Tertia Pars
Lecture 46: Christ's Passions: Sadness, Fear, Wonder, and Anger

Transcript
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Okay, now, so this man has sadness in him, right? And now, whether in Christ there was, what, fear, right? Incidentally, what form of fiction is purging a form of sadness and fear? Tragedy, yeah. So when Aristotle defines tragedy, right, in the book of the Poetic Art, he puts in the definition of it that it purges, what, pity, which is a kind of sadness and fear, right? Now, purge doesn't mean to eliminate, but, you know, it purifies. But it's interesting, you have a sadness here and now fear. So then, of course, Shakespeare there in the premium, not the premium, the prologue to Roman Juliet, right? In the second quatrain, he mentions pity, right? It was misadventured, piteous overthrows to their death. And then in the third quatrain, in the fearful passage of their death marked love. So he identified 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, that 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 St. Catherine of Siena, right? 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, but let my other people go, you know, just kill me, you know. You know, the guy got so bewildered by this, you know, he couldn't do it. And she was upset because she wanted to be a martyr. No one day, no one day, I mean, the guy just wants to be a martyr, but what are you going to do? I mean, I mean, you go and kill somebody who wants to be a martyr. Great, great woman. Moreover, Hilary says, in the 10th 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, yeah, from the apostles of death, exhorting them to the glory of, what, you know, that's St. Catherine of Siena, right? Yeah, yeah. Therefore, there was not in Christ reasonable to have fear. 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? But again, against this, he got the Gospels, but against this is what is said in Mark chapter 14, that Jesus began to, what, fear, poverty. Well, here it says it was sad. Sad and impoverty 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. But the apprehension of a future evil, if all is had, does not induce what? Fear. Strange, huh? Yeah, why, why not? 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. Thus, therefore, fear can be considered as regards two things. In one way, as regards this, that the sensitive appetite, 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, huh? Another way can be considered according to the incertitude of the future advent coming, just as when at nighttime we fear from some sound as ignoring, or be ignorant, what it is, right? And in regards to this, there was no fear in Christ, huh? As Damascene says in the third book, huh? 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's a future evil that he's not anticipating with any other feeling that kind of fear, right? 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, 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, 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, huh? The word propassion. Yeah, yeah, there didn't seem to be a word for it, you know? Especially of Christ. And therefore, it is said that Jesus began to, what, fear, if you want to put that there. As it were, according to propassionists, Jerome expounds, huh? So that would be excluding that passion that would, what, take away whatever reason, yeah. What about the text from Hillary, huh? It should be Hillary, 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? So did Christ necessarily fear? 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, they were nevertheless inevitable, or not easily avoidable, according to the weakness of the flesh. Interesting. It's flesh left to itself, right? Oh, no, it did. I'm just going to take up wondering next, because sometimes wondering is what? Tied up with fear, right? Like Shakespeare says, huh? It harrows me with fear and wonder, huh? To the eighth one proceeds thus, it seems that in Christ there was not wonder, for the philosopher says in the first book of Wisdom there, the Metaphysics, that wonder is caused from this that someone sees an effect and doesn't know the cause, huh? And thus to wonder is not except the one who is ignorant. But in Christ there was not any ignorance, therefore in Christ there was no wonder. Morbred Damascene says in the second book that wonder is fear from great imagining. Imagine you may. And therefore the philosopher says in the fourth book of Nicomache in Ethics, that the magnanimous man is not what's filled with wonder, right? Because nothing is great to him, huh? But Christ was most magnanimous, huh? Maximate magnanimous. The magnanimous man does great things in all the virtues, huh? I remember Warren Murray was directing somebody's thesis on magnanimity, right? Of course, you're trying to find a good example of a magnanimous man, but all these men who are spoken of as