Reading Job with St. Thomas Aquinas 081323283X, 9780813232836

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
Part 1. Job and Sacra Doctrina
1. John F. Boyle: St. Thomas, Job, and the University Master
2. Jörgen Vijgen: Job, Aquinas, and the Philosopher
3. Matthew Levering: The Gospel of John in Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job
Part 2. Providence and Suffering
4. Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP: The Incomprehensible Wisdom of God in the Expositio super Iob
5. Rudi te Velde: Divine Providence and Man’s Place in the Order of the Good
6. Guy Mansini, OSB: Revelation and Divine Speech
7. Harm Goris: Sin and Human Suffering in Aquinas’s Commentary on Job
8. John F. X. Knasas: Suffering and the “Thomistic Philosopher”: A Line of Thought Instigated by the Job Commentary
9. Joseph P. Wawrykow: Human Suffering and Merit
Part 3. The Moral Life and Eschatology
10. Daria Spezzano: The Hope and Fear of Blessed Job
11. Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, OP: Moral Principles in Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Job
12. Anthony T. Flood: Friendship in the Literal Exposition on Job
13. Bryan Kromholtz, OP: The Spirit of the Letter: St. Thomas’s Interpretation of Scripture in His Reading of Job’s Eschatology
Bibliography
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Reading Job with St. Thomas Aquinas

T H O M I ST I C R E S S O U R CE M E N T S E R I E S Volume 15

Series Editors Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary Thomas Joseph White, OP, Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Editorial Board Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP, Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Gilles Emery, OP, University of Fribourg Reinhard Hütter, The Catholic University of America Bruce Marshall, Southern Methodist University Emmanuel Perrier, OP, Dominican Studium, Toulouse Richard Schenk, OP, University of Freiburg (Germany) Kevin White, The Catholic University of America

Reading Job with St. Thomas Aquinas edited by Matthew Levering, Piotr Roszak, and Jörgen Vijgen

The Catholic University of America Press Washington, D.C.

Copyright © 2020 The Catholic University of America Press All rights reserved The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Science— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. ∞ Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8132-3283-6

Contents

Introduction

1

Part 1. Job and Sacra Doctrina 1. John F. Boyle: St. Thomas, Job, and the University Master

21

2. Jörgen Vijgen: Job, Aquinas, and the Philosopher

42

3. Matthew Levering: The Gospel of John in Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 68 Part 2. Providence and Suffering 4. Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP: The Incomprehensible Wisdom of God in the Expositio super Iob 93 5. Rudi te Velde: Divine Providence and Man’s Place in the Order of the Good

127

6. Guy Mansini, OSB: Revelation and Divine Speech 143 7. Harm Goris: Sin and Human Suffering in Aquinas’s Commentary on Job

161

vi Contents 8. John F. X. Knasas: Suffering and the “Thomistic Philosopher”: A Line of Thought Instigated by the Job Commentary

185

9. Joseph P. Wawrykow: Human Suffering and Merit

220

Part 3. The Moral Life and Eschatology 10. Daria Spezzano: The Hope and Fear of Blessed Job

261

11. Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, OP: Moral Principles in Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Job 315 12. Anthony T. Flood: Friendship in the Literal Exposition on Job 341 13. Bryan Kromholtz, OP: The Spirit of the Letter: St. Thomas’s Interpretation of Scripture in His Reading of Job’s Eschatology

364

Bibliography 385 Contributors 399 Index 403

Reading Job with St. Thomas Aquinas

Introduction Introduction

Introduction

Behind Thomas Aquinas’s Expositio super Iob stand many centuries of patristic and medieval Christian exegesis of the book of Job, especially Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job. In the medieval Glossa Ordinaria, the marginal glosses on the book of Job are drawn largely from Gregory’s work, and furthermore the Gloss on Job contains a prologue that derives from Gregory’s prologue to his work.1 Gregory famously emphasizes the “spiritual sense” of the Book of Job, although he also gives some attention the literal sense. Medieval commentators on Job were numerous, including Bruno of Segni, Rupert of Deutz, and Peter the Chanter in the twelfth century, as well as Hugh of St. Cher and the early Dominican master Roland of Cremona in the early thirteenth century.2 As Gilbert Dahan points out, these commentators remain close to Gregory the Great’s emphasis on the spiritual sense and focus on Job’s virtue of patience.3 Later notable thirteenth-century commentators include William of Melitona and, a decade after Aquinas’s commentary, Albert the Great. In her contribution to A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, 1. See Lesley Smith, “Job in the Glossa Ordinaria on the Bible,” in A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, ed. Franklin T. Harkins and Aaron Canty (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 101–28. 2. See Antoine Dondaine, OP, “Un commentaire scripturaire de Roland de Crémone, ‘Le livre de Job,’” Archivum fratrum praedicatorum 11 (1941): 109–37. 3. See Gilbert Dahan’s “The Commentary of Thomas Aquinas in the History of Medieval Exegesis on Job: Intentio et materia,” Nova et Vetera 17 (2019): 1053–75.



1

2 Introduction Ruth Meyer has highlighted Albert’s presentation of Job as an exemplary theological teacher and has shown that “Albert makes skillful use of the already extant body of rules for disputations to interpret the book of Job as a passionate disputation about important aspects of the contemporary doctrine of divine providence.”4 The indebtedness of Albert to Thomas Aquinas’s commentary is clear and indicates the groundbreaking character of Aquinas’s commentary. Aquinas portrays Job as an exemplary university master and argues that the book unfolds as a disputation on divine providence. As Dahan has observed, other medieval commentators after Aquinas—notably Peter John Olivi, Nicholas of Lyra, and Denys the Carthusian—also display the influence of Aquinas’s approach. At the same time, these commentators also felt free to disagree with him.5 Explicitly against Aquinas, for example, Nicholas of Lyra argues that the book of Job is not about the nature and scope of divine providence but rather is about “why the good suffer and the wicked prosper,” admittedly a topic central to any account of providence.6 Aquinas wrote his Expositio super Iob ad litteram himself; hence its title expositio, since it is not merely a collection of notes (reportatio) taken down by a scribe present at his lectures.7 He appears to have written the commentary during his time in Orvieto, Italy (1261–1265), when as a lector he was responsible for the “teaching of 4. See Ruth Meyer, “A Passionate Dispute over Divine Providence: Albert the Great’s Commentary on the Book of Job,” in A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, 201– 24, at 224. Meyer recognizes that Aquinas “several times compares the debate depicted in the Book of Job with an academic disputation. His teacher [Albert] picks up this idea and, for the first and only time in the history of exegesis, explicitly interprets the entire book of Job as a disputation” (ibid., 204). She clarifies, “Although Thomas understands the whole biblical book as a disputation, he does not employ the specific terminology of a Scholastic debate throughout his commentary” (ibid., 204n6). 5. See the new critical edition of Olivi’s work: Petrus Iohannis Olivi, Postilla super Iob, ed. Alain Boureau, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 275 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015). 6. Aaron Canty, “Nicholas of Lyra’s Literal Commentary on Job,” in A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, 225–53, at 231. 7. For this distinction see Beryl Smalley, The Study of Bible in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), 200.

Introduction 3 those [Dominicans] who were called the fratres communes, which is to say all those who had not been able to study in the studia generalia or even the provincialia.”8 At this time he was also writing the Summa contra Gentiles—likely including Book III on Providence— along with a number of smaller works. The Expositio super Iob is thus a work that engaged his highest abilities during an important point in his career. Although numerous valuable articles have appeared on Aquinas’s Expositio super Iob, Denis Chardonnens’s monograph still remains the only book-length study of this commentary.9 The present book, therefore, fills a lacuna in Aquinas scholarship. The contributors to this volume are theologians and philosophers with expertise in Aquinas, who find in his Literal Exposition on Job rich insights into the theological and philosophical concerns raised by the book of Job. Their chapters shed light on the biblical, theological, and philosophical sources and hermeneutical methods that Aquinas employs. In modern biblical scholarship on the book of Job, one frequently finds the affirmation that “the issues of creation and providence . . . lie at the heart of Job” and that Job exhibits “a profound concern with providence, especially God’s just government of the created order.”10 Similarly, Aquinas holds that the book of Job is about divine providence and governance. Our volume begins with a treatment of Aquinas’s understanding of the teaching and learning found in and modeled by the book of Job, a topic that Albert the Great picks up (chapter 1). The next two 8. Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 118–19; cf. 120–21 on the Expositio super Iob. See also Leonard E. Boyle, OP, “Notes on the Education of the Fratres communes in the Dominican Order in the Thirteenth Century,” in Xenia medii aevi historiam illustrantia oblata Th. Käppeli OP, ed. R. Creytens and P. Künzle (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1978), 249–67. 9. See Denis Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de la providence. Providence de Dieu et condition humaine selon l’“Exposition littérale sur le Livre de Job” de Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1997). 10. Robert S. Fyall, Now My Eyes Have Seen You: Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 185, 188; see also, among others, James L. Crenshaw, Reading Job: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys, 2011).

4 Introduction chapters examine the use that Aquinas’s Expositio super Iob makes of Aristotle (chapter 2) and the Gospel of John (chapter 3). The final ten chapters take up major topics of the book of Job: divine providence, friendship, the incomprehensible wisdom of God, divine speech, sin, suffering, merit, hope, fear, ethics, and eschatology.11 Aquinas’s Exegetical Practice In the Didascalion, Hugh of St. Victor compares the reading of Sacred Scripture to a path which passes through a dark forest; instead of moving blindly and returning to the same places, it is better to follow the path of the method and order of the presentation (modus et ordo).12 This concern fueled the Scholastic exegetical practice of the division of the text. Through the divisio textus, Aquinas takes into consideration the particular and general context in the interpretation of each passage.13 In his other biblical commentaries, admittedly, it is easier to notice the divisio textus; in his Expositio super Iob, the divisio textus is not absent but the structure is generally determined by the flow of the dispute between Job and his friends, which Aquinas reads as a scholastic disputatio. As Timothy Bellamah has shown, reflections inspired by the Liber de causis and its framework of an interplay between primary 11. For other books that illuminate Aquinas’s exegesis as a form of speculative reading of the word of God, see Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2005); Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2012). 12. Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalion, lib. V, cap. V: “Quid autem scripturam dixerim nisi silvam, cuius sententias quasi fructus quosdam dulcissimos legendo carpimus, tractando ruminamus?” 13. See John F. Boyle, “The Theological Character of the Scholastic ‘Division of the Text’ with Particular Reference to the Commentaries of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. Jane McAuliffe, Barry Walfish, and Joseph Goering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 276–83; Margherita Maria Rossi, “La ‘divisio textus’ nei commenti scritturistici di S. Tommaso d’Aquino: un procedimento solo esegetico?,” Angelicum 71 (1994): 537–48.

Introduction 5 and secondary causes contributed to a clearer understanding of the literal sense of Sacred Scripture among medieval authors.14 The literal level of meaning belongs to both the divine author and the human authors, whereas the spiritual sense belongs only to God, since human authors cannot infuse a spiritual sense into their words. With regard to the literal sense, Aquinas seeks to avoid the depravatio Scripturae, the misreading of Scripture.15 Defining the “literal sense” in Aquinas’s exegesis, the biblical scholar Mary Healy clarifies its distinction from modern understandings of the literal sense: The literal sense was traditionally defined as the gesta, the events recounted in Scripture. But Aquinas defines it as “that which the author intends” (quem auctor intendit). This significant move allows him to include in the literal sense the whole range of devices by which an author can communicate meaning, including figurative modes of speech such as poetic imagery, parable, and metaphor. In such cases, the literal sense is not the surface meaning of the words but that which is signified by the literary figure. . . . It is crucial, however, not to confuse Thomas’s view with the modern notion of authorial intention. In using the verb intendere he was not referring to the psychological intent of the author—the ascertainment of which, as modern literary critics have pointed out, is a dubious and highly speculative enterprise. Rather, he was using intendere in its philosophical sense of “point to” or “refer to.” The literal sense is not the subjective intention of the author but the objective realities referred to by the text, whether historical facts or atemporal truths. Thus Thomas also describes the literal sense as “the meaning whereby the words signify things [res]” and uses “literal sense” and “historical sense” synonymously. Thomas also differs from modern interpreters in that he does not distinguish between the intention of the human author and that of God; because God is the primary author 14. See Timothy Bellamah, OP, “Tunc scimus cum causas cognoscimus: Some Medieval Endeavors to Know Scripture in Its Causes,” in Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting Against Reason is Contrary to the Nature of God, ed. Matthew L. Lamb (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 154–72. On the effort to know the literal sense, see also Mauricio Narváez, “Intention, probabiles rationes and Truth: The Exegetical Practice in Thomas Aquinas. The case of Expositio super Iob ad litteram,” in Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions and New Perspectives, ed. Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 141–69. 15. See Piotr Roszak, “Depravatio Scripturae. Tomas de Aquino ante los errores hermenéuticos en la exegesis bíblica,” Scripta Teologica 49 (2017): 31–58.

6 Introduction of Scripture, the literal sense is ultimately to be attributed to him. Thus the literal sense apparently can include meanings of which the human author was unaware.16

For Aquinas, therefore, the literal sense denotes the connection of the verbal sign (littera) and meaning (sensus) and is not strictly in the text but in the intention of the author—human and divine— concerning the thing (res).17 Since realities are in view, the spiritual sense constitutes the fulfillment of the literal sense from the perspective of the fullness of divine revelation, especially given that the ultimate author of the literal sense is God.18 The literal sense does not exclude Christology, as it would for most modern scholars of the book of Job. As Franklin Harkins remarks, for Aquinas “Christ occupies a significant place with regard to the primary intention of the words and sensible similitudes whereby God reveals Himself and His will to and through Job,” and indeed Aquinas understands Job as explicitly placing his hope in “the redemptive suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ.”19 This is because Aquinas considers that “the 16. Mary Healy, “Aquinas’s Use of the Old Testament in His Commentary on Romans,” in Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 183–95, at 186–87. 17. See Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de la providence, 20–30. 18. See Ignacio María Manresa Lamarca, El hombre espiritual es el que entiende las cosas espirituales. Un criterio de hermenéutica bíblica a la luz de Santo Tomas de Aquino (Madrid: Universidad San Dámaso, 2015). 19. Franklin T. Harkins, “Christ and the Eternal Extent of Divine Providence in the Expositio super Iob ad litteram of Thomas Aquinas,” in A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, 161–200, at 163. Harkins concludes that Aquinas’s commentary conceives of the Book of Job as providing “the occasion for deep theological reflection on the nature of God’s own self-disclosure to humankind, its final soteriological purpose, and how humans do and should apprehend and interpret this divine disclosure. And so, for Thomas, the fundamental problem addressed by the book of Job is that the natural human capacity to know that God’s providence extends to human affairs and how it so extends is limited. Because of this human epistemological limitation regarding divine providence, many people throughout history have erred in their thinking about this crucial theological doctrine. And so it was fitting, according to Thomas, that God should reveal the truth concerning His providential governance of human affairs not only to Job himself (most dramatically from the whirlwind, as recorded in Job 38–41), but also—since God permitted the words of Job and his interlocutors to be engraved in a book (19:23)— to subsequent hearers and readers of the sacred text bearing his name. We have sought

Introduction 7 literal sense is polysemous, including the figurative or metaphorical use or intention of the words of the sacred text,” and in the literal sense of the book of Job God providentially and pedagogically offers “similitudes” or figures that reveal Christ.20 In Aquinas’s biblical commentaries, we often find short quaestiones in which Aquinas dialectically raises questions and objections and then offers an answer. Notably, formal quaestiones do not appear in the commentary on Job. Yet Aquinas does raise and answer questions, such as whether the evil actions in human life might in some way be regarded as good by God or how God “speaks” to Satan (whether through imaginary visions or intellectual expressions). Aquinas also introduces plentiful notae, which rely on certain standard formulations to introduce explanations of an important point or to draw the reader’s attention to an interesting detail. The presence of notae is signaled by expressions such as notandum, sciendum, and considerandum. In the Literal Exposition on Job, Aquinas uses this tool with a threefold purpose: to explain certain terminology on the linguistic level, to make distinctions which are necessary in order to understand the verse properly, and to explain the theme in the context of apparent contradictions between different scriptural texts. In addition, Aquinas occasionally draws upon other biblical passages in order to understand or deepen a verse from Job—as Matthew Levering’s essay in our volume will explore—but Aquinas does this less to show that, on Thomas’s reading, Christ is an indispensable significatum of the words and sensible similitudes whereby God reveals Himself and His will to and through Job” (ibid., 199). Harkins also directs attention to John Yocum’s enumeration of Aquinas’s theological assumptions in the Expositio super Iob (although Yocum does not include Christology): see Yocum, “Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” in Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to His Biblical Commentaries, ed. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM Cap., Daniel A. Keating, and John P. Yocum (London: T&T Clark International, 2005), 21–42, at 31. For Aquinas’s view that Christ is intended in the literal sense of certain Psalms and passages of Isaiah, see Gilbert Dahan, “Le sens littéral dans l’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible au Moyen Âge,” in Le sens littéral des Écritures, ed. Olivier-Thomas Venard, OP (Paris: Cerf, 2009), 237–62, at 261. 20. Harkins, “Christ and the Eternal Extent of Divine Providence,” in A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, 169–70.

8 Introduction in his commentary on Job than in his other biblical commentaries.21 As A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages makes especially clear, Aquinas inherited a vibrant tradition of expansive allegorical and typological reading of the book of Job, similar to the allegorical and typological reading applied to other wisdom literature such as the Song of Songs. We have already indicated that the preeminent study of Job in the tradition inherited by Aquinas is the vast sixth-century Moralia in Iob by Gregory the Great. The modern reader of Gregory’s work will be surprised by Gregory’s freedom in drawing moral and spiritual meanings from the text of Job. Gregory does not try to show that these meanings belong intrinsically to Job’s verses, but rather he employs Job’s verses to move the reader into the moral worldview of Christian Scripture and Tradition as a whole. For example, commenting on Job 5:5, “Thirsty people will drink up his wealth” (Vulgate), Gregory suggests that the meaning has to do with the attention that we give to the wealth we receive in Scripture. He comments, “So then the thirsty people drink up the wealth of the fool when the intelligent people feel distaste for God’s precepts and do not know them, but the slow of mind earn them through love.”22 In his Expositio super Iob, Aquinas’s goal of interpreting Job ad litteram means that he moves in a different direction from Gregory, though certainly not one that is in opposition to the spiritual sense.23 Reading Job 5:5 ad litteram, Aquinas comments that the verse means that wealthy and foolish people lose their wealth because they have lived luxuriously and have oppressed the poor. He explains that when the poor are oppressed, they are compelled by necessity to attempt to seize the goods of the rich; and because the rich have lived an easy life and have become “unfit for war,” the result often is 21. See W. G. B. M. Valkenberg, Words of the Living God: Place and Function of the Holy Scripture in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 181. 22. Gregory the Great, Moral Reflections on the Book of Job, vol. 2: Books 6–19 and Book 2.LII.84-LV.92, trans. Brian Kerns, OCSO (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2015), 40. 23. See Piotr Roszak, “Exegesis and Contemplation: The Literal and Spiritual Sense of Scripture in Aquinas’ Biblical Commentaries,” Espiritu 65 (2016): 481–504.

Introduction 9 that the rich “are easily destroyed by warlike poor men.”24 When the historical-critical biblical scholar David Clines comments on this same verse in his massive two-volume commentary on Job, he observes rather similarly that the point is that strangers will enjoy the fruits of the fool’s labors, and indeed “[i]f the ‘thirsty’ and ‘hungry’ who take over the fool’s possessions are themselves genuinely needy, no great harm seems to result.”25 Aquinas’s Job A central feature of Aquinas’s Expositio super Iob is his view that there are three different modes in which Job speaks, corresponding to the three different parts of the book.26 First, Aquinas argues that the third chapter of the book of Job presents Job speaking according to his passions and freely expresses the pain that he feels. Second, in the subsequent chapters, in which Job debates with his friends, he speaks from the perspective of deliberation by human reason. Third, Job’s concluding words to God involve him speaking according to divine inspiration. In this way, Aquinas seeks to account for the transformation of Job. Throughout the commentary, however, Aquinas consistently holds that Job’s reflections are guided by his knowledge—given to him by a revelation—of the coming Redeemer (Christ) and of the resurrection of the dead and final judgment. From this perspective, Aquinas considers that Job, although he speaks “what is right” ( Jb 42:7), does not do so with sufficient seriousness vis-à-vis his friends, whom Job should not have scandalized by his bold words.27 Job’s words would have appeared less bold or arrogant to his friends had they clearly understood from the out24. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job: A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence, trans. Anthony Damico (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1989), 129. 25. David J. A. Clines, Job 1–20 (Dallas, Tex.: Word Books, 1989), 141. 26. See the remarks of the editors of the Leonine edition: Leonine, vol. 26, 28–29*. 27. For the view that Job caused scandal, see Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, 415, 441. In Aquinas’s view, Zophar the Naamathite is persuaded by Job, in 19:25–27, that there is a resurrection of the dead and final judgment.

10 Introduction set that Job solely intended to be criticizing the position that in this earthly life God fully rewards the just and punishes the wicked. According to Aquinas, Job never intends to deny that God (in Christ) rewards the just and punishes the wicked. Instead, Job simply means to show that this will only fully occur at the resurrection of the dead and the final judgment. Aquinas’s position in this regard relies upon Job 19:25–27.28 As Martin Yaffe sums up, Aquinas maintains that Job is “perfectly wise in his intellectual grasp of . . . Christian doctrines,” but nonetheless “is somewhat sinful in his manner of communicating his wisdom” because he “upsets his friends by inadvertently giving them the false impression that he is blaspheming.”29 Aquinas recognizes that Scripture expresses itself in a wide variety of modes. The historical books employ the narrative mode; the Law, prophets, and the books of Solomon use the mode of admonishing, legislating, and exhorting; and the Psalms use the laudative mode. Aquinas deems that the book of Job uses “the mode of dispute,” as appears in Job 13:3.30 Thus Aquinas finds it appropriate to present Job’s debate with his friends as “a formal Scholastic disputed question after the manner practiced in the medieval universities on the problem of the suffering of the just.”31 But given the power of Job’s lamentations, especially in their literal sense, are his thoughts truly those of a wise, patient, and just man? 28. Contemporary biblical scholars note that the Hebrew text of Job 19:25–27 is difficult to decipher. For a contemporary interpreter who argues that Job 19:25–27 has in view resurrection or re-embodiment (a reversal of death as disembodiment) that makes possible a renewed vision of and relationship with God, see J. Gerald Janzen, Job (Louisville, Ky.: John Knox Press, 1985), 134–50. For the standard modern view that the passage—insofar as it is possible to understand the garbled Hebrew—does not refer to resurrection or re-embodiment after death, see Marvin H. Pope, Job (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), 135. 29. Martin D. Yaffe, “Interpretive Essay,” in Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, 1–65, at 26–27. 30. Proemium in Psalmos, ed. Vivès, vol. 18, 228: “Disputativus; et hoc in Iob, et in Apostolo: Iob 13. ‘Disputare cum Deo cupio.’” 31. Brian Mullady, OP, “Translator’s Introduction,” in St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Job, trans. Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, OP (Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2016), 1–5, at 3. See also Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de la Providence, 205–9.

Introduction 11 In order to answer in the affirmative, Aquinas conceives of the book of Job as an effective disputation that engages “an extreme case study,” namely, Job’s sufferings.32 On this view, in the lengthy disputatio that forms the body of the book of Job, the role of the disputants (students) is played by Job and his friends, and the role of the master who sums things up and gives the resolution to the disputed question is played by God.33 In refuting both the Averroist denial of divine particular providence and the view that providence is about particular bodily rewards or punishments in the present life, Aquinas presents a Job whose laments instruct his hearers in the Christian doctrine of providence, even if, according to Aquinas, Job’s error for which he repents at the end is that he should have been clearer in communicating his knowledge that the justice of divine providence will only be fully apparent at the resurrection of the dead and final judgment.34 We need not accept Aquinas’s view that Job does not speak clearly all that he knows. We may take more literally Job’s existential ag32. See Harkins, “Christ and the Eternal Extent of Divine Providence in the Expositio super Iob ad litteram of Thomas Aquinas,” 167 (rightly emphasizing divine providence and governance): “Job’s suffering provides an extreme case study, as it were, by means of which Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar debate—in the manner of a medieval scholastic disputation—the crucial quaestio of the governance of human affairs by divine providence.” 33. Although Albert the Great does not insist as much on the literal sense and, contrary to Aquinas, frequently employs Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob, he constructs his commentary on Job, completed ca. 1272, more strongly than Aquinas as a Scholastic disputation. As Meyer has argued, this could be due to the influence of Maimonides’s Dux Neutrorum on both Aquinas and Albert. See Ruth Meyer, “‘Hanc autem disputationem solus Deus determinare potest.’ Das Buch Hiob als disputatio bei Albertus Magnus und Thomas von Aquin,” in Via Alberti. Texte—Quellen—Interpretationen, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Hannes Möhle, Susana Bullido del Barrio (Münster: Aschendorff 2009), 325–83, in particular 329n23. See also Meyer, “A Passionate Dispute over Divine Providence: Albert the Great’s Commentary on the Book of Job.” 34. See Yaffe, “Interpretive Essay,” 5–6. Yaffe notes that “Thomas follows Maimonides in interpreting the story of Job’s suffering as the authoritative account of divine providence. Their interpretations nevertheless differ. Maimonides understands the story to be a parable about an imaginary figure who is perfectly blameless, if somewhat unwise. Thomas, on the other hand, understands it to be the description of a historical person who is perfectly wise, if somewhat sinful” (ibid., 4–5). See Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, III.22–23, trans. S. Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 486–97.

12 Introduction ony, both in Job 3 and in Job’s debate with his friends. Even so, JeanPierre Torrell is correct that Aquinas’s commentary engages many of the most central theological and philosophical questions that the book of Job raises. As Torrell states, “Like the biblical book itself, Thomas’s commentary offers . . . a reflection on the most fundamental questions that are put to man, since the tragic reality of the suffering of the just and innocent man remains of a nature to inspire doubts about the existence of divine justice.”35 Here we take note of the value of reading the book of Job within the context of its reception history.36 In the past century, Brevard Childs pioneered the practice of canonical exegesis, in which he argued that understanding a biblical text requires knowing not only its original meanings but also the meanings obtained through its canonical placement and its function within the history of salvation. Extending this insight, contemporary biblical scholars have begun to pay much more attention to the reception history of biblical texts. This reception is important for understanding the meanings of the particular biblical book for the people who are shaped by God’s Word and guided by his Spirit. The biblical book is interpreted by believers over the centuries, and believers identify patterns and themes that—even if they were not in the mind of the original human authors and editors—belong to God’s guidance of his people.37 35. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, 121. See M. F. Manzanedo, “La antropologia filosofica nel commentario tomista al libro de Job,” Angelicum 62 (1985): 419–71; Manzanedo, “La antropologia teologica en el commentario tomista al libro de Job,” Angelicum 64 (1987): 301–31. 36. For an encyclopedic overview of the construction of the various textual versions of the Book of Job and its reception in theology, philosophy, literature, film, and music, see Stephen J. Vicchio, The Image of the Biblical Job: A History; Vol. 1, Job in the Ancient World; Vol. 2, Job in the Medieval World; Vol. 3, Job in the Modern World (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2006). See also Nahum N. Glatzer, The Dimensions of Job: A Study and Selected Readings (New York: Schocken Books, 1969). 37. For the importance of reception history, see Dieu a parlé une fois, deux fois j’ai entendu, ed. Olivier-Thomas Venard, OP (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2016). The major commentary series focused on reception history, the Blackwell Bible Commentaries series, has not yet published its volume on Job. See also the four-volume The New Cambridge History of the Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012–16).

Introduction 13 Thus, an appropriate recognition of the value of historical-critical biblical exegesis, with its expertise in ancient near-Eastern languages, culture, and texts, should not mean supplanting the theological insights of patristic and medieval interpreters, who interpreted Scripture “in the light of the same Spirit through whom it was written” and in the light of “the content and coherence of scripture as a whole, taking into account the whole church’s living tradition and the sense of perspective given by faith.”38 Let us briefly survey the chapters of our book. The first three chapters address the commentary from the angle of sacra doctrina. In chapter 1, John F. Boyle treats teaching and learning in Aquinas’s commentary—not only Aquinas’s teaching, but also God’s teaching and the teaching and learning of Job and his friends, as understood by Aquinas. For Aquinas, central to the book of Job is the communication of wisdom. Job models what a good (and humbly correctable) teacher can do in leading his pupils to grow in wisdom about God and humanity. In chapter 2, Jörgen Vijgen examines Aquinas’s use of Aristotle throughout his commentary on Job, since Aquinas knows that sacra doctrina requires philosophical wisdom. Vijgen first attends to Aquinas’s use of Aristotelian ideas in reflecting on divine providence. He also discusses the influence of Aristotle’s view of the passions (notably sorrow and anger), and he refers to Aristotle’s cosmology and anthropology in arguing for the fittingness of the resurrection of the 38. Dei Verbum, §12, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2: Trent to Vatican II, ed. Norman P. Tanner, SJ (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 971–81, at 976. See also Harkins’s insistence upon the point that for Aquinas, God as the divine author can and does speak through “similitudes” or figures present in the literal sense. Harkins observes, “Given historical-critical assumptions about what constitutes sound literal interpretation, modern readers may legitimately ask whether Thomas is inappropriately reading Christ into the text of Job (i.e., eisegeting rather than exegeting), particularly given his self-avowed aim of proceeding ad litteram in this commentary. In order to appreciate why Thomas would have answered this question with a resounding ‘No,’ it is necessary to consider . . . his understanding of literal signification and interpretation” (Harkins, “Christ and the Eternal Extent of Divine Providence in the Expositio super Iob ad litteram of Thomas Aquinas,” 168).

14 Introduction dead and the new heavens and earth. Vijgen shows that among the various works of Aristotle, Aquinas’s commentary most frequently employs Aristotle’s natural philosophy. In chapter 3, Matthew Levering explores Aquinas’s eleven citations of the Gospel of John in his commentary on Job. Scripture is the fundamental source of all sacra doctrina, and Aquinas conceives of Scripture as a unity. His citations of the Gospel of John involve the themes of divine speech and of light and darkness. Modern commentators have shown how central these themes are for the Gospel of John, and Aquinas allows these central Johannine themes to illumine the meaning of the book of Job. In reading Job with Aquinas, we see not only the Old Testament book illumining the Gospel, but also the Gospel illumining the Old Testament book. The next section of our book treats providence and suffering. In chapter 4, Serge-Thomas Bonino shows that in Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job, the divine incomprehensibility does not mean that Job is wrong to seek to understand God’s ways. Like all humans, Job can come to know some truths about God on the basis of analogy from created things, even while God remains incomprehensible. Such acquired wisdom is complemented by infused wisdom. But this does not take away the divine incomprehensibility, because even though we come to know that God is just, loving, and wise, God’s utter transcendence vis-à-vis the humble creature—exemplified by Job—remains in place. In chapter 5, Rudi te Velde compares the doctrine of providence in the Summa contra Gentiles with that found in the Expositio super Iob. The Summa contra Gentiles does not cite Job in its treatment of providence. But Aquinas’s commentary on Job, te Velde argues, benefits from the reasoning developed in the Summa contra Gentiles. Te Velde focuses in this regard upon the concept of the good order of the universe, with respect to how God cares for things that are corruptible versus how God cares for things that are perpetual. In chapter 6, Guy Mansini treats God’s speech in the book of Job. Mansini emphasizes the importance, for Aquinas, of God’s words to

Introduction 15 Job at the end of the book of Job. Had God never spoken to Job, then Job would have been unable to know that his suffering has the meaning that in fact it does. The issue is whether patiently enduring affliction for God’s sake bears spiritual fruit. By speaking, God reveals the virtue of Job and its value in God’s providence. In chapter 7, Harm Goris points out that the Literal Exposition on Job provides Aquinas with an opportunity to discuss sin concretely and phenomenologically, as distinct from the more abstract and general way present in his systematic works. After discussing the fourfold evidence for Job’s innocence, Goris treats the definition, classification, and causes of sins according to the commentary. He examines how, according to Aquinas’s commentary, sin is and is not related to suffering. In chapter 8, John F. X. Knasas observes that Aquinas’s commentary on Job does not claim to know why humans suffer, but this is not because human suffering is necessarily absurd. Drawing upon the Summa contra Gentiles, Knasas emphasizes that Aquinas does not hold that the resurrection of the body is a necessary philosophical corollary of the human desire for happiness. God does not owe us bodily resurrection. Through our natural inclinations, we experience epiphanies of or encounters with being as good, but these too do not point to a necessary overcoming of mortality. Yet, in his commentary on Job, Aquinas argues that there are indeed probable or fitting philosophical arguments that point to the theologically necessary conclusion regarding the resurrection of the dead. In chapter 9, Joseph Wawrykow analyzes and compares Aquinas’s view on merit in the Summa theologiae with that of his earlier commentary on Job. Wawrykow shows that Aquinas’s teaching about merit in the Expositio super Iob stands in broad agreement with that advanced later on in the Summa and/or anticipates insights from his later, more systematic, treatment. The occasioning text of the book of Job providing the lead, however, enables Aquinas to be attentive to the connection between sin (especially personal or actual sin) and punishment and affliction; and correspondingly to that

16 Introduction between good willing and doing and flourishing in the good. The crucial distinction in this respect, Wawrykow argues, is the distinction between temporal and eternal/final, whether speaking of punishment (of sinners) or reward (of the just). The third and last section of our book explores the moral life and eschatology—themes that are intimately connected to the main themes of providence and suffering. In chapter 10, Daria Spezzano examines Job’s infused virtue of hope and gift of filial fear according to Aquinas. She notes that Aquinas describes growth in Job’s possession and manifestation of these gifts, as his passions and reason become more perfectly ordered by divine grace, so that he becomes a better witness to the divine goodness. Job’s hope and filial fear transform his suffering, making him an exemplar of the consolation that the virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit provide to the just. For Spezzano, Aquinas’s Job reveals the transformative value of hope and fear for the facing of earthly adversity by humble pilgrims on this earth, who look forward in poverty of spirit to eternal life with God. In chapter 11, Brian Mullady takes stock of the way in which Aquinas, in his commentary on Job, addresses the moral problems and opportunities posed by the passions. He contrasts Job with Stoic apatheia, arguing that Job succeeded in regulating his intense passions by the standard of reason. With regard to the ordering of the virtues to the reward of human happiness, he argues that Aquinas’s commentary adduces the unity of body and soul as a necessary philosophical reason for the inclusion of bodily resurrection as part of our created ultimate end—even if God’s grace and God’s miraculous power are necessary for our resurrection actually to come about. Lastly, he points out that for Aquinas Job was sinless but nonetheless passively and accidentally scandalized his friends. The commentary on Job thus has much to teach about the more complex dimensions of the Christian moral life. In chapter 12, Anthony T. Flood investigates friendship in Aquinas’s commentary on Job. After defining Aquinas’s positions on love and friendship, Flood explores Job’s righteousness and Job’s friend-

Introduction 17 ships. He shows how Aquinas defends Job’s possession of the qualities needed for true friendship, such as patience, delight in the presence of the friend, and compassion. Flood gives particular attention to friendship with God, since God’s providential care of humans has such friendship as its goal. Lastly, in chapter 13, Bryan Kromholtz remarks that although Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job never extensively engages eschatology, it depends throughout upon the reasonableness of hoping for the resurrection of the body and the final judgment. It is reasonable to suppose that God cares about human actions because God wills to give humans a perpetual destiny. According to Aquinas, Job always has in view eternal reward and punishment. Since God, in his justice and goodness, does not reward the righteous justly in this life, it makes sense that he will do so in an afterlife. For Aquinas, of course, Job’s arguments arise from faith and show the ways in which faith is served by reason. Kromholtz concludes that philosophy and theology necessarily go together in Aquinas’s exegesis. It will be clear that these thirteen chapters engage perennial theological and philosophical themes: the requisites of sacra doctrina; the character of Sacred Scripture; divine providence; divine and human wisdom; divine speech; the hiddenness and incomprehensibility of God; virtue and its reward; humility and hope; faith and reason; sin and suffering; resurrection and judgment; and so on. These themes exhibit the book of Job’s perennial fruitfulness, difficulty, and interest. The chapters of this book thereby enrich both our understanding of Aquinas’s Expositio super Iob and our understanding of the book of Job itself, as it functions in the canon of Scripture and in the ongoing life of the Church to speak God’s word to suffering humanity.

