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"in thunderstorms and tempests Thomas would fortify himself with the sign of the cross and say: 'God came . . . in the flesh, He died for us and rose again [(Deus in carne venit, Deus pro nobis mortuus est et resurrexit)].'"
Bernard Gui, Vita S. Thomae Aquinatis (=Fontes Vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, ed. D. Prümmer, vol. 3, pp. 161-263), chap. 35, trans. Kenelm Foster, O.P. (The life of Saint Thomas Aquinas: biographical documents, trans. and edited by Kenelm Foster, O.P. (London: Longmans, Green and Co; Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1959), 53). Cf. Peter Calo, Vita S. Thomae Aquinatis (=Fontes Vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, ed. D. Prümmer, vol. 1, pp. 17-55), chap. 21 (Deus in carne venit, Deus pro nobis mortuus), and especially William of Tocco, Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino (=Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, vol. 2, pp. 59-160), chap. 38:
Thanks to his force of soul, he feared no danger. . . .
It is said of him that as he made his way to Paris he had to suffer at sea a horrible tempest, at the hands of which even the mariners feared they would perish. And yet he showed no fear during this whole tempest. . . . In dreadful storms, thunder, and tempests, shielding himself with a sign of the cross as with a buckler he would say, 'God came in the flesh, God died for us [(Deus in carnem uenit, Deus pro nobis mortuus est)].'
Nonetheless, he certainly had reason to fear such storms. For when he was still in early infancy, "A fearsome tempest swept suddenly down upon the castle of Roccasecca. Lightning struck the keep, killing his sister, who slept there, as well as the horses in the stable" (William of Tocco, Ystoria, chap. 3, as reproduced in L'histoire de saint Thomas d'Aquin de Gullaume de Tocco: traduction française du dernier état du texte (1323), avec introduction et notes par Claire le Brun-Gouanvic, Sagesses chrétiennes (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2005), 27 (90 for chap. 38); cf., for the Latin, Fontes, vol. 2, pp. 59-160 (where it is chap. 2), and Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino de Guillaume de Tocco (1323): édition critique, introduction et notes, ed. Claire le Brun-Gouanvic (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1996), 98 (166 for chap. 38)).
That he may have needed "fortification" is indicated by what Torrell calls "his sensitivity to pain". Tocco says that he "was extraordinarily sensitive [(miro modo passibilis)] and [that] physical wounds did not fail to upset him." Of an impending cauterization or blood-letting he therefore wanted to be warned, so as to be able to escape the pain by focusing in advance on an elevated subject. These anecdotes occur in a chapter devoted to his extraordinary powers of abstraction, but this acquired "insensibility to pain" is also attributed to "a divine miracle" (Tocco, Ystoria 47; see Jean-Pierre Torrell, “Thomas d’Aquin,” Dictionnaire de spiritualité 15 (1991), col. 745 (718-773)).
"those things that are natural to man are neither withdrawn from nor bestowed upon him by sin."
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I.98.Resp. Cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., "Nature et grâce chez Thomas d'Aquin," Revue thomiste 101, no. 1/2 (2001): 177 (167-202).
Which means that the "state of original justice," the phrase favored by Aquinas when discussing original sin, or "innocence," the phrase favored by Aquinas in "the treatise on the creation of the first man" (Torrell, 175), is not natural, but supernatural:
such a subjection of the body to the soul and of the lower parts to reason, was not from nature; otherwise it would have remained after sin, as Dionysius declares (Div. Nom. iv). . . . the primitive subjection by virtue of which reason was subject to God was not a merely natural gift, but a supernatural endowment of grace
(Summa theologiae I.95.1.Resp., trans. FEDP; cf. Torrell, 177-178).
human nature was established in its first beginning so that the inferior powers were perfectly subject to reason, the reason to God, the body to the soul, and God was by His grace supplying what nature lacked for this arrangement
(Summa contra Gentiles IV.52.6 (=Marietti no. 3880), trans. Charles J. O'Neil; cf. Torrell, 178). Thus, St. Thomas rejects "the opinion of those who think that sanctifying grace is not comprised in original justice":
Original justice included sanctifying grace (gratiam gratum faciens) and I do not believe that it is true that the first man was created with his natural powers alone (in puris naturalibus)
(De malo q. 4 a.2 ad 22 (Marietti, p. 531), as reproduced at Torrell, 179, who says ad 1).
