Aquinas at 800, Part 1: Christology

Episode Topic: Christology 

Contemplate Thomas Aquinas’ writings on the predestination of Christ, Christ’s knowledge and our virtue, and Christ’s co-assumption of power through the lens of Christology, the branch of Christian theology concerned with Jesus’ person, role, and nature.

00:00 Introduction and Joshua Lim's Talk on Christ's Predestination

07:42 Bonaventure's Interpretation

10:40 Thomas Aquinas' Perspective

16:46 Q&A Session with Joshua Lim

20:38 Frederick Bauerschmidt's Talk on Infused Habits

41:51 Aquinas on Christ's Co-Assumption of Power

51:41 Speculative Interpretations of Aquinas

56:34 Q&A Session: Exploring Aquinas' Reasoning

Featured Speakers:

- Joshua H. Lim ‘20 Ph.D., Assistant Professor in Thomistic Studies, University of Notre Dame

-Frederick C. Bauerschmidt, Professor of Theology, Loyola University Maryland and a deacon of the Archdiocese of Baltimore

- Rev. Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., Pinckaers Professor of Theological Anthropology and Ethics and director the Angelicum Thomistic Institute

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/1ee61e

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Aquinas at 800. 

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Transcript

Introduction and Joshua Lim's Talk on Christ's Predestination

1 0:06

My name is Adam Van Wart. Associate Professor of Theology at Aave Maria University, it's my privilege to introduce our speakers this afternoon. The format will be, 20 minutes for each paper, 10 minutes for questions and answers, and then at the end we'll have Ideally, 15 minutes for a panel Q& A at the end. Joshua Lim is assistant professor in theology at the University of Notre Dame. His research is in medieval Christology, focused on Thomas Aquinas. The title of his paper is Praeclarissimum Lumen, Praedistinosianus, Please join me in welcoming Dr. Lim.

