Prima Pars
84. Summa I, Q.21 (Arts. 2–4): Justice as Truth, God's Mercy, and Mercy as the Root of Justice
Class of 2007-05-10
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/084-summa-i-q-21-arts-2-4-justice-as-truth-gods-mercy-and-mercy/

[0:00] Let's say our little prayer. Name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order, to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor. Amen. Help us to understand what you've written. In the Name of the Father, the Son, the, Holy Spirit. Amen. I was reading Thomas this morning there in my favorite book there, the Summa Contra Gentiles of how the devils could sin right, and what their sin actually consisted in, as kind of stopping at their own excellence, and not, Thomas says, retulit, which I think means bring back.

[0:48] They didn't bring back their own perfection or goodness to God, yeah. So it's kind it's kind of frightening to read about. Yeah. So excellent a creature can do that wrong, and then once they did that, then then they could have other faults arising from that, like the hatred of God, resisting them, and and their envy of man, and so on. But fundamentally, it was this pride they did not want to be subject to to higher things.

[1:21] you're up to article two, I believe, right? To the second one proceeds. Thus, it seems that the justice of God is not truth. Huh?

[1:32] Well, I guess this word truth can have more than one senses. That's the main problem here, right? But it's kind of striking how how those two words are brought together, though.

[1:51] Justice is in the will, for it is the rightness of the will, as Saint Anselm says. But truth is in the understanding, according to the philosopher in the sixth book of wisdom, in the sixth book of the Nicomachean Ethics. Therefore, justice does not pertain to what truth.

[2:14] More of a truth, according to the philosopher in the fourth book of the Ethics, and he's taking up the moral virtues. There's one called truth, right? Veracity, here, it's like the truth. Truth is a certain virtue other from justice. Therefore, truth does not pertain to the notion of what justice. So I think these first two arguments are based upon two other senses of the word what truth, right?

[2:40] Truth is the name of one of the last three virtues taken up in book four, the Nicomachean Ethics. Huh? Yeah, friendliness, right? Which is not to be confused with friendship, right? Friendliness is something you have to everybody, even the clerk in the store, you know, you're friendly with, and and then. What Aristotle calls eutrapelia sense of humor, we call it, you know. But Shakespeare, you know, he speaks of what this guy is being easily turning, right?

[3:09] You can easily turn whatever you say and give it kind of humorous touch within the limit of becoming mirth, you know. There you have exactly the Greek word eutrapelia It's easily turned, easily turned. You say, make it kind of funny, you know, without going to excesses in matters.

[3:28] But against this is what is said in Psalm eighty-four. Mercy and truth have met together, right? And truth is put there for what justice, huh?

[3:45] I answer. It should be said. Thomas says that truth consists in the making equal, right, of the understanding and the thing, as has been said above.

[4:01] Now, the understanding, which is a cause of the thing, like the divine understanding is, is compared to the thing as the rule and measure of it. But the reverse is true about the understanding, who gets its knowledge from things.

[4:21] When therefore things are the measure and the rule of the understanding, truth consists in this that the understanding is made equal to the thing, as happens in us. For from this that the thing is or is not, our opinion and our statement, our ratio, right, is true or false, huh? That's what Aristotle says, even in the what categories in chapter on before and after, if you recall, right?

[4:56] But when the understanding is the rule and measure of things, truth consists in this that the things are made equal to the understanding, just as the artist is said to make a true work when it accords to the what art, huh? And so you know, we might say even about a musician, right? He makes a piece. Well, this is not really a true symphony, right? You know, it's not true.

[5:19] This because it's not according to the the rules of the it's not in harmony with the rules of the art. Or even you might say about the cook, right? This is not really a you know crepe Suzette, you know, you know. There's some shortcuts have been taken. It doesn't really measure up to what the recipe says or what the the idea is. But just as artificial things add themselves to art, so do just doings to the law to which they should be in accord with them.

[5:50] The justice, therefore, of God, which constitutes order in things, an order that's in conformity with the reason of His wisdom, right? Which is his law is conveniently called what truth, and thus also there is said in us to be the truth of what justice, so those are all different senses of what truth, huh? But it seems to me it's kind of interesting that since truth does have a connection with the understanding, huh?

[6:23] It's even an explanation you have here. It seems like justice is closer to the understanding, than mercy, right? And mercy is more a perfection of the of the will or the heart.

[6:42] Seems the words kind of hint at that anyway, huh? And kind of interesting the way we use the word just sometimes to mean what equal, just so, truly so, right? As if as if it's has a greater likeness, huh? Greater connection with that.

[7:07] Now the first objection was that justice is in the will, for it's a rightness of the will, as Anselm says, but truth is in the understanding, right?