Part 1 Job and Sacra Doctrina

John F. Boyle St. Thomas, Job, and the University Master

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St. Thomas, Job, and the University Master John F. Boyle

St. Thomas Aquinas had completed three years as a regent master of theology at the University of Paris when he was ordered to return to his native Roman Province in 1259. There he was to teach his brethren within the Order of Preachers. Upon his return to Italy, St. Thomas wrote his commentary on the book of Job.1 St. Thomas takes the principal theme of Job to be divine providence.2 It is thus fitting that he would undertake this commentary at the same time he is writing Book 3 of his Summa contra Gentiles on providence. But there is a secondary aspect of his commentary that is noteworthy in the light of the commentary’s place in St. Thomas’s career. St. Thomas reads the book of Job as a disputation. Having come from the University of Paris where disputation is among the required duties of the master, it is perhaps not surprising that St. Thomas, a mas1. James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D’Aquino (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974), 153, 368. 2. Prol., 3, lines 55–57 (68). I cite first by chapter and verse of the book of Job, except when citing St. Thomas’s prologue as here. What follows is page and line number to Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Iob ad litteram, cura et studio Fratrum Praedicatorum, in Opera omnia, Leonine edition, vol. 26 (Rome: Santa Sabina, 1965). In parentheses is the page number to the fine translation, The Literal Exposition on Job, by Anthony Damico (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989). I have consulted and freely used Damico’s translation in providing the translations in this essay.



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ter of the disputed question, would see the very form in the book of Job. The form, in turn, illuminates the moral and spiritual character of the disputants. What I would like to address in this essay is how St. Thomas’s commentary, in its illumination of the moral and spiritual character of the disputants, also sheds light on his understanding of the moral and spiritual dimensions of intellectual disputation itself. Let us turn to the commentary. “As in things which are naturally generated, which come gradually to the perfect from the imperfect, so too among men with regard to the knowing of the truth: for in the beginning they attain to a little of the truth, but afterwards, as it were step by step, they come to a fuller measure of the truth.”3 Thus St. Thomas begins his commentary on Job. This progression toward a fuller measure of the truth is in part the very story of the book of Job. But that progression, especially in the highest matters, is not an easy one; this too is part of the story of the book of Job. As St. Thomas makes clear in the course of his commentary, this movement of truth toward its perfection is a movement toward wisdom. Wisdom considers the highest cause of all things, which is God.4 If wisdom considers the highest cause, then providence is of particular concern to the wise man. If that wise man is a teacher, he must work first of all to answer those who would deny providence, especially in human affairs: “Hence it was the first and principal study of those who, in the divine spirit, pursued wisdom for the instruction of others to banish this opinion from the hearts of men.”5 Let us note two points here. First, this is a matter of study, studium, which St. Thomas describes in his Summa theologiae as “the vehement application of the mind to some thing.”6 Providence is the first and principal object of study, of that vehement application 3. Prol., 3, lines 1–6 (67). 4. ST II-II, q. 45, a. 1, resp., for example. 5. Prol., 3, lines 48–51 (68). 6. ST II-II, q. 166, a. 1, resp.



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of the mind; to get this wrong is to fail in wisdom. Second, this is especially the case for those who pursue wisdom for the instruction of others. If they are to bring others to wisdom, they must get the providence of God in human affairs right. This is manifest in the divine pedagogy of the very ordering of the books of Scripture. After the Law and the Prophets, the book of Job is first in the hagiographical books, which St. Thomas here neatly characterizes as “those books wisely written through the Spirit of God for the instruction of men.”7 Job is first because the “entire intention of the book is to show through probable reasons that human affairs are ruled by divine providence.”8 St. Thomas sees Job as a book pertaining not just to the wise man, but to the teacher. One way to come to that fuller measure of the truth is by way of disputation. And so it is that St. Thomas reads Job as a disputed question. In saying that Job is about providence, St. Thomas specifies more precisely that the question (quaestio) is with regard to the affliction of the just man, specifically “of a man perfect in every virtue, named Job.”9 The language of the academic disputed question runs throughout the commentary as St. Thomas follows the movement of the arguments back and forth between Job, his friends, and the young Elihu. It concludes with an inadequate human and then magisterial divine determination of the question. In other words, St. Thomas reads Job as a quintessential university exercise. It is a work not only about what is particularly important to masters; it is read as being conducted according to that way proper to masters, the disputation. Yet more deeply, the disputation provides the essential structure of St. Thomas’s commentary. The order of the disputation provides a clear framework which both orders the whole and gives clarity to the speculative material. The adequacy of this structure is suggested by the fact that this is the only commentary on Scripture by St. Thomas that does not have a formal division of the text. 7. Prol., 3, lines 51–55 (68). 8. Prol., 3, lines 55–57 (68). 9. Prol., 3–4, lines 60–71 (68).

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For the purposes of this essay, however, I am not interested in the way in which St. Thomas charts and develops the arguments with regard to providence; rather, I am interested in another aspect of the commentary: the moral and intellectual character of the disputants themselves. In his commentary, St. Thomas does not provide us simply with outlines and articulations of arguments. Job is not solely a story in which the task of the commentator is to extract speculative arguments buried under a poetic narrative. St. Thomas does not read Job simply as an argument, he reads it as a dialogue. As in Plato’s dialogues, the conversation reported in the book of Job reflects the moral character of each of the participants. St. Thomas consistently articulates this in his commentary, for it is consistently presented in the book of Job itself. The book begins with an affirmation of Job’s moral and spiritual state, and much of the debate is, in fact, a debate precisely about that moral and spiritual state. But the dialogue of the book reveals not only Job’s moral state, it also reveals the moral state of the others. The moral and spiritual state of the disputants has direct bearing on the movement of the dialogue and the capacity of the disputants to come to a fuller measure of the truth. This is the line of thought in St. Thomas’s commentary that I wish to consider in this essay. St. Thomas takes Job to be a virtuous man for the good reason that he is so described at the beginning of the book. He is simple, upright, fears God, and withdraws from evil.10 Throughout the commentary, St. Thomas calls Job, “Blessed Job.” His tribulation arises from the Lord permitting Satan to inflict misfortune on him for a “perfect demonstration of Job’s virtues.”11 With the onset of his grievous misfortunes, his friends arrive to comfort him. Job protests his innocence in the face of such tribulation. It is among these four, Job and his three friends, that almost the entire disputation of this book takes place.12 10. 1:1, 5, lines 31–40 (72). 11. 2:1, 16, line 22 (91). 12. 2:11, 18, lines 198–99 (95).



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St. Thomas first considers in what opinion the four agree and in what the three friends and Job disagree. They agree that human affairs are subject to divine providence. Their point of disagreement is that the friends think man is rewarded with earthly prosperity and punished with temporal adversity, while Job thinks that the good works of men are ordered to a future spiritual reward after this life and sins are punished by future punishments.13 Such is the question to be disputed. With the infliction of his misfortunes, Job laments his state, a lament which St. Thomas characterizes as “in the person of his sensual part.”14 Although the lament is in the person of the senses, St. Thomas argues that at no point do the passions overwhelm Job’s reason; Job exercises the virtue of patience under the guidance of reason. St. Thomas summarizes the lament as threefold: Job shows his life is tedious to him, he shows the magnitude of the misery he is suffering, and he shows his innocence.15 Eliphaz the Themanite is the first friend to respond to Job, and in doing so he imputes three sins to Job following upon the three points of the lament. He imputes Job’s hatred of this present life to the sin of despair, the magnitude of his bitterness to the sin of impatience, and his profession of innocence to the sin of presumption. St. Thomas says simply that Eliphaz did not receive Job’s words in the spirit in which they were spoken.16 How is it that Eliphaz misconstrues Job’s words? The problem is his erroneous conception of divine providence. Eliphaz charges Job with presumption because in Eliphaz’s opinion all suffering in this life arises from sin. The upright, those who are just in accord with virtue, do not suffer adversity in this life; only those who work iniquity do. Thus, if Job is suffering, he must be a sinner and his profession of innocence is presumption. Eliphaz is so convinced of this that he does not believe that 13. 2:11, 18, lines 204–19 (96). 14. 3:16, 24, line 384 (107). 15. 3:4–26, 26, lines 555–60 (111). 16. 4:1, 27, lines 4–9 (113).

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Job could disagree; Job’s problem is that his mind is so perturbed that he has forgotten this truth, and Eliphaz is reminding him of it.17 Thus Eliphaz’s false opinion impedes him from appreciating the true character of his friend’s lament and leads to a false imputation of sin against Job. In response, Job defends himself against the charges, and then says to Eliphaz, “But yet, finish what you have begun.” He says this, according to St. Thomas, so that the truth may shine forth from mutual disputation (ex mutua disputatione). Job directly engages the disputation as a means of manifesting the truth. Job’s lament and Eliphaz’s comfort become the occasion for pursuing the truth. The point of disagreement now emerging in the dialogue, Job can undertake leading his friend to a fuller measure of the truth. Job’s intention is to defend and prove the truth about both human and divine matters.18 Job proceeds according to the custom of one disputing for whom it is sufficient in the first place to refute false opinion and then subsequently to lay out what he himself holds to be true.19 But Job warns Eliphaz of three impediments to the success of a disputation: first, when someone does not want to hear what is said by his adversary; second, when he responds to what he hears noisily and insultingly; and third, when someone does not intend to get at the truth in disputation but rather to victory and glory.20 These impediments to getting at the truth are moral in character. Job signals that the quest for the truth is affected by the moral disposition and character of those undertaking the disputation. Job then undertakes to refute Eliphaz’s false opinion. St. Thomas describes this response as gutting Eliphaz’s opinion effectively and profoundly.21 But Job’s friends do not see this. The second friend, Bildad the Shuite, now speaks. St. Thomas states that Bildad, shar17. 4:7, 28, lines 109–30 (115–16); see also with regard to the imputation of despair, 5:17–19, 38–39, lines 281–344 (134–35). 18. 6:30, 45, lines 324–35 (144). 19. 7:20, 52, lines 524–27 (156). 20. 6:2–30, 44–45, lines 301–20 (144). 21. 8:1, 53, lines 1–3 (157): “eius sententiam efficaciter et profunde evacuando.”



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ing the same opinion with Eliphaz, has not comprehended the profundity of Blessed Job and therefore speaks against Job’s response as men are accustomed to speak against opinions they do not understand. Those men who fail to comprehend the mind of a speaker are accustomed to fail in two ways. First, they do not know when the speaker has come to his proposed end; second, they cannot grasp the speaker’s ordering of his words. Such is the case of Bildad whose very words manifest this failure. And this appears manifestly in the words of Bildad, for it is said Now Bildad the Shuhite said in response: How long will you speak such things?, for it seemed to him, neither considering nor understanding to what end Job wanted to bring his speech, that Job had drawn out his speech excessively; similarly, too, he did not grasp the ordering of those things which Job had said, namely, how they had been connected to each other, and therefore, he adds and the many sided spirit of the speech of your mouth?, for he deemed that Job had uttered many words whose order he himself did not grasp because they were the unconnected words as of a man who without reason and from the impulse of his spirit speaks inconstant things without the order of reason.22

Bildad does not give real consideration to Job’s words and therefore does not understand them. Given this failure, he readily enough misconstrues Job’s words, assuming an intention that is not Job’s, namely, a denial of divine punishment and reward contrary to divine justice. He has made no progress toward the truth and still holds his error. The result is that Bildad denies Job’s holiness and instead attributes sin, here hypocrisy, to him insofar as Job insists on his innocence in the face of obvious divine judgment.23 He thus charges Job with attempting to overturn divine providence. When Job undertakes to respond to the charge that he seeks to overturn divine judgment, we find in St. Thomas’s commentary a careful exposition of Job’s moral and spiritual disposition drawn from his words. This matters because Job’s friends have accused him 22. 8:1, 53, lines 13–25 (157). 23. 8:22, 57, lines 327–32 (164).

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of grievous sin. Job insists first and foremost that he does not want to contradict divine justice nor contend against God.24 No man can contend against God in either strength or wisdom.25 Contention consists in responding and objecting; which Job does not seek— rather, he seeks mercy. Job does not contend with God over his justice, rather he prays to God for mercy.26 This spiritual disposition provides the moral and intellectual context for Job’s investigation into the affliction of the innocent in this life. He recognizes what could impede his investigation. First, the very affliction he is himself suffering could impede him as can happen to a mind occupied with sadness. He could also be impeded by the reverence he has for God. He asks that it not be imputed irreverence that he dispute over divine matters. He need not fear investigating them provided he search into divine matters with a desire to know the truth and not to comprehend the incomprehensible. His search must always be moderated by this: that he subject his understanding to divine truth.27 Job sees the dangers of such an investigation: the danger of oppression by the passions, in this case especially sadness and the pride of the intellectual who seeks what is beyond him. But he also sees that there is a danger in the fear that would keep one from moving forward in the investigation. Notably, Job establishes for himself the moral conditions for the pursuit of this truth and his own efforts to teach his friends. As Job presses his investigation, especially with regard to his own circumstance, he argues against a number of opinions, such as that the earth has been given into the hands of an impious being, that God is oppressing him on a false charge, that God is inquiring into some crime, that God is punishing sins, and that God takes pleasure in punishments. If these reasons, some of which have been put forward by Job’s friends, do not account for Job’s suffering, the real rea24. 9:2, 58, lines 14–16 (165). 25. 9:4, 58, lines 51–57 (166). 26. 9:14–15, 62, lines 390–99 (173). 27. 9:34–35, 66–67, lines 731–59 (181).



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son remains in doubt. St. Thomas is clear as to Job’s intention: “Job pursues all these points in order to induce them [his friends] to posit of necessity another life in which both the just are rewarded and the wicked punished, because if that life is not posited, no cause can be given for the tribulation of the just, who, it is certain, sometimes suffer tribulation in this world.”28 St. Thomas clearly affirms that Job’s purpose is not one of self-justification; it is to bring his friends to the truth. Job continues in his efforts to show them the error of their own positions so as to open them to the true position. Job is teaching and the disputation is his means. When the third friend, Zophar the Naamathite, responds, it is clear that, like the other two friends, he has failed to grasp Job’s arguments. Indeed, he insults Job, taking him as, in fact, contending with God. St. Thomas succinctly describes the intention of the friends as threefold. First, they are zealous to say magnificent things about God, extolling his wisdom, power, and justice, so that their cause will appear more favorable. Second, they apply these magnificent attributes of God to the false dogmas that in this life just men prosper and sinners suffer and nothing is to be expected in the next. And third, from these assertions, they argue from Job’s suffering that he is a sinner, and they make empty promises that if he would simply abandon his iniquity, splendor like the noonday sun would shine upon him.29 Job’s friends are so committed to their position that they are making poor arguments. Now it sometimes happens that some people put forward what is probable although false, but when they do not know how to defend it or prove it convincingly, they manifest their lack of wisdom in their speech, and this was happening to Job’s friends; therefore, he adds And that you would keep quiet so that you might be thought wise!, for by the very fact that you unsuitably defend and prove your false dogmas you demonstrate that you are unwise.30 28. 10:21, 74, lines 495–506 (194). 29. 12:1, 79, lines 5–21 (203). 30. 13:5, 84, 47–54 (214).

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As the disputation moves forward, although Job’s friends fail to prove their position convincingly, they nonetheless hold to it. In this, they show themselves to be unwise. The wise man is attentive to the suitability of his demonstrations, because the wise man is zealous for the truth about highest things. As the arguments of the friends weaken, we come to see their failures in wisdom, not simply as a matter of dogma, but as matter of spiritual and moral disposition to the truth. With this recognition of his friends’ lack of wisdom and the weakness of their arguments, Job undertakes to destroy their dogmas under the bold figure of a divine disputation. For St. Thomas, Job’s disputation with God is a device within the larger disputation by which Job seeks to convince his friends of the error of their opinions. It is in this disputation with God that Job turns from simply replying to the opinions of his friends to setting forth his own true position, namely, that the time of retribution is properly in another life.31 It is here that this intention of Job is disclosed for the first time in a set of carefully articulated arguments from his own circumstances and from the human condition. The response of Eliphaz to these arguments is not positive. St. Thomas says that Eliphaz misconstrues Job’s words considering only the surface, not considering the profundity of their meaning.32 As a result Eliphaz reproaches Job for vainglory and anger.33 Because Job had sought to dispute with God he is proud and foolish; he lacks fear of God and has failed to pray to God; he is a blasphemer.34 In the midst of these charges, St. Thomas reminds the reader that Job had disputed with God not out of pride but out of a confidence in the truth, thus Eliphaz rashly judges that Job acts from iniquity.35 This is a rash judgement precisely because Eliphaz has failed, again, to consider well Job’s words. He looks simply to the surface; he considers Job’s words only enough to see that Job must be a sinner, not 31. 14:6, 91, lines 57–61 (225). 32. 15:1, 96, lines 1–7 (233). 33. 15:2, 96, lines 7–18 (233). 34. 15:3–5, 96–97, lines 19–50 (233–34). 35. 15:4, 96, lines 40–43 (234).



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that his own position might be false as Job has, in the profundity of his words, shown. In response, Job replies not out of hatred or vengeance, but with a desire to recall his friends from the cruelty of their treatment of him.36 What they offered was hardly consolation.37 Job’s response is marked by zeal, but it is the zeal of the just man. When the just man sees the rectitude of divine judgments being perverted by false doctrines, he becomes indignant.38 Job’s anger, always under the rule of reason,39 is not directed to the person of his friends but to their false and perverse doctrines. His desire is to bring the ignorance of his friends to an end. Bildad the Shuhite is unable to comprehend the words of Job, and so he thought that Job was speaking emptily. He accuses Job of inefficacy of speech, empty multiplication of words, and disorder in his words. Because Job speaks in this way, Bildad accuses him of a lack of understanding.40 He also accuses him of presumption and anger. When Bildad undertakes to defend his position that afflictions in this life are punishment for sin, St. Thomas says simply that he is unable to provide reasons for his position. Instead, Bildad argues that it is the firmest position on the basis of common opinion.41 He then rehearses afflictions without introducing any further proof.42 And so the disputation continues. Job develops with care his position; his friends insist, with no forward movement in their arguments, on their positions. Zophar seems to acquiesce to Job’s position, but without entirely withdrawing from his previous opinion. He cannot quite see his way to the truth of the matter.43 Eventually, the disputation stalls. The friends have no more to say but remain unconvinced; they cannot embrace Job’s position. 36. 16:5, 101, lines 41–45 (244). 37. 16:1, 101, lines 3–4 (243); 16:21, 104, lines 275–80 (249). 38. 17:7, 107, lines 103–40 (253–54). 39. Ibid. 40. 18:1–2, 109, lines 1–24 (257). 41. 18:4, 109, lines 46–49 (258). 42. 19:1, 113, lines 7–11 (263–64). 43. 20:1–2, 118, lines 1–31 (273), fruitfully, all of chapter 20.

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There is a fifth figure, in addition to Job and his three friends, and that is Elihu. Elihu enters at the point the friends fall silent. Although he is young and has remained silent throughout the disputation up to this point, he is now moved to speak by his indignation against both Job and the friends. He is indignant toward Job because Job was saying he was justified before God; he is indignant toward Job’s friends because the friends had offered no reasonable response to Job, their words had been ineffective against Job.44 Elihu is intellectually able; he will use sharper arguments and comes closer to the truth than did the friends.45 Although he agrees with Job’s friends that tribulation in this life arises from sin, he nonetheless holds with Job that it is only after death that the just man is ultimately rewarded and the sinner punished.46 Morally, Elihu is moved by zeal to defend the truth, but he is also moved by vainglory as he will manifest whatever is excellent in himself.47 Elihu first rebukes Job on moral grounds for his desire to dispute with God, for in this Job manifests his presumption in seeking to dispute with one who is greater than him.48 Here Elihu too misconstrues Job’s words. St. Thomas comments that the charge would indeed be just if Job had desired to dispute with God in order to contradict him as if disputing with an equal; but Job desired to dispute with God as a student disputes with a master in order to learn. Elihu, however, understands Job to have spoken contentiously against God by way of complaint. St. Thomas concedes the possibility of so reading Job’s words, but he insists that any such words of Job are not to be understood to have been said by way of contention, but rather as Job’s desire to know the reasons of divine wisdom.49 Elihu has a further twofold reproach against Job on matters of truth. First, that he claimed to be free from sin; second, that he 44. 32:1–3, 171, lines 8–39 (366). 45. 32:1, 171, lines 1–5 (365–66). 46. 32:22, 173, lines 203–6 (370) and 37:24, 197–98, lines 375–91 (413–14). 47. 32:16, 173, lines 160–63 (369). 48. 33:12, 175, lines 99–113 (374). 49. 33:13, 175, lines 114–30 (374).



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charged God with iniquity of judgment.50 He first disputes against Job, charging that he said the divine judgment was unjust. He presents words of Job which, St. Thomas comments, he interprets for the worse. To make his point, Elihu even adds words. St. Thomas comments, “Job had never said this, of course, but Elihu believed that this was his intention in those words, to say that he had been punished unjustly. Now Elihu had thus conceived this opinion, because he did not see how anyone without sin could be afflicted except unjustly; and since Job was saying that he was without sin, he judged that Job thought that he had been stricken with violence by God against justice.”51 Having imposed this perverse opinion upon Job, Elihu then proceeds to criticize him for it.52 The problem is that in twisting Job’s words, the disputation that follows is not in fact against Job.53 Similarly when Elihu turns to criticize Job that he had said he was free from sin, he twists Job’s words.54 When Elihu has finished his arguments, Job remains silent. The reason, according to St. Thomas, is that Job actually agrees with Elihu in his principal dogmas, most importantly in the remuneration of good men and the punishment of bad men after this life. What Elihu said about his person was not of particular concern to Job, especially since he could not prove the purity of his conscience. And finally, Elihu has attacked Job and imputed to him claims that were not in fact his in the manner of contentious people who make up or misconstrue another’s words. Job chooses to remove himself from such contentions.55 He is silent in defending himself since the dogmatic truths have, in fact, been defended. The disputation has come to its end in the articulation and defense of a fuller measure of the truth. That it has done so at the expense of Job’s good name is irrelevant to the Blessed Job. This is not, however, the end of the disputation. Notable for our 50. 33:8–10, 174, lines 56–72 (372). 51. 34:6, 179, lines 49–56 (382). 52. 34:7, 179, lines 63–64 (383). 53. 34:10, 180, lines 96–99 (383). 54. 35:1–3, 185, lines 1–44 (391–92). 55. 37:2, 198, lines 392–405 (414).

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purposes is St. Thomas’s understanding of Elihu’s role in the disputation. He is not merely another disputant; rather, he had assumed to himself the determination of the question.56 St. Thomas says that when a disputation has been determined by a sentence of judgment (sententia judicii), nothing else remains to be said, unless the sentence of the determination (sententia determinationis) is rejected.57 This is precisely what happens in this case. Elihu’s determination is rejected firstly on a matter of principle. Because human wisdom is not sufficient for comprehending the truth of divine providence, the disputation ought to be determined by divine authority. 58 Secondly, it is rejected for specific reasons arising from the circumstances of this particular disputation. And so it is that God, as the true determinator of the question, criticizes Job’s friends because they did not think rightly, criticizes Elihu for an unfitting determination, and criticizes Job for his disordered way of speaking.59 Let us consider each of these. Although the Lord rebukes all three, he is described as being gravely angry with Job’s friends. This is because they alone have sinned gravely in asserting perverse dogmas.60 Elihu, in turn, had set forth true positions. God rebukes him not for his positions but because he clothed them with many false and frivolous words. Elihu had set forth his position by claiming that Job wanted to dispute with God and had diminished the justice of divine judgment in so doing. Elihu had wrapped his position in many presumptuous and even false words. These are the words of the inexperienced (sermones imperiti), for every disorder would seem to proceed from a defect of reason.61 St. Thomas does not elaborate on Elihu’s inexperience. He is, perhaps, inexperienced in disputation and thus errs in the way he argues, in the improprieties of speech, and in his misconstrual of the 56. 38:1, 199, lines 1–5 (415). 57. 38:2, 199, lines 38–40 (416). 58. 38:1, 199, lines 5–8 (415). 59. 38:1, 199, lines13–17 (425). 60. 42:7, 228, lines 57–62 (471). 61. 38:2, 199, lines 42–53 (416).



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words of others. He thinks he can take on the role of determination when, in fact, he cannot. These are defects in Elihu but their source is principally inexperience. We should recall that Elihu is a youth; if he is not wise, it is in part because of his youth. He does not have the stubborn maturity of Job’s unwise friends. In sinning out of inexperience, Elihu does not sin gravely.62 Finally, God rebukes Job. At the beginning of God’s determination, St. Thomas articulates the essence of God’s rebuke: although Job held the true position, nonetheless he was excessive in his mode of speaking insofar as scandal arose in the hearts of others when they thought Job did not show due reverence for God.63 The concluding chapters of the book are the unfolding of this rebuke. God charges that Job appeared to have spoken presumptuously when he challenged God to a disputation. St. Thomas notes that when Job began the disputation with God he had given God the choice to speak or to respond. Because of God’s silence, Job chose to speak and leave God to respond. Here God chooses to speak; he will ask, and Job will respond. This asking of God is not so that God will learn something, but rather so that he will convince man of his ignorance.64 And so begins the great questioning of Job. Here is the exquisite refinement of the fuller measure of the truth, expressed in the divine master’s sentence of judgment, in his rich explanatory determination. God first questions Job about the effects of God which are available to Job’s senses, for when a man is shown to be ignorant of these things, he is all the more convinced of his ignorance in sublime matters.65 God presents what he has done so as to show the magnitude of divine wisdom and power.66 In this, God stirs Job to consider that a man is not suited to disputing with God.67 It is, however, just that the one who challeng62. 42:7, 228, lines 57–59 (471). 63. 38:1, 199, lines 9–13 (415). 64. 38:3, 199, lines 68–200.77 (417). 65. 38:4, 200, lines 77–81 (417). 66. 39:31, 212, lines 326–30 (441). 67. 39:31, 212, lines 330–32 (441).

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es another to a disputation also be prepared himself to respond. Thus, lest Job seem to remain obstinate in his position, even though he has been proven wrong, words of humility burst forth from his mouth.68 His self-accusation is very precise and in accord with the divine rebuke. He does not accuse himself before God and his own conscience of falsity of speech or of proud intention, because he had indeed spoken truly from the purity of his soul; rather, he accuses himself of lightness of speech, for even if he had not spoken out of pride of soul, nevertheless, his words seemed to savor of arrogance from which his friends had taken an occasion for scandal. One must avoid, St. Thomas remarks, not only evils but those things which have the appearance of evil.69 Job thus explicitly repents of two things he said: first, that he wished to dispute with God; and second, that he set his own justice before divine judgment. He does not repent of Elihu’s third charge, denying God’s judgment was just, because this would not apply to lightness of speech but to blasphemy.70 Having rebuked Job for this desire to contend with him, God then rebukes him for his words which, in defending his justice, had seemed to disparage divine judgment.71 In recalling his own justice, Job had not intended to impute inequity to divine judgment, as his friends and Elihu had perversely understood him to do. His intention was to show that he had not been punished for sins but as a test. Nevertheless, he had done so in such a way that his defense of himself redounded to the derogation of divine justice.72 It is precisely on this point that God questions him. He asks, in St. Thomas’s paraphrase, “Does it seem right to you that by commending your own justice you bring it about that my judgment is deemed false by men?”73 Where there is so great a difference as between God and 68. 39:31–34, 212, lines 332–45 (441). 69. 39:34, 212, lines 345–55 (441). 70. 39:35, 212, lines 357–64 (441–42). 71. 40:1, 213, lines 1–9 (443). 72. 40:3, 213, lines 17–27 (443). 73. 40:3, 213, lines 27–31 (443–44).



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man, a man ought to allow guilt to be unjustly brought upon himself than that it be brought unjustly upon God. As God had shown Job his excellence with regard to sensible effects, God now undertakes to show his power and wisdom with regard to his effects in rational creatures.74 In the end of this manifestation of his effects, God shows Job that Job had especially to fear that the devil, who had tried to tempt him, might try especially to lead him into pride. Therefore, Job should have been cautious of an attitude and of words which savored of pride.75 After God has rebuked Job for his careless speech which seemed to savor of pride, Job responds humbly, acknowledging divine excellence with regard to power and knowledge. Now from a consideration of divine excellence, Job proceeds to a consideration of his own guilt when he adds Therefore, I have spoken unwisely, namely, not showing due reverence for divine excellence in my words, and things which exceed my knowledge beyond measure, namely by discussing divine judgments. And since I have spoken unwisely, for the rest I will speak wisely. Hence, he adds Listen and I will speak, namely, by confessing my guilt, and since I have spoken things which exceed my knowledge, for the rest I do not dare to speak of it but only to ask You about these things. Hence he adds I will ask You, namely, by asking, praying, knocking, and respond to me, namely, by instructing me inwardly. Now he shows why he has changed so, adding I heard You with the hearing of my ear, namely, formerly when I was speaking unwisely, but now my eye sees You; that is, I know You more fully than before as that which is seen with the eyes is known more certainly than that which is heard with the ear. For he had progressed both from being stricken and from divine revelation. Now the more someone considers God’s justice the more fully he recognizes his own guilt. Hence he adds Therefore I reproach myself, namely, by considering my own guilt. And because it is not sufficient to acknowledge guilt unless satisfaction follow, therefore, he adds and I do penance in dust and ash, namely, as a sign of the fragility of corporeal nature. For humble satisfaction is fitting for expiating the pride of thought.76 74. 40:3–4, 213, lines 37–54 (444). 75. 41:25, 227, lines 451–57 (468). 76. 42:3–6, 228, lines 22–49 (470).

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Job has spoken lightly and the problem is that in so doing he has lead his friends to think otherwise of him than is true, which is significant because it undermines his ability to manifest the truth to them. The reason for this failure is an interior movement of pride within him by which he prefers his own innocence to God’s right judgment. It is the movement of pride, but God’s rebuke provokes Job’s humility. He can see his error as a result of the divine correction. The result is that he has in fact learned the very goal of the disputation as he articulated it at the beginning. But he has learned beyond, perhaps, what he had anticipated. The fuller measure of truth has grown to wisdom. St. Thomas says, in the passage just quoted, that Job has grown in wisdom both through his tribulation and through divine revelation. Which returns us to wisdom, that consideration of the things in their highest cause, which is God. Job’s wisdom is the fruit not only of his intelligence but of his moral life, which has been tested and strengthened in his tribulation. His wisdom is the fruit not only of his own intellectual effort but also of God’s revelation to him. In these matters, the human master must defer to the divine master. As we can see in Job’s friends, it is not necessarily easy to get it right. False doctrines in such fundamental matters lead to false understanding of many other things, including false counsel and false comfort. Wisdom is indeed architectonic and the manifold failures of the friends from their initial doctrinal error is ample evidence. We might ask, yet further, why, in the face of Job’s arguments, do his friends so steadfastly fail to understand the truth, to be persuaded by Job of the truth? Let us recall the three impediments to successful disputation noted early in the commentary: first, that someone does not want to hear what is said by his adversary; second, that he responds to what he hears noisily and insultingly; and third, that he does not intend to get at the truth but to victory and glory. 77 The disputation of the friends seems to be especially marked by the first two. They so firmly hold their initial error as to be unwilling to hear 77. 6:28–30, 44–45, lines 301–20 (144).