Bonaventure's Interpretation

Thomas Aquinas' Perspective

Q&A Session with Joshua Lim

2 0:40

The title of my talk is, Prae clarissimum lumen praedestinationis et gratiae Thomas Aquinas on the Predestination of Christ. in treating the doctrine of election, the great Swiss reformed theologian of the 20th century, Karl Barth, Take special aim at Thomas Aquinas as a key figure in the Western theological tradition, who is remarkable for his failure to acknowledge the centrality of Jesus Christ in the knowledge of election. Quote, The great exponents of the doctrine of election have not hesitated to point most emphatically to Jesus Christ. When speaking of the knowledge of election, the only exception is Thomas Aquinas. He did quote Ephesians 1. 4, but in his interpretation, he succeeded in not paying any attention to the in ipso, the in him, end quote. Aside from the Summa Theologiae organized according to the Ordo Disciplinae, Thomas' treatment of Christ's predestination should not be taken by itself as indicating a relegation in its importance. A look at Thomas Aquinas's treatment of the Predestination of Christ within 13th century. Medieval scholasticism tells a different story In this paper, I will lay out Thomas's teaching on Christ's predestination against the backdrop of two parallel accounts in the 13th century. with which Thomas would have been familiar, that of the Summa Holensis and Bonaventure's commentary on the sentences. While Thomas contemporaries undoubtedly intend to give due weight to authoritative biblical and patristic texts, the concern to safeguard the eternal character of predestination leads them to attenuate the sense in which Christ's predestination can be considered by contrast, Thomas's account characterized by an insistence to foreground the role of Christ's predestination in God's eternal plan leads to a new way of considering the eternal and temporal aspects of predestination Thomas can affirm in no uncertain terms that the man Christ is in Augustine's words, the clearest light of our predestination and grace. turning to the Summa Holensis. I focus on chapter 5, which pertains directly to the question of its causality. The Summa Holensis asks, quote, whether we are predestined through him, The biblical warrant for affirming the efficient and exemplar causality of Christ's predestination draws on two crucial texts. Ephesians 1. 5, he predestined us to the adoption of sonship through Jesus Christ. suggests sufficient causality Romans 8 29, those whom he foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, highlights exemplar causality the claim to exemplar causality will consistently be tied to Augustine's later on the predestination of the saints. which refers to Christ as the clearest light of our predestination and grace. The inquiry into what it means for Christ to be the cause of our predestination gives rise to an immediate difficulty. How can one predestination be the cause of another when all predestinations are eternal and simultaneous in the divine mind? causality implies a prior and a posterior, it seems impossible to posit causality and predestination Without compromising its eternal character, the temporal and contingent nature of Christ's predestination seems to require a denial of any causal power on its part. Considering such difficulties, and motivated to affirm the causality of Christ's predestination, The Summa Hellensis draws a distinction between two senses of the word. The principal signification of predestination is the divine foreknowledge with approbation, and it is eternal. The secondary signification, is temporal and refers to predestination's effects of grace and glory. I will refer to this distinction of predestination as the Hellensian distinction. in sum, the eternal and temporal aspects of Christ's predestination are distinguished according to predestination's principle one and connoted significance. The result of this distinction is to preserve the divine eternity according to the principle sense while relegating the temporal connoted effect to a secondary sense the Summa Holensis believes it can make sense of scripture and Augustine without violating concerns from predestination's eternal character. the Hellenesian distinction provides a resolution to the objection against the efficient causality of Christ's predestination based on the absence of priority and posteriority in what is eternal. There is absolutely no causality with respect to the eternal divine mind, that is, according to the principal sense of predestination. Nevertheless, according to its connoted temporal sense, that is, on the part of the predestined, it is possible to affirm the efficient causality of Christ's predestination. This is to say that Christ, as predestined brings about the salvation of others who are predestined. While the distinction resolves difficulties surrounding the eternity of predestination, it leaves unclear to what reality the predestination of Christ refers. If we speak only of the connoted sense and thus only of the temporal effects of grace and glory, we are no longer speaking of Christ's predestination according to its primary signification, but only of Christ as predestined. The problem is heightened in the Summa Holensis reply to an objection that denies that Christ as man is the light of our predestination. In its reply, the Summa Holensis applies the Holensian distinction To speak of Christ as light in two senses, Christ is understood as light according to his eternal and divine nature. According to the second sense, Christ is a temporal light according to his human nature. The Summa Holensis unequivocally affirms the exemplarity of Christ in the first sense, as God and as eternal wisdom. the Summa Holensis grants the premise that the ratio or light of any predestination is identical with God. Since Christ is God, it is possible to say that Christ, according to his divinity, is the eternal light of our predestination. Significantly, Augustine's text speaks explicitly of Christ as man, as the light of our predestination. To affirm Christ as light only according to his divine nature appears to go against Augustine's argument. which moves from the gratuitous character of the predestination of Christ's human nature to our own predestination. The Summa Holensis attempts to save Augustine by recurring to the Holensian distinction referring to what is connoted in predestination. The Summa Holensis posits that Christ as man is, quote, the temporal light. the focus shifts away from Christ's predestination to consider Christ as predestined, as the temporal effect of predestination. as a grace of adoption is a participation in the temporal grace of Christ, by which the son of man is the son of God, Christ can be called a temporal exemplar in light of predestination. Here the Summa Holensis repeats the teaching of Alexander's disputed questions before he was a friar, where Alexander suggests Ephesians 1. 5 of our predestination to adoptive sonship per iesum Christum. The pair, which denotes efficient causality, should be understood not as referring to eternal predestination, but only to our adoption in time. Notwithstanding the Summa Holensis clear desire to affirm the causality of Christ's predestination, The explanation of its causal role via the Hellenesian distinction leads to its minimization. according to predestination's principle sense, the Summa Hellensis is clear. The predestination of Christ is not the light of our predestination. and then turning to Bonaventure. Bonaventure's development of the Summa Holensis account in his commentary on Lombard Sentences, Book 3, Distinction 10, applies the Holensian distinction to the predestination of Christ further diminishing its significance. Bonavent Bonaventure's reduction of the exemplar causality of Christ's predestination to its connoted temporal sense. leads to a moral interpretation of Augustine's text opposed to Augustine's intention Augustine's purpose in pointing to the exemplarity of Christ's Predestination is to emphasize the gratuity of God's grace It is precisely because no merit or human act can be conceived as preceding the human nature's union to the word that Christ's predestination is the exemplar of our predestination. for Bonaventure, the doctrine of the exemplarity of Christ's predestination becomes the occasion to consider what we must do in order to be conformed to Christ. Here, the Hellenesian distinction not only limits Bonaventure's consideration of Christ's predestination as a temporal exemplar, but becomes the basis for a doctrine of moral exemplarity. In considering exemplarity, Bonaventure follows the Summa Holensis in affirming that predestination is nothing other than the divine essence. As a result, there can be no relation of exemplarity between individual predestinations, for all predestinations are one, The exemplarity of Christ's predestination as man is affirmed only with respect to the effect of his predestination, Namely, His grace and glory in time. Bonaventure makes an application of the Hellenesian distinction, seeing Christ's exemplarity as belonging to predestination's connoted sense. The result is an emphasis on Christ's moral exemplarity, For the grace of God is rightly in us when we are conformed to Christ. if we wish to arrive at the final term of predestination, we must look to the author and perfecter of faith, who gave an example for how we should act. For as Peter says, Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example. Bonaventure's focus on the connoted temporary sense of Christ's predestination leads to an interpretation of Augustine's text that is antithetical to its original intention. Augustine says that Christ is the clearest light of our predestination, as if God says to each of us, look and act according to the exemplar revealed to you in the mountain, that is, to Christ. Like Alexander and the Summa Holensis before him, Bonaventure is aware that he must affirm the exemplarity of Christ's predestination. As well as its efficient causality, but the Hellenesian distinction, alongside his own curtailed view of Christ's human nature, prevents him from a robust account. On account of his use of the Hellenesian distinction, Bonaventure is forced to reduce the question of the causality of Christ's predestination to its extrinsic temporal effect. As a result, Bonaventure's stated affirmation of the exemplarity of Christ's predestination turns into an affirmation of the exemplarity, not of Christ's predestination as such, but of his human acts in time. Christ's predestination thus becomes the occasion for moral exhortation. Okay, so turning to the Summa Theologiae. In broad strokes, Thomas intention in the Tertia Pars is not different from that of his contemporaries. Thomas wishes to preserve the eternal character of predestination while finding some way to account for the causality of Christ's predestination. Like his contemporaries, Thomas resolves the concern not to violate the principle that the eternal has no cause through a distinction between predestination's eternal and temporal aspects. instead of following the Hellenesian distinction between predestination's primary and secondary sense, Thomas distinguishes the eternal act of predestination from its temporal term. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to Thomas distinction as the Thomasian distinction and summarize it goes, the eternal and temporal acts of Christ's predestination are distinguished according to, the act, and two, the term of predestination. The result of this distinction is to preserve the divine eternity without relegating the temporal aspect to something secondary the temporal effect as Terminus ad quem specifies the eternal act. Turning to Thomas treatment of Christ's predestination we see how the Tamazian distinction enables a more robust account of its causality. Thomas identifies two aspects of Christ's predestination, the act of the one who predestines, and the term and effect of predestination. According to the act, Christ's predestination cannot be the exemplar of our own. For in one mode and in the same eternal act, God predestined us and Christ. Here Thomas joins the rest of his contemporaries in denying the causality of Christ's predestination with respect to its properly eternal aspect. For Thomas, the temporal aspect does not refer to a connoted and secondary sense of predestination. But to the term of the act, that to which one is predestined. Though absent in Thomas scriptum, Augustine's On the Predestination of the Saints figures largely in Thomas reconsideration in the Summa of Christ's Predestination. In the sad contra, Thomas quotes a fuller version of the text. Which makes clear that exemplarity is predicated of Christ precisely as man quote, he is the clearest light of predestination And grace our Savior the mediator between God and man the man Jesus Christ and quote further Thomas clarifies that Christ's Exemplarity is here considered not simply in terms of the temporal effect of grace, but in terms of his predestination he is called the light of predestination and grace as through his predestination and grace our predestination is made clear. This pertains to the ratio of an exemplar. in his emphasis on Christ's human nature and the exemplarity of Christ's predestination Thomas moves away from the Summa Holensis, which emphasized Christ's divine nature as exemplar, and from Bonaventure who posited a moral reading of exemplarity, returning to Augustine's original intention. Christ's predestination is exemplary in two ways. First, since predestination is ordered to a good, in fact to the highest good, which is the final end, the predestination of Christ to natural sonship serves as an exemplar for our own predestination to adoptive sonship. Thomas relies on the work he has done in question 23, on filial adoption to show the predestined are ordered to a participation in the natural sonship of Christ as their final end. The teleological orientation of predestination, explicit in the early definition of the prima pars, is reintroduced under the concrete end of the predestined to be adopted children of God. For he is predestined to be the natural son of God, but we are predestined to the sonship of adoption, a kind of participated likeness of the natural sonship Thomas relies on Romans 8 29, whom he fore knew. These, also, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. Notable by its absence is any distinction between Christ's temporal and eternal exemplar through the Timian distinction. Thomas overcomes the difficulty faced by the Summa Halens. It is precisely as man that he is considered the light of our predestination. Thomas does not stop here, Christ's predestination is exemplary with respect to the good to which it is ordered, but also with respect to, quote, the way of obtaining that good, which is through grace, In direct contrast to Bonaventure's teaching on exemplarity as primarily moral, Whereby the predestination of Christ is meant to show us how we ought to conduct our lives, Thomas recovers Augustine's original intention, focusing on the divine prerogative, manifest in Christ, because the human nature in him, by no preceding merits on its part, was united to the Son of God. The predestination of Christ is not a moral exemplar but an exemplar of divine grace. For the Summa Holensis and in a mitigated way for Bonaventure, the affirmation of the causality of Christ, practically amounted to a consideration of the effect of Christ's predestination in time, that is, the role of Christ's temporal life with respect to our own. these thinkers, required the bracketing of the eternal. They consider the causality of Christ as predestined. By contrast, the focus in the Tertia Pars remains on Christ's predestination as such. the role of Christ's life from God's eternal preordination. Thomas focuses on the means and order of our salvation under divine predestination. Thomas signals the unity of act and term by constantly highlighting their relation, quote, For in this way God foreordained our salvation. By predestining from eternity that it be completed through Jesus Christ, Thomas offers an interpretation of Ephesians 1. 5, who predestined us to the adoption of sonship. distinct from Alexander who took Paul's periasum Christum to refer to temporal adoption rather than predestination. Thomas reads the through as referring to our predestination and speaking of the temporal term of predestination, Thomas is not forced to move away from the eternal act predestination to consider something extrinsic to it. We are adopted through Jesus Christ because we are predestined through him. The developments in Thomas teaching on Christ's predestination, seen most closely against the backdrop of the broader discussion in 13th century scholasticism, offer a correction to Barthes harsh appraisal through the Thomasian distinction, Thomas is able to affirm not only that the predestined Christ in time brings about our salvation, but that from eternity, Jesus Christ is at the heart of God's plan of salvation. Thank you.

