Tertia Pars
41. Aquinas on Christ's Emotions: Sadness and Fear (Summa III, Q.15, Arts. 6–7)
Class of 2009-04-30
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/13-tertia-pars/041-aquinas-on-christs-emotions-sadness-and-fear-summa-iii-q/

[0:01] In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, their enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, ordain, illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, angelic doctor, In the name of Christ. and help us to understand all that you've written. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen. Did you celebrate Saint Catherine of Siena yesterday?

[0:30] Yes, of course. Okay. I was reading in a little bit of her life there that just they thought she didn't know how to what write, and then she was lonely when her confessor had left her for a while, and she wanted to write, and so she was given the miraculous gift of writing, right? But it was given her Christ appeared to her with Saint John and Thomas Aquinas.

[0:57] I was kind of interested. Well, why John and Thomas Aquinas with our Lord, right? Of course, John is the one who emphasizes the word, right? He's that he's really famous for that, right? And of course, Thomas is what the master of the word, right? You know, one of the the image of the Trinity in the Dominican Order, they say, is Dominic represents the Father, right? And then his word is Thomas, right?

[1:26] And then the Holy Spirit or love is Catherine of Siena, right? So it's appropriate that Thomas has come down to help her put things into words.

[1:39] Okay, we're in Article Six here, and we're finding out about the what they in Latin they call the Passiones Animae, right? But what do we call these passions in English? Sometimes we use the word passion. That's more for excess of them usually. What do we call them in English? Emotions. Yeah, emotions and sometimes what feelings, right? Okay, but emotions comes from the word for what motion, and so we speak in English, you know, that I was moved to anger or I was moved to you know some other emotion, right?

[2:16] And of course, the word Passion in Greek or in Latin has the idea of what undergoing, right, and therefore being moved in some way. But the word feelings, which has more meanings than that of emotion, but it kind of shows the fact that there's something bodily about these things, that would be known even by the sense of touch, right? So you feel, we say, your anger is if it's by the sense of touch touch that you that you know huh?

[2:47] Your bodily change when you're angry or you're when you're feeling fear or something, right? So Christ had these things, right? Especially wanted to have them. Okay. To the sixth, one proceeds. Thus, it seems that in Christ there was no what sadness.

[3:15] Now, it's interesting that he has an article on sadness here, and he's going to have one on fear in the next one, and then admiration, which is connected with fear in a way, both not fear in the ordinary sense, and then he's going to have one on anger, right? And no one on joy. Interesting, huh? Maybe it's kind of obvious that you have that.

[3:49] Or hope and things of this sort, right? So it seems that in Christ there was no sadness, right? For he said about Christ in Isaiah chapter forty-two that he was neither what sad nor disturbed. Now we had that scene there with Philip. You know, did you have that today, and on your? No, I have the. Where he gets up to the eunuch there from Ethiopia, right? Yeah, the other day.

[4:25] He was reading Isaiah in the carriage or the chariot or something, and he doesn't know what this refers to you know, It, wasn't this exact passage, but a different one, the one about the sheep there. I mean, being for the suffering. Okay, Moreover, Proverbs twelve, verse twenty-one. Um,

[4:53] the just man is not what saddened, no matter what happens to him, right? You see why the church is, people are kind of attracted to the Stoics a bit, right? That's what the wise man's supposed to be. He's above this, You know when the wise man is told that his son has died, I always knew he was mortal, or

[5:14] some other such inhuman reasons. And this reason the Stoics assign, right, That's going right to the Stoics, because no one is sad except about the loss of his own what goods, right? But the just man does not regard as his own goods anything other than justice and virtue, which he cannot lose, right? Of course, the Aristotelians they divide the goods into the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, and the outside goods, and there's an order among them, right?

[5:50] And the chief ones are the goods of the soul, but the goods of the body are goods nevertheless, even the exterior ones. My chair is good, and so on. Okay, without my car, I'd have a hard time getting up here. I bicycled up here all the way. It would be kind of a there's somebody on the road I passed, bicycling along. I don't know how far he was going, but but a little dangerous out there

[6:16] Otherwise, a just man would be subject to fortune, right? If he was saddened by the loss of the goods of what fortune, right? But Christ was most of all just, right? According to that of Jeremiah 23: 6. This is the name that they call him, Lord, our the just one, yeah. Therefore, in him there was no what sadness, huh?

[6:49] And Saint Catherine of Siena saying something like that, huh? Man, what happens? You don't get upset about it, he says because it comes from God that it came to you, so why get upset about it?