[7:20] Thomas doesn't solve it simply by saying the meanings are different, but he brings out something in addition to that. So the first, therefore, should be said that justice, as regards the law that is ruling, right, is in reason or the understanding. So if you read the treatise on law, Thomas will say the first thing it's something of reason, as opposed to Hegel might say something of the will.

[7:49] But as regards command, by which works are ruled according to law, it is in the what will, right? So it kind of presupposes the the reason, right?

[8:05] Kind of reminds me that other way of speaking in Latin. They don't speak of free will, but they speak of liberum arbitrium. Arbitrium means, I guess, judgment, huh? So that's naming more the the what? Yeah, the act of reason, but people would probably translate for a want of a better translation as free will, right? But you kind of see that as the what foundation of what is in the will, right?

[8:30] It's almost like what they call naming something predicatio per causam, saying the the cause and the effect. It's the free judgment that makes the will, in a sense, free, and

[8:51] justice is in the will only when it's reasonable, right, in accordance with the law, right. Now the second one, huh, is is more emphasizing now the different meaning of the word there. To the second, it should be said that that truth about which the philosopher speaks there is a certain virtue through which someone shows himself such in what he what says and does as he is, right?

[9:27] Okay. Now, does Iago have that virtue? No. And thus it consists in conformity of the sign to the what signified, huh? Not however in conformity of an effect to a cause or what rule, as in the truth of what justice. Okay. Now, so someone who's coming to that virtue of Aristotle of veritas, how can that be a moral virtue? Because the moral virtues are in the will or in emotions and truth. is in the reason, right?

[10:04] You'd have to again point out what you mean by by truth here, right? Okay, so the first two articles then were about what justice, right? The third article is about the mercy of God, right? And the fourth article will be about what both of them together, right? If you understand the four articles, you divide divide them into three, right?

[10:38] Right. Okay. Justice, mercy, together. Yeah. Yeah. But then the first is subdivided into the two, right? So whether mercy belongs to God, to the third one proceeds thus: it seems that mercy does not belong to God.

[11:09] Now you could translate misericordia as mercy, or you could record it as as pity, right? Um, for mercy or pity is a species of what sadness, as Damascene says. But there's no sadness in God, therefore no what. Yeah. Yeah. So now it's writing on on

[11:39] the emotions. There we're talking about comedy and so on, and tragedy, right? And Aristotle says a tragedy moves us to pity and fear, and it purges these and so on. And what kind of of what is this pity, right? Then later on we come to comedy. We say, well, it moves us to mirth and hope, and it purges away melancholy. I had all these references from the Greek, I mean the English comic muse, to show that it was there to get rid of of of melancholy.

[12:10] Shakespeare himself says, and other all the time quotes this. Melancholy is a form of sadness, right? But is it the same kind of sadness as pity?

[12:25] And then envy is again another kind of sadness, right? And so envy is what sadness at the good fortune of another, and therefore envy seems by its very nature to be something bad, right? And so in Scripture it said that through the devil envy came into the world, huh? And that's a beautiful quote from the English novelists about how common this is, right? One of them puts it very very picklingly.

[12:59] he says, you know. they say, it's hard for a man to bear well good fortune. It's even harder for him to bear the good fortune of his friends.

[13:10] And so, in a regular college, and I would say, you know, to the girls now, suppose you you and this girl are roommates, right? And he suddenly gets a boyfriend who's really handsome and going places and kind of making a lot of money and so on. And you don't really like that, you know? Don't you feel a little bit of, you know? And the same I see two guys.

[13:31] You're seniors now, you know, and you're thinking now getting a job after college. And you find a good job, and you're all set, you know. The other guy can't find anything. Don't you feel a little bit of, you know, you know? So I think, so I mean, you see how frequently this thing is, how frequently envy is. But now, what is melancholy, right? And what is pity?

[13:52] Well, pity in its full sense is sadness over the misfortune of another, and therefore pity seems to be something what good, right? Why envy seems to be something bad, right? Now, melancholy is kind of in between, huh? Melancholy is sadness over the one's misery, right? Or perhaps the miserable condition of the world. And so, melancholy is something that is not really particularly helpful, and therefore is something that comedy is supposed to try to purge away, some like that.

[14:31] Melancholy makes it hard people to. Why do you just what melancholy again? It's it's sadness over one's own miserable state. Oh, one's own. Or the miserable state of the family, or the city, or the nation, or the world to which one belongs, right? Okay. So, in other words, it's something related to you. It can be, it can be, you know, your own miserable state, but also because you're a part of something that's in miserable condition, right?

[15:03] Um. Okay. But there's no sadness in God, right? They couldn't be envy in God, but for other reasons, you know, you couldn't see somebody else as good as opposed to his good, right? God can't be melancholy, right? So,

[15:28] moreover, mercy is a relaxation of justice, huh? But God is not able to what omit that which pertains to His justice, huh? For He said in the second epistle to Timothy, chapter three, if we do not believe, He remains what faithful, for He's not able to deny Himself. But He would deny Himself, as the gloss says there, if He neglected His own dicta, His own sayings. Therefore, mercy doesn't belong to God.