1 16:45

You have a set of minutes for questions, please use the microphone. for the people on zoom,

3 16:50

Am I allowed

4 16:51

Joshua, do you think there's any connection? does the summa take a position on the possibility of the eternity of the world? And two, do you think there might be any connection between, say, the difference between Bonaventure and Thomas on the eternity of the world's creation? And this question of the eternal predestination of Christ Thomas seems to have a way to think causality. Without temporal priority, right? And I'm wondering if there might be some relation between those.

2 17:22

I don't know what the Summa Holensis says about that. as far as the eternity of the world I haven't thought about that. I will have to think about that. I've been trying to think of areas outside of this consideration where Aquinas might come up with this sort of distinction. I think it's latent in the Prima Pars account, but it seems like it's brought out explicitly when he deals with the predestination of Christ. I would have to think about it in relation to the eternity of the world. Thanks.

5 17:46

Another question.

6 17:47

Hey, That was a great paper. the question I had was simple why wouldn't Carl Barth be satisfied with that? since you didn't choose to use that as a hook. it all just seems quite reasonable I wondered if if there was something else in Bart and that you might just going back to that hook after you presented what seemed very reasonable I wonder what you would think or if you had a thought on that.

2 18:04

Bart would not be satisfied because he wants to say the subject of predestination or electing is Jesus Christ. with respect to what Bonaventure, the Summa Holensis and Thomas Aquinas distinguishing the eternal aspect and denying causality there that would preclude Bart's position because it seems like Bart wants to say that somehow. God's decision to be for us in Christ precedes election, or I'm not entirely sure if you would say precedes election, but in some way it's constitutive of the decision to elect. all three thinkers would preclude Bart's position because they don't allow for causality with respect to what is eternal

7 18:42

Thank you for your paper. I was wondering Bonaventure, when he talks about to what extent Christ's humanity can cause grace, he thinks about it more in terms of moral causality, whereas later Thomas will think about it in terms of instrumental efficient causality. Thomas doesn't think Christ is an instrumental efficient cause in predestination, if I understand correctly, but do you think that there's any connection between this and Thomas's developments on Christ?

2 19:10

Yeah. so what initially got me interested in the paper was I thought Thomas disagreed with others in affirming efficient causality with respect to Christ's predestination. then the way he hashed it out, I thought maybe they were all saying the same thing. one difference is for Bonaventure, Christ's human nature. can only be a dispositive or excitative cause not efficiently cause grace. in the fuller version of this, I treat the question of efficient causality there you have two reasons why Aquinas represents a deepening in how we understand the causality of Christ with respect to his predestination as such, but also with respect to his human nature, he is the efficient cause.

8 19:48

Hi, Josh. Thanks for the paper. Just a question of ignorance. on Romans 8. 29, you said it was exemplary reference to exemplary causality. Why is exemplary causality, a problematic cause according to the problem you lay out?

Frederick Bauerschmidt's Talk on Infused Habits

2 20:01

who is it an exemplar for? if you say it's for God, then you're introducing priority and posteriority in eternity. likewise, if you say for us, I think either respect, it would be problematic. But the move that Bonaventure makes is to say that nothing temporal can be an exemplar for God. anytime we talk about exemplarity with respect to what is temporal, it has to be for us. the way Bonaventure goes with that is therefore it has to be moral exemplarity. I think his reason why it can't be eternal is sound. it's not as if God regards something temporal as an exemplar for what he's going to do in time. That doesn't make sense.

1 20:37

Our second speaker, Frederick Bower Schmidt professor of theology at Loyola University, Maryland and a deacon of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. is the author of several books, including Thinking Through Aquinas, from Word on Fire Academic. The paper he has this afternoon is titled, The Question of Infused Habits, Christ's Knowledge, and Our Virtue. Please join me in welcoming Professor Bausch.