magnanimous, like Winston Churchill and so on, they turn out not to be altogether magnanimous. And he says the only example you can find of a magnanimous man was Christ, you know? But anyway. No one admires about someone what he himself is able to do, but Christ is able to do whatever was great in things. Therefore it seems that he would, what? Have wonder about no one, huh? But against this again, this pesky test from the Gospels that keep on showing up here, right? Of course, the Second Vatican Consul said that the four Gospels are the greatest part of Scripture, right? Even among the books of the New Testament, huh? But against this is what is said in Matthew chapter 8. Hearing, Jesus hearing, to wit, the words of the centurion, marveled, right, huh? Rattus est. The answer, it should be said, that admiration is properly about something new that's not customary, right? I was reading this in Augustine there in the Golden Chain, talking about the miracles, right? I mean, the miracle is greater than God's creating the world and preserving it in existence and so on, or more marvelous than a reasonable soul. Interesting in this thing I was reading about Catherine and Sian, right? She had a vision of a reasonable soul and she said, it's a more beautiful thing in the world, you know? But normally we don't wonder at those things because we see them all the time, right? You know, if I do go over the rock and it falls to the ground, do you wonder at it? Well, you might not know why the rock falls to the ground, huh? Einstein said he didn't know, and he admired Newton for knowing that he didn't know. He's trying to find out. We don't tend to wonder about that because that's what we expect, right? But if you'd have to go over the rock and it went up and set it down, they didn't wonder, you know? Why did it go up? And that's why we wonder, you know, a miracle is taken from the word wonder, right? See? So the miracle is not the greatest thing God has done, is it? See? But it's what? Not the customary way things are in nature, right? And therefore it arouses what? Wonder, yeah. So he says, de novo aliquo insolito, something new and untested, yeah. He's saying nothing differently from what Aristotle is saying. He's all about that in Objection 1. See, what Aristotle talks about when we're there, he will single out the example there of the discovery by the Greek geometries of the incommensibility of the diagonal square with the side. And this is contrary to what you'd expect, right? Okay? And Thomas, you know, sometimes he comes back upon an example and talks about that, right? And Einstein, he talks about wonder, you know, in the early wonder. And it was a father bringing home a magnet, right? And the magnet seemed to move things without being in contact with them. And that was contrary to what you'd expect. How could one body move another body without touching it? So it's something that's contrary to what you expect, huh? It makes you wonder, huh? See? Human beings, you know, I mean, they're kind of strange the way we act sometimes, but if somebody acts in a way you don't expect them to act, then you kind of wonder what's wrong with so-and-so, what's, you know? You see? And so Augustus is making that same point in the golden chain, which talks about the miracles, right? Now, these are not the most wonderful things God has done, but the creation of the world, we don't wonder at, because it's always there. The world's there, but it's always with us. The world is too much with us, as we say. Now, in Christ, there could not be something new and unaccustomed as regards his, what, divine knowledge, huh? Nor as regards his human knowledge, by which he knew things in the Word. Or even that, by which he knew things through, what, these species that were placed in them, right? But there could be something new and unaccustomed to him according to his experiential knowledge, huh? According as there could, what, daily occur some new things, right? And therefore, if we speak about Christ as regards his divine knowledge, his knowledge as God, I guess that refers to, or his blessed knowledge, whereby he sees God as he is, face to face, or even his infused knowledge, which he called indita, before the indita species, there would not be in Christ wonder, right, huh? If, however, we speak of him as regards his experiential knowledge, and thus there could be, what, wonder at him, right? That's interesting because, remember how, was it the experiential knowledge that Thomas didn't see in the sentences, right, as being part of Christ's array of knowledge? And, you see? But here it's kind of interesting that it's tied up with the fact that he could, what, wonder, right? Oh, yeah. Maybe St. Thomas wondered. Yeah. Is it the centurion who says, you know, you're going to have to come down to my house to cure the servant of the boy, you know? Yeah. And he says, I'm a man, you know, I give commands and they do it, you know? It's almost like saying, you know, you can command nature, right? In the way that I command, you know, and it really does. It's striking, you know, and this guy's a pagan, and he's not even a Jew or anything like that, he is, you know? And yet he's, he's, kind of respect the military, yeah, sometimes. And he took on this affection to our instruction, right? To wit, that he teaches us to wonder about what also he wondered. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Once Augustine says in the first book on Genesis against the Manichaeans, that the Lord, what, wondered, right? He signifies to us ought to be, what, wondered at? It's something we wondered at, we should be moved to wonder at certain times. Yeah, yeah. It's what's necessary. Yeah. For all such motions are not signs of a disturbed soul, right? But of a, what, teaching magisterium. So I wonder at this St. Catherine, yeah, right? Quite a formidable woman. So the first thing, although Christ was not ignorant of anything, there nevertheless could be something new occurring to his, what, experiential knowledge, right? From which wonder was, what, caused, huh? To the second it should be said that Christ wondered about the faith of the centurion, not by reason that it was something great to him, but because it was great in comparison to others, right? It's pagan, right? How could he? That's what he said. Yeah. Not all of Israel. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I can see a little child and say something very wise. Maybe that's great compared to what you know, you know, but compared to other children, right? To come out with this little thing that they say, huh? Now, to the third it should be said that he was able to do all things according to his divine power, according to which in him there was not wonder, right? But only according to his human experimental, what, knowledge, huh? Sometimes Thomas, you know, when he's arguing against those who deny that Christ had a human soul, you know, these heresies. There's some, you know, who said that in place of human soul was his divinity, right? And there are others who are forced to admit some kind of soul, but in place of his reason, he has the divinity, right? So therefore, he really has an animal soul, right? But not an understanding soul. But then Thomas would point to the fact that he has admiratio, wonder, right? And that's tied up with the fact that Christ must have had a rational soul. So that reason, right? He could have wonder, huh? So, Ernstall talks a little bit about wonder there, too, and he talks about tragedy, huh? How it arouses some wonder. But you have that at the end of, what, of Hamlet there, where Hamlet's friend, right, is going to tell Fortinbrau there was a day in place, you know. If you would see out of woe or wonder, he says, right? So woe is another word for pity, right? Once they're using the word fear, he says wonder, right? There's a dead king there, a dead queen, a dead prince, a dead, you know. This whole group of bodies, right, that befits the field, as Fortinbrau says, but not the throne, huh? Okay? But it involves a certain wonder, the tragedy, you know. It's interesting when Aristotle is given the arguments of Zeno in the eight books that I actually hear him. You know the famous arguments of Zeno against motion, huh? And some of the arguments really have the same basis, but the way they said, they arouse, what, more wonder, right? And so he was talking about the argument of Achilles cannot catch the torch, huh? And he says, it's a certain tragodia, huh? A certain tragedy, right? And Thomas says, that is a certain magnification of words arousing, what, wonder, right, huh? Okay? Well, now, I was mentioning about some of the theorems I know of Euclid, right, huh? You see? That theorem I like so much in the second book, the fifth one in the second book. And the way it's stated in Euclid is thus, he says, if you cut a straight line in equal and unequal segments, right, the rectangle contained by the unequal segments, right, or excuse me, see, the square contained by the equal sections will be equal to the rectangle contained by the unequal segments plus the square on the line between the points of section, right? Okay, so what? But that occurred to me, you see, that if you think of this line as representing the perimeter of a rectangle, right, then you can see that with the same perimeter, the square is going to have more area than the, what, outlaw, right? So, let's say, if you have 5 by 5, the area is 25, right? And if you have 4 by 6, the area is only, what, 24, but 4, which had the same perimeter, 20. Now, as you depart further from that, you see, you have 7 and 3. You still have 20 all around here, but now it's only 21, right? Now, you could say that the difference between the one of these and 5 squared would be the difference. So, 1 squared is 1, 2 squared is 4, and it's between 1. And once you see that, then you realize something even more interesting, that you could have a rectangle, let's say, 2 by 10, whose perimeter would be, what, 24, as opposed to here the perimeter is what? 20. 