[7:03] Moreover, the philosopher says in the seventh book of the Ethics that all sadness is bad and to be what run away, freed from. But nothing bad or to be freed from should be in Christ, right? Therefore, in Christ there was no what sadness, huh? That's interesting argument, huh? Moreover, as Augustine says in the fourteenth book about the City of God, sadness is about those things which happen to us, not willing them to happen to us, huh?

[7:38] But nothing that Christ underwent was against his will, for it is said in Isaiah chapter 53, he was offered up because he willed. Therefore, in Christ there was no what sadness.

[7:56] But against all this is what the Lord Himself says in Matthew chapter 26, "My soul is sad, usque ad mortem, even unto death," right?

[8:08] And Ambrose says in the second book about the Trinity that as a man, huh, he had what sadness? As God, he couldn't have any sadness, but as man, and he underwent them, took on my sadness, huh?

[8:29] And with confidence, I call it sadness. Who what? When I preached the cross, huh? Okay. Thomas answers. I answer. It should be said that as has been said, the delight or pleasure of the divine contemplation. Was thus by the dispensation of the divine power retained in the mind of Christ in such a way that it does not overflow or derive down to his what sense powers,

[9:13] so that the sadness or the pain, sensible pain, would what be excluded. But just as sensible pain is in the sensitive desiring power, so also sadness, right? But there is a difference according to the motive of this. Notice the word motivum, right? You see, these are the words, emotions or the object, right? For the object in the motive of what pain, right, dolor, dolor, is the what injury, right, perceived by the sense of touch, as when someone is wounded, huh?

[9:59] But the object,and the motive of sadness is something harmful or a something bad grasped in an interior way, so it's more spiritual thing. Either through reason or through the what imagination.

[10:21] So when Hamlet says there's nothing good or bad in this world, but thinking makes it so. He's probably thinking there not so much in the sense of reason, but of what imagining, right?

[10:34] You can imagine things a certain way, and then they seem terrible. Imagine another way, they seem seem good, right? And sometimes we even laugh about the awful thing that happened to us. Car is broken down, huh?

[10:52] The way back from the south, there almost drove the car until it's empty, right? I know. I was thinking I got. I said I got to get it filled up the first thing tomorrow morning. You know, instead next day, and then I was driving, so I'm driving along and I forgot all about it. Then finally, there's a rest area. I say, "We're going to stop here." Goes, "Yeah."

[11:13] And then she's going to drive a little bit, you know. Hey, it's almost empty. There was enough gas in there to make it to the thing, but it would have been, you know, wouldn't be too much fun to be out there on the highway without any gas.

[11:28] Well, no, I hadn't seen that that that rest area. You know, may not be a rest area for another three miles. If I would have run out. We did that in New Brunswick with Father John Marini. The fall of foliage is beautiful. Yeah. We just left the big town. We passed through it, and we countryside, nothing anywhere. Just oh, look at the leaves! Look at the leaves!

[11:49] Ding, ding, ding! What's that? Just over the next mile, there's one exit and one gas station. Yeah. Thanks, good job. I had one time when we were driving with my aunt, you know. Luckily, there's a huge hill down to the. How do you think it would have been? Getting injured does some things for you like that, you know. Um do not even want

[12:20] Just as when someone is saddened about the loss of what grace, right, or money, huh? Interesting examples there. So, so the soul of Christ, inwardly, is able to grasp something as what harmful. Both as regards what himself, right, as his own passion and his death was something harmful. As regards others, as the sin of his disciples, right. Or even that of the Jews killing him, right? And therefore, just as in Christ there could be true pain, I think dolor would be pain, so in Him there could be true what?

[13:13] Sadness, huh? But in a different way than in us, according to those three things which were assigned above when we spoke what? In common about the passion of Christ, huh?

[13:32] No, it's back in article what? Four here, right, huh? Three, huh? That was towards the third part of that thing. First, as regards the object, right? Okay, that Christ wouldn't have these illicit objects, right? And second, as regards the beginning, because in us they come before the judgment of reason, and not in Christ.

[14:03] And third, because in us they sometimes, or often, draw us outside the path of reason, right? Okay, so Christ has those qualifications, but still he has truly these emotion of what? Sadness, huh?

[14:25] Now, what about that text from Isaiah 42, where we're like the eunuch that we have to have a teacher to explain what he is saying? So he says, sadness is removed from Christ according to perfect or complete passion, right?