3 21:00

Thank you,

4 21:01

Adam. Two wrongs almost certainly don't make a right, but my gamble is that two sources of puzzlement brought together might shed some illumination the puzzlement is over this notion of infused habits, which occurred in two places in Thomas. It occurs in the Secunda Pars, talking about the infused moral virtues, and the Tertia Pars in connection with the knowledge of Christ, that Christ has infused habits of knowledge. I think most people in these areas agree that notions of infused habits are puzzling. They bring with them all sorts of issues and controversies. the first part of the paper, I try and lay out what some of those issues but let me just do a real short summary and I'm just going to trust on your vast reservoir of knowledge I hope I'm not going to leave anybody behind. With regard to the infused habit, this is a question that has revived as a controversy, in the last decade, I witnessed its revival at a conference in Utrecht about a decade ago that had Bill Madison, Angelica Noble, David De Cosimo Tom Osborne, and they were going at it hammer and claw. I didn't know this was something you could be interested in. a lot's happened in the last decade, the basic claim of Thomas is that along with faith, hope, and love, the infused theological virtues, there are also infused moral virtues that correspond. By name with the acquired moral virtues. And it seems to me that there's three options for interpreting these infused moral virtues. In the case of a Christian in the state of grace and the relationship of these infused virtues to acquired virtues that a person might have had before entering into a state of grace. what I would call the traditional view is that a Christian in a state of grace can simultaneously possess both acquired moral virtue and infused moral virtue and that there's a division of labor, right? Yeah, the acquired virtues help you with your natural end. The infused virtues help you with your supernatural end. There's what I would call the revisionist version which used to be a distinct minority, but I think is rapidly becoming a majority, which is that for the Christian in the state of grace, there's only infused virtue. Acquired virtues are either replaced or transformed with the infusion of supernatural charity. And then third, there's what I would call the revisionist or neo traditional approach, which posits simultaneous possession of infused and acquired moral virtues. an ordering of the acquired virtues by the infused virtue. the interpretive question is when you read the Secunda Pars, particularly the Secunda Secundae, are you reading about infused virtues or acquired virtues? Thomas never says. And some things he says could only be true of infused virtues. Some things would be true of acquired virtues. And the real question is, why does Thomas never tell us? that's the question about infused moral virtue. The puzzle over Christ infused knowledge is Quinas's position laid out in the Tercia Pars, in addition to his knowledge as the word, Christ's human soul possesses three sorts of knowledge, right? we're familiar with this. Beatific knowledge. controversial among modern theologians modern Christologies want Jesus as miserable and ignorant as us, Christ also has acquired knowledge, Thomas is somewhat swimming against the medieval tide in the robustness of what he wants to of his account of Christ acquired knowledge. And then third infused knowledge, which most modern theologians don't pay enough attention to disagree with Thomas on this this is generally compared with the kind of knowledge that angels have which raises a couple of puzzles, One is the puzzle about baby Jesus using Father Gaines examples Baby Jesus knowing from conception Chinese grammar, details of quantum physics, or how to fly a jumbo jet. So that's one puzzle with this infused knowledge. The second is the idea that the passive intellect can possess identical forms from two different sources. seems strange. the parallels between these puzzles, I hope are obvious. As regards the overall scheme, in both cases, we're dealing with the infusion of a set of habits. these infused habits fall midway in a threefold scheme, right? The infused moral virtues are midway between the infused theological virtues and the acquired moral virtues. The infused knowledge of Christ is midway between his beatific knowledge and his knowledge from sense experience. In both cases the upper member of the triad, the theological virtues and the beatific vision is inchoate or intuitive Pieces of knowledge or specific actions. In both cases, there is no obvious problem relating the infused habit of the higher to lower members. The puzzle is how the infused habit relates to the acquired habit. Jean Porter says the infused virtues represent The comprehensive perfection of the faculties they inform, they are, not compatible with the acquired virtues another kind of comprehensive perfection of the same faculty. what she says about infused moral virtue, you could say about the infused knowledge of Christ. what seems clear in one domain seems unclear in the other. in the case of Christ's knowledge, it seems the case. Thomas maintains that Christ possesses infused and acquired habits simultaneously within the same faculty. Thomas clearly says Christ has both forms of knowledge. Should this tilt the debate over infused and acquired virtue toward the position that the same person can possess both kinds of virtue? Thomas holds to the coexistence of these two sorts of knowledge in Christ, it still raises a host of difficult questions. So maybe it doesn't help us. Maybe it should tilt us away from the notion that we can have infused and acquired moral virtues simultaneously. Thomas argues for infused virtues on the basis of ontological perfection leaving aside existential or psychological questions. Christ has to have infused virtue because he has to have the most perfect form of human knowledge, He must have all faculties, perfected, Christians need to have infused moral virtues for it to be perfected in the things of this world so that they can attain beatitude, right? it's argued for moral perfection. Thomas never seems to ask what it might, feel like to have infused habits. Whether a virtue or knowledge nor how you might narrate this in terms of a life story, whether of the Christian or of Christ. given all these puzzles from what Thomas says and from what he does not say there's all sorts of questions he just doesn't answer that seem obvious to us. Can we undo this tangle by comparing what he has to say in these two domains? Thomas is relatively clear that infused and acquired moral virtue are distinct habits They differ not only in relation to the ultimate end, but also in relation to their proper objects. The acquired virtues have to do with life in the earthly city, and infused virtues have to do with our heavenly citizenship. while wayfarers, we remain in some sense residents of the earthly city even while through grace we are citizens of the heavenly. Such simultaneous possession of infused and acquired virtue then would seem not only to accord with our actual experience. of having mundane concerns even while we're yearning for beatitude, it also tracks with Thomas position that Christ possesses acquired and infused habits of knowledge. if the Christian in a state of grace does simultaneously possess both acquired and infused moral virtues, It seems to me that the integrity of the human person suggests that these different sorts of habit must in some way be integrated. I find convincing the account of relationship of the acquired and infused moral virtue. To be the one I described as the sort of neo traditionalist or re revisionist approach which is that the acquired and infused moral virtues can both be in a Christian in a state of grace with acquired virtues ordered to the final end via the infused moral virtues, So I'm gonna go with The people who want to say the Christian state of grace has both kinds of virtue with the infused virtues ordering the acquired virtues to beatitude. for example, the prudence that the abbot exercises with regard to negotiating fair prices with vendors can be ordered to the end of beatitude by being subordinated to the infused prudence by which he cares for the souls of his monks. Which, in turn, actually enhances his care of earthly matters. If acquired virtues are ordered to their end by infused virtues, does it make sense, to suggest the acquired and infused knowledge of Christ is similarly integrated? Can a higher mode of knowledge order a lower mode? On the one hand, this would seem to somewhat restrict the contents of Christ infused knowledge, and this is one of the things Thomas says, is that Christ has, his infused knowledge is comprehensive. Everything that can be known by a human being is known by Christ from the moment of his conception. My proposal that the higher knowledge is ordering the lower knowledge might seem to somewhat restrict that content. While they might have infused knowledge of carpentry, it would be precisely that knowledge relevant to his mission of advancing humanity and goodness. and removing it from evil, On the other hand, if we were willing to restrict Christ's infused knowledge, it would certainly relieve us of the burden of imagining infant Jesus knowing Chinese grammar the details of quantum physics, or how to fly a jumbo jet, while still allowing that Christ has specific knowledge relevant to a saving mission that exceeds natural human knowledge Thomas says Christ had infused knowledge of the marital situation of the Samaritan woman. to bring her to a spiritual understanding we can retain Christ's infused knowledge distinct from his acquired knowledge ordered to his saving mission to bring humanity to its ultimate end. If the ordering of acquired virtue to the final end is mediated by infused moral virtue, then perhaps it's through the mediation of Christ's infused knowledge that his acquired knowledge is ordered to his mission of bringing human beings to beatitude, by the light of divine glory. Christ possesses the fullness of infused knowledge is that he possesses by special divine gift the capacity to use anything that a human being can know for the honor and glory of God. Perhaps the knowledge of carpentry is not simply the acquired knowledge of carpentry, And that there is a knowledge of carpentry by which Christ knows that his human life and labor is part of his salvific mission. The infused knowledge of Christ, then, would serve to mediate between his beatific knowledge and his acquired knowledge by referring that acquired knowledge to the end that is beheld in the light of glory. conclude with some reflection. does this solve the problem? I don't know. I'm not sure. I've been thinking about this since that conference in Newtruck 10 years ago, and I still don't know. what's puzzling about these areas is that the questions seem so obvious to us. yet Thomas doesn't seem to address the questions which seem to us so obvious. I always tell my students, Thomas is not only good at giving answers, he's great at asking questions, He thinks up new questions all the time. how do we think about the things Thomas doesn't ask about, the distinctions he doesn't draw, the things he leaves unclarified? The tendency to treat Thomas as having an answer for everything is a persisting sin among lovers of St. Thomas, engendered not simply because of the church's tendency to treat him, as a kind of oracle. he, answers so many questions so well. Because he's so clear about important things, one temptation in the face of Thomas silence especially around our modern questions about the experience of persons is to decide that there's something wrong with those questions, that these are not questions worth asking. But that is mistaken. I can't imagine anything less in the spirit of St. Thomas. Another temptation is to think that because Thomas doesn't address these questions he has nothing to teach us, even by his silence. Thomas's silences might be, the result of his failure to imagine a question we might have, perhaps as a result of the limits of his historical horizon. in some cases, these silences might be more deliberate, a certain kind of reticence that recognizes the limits of our inquiry. Thomas's dry and precise scholastic idiom can tempt us to treat his distinctions as a total inventory Out of which human thinking about God and all other things in relation to God can be constructed. But Josef Pieper is, only slightly overstating his case when he says, Its fragmentary character belongs to the total implication of the Summa Theologiae. Perhaps a summary of theology, by its very nature, must be incomplete, and not only in the sense of the whole being unfinished. Distinctions that might have been made being left unmade, conclusions that might have been drawn being left undrawn. When Thomas does not pursue a question, Does not make a distinction, does not draw a conclusion. This may be a simple failure on his part, It might be a significant silence, telling us something important about theological inquiry and the inquiring subject. We must keep in mind what Thomas knew, that distinctions between various sorts of habits And our best attempts to explain their relation are simply heuristic devices that represent our best attempts to account for, on the one hand, the moral and spiritual development of human beings, and the claims about Christ in scripture and tradition. distinctions to account for human action or the knowledge of Christ should be made while bearing in mind that what we are attempting to grasp are living holes. And such holes always suffer somewhat from the autopsies that we theologians perform on. Though he was the master of the distinction, I do not believe that Thomas ever forgot this, and that we would forget it at our peril. Thank you.