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what is said by Job. The friends are not stupid; they are unwilling. They do not listen willfully and openly; at the end they seem to have come some way toward Job’s position, but only partially, as they are still rebuked by God for their false and perverse doctrine. And as Job’s arguments progress, the friends manifest the second impediment, which follows from the first, when they respond noisily and insultingly. They pile up assertions and accuse Job falsely of simply arguing badly and, more importantly, of grievous sin against his own conscience and God. Elihu, too, has failed even though he holds the correct doctrine. God rebukes him not for his positions but because he clothed them with many false and frivolous words. Why is this? He too does not want to hear what is said by his adversary. He too responds to what he hears noisily and insultingly. The third impediment—that one does not intend to get at the truth but to victory and glory—also seems to apply to Elihu. When he is first introduced, he is characterized not only with zeal for the truth but also with vainglory. Elihu, though young and inexperienced, thinks he is wise enough to determine the question. As he proceeds, he interprets Job’s words negatively and imputes words to Job that he did not speak. Why would he do this? Because, in his vanity, he has compromised his zeal for the truth with his vain desire for victory and glory in disputation. Job, however, shows himself to be indeed wise. Knowing the truth, St. Thomas said at the beginning of his commentary, like natural growing things, proceeds from imperfection to perfection. In Job’s case, the fuller measure of truth has come to the perfection of wisdom. That he is the Blessed Job does not mean he is the perfect Job, but he is very much the docile and correctable Job. The integrity of his virtues is such that his failure in the disputation, failure of a moral and spiritual kind, is, in its correction, an occasion of humility and therein growth in wisdom. Having so repented, Job then prays for his friends. Rebuked by God, they too have repented and humbly offered sacrifice to God. That, however, is not enough. God says to Job’s friends, as St. Thom-

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as puts it: “But your satisfaction requires the patronage of a faithful man, hence he adds, Now Job my servant, who namely is worthy of being heard because of his faith, will pray for you; hence he adds, his face, namely, of one praying, I will take up, namely, by hearing his prayer, that your foolishness will not be imputed to you, namely your faithless dogmas.”78 St. Thomas concludes, “And so through their obedience and humility, they were made worthy that Job’s prayer for them would be heard.”79 In this, they have overcome at last their foolishness, stultitia, which, for St. Thomas, is precisely what opposes wisdom.80 The reconciliation of the friends with God, their own progression in wisdom, is mediated through Job, not only through his arguments but through his prayers. And so we come to the end of St. Thomas’s commentary on Job. In conclusion, we can see that reading the book of Job as a disputed question not only allows St. Thomas to articulate the speculative material concerning providence, but also to consider another aspect of the book in the moral character of the various disputants. St. Thomas finds this in the descriptions and very words of the disputants. While the form of disputation is exquisitely well suited to coming to a fuller measure of the truth, such need not necessarily happen. As the book of Job shows so clearly in St. Thomas’s reading, such disputation is not a clear progression in the truth for all parties. How is it that some do not come to a fuller measure of the truth? It can certainly be lack of intellectual power, but that does not really seem to be the issue in the book of Job. Instead, we are presented with a subtler and more interesting set of themes that bring motives and inclinations other than the truth to bear in the reality of disputation. St. Thomas reads Job like a Platonic dialogue in which the character of those in the dialogue emerges in the course of the dialogue, in which some come closer to the truth and others stubborn78. 42:8, 229, lines 76–81 (471). 79. 42:8, 229, lines 88–89 (471). 80. ST II-II, q. 46, a. 1.



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ly refuse to do so. We have, perhaps, insights arising from St. Thomas’s own experience of disputation in Paris, an experience which he sees present as well in Job. And perhaps, as well, these are insights to be communicated to his brethren as they advance in their intellectual formation and strive themselves for a fuller measure of the truth.

Jörgen Vijgen Job, Aquinas, and the Philosopher

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Job, Aquinas, and the Philosopher Jörgen Vijgen

Thomas Aquinas’s Expositio super Iob ad litteram has been described, and rightly so, as a “philosophically informed work of biblical theology.”1 Both from an historical and a systematical perspective, the modern separation between exegesis and philosophy does not apply to a medieval Magister in Sacra Pagina such as Thomas Aquinas, nor would it capture what he considers as the goal of biblical exegesis. On the contrary, as Gilbert Dahan has observed, philosophy offers for Aquinas a framework for reflection and a set of tools to better understand Scripture and at the same time Scripture itself “opens up towards philosophical reflection.”2 Moreover, following Romans 15:4 1. Roger W. Nutt, “Providence, Wisdom, and the Justice of Job’s Afflictions: Considerations from Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job,” The Heythrop Journal 56 (2015): 44–66, at 59. See also Eleonore Stump, “Biblical Commentary and Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, ed. Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 252–68. For a recent example of what Étienne Gilson has called the “metaphysics of Exodus,” see L. Clavell, “Philosophy and Sacred Text: Mutual Hermeneutical Help: The Case of Exodus 3:14,” Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions and New Perspectives, ed. Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 457–80. 2. Gilbert Dahan, “Thomas d’Aquin, commentateur de la première épître aux Corinthiens,” introduction to Thomas d’Aquin, Commentaire de la première épître aux Corinthiens, trans. J.-E. Stroobant de Saint-Eloy (Paris: Cerf, 2002), i-xl, at xxi. For a fuller discussion see my “Biblical Thomism: Past, Present and Future,” Angelicum 95 (2018): 263–87.



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(“For what things so ever were written, were written for our learning”) and 2 Timothy 3:16 (“All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable to teach and to instruct”), Aquinas is convinced that the goal of Scripture consists in a genuine and authentic eruditio of man. He considers it therefore unfitting if some passage of Scripture could not in principle be made intelligible, for in such a case Scripture would rather deceive than instruct the reader.3 From the perspective of Scripture as a source of genuine eruditio, one could indeed argue, as Piotr Roszak has done, that Aquinas’s biblical commentaries contain a “metaphysics in nuce.”4 Having said this and given the fact that Aristotle or the Philosopher is by far the most quoted pagan writer in his Expositio super Iob ad litteram,5 it is worthwhile to examine Aquinas’s use of Aristotle throughout his commentary.6 Aquinas’s observations in this respect can be centered around the following four topics: general and particular providence, the passions, the resurrection, and explanations in the area of natural philosophy.7 General and Particular Providence It is well known that, under the influence of Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob (579–595), the predominant interpretation of the book 3. Cf. ScG IV, 29; Ql XII, q. 17 s. c. 4. Piotr Roszak, “Exégesis y metafísica. En torno a la hermenéutica bíblica de Tomás de Aquino,” Salmanticensis 61 (2014): 301–23, at 308–10. 5. Cf. the Index Auctorum on 323–24 of Thomas de Aquino, Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, vol. 26: Expositio super Iob ad litteram (Rome: Santa Sabina, 1965). Hereafter, In Iob, followed by chapter, page, and line numbers. Aquinas refers to Aristotle or one of his works explicitly on 20 occasions; in addition, the editors of the critical edition identified 137 implicit references to Aristotle. 6. For a first synthesis regarding the whole of Aquinas’s biblical commentaries and their use of Aristotle, see my “The Use of Aristotle in Aquinas’s Biblical Commentaries,” in Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas, 287–346. 7. I will not discuss his use of Aristotle’s Historia Animalium in chapters 40 and 41. See Carlos Steel, “Animaux de la bible et animaux d’Aristote. Thomas d’Aquin sur Béhémoth l’éléphant,” in Aristotle’s Animals in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. C. Steel, G. Guldentops, and P. Beullens (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999), 11–30.

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of Job focused on the exemplary nature of Job’s virtues of patience and long-suffering (longanimitas) in the face of adversities and the resulting moral edification the reading of the book of Job could produce in its readers.8 Aquinas does not reject this tradition but expands upon it by placing the book of Job in the broader metaphysical and theological context of the doctrine of divine providence.9 In fact, it is precisely the erroneous claim that not divine providence but fate or chance rules man’s life which for Aquinas is harmful for man: This idea causes a great deal of harm to mankind. For if divine providence is denied, no reverence or true fear of God will remain among men. Each man can weigh well how great will be the propensity for vice and the lack of desire for virtue which follows from this idea. For nothing so calls men back from evil things and induces them to good so much as the fear and love of God.10

Hence, it is more than fitting that Aquinas in his Prologue starts out by giving an historical and systematical account of the origins of the denial of divine providence. Echoing the Aristotelian dictum “a small error in the beginning is a large error in the end” (Parvus error in principio magnus est in fine),11 Thomas explains how the 8. See Stephen J. Vicchio, The Image of the Biblical Job: A History, volume II: Job in the Medieval World (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2006), 4–43; Kenneth B. Steinhauser, “Job in Patristic Commentaries and Theological Works,” in A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, ed. Franklin Harkins and Aaron Canty (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 37–70. 9. The more traditional perspective can still be found in Albert’s commentary (finished ca. 1272). He writes in the opening lines of his prologue: “Exemplum accipiter, fratres, exitus mali et longanimitas, laboris et patientiae, prophetas, qui locuti sunt in nomine Domini. Ecce beatificamus eos, qui sustinerunt”; Albertus Magnus, Super Iob (ed. M. Weiss, Freiburg: Herder, 1904, col. 1, lines 1–6). This is not to say that the topic of providence is entirely absent from Albert’s commentary: see Ruth Meyer, “‘Hanc autem disputationem solus Deus determinare potest’: Das Buch Hiob als disputatio bei Albertus Magnus und Thomas von Aquin,” in Via Alberti: Texte—Quellen—Interpretationen, ed. Ludger Honnefelder, Hannes Möhle, and Susana Bullido del Barrio (Münster: Aschendorff, 2009), 325–83, at 367–77. 10. In Iob, Prologue, 3, lines 41–48. 11. The dictum originates in De Caelo I, 5 [271a8–9]; see also J. Hamesse, Les Auctoritates Aristotelis: un florilège médiévale: étude historique et édition critique (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1974), 161.



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very limited knowledge of the truth; that is, admitting only material causes led the “ancient natural philosophers,” such as Democritus and Empedocles, to deny divine providence and attribute “everything to fortune and to chance.” Later philosophers, however, who were more attentive (diligentia) to the fullness of the truth, realized that the certainty of the order in nature requires an ordering intellect governing this course of nature and at the same time transcending it. In doing so, they were able to provide “evident proofs and reasons” (evidentibus indiciis et rationibus) for divine providence in nature.12 Aquinas realizes, however, that the certainty of the order of nature sometimes stands in contrast with human affairs because no apparent order seems to exist when good befalls the wicked and vice versa. As a result, the doubt which arises concerning the extent of divine providence can lead and has led man to believe that human affairs are led by chance or by some fatalistic entity as the motion of the heavens. It is precisely because of the possible harm such views can install in the minds and hearts of man that the book of Job was written: “The whole intention of this book is directed to this: to show that human affairs are ruled by divine providence using probable arguments (per probabiles rationes).”13 One notes Aquinas’s distinction: whereas general divine providence can be shown to exist by way of “evident proofs and reasons” (evidentibus indiciis et rationibus), special divine providence concerning human affairs uses merely “probable arguments” (probabiles rationes). Within this distinction there exists both a metaphysical and epistemological hierarchical order. For it is because of the existence and the certainty of general divine providence that the apparent contrast with the uncertainty of human affairs can arise. Hence Aquinas describes the method he will follow as proceeding “from the supposition” that general 12. See In Iob, Prologue, 3, lines 17–23: “Sed posteriorum philosophorum diligentia perspicacius intuens veritatem, evidentibus indiciis et rationibus ostenderunt res naturales providentia agi: non enim tam certus cursus in motu caeli et siderum et in aliis naturae effectibus inveniretur nisi haec omnia a quodam intellectu supereminente ordinata gubernarentur.” 13. In Iob, Prologue, 3, lines 55–57.

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divine providence is true to demonstrating that probable arguments can be given for special divine providence, even in the midst of the varied and grave afflictions of a specific just man called Job.14 It is no wonder, therefore, that he returns to this topic time and again. Commenting on 5:9 (“who makes things great and inscrutable and wondrous without number”), he rejects what we could call “naturalistic determinism,” namely, that “everything comes about from the necessity of natural causes.” On the contrary, for Aquinas, the determinate configuration of the cosmos points to an “ordering of some intelligence.” Moreover, knowledge on the basis of solely natural principles would entail a kind of scientism, that is, the claim that there is “a way to inquire into everything in this world.” For Aquinas, however, it is “manifest” that there are things in the cosmos for which we are unable to assign any reason or which lie hidden below the empirical data we can scrutinize.15 Aquinas next focuses on providence in the natural order of things. Although based on Aristotle’s outdated view on heaviness and lightness as properties of the elements (e.g., water and earth),16 Aquinas offers a rudimentary version of the anthropic principle when he writes that natural things “seem to have been made for the use of man and the other animals, although the natural order of the elements seems to demand another thing.”17 Undoubtedly, Aquinas’s terse explanation is influenced by the fact that he is commenting on 5:10 (“who gives the rain on the face of the earth”). A more detailed argument would entail demonstrating formal and final causality in nature, as he mentions for instance in De Veritate.18 14. See In Iob, Prologue, 3–4, lines 58–71. 15. See In Iob, c. 5, 36–37, lines 148–83; see also ScG III, 64, no. 7; De Veritate q. 5, a. 2 co. (ed. Leon., t. 22/1, Roma, 1970, 143, lines 135–48). 16. Physica IV, 5 [213a1–10] and De Caelo IV, 5 [312a25–35]. For the claim that gravity in modern science is not contradictory to the Aristotelian “vis gravitates,” see William Wallace, The Modeling of Nature (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 50. 17. In Iob, c. 5, 37, lines 202–9. See Thomas J. McLaughlin, “Aquinas and Humanity in the Cosmos,” in Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Humanity, ed. John P. Hittinger and Daniel C. Wagner (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 112–30. 18. Q. 5, a. 2 co. (ed. Leon., t. 22/1, 143, lines 135–43).



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Aquinas continues by examining the presence of providence in human affairs. Following the claim in the prologue, these arguments can merely be probable arguments. Having to stay close to the text of verses 10–12, his argument entails the observation that sometimes the oppressed are “raised up with salvation” (vs. 10) while the oppressors, no matter how clever they are, sometimes find their plans to be impeded and even are unable to discern better plans. All this indicates for Aquinas that human affairs do not always “run as their disposition seems to require” (secundum quod earum dispositio videtur exigere) but run in another way, a way which frees the oppressed from the deception that human affairs are run by chance and fortune but also which refrains the oppressors.19 The opening verse of chapter 7 (“Man’s life on earth is a military campaign”) again offers Thomas an occasion to introduce divine providence, for it indicates that man’s life “is not like the state of victory but like the state of a campaign” (militia). This comparison indicates that the present life is indeed subject to divine providence “for soldiers campaign under a general” (sub duce militant).20 Here Aquinas clearly echoes Aristotle’s comparison of the highest good and its relation to the universe with an army and its leader in Metaphysica XII, 10 [1075a11–24]. In his Commentary (1271–73), he will remark that because the ratio of a thing ordered to an end is derived from that end (ex fine), the order of the army depends on the leader (a duce sit ordo exercitus).21 Already in his De Veritate (1256–59), Aquinas had used this comparison from Aristotle to refute the opinion that divine providence only extended to incorruptible things and that corruptible things merely act on the basis of necessity. Moreover, he explicitly attributed divine providence over corruptible as well as incorruptible things to Aristotle. Aquinas writes: The Philosopher, however, has refuted this position by taking an army as an example. In an army we find two orders, one by which the parts of the 19. In Iob, c. 5, 37–38, lines 221–80. 20. In Iob, c. 7, 47, lines 39–40. 21. In XII Meta, c. 10, no. 1263.

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army are related to each other, and a second by which the army is directed to an external good, namely, the good of its leader. That order by which the parts of the army are related to each other exists for the sake of the order by which the entire army is subordinated to its leader. Consequently, if the subordination to the leader did not exist, the ordering of the parts of the army to each other would not exist. Consequently, whenever we find a group whose members are ordered to each other, that group must necessarily be ordered to some external principle.22

As an indication that Scripture has this rejection of particular providence of corruptible things in mind, Aquinas refers in De Veritate to Eliphaz’s claim in Job 22:14 “The clouds are His hiding place, and He does not consider ours and he walks about the hinges of heaven.” It is no wonder therefore that Aquinas returns at length to this discussion in his Commentary on Job. He mentions two opinions against particular providence. The first opinion claims that the loftiness of the divine substance can only entail divine self-knowledge because knowledge of lower things (inferiora) would defile (vilesceret) God’s self-knowledge. Elsewhere he attributes this view to “the opinion of certain Peripatetics” (opinion quorumdam Peripateticorum).23 The second opinion holds that divine providence does extend to particular things but merely in a general way, that is, “He knows them in the universal, for example, by knowing the nature of being or the universal causes.”24 In his earlier writings Aquinas had attributed this opinion to Averroes and Avicenna.25 It is well known that throughout his writings and increasingly over the years that Aquinas regarded Averroes as both his principal antagonist regarding the Christian faith as well as the primary “philosophie peripatatice deprevator.”26 In the words of R.-A. Gauthier: “quand il s’agit de condemner en 22. De Ver. q. 5, a. 3 co. (ed. Leon. t. 22/1, 146, lines 72–84). I have analyzed Aquinas’s use of Aristotle’s example of an army and its leader in my “Did St. Thomas Attribute a Doctrine of Divine Providence to Aristotle?” Doctor Angelicus 7 (2007): 53–76. 23. In Div. Nom., c. 3, lect. un., no. 241. 24. In Iob, c. 22, 129, lines 123–25. 25. See In I Sent. d. 36, q. 1, a. 1, sol. (ed. P. Mandonnet, Paris: Lethielleux, 1929, 830); De Ver. q. 2, a. 5 co (ed. Leon. t. 22/1, 61–62, lines 203–31). 26. De unitate intellectus, c. 2 (ed. Leon. t. 43, Rome, 1976, 302, lines 156).



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Averroès le négateur de la foi, saint Thomas est ferme; quand il s’agit de condemner en lui le corrupteur d’Aristote, il est passioné.”27 It is therefore not surprising that we can find Aquinas refuting Averroes’s position on divine providence on the basis of Aristotle himself. In De Veritate he writes: “But this error can be destroyed by the reasoning used by the Philosopher against Empedocles; for if—as would follow from what Empedocles had said—God were ignorant of that which others knew, God would be most stupid, although He Himself is most happy and, for this reason, most wise. The same thing would be true if it were asserted that God did not know the singulars which all of us know.”28 He further refutes this position on the basis of matter being the principle of individuation. Comparing God to an artist who produced both form and matter, and, given the fact that matter serves as the principle of individuation, Aquinas holds that God cannot merely know particular things in their universal nature but must do so as particular: “Therefore, since divine art produces not only the form but also the matter, it contains not only the likeness of form but also that of matter. Consequently, God knows things in regard to both their matter and their form; and, therefore, He knows not only universals but also singulars.”29 In other writings, Job 22:14 (“The clouds are His hiding place, and He does not consider ours and he walks about the hinges of heaven”) will continue to hold a prominent place as a scriptural warrant for those who rejected particular divine providence. In these writings, moreover, parts of the philosophical, Aristotelian arguments given in De Veritate will be used to argue for a divine particular providence.30 Aquinas’s own position in the Summa contra 27. Sententia libri de anima (ed. Leon. t. 45/1, Rome, 1984, 224*). This is particularly the case in his Physics commentary: see Leo Elders, SVD, “St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics,” The Review of Metaphysics 66 (2013): 713–48, and more fully in chapter 3 of his Aristote et Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Les Presses universitaires de l’IPC, 2018). 28. De Ver. q. 2, a. 5, (ed. Leon. t. 22/1, 62, lines 208–16). 29. De Ver. q. 2, a. 5, (ed. Leon. t. 22/1, 62, lines 270–76). 30. See ScG III, 75 and ST I, q. 22, a. 2 c.

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Gentiles, for instance, is quite nuanced. On the one hand Aquinas does not explicitly affirm that Aristotle indeed held divine particular providence. Nevertheless, he sees no objection to using Aristotle’s texts in this way. He explicitly states, moreover, that the opinion according to which divine providence does not extend as far as particular things, although attributed to Aristotle, cannot be gathered from Aristotle’s own texts.31 Aquinas’s reasoning to establish general and particular divine providence on the basis of Aristotle’s philosophical arguments exemplifies what he himself calls a “careful consideration of the words of the Philosopher.”32 In the following chapters of his Commentary on Job, however, Aquinas refrains from using Aristotle to corroborate philosophically divine particular providence. Rather, he will reject the arguments by Averroes and others by showing that it is “not repugnant”33 to divine providence if evil men prosper in this world, nor that divine providence extends only to judging in this life,34 etc. God himself determines the dispute between Job and his friends about “the truth of divine providence.”35 Job and the Passions In chapter 1, Job’s prosperity followed by his adversity (the deaths of his cattle, his employees, and, finally, his children) is recounted. The temporal order of this narration is not without purpose for Aquinas. On the contrary, in moments of great joy the sudden news of adversity appears graver when compared to the joy of the moment. Aquinas finds a confirmation of this insight into the human condition in Aristotle’s Rhetoric [III, 17, 1418b4]: “contraries placed next to each other shine forth all the more.”36 This insight and its confirmation 31. See ScG III, 75: “opinionem quidam Aristoteli imponunt, licet ex verbis eus haberi non possit.” See my “Did St. Thomas Attribute a Doctrine of Divine Providence to Aristotle?” 32. De Subst. Separ. c. 14 (ed. Leon. 40 D 67, lines 198–99). 33. In Iob, c. 25, 142, line 7. 34. In Iob, c. 26, 145, lines 69–71. 35. In Iob, c. 38, 199, lines 6–7. 36. See In Iob, c. 1, 12, line 237.



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in Aristotle highlights even more the severity of Job’s suffering but also the virtuousness of his patience. At this point he introduces a digression on the virtuousness of sadness according to the “ancient philosophers.”37 He firmly rejects the view of the Stoics according to which a wise man should not experience sadness over such “external goods” and agrees with the Peripatetics for whom these external goods are true, though not “principal goods,” such as the “good of the mind”; hence, the experience of a moderate sadness, that is, a sadness that does not disturb the deepest part of reason and does not engross the person, is a mark of virtue.38 The contrary, not to be saddened over the loss of loved ones, is a sign of “a hard and insensitive heart.”39 In fact, such a moderate sadness should ultimately be viewed upon as part of the divine plan and hence as a cause of joy “for even over the taking of bitter medicine a person rejoices with reason because of the hope of health, although he is repelled in the sense of taste.”40 The opinion of the Peripatetics is for Aquinas “the truer one and agrees with Church doctrine.”41 The argument in chapter one proceeds from philosophical reasons, then discovers a truth and finally finds confirmation in Church doctrine. This procedure becomes even more apparent when Aquinas returns to the topic of sadness at the beginning of chapter three, commenting on “Now after this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day” (3:1). Aquinas recounts the positions of the Stoics and the Peripatetics and confirms again that in sad circumstances the wise man should moderately experience sadness, that is, according to reason. Now, however, he gives a philosophical argument based on the nature of reason (ratio) and which rests on the anthropological prin37. See In Iob, c. 1, 13–14, lines 732–49. 38. For a similar view, including a more extensive philosophical analysis and always contrasting the Stoics with the Peripatetics, see ST I-II, q. 24, a. 2; De Ver. q. 26, a. 8, ad 2; De Malo, q. 12, a. 1 co. The contra stems from Augustine, De Civitate Dei IX, 4. 39. In Iob, c. 1, 14, line 757. Elsewhere he calls it “inhuman”: “Stoici enim dixerunt quod nullus sapiens tristatur. Sed valde inhumanum esse videtur quod aliquis de morte alicuius non tristetur.” Super Ev. Joh., c. 11, lect. 5, no. 1535. 40. In Iob, c. 1, 15, lines 853–55. 41. In Iob, c. 1, 14, line 748.

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ciple: “reason cannot remove the condition of nature.” It belongs to the nature of man, insofar as it is also sensual, to be saddened over harmful things. The possibility of a removal of this kind of sadness would imply a body-soul dualism in which both components are inevitably antithetical. Moreover, it would also entail a change in the species of human nature. Reason, rather than being antithetical to the sensitive, bodily nature of man, “moderates” the passion of sadness so that reason “does not turn aside from its straightforwardness (rectitudo) through sadness.”42 Aquinas finds confirmation for this philosophical position in those passages in Scripture that affirm sadness in Christ (Mt 26:34; Mk 14:34), “in Whom there is every fullness of virtue and wisdom.”43 Equally central to the human condition for Aquinas is the vocal expression of such sadness (“Job opened his mouth”), for it indeed belongs to a wise man to express an emotion in order to moderate it by reason, as did Christ himself in Matthew 26:38 as well as Boethius in the opening lines of his On the Consolation of Philosophy.44 In chapter six this position is reiterated and expressly directed against the Stoics: by nature it belongs to the internal senses to be saddened when receiving something harmful or unfitting.45 Another passion frequently present in the commentary is the passion of anger. The main issue is, again, establishing the virtuousness of anger.46 In commenting on Eliphaz’s statement in 5:2 (“Anger kills the foolish man”), Aquinas starts with an implicit reference to Aristotle’s definition of anger in De Anima I, 2 (403a30) and Rhetorica II, 2 (1378a31): “anger is the appetite for vengeance arising from an earlier offense.”47 Such an appetite occurs more easily in those 42. In Iob, c. 3, 21, lines 11–12. 43. See In Iob, c. 3, 21, lines 12–15. 44. See In Iob, c. 3, 21, lines 30–44. 45. See In Iob, c. 6, 42, lines 88–94. 46. The contrast between the Stoics and the Peripatetics is absent here but can be found in ST II-II, q. 158, a. 1 ad 2. 47. See In Iob, c. 5, 35, lines 10–11, 35; see also Thomas Aquinas, In I De Anima, lect. 2, no. 24 (ed. Leon. 45/1, Roma, 1984, 11, line 170).



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who are full of themselves (magni et elati animi),48 because they are more easily offended. Such persons are proud and hence are foolish, whereas Proverbs 11:2 states that “where there is humility there is wisdom.” For Aquinas, this biblical insight is confirmed by Aristotle’s observation in Ethica Nicomacheia VII, 7 (1149a25, etc.) that an angry person to some extent follows reason in seeking vengeance but in a hurried fashion, without properly listening to reason. Aristotle compares such an angry person to a watchdog, barking at a mere knock at the door, without waiting to see if it is a friend. In the words of Aquinas, an angry person “uses it [i.e., reason] perversely when he does not observe the moderation of reason in vengeance.”49 Aquinas returns to this topic when commenting on Job’s statement in 17:7 (“My eye has misted over at the indignation, and my members have been reduced as if to nothing”). Job’s indignation arises over Eliphaz’s claim that Job’s adversities are the result of his sins. Such an indignation, for Aquinas, is justified and characteristic for “the zeal of just men,” because the Eliphaz’s claim is false and a perversion of the rectitude of God’s judgment. The eye of which Job is speaking enables Aquinas to draw a connection with a saying by Gregory in his Moralia in Iob V, 45: “Anger through vice blinds the eye, but anger through zeal disturbs the eye.”50 As he goes on to explain, there is a certain virtuousness in anger when a person, through a zeal for justice, revolts against “evil men,” against “a hypocrite who perverts true teaching,” and in doing so is stirred up (concitetur) against this person and recognizes in himself an “astonishment” (stupor) of his reason, that is “a misting over” of his reason.51 Such a virtuous anger does not blind a man’s reason but disturbs it because of his zeal for justice. Such an anger is therefore a consequence of reason, justified and helpful insofar as it strengthens the person’s spirit. Consequently, it is added in 17:9 that “he will add 48. In Iob, c. 5, 35, line 9. 49. In Iob, c. 5, 35, lines 21–23. 50. See also ST II-II, q. 158, a. 1, ad 2. 51. See In Iob, c. 17, 107, lines 118–28.

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strength to pure hands,” a statement which is confirmed by Aristotle’s Ethica Nicomacheia III, 8 [1116b31, etc.] where it is argued that anger, moderated by reason and experienced out of justice, contributes to establishing the virtue of fortitude. The Future Resurrection Commenting on 7:5 (“My flesh has been clothed in corruption”), Aquinas introduces the question whether the dead can return to their past life, a question inspired by a remark of Augustine.52 Although the negative answer is already present in the text itself (7:9: “Just as a cloud is consumed and passes from existence”), he includes a digression on the difference between two kinds of circular motion, as can be found in Aristotle’s De Generatione II,11 [338b11, etc.]. In this passage Aristotle distinguishes between a circular motion in which the same in number returns, as is the case with incorruptible bodies and a circular motion in which the same in species returns, as is the case with man. Hence, numerically, the same Job cannot return to the state of his past life. As an illustration of the latter, Aristotle mentions the formation of clouds as well. Aquinas’s knowledge of Aristotle’s text not only enables him to see a connection between Job 7:9, the objection mentioned by Augustine, and Aristotle’s distinction and example of the clouds but, more importantly, to discern the cosmology underlying the objection. For, after digressing on Aristotle, he continues by saying that the question of a possible return to the same life operates on the assumption (credebant) that “lower things are disposed according to the motion of the heavenly bodies”53 and that such a disposition would imply a return of numerically the same substance. Such an implication was already disproved by Aristotle. Neither should such a possible return in the case of man, Aquinas continues, be viewed in an all-too-literal way as implying a return to the same possessions or a return to the same state, that is, doing the same things and holding the same offices and honors (7:10). Here, as 52. See De Civitate Dei XII, 13. 53. In Iob, c. 7, 48, lines 209–10.



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well as in Summa contra Gentiles III, 82, where the same text of St. Augustine is referred to, Aquinas is aware that this reasoning seems to run counter to the resurrection “which the faith claims” and which is attested by Scripture. However, for Aquinas, Job is merely denying “a return to the life of the flesh which the Jews posit, and certain philosophers have also posited.”54 Moreover, a return to the same life, as it is attested by Scripture, happens miraculously, whereas Job is merely speaking of what happens “according to the course of nature” (secundum cursus naturae) and is merely “conjecturing” (conici)55 on the basis of what “appears to the senses” as St. Thomas writes in chapter fourteen.56 In that same chapter, indeed, he returns to the position of those who read 14:12 (“so man, when he has fallen asleep, will not rise again; until heaven is worn away, he will not awake”) to mean a restoration of the corporeal universe, including a restoration of numerically the same men. The verse in question could mean that while this world lasts, man will not rise again from the dead. On the basis of what he has said in chapter seven, one can understand St. Thomas’s clear juxtaposition of this view with that of the “Catholic faith,” which does not hold “that the substance of the world but that the state of this world which now exists will perish” (see 1 Cor 7:31). Hence 14:12 continues with “until heaven is worn away,” as if to say, “until the shape of the world has changed.”57 Such a reading corresponds to the intrinsic incorruptibility of the heavens, as argued for by Aristotle in the De Caelo and referred to by St. Thomas.58 In chapter 14, Job begins his own reflections about the resurrection with a general principle from Aristotle’s philosophy of nature, namely, “every being naturally desires to be,”59 and a truly natural 54. In Iob, c. 7, 47, lines 227–30. 55. In Iob, c. 7, 47–48, lines 230–41. 56. See In Iob, c. 14, 92, line 137. 57. See In Iob, c. 14, 92, lines 127–35. 58. See In Iob, c. 14, 92, line 114, with reference to De Caelo I, 6 [270a12]. 59. In Iob, c. 14, 92, line 142, with reference to De generatione et corruptione II, 10 [336b27].

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desire cannot be in vain. Or, in the words of St. Thomas, “it would be very horrendous and miserable if man, through death, were to fail in such a way that he would never be restored to life, since every being naturally desires to be.”60 That the fulfillment of a natural desire cannot be impossible “follows from the presence of finality in the world,” as Leo Elders rightly observes.61 Here St. Thomas, however, does not develop this argument but stays close to the text and in particular to 14:13 (“You appoint a time for me in which You may remember me”).62 Consequently, he observes that “to appoint a time in which God may remember a man who has died, then, is nothing else than to appoint a time for resurrection.”63 It is noteworthy that St. Thomas speaks about “probable reasons,” offered by Job toward the end of the chapter in favor of a future resurrection. In his Summa theologiae, he will refer to these as “signs” or “indications.”64 The argument there can be summarized as follows. Given that the intellect apprehends being “in an absolute way and for all time,” any existing intellect naturally desires always to exist. However, a natural desire cannot be in vain: “Therefore every intellectual substance is incorruptible.”65 In chapter fourteen St. Thomas takes as his starting point the excellence of man, as expressed in 14:20 (“Did You make him mighty for a little while so that he might pass away forever? Will You change his face and send him away?”). Now, the excellence of man consists in his capacity for free 60. In Iob, c. 14, 92, lines 139–43. 61. Leo Elders, The Philosophy of Nature of St. Thomas Aquinas (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997), 284. See also Robert M. Augros, “Nature Acts for an End,” The Thomist 66 (2002): 535–75. 62. I have dealt extensively with these matters in my “‘Si negetur resurrectio corpus, non de facili, imo difficile est sustinere immortalitatem animae.’ Sint-Thomas van Aquino over de onsterfelijkheid van de ziel en de verrijzenis van het lichaam,” in De actualiteit van Sint-Thomas van Aquino, ed. J. Vijgen (Hoofddorp: Boekenplan, 2005), 174–201; and my “Bemerkingen bij het thomistische adagium ‘Appetitus naturalis non potest esse frustra,’” in Indubitanter ad Veritatem, ed. J. Vijgen (Budel: Damon, 2003), 423–45. 63. In Iob, c. 14, 93, lines 159–63. For a more extensive argument in his Scripture commentaries see his In I Corinthians, c. 15, lect. 5, no. 924. 64. ST I, q. 75, a. 6 co. 65. Ibid.



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actions and intellective knowledge. Regarding the latter, St. Thomas claims that “although it is in the mind, some indication of it nevertheless appears in the body” and “especially in the face, which man has very different from other animals.”66 He is implicitly referencing to Aristotle’s Historia Animalium I, 8 (41b9–14) where it is said that the term “face” only applies to men and that the shape of the face, and in particular the shape of the forehead, reveals the intellectual and emotional character of a person. Equipped with this information, St. Thomas can identify the “face” of 14:20 with intellectual knowledge, which, “as is proved by the philosophers, can only fit an incorruptible substance,”67 implicitly referring to passages from Aristotle’s De Anima III, 4 [429a18-b6]. All this enables him to construe an argument from fittingness: “It is not fitting that You change his face, that is, differentiate him from the other animals, and yet dismiss him from state of life forever, never to return, like the other animals.”68 On the basis of this remarkable combination of Aristotelian philosophy and scriptural exegesis,69 I would say that the “probable reasons” of which St. Thomas speaks do not refer to the arguments as such, as if he considers the arguments to be possibly invalid, but refer to the kind of knowledge man can possess of God’s inner life. This is to say that the probability of an individual future resurrection is grounded in the fact that man’s knowledge of God’s inner life cannot be about the necessary dispositions of God’s will but only about what seems fitting, given the harmony between philosophical reasoning and Scripture.

66. In Iob, c. 14, 94, lines 284–86. 67. In Iob, c. 14, 93, lines 308–10. 68. In Iob, c. 14, 93, lines 302–6. 69. Neither in chapter seven nor in chapter fourteen of his commentary does Albert touch upon the issue of immorality and resurrection, let alone construct an argument with the help of Aristotle. See Albertus Magnus, Super Iob, ed. Weiss, col. 110–18 and col. 181–89.