[14:44] But there was in him one what? Initiated, right? According to propassion, that's that technical term we saw before. Matthew. says in Matthew 26, he began to be saddened and to be disturbed, huh?

[15:07] For for other is it to be saddened, another to begin to be saddened, as Jerome what? Says, huh? I suppose in Latin the word passion. This is coming to English. Say somebody's passionate; it's an excess there maybe, and that's not found in Christ. Okay.

[15:35] Now the second objection: the just one is not saddened no matter what happens to him, right? To the second, it should be said, as Augustine says in the 14th book about the City of God, huh?

[15:57] That for three perturbations, to what cupidity, joy, and what fear. The Stoics lay in the soul of the wise man three eupatheias, good passions, you might say.

[16:20] For cupidity, will right. For laetitia, that's kind of I suppose altered, you know. Joy, right, and for fear, caution, right. But for sadness, they deny something is able to be at all in the soul of the wise man, right? Because sadness is about an evil that is already what happened. But they estimate that no evil can happen to the wise man, right? And this is because they do not believe something to be good except the what honestum, right?

[17:04] Which is another name for the goods of the soul, right? The honorable good that makes men what good. Nor anything is bad except the dishonest, in the sense of the the more vice vicious, by which men are made what bad. Thomas says, "Well, although the bonum honestum is the chief good of man, right, the goods of the soul, and the evil of the soul, the chief what evil of man, right?

[17:40] Because these pertain to reason itself and we can partake of reason, which is the chief thing in man. Man is the animal that has reason, just like Shakespeare teaches us, okay.

[17:57] And Shakespeare also says, 'Let's not be like stocks, Stoics. ' Makes a pun on Stoic and stock, okay. But there are nevertheless certain secondary goods of man, right, which pertain either to the body itself or to what exterior things serving the body. Okay. So this is the division of the goods of man, and it's a division into what three, and you see it in Socrates there in the dialogues, like in the Phaedo and so on.

[18:40] And usually divided into these three: the goods of the soul, the goods of the body, and exterior goods, right? And what Socrates is saying in the Apology is that. He's been going around examining men, right, about many things, but chiefly about their preferring the goods of the body and exterior goods to the goods of the soul. So for Socrates, the goods of the soul are much greater than the goods of the body, exterior goods, and therefore we should get as much as we can of those and be satisfied with what's necessary in the goods of the body, exterior goods.

[19:18] Why the Athenians act as if the goods of the body and the exterior goods are the greatest goods, to get as much of these as you can and be satisfied with the goods of the soul that's necessary to get these other ones and keep them, right? Because a fool in his money is soon, you know, you have a little bit of moderation to preserve your health and so on, right?

[19:40] And so on. And so Aristotle takes this up formally in the seventh book of the Politics. He says there is two points of agreement between the philosophers and all men, or most men, and that is that there are these three kinds of Goods, and secondly, we need some of all three. But they disagree as to which ones are better, right? And which ones you should try, therefore, to get the most of, right?

[20:17] And consequently, where the purpose of life is going to be found, it's going to be found among the greater ones, right? I used to always quote, you know, the kind of a thing from Ben Franklin. Yes, it is. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. And there you single out three goods, one from each of the three kinds. Because wealth is the excellence of exterior goods, and health is perhaps the greatest good of the body, and wisdom is the greatest good of the soul, right?

[20:51] So, in some sense, we know there are these three kinds of goods. And but we and you need some of all of them, right? But they disagree as to which are better, right?

[21:08] And sometimes Thomas uses that division in talking about Christ. You know, that what did he do after his death, right? Well, as a consequence of the merits of his death and so on, he first descended into hell and gave the beatific vision to the prophets and so on, right? That was the good of the soul. And then he rose from the dead, right? Which is to bestow upon us the good of the body, right?

[21:35] Not only that, but I mean, he kind of stands out there. And then he ascended into heaven, right? And that's the exterior good, right?

[21:46] So, but it goes back to that division into those three. That's in the Compendium of the Creed. Yeah, yeah, and the when he talks about the articles of the faith, right? We

[22:04] will come back to that when we get to get to the part that goes to the life of Christ, you know, when you get to these different things. Because all this is what he took on when he became man, right?

[22:20] So Thomas says, although the bonum honestum—that was the name that was adopted in Latin, right, for the goods of the soul, right, the honorable goods. huh So although the bonum honestum is the chief good of man and the dishonest, meaning that has a different meaning, of course, in English now, the chief evil of man, because these pertain to reason, which is chief in man. There are nevertheless some secondary goods of man, which pertain to the body or to the exterior things serving the body.