9 35:06

I'm Adam Idle. I teach at the university of Dallas. I wanted to just say one thing about the analogy you're constructing. I, and this I'll admit is a shameless plug for my own paper. For those of you who will be here tomorrow, one of the issues with the debate over the acquired and infused virtues. has to do with just the completely ahistorical vacuum in which it's been carried out. Once you read Thomas in his context, the generation prior to him, and William of Auxerre in particular, held that the acquired and infused virtues cannot be compatible. Albert and Bonaventure say, No, they exist together. objectors say, you can't have two forms of the same species in the same subject. And that's what prompts Thomas to say, they differ in species then. So to see that progression is important because the reason he's arguing for the distinction in species is that allows them to say they exist together. it's difficult to hitch the problem to a problem that's so problematic, but if we put all that in place, I think you're on the right track, I wanted to ask about the ordering of the two kinds of knowledge. Thomas in the Tertia Pars, comes to that view after having rejected it in the scriptum. It's actually a, he actually comes, let's say later no, these, they have to be together. How does he think of things being ordered? This has to do with wisdom. in the same way that the acquired virtues are ordered by charity would it not Be the case that Christ's wisdom orders both kinds of knowledge.

4 36:35

it seems to me that even if charity is ordering both the infused and acquired moral virtues. there's I think it's in Dave Vertutibus 110 where he talks about how the infused moral virtues also have a role in ordering the acquired virtues, right? Yeah, and I know it's a controversial passage but that suggests to me that even if wisdom or beatific knowledge is ordering the acquired virtues, it may be, you can think of it as ordering it by means of the acquired knowledge. Maybe it's doing it by means of the infused knowledge. I tried in the longer version of the paper, come up with examples of how this could help us read the stories in the gospels. I know Drew's going to disagree with me because we had a conversation earlier.

10 37:19

Thanks for your thought provoking paper. You made a case for the continued utility of the acquired moral virtues in the life of a Christian. You gave that example of the abbot negotiating bread prices for his monastery could use his prudence and justice. In my

4 37:31

it was

10 37:31

okay.

4 37:32

French monastery.

10 37:33

They probably make their own wine, but yeah, they're selling it in any case. I guess the question I have is in the case of a Christian who has the infused moral virtues but lacks the acquired virtues is such a person just going to be unable to really negotiate their earthly life very well? Or will the infused virtues allow them to take care of their day to day business in light of their, pursuit of heaven in a way that would be sufficient? Or are they really going to be lacking something? To make them function well as a human being on the wine negotiation prices.

4 38:01

I think the holy fool is more than just a literary convention from Russian literature. I feel like I know a few, people who don't navigate life and are characterized by worldly excellence yet to my mind undeniably holy maybe that would be what it would look like for somebody to have. The infused virtues, but not the acquired virtues. the infused virtues keep you ordered to beatitude, presumably out of mortal sin, but might not make you wise in the ways of the world it might be a more difficult path. that would be the example I think of.

10 38:34

Okay, lots of Christians might not have the acquired moral virtues. They might not be holy fools

4 38:38

Yeah. So what

10 38:38

about a

4 38:39

person? Holy by habit, if not by act. it might be the case that a lot of people behave In foolish ways, while still, being in a state of grace. it's hard to say there's places in thomas where he seems to imply that the infused virtues can sometimes compensate

11 38:54

Thank you I'd love for you to go back to the Gospels and in particular, I'm thinking about the times when there's a question of whether Jesus knew the answer to a question he was asking. the typical patristic response, which Aquinas draws on is he knew, but he did that for our sake. And I'm wondering if, speak about the Gospels in whatever way you want, but in particular, if there's any way we could make sense of that interpretation in light

4 39:20

a classic example of Jesus not knowing something is Mark 13, No one knows only the father, not the son. my proposal could work, that in some ways he has a infused knowledge of this, that's a kind of a, one of the things I left out was the distinction in terms of the infused virtues between having the habit and being able to exercise the act, I was saying, this might help us think about the infused knowledge of Christ, he could have it in a sense habitually, but not be able to, Activate it. And in the case of the sun in his humanity, not knowing the hour maybe that's important for the work of salvation, right? I think he could also give you, of course, this Thomas would not like this, but it could even give you a way to rethink, what Paul means by fetus Christi, right? Thomas, says Christ doesn't have faith. Perhaps there is a kind of a habitual infused knowledge, but the other case I thought of was the case of the Canaanite woman, modern people don't like the standard patristic. Exegesis, which is, yeah, Thomas sites, origin, Jerome Augustine, who all say Oh yeah, no he, he knew about her faith. She's not teaching him anything, but it could be that out of that encounter Christ gains a certain kind of acquired knowledge that activates his habitual knowledge about his mission, he has habitual knowledge he's come not just for Jew, but for Gentile, but that habitual knowledge needs to, be exercised to become active knowledge the acquisition of knowledge in that empirical encounter with the Canaanite woman might be an occasion. I don't think Thomas would like that interpretation, but I can draw some principles from him to make that more supported. in a sense you would say yeah. in terms of his infused knowledge, he knew his mission was to both Jew and Gentile, there isn't acquired knowledge. Thomas wouldn't like me saying she taught him anything.'cause Christ doesn't learn from another human being. He just learns from watching that would be another example. Thank you.