[16:03] This is something that Calvin or somebody might might go for. But nevertheless, against this is what is said in Psalm one ten, that God is merciful and one who takes mercy on people.

[16:20] Incidentally, are pity and mercy synonyms? You see, the Greeks. If you look up in the dictionary, right, misericordia would correspond to the Greek word for pity, right? But perhaps there is a little bit of difference, and what is that? What What is the difference between pity and mercy if there is any distinction to be made? Is it that mercy actually goes out to help, where pity not necessarily?

[16:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pity seems to name simply the sadness or misfortune of another, a sadness you can have when you pick up. You know, I was reading in the news today was was this guy who died just in a neighboring town in Iraq, right? You know, a young young soldier, twenty, just recently married, they're expecting a child in November, right? So you feel sadness, but what can I do about it?

[17:20] I can't do about it. You see, but mercy sometimes is customarily used, right? Implies that you can do something to relieve the the thing. Kind of instea, that's what I think is is the kind of nuance in the words. Although basically, mercy is a kind of pity, right? Okay, but maybe it kind of adds this idea of being able to do something to relieve, right, the the misery of the one that you feel pity for.

[17:49] And the you know those last plays of Shakespeare, the ones that they now today put together and call them the romances, and the complete editions of Shakespeare's plays, Cymbeline

[18:06] and Tempest, and so on, right? Winter's Tale, Pericles, and there is a couple earlier plays that kind of anticipate those. I sometimes call those the mercy and forgiveness romances, right, where there is something can be done about the misery person, right? We can't do much about Othello, right? He's killed his wife already, and and he's about in his own life, right? But

[18:36] okay, so how does Thomas handle this? I answer. It should be said that mercy should maxime, most of all, be attributed to God. How can he say that if it's kind of sadness?

[18:59] Nevertheless, according to its effect, right. Not according to the affection of the what emotion or passion or feeling. Now this is a little bit like when he speaks of what anger as being what the justice of God, right? He doesn't have the emotion or feeling of anger, right? But since the angry man punishes the one he's angry with, God, insofar as he punishes us and so on, is said to be angry with us, right?

[19:40] But that's kind of a metaphor, Thomas would usually say, for the what justice of God, right? Now here we have two words. We can say the justice of God and the anger of God, and the one is naming what is in God properly, the other is naming what is in God metaphorically, right? Now in terms. of... mercy, what you really have in God is the will to relieve our misery, right?

[20:10] The will to relieve the defect of the creature, huh? But especially the rational creature. But does that will that He has to relieve the misery or the defect of the creature, does that have a name other than mercy?

[20:33] So is it only named metaphorically, or is it that this word mercy, for want of any other word, right, is used to name God's will to relieve our what defect and our misery, huh?

[20:50] But the first thing you got to point out is that it's originally naming an emotion, and therefore the original word can only be said metaphorically of, God, right? But maybe because we have no other word, this has now become the word to name the will of God, right? Why, in the case of justice and anger, there is another word besides what anger to refer to God's will to, yeah, which is justice, justice, yeah, yeah.

[21:22] But I don't think we have another word corresponding to that, right? He seems to be you know explaining the use of the word mercy or pity said of God

[21:36] by in an analogous way that he's explaining the word anger said of God, right? It's not according to the the affection, the passion, the feeling, right? But according to the effect of that, right? That makes sense. But you're naming the really the will of God, right?

[21:59] Incidentally, in these two prayers we've talked before, I think about the symmetry of the Mass and its sung parts, at least in Roman liturgy. And the first thing that's sung is the Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, and there you've kept the Greek word for pity, same way Aristotle has in the book on the poetic art, and the same one he has in the rhetoric, right? He's talking about how he roused the jury to feel pity for the guy to try to help him.

[22:29] But then the third one is Agnus Dei, Qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. But it's the same word taken one case in the Latin and the other from the what the Greek, right? But Thomas here is going to explain the the the Latin word. To the evidence of this, it should be considered that misericors someone who said as we're having a miserum cor so he takes this way the word looks right.

[23:04] He had the word heart in their core. In miserum, which means what? Yeah, miserable hearts, he's speaking of, sad. Because one is affected from the misery of another, right? Through what? Sadness, as if it was one's own misery, right? A misery, in a sense, name is more not the sadness, but the opposite of happiness, huh? So, think I've number number of words in in the languages for happiness.

[23:40] In English, the word for happiness. What is the opposite of happiness? That's kind of a thing that happened later on, right? But originally, the word happiness comes from the word "happy," you know, happy-go-lucky. What does it mean? Because the common man kind of thought that that happened by luck that you were happy. And so, in Latin they had bona fortuna.