Given that original justice consists principally in the submission of the human soul to God, which cannot be firm without grace, original justice could not exist without grace
(De malo q.5 a.1 ad 13 (Marietti, p. 547), as reproduced at Torrell, 179).
On pp. 174-175 Torrell reproduces In II Sent. d.30 q.1 a.1 on the distinction between human nature "according to its natural principles alone," and human nature "as it was [actually] created (instituta)", "the concrete situation of man fresh from the [(sorti des)] hands of God" (Torrell, 175).
"In the fourteenth century the kings of France, wishing to concentrate their forces against the English, called upon their barons to curtail their own feuds and vendettas: 'We forbid anyone to wage war [guerre] during our war [guerre].'"
Robert J. Bartlett, "Lords of 'pride and plunder,'" a review of The crisis of the twelfth century: power, lordship, and the origins of European government, by Thomas N. Bisson, New York review of books 57, no. 11 (June 24, 2010): 48 (47-50), on "the worrying doubt that states and kingdoms, indeed all lawfully constituted governments, are just the most successful of the robber gangs", "the thin line between the gunslinger and the sheriff," "the poignancy of the bandit turned law officer", and so forth. I think there can be a distinction ("Nowadays, we make a sharper distinction"), but like the quote.
"it looks as if it was David Hume who made the term [Tudor] an indispensable part of the historian's vocabulary when, in 1757, he published his History of England under the House of Tudor. It was Hume, too, who seems to have established the modern spelling.
"'Tudor monarchs', then, did not think of themselves as such; still less did 'Tudor subjects'. . . .
". . . one of the most familiar of English historical terms had little purchase in its own era. We must learn to do without the Tudors."
Clifford S. L. Davies, "A rose by another name: why we are wrong to talk about 'the Tudors,'" Times literary supplement, June 13 2008, p. 15 (14-15).
Has this been sustained?
"it was in those nights of prayer that he learned what he would write or dictate in the day-time. . . . It was as though the prayer of his mind never ceased, and in fact no external business could ever distract it from the thoughts in which he delighted and the revelations for which he prayed. He never set himself to study or argue a point, or lecture or write or dictate without first having recourse inwardly—but with tears—to prayer for the understanding and the words required by the subject. When perplexed by a difficulty he would kneel and pray and then, on returning to his writing or dictation, . . . was accustomed to find that his thought had become so clear that it seemed to show him inwardly, as in a book, the words he needed. All this is confirmed by his own statement to brother Reginald that prayer and the help of God had been of greater service to him in the search for truth than his natural intelligence and habit of study."