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On numerous occasions throughout the Expositio, St. Thomas uses insights from Aristotle and other philosophers to shed light on troubling passages in the area of natural philosophy.70 In the background of these particular passages stands his view of the divine ordering of nature, as he explains in detail when commenting on 9:5 (“He has moved mountains”). In doing so, he develops an argument for the existence of an ordering, intelligent being “whom we call God,” which is to a large degree identical to the fifth way, including the use of the Aristotelian principle of finality in nature and Aristotle’s example in the Ethica Nicomacheia I, 2 [1094a23] of the archer directing the motion of the arrow. Hence, “the whole operation of nature is fittingly attributed to divine power.”71 This means for St. Thomas that what happens “naturally” is also the result of divine power: “if mountains are overthrown by the operation of nature, it is manifest that the stability of mountains is overcome by divine power.”72 Or, in commenting on 9:7 (“He commands the sun and it does not rise”), he explains that, because the movement of the sky is continuous,73 the sun merely appears to not rise on account of the clouds blocking the sun: “But since such cloudiness happens through the operation of nature, it is fittingly attributed to divine precept, by which all of nature is regulated in its operation, as has been said.”74 Earlier on, in chapter five, when commenting on 5:6 (“Nothing on earth happens without a cause”), St. Thomas had already rejected the idea that everything happens by 70. I take the term “natural philosophy” to refer to both general natural philosophy (cosmology) and special natural philosophy (philosophical anthropology). See Elders, The Philosophy of Nature of St. Thomas Aquinas, Introduction. 71. In Iob, c. 9, 59, lines 122–25. 72. In Iob, c. 9, 59, lines 125–27. 73. See Aristotle, De Caelo, II, 6 [287a23]. In commenting on “and its columns will be shaken” (9:6), he says that, “since an earthquake proceeds from the deep parts of the earth, it seems to be caused by the shaking of the columns, as it were (quasi), of the earth” (In Iob, c. 9, 60, lines 167–70). It seems that Aquinas would perfectly accord with what we now know about the movement of the tectonic plates as a cause of earthquakes. 74. In Iob, c. 9, 60, lines 185–89.



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chance. On the contrary, verse six confirms that everything on earth happens from definite causes, which means that everything has “a natural disposition suited to their proper operation” so that these dispositions “are not without cause but for the sake of a definite end.”75 Another example of the cooperation between natural and divine powers occurs in the context of the generation of man in chapter ten. In commenting on 10:9–11, Thomas observes that Job sees all the works of nature as caused by God, “not in order to exclude the operation of nature but in the way which things which are done through second causes are attributed to the principal agent, as the operation of the saw is attributed to the artisan.”76 The more familiar terminology of principal or primary cause and secondary causes77 is then applied to the various stages of man’s generation, that is, the release of semen, the joining of the male’s semen with the female’s material (materia), the distinction of the organs, the animation of the fetus, and, finally, the preservation of life in the mother’s womb. In expounding the literal sense, St. Thomas looks for support in Aristotle when commenting on 10:10 (“Did You not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese?”). In his De Generatione Animalium, Aristotle viewed the male semen as a residue of useful nourishment and compared the joining of the male’s semen and the female’s material with the action of rennet upon milk, “for rennet is a kind of milk containing vital heat, which brings into one mass and fixes the similar material.”78 Through these passages from Aristotle, the comparisons with milk and cheese become intelligible.79 75. In Iob, c. 5, 36, lines 110–15. It is remarkable that in his comments on 5:6 Thomas nowhere invokes a philosophical authority. Albert, however, writes: “Plato idem in Timaeo: Nihil est, cuius ortum legitima causa non praecesserit” (Super Iob, ed. Weiss, col. 86, lines 5–7). 76. In Iob, c. 10, 71, lines 238–40. 77. On this topic see Michael J. Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012). 78. De Generatione Animalium II, 4 [739b20–22]; for the view that semen is a residue of nourishment see ibid. I, 18 [725b3–726a26]. Albert makes references to the same texts by Aristotle but, as can be expected, refrains from mentioning the animation of the fetus. See Super Iob, ed. Weiss, col. 148, ll. 10–40. 79. On the difficulties but also opportunities of Aristotle’s embryology today, in

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St. Thomas’s willingness to include contemporary scientific insights is further exemplified by his comments on 23:8–9 (“If I go to the east He does not appear,” etc.). For St. Thomas, the phrase could indicate Job’s refusal to locate God in a corporeal place. Hence, St. Thomas inserts a long digression based upon Aristotle’s De Caelo II, 2, wherein Aristotle asks whether, in a manner analogous to the human body, we can assign a left and right, above and below, front and back to the sphere of the heaven. This would result in assigning the right side of heaven to the east. St. Thomas also allows for Averroes’s opinion, namely that the upper part of heaven is the eastern part, because both opinions ultimately involve the same point: God is not closed in locally. A second meaning of verses 8–9, one which in the whole of Job’s reasoning is more intelligible, concerns the idea that the created, inferior effects of the movements of heaven are not sufficient to know God. St. Thomas concludes: “And although He eludes me in this way, yet the things which happen with respect to me do not elude Him. Hence, he adds Nevertheless, He knows my way, that is, the whole process of my life.”80 Whereas Albert considers “the road of vineyards” in 24:18 to be a metaphor for joy, inspired by the pleasantness and satisfaction caused by the fruits of the vineyard, Thomas relies on a comment by Albert himself to the effect that a vineyard requires a temperate place, not excessively hot or cold. Consequently, verse 18 (“let him not walk along the road of vineyards. Let him cross over to the excessive heat from the waters of the snows”) indicates the absence of moderation and the inclination to the extremes of opposite vices (indicated by “heat” and “snow”). Despite this difference in reading “the road of vineyards,” Albert and Thomas agree that the punishment of which Job is speaking is the result of not attaining the Aristotelian mean of virtue.81 particular regarding the infusion of the rational soul, see Kevin Flannery, SJ, “Applying Aristotle in Contemporary Embryology,” The Thomist 67 (2003): 249–78; Flannery (with Maureen L. Condic), “A Contemporary Aristotelian Embryology,” Nova et Vetera (English) 12 (2014): 495–508. 80. In Iob, c. 23, 135, lines 153–56. 81. In Iob, c. 24, 139, line 220: “quia in medio virtutis non manet.” Thomas is referring



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For Aquinas, divine providence extends to natural phenomena as well and, in particular, to the celestial bodies and their ordered arrangement.82 He is aware, however, that, despite some (aliqua) knowledge one can gain, a detailed and exhaustive explanation of these natural phenomena as effects of divine providence exceeds man’s abilities, for “no one is so wise that his knowledge is not far overcome by the excellence of divine splendor.”83 This becomes apparent when commenting on 26:7 (“And He extends the north wind over the empty air and He suspends the earth over nothingness”). First, he compares heaven with a tent and earth with the floor, supporting a tent; he notes that this comparison is the result of what “appears to the senses.” Next, he shows the limits of this comparison, for neither heaven nor earth are in fact supported by another body. Moreover, what appears to our senses is not heaven as such but a space, merely filled with air. As Aristotle recounts in Physica IV, 6 [213a22–231b3], Anaxagoras and other ancient philosophers thought that where there is nothing except air, there is a void. Both Aristotle and Aquinas refute this position; hence, Aquinas refers to this position here as that of “common men” (vulgares homines). He immediately adds, however, that such a way of speaking “is customary in Sacred Scripture.” Finally, Aquinas draws attention to what lies at the heart of divine providence regarding natural phenomena. Divine providence, as expressed in 26:7, does not refer to an interventionist divine power but refers to the divine power as the “principle of nature” which instilled the natural inclinations into the (in) corporeal bodies.84 to Albert’s De vegetabilis libri VII, liber VII, tr. II, c. 4, ed. E. Meyer-C. Jessen (Berlin, 1867), 856, § 171; See Albert, Super Iob, ed. Weiss col. 284, lines 34–35: “via vinearum metaphorice est laetitiarum et gaudiorum.” Contrary to Thomas, Albert mentions Aristotle explicitly, see col. 285, lines 22–24: “Dicit enim Aristotelis, quod vitium in excellentia est, virtus autem in medio.” Thomas turns repeatedly to Albert’s On Minerals to shed light on the origin and composition of the precious metals and stones (sardonyx, sapphire, topaz, etc.) mentioned in chapter 28. Albert largely refrains from such explanations. 82. See for instance his commentary on 9:8–10 and the first section of this chapter. 83. In Iob, c. 36, 91, lines 270–75. 84. See In Iob, c. 26, 145, lines 79–112.

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Among the more straightforward uses of Aristotle are the idea that life is preserved by respiration in De iuventute 5 [472b27] as well as the claim in his Historia Animalium I, 11 [492b10] that respiration happens mainly by way of the nostrils. Both insights are used to provide a foundation in natural philosophy for 27:3 (“as long as there is breath left in me and God’s spirit in my nostrils”).85 In order to account for the use of “silver” and “clay” in 27:16, he refers to Aristotle’s distinction in Politica I, 7 [1257a35] and Ethica Nicomacheia V, 5 [1133a2] between artificial riches such as money, invented to measure the exchange of things, and natural riches, that is, riches which serve the natural necessities of man, such as bread, clothing, etc.86 In chapter 36 Elihu questions Job’s claim that he, Job, has always been just. He accuses Job of being a “pretender” and a “clever” or “cunning” (callidus) man (36:13). Already when commenting on 1:7, Aquinas had described Satan as “cunning,” that is, as pretending one thing and intending another.87 Repeating this description, Aquinas now adds that such men do not easily show repentance because the praise they receive from others instills in them the idea that they act justly. Thomas reads Elihu’s claim in 36:14 (“Their soul will die in the storm and their life among effeminate men”) as a comparison between the pretenders of verse 13 and the effeminate men of verse 14. This comparison enables Aquinas to attribute the cause of such pretending to “smallness of spirit,” that is, the opposite of magnanimity. For, according to Ethica Nicomacheia IV, 3 [1124b26–29], the magnanimous man does not keep who his friends or enemies are a secret, nor does he hide what he does or think, but rather he openly and “publicly divulges his words and deeds.”88 Aquinas’s reading is in marked contrast with that of Albert, who has to rely on the anthropology of “female softness” to explain the “effeminate men” of verse 14.89 85. See In Iob, c. 27, 147, lines 29–39. 86. See In Iob, c. 27, 149, lines 185–205. 87. See In Iob, c. 1, 9, lines 364–67. 88. In IV Ethic., lect. 10, no. 774 (ed. Leon. 47/2, Roma, 1969, 235, l. 165). 89. Albertus Magnus, Super Iob: “Effeminati dicuntur ad mollitiam femineam



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The first lines of chapter 38 deal with the creation of the earth. Both Thomas and Albert read “loins” in verse 3 as referring to concupiscence which impedes “spiritual attention” to the fact that the creation of the earth falls under divine providence.90 More particularly, for Aquinas, the aim of these verses is to show that the earth is not the result of necessary characteristics of the material, as discussed and rejected by Aristotle in Physica II, 9, but rather is the result of a divine operation according to a divine plan, similar to the construction of a building according to the plan of a builder. The construction of a building requires first of all an idea of the size of the foundation of that building (“who set its measurements”); next, the site of building has to be determined (“who stretched the line over it”); furthermore, the basis of the foundation needs to be investigated and chosen (“upon what were its bases founded”); and, finally, the construction can commence with the laying of the cornerstone (“who laid its cornerstone”). Regarding the basis of the foundation, Aquinas follows Aristotle’s idea in De Caelo II, 14 (296b5–15) that the center of the world forms the basis of the earth. One should, however, take into account Aquinas’s observation in his commentary on Aristotle’s text that “although these suppositions [by Aristotle] save the appearances, we are nevertheless not obliged to say that these suppositions are true, because perhaps there is some other way men have not yet grasped by which the things which appear as to the stars are saved.”91 In those things which are not directly accessible to empirical observation, it is enough for Aquinas to “solve the problem with some possible solution from which nothing impossible follows” rather than to search for “a certain and necessary demonstration.”92 As with the creation of the earth, the formation of the sea in reladeducti, qui nullo vitio resistunt, sed ut molles cedunt. Propter quod Aristoteles in VII. Ethicorum dicit, quod mollis peior est incontinente. Is. III, (4): ‘Effeminati dominabuntur eis.’ Mt XI (8): ‘Qui mollibus vestiuntur, in domibus regum sunt’” (ed. Weiss, col. 420, lines 1–8). 90. See In Iob, c. 38, 199, lines 63–65; Albert, Super Iob, ed Weiss, col. 443, lines 15–20. 91. In II De Caelo, lect. 17, no. 451. 92. In I Meteor., lect. 11, no. 68.

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tion to the dry earth is also not the result of a natural phenomenon, related to a characteristic of the material, namely, the sun’s evaporation of the moist earth. An objection to this effect, mentioned by Aristotle in his Meteorologica II, 1 (353b5–10), forms the position,93 which is rejected by the Lord himself in verse 8, when it is asked “Who shut up the sea with doors?” For in Thomas’s reading, this means that “from the beginning [the Lord had disposed] that the sea should not cover the earth” in order to make the generation of living beings possible.94 The comparison of the formation of the sea with the birth of a child in the same verse also finds a foundation in Aristotle’s claims regarding the plasticity of water and the moistness of animal seed.95 Similarly, the Lord’s statement that the sea “put on a cloud as its garment” (vs. 9) finds justification in Aristotle’s analysis of the generation of clouds from the vapors of water in Meteorologica II, 7 (359b27).96 Even the temporal order in which the Lord describes creation finds justification in Aristotle’s philosophy, as we see from Aquinas’s exposition on Aristotle’s Physica (1268–70), composed a few years after his commentary on Job. There Aquinas adds to Aristotle’s text the observation that “the motion of the entire firmament in its daily revolution from east to west” is “the first motion.”97 But already here in his commentary on Job (1263–1265), he uses the same expression. It is on this basis that Aquinas thinks the temporal order in which the Lord speaks is justified.98 The chapter continues by ascribing a wide variety of natural phe93. In his commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorologica, Aquinas attributes the opinion that the sea is the result of the drying-up by the sun of moist earth to Anaxagoras and Diogenes. See In II Meteor., lect. 1, no. 142. 94. In Iob, c. 38, 201, lines 183–85. 95. See De Gen. Anim. III, 11 [761a32] and Meta. I, 4 [983b26]. 96. These justifications from Aristotle’s philosophy of nature are absent in Albert. 97. In VIII Phys., lect. 23, no. 1168. 98. See In Iob, c. 38, 201–2, lines 226–36: “Post terram autem et aquas ulterius procedit ad aerem qui secundum aspectum caelo continuatur; prima autem dispositio communis ad totum corpus quod superiacet aquae et terrae est variatio noctis et diei, quae fiunt secundum motum diurnum qui est primus motuum, et ideo consequenter dicit Numquid post ortum tuum praecepisti diluculo?, quasi dicat: numquid ex praecepto tuo alternantur nox et dies super terram? Diluculum enim est quoddam confinium diei et noctis.”



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nomena such as snow, hail, heat, and winds to the realm of divine providence. Verse 28 (“Who is the father of the rain?”) enables Aquinas to describe in further detail the interplay between natural and divine causes. Aristotle’s claim in his Meteorologica I, 9 [346b20–32] that the efficient, chief, and first principle of natural phenomena is the circular movement of the sun leads Aquinas to identify “the father” with “the efficient cause” of the rain. He underlines again that the causality of which the Lord speaks is not a necessary causality but a providential causality. Explaining the meaning of this providential causality, he writes that “the sun and the other heavenly bodies which are the proximate efficient cause of the generation of rain are moved by God.”99 When the text continues by asking “who has begotten the dewdrops?” and “from whose wombs has come forth the ice?” ( Job 38:28–29), Aquinas again draws on Aristotle’s Meteorologica I, 10 [347a16–25] to note that the cause of ice is cold and the cause of rain and dew is heat. He also draws on Aristotle’s claim in De Generatione Animalium I, 6 [775a6–14] that the male possesses more “natural heat” whereas females are “colder in nature.” Combining these elements, Aquinas finds justification for Scripture’s use of the term “father” as cause of the rain and the term “womb” as the cause of the ice (“from whose womb has come forth the ice,” vs. 29).100 A final example of the use of Aristotle occurs in commenting on 38:37 (“who will make the harmony of heaven sleep?”). On the basis of Aristotle’s arguments in De Caelo II, 9, Aquinas rejects the Pythagorean claim, suggested by verse 37, that the motion of the heavens produce a harmony of sounds.101 The philosophical arguments put forward by Aristotle lead Aquinas to the conclusion that the harmony mentioned in verse 37 must be interpreted metaphorically (metaphorice) as referring to the symmetry (convenientia) of the heavenly motions.102 99. In Iob, c. 38, 205, lines 496–98. 100. Albert, on the contrary, feels no need to justify these male and female terms on the basis of Aristotle; see Super Iob, ed. Weiss, cols. 451–52. 101. In II De Caelo, lect. 14, nos. 420–27. 102. In Iob, c. 38, 207, lines 650–60.

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In this essay I have analyzed a large number of passages in which St. Thomas explicitly or implicitly uses Aristotle’s philosophical insights to shed light on passages difficult to make sense of ad litteram. While it is quite plausible, as Gilbert Dahan remarks, that St. Thomas “wanted to bring in solutions which were acceptable to readers who were familiar with the work of Aristotle,”103 Aquinas’s aim cannot be limited to this formal strategy. Divine providence, the central theme of the book of Job, is already an excellent indication that for Aquinas the use of Aristotle is part of a material argumentation, aiming at both rejecting erroneous views as well as defending Scripture by way of making its underlying philosophical insights intelligible. The doctrine of divine providence fits particularly into this purpose, for in his systematic works, St. Thomas attributes a doctrine of divine providence to Aristotle. Moreover, and, in particular, in Book III of the Summa contra Gentiles, a text contemporaneous with his Expositio super Iob, he relies explicitly upon Aristotelian principles to refute those who limited divine providence. There he also notes that the negation of divine particular providence cannot be gathered from Aristotle’s text.104 Thomas’s position explains the many explicit and implicit references to Aristotle and his Arabic commentators regarding divine providence in his Expositio super Iob.105 The characteristic “sobriety”106 with which St. Thomas approaches the book of Job should not there103. Gilbert Dahan, “Le commentaire de Thomas d’Aquin dans l’histoire médiévale de l’exégèse de Job,” Revue thomiste 119 (2019): 31–54, at 53. 104. For an extensive analysis see my “Did St. Thomas Attribute a Doctrine of Divine Providence to Aristotle?” 105. Historically the doctrine of divine providence appears in several forms among the list of censured propositions of both the condemnations of 1270 and 1277. See R. Hissette, Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 mars 1277 (Louvain-Paris: Publications universitaires, 1977); and Jean-Pierre Torrell, “Dieu conduit toutes choses vers leur fin: Providence et gouvernement divin chez Thomas d’Aquin,” in Ende und Vollendung: Eschatologische Perspektiven im Mittelalter, ed. J. A. Aertsen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 561–94. 106. In Iob, 26*.



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fore mislead us: much more than a general philosophical outlook, Aquinas introduces into the scriptural text genuine philosophical arguments, derived extensively from his preferred philosopher. Similar conclusions could be drawn from the use of Aristotle in the other topics I have selected (passions, resurrection, explanations in the area of natural philosophy). Time and again, St. Thomas employs Aristotle’s insights in order to reject some erroneous view, to clarify a certain term, or to justify the use of a certain comparison or attribution which, from the perspective of a literal reading, seems incongruous. Aristotle is Aquinas’s favored philosophical interlocutor whenever he, as a theologian, is seeking an understanding of the difficulties of the biblical text. The wide range of theological topics and the references to a broad selection of works from the Corpus Aristotelicum in order to shed light on these topics show the ease with which Aquinas combines Aristotle’s philosophical insights with revealed Scripture. As such, his biblical interpretation remains exemplary of the integration of faith and reason.

Matthew Levering

3 The Gospel of John in Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job Matthew Levering

In the opening verses of the Gospel of John, we find God speaking his eternal Word, God bestowing light (and life) through his Word, and God rescuing us from darkness (and death) through his Word incarnate. In the present essay, by attending to Thomas Aquinas’s references to the Gospel of John in his Literal Exposition on Job, I suggest that for Aquinas these central Johannine themes have a notable background in the book of Job. In his Literal Exposition on Job, Aquinas explores the contrast of darkness/light, as well as the power of God’s voice or God’s speaking. When he finds these themes in the book of Job, he draws upon the Gospel of John to exposit them. Notably, this use of the Gospel of John is more than the expected Augustinian procedure of showing that “in the Old Testament the New is concealed, in the New the Old is revealed.”1 Rather, Aquinas’s use of the Gospel of John in his literal commentary on Job flows from what Piotr Roszak calls “the necessity of reading the Bible through 1. Thomas Aquinas, In Gal., cap. III, lect. 8; quoted in Piotr Roszak, “The Place and Function of Biblical Citation in Thomas Aquinas’s Exegesis,” in Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions and New Perspectives, ed. Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 115–39, at 121.



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Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 69 the prism of the Bible as a single work” and “the manner of treating the Holy Scripture as a unity and not as a conglomerate of selected books read in isolation.”2 The way that this procedure works in a literal commentary on the Old Testament, however, has not yet been adequately explored. At the level of historical context and genre, of course, John and Job are far apart; it seems quite a stretch to argue that the Fourth Gospel could teach us about the meaning of Job. But given that the two biblical books are speaking about divine realities and using metaphors drawn from common experience, they are more connected than one might expect, and they are connected in the intention of the divine author. With regard to the themes of darkness versus light and God’s powerful voice in the book of Job, Aquinas’s recourse to John’s Gospel helps him to interpret Job’s meaning in a more theologically sensitive manner, so as to see deeper dimensions of the literal sense of Job. As Roszak puts it, “A biblical citation embedded by Aquinas in his exposition plays the role of a hermeneutic channel which reaches to the resources of the revealed truth whose topicality cannot be limited to one historical period only.”3 Admittedly, Aquinas’s brief references to the Gospel of John do not have a major role in his commentary on Job. In his entire commentary on Job, he only quotes John eleven times. He quotes the Gospel of John as part of casting a wider biblical net for reflection upon a particular verse in the book of Job; and he never says that there is any special relationship between the Gospel of John and the book of Job. In this regard, Roszak is quite right that “the biblical commentaries of Aquinas, frequently constructed from biblical citations which are . . . based only on terminological associations, may cause numerous difficulties for the contemporary reader accustomed to other methods of interpretation of a biblical text.” 4 2. Roszak, “The Place and Function of Biblical Citation in Thomas Aquinas’s Exegesis,” 119, 121. 3. Ibid., 116. See also my Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008). 4. Roszak, “The Place and Function of Biblical Citation in Thomas Aquinas’s Exegesis,” 115.

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Yet, with regard to two crucial themes—darkness/light and God’s life-giving Word or voice—Aquinas helps us to perceive valuable connections between Job and John. I hope to show that, as Roszak says, “in Thomas’s texts these citations are not pure indications of parallel places but their deep enrichment”5—namely, an enrichment of our understanding of Job through the Gospel of John.6 Setting the Stage: Raymond Brown, Francis Moloney, and Andrew Lincoln on Light, Darkness, Word, and Life in the Gospel of John Raymond Brown states, “The dualistic contrast between light and darkness is preponderantly Johannine, although it appears occasionally in other NT works (Luke xi 35; II Cor vi 14; Eph v 8; I Thess v 4; I Pet ii 9).”7 In the Old Testament, Brown remarks, light symbolizes goodness and life, while darkness symbolizes evil and the realm of death. Citing Elizabeth Achtemeier’s article “Jesus Christ, the Light of the World: The Biblical Understanding of Light and Darkness,” Brown notes that one place where this symbolism of light versus darkness occurs is Job 30:26.8 Brown makes clear that for the Gospel of John, “By way of response to the coming of the light, men line up as sons of light or sons of darkness according to whether they come to the light radiant in Jesus or turn away.”9 5. Ibid., 120. Roszak adds that “quotations are not a group of linguistic terms of representations, but a real beginning of theological thinking” (ibid., 123). 6. Regarding the biblical text that Aquinas employs for the Book of Job and the Gospel of John, see two studies cited by Roszak: Gilbert Dahan, “Les éditions des commentaires bibliques de Saint Thomas d’Aquin. Leur apport à la connaissance du texte de la Bible au XIIIe siècle,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 89 (2005): 9–15; G. Lobrichon, “Les éditions de la Bible latine dans les universités du XIIIe siècle,” in La Biblia del XIII secolo. Storia del testo, storia dell’esegesi (Florence: Galluzzo, 2004), 15–34. 7. Raymond E. Brown, SS, The Gospel according to John (i-xii) (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), 515. 8. Ibid.; Brown refers to Elizabeth Achtemeier, “Jesus Christ, the Light of the World: The Biblical Understanding of Light and Darkness,” Interpretation 17 (1963): 439–49. 9. Brown, The Gospel according to John (i-xii), 516.

Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 71 For his part, Francis Moloney places particular emphasis on the Johannine theme of God speaking his Word. For Moloney, it is God’s speaking through his Word (or the Word speaking) that is the source of the “light” not only of creation, but of creation restored and perfected. He understands the “light” of John 1:4 to be descriptive of a “life” guided by knowledge of the Word, a knowledge that is salvific. As Moloney states, “This knowledge provides the life for which humanity yearns, a life that gives sense and direction: light.”10 Here it is God speaking—through the Word, especially through the Word incarnate—that gives the light that the human mind needs in order to live rightly. Sadly, often human beings do not welcome this light that comes from God speaking his Word, but for Moloney the key point that John 1:5 makes through its reference to darkness is that the “light continues to be present despite the hostile reception given to it.”11 Moloney connects John 1:5 with the history of Jesus: “It may appear that humankind responds negatively to the presence of life and light, but such is not the case. The light continues to shine in the darkness.”12 God speaking his Word in the world meets with rejection and contempt, but the light of the Word cannot be quenched and continues to shine for all those who hear, believe, and obey it. Observing that the word generally translated as “overcome” (καταλαμβάνω) can also mean “grasp intellectually,” Moloney warns against supposing that John 1:5 might mean that some people’s minds are too dark to receive the Word. All are “free to accept or reject the light.”13 Thus, Moloney emphasizes the incarnate Word’s unquenchable offering of light to all persons, a light which provides life-giving wisdom about reality. At the same time, Moloney recognizes that in the Gospel of John “darkness . . . is a power for evil which militates against the light” and that people succumb to this “darkness.”14 10. Francis J. Moloney, SDB, The Gospel of John (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1998), 36. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 43. 14. Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel according to Saint John (London: Continuum, 2005), 96.

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Andrew Lincoln provides further insight into the Johannine themes of light versus darkness and God speaking his powerful Word. Lincoln links the powerful “Word” of John 1:1–3 with the Torah and with personified Wisdom. With regard to the connection made by John 1:4 between “life” (in the Word) and “light,” Lincoln points out that “[i]n Judaism . . . Torah brings life (cf. also Deut. 30:15–20; Sir. 17.11), as does Wisdom (cf. Prov. 8:35), while Torah is also light (cf. Ps. 119.105) and Wisdom is ‘a reflection of eternal light’ (Wis. 7.26). Both life and light are linked with Torah in Bar. 4.1–2.”15 The incarnate Word communicates to believers a life-giving participation in divine wisdom or light, perfecting the Torah’s earlier communication. Lincoln underlines the sharpness of the divide between light and darkness. He explains, “The contrast . . . between light and darkness is one that would also have been familiar from Jewish tradition, whether in the creation narrative of Genesis 1:3–5, in apocalyptic writings (cf. e.g., 1 Enoch 89.8) or, in more developed form, in the Qumran literature (cf. e.g., 1QM with its war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness).”16 In Lincoln’s view, as in Brown’s, this view of a war between light and darkness—with people choosing which side they are on through their response to the incarnate Word—characterizes the Gospel of John. In the Gospel of John, as Lincoln says, “God, on the side of light, is ultimately in control and will triumph in the end,” but at the same time “[d]arkness represents the world in its alienation from the true source of life” and “[t]here can be no peaceful coexistence between such darkness and the light.”17 The Gospel of John in Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job I have briefly set forth the basic paths taken by modern biblical scholars with respect to the Johannine themes of light and darkness and 15. Ibid., 99. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid.

Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 73 God speaking his powerful Word. How, then, does Aquinas engage these themes in his Literal Exposition on Job? Can Aquinas’s reading of Job in light of John deepen our understanding of both biblical texts—as we would expect from a faith that is grounded in both the Old and New Testaments? In this central section of my essay, I hope to show for Aquinas’s citations of the Gospel of John in his commentary on Job what Mary Healy has shown for Aquinas’s citations of the Old Testament in his commentary on Romans. Healy states that in expositing Romans, Aquinas “uses Old Testament citations like small spotlights, each shining from a different angle to illuminate another facet of the theological realities that he is expounding.”18 In his Literal Exposition on Job, Aquinas employs John in this very same way to illuminate central theological dimensions of Job. Light and Darkness in Job and John Let me begin with John 3:20, “For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.” In a certain way, this verse is a tragic one, since the very message of John 3 is divine mercy. Recall the well-known text of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The world is sinful and on the path to perishing, but God loves precisely this world. Indeed, God gave his only Son, Jesus Christ, so that sinners might not perish but might instead have eternal life. In Christ, God loves all sinners and wishes to bestow mercy upon all sinners. This point becomes clear in John 3:17, “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” The problem, however, is that “the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (Jn 3:19). In pride, we hate God’s light not least because it seems to demean and humiliate us by identifying us as sinners. 18. Mary Healy, “Aquinas’s Use of the Old Testament in His Commentary on Romans,” in Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 183–95, at 185.

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Aquinas quotes John 3:20, “every one who does evil hates the light,” in his commentary on Job 3:8. Job 3 consists in Job’s extraordinary cursing of the day of his birth, of the fact that he ever saw the light of day. In his mortal misery, Job cries out against conscious existence. He argues that it is better to be dead than to have to endure the troubles that afflict us on our way to annihilating death. Thus, Job 3 contains numerous outcries against day (and life) and in favor of darkness (and death). After urging with regard to the day of his birth, “Let the day perish,” Job says, “Let that day be darkness!” ( Jb 3:4). Job follows up this cry with an ever-increasing intensity: “May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it” ( Jb 3:6); “Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none, nor see the eyelids of the morning” ( Jb 3:9). The imagining of a dawn in which there is no dawn—a sudden absence of any light at the very hour when stars and morning are expected—indicates the end of the cycle of time, a descent into the darkness of nothingness. This is the context of Job 3:8. Job 3:8 itself reads, “Let those curse it [the day of Job’s birth] who curse the day, who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan.” For Aquinas, the first question is what “Leviathan” means here. He suspects that the real meaning of “Leviathan” is found in Isaiah 27:1, “In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.” The connection of Leviathan with a “serpent” sends Aquinas’s mind back to the fundamental “serpent,” the serpent of the garden of Eden who “was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made” (Gn 3:1) and who, as the embodiment of creaturely wickedness, tempted Eve to disbelieve God’s goodness. This “ancient serpent,” says Aquinas, is none other than “the devil.”19 The devil dwells in deep darkness, rejecting and avoiding God’s light. 19. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job: A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence, trans. Anthony Damico (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1989), 104.

Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 75 Who, then, are those who “are skilled to rouse up Leviathan” ( Jb 3:8)? Aquinas answers that they are people who seek to rouse up the ancient serpent, the devil, and to do the works of the devil. By rousing up the devil, such people show that they hate the light, and they thereby “curse the day” ( Jb 3:8). They are sinners who prefer to live in sin rather than come into the light of God. In the passage where he quotes John 3:20, Aquinas explains that such persons “are eager to implement the suggestions of the devil by being ready for the works of iniquity,” and they can be said to “curse the day” (Jb 3:8) “because, as is said in John 3:20, ‘Everyone who does evil hates the light.’”20 But does not Job himself hate the light, since Job is busy cursing the day of his birth and wishing that he had never seen the light? And if so, would not Job be an evildoer, far from sinless, and eager to do the works of the devil? Aquinas responds that in fact Job is simply speaking about adversity, which is indeed hateful, since it is a defect in God’s good gifts.21 Being afflicted by serious disease is not something in which we should rejoice, even though we can rejoice that God can use our afflictions, which God permits, in order to advance us further toward our goal of union with God. As Aquinas says, “both good and evil men detest adversity.”22 With regard to Job 3:8, then, Aquinas argues that those “who curse the day” and “who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan” are in the same spiritual condition as the person described in John 3:20 who “does evil” and “hates the light.” A foundation for the Johannine motif of light versus darkness therefore appears in Job’s powerful cursing of the day on which he was born. Job himself does not hate the light, but Job’s cursing of the day suggests the ability of some people to act on behalf the dark power. John 3:20 appears again with regard to Job 24:13, “There are those who rebel against the light, who are not acquainted with its 20. Ibid. 21. See Roger W. Nutt, “Providence, Wisdom, and the Justice of Job’s Afflictions: Considerations from Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” Heythrop Journal 56, vol. 1 (2015): 44–66. 22. Aquinas, Literal Exposition on Job, 105.

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ways, and do not stay in its paths.” In its context, the description of “those who rebel against the light” belongs to Job’s legal complaint against God. Job insists that “when he [God] has tried me, I shall come forth as gold. My foot has held fast to his steps; I have kept his way and have not turned aside” ( Jb 23:10–11). Despite his innocence, says Job, God is mortally terrorizing him and Job is “hemmed in by darkness” ( Jb 23:17). Job complains that those who “rebel against the light” ( Jb 24:13) and who “are friends with the terrors of deep darkness” ( Jb 24:17) are not punished; their life is prolonged by God’s power. Admittedly, in Job 24:12, where the RSV reads “God pays no attention to their [the victims’] prayer,” Aquinas’s Vulgate text reads “God does not allow this situation to go unpunished.” But this does not affect the point that I am making here. Interpreting Job 24:13, Aquinas understands the “light” against which sinners rebel to be “the light of reason” or “the mandates of wisdom.”23 Job is crying out against those who violate wisdom and the light of reason by murdering “the poor and needy” ( Jb 24:14) and by committing adultery. The fact that such persons “do not stay on its [the light’s] paths” means that they are impenitent: they hold fast to their sins, continuing steadfastly to “rebel against the light.” Aquinas points out that, in contrast, penitent persons, “although they have been rebels against wisdom by sinning, yet return to wisdom through penitence.”24 This condition of impenitent rebellion against the light of wisdom seems congruent with the situation faced by the Word when he entered his rebellious world. Aquinas notes that Job 24 depicts sinners as preferring to do their sins during actual nighttime, thus exhibiting not only a hatred of “the spiritual light of wisdom” but a parallel hatred of the physical light of day.25 The same essential situation, he observes, appears in John 3:20, “For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come into the light, lest his deeds 23. Ibid., 308–9. 24. Ibid., 309. 25. Ibid.

Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 77 should be exposed.”26 Not only do sinners prefer to sin in the night when their neighbors cannot see them, but also this hatred of physical light is paired with a rejection of the Word’s light (divine wisdom) because “men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” I note that John 3:19–20 resolves the problem of divine providence that the RSV text of Job 24 poses, since John 3:19 teaches that those who love “darkness rather than light” have in fact thereby received their “judgment.” The connection that Aquinas draws between the hatred of the light in John 3:20 and the rebellion against the light in Job 24:13 makes even more sense when one perceives that John 3 offers the providential solution (in Christ) to the problem posed by Job 23–24 about the suffering of the good. The scope of the light of reason (or the light of the Word) is a question that Aquinas thinks Job 23 raises. In Job 23:8–9, Job complains that no matter which way he turns, he cannot see God, whereas God can always see Job: “on the left hand I seek him, but I cannot behold him; I turn to the right hand, but I cannot see him” ( Jb 23:9). Why, Aquinas asks, can Job not see God by the light of reason? Aquinas’s quotation of John 9:4 in commenting on Job 23:9 is apt. Preparing to heal a blind man, Jesus says, “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work” ( Jn 9:4). Arguably, “night” here signifies any time when the enlightening Word has been rejected. Citing this text, Aquinas observes that “darkness impedes action,” and he emphasizes that even when humans are in darkness, humans should know that God’s providential action is never impeded by darkness.27 Despite the weakness of our reason, we should not be blind to God’s work, now that the light (the Word) has entered into the darkness of the world.28 Still with respect to the motif of light versus darkness, Aquinas cites John 11:9 in discussing Job 18:5, where Bildad the Shuhite 26. Cited in ibid. 27. See Marcos Manzanedo, “La antropología teológica en el comentario tomista al libro de Job,” Angelicum 64 (1987): 301–31. 28. Just to be clear, Aquinas does not here cite John 1:5; the only verse he cites in discussing Job 23:9 is John 9:4.

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informs Job that “the light of the wicked is put out.” In the broader context of the passage, Bildad has in view the earthly punishments that come upon wicked people. Thus, Aquinas supposes that the “light of the wicked” that is “put out” means (for Bildad) their worldly prosperity. Aquinas seeks to strengthen this interpretation by appealing to John 11:9, where Jesus tells his disciples, “If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of the world.” Jesus clearly means that a person who acts rightly will do so because he sees Jesus (who is the “light”). It seems mistaken, therefore, for Aquinas to quote John 11:9 as affirmation of Bildad’s claim that wicked people will lose their “light,” that is, their worldly prosperity. After all, people who see Jesus (“the light of the world”) and follow him must be prepared to suffer, and Jesus certainly does not promise them worldly prosperity. Aquinas, however, refers human prosperity to two causes: human providence and divine providence. When the wicked reject the light of reason, they lose their human providence and are abandoned by divine providence, with the result that they lose their “light,” their worldly prosperity. Those persons who walk in the light of day, by contrast, are those who pray to God for the success of their worldly endeavors (as reasonable people do, Aquinas thinks) and whose prayers God answers. The point for Aquinas is that acting according to the light of reason—not least by praying—gives good hope that one’s undertakings will “be protected by the light of divine providence.”29 Of course, Aquinas recognizes that Job rightly refutes Bildad’s view that “present adversities always come about because of past sins.”30 So Aquinas’s quotation of John 11:9 is an attempt to make the best possible case for Bildad’s words, by insisting that it matters whether or not we are guided by “the light of the world” even in our earthly undertakings, although at the same time Aquinas (with Job) goes on to make clear that Bildad is wrong to assume that 29. Aquinas, Literal Exposition on Job, 259. 30. Ibid., 264.

Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 79 “the adversities of the present life come about in return for sins.”31 In John 8:34, Jesus warns that “every one who commits sin is a slave to sin.” While this is not the motif of light versus darkness, it is certainly close—since everyone who “is a slave to sin” walks in darkness. Jesus notes that he will be the one who “makes you [sinners] free” ( Jn 8:36) from slavery to sin and darkness. Aquinas quotes John 8:34 in his discussion of Job 9:24. In Job 9, Job is answering Bildad. Professing his innocence, Job contends that God “destroys both the blameless and the wicked” ( Jb 9:22) and that “[t]he earth is given into the hand of the wicked” ( Jb 9:24). In his commentary, Aquinas turns Job’s complaints into a finely woven discourse on the justice of God’s providence. According to Aquinas, Job first pokes holes in Bildad’s arguments and then shows Bildad that in fact God must have a reason for punishing those who appear to be innocent (the punishment of death, for instance, comes to everyone due to original sin). Whether or not one agrees with Aquinas’s interpretation of Job’s speech in Job 9, Aquinas’s reading of Job 9:24, “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked,” retains value. In a certain sense, Aquinas agrees with Job’s claim and even strengthens it. As Aquinas points out, citing John 8:34, “earthly men are left by God under the power of the devil, according to the saying ‘He who commits sin is the slave of sin.’”32 In this regard, then, Job is right that “the earth is given into the hand of the wicked.” But Aquinas adds that Job could not have meant to suggest that the wicked one (the devil) is supremely possessed of earthly reign. The darkness is not so dark as that. Aquinas explains that “dominion over the earth has not been conceded to the devil absolutely, so that . . . he can freely do on it what he wishes.”33 On the contrary, whatever the devil “is permitted to do proceeds from the divine disposition which dispenses everything according to reasonable cause; hence, the very fact that the innocent are punished does not depend absolutely on 31. Ibid., 263–64. 32. Ibid., 177. 33. Ibid.

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the malice of the devil but on the wisdom of God permitting it.”34 One further quotation of the Gospel of John in Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job pertains tangentially to the motif of light versus darkness. Namely, in commenting on Job 24:20, Aquinas refers to John 15:2. In Aquinas’s Vulgate translation, Job 24:20 reads, “Let mercy forget him. Let his sweetness become a worm. Let him not be in remembrance, but let him be destroyed like an unfruitful tree.”35 The point about being “destroyed like an unfruitful tree” raises in Aquinas’s mind the remark of John the Baptist that “every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Mt 3:10), and Aquinas could also have cited the same teaching from the lips of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Mt 7:19). But although Aquinas cites Matthew 3:10, the lesson that he draws comes from John 15:2, where Jesus teaches that “[e]very branch of mine that bears no fruit, he [the Father] takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”36 Aquinas moves from Job’s image of a person being cut down like a tree that bears no fruit to Jesus’ Johannine image of branches being pruned. Some branches are cut away because they bear no fruit, while other branches are cut back so that they might bear more fruit. Aquinas’s point is that what looks like the same punishment can either be for our destruction or for our salvation: “Impious men . . . are punished for their extermination but just men for their improvement.”37 According to Aquinas, Job 24 is distinguishing between the punishments that people endure in hell and the punishments that people mercifully endure here on earth so as to help them repent 34. Ibid. Aquinas is not pretending that the suffering of innocent victims is easy to understand. He recognizes the difficulty of “search[ing] into divine matters with a desire to know the truth” (ibid., 181), although he thinks that God does not will to leave us in the dark about the goodness of divine providence. 35. The RSV is quite different, ending with “so wickedness is broken like a tree.” 36. See ibid., 311. 37. Ibid., 311.

Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 81 and go to heaven. The former is punishment that does not alleviate spiritual darkness, whether the latter is a punishment that enables one to embrace the light. God’s Powerful, Life-Giving Voice or Word Thus far, my focus has been on the ( Johannine) theme of light versus darkness in Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job. For Aquinas, the book of Job is pointing to the providential coming of the light (Christ), a light that vindicates the light of wisdom or reason. Without this providential light, the darkness might be mistakenly thought to reign unrestrained or to have overcome the light. The second theme that recurs in Aquinas’s quotations of the Gospel of John in his Literal Exposition on Job is that of God’s life-giving voice or Word. John 5:25 and 5:28 are particularly significant here. Jesus states, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. . . . Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice” ( Jn 5:25, 28). Aquinas interprets Job 14 and 19 in light of this passage from the Gospel of John. Let me first discuss Job 14. Aquinas recognizes that in this chapter, Job is expressing “his desire concerning rising again,” and Aquinas equally recognizes that “desires sometimes are for even impossible things.”38 In Aquinas’s view, of course, Job believes that he will be resurrected—something that Aquinas thinks is confirmed by Job 19:25–27. Since for Aquinas it is a given that Job will be resurrected, the question is how such a thing will occur: will it occur by a natural means (as a tree that is cut down “will sprout again” [ Jb 14:7]) or by the divine power? The answer, says Aquinas, comes in Job 14:15. Imagining his resurrection from the dead, Job here says to God: “Thou wouldest call, and I would answer thee.” Aquinas takes this to mean that Job holds that resurrection comes from God’s power rath38. Ibid., 228.

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er than any creaturely power. Furthermore, not merely God’s power, but the “voice” or Word of God will be responsible. Aquinas explains that the text of Job 14:15 should be read as though Job were saying to God that the resurrection of the dead “will proceed from the power of Your voice or from Your command, according to the text of John 5:28: ‘All who are in tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear it will live.’”39 The divine “call” that the dead Job hopes to hear will come, according to John 5:28, from none other than the “voice of the Son of God.” This “voice” will be life-giving and will resurrect the dead. This way of connecting John 5:28 (and 5:25, which uses the same language) with the wish of Job 14:15 for resurrection from the dead is compelling. Even if, as I think, Job 14:15 does not express an actual belief that God will raise Job, nonetheless Job 14:15 certainly does express its desire for resurrection in terms of a divine call or a divine voice. Similarly, in John 5:28 we find resurrection coming about through the powerful “voice of the Son of God.” Of course, this connection may simply be based on a ready image of calling someone to arise from the grave. But even so, it still strikes me as significant that the desire of Job that God call him forth from the grave is answered in John’s Gospel by Jesus’ promise to call forth the dead. In the Gospel of John, the incarnate Word promises to speak powerfully at the consummation of all things “when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth” ( Jn 5:28–29). The incarnate Word who speaks at the inauguration and consummation of the kingdom of God will grant Job his longed-for “release” ( Jb 14:14) from death. Aquinas notes that “to call pertains to command,”40 and certainly God’s commanding voice (or Word) stands at the heart of the book of Job and the Gospel of John. Commenting on Job 19:25, “For I know that my Redeemer lives,”41 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., 228–29. 41. Modern scholars recognize that the garbled Hebrew text of Job 19:25–27 is difficult, even impossible, to understand clearly. The majority of exegetes today hold that Job is talking not about his own bodily resurrection at the end of time (let alone about Jesus

Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 83 Aquinas refers to John 5:25. Recall that John 5:25, like 5:28, describes God’s life-giving voice as being the cause of the resurrection of the dead: “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.” Why does Aquinas cite this particular text with regard to Job’s statement that “I know that my Redeemer lives”? After all, it seems this text is about the Redeemer’s being alive, rather than about the dead in general. By connecting Job 19:25 and John 5:25, however, Aquinas is seeking to make a point about the life of the incarnate Word. Namely, this particular life (Christ’s) is the source of the life of all the resurrected dead. All will share in the life of Christ. In citing John 5:25, Aquinas explains that “the life of the risen Christ . . . will be poured out to all men in the common resurrection,” and he goes on to add that it is the Word—“the life of the Son of God”—that “is the principal cause of the resurrection of man.”42 Since the Word is our Redeemer, furthermore, Job can rightly say that “my Redeemer lives” even prior to the Incarnation. The main point is that it is the Word’s life, inclusive of but most certainly not limited to his incarnate life, that makes possible our resurrection. This focus on the Word connects with John 5:25’s emphasis on the “voice” of the divine Son. What makes the “voice of the Son of God” life-giving for all the dead is that this voice is that of the divine Word, through whose divine life it is possible for dead humans to have resurrected life. In this regard, Aquinas also quotes John 5:26, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”43 In the same context, Aquinas adds a quotation from John 6:40, where Jesus says that “every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” Here the connection is to the second half of Job 19:25, which in the as Redeemer) but about a kinsman-redeemer who will press Job’s case after Job’s death. However, there are notable scholars who hold that Job 19:25–27 has in view a postmortem resurrected life, for example, J. Gerald Janzen, Job (Atlanta, Ga.: John Knox Press, 1985). 42. Aquinas, Literal Exposition on Job, 269. 43. See ibid.

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Vulgate translation reads “on the last day I will rise from the earth.”44 The connection specifically has to do with the “last day.” Aquinas takes the opportunity to refute the notion of “eternal return” or reincarnation. He states that “here one should consider that certain men, positing that the movement of heaven and this state of the world will last forever, have posited that after a fixed number of revolutions of years, with the stars returning to the same positions, dead men may be restored to life.”45 The emphasis in Job and John on the “last day,” says Aquinas, makes clear that no such reincarnation is to be expected. On the contrary, far from eternally recurring, the movements of the heavenly bodies will cease, and the time of their ceasing will indeed be the “last day.” Aquinas does not mention it, but I note that this point fits with the emphasis on God’s life-giving voice that I examined above. In Genesis 1 and John 1, God speaks the cosmos into existence by his life-giving Word, and his Word will bring about the end of cosmic time and the radically transformative new creation that is a sharing in the incarnate Word’s risen life. Aquinas recognizes that Job 14:10–12 is “said on the supposition that nothing remains of a man after death” since “man . . . seems to be consumed by death in such a way that nothing remains of him.”46 In Aquinas’s view, Job brings up this supposition in order to refute it.47 In a certain sense, Aquinas points out, Catholic faith gladly grants that death produces a radical change, since the “state of this world which now exists will perish.”48 The world that we see around us is quite different from the consummated new creation. In this sense, everything will be destroyed. The movements of the stars will not go on forever, and there will be no reincarnation.49 44. The RSV reads “at last he will stand upon the earth.” 45. Ibid., 270. 46. Ibid., 226–27. 47. I think that Job raises the supposition because, at this stage in the narrative, Job believes it. 48. Ibid., 227. 49. See Carlo Leget, Living with God: Thomas Aquinas on the Relation between Life on Earth and “Life” after Death (Leuven: Peeters, 1997).

Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 85 Yet, as Aquinas notes, “the substance of the world” will not be annihilated, but rather will be transformed.50 Aquinas holds that the fact that the substance of the world will endure (rather than being annihilated) indicates how it is that the resurrection of the dead can take place. The world will come to an end, and precisely at that end (the end of the heavenly movements and the end of this world, though not the end of the substance of the world), the new creation and the resurrection of the dead will occur. Aquinas here cites John 11:24, where Martha tells Jesus about her dead brother Lazarus, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”51 Aquinas is accentuating the fact that resurrection, unlike reincarnation or a mere continuance of earthly life, involves the end of time. Here we do not have God’s life-giving voice or Word raising the dead, but it is implied from what we have seen above. Lastly, Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job quotes two additional places where the Gospel of John refers to God’s powerful voice or Word. The first comes in Aquinas’s discussion of Job 37:20, “Shall it be told him that I [God] would speak? Did a man ever wish that he would be swallowed up?” In Aquinas’s Vulgate version, the text reads differently: “Who will recount to him what I [God] am saying? Even if he speaks, a man will be devoured.” Aquinas interprets this verse to mean that in our present state, the glory of God’s knowledge—if God spoke to us without condescending to our weakness—would infinitely surpass our ability to understand. In this context, Aquinas quotes John 16:12, “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”52 In this life, we cannot bear “the splendor of divine knowledge,” although “within the darkness of the ignorance of this life is found some gleam, albeit obscure, of divine knowledge.”53 Here we do not find the emphasis on God’s Word as life-giving, but we do find a profound appreciation for the glory and 50. Aquinas, Literal Exposition on Job, 227. 51. See ibid. 52. See ibid., 412. 53. Ibid., 412.

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power of God’s Word, which goes infinitely beyond anything we can know. Such a Word, when spoken, could certainly raise the dead. Similarly, Aquinas reflects upon Job 38:1’s statement that God answers Job “out of the whirlwind.” What is the significance of “whirlwind” here? Aquinas considers a literalistic reading, whose possibility he does not deny: it could be that “God’s voice was formed miraculously in the air with a kind of disturbance of the air.”54 In fact, people do sometimes hear God’s voice in this way. Among his examples of such a way of hearing God’s voice, Aquinas offers Exodus 20:18’s description of the people hearing God’s voice giving the Decalogue to Moses. The people hear “thunderings . . . and the sound of a trumpet.” The same thing occurs in John 12:29, also cited by Aquinas in this connection,55 where the divine Father’s voice speaks “from heaven,” but the people hear thunder rather than words. What is the meaning of such audible thunderings? Is God trying to conceal his own voice metereologically? Aquinas responds that the thunderings, like the “whirlwind” (whether or not the latter describes an actual physical reality), signify the “obscurity” that veils God’s voice or word because it is too strong, too glorious.56 Aquinas explains that “we cannot perceive divine inspiration in this life clearly but with a kind of dark impression of sensible likenesses.”57 The thunderings and the whirlwind remind us that God’s Word, not being like our words in any way, is profoundly beyond us and cannot be easily known and understood. Only such an awe-inspiring Word, I note, has the power to give life. In John 12:29, God the Father glorifies his name by judging the world’s sin and overthrowing the devil’s rule through the lifting up of his Word upon the Cross, a Word of life-giving mercy that gives “eternal life” ( Jn 12:50). This same Word was present when God “laid 54. Ibid., 415. 55. See ibid., 416. 56. Ibid., 416. 57. Ibid., 416.

Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 87 the foundation of the earth . . . when all the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” ( Jb 38:4, 7). John 12 and Job 38 enrich each other, both insisting upon the glory and power of God’s Word, and both observing—from within the mystery of suffering and divine presence—that God manifests his glory by graciously giving life. Conclusion In both patristic-medieval and modern biblical commentaries on the New Testament, the Old Testament is necessarily an active presence, since the New Testament authors refer extensively to (Old Testament) Scripture. But in modern biblical commentaries on the Old Testament, the New Testament is much less employed, for obvious reasons. Aquinas, however, values the Gospel of John in his Literal Exposition on Job. I have sought in this essay to understand how Aquinas uses New Testament Scripture in probing the meaning of Old Testament Scripture, given that Aquinas holds that Scripture is a providentially ordered unity, a canon whose parts should mutually illumine each other.58 Specifically, after discussing how modern Johannine scholars treat the themes of light and darkness and the divine Word, I examined the eleven citations of the Gospel of John that appear in Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job. For Aquinas, I argued, John illumines passages in Job that involve the motif of light versus darkness (and thus the status of sinners) or the motif of God’s life-giving voice or Word (and thus the promise of resurrection at the last day). Since these two motifs have a central place in the Gospel of John, Aquinas thinks of John when Job uses similar language or addresses similar concerns. Does Aquinas succeed in illuminating Job via John? Or do the 58. See also Matthew Levering, “Aquinas’s Reception of Paul: Reading the Testaments Together,” Letter & Spirit 11 (2016): 83–101; Levering, “A Note on Scripture in the Summa theologiae,” New Blackfriars 90 (2009): 652–58.

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references to John draw Aquinas away from the text of Job and fail to illuminate Job’s meaning? No doubt not all the references are equally successful, although in the above I tried to give each one its due. But I think that much more often than not, Aquinas succeeds both in illuminating Job and in illuminating John. As Mary Healy describes Aquinas’s approach to the theological unity of the Bible, “The texts determine the synthesis, not the other way around.”59 Consider for example his references to the dead hearing the voice of the divine Word or Son, a Johannine theme. The impact of this passage in John (see Jn 5:25, 28) is significantly enriched, in my view, by the connection that Aquinas makes to Job 14, where Job expresses the wish that when he is dead, God would call to him—restoring his life—and he would respond. When we are dead, we want God to call to us; we want to hear God’s voice. How joyful it will be to hear the incarnate Word raising the dead! Similarly, the connections that Aquinas draws between the awesome mystery of God’s voice or Word in Job and John resonate deeply with anyone who has reflected on what it means to hear God’s Word. The connection between what the Gospel of John says about those who hate the light illumines what Job says about those who “curse the day” ( Jb 3:8) by helping us to penetrate more deeply into the mystery of sin. God’s life-giving Word comes to release the world from its slavery to sin and death. John Yocum has pointed out with regard to Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job: “It was Thomas’ task to interpret the specific text under examination within an understanding of the truth that derives from reflection on the Bible as a whole, which then informs further reading of the Bible.”60 Thus, Aquinas’s understanding of the doc59. Healy, “Aquinas’s Use of the Old Testament in His Commentary on Romans,” 193. Of course, as Healy says, “Thomas assumes the fundamental unity of the canon. . . . For Thomas, the unity of the canon is ultimately grounded in a theology of history that recognizes all history as a divine plan at the center of which is the Lord Christ” (ibid., 193–94). 60. John Yocum, “Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” in Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to His Biblical Commentaries, ed. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM Cap., Daniel A. Keating, and John P. Yocum (London: T&T Clark International, 2005), 21–42, at 28.

Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job 89 trine of providence or the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, has a significant impact in informing his reading of the book of Job. Indeed, there is a circular relationship between Aquinas’s scriptural exegesis and doctrinal reflection.61 In this circular relationship, the Gospel of John no doubt plays a larger role in the Literal Exposition on Job than can be isolated by attending solely to its eleven citations of John. Yet, unlike commentaries on Job that continually find spiritual or hidden reference to the Gospels, Aquinas’s commentary on Job seeks to determine the book’s literal sense, the meaning intended by the human author.62 Aquinas therefore quotes the Gospel of John only when he thinks that it sheds light on what the text of the book of Job means. In this respect, the presence of the Gospel of John in Aquinas’s commentary on Job is perhaps less than it would have been otherwise. The eleven citations of the Gospel of John in Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job flow from the central themes of the Gospel of John. They help us to see how these central themes resonate with the book of Job. Ultimately, Job’s message consists in the cry of a sufferer in a world where wickedness flourishes, who yearns for communion with God after death and who recognizes the power and mystery of the Creator God. The Johannine Word of God who overcomes darkness—the merciful light of the world who overcomes the darkness of sin and death—echoes and answers the central concerns of Job. 61. See the essays in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 2005). 62. See Leo Elders, SVD, “Le commentaire de Saint Thomas d’Aquin sur le Livre de Job,” in Elders, Sur les traces de saint Thomas d’Aquin: Étude de ses commentaires bibliques. Thèmes théologiques (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2009), 82–122); Mary L. O’Hara, CSJ, “Truth in Spirit and Letter: Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Maimonides on the Book of Job,” in From Cloister to Classroom: Monastic and Scholastic Approaches to Truth, ed. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1986), 47–79. See also P. Zerafa, “Il commento di San Tommaso al libro di Giobbe tra esegesi antica e esegesi contemporanea,” Angelicum 71 (1994): 461–507.

Part 2 Providence and Suffering

Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP

4 The Incomprehensible Wisdom of God in the Expositio super Iob Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP Translated by David L. Augustine

In his article “The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice,”1 Hans Jonas in his own way brings the dilemma of Epicurus2 up to date when he reckons that, in the face of the massive evidence of evil, of which Auschwitz is the dark epiphany, it is impossible to sustain the “classical” depiction of a God who is simultaneously omnipotent, good, and wise (or intelligible): 1. Hans Jonas, “The Concept of God after Auschwitz: A Jewish Voice,” The Journal of Religion 67, no 1. ( Jan. 1987): 1–13. 2. The dilemma of Epicurus is formulated (and refuted) by Lactantius, A Treatise on the Anger of God, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004), 271: “God, [Epicurus] says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? or why does He not remove them?” Cf. Hermann Usener, Epicurea, frag. 374 (Leipzig: Tuebner, 1888), 253.



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We can have divine omnipotence together with divine goodness only at the price of complete divine inscrutability. Seeing the existence of evil in the world, we must sacrifice intelligibility in God to the combination of the other two attributes. Only a completely unintelligible God can be said to be absolutely good and absolutely powerful, yet tolerate the world as it is. Put more generally, the three attributes at stake—absolute goodness, absolute power, and intelligibility (Verstehbarkeit)—stand in such a logical relation to one another that the conjunction of any two of them excludes the third.3

Now, for a religious mind, there can be no question, according to Jonas, of renouncing either the goodness or the intelligibility of God: exit, therefore, God’s omnipotence, which Jonas at any rate reckons to be a self-contradictory concept. The only God who passes the test of evil innocently is a feeble God. Much could be said about the manner in which Jonas conceives of God’s omnipotence, but it is above all necessary to contest his understanding of the divine “comprehensibility.” Jonas is perfectly right to say that revelation implies in its very concept the idea that God is intelligible; that is to say, that we are able to know something of his being and of his intentions. Jonas also knows that this understanding of God remains limited for us. However, he seems to think that the de facto impossibility of giving an account of the existence of evil in a world governed by an omnipotent God (which is unintelligible for us) amounts to denying the intelligibility of God in himself, as if intelligibility were a univocal notion. It seems to me that Jonas thereby misjudges the very nature of the faith that emerges from biblical revelation. In the night of the trial, which disconcerts his intelligence and plunges it into a very real darkness, the believer is the one who has sufficient confidence in the infinite wisdom of the infinitely good and omnipotent God to be convinced that his designs are a priori good and intelligible in themselves, even if they do not appear as such to the believer’s present limited comprehension. The incomprehensibility for us of God’s ways, which the faith confesses, is not synonymous with absurdity. It means that the believer 3. Jonas, “The Concept of God after Auschwitz,” 9.



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must simultaneously hold the unfathomable character for us (quoad nos) of God’s designs and their wisdom (intelligibility) and intrinsic goodness. The search for the proper connection between the incomprehensibility and intelligibility of God is a central theme of St. Thomas Aquinas’s commentary on the book of Job, for the good and simple reason that this theme lies at the heart of the biblical book itself. Who more than Job was confronted with God’s “incomprehensible ways” without ever renouncing the search for their meaning? St. Thomas therefore develops throughout his Expositio super Iob ad litteram a solid theology of God’s incomprehensibility (in his being and action) without ever sacrificing God’s intelligibility or placing in doubt the wisdom and the intrinsic justice of his “ways.” In fact, the transcendent God, whose judgments are “unsearchable” and whose ways are “inscrutable” (Rom 11:33), is not a God beyond good and evil, an arbitrary God who, according to the formula of Pope Benedict XVI in his Regensburg lecture, “is not even bound to truth and goodness.”4 The Thomist doctrine of analogy, whose theological importance Benedict XVI underscored, expresses here the proper equilibrium of the Christian faith.5 Even if the wisdom 4. Pope Benedict XVI, “Meeting with the Representatives of Science,” delivered at the University of Regensburg (September 12, 2016), cited at vatican.va: “In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God’s voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God’s freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which . . . lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God’s transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions.” 5. Ibid.: “As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which—as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated—unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our be-

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(intelligibility) and the justice that God displays in his government of the world are not univocal to our created wisdom and justice, to the point that at times they take on paradoxical forms in our eyes— “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Cor 1:25)—God’s wisdom and justice are nevertheless the transcendent source of, and can be analogically contemplated through, our created wisdom and justice. The aim of this study is to reconstruct the teaching of St. Thomas on the theme of the incomprehensible wisdom of God, as developed in the Expositio super Iob ad litteram according to the modes proper to a commentary on Scripture, which are not exactly those of systematic theology. Four steps will mark our course. First, we will establish the general framework in which this reflection is inscribed: the intrinsic intelligibility of the universe, created and governed by the Logos-Wisdom and therefore penetrated throughout with intelligibility. Everything participates in this transcendent Wisdom, and this diversified participation of creatures in Wisdom constitutes the ontological foundation that allows for analogically attributing to God wisdom and justice in his government. Second, we will gather together the teaching of the Expositio on the reasons for God’s incomprehensibility to human wisdom. Third, we will see that the diverse forms of supernatural knowledge, most notably infused wisdom, do indeed allow us to go further in understanding the mystery of God’s wisdom and justice but do not suppress God’s incomprehensibility. Finally, as a fourth step, we will establish that, for St. Thomas, this divine incomprehensibility—because it results not from divine absurdity, nor from the arbitrariness of a God who would like to keep the human being at a distance, but from the inherent super-intelligibility of the mystery of God—stimulates man half. Certainly, love, as Saint Paul says, ‘transcends’ knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is Logos. Consequently, Christian worship is, again to quote Paul—‘λογικη λατρεία,’ worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).” See also Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience ( June 16, 2010), “Saint Thomas Aquinas (2),” available from https://w2.vatican.va.



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to interrogate and search, insofar as he is able, for an understanding of the unfathomable ways of God. In the Beginning Was the Logos Thomas’s vision of the world is structured in a thoroughgoing way by the metaphysical schema of participation. God is subsistent Being in whom all creatures participate, according to their diverse modalities. Likewise, God is subsistent Truth (Intelligibility) and Wisdom in whom all creatures participate.6 God, Subsistent Wisdom Job’s discourse on wisdom (ch. 28), its origin and inestimable worth, puts to work this general vision. Job there describes the procession of Wisdom; that is to say, the manner in which wisdom, which has its origin in God, is diffused throughout the whole creation: To show the root of wisdom, then, [ Job] adds: God understands its way [ Jb 28:23], that is, the whole process of wisdom, since He Himself is both the origin of wisdom and “the place of understanding” (v. 20). And since He knows Himself perfectly, therefore Job adds and He knows its place, that is, He knows Himself, in Whom wisdom is found fully as in its first origin.7

The first place of wisdom, its “natural place” so to speak, is the divine intellect, which is to say, God himself, insofar as by knowing himself he is the model or transcendent archetype of all things. The source of Wisdom, the place of the divine ideas, can therefore be appropriated to the Word.8 This wisdom in its source is perfectly known only by God alone, because, according to an insight that 6. Cf. Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP, “La théologie de la vérité dans la Lectura super Joannem de saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 104 (2004): 141–66. 7. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 28 (337–38). Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Iob ad litteram (hereafter, In Iob) (ed. Leonina, vol. 26, Rome, 1965), c. 28, lines 282–88 (154): “Ut ergo ostendat sapientiae radicem subdit ‘Deus intelligit viam eius,’ idest totum sapientiae processum, dum et ipse est et origo sapientiae et ‘locus intelligentiae’ et quia ipse se ipsum perfecte novit ideo subdit ‘et ipse novit locum illius,’ idest se ipsum in quo plene sapientia invenitur sicut in prima origine.” 8. Cf. In Iob, c. 28, lines 257–58 (154).