[24:13] And but Greek and Latin have other words, you know, that indicate something else as the cause. So the Latins have the word felicitas, huh? So you read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, you'll usually translate the Greek word eudaimonia by happiness, right? Then you read the Latin texts, and they'll have not bona fortuna, which would be etymologically similar to that, but they will have felicitas, right? And felicitas comes from the Latin word "felix," which means fruitful.

[24:53] And so felicitas is, in a sense, a better name really for than happiness, because Aristotle is talking about what is the result of virtuous activity. As Thomas says, virtue is the road to happiness. Vice is the road to misery. So happiness, in that sense, is the fruit of one's good works, huh? And that word "fruit" comes up again when you talk about the fruits of the Holy Spirit, huh?

[25:20] Because their fruit is something last and sweet and so on, right? And so it's a really really better word, huh? The now in in Greek Aristotle uses two words in the Ethics. He uses the word eudaimonia, which means having a good demon. But kind of implies that that one's happiness depends upon the guidance of something above man, right? So it's a very interesting word, huh? But in the book of the Poetic Art, he uses the word like bona fortuna.

[25:57] You're fortunate in life, right? So you got to be kind of sensitive to those words, right? The etymologies are different, and some things bring out something. Different, right? Is my happiness a result of good luck, or is it the fruit of my doing good things, or is it due to some higher one who's directing me? Huh? Well, you might say there seems to be some truth in all of these, right?

[26:25] If I go out here and get hit, you know, and paralyzed and so on, well, I say that's bad luck. You know, I'm not going to be very happy about it. Okay, but to some extent, a person's responsible for his happiness or misery for what he does.

[26:41] Now, the opposite of happiness should be called what? In Latin, it's called miseria. miseria. Yeah. And what's the native English word for the opposite of happiness, or the opposite of happy?

[26:57] Well, it could be that. There's a native word though. You mean unlucky in that sense, or? Yeah, opposite happiness. You wretch. Oh. Wretched, wretched. Yeah. And it's kind of interesting if you look at the word etymologically, wretched. I guess it's related to the word for shipwreck, you know. So. And I remember, you know, Pius XII using that, you know, that when he's defining one of the mysteries of Mary, there, you know, that if you don't believe this now, you're suffering shipwreck.

[27:34] Listen. Of course, it's a very, very vivid image, right? Shakespeare speaks of life on certain voyage, as if you're trying to reach the port, which is happiness. But in those days, especially, the ships often didn't reach the port, and so you suffer what? Shipwreck, right? There's a lot of allusion to that in Shakespeare's plays, you know, but it's not private to him by any means, right? So.

[28:04] So regard the misery or the wretchedness of another, right? Huh. With sadness, right? As if it was your own what? Yeah. You're wretched, right?

[28:25] And from this it follows. This is kind of the thing we were talking about before, right? That one acts to what? Dispel the misery of another, right? Just as you would act to dispel your own what? Misery, right? And this is the effect of mercy, right? So we're saying a little bit that the word mercy, perhaps a little bit more than the word pity, implies that effect that's going to happen.

[28:58] Now, to be sad over the misery of another does not belong to God. But to repel the misery of another, this most of all belongs to God. That's very interesting, huh?

[29:14] If we, through misery, understand in a broader sense any defect, right? As strictly speaking, misery is the opposite of happiness, right? Aristotle said they don't consider the dog happy even he gets a good meal.

[29:34] For defects are not taken away except through the perfection of some good. But the first origin of goodness is God. So we say misery most of all then be attributed to God, huh? Let's see.

[29:56] It's interesting that you know going back to the Mass there in the Kyrie eleison we're Appealing to God's mercy, aren't we? And in the Agnus Dei, we're appealing to God's mercy, other places do, but especially those two, two prayers. You don't really have a prayer appealing to God's justice, do you? Oh God, do me justice.

[30:20] I used to cringe when we get the social justice types up there Yeah. Petitions, and they always go crying about for justice. I always say, no, no, We don't want mercy, We don't want justice. This is the way Portia argues with Shylock. You know, if we all demand justice, but where would we be? You know. So it's kind of interesting, right?

[30:46] I mean, if we pray at all, about his, justice is to avoid his justice, so to speak. And the justice hurts. of what we've done, and haven't done that we should have done. Now, the second paragraph, of the second paragraph, is in my body, in, my article here. Thomas gives a very interesting bonitatis doctrine, right? The goodness of the teaching. He gives a nice little distinction there among four things.

[31:17] But it should be considered that to what bestow perfections on things pertains to the divine goodness and to the divine justice and to the divine liberality, which he hasn't mentioned in this thing, and the divine mercy. All four of these, right? But for another and another reason, for different reasons, we'd say it's kind of colloquial in Latin, there, right? secundum aliam et aliam rationem. For different reasons, we'd say.