Aquinas on Christ's Co-Assumption of Power

1 41:16

Father Simon Francis Gain is a member of the English Dominicans. Before joining the order, he studied theology at Oxford. Subsequently teaching there and serving as regent of Blackfriars Hall. He currently teaches at the Angelicum in Rome, and is both director of the Angelicum Thomistic Institute. He's a member of the International Theological Commission and the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and the author of Will There Be Free Will in Heaven? And Did the Savior See the Father? The title of his paper this afternoon is Aquinas on Christ's Co Assumption of Power. Please join me in welcoming Father Yang.

Speculative Interpretations of Aquinas

Q&A Session: Exploring Aquinas' Reasoning

12 41:51

When the third part of Aquinas Summa Theologiae has concluded its treatment of the human nature assumed in the Incarnation, the author moves on to what is co assumed in the Union, before treating the Union's consequences. He speaks of three perfections co assumed in the Union. Christ's grace, knowledge, and power. Both Christ's grace and knowledge have been much discussed in recent work on Aquinas, but little has been said about Christ's co assumption of power in his human soul. Even treatments of Christ's miracles can neglect his co assumption of the power to work them. The medieval discussion of Christ's human power focused on whether Christ's human soul was omnipotent. Given that he knew everything in his human soul, did he also have the power to do everything? Early modern scholasticism debated how to categorize the power found in Christ's human soul, My focus, is on why Aquinas speaks of the power to work miracles as co assumed rather than a consequence of the union. Aquinas had treated Christ's power under a broader category of consequences of the union. in the Summa the union. This is a category of dividing material that he took from the Summa Theologica of Alexander of Hales and his Franciscan disciples. Alexander treated penalties Christ took on for our salvation. These he took, not as pertaining necessarily to human nature, but as defects freely co assumed Aquinas expanded the division of co assumed. By including not only defects like bodily passability but also perfections, namely grace, knowledge, and power, he now shifted to what was freely co assumed. Not that Aquinas's treatment of perfections co assumed only spoke of what was co assumed, strictly speaking. He also touched on some things inevitably assumed in human nature, and on what was freely not co assumed, And what was not co assumable. For example, when treating Christ's knowledge, he makes it clear Christ did not co assume full comprehension of the divine nature, because the infinite act of knowledge that would entail is simply not possible for a finite intellect. At the same time, this helped Aquinas distinguish one thing Christ did co assume, the blessed vision of the divine essence, and in it, vision of everything God creates. He distinguishes that from uncoassumable comprehension of the divine essence and knowledge of the infinity of worlds God can possibly create. Aquinas considers Christ's coassumption of power. Christ does not have omnipotence, the active power to do anything in his human soul. since the distinction of Christ's natures is maintained in the union, and the power to do anything belongs to the infinite divine nature, Christ's human nature does not possess strict omnipotence. But the active power belonging to human nature. So Christ's human nature is not involved in creation out of nothing, which Aquinas takes to pertain only to the infinite power of the divine nature. it is the same with anything on the same level as creation out of nothing. Aquinas concludes that Christ's human soul did not have the power of annihilation, The power of annihilation, like that of the preservation of creatures, belongs to divine power alone. What is freely co assumed is distinguished not only from what is strictly unco assumable. but also from what is inevitably assumed in the human nature. This figures in Aquinas consideration of Christ's knowledge, which is mainly concerned with Christ's co assumption of blessed, infused, and acquired knowledge. He mentions that Christ, having a human intellect, had knowledge of first principles. For Aquinas, such knowledge comes inevitably By having a human mind, not freely assumed. What is inevitably assumed with human nature plays a greater role when Aquinas comes to Christ's power. He needs to distinguish what is strictly assumed from what is assumed. In the union Christ assumes the natural powers of the human soul to rule the body and be the source of normal human acts that pertain to human nature. Hence, Christ's soul had the same power with regard to the body that every human soul does and such things come by nature. Aquinas does not say any power relating to the supernatural is co assumed. while the distinction between natural and supernatural plays a role here, it is not the crucial distinction. Before he goes on to speak of the co assumption of the power to work miracles, Aquinas also speaks of Christ's ability to act in a way that is not miraculous, but nevertheless supernatural. He is concerned here with acts that follow from Christ's co assumption, not of power, but of his fullness of grace and knowledge. This supernatural grace and knowledge. enable Christ to supernaturally enlighten rational creatures. this is not considered a miracle because the supernatural enlightenment of angels and human beings does not mean a departure from the regular order and course of things. grace and knowledge enable Christ to enlighten others As the efficient cause of their illumination, just as the assumption of human nature enables Christ to act as a proper human agent. allows him to be the cause in his humanity of certain supernatural acts, like enlightening others. with the working of miracles, Aquinas does not consider Christ to have been acting humanly as a principle efficient cause. there can be no principal cause of what departs from the whole order and course of the created order, except God. Aquinas has already set out his position in the first part of the Summa that miracles are attributed only to divine power, where God causes something not affected by created causes. What creatures can do by their natural power remains within the order of things God alone, can be the principal cause of effects that depart from that order. Aquinas identifies the power in Christ's soul to work miracles Not as one where he acts humanly as a principle efficient cause, but one where he works humanly as an instrumental cause. It's the distinction between principal and instrumental efficient cause that enables Aquinas to home in on Christ's specific co assumption of power. He has prepared the way for this by first considering Christ's power arising from his human nature, adding the power from his co assumption of grace and knowledge, before finally coming to the power co assumed precisely where his human soul operates instrumentally to cause miracles. we've seen that creation out of nothing and annihilation are simply unco assumable, and there Christ's human instrumentality could have nothing to contribute. My question is whether Christ assumed the power to perform every miracle co assumable where his instrumentality would contribute. for every possible miracle did Christ assume the power to work that miracle? Should it have been the case that the power to work every possible miracle was an inevitable consequence of the union, any incarnate divine person would have the power to work every possible miracle we would have to say the same of Christ. He necessarily had the power to work every possible miracle. But what if the power to work miracles is, as Aquinas treats it in the Summa, something freely assumed? Does he assume the power to work every possible miracle? in the course of discussing the question of Christ's omnipotence in regard to his own body, Aquinas intimates a possible miracle that Christ did not assume the power to perform. He puts the following objection to Christ not having omnipotence over his body. Through the state of original justice, Adam's body was entirely subject to the soul, such that nothing could happen to the body against the will of the soul. Now, given that Christ was more perfect than Adam, the objection goes, his soul should have had omnipotence over his body. In his reply, Aquinas is clear that While Adam did not have anything like omnipotence over his body, he did have the power to preserve it from injury. Christ could have taken on this power if he wanted to. Perhaps the simplest way to interpret this is to suppose that Aquinas was merely excluding from Christ The version of impassibility proper to original justice. Because he already said by Christ's instrumentality, every disposition of his body was subject to his power. However, we may also consider a more speculative interpretation of Aquinas position. which would exclude any version of impassibility from Christ's earthly life, including one that's miraculous. Given that Christ co assumed passibility, could he have co assumed the power to prevent his passible body from being injured Aquinas would reply that Christ could have assumed this power if he had wanted to. Here we have something Christ could have co assumed, but did not. It is not, that Christ had the power to preserve his body from injury when attacked, but did not use it. Rather, he didn't have the power at all. Aquinas gives no reason why this power would not have been assumed. But it's easy to see why he thought it was not. It was the purpose of the Incarnation that Christ redeem us by His Passion. The power to prevent injury miraculously would in no way contribute to that goal. Moreover, were Christ to have exercised such power prior to the Passion, it would have led to the impression that he was not really human. This is perhaps confirmed by what Aquinas said about the assumption of power to change material creatures. If we speak of Christ's soul as the instrument of the word united to him, it had an instrumental power to effect all the miraculous changes ordainable to the end of the Incarnation, which is to re establish all things that are in heaven and on earth. By citing Ephesians 1. 10, Aquinas was alluding to the miraculous transformation of all things at the end of time, which he clearly thinks will be effected instrumentally through the instrument of Christ's humanity. the miracles of Christ's earthly life are ordained in the service of our faith in the Incarnation. On Aquinas view, then, Christ co assumed the power to perform not just those miracles that were, ordained to the Incarnation, but whatever miracles were ordainable to the end of the Incarnation, even if he did not in fact do them. Aquinas was inclined to think an incarnate divine person would assume perfection rather than defect, However, the perfection or defect was assumed to serve our salvation. only those miracles which could not serve Christ's saving mission, were excluded from assumption. I end the paper by asking whether this approach can help us with other speculative matters. Including why Adam, other Old Testament figures, and the Christian martyrs seem to enjoy gifts the earthly Christ did not possess. I also explore whether this approach can explain why, in Mark's gospel, Christ did not work miracles where there was a lack of faith, Finally, I suggest that an appreciation of Christ's power to work miracles can reinforce our appreciation that Christ's grace and knowledge were freely assumed.