Bernard Gui, Vita S. Thomae Aquinatis 15 (=Fontes Vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, ed. D. Prümmer, vol. 3, pp. 161-263), trans. Kenelm Foster, O.P. (The life of Saint Thomas Aquinas: biographical documents, trans. and ed. Kenelm Foster, O.P. (London: Longmans, Green and Co; Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1959), 37). This theme is continued in secs. 16 (mission of Sts. Peter and Paul) and 24 (Jesus himself), as elsewhere. Cf. chap. 30 of William of Tocco's Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino:
like Solomon [he] asked for nothing from God but wisdom. Hence it may easily be believed, nay the fact is manifest, that it was through the merits of his prayer and piety that he received what he taught and wrote and dictated. This we have, too, from the mouth of brother Reginald, his socius, who was in his master's confidence and saw things that he did not reveal while the latter was still living. But after the death of his master, when Reginald returned to Naples from Fossanova, and resumed his lecturing (for he was a lector) he spoke thus, with many tears: 'My brothers, while my master lived he would not let me reveal the wonderful things I knew about him, among which was this, that his amazing knowledge was not an effect of human intelligence but of prayer. For always, before he studied or disputed or lectured or wrote or dictated, he would pray from the heart, begging with tears to be shown the truth about the divine things that he had to investigate. . . . And when any difficulty arose he . . . had recourse to prayer, whereupon the matter would become wonderfully clear to him. Thus, in his soul, intellect and desire somehow contained each other, the two faculties freely serving one another in such a way that each in turn took the lead: his desire, through prayer, gained access to divine realities, which then the intellect, deeply apprehending, drew into a light which kindled to greater intensity the flame of love'
(70n44). Cf. Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino de Guillaume de Tocco (1323) (=Fontes Vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, ed. D. Prümmer, vol. 2, pp. 59-160), ed. Claire le Brun-Gouanvic, Studies and texts 127 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1996), 157-158, and in a French translation, L'histoire de saint Thomas d'Aquin, trans. Claire le Brun-Gouanvic, Sagesses chrétiennes (Paris: Cerf, 2005), 80-81. In German: Das Leben des heiligen Thomas von Aquino erzählt von Wilhelm von Tocco und andere Zeugnisse zu seinem Leben, trans. Willehad Paul Eckert, Heilige der ungeteilten Christenheit dargstellt von den Zeugen ihres Lebens, ed. Walter Nigg and Wilhelm Schamoni (Düsseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 1965), 125-126.
Yet there was, of course, a vast ocean of insight yet to come, there being limits to what "'can be answered, in human language, by man still living in this mortal life'":
'Reginald, my son, I will tell you a secret which you must not repeat to anyone while I remain alive. All my writing is now at an end; for such things have been revealed to me that all I have taught and written seems quite trivial to me now. The only thing I want now is that as God has put an end to my writing, He may quickly end my life also'
(Bernard Gui, Vita 27, trans. Foster (p. 46)). Cf. chap. 47 of the Life by Tocco, chap. 24 of the Life by Calo, and most famously chap. 79 of the first inquiry into canonization (or Bartholomew of Capua), which appears on pp. 109-110 of this translation by Foster ("'all that I have written seems to me so much straw'"; "'All that I have written seems to me like straw compared with what has now been revealed to me'"). And
'You have written well, Thomas, of the sacrament of my Body; you have answered the question put to you as well as it can be answered, in human language, by man still living in this mortal life.'
(Bernard Gui, Vita 24, trans. Foster (p. 44), italics mine).
Moreover, this was as far from a tradition- or church-deprecating illuminism as it could have been. For on this same deathbed St. Thomas is also supposed to have said, addressing Christ himself in the viaticum,
O price of my redemption and food for my pilgrimage, I receive You. For Your sake I have studied and toiled and kept vigil. I have preached You and taught You. Never consciously have I said a word against You. But if I should have said or written anything amiss on this sacrament or any of the others, I leave it all to the judgment of the holy Roman Church, in obedience to whom I desire to end my life
(Bernard Gui, Vita 39, trans. Foster (pp. 55-56)).
See also this note here.
"the commandments of the New Law . . . have been given about matters that are necessary to gain the end of eternal Happiness, . . . but . . . the counsels are about matters that render the gaining of this end more assured and expeditious" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II.108.4.Resp., trans. FEDP).
"the evangelical counsels are 'not perfections but . . . dispositions to perfection'" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles III.130.3, trans. Vernon J. Bourke).
Cf. Dieter Witschen, "Zur Bestimmung supererogatorischer Handlungen: der Beitrag des Thomas von Aquin," Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 51, nos. 1/3 (2004): 32-33 (27-40).
"The content of the doctrine of the Trinity which the Church has formulated and dogmatics has to repeat and Church proclamation respect is not that God in His relation to man is Creator, Mediator and Redeemer, but that God in Himself is eternally God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. . . . God Himself cannot be dissolved [nicht aufgeht] into His work and activity [for us]. . . ."