[31:49] For the communication of perfections, considered simply as such, right, absolutely considered, pertains to what goodness, good. This is diffusive of itself. But in so far as perfections are given by God to things according to their ratio, their proportion, it pertains to justice, to that distributive justice, right? So it doesn't give the dog and you the same thing, does it? Okay.

[32:24] But just you get what you get, and it's just that the dog gets what he gets. The skill gets what he deserves. Insofar as he does not attribute to things perfections on account of his usefulness, right? But on account of his goodness, it pertains to what liberality. We mentioned before how the great Avicenna says, "what? God alone is liberal, right? He gets nothing out of what he gives us.

[32:58] " When he gives somebody out of the abundance of our heart, you know, we get something out of at least the good deed, of bestowing something upon them.

[33:09] But insofar as perfections given to things by God expel every defect, right? It pertains to what? Mercy. That's a very interesting distinction, right? So those four things are not what synonyms, right?

[33:29] Even though in God, the goodness of God and the justice of God and the liberality of God and the mercy of God are not four different things; they're one and the same thing, right? But we have four different thoughts, and we attribute the giving or bestowing perfections upon things to each of these in a somewhat different way, right? That's actually quite a beautiful text, huh?

[33:56] In the Summa Contra Gentiles, I remember correctly in the first book, there he talks about the justice of God and about the liberality of God, not so much about the mercy of God, right? He kind of begins the Nicomachean Ethics, and there's no virtue of mercy in there, right? But there is a virtue of liberality, which Aristotle talks about in the fourth book, and obviously virtue of justice, right?

[34:19] So how are these applied then to God, right? And then he always will tend to bring in what the great Avicenna said. Doesn't always agree with Avicenna about everything, but some beautiful things that Avicenna says, and you have to admire him for what he understood.

[34:36] Now he applies to the first objection, which is based upon the original meaning of mercy or pity as a species of what sadness, right?

[34:48] That's why you know in the tragic and the comic mask, you know, the tragic mask has got the sad, right, and then the comic mask has got the smile or the mirth and so on. They tell the story of one of these terrible tyrants there who went to the theater, you know, and there was a great great tragedy on, and he's starting to get tears and yeah, quickly, you know.

[35:11] Now the people see that he was moved. to pity and the the in the fiction when he's not in real misery with people around him. Kind of a funny story, though, in a sense, huh? That's what Augustine criticizes about theater. Yeah. It does you no good if you don't practice it in virtue. But people say, "oh, what a good-hearted man because he wept at the theater. " Yeah.

[35:37] What did he do for his life? Nothing. Yeah. He doesn't have pity on his neighbor when he has tears in the end. Yeah. So it doesn't dispose you too strongly, right?

[35:50] Okay. The second objection was saying, "Isn't mercy a relaxation of justice? " So it's in their conflict there, right? Thomas will say some things about that here, and then you know this is relevant to the fourth article, which is going to say that both of the things are found in everything God does, right?

[36:13] So he says God acts mercifully, not by acting against His justice, right? But by doing something above His justice, just as if to someone are owed a hundred denarii, right? Someone gives two hundred.

[36:37] Nevertheless, He does not act against justice, but He acts either liberally or mercifully, right? Okay. And similarly, if someone remits a offense committed against him, right? For who remits something in a way gives it, right? Hence, the apostle calls remission a what? Giving, right? Ephesians five. Now, in English, we'd say what? Forgive one another, right? But it comes from the word give, right? That's kind of interesting.

[37:18] I guess the German word means fair give, means to give completely. Yeah. Yeah. So both in the word forgive and the word thanksgiving, you have the word give, but they're a little different meaning, right? See, because thanksgiving is for some good you received from somebody, right? And forgive is someone's done something bad to you, and you're what? Forgiving it.

[37:49] From which it is clear that mercy does not take away justice, right? But is a certain fullness of justice. Huh? That's a very subtle thing, right? That's came on Shakespeare's, you know, thing that when Porsches speaking, right, about perfecting justice by mercy. Went to the second, Epistle James. James is it Jacob it Jacob? Mm-hmm. That mercy what? Exalts highly judgment, right? That's

[38:27] interesting. How that Mary is called what? The Mother of Mercy and the Mirror of Justice. What? The Mother of mercy and mirror of justice. What? Mother of mercy and mirror of justice. Yeah, yeah, but you never called me the mother of justice, right? And I suppose this is partly due to the nature of woman, right? And the woman, as Shakespeare says, are more merciful by nature than men, right?

[38:54] And so it's more appropriate that Mary be the mother of mercy than of justice, right? But it's interesting if you take the two comings of Christ. The first coming of Christ is in mercy, right? And the first coming of Christ then is through Mary.