20. But the area here is only 20, right? So, with more fence, you can gain less area, right? You see? And that seems, you know, crazy at first, right? So, you're going to make a yard for your kid to play in, and you're going to fence off an area, right? And my kid has got more room to play in with the area I fenced off, but I use less fence. It costs me less than you. You know? That kind of arousing wonder, right? That you can contain more area and less fence. You see? So, when you put it that way, this arouses more wonder than the original, what? The way Euclid states it, right? But I still vision myself upon what Euclid has shown there, right? But this is sitting with a quadum pragodia, and sort of tragedy to arouse, what? Wonder. Wonder, right? And I found that with other theories of Euclid, if you change a little bit, boom, boom! Especially when people are dying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Euclid wasn't a poet. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Whither in Christ there was anger. To the ninth one goes forward thus. It seems that in Christ there was not, what, anger. For it is said in James chapter 1, the epistle, the anger of man does not work the justice of God. That's something you have to remember all the time. I get so angry at the bomb administration. I always thought if I was sitting in the same room with Ted Kennedy, I'd just berate him. Probably not be very effective. I was denouncing him for his anti-life. Okay. But whatever was in Christ pertained to the, what, justice of God, right? For he was made for us justice from God, as is said in 1 Corinthians 1. Therefore it seems that in Christ there was no, what, anger, right? Moreover, anger is opposed to mildness, huh? This is clear in the fourth book of Ethics. Aristotle has a virtue that, what, moderates anger, right, huh? Okay. Shakespeare plays on that with the metaphor, right? There in the very wrath of love, he says. There in the very wrath of love, okay? Clubs cannot part there. Yeah, yeah. But notice the idea that wrath and love are both emotions that need to be, what, moderated, right? But he's playing on it. There in the very wrath of love, clubs cannot part there, right? No. It's like you use clubs to part the angry dogs, you know, so you'd have to need a club to celebrate these lovers that are so intense. You've got to get married off right away, you know. And it's as you like it, you know. But you find, you know, that same type of metaphor, you know, when Hotspur, you know, can't control what he has to say. And he says, what, drunk with, drunk with anger, right? Well, it's a likeness from species to species, they say. So when Thomas takes up the virtues there in the second part of the second part, he takes up, you know, the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues. He takes up the other virtues by having a likeness in their mode. So when he takes up temperance, he'll take up, what, monsoitudo, right? Because it has something like it in terms of, what, moderating, huh? So you have this sensual desire that very much needs moderation, and anger is something like that, huh? Very strong emotions that move us to do something we shouldn't do. But Christ was most, what, mild, huh? What does he say? Learn of me, for I am one. Amicus, I know, we're used to translate monsoitus, yeah. Moreover, Gregory says in the fifth book of Morals that anger through vice blinds the eye of the mind, huh? It's beautiful, the eye of the mind, huh? That's what reason. But anger through what? Zeal disturbs it, right, huh? But in the eye of the mind in Christ, there was nothing blind or nothing disturbed, right? Therefore, in Christ, there was no anger by vice, nor anger through, what? Zeal. But against this is what is said in John chapter 2 about him being fulfilled in the psalm, that the, what, zeal of your house eats me up. The answer should be said, Thomas says, that has been said in the second part. Anger is an effect of what? Sadness, huh? But from the sadness created in someone, right, the fouls in him, in the sensitive part, the desire of repelling, huh? The injury imposed upon oneself or others, right? And thus, anger is a passion, in a sense, put together from sadness and the desire of vengeance, huh? Instead of that in Christ, there can be, what, sadness, right? See the order that Thomas has where he took up sadness first? And there can be a, what, desire for, we say, revenge or what? Revenge of the conviction. This is sometimes with sin, right? For some, when someone, what, seeks revenge without the order of, what, reason. And in that way, anger in Christ could not be, right? And this is called anger, but it's a vice, right? Okay? I