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comes from the Cappadocians’ controversy against the rationalism of Eunomius, only the infinite is capable of understanding the infinite, namely, knowing it as much as it is knowable, fully embracing its intelligibility.9 The “Procession” of Wisdom Wisdom is the principle of creation, since it is by contemplating this wisdom, which he himself is, that God created.10 It follows that every action of God ad extra (creation and government in the natural as well as in the supernatural order) aims to spread and communicate this wisdom to creatures: Now wisdom is distributed from Him into all the creatures which are made through God’s wisdom just as art derives from the mind of the artisan in his work. Hence, it is said in Ecclesiasticus 1:10 that “God pours out wisdom over all His works.” Hence, too, the whole number of creatures itself is, as it were, a kind of secondary place of wisdom.11

Just as a work contains, as objectified in it, an idea conceived in the mind of the craftsman, so also the created universe is the place of an objective wisdom, derived from the divine mind and inscribed in the being and nature of creatures. As the work of an intelligence, the universe is radically intelligible. It is always thought in act by God.12 9. Cf. ibid., c. 40, lines 98–102 (214): “Bonitas autem Dei infinita est, cuius notitia perfecta non est nisi apud Deum, et ideo gloria in solo Deo est inquantum se ipsum cognoscit, ad quam gloriam homo pervenire non potest nisi participando cognitionem divinam.” On the understanding that God has of himself, see St. Thomas, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 14, a. 3 et loci par. 10. In Iob, c. 28, lines 327–32 (155): “Quia vero ex ipsis creaturis sapientiam non acquirit sicut nos sed potius ex sua sapientia creaturas produxit, ideo subiungit ‘Tunc,’ scilicet quando creaturas faciebat, ‘vidit illam,’ scilicet sapientiam in se ipso, inquantum per actualem suae sapientiae considerationem res in esse produxit.” 11. In Iob, c. 28, lines 288–94 (154): “Derivatur autem sapientia ab ipso in omnes creaturas quae per Dei sapientiam fiunt, sicut ars derivatur a mente artificis in opere eius, unde dicitur Eccli. I, 10 quod ‘Deus effundit sapientiam super omnia opera sua’; unde etiam ipsa universitas creaturarum est quasi quidam secundarius sapientiae locus.” 12. The universe is thought in act by God since it exists in him as in its cause in a synthetic mode. Cf. In Iob, lines 294–307 (154): “Ad ostendendum quod Deus cognoscit locum sapientiae, subiungit quod ipse cognoscit universitatem creaturarum. . . . Et



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Among spiritual creatures, who participate still more in the divine perfection, the intelligibility spread throughout the universe attains to consciousness of itself. In spiritual creatures, intelligibility is participated in not only in an objective mode by reason of their nature, but also in a subjective mode by reason of their knowledge. In accord with an idea dear to St. Augustine,13 St. Thomas explains that the divine wisdom is communicated according to two (or three) principal axes: Now from Him, of course, was wisdom first distributed to the angels, who became participants of divine wisdom, and with respect to this fact he says and He explained in detail [ Jb 28:27] His wisdom, namely, manifesting it to them. Second, it was distributed to the whole number of creatures by disposing it through His wisdom, and to this fact pertains the addition and he prepared, namely, in His wisdom the world. Third, it was distributed to men, who do not perceive the wisdom of truth through simple apprehension as do the angels, to whom it is explained in detail, but who arrive at it by inquiry of reason. Hence, he adds and He investigated [ Jb 28:27], that is, He made men investigate it.14 ne aliquis crederet quod notitiam rerum habeat a rebus acceptam sicut nos habemus, ostendit consequenter quod cognoscit res sicut omnium causa.” 13. Cf. St. Thomas, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 56, a. 2: “As Augustine says (Gen ad lit. lit. ii), such things as pre-existed from eternity in the Word of God, came forth from Him in two ways: first, into the angelic mind; and second, so as to subsist in their own natures. (Sicut Augustinus dicit, II super Gen. ad Litt., ea quae in verbo Dei ab aeterno praeextiterunt, dupliciter ab eo effluxerunt, uno modo, in intellectum angelicum; alio modo, ut subsisterent in propriis naturis).” The English and Latin of ST have been taken from: Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, in 8 vols., trans. Laurence Shapcote, OP, ed. John Mortensen and Enrique Alarcón (Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012). All citations from ST are from this edition. Cf. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, II.8.16, in Saint Augustine, On Genesis, ed. John E. Rotelle, OSA, and trans. Edmund Hill, OP (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 2002), 155–506, at 170: “The fashioning of heaven . . . was first in the Word of God in terms of begotten Wisdom, then it was made next in the spiritual creation, that is, in the knowledge of the angels, in terms of the wisdom created in them, and only next after that was the heaven made, so that the actual created heaven might be there in its own specific kind” (“Conditio vero coeli prius erat in Verbo Dei secundum genitam Sapientiam, deinde facta est in creatura spiritali, hoc est in cognitione angelorum secundum creatam in illis sapientiam: deinde quod coelum factum est, ut esset iam ipsa coeli creatura in genere proprio”). 14. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 28 (338–39). In Iob, c. 28, lines 332–44 (155): “Ab ipso autem sapientia derivata est primo quidem ad angelos qui facti sunt participes sapientiae divinae, et quantum ad hoc dicit ‘et enarravit,’ scilicet sapi-

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The divine mind is reflected first in the noetic mirror of God that is the angel, since God, when he creates the angel, deposits in it “a noetic patrimony,”15 that is, an ensemble of species or ideas, which are participations in the creative ideas of God and allow the angel to know all things by knowing itself.16 The same divine mind likewise diffuses itself in the cosmos in an objective mode. The teleological processes that are at work in physical nature give evidence of an immanent intelligibility that refers back to a transcendent intelligence, according to the principle Opus naturae est opus intelligentiae, which is the basis of the quinta via.17 At many points, the Expositio concerns itself with the natural instinct that dictates the behavior of animals. The immanent finality manifested by this instinct imitates the rational behavior of the human being,18 but it refers back to an intelligence that can only be that of the Creator who regulates the whole activity of nature.19 entiam suam eis manifestando; secundo vero ad universitatem creaturarum eam per sapientiam suam disponendo, et ad hoc pertinet quod subdit ‘et praeparavit,’ scilicet in sapientia sua orbem terrae; tertio ad homines qui non per simplicem apprehensionem percipiunt sapientiam veritatis, sicut angeli quibus enarratur, sed per inquisitionem rationis ad eam perveniunt, unde subdit ‘et investigavit,’ idest homines eam investigare fecit.” 15. Tiziana Suarez-Nani, Connaissance et langage des anges selon Thomas d’Aquin et Gilles de Rome (Paris: J. Vrin, 2002), 32. 16. On angelic knowledge, see Serge-Thomas Bonino, Angels and Demons: A Catholic Introduction, trans. Michael J. Miller (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 131–51. 17. Cf. James A. Weisheipl, “The Axiom ‘Opus naturae est opus intelligentiae’ and Its Origins,” in Albertus Magnus, Doctor universalis 1280–1980, ed. Gerbert Meyer and Albert Zimmerman (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 1980), 441–63; Ludwig Hödl, “‘Opus naturae est opus intelligentiae.’ Ein neuplatonisches Axiom im aristotelischen Verständnis des Albertus Magnus,” in Averroismus im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance, ed. Friedrich Niewöhner and Loris Sturlese (Zürich: Spur, 1994), 132–48. See, for example, Thomas Aquinas, De Ver., q. 3, a. 1; De pot., q. 1, a. 5. 18. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In Iob, c. 37, lines 119–129 (194): “Quod autem opus cuilibet tempori congruat discernit homo secundum rationem sibi divinitus datam, et hoc est signum quod Deus posuit in manu, idest in operativa virtute, omnium hominum ut sciant congrue distribuere sua opera diversis temporibus. Et ista providentia usque ad animalia bruta protenditur quae quodam naturali instinctu diversis temporibus diversa operantur, unde subdit Ingredietur bestia latibulum suum,’ scilicet tempore pluvioso, ‘et in antro suo morabitur,’ scilicet tempore congruo.” 19. Cf. In Iob, c. 39, lines 297–302 (211): “‘Numquid ad praeceptum tuum elevabitur aquila,’ scilicet sicut ad meum? Facit enim hoc aquila naturali instinctu: omnis autem



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As for the human being, situated at the horizon of the material and spiritual worlds, he participates in the objective immanent wisdom of the cosmos by reason of his created nature, but he is also called, like the angel, to be a noetic mirror of the divine mind. This properly noetic participation of the human being in the divine wisdom is however realized in two ways, indirect and direct, or, again, natural and supernatural. On the one hand, in accordance with his nature, the human being acquires wisdom little by little by turning himself toward the corporeal creatures that surround him and by assimilating through the work of reason the wisdom that is immanent in them. However, on the other hand, somewhat like the angel’s way of thinking, but by grace and not by nature, the human being is able to receive a superior infused wisdom directly from God, by virtue of a more intimate union with God, the First Cause.20 At many points in the Expositio, St. Thomas makes reference to these two manners in which the human being gains access to wisdom: the natural enquiry of reason and supernatural inspiration. For example, in chapter 33, he writes: By the statement God speaks once [ Jb 33:14], namely, to a man, reference may be made to the instruction of the mind, which is through the light of natural reason, according to Psalm 4:6–7: “Many men say: Who shows us good things?,” and, as if in response it adds, “The light of your countenance is observed upon us, oh Lord,” and by this light, namely, we can distinguish good from evil. And since natural reason remains immobile in a man so that it is not necessary to repeat it, he therefore adds and He does not repeat the same thing a second time. Next he shows another way by which God speaks to a man—through an imaginary vision in the apparition of dreams. Hence, he adds through a dream in a vision in the night. This phrase, of course, can refer to prophetic revelation, according to Numbers naturalis cursus rerum est quaedam motio creaturae ad praeceptum Dei, secundum illud Psalmi ‘Ignis, grando, nix, glacies, spiritus procellarum, quae faciunt verbum eius.’” 20. Cf. In Iob, c. 28, lines 344–50 (155): “‘Et dixit [Deus] homini’ [ Job 28:28], scilicet per interiorem inspirationem illuminando ipsum et sapientiam communicando: ‘Ecce timor domini,’ quem scilicet praesentialiter tibi do, ‘ipse est sapientia,’ quia per timorem Domini homo Deo inhaeret in quo est vera sapientia hominis sicut in altissima omnium causa.”

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12:6: “If anyone will be a prophet of the Lord among you, through a dream or in a vision I will speak to him,” or it can even refer to common dreams, which Elihu believed were divinely procured.21

The Incomprehensibility of God to Human Reason Acquired Wisdom The human person therefore gains access to a certain wisdom, theoretical and practical, by scrutinizing creatures in the natural light of reason and by appropriating in some way the wisdom diffused in them. This natural light of reason is a participation in the divine light.22 It is already a gift from God. Because of this gift, the human person is put into possession of the first principles of reason, both in the theoretical order and in the practical order. Thanks to these, he is capable of integrating little by little in the course of his experienc21. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 33 (375). In Iob, c. 33, lines 144– 60 (175–76): “‘Semel loquitur Deus,’ scilicet homini, referatur ad mentis instructionem quae est per lumen rationis naturalis, secundum illud Psalmi ‘Multi dicunt: quis ostendit nobis bona?,’ et quasi respondens subdit ‘Signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui, Domine,’ per quod scilicet discernere possumus bonum a malo; et quia naturalis ratio immobiliter in homine manet ut non sit necesse eam iterare, ideo subdit ‘et secundo id ipsum non repetit’; et deinde ostendit alium modum quo Deus homini loquitur per imaginariam visionem in apparitionibus somniorum, unde subdit ‘per somnium in visione nocturna’: quod quidem potest referri ad propheticam revelationem, secundum illud Num. XII 6: ‘Si quis fuerit inter vos propheta Domini, per somnium aut in visione loquar ad eum,’ vel potest referri etiam ad communia somnia quae credebat Eliud divinitus procurari.” Cf. likewise ibid., lines 237–43 (177): “Tripliciter ei Deus [est] locutus: primo quidem per naturalem rationem sicut ad omnes homines, secundo arguendo per somnia, dixerat enim supra ‘Terrebis me per somnia et per visiones horrore concuties,’ tertio per infirmitatem, dixerat enim supra XXX, 16: ‘Nunc in memet ipso marcescit anima mea,’ etc.”; c. 34, lines 305–7 (183). 22.The fact that the light of reason has its first origin in God means that it participates in some way, with regard to its origin, in the mystery of God and his incomprehensibility. Cf. In Iob, c. 28, lines 233–58 (154): “Est enim humanae sapientiae origo occulta dupliciter: uno modo ex parte intellectualis luminis quod derivatur ad nos ab occultissima omnium causa, scilicet a Deo. . . . ‘Et quis est locus intelligentiae,’ idest a quo principio homines lumen intellectus participant? Ostendit autem hoc principium excedere omnem cognitionem humanam, unde subdit ‘Abscondita est ab oculis omnium viventium,’ quia ‘fons sapientiae est verbum Dei in excelsis,’ ut dicitur Eccli. I, 5.”



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es the particular bits of knowledge needed to advance toward wisdom. To take a comparison from the world of computers, human intelligence is like a blank disk that is already formatted (thanks to the first principles), capable of integrating the bits of information that I communicate to it little by little. The first principles, as instruments of the Active Intellect, are therefore like the seeds of wisdom.23 The passage from seed to savory fruit is the result of a process that is inscribed in time. By means of experience, the person gathers particular bits of knowledge, verifies them,24 and begins to organize them into a coherent system. As a path toward wisdom, experience assumes a high noetic and moral worth. The book of Job makes reference many times to the authority of the aged in matters of wisdom, something that follows precisely from the long temporal duration of their experience: [ Job] manifests how men arrive through experience to a knowledge of divine things, saying, Does not the ear distinguish words, namely, when it hears them, and does not the mouth of one eating distinguish flavor? Since experience is from sensation, he fittingly manifests through the judgment of the senses the power of experience, and especially through hearing and taste, since hearing, among all the senses, is most able to be trained; hence, it is most valuable to the contemplative sciences. Now taste is perceptive of the foods which are necessary to man for life; hence, through the judgment of taste he signifies the experience which one has of the elements of an active life. And on this account, from the judgment of the two senses he shows the power of experience as much in speculative as in practical pursuits when he adds In the ancients there is wisdom, which pertains to contemplation, namely, since the ancients heard many things; and in much time prudence, which pertains to action, since, namely, in much time men taste many things, useful or harmful.25 23. Cf. In Iob, c. 38, lines 621–27 (206): “‘Quis posuit in visceribus hominis sapientiam?’ Per viscera hominis intelliguntur intimae vires animae ipsius, scilicet intellectus et ratio, quibus Deus sapientiam indidit inquantum lumen rationis homini dedit: quaedam seminaria sapientiae et scientiae naturaliter indidit rationi ipsius in cognitione primorum principiorum.” 24. Cf. In Iob, c. 8, lines 127–30 (54): “Experimentum enim in rebus particularibus maxime efficax est ad probandum, et tanto magis quanto diuturnius est observatum et infallibile inventum.” 25. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 12 (207). In Iob, c. 12, lines

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The experience that leads to wisdom is not solely that of the individual but also the patrimony of accumulated and already systematized experiences that is transmitted from generation to generation in a given culture. The quest for wisdom thus presents a social and historical dimension that the Prologue of the Expositio sheds light upon, when St. Thomas describes the progress of human reflection on providence: Just as in the case of things which are generated naturally there is a gradual development from the imperfect to the perfect state, so it happens in the case of men with respect to the knowledge of truth; for in the beginning what they have attained of the truth is slight, but afterwards, step by step as it were, they come to some fuller measure of the truth. For this reason it has happened that, from the beginning, many men have erred because of imperfect knowledge concerning the truth.26 169–188 (81): “Manifestat quomodo homines per experimentum in rerum cognitionem deveniant, dicens ‘Nonne auris verba diiudicat,’ scilicet dum ea audit, ‘et fauces comedentis saporem’ nonne diiudicant? Quia experimentum a sensu est, convenienter per iudicium sensuum virtutem experimenti manifestat, et praecipue per auditum et gustum, quia auditus inter omnes sensus est disciplinabilior, unde plurimum ad scientias contemplativas valet; gustus autem est perceptivus ciborum qui homini sunt necessarii ad vitam, unde per iudicium gustus experimentum significat quod de rebus activae vitae habetur. Et propter hoc ex iudicio duorum sensuum ostendit virtutem experimenti tam in speculativis quam in operativis, cum subdit ‘In antiquis est sapientia,’ quae ad contemplationem pertinet, quia scilicet antiqui multa audierunt; ‘et in multo tempore prudential,’ quae ad actionem pertinet, quia scilicet in multo tempore homines multa degustant, utilia vel nociva.” Cf. In Iob, c. 15, lines 88–90 (97): “Per maiorem autem vetustatem maiorem sapientiam vult intelligi, quia per experimentum longi temporis aliquis sapientior redditur”; c. 32, lines 71–76 (172): “Senes per experientiam longi temporis multa cognoscere potuerunt et per consequens sapientius loqui, unde sequitur ‘et annorum multitude,’ propter quam scilicet experimentum accipi potest, ‘doceret sapientiam’ scilicet ex experimento acceptam.” 26. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, Prologue (67). In Iob, Prologus (3): “Sicut in rebus quae naturaliter generantur paulatim ex imperfecto ad perfectum pervenitur, sic accidit hominibus circa cognitionem veritatis; nam a principio parvum quid de veritate attigerunt, posterius autem quasi pedetentim ad quandam pleniorem mensuram veritatis pervenerunt: ex quo contigit multos a principio propter imperfectam cognitionem circa veritatem errasse.” To cite texts where St. Thomas describes the progress of reflection upon the first principles of reality all the way to the discovery of creation: Summa contra Gentiles, II, c. 37 n. 1129–30, lines 1261–62; De pot., q. 3, a. 5, 1265–66; ST, Ia, q. 44, a. 2, 1266/1268; Sententia super Physicam, VIII, lect. 2, 1268/69; De substantiis separatis, c. 9, after 1271.



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However, wisdom does not reside in the accumulation of particular bits of knowledge but in their systematic organization according to the very nature of the things known, the noetic order reflecting the ontological order. More precisely, wisdom consists in knowing and judging things from their highest, and hence most explicative, causes. It is thus that the wise man, by virtue of a kind of twofold analysis or resolutio,27 first searches for the hidden properties of things, their essence (immanent causes), so as then to rise from them to the recognition of God (transcendent cause), true wisdom consisting above all in knowing God: For the origin of human wisdom is hidden in two ways . . . in another way on the side of things known, into the hidden properties and essences of which wisdom inquires, and [it] ascends from them to a knowledge of divine matters which is especially appropriate to wisdom.28

Knowledge and Lack of Knowledge of God The knowledge of divine things, in which human wisdom reaches its fulfillment, nevertheless remains very partial and, on several occasions, St. Thomas emphasizes its structural limits. He compares human knowledge of divine things to a vague glimmer on a background of darkness—“within the darkness of the ignorance of this life is found some gleam, albeit obscure, of divine knowledge”—like an uncertain dawn that permits one to praise God but with a praise that is still very trembling and hesitant.29 The reason for the imperCf. Gilbert Dahan, “Ex imperfecto ad perfectum: Le progrès de la pensée humaine chez les théologiens du XIIIe siècle,” in Progrès, réaction, décadence dans l’Occident médiéval (Geneva: Droz, 2003), 171–84. 27. Jason A. Mitchell, “The Method of Resolutio and the Structure of the Five Ways,” Alpha et Omega 15 (2012): 339–80. 28. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 28 (336). In Iob, c. 28, lines 233–39 (154): “Est enim humanae sapientiae origo occulta dupliciter: . . . alio modo ex parte rerum cognitarum quarum occultas proprietates et essentias sapientia inquirit, et ex his in divinorum cognitionem ascendit, quae maxime sapientiae appropriatur.” 29. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 37 (412). In Iob, c. 37, lines 341–52 (197): “Sicut in tenebris septentrionis invenitur fulgor auri, ita etiam inter tenebras ignorantiae huius vitae invenitur aliqua licet obscura refulgentia divinae cognitionis, unde subdit ‘et a Deo formidolosa laudatio’: si enim nihil divinae lucis in nobis fulgeret,

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fect character of this knowledge does not come from the Object: God is infinitely intelligible. Rather, it follows from the nature and modalities of human knowledge. Our knowledge of God is an indirect knowledge that takes creatures as its point of departure: “all of a man’s knowledge and speech about God is through His works, which, nevertheless, neither Job nor any other man can know perfectly.”30 Through creatures, analyzed in the light of reason, the human person is able to recognize with certitude the existence of God as provident wisdom at work in creation,31 but this knowledge of God and his ways comes up against a twofold limit to which Aquinas keeps returning in the Expositio:32 the knowledge that we have of creatures is very imperfect; and, even supposing that it could be perfect, this knowledge would not procure a perfect knowledge of God for us on account of the disproportion between the divine cause and the created effects. Among the numerous passages of the Expositio that make reference to this twofold limit, the following text from chapter 11 is particularly explicit.33 St. Thomas begins by recalling the principle that governs all of our knowledge of God: nullatenus eum laudare possemus; rursus si fulgeret nobis divina veritas manifeste sicut in meridie, eum secure laudaremus, sed quia in nostra cum quadam obscuritate nobis aliquid de divina luce fulget, cum formidine ipsum laudamus, sicut cum formidine homo facit illud quod scit se perfecte facere non posse.” 30. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 36 (403). In Iob, c. 36, lines 267–69 (191): “Tota hominis cognitio et sermo est de Deo per opera eius, quae tamen neque Iob neque aliquis alius homo perfecte cognoscere potest.” 31. Cf. In Iob, c. 12, lines 139–45 (80): “Omnia confitentur se a Deo esse facta; tunc autem homo creaturas interrogat quando eas diligenter considerat, sed interrogatae respondent dum per considerationem ipsarum homo percipit quod tanta ordinatio quae invenitur in dispositione partium, in ordine actionum, nullo modo posset esse nisi ab aliqua superiori sapientia dispensante.” Fools (stulti) attribute to chance or to fortune the events that in the course of human affairs seem out of the ordinary, but the wise man refers them to a higher cause, providence. Cf. ibid., c. 5, lines 223–234 (37). 32. In Iob, c. 11, lines 51–52 (75): “Considerandum autem quod ab intellectu divinorum duplici ratione deficimus.” 33. Cf. In Iob, c. 11, lines 51–165 (75–77); c. 36, lines 275–80 (191): “Cognitio hominis longe distat a perfecta comprehensione divinae essentiae, tum quia non potest homo nisi per opera cognoscere quae in infinitum distant ab excellentia essentiae eius, tum quia etiam opera eius perfecte homo non cognoscit.”



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Will you perhaps comprehend God’s tracks? [ Jb 11:7] Tracks [vestigia] are the signs of one proceeding [procedens] along a way. Now God’s works are called his ways, and the production of creatures by God is understood as a kind of proceeding of God towards His creatures, inasmuch as divine goodness, derived from Him in Whom it exists simply and supremely, proceeds by degrees to its effects when superior creatures are found to be better than inferior creatures. God’s tracks, then, are certain signs found in creatures by which God can to some extent be known through creatures.34

Aquinas here signals the first structural limit that affects our knowledge of God: the imperfection of our knowledge of creatures, which constitutes our point of departure. But since the mind of man cannot know even the creatures themselves totally and perfectly, it is much less able to have perfect knowledge about the Creator Himself, and therefore he goes on, asking and will you find out the Almighty perfectly? [ Jb 11:7], as if to say: If you cannot know the creatures perfectly, much less can you know the Creator. And he says expressly will you find out, because through a kind of inquiry reason proceeds from effects to the cause, and when it knows the cause through its effects we are said to come upon it.35

Next St. Thomas mentions, as still more fundamental, the second structural limit that affects our knowledge of God: the disproportion between the effects (creatures) and their cause (Creator). 34. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 11 (197). In Iob, c. 11, lines 106–14 (76): “‘Forsitan vestigia Dei comprehendes.’ Vestigia signa sunt per viam procedentis; opera autem Dei viae ipsius dicuntur, et productio creaturarum a Deo quidam processus Dei intelligitur in creaturas, prout divina bonitas ab eo in quo simpliciter et summe existit gradatim ad effectus derivata procedit dum superiora inferioribus meliora inveniuntur: vestigia ergo Dei sunt signa quaedam in creaturis inventa, ex quibus per eas Deus aliquatenus cognosci potest.” 35. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 11, 197–98. In Iob, lines 115–24 (76): “Sed cum humana mens nec ipsas creaturas totaliter et perfecte cognoscere possit, multo minus et de ipso creatore perfectam notitiam habere potest, et ideo interrogando subdit ‘et usque ad perfectum omnipotentem reperies?’ Quasi dicat: si creaturas perfecte cognoscere non potes, multo minus nec creatorem; et signanter dicit ‘reperies’ quia per quandam inquisitionem ratio ab effectibus procedit ad causam, quam dum per effectus cognoscit eam dicimur invenire.”

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It is no wonder that the Creator is not perfectly known if the creatures are not perfectly known, since even if the creatures were perfectly known the Creator still would not be. For the cause can be known perfectly through the effects only when the effects equal the power of the cause, which cannot be said about God; therefore, Zophar adds He is higher than heaven, and what will you do? He is deeper than hell, and whence shall you know Him? Longer than the earth is His measure and wider than the sea [ Jb 11:8– 9]. . . . [Zophar] shows that God cannot be found perfectly in His creatures, since, even if it were granted that all creatures were perfectly known, power equal to that of the Creator could not be known from them. What means, then, can be taken to come to know the power of God, since it exceeds every creature? And he signifies this difficulty when he says what will you do?, and whence will you know Him?36

Creatures Do Not Adequately Express the Mystery of God The second structural limit just mentioned in our knowledge of God directly results from the very nature of the creative act. Creation is not a generation. God does not communicate his very nature to an effect that is thenceforth exactly like him (as is the case in the generation of the Son by the Father in the Holy Trinity). The creative act does not constitute a univocal causality but an equivocal one; that is, a causality in which the effect is not on the same ontological level as the cause. It follows that God does not exhaust his power in the creative act. There is consequently a gap between the power of the First Cause and its effects, whether these be taken individually or collectively. This “gap” prohibits the intelligence from ascending from these effects to perfect knowledge of the First Cause. 36. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 11 (198). In Iob, lines 125–49 (76–77): “Nec est mirum si creaturis non perfecte cognitis creator non perfecte cognoscitur, quia etiam creaturis perfecte cognitis adhuc creator non perfecte cognosceretur : tunc enim per effectus perfecte causa cognosci potest quando effectus adaequant causae virtutem, quod de Deo dici non potest, et ideo subdit ‘Excelsior caelo est, et quid facies ? Profundior inferno, ? Longior terra mensura eius et latior mari’ [ Jb 11:8]. . . . Ex hoc ergo ostendit quod perfecte in creaturis inveniri non potest, quia dato quod omnes creaturae perfecte cognoscerentur, ex eis cognosci posset virtus ei aequalis: quod ergo medium sumi potest ad cognoscendum virtutem Dei secundum quod excedit omnem creaturam? Et hoc significat cum dicit ‘quid facies?’ Et ‘unde cognosces?’”



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Since creatures do not adequately express the power of the divine essence, a knowledge that starts from creatures does not permit one adequately to know the divine essence: We cannot find Him out worthily [ Jb 37:23], namely, so that through our finding Him out we may come to know Him as He is. This happens, of course, as a result of His excellence. Hence, Elihu adds He is great in strength, namely, because His power infinitely exceeds all His effects; hence, He cannot be worthily found out through them.37

Earlier, Aquinas had maintained that most aspects of God’s power necessarily remain hidden from creatures: Since we can only know the “unseen attributes of God through things which have been made” [Rom 1:20], but things which have been made fall far short of the power of the Maker, it is necessary that there remain many things to be considered in the Maker which are hidden from us, and these things are called the secrets of God’s wisdom, concerning which he says I wish that He would show you the secrets of His wisdom [ Jb 11:6].38

A few chapters later, St Thomas’s commentary insists on the incompressible discrepancy between the divine cause and its created effects, which prohibits the created intelligences from any adequate knowledge of God: And lest anyone believe that these effects, great though they may be, are equal to divine power, he adds Look! These things have been said about a part of His ways [ Jb 26:14], that is, of His works, by which we ascend to a knowledge of God and God communicates Himself to us in a way. And lest these things seem, even if not to equal the whole divine power, never37. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 37 (413). In Iob, c. 37, lines 352–58 (197): “‘Digne eum invenire non possumus,’ ut scilicet per nostram inventionem perveniamus ad eum cognoscendum sicuti est; quod quidem ex eius excellentia contingit, unde subdit ‘magnus fortitudine,’ quia scilicet eius virtus in infinitum excedit omnes suos effectus, unde ex eis inveniri digne non potest.” 38. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 11 (196). In Iob, c. 11, lines 52–58 (75): “Primo quidem quia cum ‘invisibilia Dei’ cognoscere non possimus nisi ‘per ea quae facta sunt,’ ea vero quae facta sunt multum deficiant a virtute factoris, oportet quod remaneant multa in factore consideranda quae nobis occultantur, et haec vocantur secreta sapientiae Dei, de quibus dicit ‘Ut ostenderet tibi secreta sapientiae.’”

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theless, to approach an equality with it in large part, he adds and since we have scarcely heard a small drop of His speeches, who will be able to look upon the thunder of His greatness? [ Jb 26:14], as if to say: The proportion of all the things which have now been said about the effects of divine power to divine power is smaller than the proportion of one small speech, dripping silently, as it were, to the loudest sound of thunder.39 The structural incomprehensibility of God to the intelligence of spiritual creatures is therefore not an incomprehensibility by default, as is the case with the incomprehensibility of realities that have a weak ontological level.40 It is a matter of an incomprehensibility by way of excess that results from the transcendence (excellentia) of God as compared to all of his works.

Humans Do Not Adequately Know Creatures Not only would a perfect knowledge of all creatures not allow us adequately to know the essence of God, but it must be noted—and this redoubles the difficulty—that we do not even have an adequate knowledge of God’s created effects. One of God’s strategies, when he intervenes at the end of the book of Job to settle the debate on providence, consists in convincing man of his ignorance of creatures 39. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 26 (321–22). In Iob, c. 26, lines 197–210 (146): “Et ne aliquis crederet hos effectus licet sint magni divinam potentiam adaequare, subdit ‘Ecce haec ex parte sunt dicta viarum eius,’ idest operum eius quibus et nos in Dei cognitionem ascendimus et Deus nobis se quodammodo communicat. Et ne videantur haec etsi non totam divinam potentiam adaequare tamen ex magna parte ad eius aequalitatem accedere, subiungit ‘et cum vix parvam stillam sermonum eius audierimus, quis poterit magnitudinem tonitrui eius intueri?,’ quasi dicat: omnium quae nunc dicta sunt de effectibus divinae potentiae, minor est comparatio ad divinam potentiam quam unius parvi sermonis quasi silenter stillantis ad maximum tonitrui sonum.” Cf. ibid., c. 23, lines 117 (134): “Vel possunt haec verba induci . . . ad ostendendum quod non potest sufficienter per inferiores effectus inveniri; inter omnes autem effectus in rebus corporalibus apparentes universalior est et maior motus firmamenti, et quamvis manifeste appareat huius motus principium in oriente, tamen huius motus principium non sufficienter demonstrat infinitatem divinae virtutis, unde dicit ‘Si ad orientem iero’ [ Jb 23:8], scilicet progressu meae considerationis, quasi considerans principium motus firmamenti, ‘non apparet,’ scilicet sufficienter per hanc considerationem.” 40. Cf. In Iob, c. 36, lines 280–86 (191): “Deus per suam excellentiam hominis cognitionem excedit, unde subdit ‘Ecce Deus magnus vincens scientiam nostram’: quod enim a nobis perfecte Deus cognosci non possit non contingit propter defectum ipsius, sicut contingit de motu et tempore, sed propter eius excellentiam”; c. 37, lines 354–55 (197).



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by displaying before Job’s eyes the amazing wonders the creation holds. How could one who does not know what surrounds him be able to pretend to know God himself and to claim to judge God’s ways? “Now all of these questions are introduced to show that man is not able to attain either divine wisdom or divine power”:41 I will question you and you respond to Me [ Jb 38:3]. This questioning of God, of course, is not for the purpose of learning but to convince the man of his ignorance. Now he questions Job about His effects which are available to the human senses, and when the man is shown not to know them he is much more convinced of having no knowledge of more sublime matters.42

The ignorance in which man finds himself vis-à-vis creatures takes, in the Expositio, two principal forms.43 First, human knowledge comes up against de facto physical limitations. Certain phenomena remain unknown to us because they escape our observation and are outside the reach of the sensible experience that is the point of departure for all of our knowledge.44 41. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 38, (429). In Iob, c. 38, lines 608–11 (206): “Haec autem omnia inducuntur ad ostendendum quod homo non potest attingere neque ad sapientiam neque ad virtutem divinam.” Cf. ibid., c. 40, lines 2–6 (213): “In praecedentibus Dominus per commemorationem mirabilium quae apparent in eius effectibus demonstravit suam sapientiam et virtutem, ut ex hoc manifestum sit quod nullus homo nec sapientia nec potestate potest cum Deo contendere.” 42. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 38, (417). In Iob, c. 38, lines 75–81 (199–200): “‘Interrogabo te et responde mihi,’ quae quidem interrogatio Dei non est ut addiscat sed ut hominem de sua ignorantia convincat. Interrogat autem ipsum de suis effectibus qui humanis sensibus praesto sunt, quos cum homo ignorare ostenditur multo magis convincitur sublimiorum scientiam non habere.” 43. Oddly enough, St. Thomas does not make reference in the Expositio super Iob to the thesis that he sets forth elsewhere, according to which the essence of physical beings largely escapes us. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, The Sermon-Conferences of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles’ Creed, ed. and trans. Nicholas Ayo, CSC (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 21–23: “If we were able to know perfectly all things visible and invisible, it would be foolish to believe what we do not see. But our knowledge is weak to such a point that no philosopher would be able to investigate perfectly the nature of a single fly. Thus, one reads that one philosopher spent thirty years in solitude that he might know the nature of a bee. Therefore, if the human intellect is so weak, is it not foolish to be willing to believe about God only those things that human beings are able to know by themselves?” 44. In Iob, c. 28, lines 54–122 (151–52): “Deinde prosequitur de aliis rebus quae habent determinatum tempus et locum ex dispositione divina, unde divinae cognitioni

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Second, St. Thomas argues that, even supposing the human being had a perfect knowledge of the principles and laws of natural science (principia naturalia), that would still not suffice for him to understand the created world. In chapter 5, in order to refute the deniers of providence who claim that everything is produced by virtue of the necessity inherent in physical causes, St. Thomas affirms with Eliphaz the Temanite that there exist, among the realities of this world, some “inscrutable” things and some “wondrous” things ( Jb 5:9). The “inscrutable things” are those that, in themselves, escape the rational investigation of the natural scientist, “for example, spiritual substances, [or] the distances of the stars.” The “wondrous things” are those that, unlike inscrutable things, are accessible to our experience but for which we are not able to give a rational explanation.45 subiacent pleraque ipsorum quae ab hominibus sunt occulta. . . . Inveniuntur etiam quaedam ab hominibus occulta propter locum invium, sicut quandoque sunt quidam montes inaccessibiles in quibus sunt quaedam invisa hominibus. . . . Sunt etiam quaedam loca non propter situm sed propter aliqua accidentia inaccessibilia. . . . Haec autem quamvis hominibus sint occulta, Deum tamen non latent qui et in montibus et in fluminibus suam virtutem exercet.” 45. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 5 (131). In Iob, c. 5, lines 163–83 (37): “Rursus si omnia ex necessitate principiorum naturalium provenirent, cum principia naturalia sint nobis nota haberemus viam ad inquirendum omnia quae in hoc mundo sunt; sunt autem aliqua in hoc mundo ad quorum cognitionem nulla inquisitione possumus pervenire, utpote substantiae spirituales, distantiae stellarum et alia huiusmodi; unde manifestum est non procedere omnia ex necessitate principiorum naturalium sed ab aliquo superiori intellectu res esse institutas, et propter hoc addit ‘et inscrutabilia.’ Item quaedam sunt quae videmus quorum rationem nullo modo possumus assignare, puta quod stellae disponuntur secundum talem figuram in hac parte caeli et in alia secundum aliam; unde manifestum est hoc non provenire ex principiis naturalibus sed ab aliquo superiori intellectu, et propter hoc addit ‘et mirabilia’: sic enim differt inscrutabile et mirabile quod inscrutabile est quod ipsum latet et perquiri non potest, mirabile autem est quod ipsum quidem apparet sed causa eius perquiri non potest.” Cf. ibid., c. 9, lines 231–38 (60): “Tertio Dei sapientia commendabilis apparet ex hoc quod Deus multa condidit secundum suae sapientiae rationem quae mirabilia hominibus apparent, et eorum rationem investigare non possunt, et haec praecipue sunt quae in situ et dispositione stellarum apparent, quae tamen a Deo sapientissime et rationabiliter sunt instituta”; lines 274–281 (61): “‘et inscrutabilia,’ quae scilicet homines scrutari non possunt propter eorum instabilitatem, quae tamen divina gubernatione ordinantur . . . ; ‘et mirabilia,’ quorum scilicet rationes homines considerare non possunt licet a Deo secundum rationem sint facta.” St. Thomas considers that the reasons for the celestial movements escape human



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Application to the Divine Government of the Moral Order The impossibility for the creature of comprehending the divine essence extends to the diverse perfections that this essence integrates, as, for example, God’s eternity.46 But it extends above all to the reasons of providence, that is to say, to the concrete means or ways that providence takes in order to attain its goal, especially in the government of human affairs. This theme is at the heart of the book of Job: what is the purpose and meaning of the ordeal that overwhelms Job and that God has permitted? To what degree is the human being able to understand God’s ways? On the one hand, St. Thomas is persuaded that man is capable of understanding God’s general intentions that preside over his government of the world, since they are inscribed in the very nature of things (natural law) or are manifested to him by the divine law (revelation). On the other hand, however, he teaches that the reason of the particular “judgments” of God largely escapes us: Concerning divine judgments the most certain and demonstrable proof cannot be introduced because of the incomprehensibility of the divine will. Hence, he adds For He himself is alone, as if to say: He has no other creature similar or equal to Him to comprehend Him, and consequently not His will either. Hence, he adds and no one can observe, that is, no with certainty, His reflections, that is, the dispositions of His judgments.47 knowledge, as the contradictions of the philosophers testify in this regard. Cf. ibid., c. 38, lines 380–85, (203): “Excedit autem humanam cognitionem qualiter luminaria moveantur, quod ostenditur ex diversis opinionibus hominum circa motus eorum, dum quidam asserunt ea moveri per excentricos et epicyclos, quidam autem per motus diversarum sphaerarum.” 46. Cf. In Iob, c. 24, lines 15–22, (137): “Illi vero qui sunt in tempore ita eum cognoscunt quod tamen modum aeternitatis eius comprehendere non valent, unde subdit ‘qui autem noverunt eum,’ idest homines temporales eius notitiam qualemcumque habentes vel naturali cognitione vel per fidem vel aliqua maiori sapientiae illustratione, ‘ignorant dies illius,’ idest comprehendere non valent modum aeternitatis eius”; c. 36, lines 286–93, 191: “Posset autem aliquis dicere quod quamvis de Deo non possimus cognoscere quid sit, possumus tamen cognoscere de Deo an est, quod pertinet ad eius durationem; sed quod hoc etiam excedat hominis cognitionem ostendit subdens ‘numerus annorum eius inaestimabilis,’ quia videlicet aeternitas durationis ipsius humano intellectu comprehendi non potest.” 47. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 23, 303–4. In Iob, c. 23, lines

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It is therefore impossible for us to determine with certitude the reason for a particular disposition of providence such as Job’s ordeal,48 that is to say, to deduce it adequately from its explicative cause which is nothing other than the wise and omnipotent will of God: To inquire into the reason why he has been punished is to inquire into the reasoning of divine judgment, which, of course, no one can know but God Himself. . . . [ Job] knew that God exceeded his knowledge; therefore, he could not find the way perfectly on his own to reach His throne, that is, the full knowledge of His judgment.49

Does a supernatural revelation permit one to surmount this ignorance and to gain access via infused wisdom to this full knowledge of the judgments of God?