[39:11] And so we go through Mary to get the mercy of God, right? But you know, does Scripture speak of the second coming of Christ as being through Mary? Did Mary come in the clouds and Christ behind her or something? No, he's going to come there with the angels and so on, right? And the second time he's coming is coming in what? Justice. Yeah. I remember one time when I was serving on one of these disciplinary committees, and there was a series of letters out there threatening a young lady, you know, and so on.

[39:46] They're trying to determine who the victim, what was, and they actually used the FBI handwriting specimens. They got they got specimens from all the students in the class, right? Not known to them in museums or what it was. And so, I guess the FBI. is pretty careful. They don't say this is so and so's thing unless they're really sure about it. Yeah. And so they identified this guy as being the the the writer of these letters, huh?

[40:12] Well, of course, it was a very serious case, so the father, the mother, came to the thing. Of course, the father thought his son was guilty, right? Mother wouldn't admit that her boy could do this, you know. But I thought that was kind of interesting, you know, the difference between the father and the mother, right? I mean, in terms of.

[40:34] But I wonder, you know, this thing about the this controversy about the death penalty and so on—whether more men or more women would be in favor of the death penalty? Huh.

[40:45] I was suspected. I don't know. I'm around making surveys, but I would kind of think that, you know. But you know, it's just in Shakespeare's plays, huh? That these mercy and forgiveness plays—it's the woman in most of them, right, who's forgiving the man for some terrible thing he's done to her, to her, right? And it's kind of beautiful when it's done, you know, Shakespeare's plays. But you know, I've seen in some of the commentaries there, Mary, you know, the mother of mercy, nil habens in regno justitiae That's kind of strong.

[41:22] having nothing in the kingdom of justice, right? And I mean, Mary at the at the cross there is not calling down the justice of God upon these men who are putting her son to death. You know, you don't have anything like that at all. No. Because in human life, basically, women are stronger than men in living life and thinking. Man is very weak. In the human, if we live like not as spiritual to God, so that's why man always sins more than a woman, and woman always forgives man.

[41:59] I mean, not as like a slave to life. Yeah, yeah. Now Christ himself, Christ as man, makes an exception in this. So we are lucky how the world is not so. We get all the. He's influenced by his mother. Maybe Joseph would have been so. Understand me. Okay, now we're up to Article Four here, right?

[42:30] To the fourth. Incidentally, the other thing was talking about too before some of you came in, you know. But I was looking at text of Thomas there in the Lectura they called it on the Gospel of Saint John, but he was talking about the wine of justice, right? And he referred to the Good Samaritan who poured in wine and oil into the wounds of the man who had fallen.

[42:57] Well, sometimes the Good Samaritan is said not just to be an example for us, but to represent Christ, huh? And the man going down to Jerusalem Jericho, Jericho, was the human race, right? And we fell among the these, like the devil, and so on. And we were deprived of our natural goods, and so on. And then Christ comes along, and through justice and mercy, he what heals us, right?

[43:20] But tempering the severity of justice, he says, with the mercy of the of the oil. There you see mercy and justice in the same what work of healing mankind, right? Now Thomas is going to talk about this universally, not just in reference to us.

[43:45] To the fourth one proceeds thus: It seems that there is not in all the works of God mercy and justice, huh? I guess he's going to take the opposite side. He always contra, right? He always just take the opposite side. He always tries to mislead you, as far as I can see, right?

[44:11] For he says some of the works of God are attributed to mercy, as the making just of the impious person, huh? By some are attributed to justice, as the damnation of the impious.

[44:27] Whence it is said in James chapter two, judgment without mercy to the one who has acted was not done mercy, right? So what is the? Let's say the merciful for what? Yeah. So here is judgment without mercy to the one who has not done mercy, huh? So therefore, in every work of God, does not appear mercy and justice, huh?

[44:57] Yeah, that's a good objection. Moreover, the apostle in the epistle to the Romans attributes the conversion of the Jews to justice and truth. There's two words there. Joined again, right? I guess that's why he had the second article. It must be more than one place in Scripture. But the conversion of the Gentiles—that means you and I, I guess—to mercy, right? So when does do the justice, does it do mercy?

[45:26] Therefore, not in every work of God is there both justice and what mercy, huh? Third objection. I know those first two objections are similar, aren't they? Right? Because they're putting out things that God does, where one seems to be attributed to justice and the other to mercy, right? There's two different examples of that.

[45:56] Moreover, many just men in this world are afflicted, but this is unjust. Therefore, not in every work of God is there justice and mercy.

[46:13] So is it just that Christ died on the cross. He deserved to die. It might seem to you know not that kind of a good example of a just man being afflicted, right? How was that justice?

[46:35] Now, this fourth objection is more dealing with a more universal way of considering this question. Moreover, it belongs to justice to render what is owed to someone, right, the debt, and belongs to mercy to relieve misery, right?