Karl Barth, CD I/2, pp. 878-879, as quoted by George Hunsinger, in his "Election and the Trinity: twenty-five theses on the theology of Karl Barth," Modern theology 24, no. 2 (April 2008): 189, but with the Thomson/Knight translation restored (since Hunsinger, or perhaps just Modern theology, drops an ellipsis).
The stress in context is on "revelation," [1] that "work and activity of God in His revelation" from which is derived the both [2b] the doctrine of God as "in His revelation . . . Creator, Mediator and Redeemer" and [2a] the logically prior and much more foundational doctrine of God as "in Himself and to all eternity . . . Father, Son and Holy Spirit." [1] "The work and activity" of revelation is therefore the "organising and controlling centre of dogmatics" out of which [2] doctrine arises, and in particular [2a] "the doctrine of the Trinity . . . as part of [2b] "the doctrine of God [as Creator, Mediator and Redeemer], which cannot be exhausted in [2a] the doctrine of the Trinity," and stands with it "alongside [3] the doctrines of creation, atonement and redemption." We need [2b] because "the impression can and must be destroyed that at every point [(I might have said level)] we have to do with a system of trinitarian doctrine." Yet [2a] is nonetheless "the foundation of th[e] threefold division of His self-revealing action", and guarantees that "even in [2b] this differentiation of God in His revelation . . . we have to do with God Himself."
So much for the context. But here's the point being made by Hunsinger: "We have to" place [2b] the doctrine of God as "in His revelation" Creator, Mediator, and Redeemer, and within and behind that [2a] the doctrine of God as "in Himself and to all eternity" Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, "alongside [3] the doctrines of creation, atonement and redemption"
because [2] this Subject God Himself [and behind that the God who is [2a] "in Himself and to all eternity" Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] cannot be dissolved into His work and activity, if His work and activity is rightly to be seen and understood as His.
Here is how I put this distinction between context and use the first time round:
We must distinguish God's "work and activity" ad extra, "the actuality of the Word of God", from "the doctrine of the Trinity" considered as a "dogma," "doctrine," "basic view, or . . . controllable principle which can be used as such for the construction of a system. . . . of trinitarian doctrine."
We did not derive our differentiation of the Loci [into De creatione, De reconciliatione, De redemptione (and before those De Deo)] from the doctrine of the Trinity. We derived the doctrine of the Trinity itself from the same source as that from which is now derived the differentiation of the Loci, viz., the work and activity of God in His revelation.
The doctrine of the Trinity, like all other doctrines, is preceded by the fact of revelation in itself and as such. The essence of this fact is that God confronts us as Creator, Mediator, and Redeemer, that as such He speaks and deals with us, that He is therefore God and Lord in this threefold way. This being of God in His work and activity is not a dogma, or a basic view, or a controllable principle which can be used as such for the construction of a system. It is the actuality of the Word of God, freely preceding and underlying all views and dogmas. We attained our differentiation of the Loci by reference to this actuality and not to the doctrine of the Trinity, although inevitably [this actuality] both confirms the latter, and is itself confirmed by it, and safeguarded against misunderstandings.
Only with what I've just placed in italics do we arrive at the use Hunsinger makes of this passage. This use is perfectly legitimate, as indeed Barth himself makes abundantly clear
("In §§ 10-12 we thought it necessary to understand God in His revelation as Creator, Mediator and Redeemer in order to see as the foundation of this threefold division of His self-revealing action the fact that in Himself and to all eternity God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit" (and then very shortly the first of the two sentences quoted by Hunsinger)),
but not the main point here.
The dangers Hunsinger sees in the new revisionism of McCormack and company were, in my judgment, dangers for the substitution of Creator-Redeemer-Sustainer before that.
"in thunderstorms and tempests Thomas would fortify himself with the sign of the cross and say: 'God came . . . in the flesh, He died for us and rose again [(Deus in carne venit, Deus pro nobis mortuus est et resurrexit)].'"