209–17 (135): “De divinis iudiciis certissima et demonstrativa probatio induci non potest propter incomprehensibilitatem divinae voluntatis, unde subdit ‘Ipse enim solus est,’ quasi: non habet aliquam creaturam similem vel aequalem quae eum comprehendere possit, et per consequens nec eius voluntatem, unde subdit ‘et nemo advertere potest,’ idest per certitudinem cognoscere, ‘cogitationes eius,’ idest dispositiones iudiciorum ipsius.” The knowledge of the divine law, that is to say, the plan of God in the world, cannot be reduced to the knowledge of providence’s general orientations, but must embrace the multiplicity of singular divine volitions, which is impossible for the human being. Cf. c. 11, lines 84–92 (76): “Lex divina secundum quod est in sapientia Dei ad omnia particularia et minima se extendit. . . . Homo ad ipsam legem divinam, prout est in secreto sapientiae Dei inspiciendam, pertingere non potest et per consequens nec eius multiplicitatem agnoscere.” 48. The judgments of God or particular dispositions of providence can be both the permission of a particular ordeal, such as that which afflicts Job, or the conferral of a benefaction or of a particular grace granted to a person. Cf. In Iob, c. 9, lines 297–307 (61): “In his . . . immensam profunditatem divinae sapientiae ostendit: primo quidem quia tam profunde et subtiliter suis subditis providet sua beneficia quod etiam eis qui recipiunt incomprehensibile est, et hoc est quod dicit ‘Si venerit ad me non videbo, si abierit non intelligam eum.’ Ubi considerandum est quod in Scripturis Deus venire ad hominem dicitur quando ei sua beneficia largitur, sive intellectum eius illuminando sive affectum inflammando sive qualitercumque ei benefaciendo.” 49. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 23, (300). In Iob, c. 23, lines 23–43 (133): “Inquirere causam quare punitus sit est inquirere rationem divini iudicii, quam quidem nullus cognoscere potest nisi ipse Deus. . . . Sciebat enim quod Deus eius cognitionem excederet, et ideo non poterat perfecte de se invenire viam per quam usque ad solium eius perveniret, idest usque ad plenam cognitionem iudiciorum ipsius.”



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Infused Wisdom By the activity of his reason, the human being progressively acquires a certain knowledge of creatures that tends to the apprehension of their innermost essence (the first inchoate form of wisdom), and from there he is raised up to a certain knowledge of their cause which is God (the second, more perfect form of wisdom). By this acquired wisdom, the human person is assimilated, indirectly and imperfectly, to God. But God is also able, in his sovereign freedom, to communicate to the human being the wisdom and understanding of his ways by instructing him directly through a revelation.50 In chapter 4, Eliphaz the Temanite boasts of a knowledge based on a divine revelation.51 Further, in chapter 32, in order to justify taking his word despite his youth, Elihu claims for himself a divine inspiration, which is supposed to confer on his discourse a clear superiority compared to the acquired wisdom of the three aged friends of Job.52 Finally, God’s intervention at the end of the book is presented as a revelation given to Job. 50. Cf. Wis 9:13–17 (RSV): “For what man can learn the counsel of God? Or who can discern what the Lord wills? For the reasoning of mortals is worthless, and our designs are likely to fail, for a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthy tent burdens the thoughtful mind. We can hardly guess at what is on earth, and what is at hand we find with labor; but who has traced out what is in the heavens? Who has learned your counsel, unless you have given wisdom and sent your holy Spirit from on high?” 51. Cf. In Iob, c. 4, lines 230–36 (29–30): “Considerandum est autem quod aliqua veritas, quamvis propter sui altitudinem sit homini abscondita, revelatur tamen quibusdam manifeste, quibusdam vero occulte; ad effugiendam igitur notam iactantiae hanc veritatem abscondite dicit sibi esse revelatam, unde subdit ‘et quasi furtive suscepit auris mea venas susurrii eius.’” 52. Cf. ibid., c. 32, lines 77–95 (172): “Consequenter excusat se quare nunc loqui incipiat, quia scilicet expertus est quod aetas non est sufficiens sapientiae causa sed magis inspiratio divina, unde subdit ‘Sed ut video,’ idest per effectum considero, ‘spiritus,’ scilicet Dei, ‘est in hominibus,’ inquantum scilicet in eis operatur, et hoc est quod subdit ‘et inspiratio omnipotentis,” qua scilicet hominibus inspirat Spiritum sanctum qui est‘spiritus sapientiae et intellectus’ [Is 11, 2], ‘dat intelligentiam,’ scilicet veritatis quae est sapientiae principium his quibus inspiratur. Quod autem haec inspiratio sit sapientiae praecipua causa ostendit per hoc quod aetas non perfecte sapientiam causat, unde subdit ‘non sunt longaevi sapientes,’ quantum scilicet ad cognitionem divinae veritatis, ‘nec senes intelligunt iudicium,’ quantum scilicet ad ordinationem humanorum actuum; et quia licet non esset senex confidebat tamen se inspiratum a Deo, ideo loqui audebat, unde subdit ‘ideo dicam.’”

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Nature of Infused Wisdom Supernatural knowledge supposes both the objective gift of an intelligible content generally inaccessible to the resources of reason alone, as well as the subjective gift of the vital capacity to assimilate this content. Theologal faith here below constitutes the foundation of the whole organism of our supernatural knowledge. It is adherence, under the motion of the Spirit, to an objective revelation, transmitted most of the time by the mediation of prophets.53 Now, the believer is able to benefit by grace from an action of the Holy Spirit, who leads him into a deeper understanding of the faith, causing an infused wisdom to develop in him.54 This was the case with Job, who thus enjoys, by grace, a more perfect and more certain knowledge.55 This infused wisdom, blossoming from faith, in no way contradicts naturally acquired wisdom, but rather corrects, fulfills, and relativizes it. Infused wisdom corrects naturally acquired wisdom because, without grace, natural knowledge easily goes astray.56 It fulfills it because, of itself, human wisdom does not 53. Job and his interlocutors, whom St. Thomas regards as historical personages (cf. Prologus, 4), are situated outside of the mainstream of public historical revelation, but all indications are that Job is a man of faith. In fact, he adheres to the first two credibilia— the existence of God and providence (cf. Heb 11:6)—which implicitly contain all of the articles of faith. See Thomas Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 1, a. 7. 54. St. Thomas mentions three types or degrees of knowledge: natural knowledge, faith, and infused wisdom. Cf. In Iob, c. 24, lines 17–20 (137): “‘Qui autem noverunt eum’ [ Jb 24:1], idest homines temporales eius [= Dei] notitiam qualemcumque habentes vel naturali cognitione vel per fidem vel aliqua maiori sapientiae illustratione, ignorant dies illius, idest comprehendere non valent modum aeternitatis eius.” 55. Cf. ibid., c. 13, lines 290–92 (87): “Certus autem erat Iob quod veritatem loquebatur sibi a Deo per donum fidei et sapientiae inspiratam, unde de veritate non diffidens”; c. 16, lines 91–93 (102): “Iob intellexit per Spiritum sanctum suam adversitatem a diabolo procuratam, Deo permittente.” Infused wisdom gives Job a more certain knowledge because it issues from more fundamental causes. Cf. ibid., c. 42, lines 37–41 (228): “‘Nunc autem oculus meus videt te,’ idest plenius te cognosco quam prius, sicut id quod videtur oculis certius cognoscitur quam quod aure auditur: profecerat enim tum ex percussione tum ex revelatione divina.” 56. Cf. ibid., c. 12, lines 313–20, (82–83): “Philosophi autem excellunt in consideratione veritatis, et de his dicit ‘commutans labium veracium,’ idest eorum qui ad veritatem loquendam student : aliquando enim Deus obnubilat eorum mentem per subtractionem suae gratiae, ut veritatem invenire non possint et per consequens nec loqui, secundum illud Rom. I, 22: ‘Dicentes se esse sapientes stulti facti sunt.’”



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attain to the truth that it seeks, so that only the intervention of God, at the book of Job’s end, is able to settle the debate.57 Above all, it relativizes it, that is to say, “places it in relation” within a general dynamism of which it is only a step. It thereby saves it from closing in on itself. Infused wisdom invites the one who already possesses a certain acquired wisdom to not stop there but to remain open and available to manifestations of the deeper reasons of providence. Acquired wisdom attains only to a general, still-quite-undetermined knowledge of the “ways of God,” whereas infused wisdom enters further into the knowledge of their concrete determination. Due to its structural indeterminacy, purely human wisdom is of itself open to revelation, and indeed it would deny itself by refusing it. Thus, according to St. Thomas, Job spoke of three ways that constitute three steps of a model spiritual itinerary in which each way of knowing can be recognized: Job is found to have spoken three ways in this book: first, of course, as representing the affection of the capacity for sensation in the first complaint when he said “Perish the day” [3:3];58 second, expressing the deliberation of human reason when he was debating against his friends; third, according to divine inspiration when he adduced words in the person of the Lord. And since human reason ought to be directed according to divine inspiration, after the Lord’s words he reproves the words which he had said according to human reason.59 57. Cf. ibid., c. 38, lines 5–8 (199): “Quia humana sapientia non sufficit ad veritatem divinae providentiae comprehendendam, necessarium fuit ut praedicta disputatio divina auctoritate determinaretur.” 58. One might compare St. Thomas’s analysis of Job’s discourse, which speaks first of the emotions (but under the control of reason) and then of pure reason illumined by faith, to St. Thomas’s analysis of the prayer of Christ at Gethsemane: see ST III, q. 21, a. 2. Cf. Denis Chardonnens, L’Homme sous le regard de la Providence: Providence de Dieu et condition humaine selon l’Exposition littérale sur le livre de Job de Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1997), 185–98. 59. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 39 (442). In Iob, c. 39, lines 370–79 (212): “Iob tripliciter in hoc libro invenitur fuisse locutus: primo quidem quasi repraesentans affectum sensualitatis in prima conquestione cum dixit ‘Pereat dies,’ secundo exprimens deliberationem rationis humanae dum contra amicos disputaret, tertio secundum inspirationem divinam dum ex persona Domini verba induxit; et quia humana ratio dirigi debet secundum inspirationem divinam, post verba Domini, verba quae secundum rationem humanam dixerat reprehendit.”

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Limits of Infused Wisdom Superior though it is to acquired wisdom, infused wisdom, on the one hand, remains conditioned by the modalities of all earthly human knowledge, and, on the other, shares in the limits inherent in all created knowledge. When God addresses himself to Job in order to instruct him, whether it is a matter of an exteriorly sensible manifestation or of a wholly interior inspiration, God does so from “out of the whirlwind” ( Jb 40:6, RSV). St. Thomas comments: It can be understood that it was said metaphorically so that this response of the Lord is an internal inspiration divinely made to Job himself. So the Lord is said to have responded to him from a whirlwind, both because of the disturbance which he was still suffering and also because of the obscurity of the whirlwind, namely, since we cannot perceive divine inspiration in this life clearly but with a kind of dark inspiration in this life clearly but with a kind of dark impression of sensible likenesses, as Dionysius says in Chap­ter 1 of On the Celestial Hierarchy. And the Lord also signified this meaning if He made His voice heard sensibly from a corporeal whirlwind.60

St. Thomas here makes reference to a text of Dionysius that he is fond of and that he often employs to attest that, since grace does not destroy nature, the human being does not cease to think in images even in the order of supernatural knowledge. Thus God, good teacher that he is, communicates himself to the human being via the mediation of sensible things and by employing images and metaphors.61 60. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 38 (416). In Iob, c. 38, lines 27–37 (199): “Vel potest intelligi ut sit metaphorice dictum, ut haec responsio Domini sit inspiratio interior divinitus facta ipsi Iob, et sic dicitur Dominus ei ‘de turbine’ respondisse tum propter turbationem quam adhuc patiebatur, tum etiam propter turbinis obscuritatem, quia scilicet divinam inspirationem in hac vita non possumus clare percipere sed cum quadam obumbratione sensibilium similitudinum, ut Dionysius dicit I cap. Caelestis hierarchiae; et hoc etiam significavit Dominus si de turbine corporali vocem suam sensibiliter fecit audiri.” 61. Cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy 1.2, in Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid with Paul Rorem (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1987), 146: “This divine ray can enlighten us only by being upliftingly concealed in a variety of sacred veils.” For the translation of John Scotus Eriugena (around 867): “Etenim neque possibile



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Moreover, infused wisdom, which works through the “dark” modalites of human knowledge, has the paradoxical effect of plunging still more into obscurity those whom it introduces to a more perfect knowledge, by reason of the transcendence of the revealed reality in relation to human intelligence.62 Therefore, it takes away nothing from the incomprehensibility of God and his designs. Rather, it makes this incomprehensibility even clearer: Now He has another spiritual voice [i.e., than the corporeal thunder], namely, the teaching of wisdom, which is incomprehensible to man, concerning which he adds He will thunder the voice of His magnitude [ Jb 37:4], that is, which teaches His magnitude. Not everyone hears this voice as aliter nobis supersplendere thearchicum radium nisi varietate sanctorum velaminum sursumactive circumvelatum” (Dionysiaca, Recueil donnant l’ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys de l’Aéropage [. . .], ed. Phillippe Chevallier [Bruges: Desclée de Brouwer, 1937], 733). Cf. Serge-Thomas Bonino, “Les voiles sacrés. A propos d’une citation de Denys,” in Atti del IX Congresso Tomistico Internazionale, VI. Storia del Tomismo. Fonti e Riflessi (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticano, 1992), 158–71. In ch. 4, lines 236–66 (29–30), where Eliphaz lays claim to a secret revelation, St. Thomas explains in what sense a revelation is able to be called “hidden.” For reasons difficult to determine (does he want to suggest that the public revelation to Israel overrides the other forms of revelation?) he uses the opportunity to stress the superiority of Moses over the other prophets: “Triplex modus occultationis innuitur qui solet in revelationibus contingere. Quorum primus est cum intelligibilis veritas alicui revelatur per imaginariam visionem, secundum quod dicitur Num. XII 6: ‘Si quis fuerit inter vos propheta Domini, per somnium aut in visione loquar ad eum; at non talis servus meus Moyses: ore ad os loquar ei qui palam et non per aenigmata videt Deum’; Moyses igitur hoc verbum absconditum per modum clarae vocis audivit, alii vero per modum susurrii. Secundus modus occultationis est quia in ipsa imaginaria visione proferuntur quandoque aliqua verba expresse continentia veritatem, sicut est illud Is. VII, 14 ‘Ecce virgo concipiet,’ quandoque vero sub quibusdam figuratis locutionibus, sicut est illud Is. XI, 1 ‘Egredietur virga de radice Iesse et flos’ etc.; in hoc igitur quod Isaias audivit ‘Ecce virgo concipiet’ percepit ipsum susurrium, in hoc autem quod audivit ‘Egredietur virga de radice Iesse’ percepit venas susurrii: nam figuratae locutiones sunt quasi quaedam venae ab ipsa veritate per similitudinem derivatae. Tertius modus est quod aliquando aliquis revelationem divinam frequentem et diutinam habet, sicut dicitur de Moyse Exodi XXXIII, 11 quod ‘loquebatur Dominus ad Moysem facie ad faciem, sicut solet homo loqui ad amicum suum’; aliquando autem aliquis habet revelationem subitam et transitoriam: hunc igitur subitum revelationis modum significat in hoc quod dicit ‘quasi furtive,’ nam ea quasi furtive audimus quae raptim et quasi pertranseundo ad nos perveniunt.” 62. Cf. In Iob, c. 4, lines 222–27 (29): “Ad ostendendum altitudinem revelationis proponit eius obscuritatem: quanto enim aliqua sunt altiora tanto humano respectu sunt minus perceptibilia, unde et Apostolus dicit Cor. XII quod ‘raptus est in paradisum Dei et audivit arcana verba quae non licet homini loqui.’”

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they hear corporeal thunder, and those who do hear it in some fashion cannot understand it. Hence, he adds and His voice, that is, the teaching of wisdom, will not be investigated, namely, perfectly, when it has been heard, that is, perceived spiritually by some man.63

And further: Not only can a man not suitably recount the divine effects but Even if God Himself speaks them, namely, revealing them to a man, a man will be devoured [ Jb 37:20], unable, as it were, to grasp so great a thing. Hence, it is said in John 16:12 that “I have many things to tell you which you cannot bear now,” and in Deuteronomy 5:26 is said, “What is all flesh that it may hear the voice of the living God?”64

Quaerere intellectum: Job as a Theologian The impossibility for us, both through reason and through revelation, of understanding the divine essence and (consequently) the ultimate reasons of providence in no way implies that the mind of the believer has to renounce scrutinizing a mystery that he knows by faith is intelligible in itself. In fact, on account of the unity of the divine plan in which grace does not destroy nature but brings it to fulfillment, the believer in search of understanding knows that he can use what he knows of God through creation to better understand, by analogy, revelation. God’s intentions, which are manifested in the creative act and in the 63. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 37 (407). In Iob, c. 37, lines 87–96 (194): “Habet autem aliam vocem spiritualem, scilicet sapientiae doctrinam, quae est homini incomprehensibilis, de qua subdit ‘Tonabit vocem magnitudinis suae,’ idest quae docet magnitudinem eius, et hanc vocem non omnes audiunt sicut tonitruum corporale; et illi qui aliqualiter audiunt eam comprehendere non possunt, unde subdit ‘et non investigabitur,’ scilicet perfecte, ‘cum audita fuerit,’ idest percepta spiritualiter ab aliquo homine, ‘vox eius,’ idest sapientiae doctrina.” 64. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 37 (412). In Iob, c. 37, lines 307–314 (197): “Non solum homo potest convenienter enarrare divinos effectus sed ‘etiam’ si ipse Deus eos ‘locutus fuerit,’ homini scilicet revelando, ‘homo devorabitur,’ quasi tantam rem capere non valens, unde dicitur Ioh XVI, 12 ‘Multa habeo vobis dicere quae non potestis portare modo,’ et Deut. V, 26 dicitur ‘Quid est omnis caro ut audiat vocem Dei viventis?’”



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general laws of the divine government, illumine all the rest of his action, including his deifying action. Now, the creative act itself reveals that, in his fundamental intention, God can only will the good.65 Thinking that Job doubts that God loves the good, Elihu responds that this truth is demonstrated in the first place by the creative act’s finality; next, by the instruction of revelation; and, finally, by the gift of reason to the human being, the purpose of which is precisely to allow for the discerning of good from evil.66 Thanks to this light of reason, the human being is capable of knowing the intention that the Creator has inscribed into the dynamisms that define his own nature and is able to collaborate in its perfection. The morally good act of the human being, which conforms to the natural law, appears therefore as a manner of participating in the divine intentions, an “imitation of God,” such that the virtuous act of the human being in some way makes visible the divine intentions: Now the rule of human life is twofold. First, of course, is the natural law impressed on men’s minds by God, by which man naturally understands what is good from its likeness to the divine goodness. In this first case one 65. Cf. In Iob, c. 40, lines 395–403 (217–18): “Considerandum est autem quod Deo unum solum opus est proprium suae bonitati conveniens, scilicet benefacere et miserere; quod autem puniat et adversitates inducat, hoc contingit propter malitiam creaturae rationalis, quae primo est in diabolo inventa et per eius suggestionem est ad homines derivata, et ideo signanter dicit quod ‘ipse est principium viarum Dei,’ idest quod Deus diversis viis utatur, scilicet benefaciendo et puniendo”; c. 1, lines 47–51 (5): “Ex prima Dei intentione iustis semper bona tribuuntur non solum spiritualia sed etiam temporalia; sed quod aliquando iusti adversitatibus premantur accidit propter aliquam specialem causam.” 66. Cf. ibid., c. 35, lines 95–114 (186): “Deinde convertit se ad improbandum aliud verbum quod praemiserat ‘Non tibi placet quod rectum est,’ quod divinae sapientiae repugnaret, quae primo quidem apparet in rerum creatione, unde dicit ‘Et non dixit,’ scilicet Iob sentiens quod Deo bona non placerent: ‘Ubi est Deus qui fecit me’? Non enim Deus fecit res nisi propter bonum, unde dicitur Gen. I 25: ‘Vidit Deus quod esset bonum’ etc., unde manifestum est quod Deo placet bonum. Secundo inducit beneficium humanae instructionis quo aliqui instruuntur ad bonum ex revelatione divina, unde subdit qui dedit, scilicet per revelationem, carmina, idest humanae instructionis dogmata quae ab antiquis multotiens carminibus comprehendebantur, in nocte, idest ad litteram in somnio nocturno, vel in quiete contemplationis seu obscuritate visionis; non autem erudiret homines ad bonum familiariter nisi bonum ei placeret. Tertio inducit infusionem naturalis luminis quo bonum a malo discernimus per rationem in qua excedimus bruta.”

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should pay attention to the fact that in proportion to his own power man imitates in his affections and works the operation of divine goodness, according to Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect,” and Ephesians 5:1: “Be imitators of God just as His dearest sons.” Hence, he says, His tracks, that is, some likeness, although in small part, of divine good in operation, are followed, namely, in imitation, by my foot [ Jb 23:11], that is, by my will, according to which we proceed to operate.67

If the human being thus imitates the divine goodness by acting in conformity with the moral law, this is because the moral law expresses something of the very nature of God. The moral law is not the fruit of a divine arbitrariness, the sole function of which would be to maintain the distance between creature and Creator and which would be valid only for the creature. It follows that, for St. Thomas, God’s ways cannot be in real contradiction with the moral requirements that are imposed on the human being. As Joseph de Finance writes: It does not suffice to say that everything God wills, however monstrous to human morality, is good and holy by definition. The conscience does not admit of the suspension of ethics: the holiness that must be found in God is a transcendent holiness, indeed, but it is not foreign to the moral order.68

Certainly, God’s justice is not univocal to human justice and can take disconcerting forms (see Mt 20:1–16). As the justice of the 67. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 23 (303). In Iob, c. 23, lines 176–89 (135): “Est autem duplex regula humanae vitae; prima quidem est lex naturalis a Deo mentibus hominum impressa, per quam naturaliter homo intelligit quid est bonum ex similitudine divinae bonitatis. In quo primo attendendum est quod homo secundum suum posse imitetur in suis affectibus et operibus divinae bonitatis operationem, secundum illud Matth. V, 48: ‘Estote perfecti sicut et pater vester caelestis perfectus est,’ et Eph. V, 1: ‘Estote imitatores Dei sicut filii carissimi’; unde dicit ‘Vestigia eius,’ idest aliquam licet ex parva parte similitudinem bonitatis divinae operantis, ‘secutus est,’ scilicet per imitationem, ‘pes meus,’ idest affectus meus, quo ad operandum procedimus.” That the natural law is a manifestation of the divine intentions can be seen, for example, in ST I, q. 104, a. 4, where St. Thomas, in demonstrating that God cannot will to annihilate creatures, relies upon the desire for conservation in being that God himself has inscribed in creatures. 68. Joseph de Finance, Existence et liberté (Paris/Lyon: E. Vitte, 1955), 120.



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Creator, it cannot be submitted to any external authority.69 But it is not purely equivocal either. The divine government is not a work of brute power. It has to be able to “justify itself,” as Job never ceases to demand: [It is as if Job said:] That response does not satisfy me, that God’s power and greatness be adduced against me alone, since just as He is the strongest and the greatest, so, too, is He the most just and a lover of equity. Hence, he adds Let him propose equity against me [ Jb 23:7], that is, let a rationale based on equity be assigned.70

God’s ways therefore pertain to justice. If occasionally the justice of the divine power, which is the ultimate cause of events, is difficult to perceive, this is on account of the transcendence of the divine justice in relation to human justice, which serves as the point of depature for the analogy, and not on account of a suspension or overstepping of justice as such: [He is great in strength ( Jb 37:23).] And lest He be believed because of the magnitude of His power to use only violence in the governance of men,71 [Elihu] adds and in judgment, namely, He is great, since, namely, “His judgments are incomprehensible” [Rom 11:33]. And this condition is not due to a defect of justice but to excellent justice. Hence he adds and in justice, namely, He is great.72 69. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In Iob, c. 36, lines 250–56 (191): “Et ex hoc concludit [Elihu] quod non potest [Deus] de iniustitia condemnari, unde subdit ‘Aut quis audet ei dicere: Operatus es iniquitatem?’ Ad hoc enim quod aliquis de iniquitate condemnetur, requiritur quod sit subiectus superiori potestati et quod alienis legibus astringatur et quod eius opera cognoscantur, quae in Deo locum non habent.” 70. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 23 (300–301). In Iob, c. 23, lines 64–70 (133–34): “Quasi dicat: non sufficit mihi ista responsio ut solum contra me allegetur Dei potentia et magnitudo, quia sicut ipse est fortissimus et maximus ita etiam est iustissimus et aequitatis amator; unde subdit ‘proponat aequitatem contra me,’ idest assignetur ratio ad aequitatem pertinens.” In ch. 24, lines 114–15 (180), St. Thomas explains that by favoring injustice, God would go against his divinity and his laws that he has established. 71. God does not use violence: see In Iob, c. 34, lines 146–72 (180–81). 72. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 37 (413). In Iob, c. 37, lines 358–64 (197): “Et ne credatur propter virtutis magnitudinem sola violentia uti in hominum gubernatione, subdit ‘et iudicio,’ scilicet magnus est, quia scilicet ‘incomprehensibilia sunt iudicia eius’ [Rom 11:33]; nec hoc est propter iustitiae defectum sed propter excellentem iustitiam, unde subdit ‘et iustitia,’ scilicet magnus est.”

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Moreover, not only are power and justice not opposed in the divine action, but they are mutually reinforcing. The perfection of his power and the perfection of his wisdom guarantee the perfection of God’s justice. Unlike Hans Jonas, St. Thomas therefore refuses to oppose the divine attributes to one another. He dismisses any conception of the divine power which would contradict God’s justice, emphasizing instead the circumincession of the divine perfections of justice, power, and wisdom: Justice is corrupted in two ways, namely, through the shrewdness of some wise person and through the violence of some powerful person. Now in God there are both perfect wisdom and omnipotence; yet, He neither overturns judgment, acting shrewdly, as it were, through the wisdom which is understood by the name of God, nor does He subvert what is just, acting violently, as it were, through his omnipotence.73

Conclusion: Quantum potes, tantum aude The teaching of the Expositio super Iob on the incomprehensibility of the sovereignly wise and intelligible God implies an entire ethic with regard to how the creature should stand in the presence of the divine truth. On the one hand, God’s incomprehensibility forbids every presumptuous challenge of the divine government,74 every perverse desire to place ourselves above God as a judge. It also requires us never to consider as definitive what we have been able to grasp of the mystery and thus to be willing to “put out into the deep” (Lk 5:4, RSV) when it pleases providence to manifest its more hidden designs. On the other hand, the sovereign intelligibility of the just and 73. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 23 (300–301). In Iob, c. 8, lines 51–57 (53): “Iustitia dupliciter corrumpitur, scilicet per astutiam alicuius sapientis et per violentiam alicuius potentis; in Deo autem utrumque est, et perfecta sapientia et omnipotentia, nec tamen per sapientiam quae nomine Dei intelligitur quasi astute agens supplantat iudicium, neque per omnipotentiam quasi violenter subvertit quod iustum est.” 74. On the theme of presumption in the Expositio, see Matthew Levering, “Aquinas on the Book of Job: Providence and Presumption,” in Providence of God: Deus habet consilium, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip G. Ziegler (London/New York: T & T Clark, 2009), 7–33.



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wise God enables us to search for “the reasons of divine wisdom.” Job is here set forth as a model for the believer who seeks to understand the faith. The two following texts sketch, through the figure of Job, a beautiful self-portrait of St. Thomas as a theologian:75 [I will speak and I will not fear Him, for I cannot respond when I am in fear ( Jb 9:35).] Now one should know that sometimes the fear of God does not call back from the search into divine matters those who fear God when, namely, they search into divine matters with a desire to know the truth, not in order to comprehend the incomprehensible, but always with this guide, that they subject their understanding to divine truth; they are, however, recalled by the fear of God from searching into divine matters as if wishing to comprehend them and not regulating their understanding by divine truth. So, then, by these words Job intends to show that with this guide he is searching into these things which pertain to divine providence so that he may subject his understanding to divine truth, not so that he may impugn divine truth, which would be contrary to reverence for the fear of God.76 God is greater than man [ Jb 33:12]. Hence, it is presumptuous that a man should desire to debate with God. And on this point, of course, he would be accusing Job justly if Job had wished to debate with God to contradict Him as if He were an equal. Now Job wished to debate with God to learn, as it were, like a student with a teacher. . . . [The words of Job] were said not by way of contention but since he desired to know the reasoning of divine wisdom.77 75. Cf. Chardonnens, L’Homme sous le regard de la Providence, 281 and 295. 76. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 9 (181). In Iob, c. 9, lines 746– 754 (67): “[‘Loquar et non timebo eum, neque enim possum metuens respondere’] Sciendum est autem quod timor Dei aliquando timentes Deum a perscrutatione divinorum non revocat, quando scilicet perscrutantur divina desiderio veritatis cognoscendae, non ut comprehendant incomprehensibilia sed semper eo moderamine ut intellectum suum divinae subiciant veritati; revocantur autem per timorem Dei ne sic perscrutentur divina quasi comprehendere volentes et intellectum suum divina veritate non regulantes. Sic igitur per haec verba Iob intendit ostendere quod eo moderamine de his quae ad divinam providentiam pertinent perscrutatur, ut intellectum suum divinae veritati subiciat, non ut divinam veritatem impugnet, quod esset contra reverentiam divini timoris.” 77. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 33 (374). In Iob, c. 33, lines 112–130, (175): “‘Quod maior sit Deus homine,’ unde praesumptuosum est quod homo cupiat disputare cum Deo. Et in hoc quidem iuste Iob argueret si cum Deo disputare voluisset ad contradicendum quasi de pari; Iob autem cum Deo disputare volebat quasi ad addiscendum sicut discipulus cum magistro . . . quae quidem verba et si qua similia

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Through this humble and respectful enquiry into the “reasons of the divine wisdom,” sustained by the gift of the Spirit of wisdom, the believer progresses in the understanding of the faith while his spirit is being purified.78 The believer thus opens himself to the definitive revelation. For it must not be believed “that the knowledge of divine truth [will be] taken from man forever.” “But now, that is, at the present time, they, namely, men, do not see the light [ Jb 37:21], that is, the splendor of divine knowledge. Nevertheless, to the friend of God it is announced that ‘to it’ at some time ‘he can ascend’ [ Jb 36:33].”79 In this vision, the spiritual creature will attain to happiness because he will finally grasp the full light of the “reasons of the divine wisdom”: And I wish a man were so judged with God as the son of man is judged with his colleague! [ Jb 16:22] For a man is judged with his colleague while each one is present to the other in person, and they present their reasons in turn for themselves. He desired, then, to stand in the presence of God and to know the reasons for the divine works and judgments in which human happiness consists, in the hope of which was his consolation.80 superius dicta sunt, non per modum contentionis dicebantur, sed quia desiderabat rationes divinae sapientiae cognoscere.” 78. The revelation given to angels of previously unknown effects of the power of God, and which are now manifested in the definitive victory of God over Leviathan (Satan), helps to purify them because it leads them further into the knowledge of God. By entering little by little into the fullness of God’s designs, the angel is purified of the part of the darkness that is ignorance. Cf. In Iob, c. 41, lines 285–290 (225): “‘Timebunt angeli’ admirando divinam virtutem; in qua admiratione multi effectus divinae virtutis eis innotescunt, et ideo subdit ‘et territi purgabuntur’: ut enim Dionysius dicit VI cap. de divinis nominibus, angeli purgari dicuntur non ab immunditia sed a nescientia.” 79. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 37 (412); translation altered. In Iob, c. 37, lines 315–21 (197): “Sed ne aliquis crederet quod cognitio veritatis divinae in perpetuum esset homini subtrahenda, ad hoc excludendum subdit ‘At nunc,’ idest in praesenti tempore, ‘non vident,’ scilicet homines, ‘lucem,’ idest claritatem divinae cognitionis: amico tamen Dei annuntiatur quod ‘ad eam’ quandoque ‘possit ascendere’ [cf. Jb 36:33].” 80. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job, ch. 16 (249–50). In Iob, c. 16, lines 291–99 (104): “‘Atque utinam sic iudicaretur vir cum Deo quomodo iudicatur filius hominis cum collega suo.’ Iudicatur enim vir cum collega suo dum unus alteri praesentialiter adest et invicem sibi suas rationes promunt: desiderabat ergo Deo praesens existere et rationes divinorum operum et iudiciorum cognoscere, in quo felicitas humana consistit, in cuius spe erat eius consolatio.”