[22:59] And according to this, there can be in the soul of the wise man sadness, right? As regards the sense-desiring power, according to the grasping of these evils, right? Not, however, such that that sadness would disturb reason, right? So, wouldn't function. And according to this, should be understood that he is not saddened the just man, whatever happens to him, as if he goes crazy when something happens, huh?

[23:31] Jumps out of the, you know, like when the stock market collapsed in 1929, right? People are actually jumping out of skyscraper windows and so on, and some people were taking their lives in their latest down, down hill.

[23:48] Because, for no accident, is his reason what disturbed and taken out of proper functioning. And according to this, sadness was in Christ, this kind of technical term, secundum propassionem, right? Not according to passion, this full one that deranges the man, right?

[24:14] Okay. Now, what about this argument from Aristotle here? All sadness is bad, huh? That's why there's no sadness in heaven, right? Because it would not be a perfect good, huh? There's any sadness? If sadness was, fair to say, good, there should be some sadness in heaven, right?

[24:35] To third, it should be said that all sadness is the evil of what? Yeah, or punishment, huh? But is not always the evil of what guilt, but only when it proceeds from a disordered what affection. Whence Augustine says in the 14th book about the city of God, that when these affections—that's another word he uses in Latin for these emotions—when they follow right reason, right, and when and where it is necessary to show them, right, huh?

[25:13] Who dares to call them morbid or vicious what passions? So, so is it appropriate for our Lord to show sadness there when his friend Lazarus died? So.

[25:36] Okay. To the fourth, sadness is about those things which happen to us, not willing them. To the fourth, it should be said that nothing prevents something to be what contrary to the will in itself. Which is nevertheless willed by reason of the end to which it is what ordered. Just as a bitter medicine is not by itself or in itself willed, right? But only according as it is ordered to what health.

[26:14] So when I was a little boy, there they give me some medicine for something, and it had like that cinnamon coating on the outside. The little cinnamon things you do sometimes they put on cakes and so on. I put in my mouth and I that didn't hurt enough, you know. Tastes pretty good, you know. Also, when I got through the cinnamon,

[26:38] so before you get this colonoscopy, they got to take all this stuff, you know, and get awful taste to it. But anyway, sometimes it fixes up when they say, but so.

[26:51] I always thought, you know, that that my dislike of milk when I was a little boy was due to the fact that I took milk of magnesia one time. You know, I was getting some, you know, for some ailment, and I associated milk and magnesia with milk. Do you know why it's called milk of magnesia? I'm curious. No, I don't know. I don't know what it's even given for I remember it used to be a home remedy in those days.

[27:18] for something. Magnesia was in Asian Minor, and I was wondering if there was some sort of connection, classical Greek connection to the name. I thought maybe it was could be it's a chemical, magnesium. Yeah, magnesium or something. I'm guessing maybe it has something to do with that. I thought the stomach upset or something. I didn't know. Yeah, a number of different uses. Yeah.

[27:48] So nothing prevents something from being contrary to the will as such, which is nevertheless willed by reason of an end which it is ordered. As a bitter medicine is not willed quain to itself, right? But only according and disordered to what Health. And in this way, the death of Christ in his what passion, considered in itself, is involuntary, right? Contrary to his will, not my will, and causing sadness, right?

[28:20] Although it was willed or voluntary in order to the end, which is the redemption of the human what race. So sadness as such is not good, right?

[28:40] Go back to definition there, Augustine. That sadness is about those things which happen to us not willing. When someone was contrary to his will to undergo this, huh? But all things considered, right. It was willed by him. Okay, now, so this man has sadness in him, right? And now, whether in Christ there was what, fear, right?

[29:10] Incidentally, what form of fiction is purging a form of sadness and fear? Tragedy. yeah. So when Aristotle defines tragedy, right, in the book on the poetic art. He puts in the definition of it that it purges what pity, which is a kind of sadness and fear, right?

[29:38] Now, purge doesn't mean eliminate, but you know, purifies. But it's interesting you have a sadness here and now fear. So of course Shakespeare there in the prelude, not the prelude, the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, right? In the second quatrain he mentions pity, right? Whose misadventured, piteous overthrows do with their death their death. And then in the third quatrain, in the fearful passage of their death-marked love.