[46:55] And thus, both justice and mercy presuppose something in their work, right? But creation presupposes nothing. You can't even want to owe something when you create, or anyone who's miserable out there that's going to relieve, okay? Therefore, in creation, there's neither mercy nor justice. So not every work of God. That's a pretty strong objection, isn't it? But against this is what is said in Psalm 24: All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth.

[47:34] You see why he had that article on truth and justice right truth and justice, right? It's a very common expression, at least in the Latin psalms. Two words, mercy and truth, many times are linked together in

[47:46] the psalms. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, is it by chance or is it reason why the word "just" can mean equal as well as just in the sense of the virtue, right? If the two go together, right? We have courts of equity, which comes in the word "equi." Right. Now, even now, you know, we say you want to make a financial deal, right? As if as if equality and justice kind of go together, right?

[48:17] But then, truth in the sense of the mind, and all my reports go with the modest truth, nor more nor clip, but so. If they say more or less in the truth, they're villains and the sons of darkness, as Paul says. So the truth is kind of an equality of the mind with things. So there's kind of a reason why truth and justice go together, right? Why mercy seems to kind of go over the top, right?

[48:42] And not observe equality, huh? You know, I didn't expect all this. You know, this is more than I deserve. We, you know, we say someone is generous, right? Or in liberal liberality, and liberality seems to be closer to what mercy than to justice, huh?

[49:10] I answer. It should be said that it is necessary that in every doing of God, every work of God, there be found mercy and what truth. He's even using the word truth himself, Thomas Thomas.

[49:27] If nevertheless we take mercy right for the removal of any defect, right, and not just what misery in the strict sense. Strictly speaking, a stone can't be miserable, and a tree can't be miserable, even a dog or cat can't be miserable, but just a human being or an angel,

[49:53] although not every defect properly can be called what. Yeah, but only the defect of the rational creature. For whom it is possible to be what happy? Okay. As I mentioned before, the word for miseria is opposed to felicitati right? I say felicitas comes in the word for what fruitful, right? Okay. And so, in some ways, felicitas is a very good word for the Nicomachean Ethics to name the end of man, because at least in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle is primarily talking about how this end is achieved by doing virtuous things.

[50:37] And so, you could say that happiness is a natural fruit of good deeds, just as in a way misery is a natural fruit of of bad deeds.

[50:53] Um. What does the doctors say? there in Macbeth, something like that. Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles. What breed is another word for to give birth, right?

[51:08] So it kind of indicates that there's kind of the natural result of what you've done, right? That you're happy or you're miserable, right? Okay. Even though you don't want to say there's no truth to chance having some influence on this, and and you don't deny something above, but those things are more what hidden to us, right?

[51:29] So he says you got to understand misericordia in kind of a what generalization there of misery, right? That's kind of the defect of the what rational creature. There's a passage in in the book on the poetic art of Aristotle where he says that you know

[51:54] change is going to be represented in a play, and basically the change is either from happiness to misery or from misery to happiness, right? Wasn't kind of the ultimate thing, son. And tragedy is more representation of a man falling from happiness to what misery, right? And and comedy is more the the reverse, right? So comedy moves us to what hope, right? Things might turn out okay after all.

[52:25] I was reading a book one time by a classical scholar talking about you know Roman comedies and so on, and he quotes kind of Saint Paul, you know about faith, hope, and charity, which is the greatest. But the comedy says hope is the greatest of all. Well, he just doesn't understand it in a theological sense, you know, but just something the idea that hope is arrived at by seeing things, you know, suddenly you know things disappear, you know, and the good turning out.

[52:55] But tragedy kind of you know causes fear, right? And the Women of Trachis is a beautiful. Thing in the play that kind of hints at what Aristotle is saying later on, because you pity somebody for something that could happen to you, you know. And the Hercules' wife there, you know, she sees the slave girl now who was the daughter of a king, you know, now she's a slave and going to be a servant, and so on And she's had this feel, of fear you know, just a short time ago she was living, you know, the daughter of the king, and now she's slave.

[53:33] What could happen to me, you know? Horrible things happened to her before, for the tragedy is out, right? Yeah. But as I say, saying that you have to take misericordia is not just relieving the defective human misery, but any kind of defect. Okay, to understand this in the, you know, universal sense, right?

[54:02] Um. So having good rain when they need the crops need rain, right? And not just getting us wine when we need wine or something. Okay.

[54:21] So he says you got to take mercy, then, to mean the removal of any defect, and not just this misery, right? Okay. Now the reason of this necessity is because

[54:40] the debt or the owed that is rendered from divine justice is owed either to God, right, or owed to some what creature, and neither can be what.

[54:57] In any work of God, right? Okay. So in any work of God, he renders what is owed to himself, right, and also what is owed to the creature, okay, because it is nature.

[55:18] For God is not able to make or do something that is not suitable to his wisdom and to his what goodness. In which way we say something is owed to God, right?