mentioned that before, I think we talked to you one day here about how, when I grew up, you know, anger was, give us one of the capital sins, right? But you're talking about this anger pervizium, right, huh? Otherwise Christ would be guilty of one of these sins, huh? But sometimes such a desire is without sin, nay, it's even what? Praiseworthy. When someone desires revenge, according to the order of, what, justice, huh? And this is called anger by zeal, right? For Augustine says upon John that the zeal of the house of God eats him up, right? He eats him up, right? Who all perverse things that he sees, he wishes to, what, make amend. And if he cannot amend them, he, what, tolerates them and moans. And such an anger was in, what, Christ, huh? Okay? It's not an anger per zeal that would disturb the, what, function of his reason. I suppose he'll bring that out. Hence these objections. Now, the first objection about the anger of man does not work the justice of God. The first, therefore, it should be said, as Gregory says in the fifth book of the Morals, anger in two ways is related to man. For sometimes it goes before reason, right? And draws it with itself to doing, right? And then anger is properly said to, what, operate, right? Why? Because operation is attributed to the principal, what, agent, right? And according to this, it is understood that the anger of man does not work the justice of, what, God, huh? Sometimes, however, anger follows reason and is, as it were, a tool, instrument of it, huh? And then the operation, which is of justice, is not attributed to anger, but to, what, reason, right? To second, it should be said that the anger which goes beyond the order of reason is opposed to mildness, huh? But not the anger, which is, what, moderated, huh? Which is reduced to the proper mean, right? The reason. For man situdo, mildness, holds the medium in, what, anger, huh? Shakespeare puns upon that, you know? It's no mean happiness to be constituted in the mean. Nice play on one of two meanings of mean, right? There's no little happiness to be constituted in the mean, huh? But as Thomas says, what, virtue is the, what, road to happiness. Vice is the road to misery, right? But the moral virtues consist in hitting the mean, huh? The very important clarification Aristotle says, right? If a word signifies an act already with an excess, then there's no mean of the extreme, he says. So he says, adultery, he says, is not right if you do it just the right amount. But any adultery, it's already excessive, right? Okay. And getting drunk is, what, a definition too much. Hehehehe. and stealing is by definition already in excess so he says there's no mean of the excess so if I steal just the right amount not too much, not too little no there was a great quote in the journal Criterion are you familiar with that? arts, politics fascinating journal and history as well culture and it's something to the effect of the contemporary sophisticates pride themselves on being in the mean between the extremes of right and wrong you know it's kind of humorous yeah you know the Clintons are saying abortion should be legal and rare yeah yeah yeah as if there's a mean you know that you should hit but Aristotle says there's no mean of the extreme it's already by definition an extreme there's one more quote which is I think very very good this applies to Clinton in this particular context he's a proud member of the herd of independent minds he's also a real singer a typical mind now to the third it should be said that in us according to the natural order the powers of the soul impede each other right so that the operation of one power when it's very intense weakens the operation of what another and from this there proceeds it follows that the emotion of what anger right even if it be moderated by reason to some extent impedes the eye of the what soul contemplating right but in Christ through the moderation of the divine power to each power was permitted to act what was proper to it and therefore one power was not impeded from what another and therefore just as the delight of the mind contemplating did not impede what the sadness or the pain of the lower part so a converse all right the passions of the lower part in no way impede the act of what reason but in us they would right in the psalm as I thought of with St. Gregory's quote here Psalm 6 the first of the penitential psalms where he says my eye is disturbed by anger pure anger whatever wrath the eye of your mind they talk about like in the Greek court and the other courts but the first guys they tried they'd be very angry with and they and they would punish them very severely and then the lay people not quite as severe because their anger had calmed down so there's obviously injustice being done because of the anger now the tenth article and the other courts and the other courts and the other courts and the other courts