1 56:33

We've got nine minutes for questions.

13 56:35

Thanks Father Gane. you outlined the change in reasoning Thomas employs in considering what sort of power Christ assumed, previously he considered it as a kind of consequence of the union, then he considered it as insofar salvific purpose, right? I'm wondering whether you find reasons for Thomas no longer thinking it should be a consequence of the union. not just A recognition that the reasoning has changed, but why he might disagree with the reasoning he previously employed.

12 57:07

consequences of the union, it's a broad category. Albert the Great used it too in his sentence commentary in trying to make sense order what's in Peter Lombard's sentences. So I don't think it was that there was a great thinking about it beforehand, and it's not clear to what extent Aquinas thought this was something that followed necessarily from the Incarnation, or whether it was only some other kind of consequence. But I suppose what he'd been thinking about in the meantime, and I think it was seeing this division among the Franciscans. He came to think that if you think very clearly about what an incarnation must involve, and God could have caused incarnations in different circumstances, he could say an incarnation need not involve all the things that the actual incarnation involved. It was really because it was much more focused on God's saving purpose. And I think at the same time, in ordering the Summa, the saving purpose of the incarnation was coming very much to the fore of his thinking. So I think all those things fitted together. I have the feeling that, if he thought about it more, he might not have done it as he did There are questions that don't get asked talking about instrumentality would that be under assumption? Or a consequence of the union? I think it would be a consequence that doesn't mean everything about instrumentality would follow he was an instrument. I think that's what he thought. He doesn't give us a question on it. There are these things that he doesn't say and nor does he explain his thinking. So to some extent, I've been trying to reconstruct, thinking about what was going on in St. Thomas's head

2 59:00

Thank you for the talk. I just had a question about instrumentality could you say more? I thought you said that with respect to grace, he was a principle efficient cause, but not Instrumental

12 59:09

efficient cause in terms of certain acts arising from the fact that he had the co assumption of grace in terms of him being the cause of grace in us, he'd be an instrumental cause. there would be other ways, Aquinas thinks, in which Christ, having been graced, can be the principal cause of certain acts, like enlightening us about matters of revelation and so on. But that doesn't mean everything in regard to grace is going to be principal.

14 59:36

One thing that struck me was, That Christ was limited in his ability to do a miracle by a human's lack of faith or not developed faith. And one thing that I hadn't understood, before this conference was that Aquinas said Jesus did not have so how could he have been limited in his ability to do something by the lack of somebody else's faith?

12 1:00:03

Aquinas thinks he wasn't limited. in his commentary on Matthew's gospel, there's no sense he was limited. he has the divine power to do this when he talks about I mentioned the Gospel of Mark, he does mention this in the Summa Theologiae when discussing whether miracles were by divine power, and he affirms divine power there. So I think that Aquinas thinks he just didn't do it, there was a good reason not to do it, and so he didn't do it. Although, there are some exceptions in both Matthew and Mark, because he didn't want the people to have the excuse. that we would have believed if you'd worked some miracles. So he does work a couple and then the people have no excuse. he takes it from Theophilact, he's got patristic sources for all these things. So I think it was my suggestion, it's only a speculation, that maybe you could use the notions that Aquinas has about co assumption of power. You could use that to say maybe because it was not fitting for his mission that he work miracles where people were ill disposed to have faith, maybe he did not assume the power to work them. And you can use that as another way to explain the inability that we see in Mark's Gospel. But it's not something that Aquinas actually says. I was suggesting we might be able to get speculative exegesis that gives another way to interpret Marx. He could not work miracles there.

5 1:01:42

Yeah.

1 1:01:42

we can open questions to the panel. Direct your question wherever you like.