[30:08] So he identifies the very two passions that Aristotle put in the definition of tragedy. It seems that in Christ there was no fear, for it is said in Proverbs chapter 28, the just one, like a what, bold lion or confident lion, right? Will be without what, terror. But Christ was most of all just. Therefore, in Christ there was no what, fear. I was reading that Saint Catherine of Siena, right?

[30:47] You know, she was trying to restore peace among these two cities and so on. They got annoyed with her and so on, and they sent men to kill her. And she says, "Come, kill me," she says. You know, you know, let my other people go. You know, just, just kill me. You know, the guy gets so bewildered by this, you know, he couldn't do it. And and and she was upset because she wanted to be a martyr.

[31:11] No wonder, no wonder. I mean, the guy just wants to be a martyr, but what are you going to do? I mean, how can you go and kill somebody who wants to be a martyr? Great, great woman. Moreover,

[31:26] Hilary says in the tenth book about the Trinity, I ask those who what think this, whether by reason that there subsists that one fears to what die, expelling what all fear. of death. Yeah, from the apostles of death. Exhorting them to the glory of what? Yeah, that's that's Saint Catherine, right? Yeah. Yeah. Therefore, there was not in Christ reasonable to have had fear.

[32:11] Moreover, fear does not seem to be about an evil that what, except about an evil that a man is not able to avoid, huh? But Christ, what, could avoid both the evil of punishment that he underwent and the evil of guilt, which happens to others than him, right? Therefore, in Christ there was no what fear, right? Huh?

[32:41] But again, against this he got the Gospels. But against this is what is said in Mark chapter fourteen that Jesus began to what fear, Fear

[32:57] Well here it says it was sad. Sad and impoverty would be to fear, right? Yeah. To fear and to be heavy. So Thomas says, I answer. It should be said that as sadness is caused from the apprehension of a present evil, so fear is caused from the apprehension of a what future evil.

[33:32] But the apprehension of a future evil, if all is had, does not induce what fear. Strange, yeah. Why? Why not? Oh, does that make sense?

[34:02] Because it seems to be something already present, you see. Yeah. Whence the philosopher says in the second book of the rhetoric that fear is not except where there is some hope of what getting away. Getting away. For when there is no hope of getting away, the evil is apprehended as present, right? And thus it more causes sadness than what fear. Right.

[34:30] Thus, therefore, fear can be considered as regards two things. In one way, as regards this, that the sensitive appetite, huh, appetite, stare for the power feeling, naturally flees or refuses the what injury of the body, and through sadness if it be what present, and through fear if it be what. In the future, and in this way, there was fear in Christ, just a sadness.

[35:11] Another way it can be considered, according to the incertitude of the future advent, coming, just as when at night time we fear from some sound, as ignoring or the ignorant what it is, right? And in regards to this, there was no fear in Christ, as Damascene says in the third book.

[35:46] So he wouldn't say in Christ that there was fear as to what was going to happen to him. He knew very well what was going to happen to him, right? But there could be this fear in the sense that what there is a future evil that he's not anticipating with any other feeling that kind of fear, right?

[36:12] Now, what about this first text here, which is from the book of Proverbs, right? The just man, as a bold or confident lion, will be without what

[36:29] terror. To the first, it should be said that the just man is said to be without terror, according as terror signifies a perfect or complete emotion,

[36:42] turning a man away from the good which is of reason, and thus fear was not in Christ, but only according to propassion. How does your text translate that? It's kind of a technical term. Propassion. Yeah, yeah, and there doesn't seem to be a word for it, you know.

[37:11] Especially of Christ. Yeah. And therefore, it is said that Jesus began to what fear, if you want to put that there, yeah. As it were, according to propassion, as Jerome expounds, huh? Okay.

[37:39] So that would be excluding that passion, that would what Take away the good of reason, yeah. Okay. Now, what about the text from Hilary?

[37:57] It should be Hilary in that way excludes from Christ the fear, in which way he also excludes sadness. As regards the necessity of fearing, right? But nevertheless, to approving the truth of human nature, he voluntarily took on fear, just as what? Sadness, huh?

[38:27] So did Christ necessarily fear? No voluntary. Apparently, Hillary is saying no, he didn't, right? What about fear being about something that you can't avoid? To the third, it should be said that although Christ was able to avoid future evils according to the power of his divinity,

[39:01] they were nevertheless inevitable or not easily avoidable according to the weakness of the flesh. Interesting. Flesh left to itself, right? Not to itself.