[55:37] Likewise, whatever he does in created things, he does according to a what suitable order and ratio to these things, in which consists the ratio of distributive justice, you could say, right? Okay. And thus it is necessary that in every work of God there be what. Yeah. Okay.

[56:01] But now he says something very interesting here in the next sentence, huh? He doesn't make these two, as it were, simply parallel, the mercy and the justice, because he says the work of the divine justice always presupposes the work of mercy, and is what founded on it.

[56:23] For to the creature is not owed anything, except an account of something already existing in it, or considered beforehand by God, right? And and if that is owed to the creature, this will be an account of something before that. And since this does not go on forever, is necessary to arrive at something that depends only on the what goodness of the divine will. It chose you to be.

[56:57] Is you more deserving to be than these countless others more deserving to be than these countless others that could have been? Is that what? Be part of it.

[57:23] I was driving up and I turned the radio on and Rush Limbaugh on, you know. Some guy was calling in and said he says you know how much I admire your program. and my daughter's gonna call her first child Regan right first child Regan, right? You know, because he uses by Regan. And Rush says, "Well, why not Rush? " I'm just kidding, he says. We say, well, we made the next, one, he says, We made the next one.

[57:59] So you don't see the justice and the mercy kind of proceeding equally from God, but the what work of divine justice always presupposes the work of mercy, and is founded in it. That's a very interesting thing to say. I think is reason for it, right? But. My goodness. What you don't owe something to the creature except for reasons of something already in the creature. Was that owed to him?

[58:26] Well, if it was, it's because something before that. And so the beginning of it is going to have to be pure mercy, the gratuitous divine will, the free. Note how it fits into what we saw before: that God doesn't will anything other than Himself, except freely, right? He naturally and necessarily wills his own goodness and loves that. But he doesn't naturally and necessarily choose you to be.

[58:54] But he did choose you freely to be. I'm very thankful for that. And then there's no justice there at all, you know. It's presupposed, right? Having chosen you to be, he's going to give you a mind and will and other things that are owed to human being, right? So on.

[59:17] I give as an example: if it be said that to have a hand is owed to man in account of his what? Rational soul, right? Now, there Thomas seems to be agreeing with Aristotle and Anaxagoras, right? Because Anaxagoras said that man is the most intelligent of animals because he has a hand. Aristotle says no, it's just the reverse. He's the most intelligent of animals. He has a hand instead of a paw or a hoof or something.

[59:43] Because you can't do much with a hoof, can you? But a hand, you can do all kinds of things with a hand, and it kind of fits, you know, the infinity of the mind. See, tool of tools, okay. So you can say to have a hand is owed to man, in account of his rational soul. But to have a rational soul is owed to him, in order to be a man, right?

[1:00:07] How can I be a man if I don't have a understanding soul, as Shakespeare says? But to be a man, in account of the what? Divine goodness.

[1:00:19] And thus, in every work of God, there appears mercy, as regards the first root. That's a beautiful fundamental word there, concrete word. As regards its first root. Have you studied Sister Faustina's writings at all Yeah, Did this come out at all in there or no? Yeah, I'm not aware. See, I mean the idea that the divine mercy is the foundation, you know, that the justice, as he says, presupposes always the work of mercy, as they would.

[1:00:55] Okay. Then it goes on, and this is something that is very clear if you know a lot about these things. You have, you know, it's like two causes, one of which is moving the other, right? Okay. So he says, whose power is saved in all the things that follow? The power of the mercy, right? And this is the other thing that's commonly said. going back to the Liber de Causis, and even more vehemently operates in them, just as the primary cause more vehemently flows in than the what?

[1:01:38] Second cause, huh? Okay. So who acts more vehemently on the marble, the hammer and the chisel, or Michelangelo? Yeah. And he kind of brings it to perfection, right? Then. So he's saying mercy is to justice a bit like Michelangelo is to the hammer and the what? Sure. Yeah, yeah. Both, both Michelangelo and the hammer, we saw, are involved in the Pietas, but primarily it's Michelangelo. More vehemently, Michelangelo, right?

[1:02:16] The hammer's not moving him around, right? Not perfecting it simply as a hammer. In account of this, also those things which are owed to some creature, God, from the abundance of his goodness, dispenses more what? Generously. More generously, large use, right? Okay. Interesting that word there, you know, and going back to Shakespeare's definition of reason, huh? Large discourse. We have Thomas's prayer. You ever seen Thomas's prayer before communion?

[1:02:51] You know. He's talking about how approaching God. You know. You know. Unclean, and then he says, "Lajitata, your abundance, in your Yeah, yeah, Then you might get more suitable to receive this. So he more abundantly dispenses than the ratio of the thing requires.

[1:03:22] For it is less that would suffice for conserving the order of justice than that the divine goodness confers, which exceeds every proportion of the creature. Right, that's very well said.