3 1:01:45

Hi, this is Firfal

6 1:01:46

I think I just didn't catch what you said in the part of the paper. where Aquinas is insisting upon Christ's freedom. on the cross, his freedom to die or to choose to die. And he talks about something that's always always at least when I first read it, it quite alarmed me. I thought he talked about his power to repel the nails or not be crucified. then I thought Aquinas does not think, I thought you were saying Aquinas holds that Christ his human soul did not have that power, I had this memory of thinking that the human soul in some way did have that power. But I know I've missed something in Aquinas

12 1:02:17

First of all on those texts, it would be good to check whether he's speaking about divine power or about human power. the simplest way to interpret Aquinas in the co assumption of power question would be to say that he did have that power in his human soul. in article 3 of question 13, in the body of the article, by his instrumentality, the whole disposition, every disposition of Christ's body was subject to his power, so that would lead me to think that Aquinas did think he had the power in his human soul. It's just that in the reply to one of the objections, when he talks about Adam having the power to prevent injury to his body when attacked, he does say that Christ could have taken on that power if he'd wanted to. Now there does seem to be a tension between what you've got in the response the text you're quoting. and what he says in the reply to the objection. I think there is a simple way to resolve it as a historical interpretation of Aquinas, to say he's only excluding Adam's version of impassibility, but not excluding every version another way to come at it a more speculative rather than purely historical interpretation. where maybe Christ did not assume the power to prevent that injury at all in his human soul on account of the fact that it could not be ordained to the end of the incarnation, was for him to suffer and die on our behalf. That's an alternative speculative reading which Aquinas does not clearly say, but I would like to give it a run for its money. a lot of what Aquinas has in this question is undeveloped. you feel he's in a bit of a hurry. He makes things less clear, than he usually does. this gives us the opportunity. to play with different alternatives for how this might be developed. he doesn't give a reason why he thinks Christ's instrumentality. would give him complete power over the dispositions of his body. I suspect it's because he thinks that this would pertain to Christ's perfection. There's an awful lot of talk about ordering things to the plan of salvation. Joshua shows in his article in the International Journal of Systematic Theology, that you've got two principles at work, and maybe they are actually ordered to one another, and the principle of perfection is ordered to the soteriological principle. Have I got you right? Okay. has Aquinas, thought through all the ways the principle of perfection is subordinated, to, the soteriological principle? Christ might not have assumed complete power over every aspect of his humanity because it might not have served the end of the incarnation well. this is speculation rather than historical exegesis. Of what Aquinas actually said or thought.

6 1:05:32

Let me just make one comment. I agree with you. that makes a lot of sense. I really like this because I remember when I was a student, when I first read this, it freaked me out. The idea that the nails could bounce off human flesh. does seem implausible to me. It seemed Gnostic. But let me ask you for one follow up one thing that really does strike me is that let's just say that on the Wednesday before Holy Thursday, if Christ had gotten a terrible cold and couldn't get out of bed do you understand the question I'm raising? In other words, I'm extremely comfortable with Christ having a cold I'm extremely comfortable with Christ not assuming the power To prevent the nails, it does seem important maybe you would just appeal to divine providence you wouldn't want Christ to be so susceptible that if someone had given him the flu, that week the salvation of the world would somehow have been delayed or something.

12 1:06:17

God's providence can sort that, make sure it doesn't happen. Aquinas thought Christ had the instrumental power to heal his flu.

6 1:06:26

He would be the same principle, right? The same principle as pulling the nails. It depends.

12 1:06:29

He might have thought it would contribute to the end of the incarnation if Christ could heal himself of the flu. So he could go and do what he's got to do on Thursday and Friday.

6 1:06:39

Okay, let me make sure I'm clear. So you're saying we can take away the power for repelling the nails.

12 1:06:44

For what can't be ordained to The end of the incarnation,

6 1:06:49

right? I see. I understand,

12 1:06:51

I wouldn't exclude what could be ordained to the end of the incarnation. Maybe, being able to heal his flu miraculously that he catches on Wednesday could be ordainable to the end of the incarnation.

16 1:07:05

What if we don't use the flu example? What if, he's going to get hit by a camel and die of accidental causes? Right before his passion. The question is, it seems that being able to have an impassable body or make his body impassable would order his life towards the purpose of the incarnation by allowing him to survive the encounter with the camel. so what's the point? it seems like it's not the case that having that power couldn't be ordered towards the purpose of the incarnation. does that make sense?

12 1:07:35

So you mean it could be ordered in the case of being hit by the camel, which could be a mortal injury. Yeah. Okay. he could prevent himself from injury, except the ultimate point is for him to be injured, and it would be quite possible for divine providence to prevent Christ from being hit by the camel. Also, he might have such good, Aquinas thinks Christ has, a body formed by the Holy Spirit. So he's pretty agile and everything senses work well, he probably, could have dodged the camel,

16 1:08:09

but if the claim is he doesn't assume the powers that could not, as in, it is impossible for them to be ordered towards the good of the incarnation, then it seems like the impassibility power is disqualified.

12 1:08:20

you've got a great point. I have to think about it more, but that's an excellent point.

9 1:08:24

thank you all for your very clear presentations. This has been fantastic. I did want to ask Fritz, one more question about the presentation. in the first question of the Summa, Thomas says the theologian knows what the philosopher knows, but under a different ratio. it's analogous to the way an astronomer and a mathematician might have similar knowledge about the same material object, under a different formal aspect. To understand the burden of your paper, is the difference between Christ infused and acquired knowledge substantially different from the distinction I'm drawing now to make the coexistence inscrutable?

4 1:09:04

you should really be asking father because he's thought a lot about this. it seems that's exactly the kind of move he tries to make. the trouble I have is, it would only be analogous to that distinction, right? we're talking about different kinds of. Acquired knowledge. that might solve the problem of differently derived species perfecting the same power. But I think the thing that really makes me stumble is the sheer implausibility of the idea of christ having active knowledge of all things humanly knowable not in a kind of non discursive way as you would in the beatific vision, but discursive knowledge. Christ knew whether the Orioles are gonna, get the wild card to, Being in the postseason, he knew that he won't tell me when I pray to him. there's something about the sheer implausibility of it, Whereas I can imagine how two different people could know the same material object under different ratios, How the same person could know the same material object in an infused and an acquired manner. it's hard for me to imagine the part where it makes me stumble, but that's a very modern question. That's not the question Aquinas is asking. He's asking about the perfection of Christ's powers, right? Doesn't he ask this question? it seems to me a very natural question to ask, when Christ has infused knowledge of Aramaic, what's going on when he's getting acquired knowledge of Aramaic by watching Mary and Joseph speaking at home. How does his infused knowledge of physics affect his learning to walk at age one? it's hard for me to imagine Thomas didn't ask Maybe he doesn't for a particular purpose, Maybe there's a reason he doesn't think these are questions worth asking.