Rudi te Velde In the Order of the Good

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Divine Providence and Man’s Place in the Order of the Good Rudi te Velde

Right at the beginning of his Commentary, Thomas states that the principal theme of the book of Job is that of divine providence, especially as related to the domain of human affairs. The importance of the book of Job lies in the fact that it teaches us about the truth of God’s providential care amidst the often chaotic and painful vicissitudes of human life. This specific theme appears to be connected with a problem. The purpose of the book, Thomas explains in the prologue, is to address the problem of why God’s providence seems to many to be absent in the world of human affairs, in contrast with the world of nature. Although it must be assumed that the whole of created reality underlies God’s providence, the presence of providence in the sense of order and reason is more apparent in the realm of nature than in the events of human life. God’s providential care is not immediately visible or understandable in what happens to people. The suffering of the innocent is for many a serious objection to belief in the justice of God: why does God allow the innocent and the just to suffer? It is the apparent lack of moral order in the human world which constitutes the problem of Job. In order to meet this



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objection, the book of Job intends to show that human affairs are in truth ruled by divine providence and that the rule of divine providence in human life demonstrates wisdom as well as justice. Following this reading of the book of Job, the theme of Thomas’s Commentary is equally divine providence as applied to the apparent injustice of the suffering of the just. The Commentary is dated during Thomas’s stay in Orvieto where he worked as lector of the Dominican priory there. It was around this time that he was also composing the third book of the Summa contra Gentiles (ScG), whose subject is providence as well.1 Thus, these two major texts on providence written more or less at the same time in Orvieto. That in the ScG’s treatment of providence hardly any reference to the book of Job is found is, then, a noteworthy fact. The fascinating discussions in the book of Job about how God’s moral regime of justice must be understood in the light of human suffering does not seem to play a significant role in the systematical treatment of providence in ScG. However, it can be expected that the treatment of ScG is, nevertheless, helpful to understand the metaphysical and theological meaning of providence as presupposed in Thomas’s analyses of the book of Job. Moreover, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the systematic elaboration of the concept of providence provides the necessary tools and the conceptual background for the interpretation of the biblical text. We will, therefore, start with an exposition of the concept of providence as treated in ScG; in the subsequent section, we will look at the special character of God’s providence with regard to rational creatures, thus God’s providential care as adapted to the moral agency of human beings. Then, finally, in the last section we will turn our attention to the Commentary on Job and discuss an exemplary passage in which Thomas explains that the moral realm of God’s providence extends in a certain sense beyond the limits of earthly life, and that, therefore, the existence of providence does not mean that good people are necessarily happier in this life, 1. Cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol.1: The Person and His Work (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 120.



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less afflicted by misfortune and adversities. The message of the book of Job, as read by Thomas, is that human life comes to its final truth, not in this life, but only in the life to come. The Concept of Providence (ScG) As said in the introduction, the fact that Aquinas was commenting on the book of Job parallel with composing the third book of the Summa contra Gentiles on providence would be reason to expect that the treatment in ScG were full of references to Job.2 That is not the case. For Aquinas, apparently, the book of Job is not a relevant source of his systematic treatment of the concept of providence. The reason must be that an essential difference in perspective exists between both discussions of providence. The treatment in ScG is philosophical or theoretical in character: the focus is on the concept of providence, how it must be understood, and that the reality of the providential regime does not necessarily exclude contingency, evil, chance, free will, etc. The book of Job, in contrast, tells us the story of Job, who experiences the extreme disharmony between his inner moral righteousness and the afflictions of his outer life. The debate of Job with his friends gives expression to the bitter human experience of suffering and the apparent lack of justice. Not satisfied with being simply a victim of God’s wrath and anger, Job demands a moral-religious understanding of what happens to him. One might say that, in the book of Job, the concept of providence is presupposed; the problem for Job is not the nature of providence in general, but rather how to recover his faith in the moral order of providence which is apparently contradicted by the extreme disharmony he experiences in his life. In this section, I will sketch the broad lines of Aquinas’s treatment of providence in the third book of ScG.3 Next, I will explain 2. I have found only three references to Job in the treatise on providence in Summa contra Gentiles III (ed. C. Pera, Turin: Marietti, 1961), c. 64 (87, 2395), c. 67 (92, 2421), and c. 75 (106, 2515). 3. This exposition is partly based on my article “Thomas Aquinas on Providence,

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how the treatment of ScG relates to the problem of Job and, in general, how rational creatures require a specific moral form of providence. When one speaks of “providence,” what is generally meant in traditional theology is the conviction that the world is ruled by divine reason which orders all things to the good. In accordance with the Greek tradition of Plato and Stoicism, providence entails the primacy of the Good as the ruling principle of the universe. The term “good” here does not have a moral sense yet; the Good has the general character of the final cause in relation to which the order of things receives its goodness as being adapted in the right way to its end. Providence must be understood as the regime of the principle of the Good which disposes all things in the best possible way. One must distinguish between, on the one hand, providence in the strict sense, that is, the rational plan existing in God’s mind and in which God preconceives the order of all things to their end,4 and, on the other hand, the actual “government” (gubernatio), the execution of the divine plan by leading all creatures to their end and good.5 The execution is primarily the act of God himself, secondarily and through mediation of the higher creatures with respect to the lower ones. Providence stands thus for the rule of reason. Belief in providence means that reason is held to be the determining principle in reality rather than that things are merely the result of chance. The providential order of the world is essentially an order exhibiting divine reason and wisdom. In the Prologue of his Commentary Thomas points out that Contingency and the Usefulness of Prayer,” in Fate, Providence and Moral Responsibility in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Thought: Collected Studies in Honour of Carlos Steel, ed. Pieter d’Hoine and Gerd Van Riel (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013). 4. Cf. ST I, q.22, a.1 (ed. Leon. 4, 263; Rome, 1888): “ratio ordinis rerum in finem in mente divina praeexistat.” 5. In the Summa theologiae, the theme of “gubernatio” is treated in the final section of the prima pars (qq.103–19), from the methodological perspective of God as the final cause of his creation, leading all creatures to the good (motio ad bonum). In ScG III the approach is different: first comes providence in itself (ch. 64–ch. 76), then follows the order of the execution of divine providence (ch. 77–ch. 88).



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providence in the sense of the inherent “order of reason” is not an immediately apparent fact but that its philosophical formulation requires a more advanced and deeper understanding of the truth of reality. The first philosophers in ancient Greece did not recognize the reality of providence (rational order) in nature but used to attribute everything to fortune and chance. Later, when philosophical thought made progress, it came to a more developed understanding of the intelligible order of reality and its causal principles: “By a more profound diligence in their contemplation of the truth, other philosophers showed by evident proofs and reasons that natural things are set in motion by providence” (Prologue). It is in particular in the workings of nature and in the regular motions of the heavens and the stars that the philosophers discovered the presence of reason in things. Things happen not by chance, but generally for the good, as part of a good order governed by a divine intellect. The rule of divine providence is thus affirmed by way of excluding fortune and chance. Providence, however, can also be affirmed in too strong a sense as leaving no room at all to chance and contingency in the world. For Aquinas, there is providence, that is, the rule of reason, but not so dominant that everything happens through necessity and that it excludes contingency from reality. Importantly, in his treatment in ScG Thomas wants to “save” the reality of contingency in a world ruled by divine providence.6 Even contingency, that is, the possibility of failure, defect, loss of being, and, consequently, loss of goodness, has its appropriate place in what Thomas calls the “order of the good.” Contingency, as Thomas understands it, is characterized by a relative lack of reason: something is contingent inasmuch as it has the possibility to exist or not to exist. The contingent can fail to be or to act in a determined way; hence, it is marked by ontological deficien6. Cf. ScG III, c. 72 (ed. Marietti, 101): “Quod divina providentia non excludit contingentiam a rebus.” Contingency is one of a series of features of “our world” that exhibit a lack of determinacy: “evil,” “free will,” “fortune and chance,” and “contingent singulars.”

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cy. According to the Greek-Aristotelian view, the universe is divided into a higher part, characterized by necessity and perfect rationality, and a lower, sublunar part, in which contingency reigns.7 This distinction between the corruptible realm of the universe and the incorruptible (or perpetual) realm also figures in the Commentary on Job, as we will see in section 4. Now, the crucial question is whether providence (rational order) and contingency (lack of order) are not mutually exclusive. Two possibilities suggest themselves, both of which are not fully acceptable to Thomas: either providence is restricted to the higher part of the universe, that is, the perfect and uniform movements of the celestial bodies as opposed to the “messy” sublunary sphere of nature where things happen more or less without reason, or providential reason extends to the whole universe in such a way that there can be, from the point of view of divine reason, no true contingency. The problem of providence, especially as it is addressed in the third book of the Summa contra Gentiles, arises at the crossroads of Greek-Arab necessitarianism and Christian thought concerning freedom, in which providence must be made to fit the moral realm of human free agency. In order to appreciate how thoughtfully Thomas deals with this problem in the ScG, I shall mark the various steps according to which he construes his understanding of the concept of providence. He starts with positing the fact of God’s providence: one must say that God governs all things in the world with respect to the good, which is God himself (ScG III, 64: “That God governs things by his providence”). Next, when we speak of God governing the world, this should not be understood in an external manner as if God governs an already existing world (more or less like a human king). God is active in the world in the sense that he gives being to all things and preserves them in being (ScG III, 65). Providence is not really different from the act of creation. By one and the same act God produces all things, preserves them in being, and leads them to their proper 7. ScG III, c. 72 (ed. Marietti, 101); cf. ScG III, c. 94 (ed. Marietti, 138).



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good and end through the powers and operations which are given to them. Providence is, so to say, the continuation of the work of creation in the sense of making things, each according to its own nature, to realize their own finality, as included in the comprehensive goodness of the order of the universe. The difference between providence and creation is that in the execution of his providence, God relates to creatures which are already constituted in their own specific nature and mode of operation. Essential to providence is that there are two levels of causality to be reckoned with: the first cause, which is God, and the second (created) causality of creatures, who are active in virtue of the powers they are provided with. The causal activity proper to creatures is said to be totally dependent upon the divine power which is active in all things. This active immanence of God’s power in all things receives its theoretical formulation in the thesis that “nothing gives being unless it acts by divine power” (ScG III, 66). The consequence of this is that “God is the cause of operation in all things that operate” (ScG III, 67). God’s causality is such that he is active in all things by causing them to operate according to their own nature. In no way should God be understood as an absolute power standing outside the world and acting upon the world by intervening in the natural order. God is everywhere and actively present in all things (ScG III, 68). There is no operation possible of whatever creature without God—the primary and universal cause of being—operating in it. One should be careful not to conceive the absoluteness of the divine power at the cost of the proper actions of creatures (ScG III, 69). For Thomas, the absolute power of God is not such that it does not tolerate any other power besides itself; the divine power of being can be said to be absolute in the sense that it causes something else to be and to act by its own power. And this “causing” on the part of God comprehends various aspects, such as giving being to a creature, providing that creature with the forms and powers it needs in order to realize itself through its operations, making it operate by itself according to its powers, and leading it to its final perfection

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and end. God operates in the operation of nature in such a way that the effect is both from God and from the natural agent itself; not in the sense that the effect is partly from God and partly from nature, but that the whole is done by both (totus ab utroque) (ScG III, 70). Thomas is defending here, against a false and insufficient understanding of God’s omnipotence, the efficacy of the secondary causes. Providence does not mean that God does everything by himself to the exclusion of nature’s own operation (or the operation of human free will). What characterizes Thomas’s approach to the subject of providence, as it is presented in the third book of ScG, is the more or less implicit discussion with Greek-Arab conceptions of fate and of cosmological mediations of providence with respect to the lower part of creation (“our human world”). According to Thomas, the execution of God’s providential plan is not the exclusive reserve of God himself. Spiritual creatures (angels) and the higher parts of the cosmos, the celestial bodies, may exercise providential influence on the lower parts of corruptible nature, that is, “our world.” The many causal interactions between creatures are covered by the principle of God’s providence. But what is rejected decisively is the possibility that the human free will is subject to the fateful influence of the celestial bodies or, more in general, that a created substance of any kind (for instance, demons) may cause and manipulate directly the human acts of free will and choice. In this regard, providence means that God makes us to will and to choose freely and that God makes us willing and loving himself freely. God’s Special Providence with Regard to Rational (Free) Creatures In contrast to the world of nature, especially its higher part of the celestial bodies, with its orderly structure and rational motions, the apparent lack of moral order in the human world gives rise to serious doubts whether human life—and the many singular events part



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of it—are in fact governed by God’s providence. It often seems to people that there is no justice in this world; we see good people suffer while the wicked prosper and are successful. People complain that life treats them unfairly and that the bad things they undergo are not in proportion to the good intentions of their actions. Moral goodness goes unnoticed in a physical universe that is indifferent to moral deliberations and choices. As Thomas observes: “Some said that human affairs proceed by chance . . . ; others attributed their outcome to a fatalism ruled by the heavens” (Prologue). In a world ruled by chance, the moral intentions of human acts will go wholly unnoticed, since such an amoral universe did not know anything of moral values and ends. Thus, when human life is experienced as ruled by mere chance or fate, the moral self-understanding of man tends to become seriously hampered. Thomas seems to agree with the implicit assumption of this reasoning that if human affairs are said to be subject to providence, that order of providence must have a moral character as adapted to the specific rational (free) mode of human action and, thus, as governing the moral praxis of human life by means of rewards and punishments. If divine providence is denied, Thomas says, then no reverence or fear of God will remain among humankind. If humans do not believe any longer in God’s providence, then their moral motivation will be fatally weakened: “For nothing so calls men back from evil things and induces them to good as much as the fear and love of God” (Prologue). That divine providence has a special character with regard to human rational creatures is often confirmed by Thomas. Thus, providence is clearly not a matter of one size fits all. Creatures are governed differently each according to their own different characters. Now, human rational creatures have “dominion over their actions”; they act through themselves with reason and free will. Consequently, they are governed by God, not only in the sense that God works in them interiorly, as the divine power operating in the operation of nature, but even in this sense that “they are induced by God to do

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good and to fly from evil, by precepts and prohibitions, rewards and punishments.”8 Above the general providence of nature, God acts thus as a lawgiver and judge with respect to human moral praxis. There will be a final retribution—not in this life, but in the next— in which each will be rewarded or punished according to his or her moral status. Divine government in general means that God moves all things to their good, the motio ad bonum. Human creatures are said to move themselves to their end and perfection. In the Summa theologiae, this specific human (rational, free) way of moving oneself to its end determines the formal perspective of the Second Part; here we see that, in the prologue of quaestio 90, the divine government with respect to human moral acts is introduced in the following way: the “exterior principle of the [human] motion to the good is God, who instructs us by the law and helps us by grace.”9 Both law (Moses) and grace (Christ) are instruments of divine providence leading humans to the good of their ultimate end. The special form of divine government in accord with human rational agency consists thus in the instruction about how to live according to the rule of God and in the assistance of grace (auxilium gratiae) to help humans to reach their ultimate perfection. That human creatures are subject to divine providence in a special way is argued for extensively in book 3 of ScG from chapter 111 onward. Here Thomas mentions two reasons why human creatures stand out above other creatures and need, therefore, a special sense of providence. Human creatures, Thomas says, differ from others “both in natural perfection and in the dignity of their end.” Man holds dominion over his acts, moving himself freely to perform his 8. ST I, q.103, a.5 ad 2 (ed. Leonina 5:458, Rome, 1889): “Quaedam enim secundum suam naturam sunt per se agentia, tanquam habentia dominium sui actus; et ista gubernantur a Deo non solum per hoc quod moventur ab ipso Deo in eis interius operante, sed etiam per hoc quod ab eo inducuntur ad bonum, et retrahuntur a malo per praecepta et prohibitionem, praemia et poenas.” 9. ST I-II, prol.q.90 (ed. Leonina 7:149, Romae, 1892): “Principium autem exterius movens ad bonum est Deus, qui et nos instruit per legem, et iuvat per gratiam.”



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actions (libere se agens ad operandum), and he is able, being an intellectual creature, to attain the final end of the universe through his own operation which consists in knowing and loving God. His end consists in the vision of God, even if it requires grace to attain this end. It is thus the dignity of this end and the free (moral) way of moving himself in his actions toward this end that justify the fact that human life is the object of special providential care on the part of God, as experienced in a most extreme way by Job. The special character of God’s providence with respect to human creatures consists in that they are governed for their own sakes, while other (irrational) creatures are cared for, not for their own sakes, but as subordinated and useful to others. Human creatures or in general intellectual creatures (including angels), are not simply useful parts of the whole of the universe, but they have an immediate relationship to the end of the universe, which is God, and because of this they are ordered to the end for their own sakes. To use a Kantian expression, human beings are an “end in themselves” and should be treated as such. One could say that God’s providential care with respect to rational (moral) creatures, as understood by Thomas, fulfills the Kantian criterion in the sense that God does respect them as “ends in themselves,” as moral subjects who are destined to enjoy the eternal bliss in God. The distinction Thomas makes in ScG between irrational creatures, which are cared for by God for the sake of others, insofar as they are useful, and rational (human) creatures, which are subject to the providential care for their own sakes, will return in the Commentary on the book of Job. This is an example of how aspects of the theoretical analysis as developed in ScG are applied in Thomas’s Commentary. We will see this in the next section. The “ordo universi” and Man’s Place in It The theme of God’s special providence with regard to rational creatures who act with free will comes up markedly in the Commentary

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on chapter 7 of the book of Job. Here we see Thomas applying elements of the theoretical analysis of ScG III in his interpretation of the discussion in Job about man as object of God’s special care and the implied dignity of man as ordered to an end beyond earthly life. This part of the Commentary illustrates nicely how the theoretical framework of providence as developed in ScG is used by Thomas in his interpretive reading of the words of Job describing his experience of God’s providence. The notion of ordo universi, the good order of the universe as a whole, plays an especially important role in accounting for the special way in which human creatures are subject to divine providence. Thomas’s reading of chapter 7 circles around the paradox of, on the one hand, the fragility of human bodily life, perishable, weak, almost nothing, as experienced by Job himself, and on the other hand, the remarkable fact of God’s giving so much attention to man, being concerned with the way he lives:10 “It would be astonishing for God to have such great care for man unless he should have something hidden which makes him capable of perpetual existence,” Thomas says.11 God’s special providential care for man, which includes testing his moral righteousness, demonstrates that there is another life of man after the death of the body. Man in his bodily existence is almost nothing; why is it then that God shows so much interest in man, that he cares for him and acts as a “watchman” who calls him to account for his deeds? For Thomas, this shows that man has a special dignity which raises him above the level of pure physical and contingent existence. In chapter 7, Job responds to the speech of Eliphaz, who had tried to console him with the prospect of a complete recovery of earthly happiness and prosperity. After showing repentance and making up for his sins, Eliphaz says, Job will be compensated for his sufferings 10. See Job 7: 16–17: “Spare me, O lord, for my days are nothing. What is man that you should make so much of him, or that you turn your heart towards him?” 11. Expositio super Iob ad litteram, cap. 7 (ed. Leon. 26:51, 410, Romae, 1965) : “unde mirum videretur quod Deus tantam sollicitudinem haberet de homine nisi aliquid lateret in eo quod esset perpetuitatis capax.”



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and losses, and everything will be all right in the end. This promise of a recovery of earthly happiness is rejected by Job as something to look forward to. And Thomas explains why this idea is unacceptable to Job, who has lost all hope in the possibilities of this life. It is not here, in this earthly and corporal existence, that the ultimate end of human life is to be found. The “ultimate end,” Thomas explains, is in that place where humans expect the final retribution for good and evil.12 That final retribution is not to be expected in this life, because the present life of humankind does not have the ultimate end in it. As Job says, “Man’s life on earth is combat” (militia est vita hominis super terram, Jb 7:1); we are like soldiers fighting and struggling during this life for the victory in the end. The condition of human life on earth is such that it does not offer us the comfort of peaceful rest and happiness. This life is ordered to an end beyond the limits of earthly existence, like warfare is ordered to victory. We should not, therefore, expect to be rewarded fully for our present virtuous behavior and consequently to be saved from hardship and pain. This is not how God’s providence works: “Divine providence does not dispose things so that the good are more freed from adversities and labors of the present life, but rewards them more at the end.”13 Job does not have illusions about the human condition and what to expect from life or what is left of it. The weakness of the body and the brevity of life are the painful facts of his experience. The days of his life have almost passed away like the wind which does not return. If God were to promise the recovery of the goods in this earthly life, then it seems as if he had forgotten that “life is but a breath” (7:7). If we take, as Eliphaz seems to suppose, earthly and bodily life as the ultimate horizon of human existence, then Job would have good reasons to lament the bitterness of his life. “I will talk in the bitterness of my soul.” An embittered man, Thomas comments, in12. Ibid. cap.7 (ed. Leon. 26:46, 14, Romae, 1965): “Ibi enim est ultimus finis hominis ubi expectat finalem retributionem pro bonis aut malis.” 13. Ibid. cap. 7 (ed. Leon. 26:46, 50, Romae, 1965): “unde nec divina providentia hoc habet ut bonos magis ab adversitatibus et vitae praesentis laboribus eximat, sed quod in fine eos magis remuneret.”

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quires as to why all the afflictions befall him. Job complains that he feels treated as if he were nothing more than a lump of matter, tossed around by physical forces, thus without being acknowledged and respected as a moral (free) subject. He cannot find any justice in the way he has been treated by the brute forces of life. Here, at this place, Thomas feels the need to explain the double aspect of God’s providence, on the one hand with respect to irrational creatures, and on the other hand with respect to rational creatures which have the status of a moral subject, acting from free will.14 To irrational creatures (subhuman reality), moral categories as reward and punishment do not apply; they do not act in a moral way and are not part of a moral order. God’s providence acts with regard to them in view of what is due to the good of the whole of the universe of which they are a part. In the terminology of Kant, irrational creatures (the parts of the physical universe, the sea, the animals, etc.) are not an end in themselves, but they exist for the sake of the whole. Thus, in God’s providential “economy,” the sea is restricted and kept within certain limits so as to make room for the earth and the animals living on earth, in view of what is the best for the whole. Job feels as if the afflictions he endures are like the confining of the sea, that is to say, that his sufferings have nothing to do with moral guilt or lack of merit but that they are the consequences of his being used for the sake of the order of the whole.15 He feels treated as if he is merely a physical part of the universe, ordered in God’s providence in view of the goodness of the whole. 14. Ibid. cap. 7 (ed. Leon. 26: 49, 272, Romae, 1965): “Ubi notandum est quod aliter providentia Dei operatur circa creaturas rationales et aliter circa irrationales: in creaturis enim rationalibus invenitur meritum et demeritum propter liberum arbitrium, et propter hoc debentur eis poenae et praemia.” 15. Job 7:12, cited according to the English translation of the book of Job, included in Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Job, Old Testament Commentaries, vol. 32 (Lander, Wyo.: Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 2016): “Am I the sea or a whale that you surround me to lock me up?” Cf. Thomas’s explanation of this passage in his Commentary: “Job therefore seeks to know if there is some explanation for his affliction like the confining of the sea and the whale, namely, that he is not afflicted because of some lack of merit but because of some usefulness to others because of it” (Commentary on the Book of Job c. 7, lect. 3, 95).



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Of crucial importance here is the use Thomas makes of the notion of the “order of the universe” (ordo universi). Each singular creature is made by God as part of an order, and it is as part of the order that each creature is directed to God (to his goodness) as final cause of the whole of creation. The particular goodness of each creature lies in its contribution to the goodness of the whole, for it is the goodness of the whole of the universe which is intended primarily in God’s act of creation.16 This means that God in his providence does not treat creatures as if they exist purely in themselves, as isolated individuals, apart from the order of the whole; on the contrary, “they are disposed by divine providence as they are ordered to the universe” (c. 7, lect. 4). There is, however, an essential difference between “replaceable” parts of the whole, parts which are useful without having an intrinsic worth, and “essential” parts of the whole, parts which contribute essentially to the goodness of the whole. What we call here “intrinsic worth,” is expressed by Thomas in terms of “perpetuity.” Insofar as things participate in perpetuity, they belong essentially to the order of the universe; but things which fall short of perpetuity pertain only accidentally to the order of the universe.17 Perpetual things are ordered by God for their own sake, while corruptible things are ordered for the sake of other things. Insofar as earthly existence entails corruptibility, it does not allow for perpetuity. Look at what happens to irrational animals, Thomas says; for example, this lamb is killed and eaten by this wolf. That such things happen is not intended by God as if this lamb deserves to be punished but because of the good of the species, since 16. See especially ScG III, c. 64 (ed. Marietti: 87, 2392) “Id quod est maxime bonum in rebus causatis, est bonum ordinis universi, quod est maxime perfectum. . . . Bonum igitur ordinis rerum causatarum a Deo est id quod est praecipue volitum et causatum a Deo.” 17. Expositio super Iob ad litteram, cap.7 (ed. Leonina 26:50, 371, Rome, 1964): “sciendum est autem quod secundum modum quo aliqua participant perpetuitatem essentialiter ad perfectionem universi spectant, secundum autem quod a perpetuitate deficiunt, accidentaliter pertinent ad perfectionem universi et non per se; et ideo secundum quod aliqua perpetua sunt, propter se disponuntur a Deo, secundum autem quod corruptibilia sunt, propter aliud.”

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God has it ordained that, in the realm of corruptible nature, the death of the one is the food of the other. In the realm of nature, it is the species which is perpetual; the individuals come and go, they are part of the natural process of generation and corruption. The lamb and the wolf are thus not made for eternity. But man, in a certain way, is; he is not meant to perish, since he has something in himself which makes him capable of perpetual existence, or, in theological terms, he is ordered to eternal life in union with God. In his sufferings Job experiences the painful discrepancy between his external physical and vulnerable existence and his inner dignity as moral subject. Both aspects of his life are kept together under the assumption that God’s providential care, as experienced in the afflictions of life, demonstrates the hidden dignity of man who is more than merely physical existence. This message concerning God’s providence is summed up in the following passage: For if man is considered only as he appears exteriorly, he seems small, fragile and perishable. So it would be astonishing for God to have such great care for man unless he should have something hidden which makes him capable of perpetual existence. . . . [I]f here were no other life for man except life on earth, man would not seem worth such great care God has for him. Therefore the very care which God has especially for man demonstrates that there is another life of man after the death of the body.18 18. Commentary of the Book of Job, c. 7, lect. 4 (Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 32, 98).

Guy Mansini, OSB Revelation and Divine Speech

6

Revelation and Divine Speech Guy Mansini, OSB

The book of Job is a part of the Bible, the Word of God, which, with the events of which it speaks, reveals both God himself and “the eternal decrees of his will.”1 What does St. Thomas think that God more particularly reveals in Job? And could it be revealed in some other way? The way St. Thomas reads Job, the answer to the second question is no. The nature of what is revealed in Job requires both the action of the chapters of the opening story and the ensuing disputation between Job and his friends. The book of Job not only is the Word of God, but it contains the second-longest speech of God recorded in the Bible (three-fourths the length of the Sermon on the Mount). Why does God speak in Job? Could what is revealed in Job have been revealed if God did not appear in the last chapters and speak? The way St. Thomas reads Job, the answer is no: the nature of what is revealed in Job, touching on what the First Vatican Council calls “the eternal decrees” of God’s will, requires God to disclose his mind and will to Job in the first person. 1. First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, chapter 2, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. II, ed. Norman P. Tanner, SJ (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990). For revelation in deeds and words, see the Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, no. 2, also in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. II.



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The story of Job’s affliction with which the book of Job opens is ordered to the manifestation of his virtue. This is the first thing revealed in Job, namely, Job’s virtue. God permits Satan unjustly to afflict Job in order and expressly to manifest Job’s justice, simplicity, and piety (1:1). In the court of heaven and before God, Satan questions whether the exterior correctness of Job’s life is not undertaken by Job purely with a view to keeping all the good things of family and possessions with which God has blessed him: “But put forth thy hand now,” Satan says to God, “and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face” (1:1). God gives Satan power, first over all Job’s possessions (1:12), and then even over “his bone and flesh” (2:5–6). When the first are destroyed, Job nonetheless blesses the name of the Lord, for “naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return” (1:21). “In all this Job did not sin,” the text reads, “or charge God with any wrongdoing” (1:22). When his flesh is eaten by sores, and his wife invites him to curse God and die (2:9), he still says nothing against God (2:10). In his Commentary on the Book of Job, the Expositio super Job ad litteram, St. Thomas does not explain this so much as paraphrase it: “It is evident from the foregoing that the cause of the adversity of blessed Job was this, that his virtue become manifest to all” (at 1:12).2 2. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Job, trans. Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, OP (Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2016), 21; hereafter Commentary: “patet igitur ex praedictis hanc fuisse causam adversitatis beati Job ut eius virtus omnibus fieret manifesta.” Translations from the Expositio are my own. I cite within the text the chapter and verse where the commentary is found; page numbers reference Mullady in the notes. The Latin text of this edition is based on that of the latest Leonine edition (1965). For the time and place of composition, see JeanPierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1: The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 120–21. The Expositio seems to have been composed at the same time as the third book of the Summa Contra Gentiles. See also Denis Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de la providence: Providence de Dieu et condition humaine selon l’“Exposition littérale sur le Livre de Job” de Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1997), 7–12. There is a fine introductory study of the Expositio by John Yocum, “Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” 21–42, in Aquinas



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Of course, God himself knows that Job is just and virtuous. But Satan does not know this. Neither does Job’s wife, it seems. And neither do Job’s three friends, nor Elihu. St. Thomas appositely observes that God wishes the virtue and justice of the righteous not only for their own good but to be seen by others, so that the elect may make progress unto salvation, and unto showing the justice of the damnation of the iniquitous (at 1:8).3 The very knowledge of Job’s virtue, itself a good, conduces to other goods. So the Sermon on the Mount: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:16). And the book of Wisdom, where the wicked man says of the righteous: “the very sight of him is a burden to us” (2:15). The immediate point of the affliction of Job is thus the manifestation of his moral goodness, his purity of intention, and his preference of God above all things, certainly above his possessions, the lives of his sons and daughters, and even his own life. He shows himself in this way to be rightly ordered in love according to the gospel (e.g., Lk 18:28–30). From the outset of the story, therefore, we know why evil things happen to good people; there is no question about this at all in the story of Job itself or in St. Thomas’s Commentary. If what is to be revealed is the virtue and obedience and piety of Job, then in God’s eyes, evidently, this revelation is worth the cost of Job’s affliction. It is perhaps not immediately evident that it is worth it in our eyes. The story becomes complicated only in the perception of this revelation by men. After the two introductory chapters, Satan disappears as an actor from the narrative, although importantly for Thomas he reappears as someone spoken about under the figures of Behemoth and Leviathan in chapters 40 and 41. Satan presumably learns that Job’s intentions in doing good deeds and exteriorly on Scripture: An Introduction to His Biblical Commentaries, ed. Thomas G. Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating, and John P. Yocum (London: T & T Clark International, 2005). 3. Commentary, 19: “Deus sanctorum vitam non solum ab electis considerari vult ad profectum salutis sed etiam ab iniquis ad cumulum damnationis, quia ex vita sanctorum condamnabilis ostenditur perversitas impiorum.”

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fearing God are righteous. It is a different matter in regard to Job’s friends and Elihu. Job’s virtue is not apparent to them in his suffering because of the perversity of their doctrine. Job and his friends agree that God’s providence extends to human affairs. The three friends, however, think that adversity and prosperity are meted out for wickedness and righteousness in this life, while Job supposes that “the good works of men are ordered to a future spiritual reward after this life” (at 2:11).4 They have too small a conception of the resources of God, not knowing what eye hath not seen nor ear heard, “what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9). Elihu, knowing of future reward and recompense in the next life, according to St. Thomas, nonetheless thinks that affliction in this life is a punishment for sin (at 32:22 and 34:37 and 37:24).5 The burden of the ensuing dialogues after the story recounting Job’s afflictions and the reason for them revolves around just these disagreements. The event of Job’s suffering cannot bespeak his virtue unless doctrine is in order. Is it also the case that the point of the story of Job, which is the manifestation of his virtue, is the same as the point of the book of Job? It may not seem so. According to Aquinas, its “whole intention is concerned with this, to show by probable reasons that human affairs are ruled by divine providence” (Prologue).6 And Aquinas emphasizes the importance of making this argument in a case like Job’s, for “that the just are afflicted without cause seems totally to subvert the foundation of providence” (Prologue).7 The foundation of providence is divine wisdom, goodness, and power. Divine wisdom, however, completely encompasses all created things in their mutual order and in their individuality. Divine goodness is the final cause of the universe as a whole and in its every part. And divine 4. Commentary, 34: “bona operum hominum ordinari ad remunerationem spiritualem futuram post hanc vitam.” 5. Commentary, 326, 347, 371. 6. Commentary, 8: “[huius libri] tota intentio circa hoc versatur ut per probabiles rationes ostendatur res humanas divina providentia regi.” 7. Commentary, 8: “quod justi sine causa affligantur totaliter videtur subruere providentiae fundamentum.”



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power is infinite and includes the regulation of all subordinate created causes. Moreover, human beings and angels are principal parts of the universe, and providence particularly concerns each and every one of them separately, singularly.8 Therefore, if there is only one just man afflicted without cause, divine providence is undone. Although differently expressed, however, the intention of the book as a whole and in its unity is the same as the intention of the action of the story of Job. Gregory the Great is understood to take the intention of the book to be the same as what we have called the intention of the story.9 Commentators on Thomas’s Commentary say that Thomas departs from Gregory’s view and adopts the view of Moses Maimonides.10 However, the difference between the two statements of the book’s intention is not as great as it might seem, and to say with Gregory that its point is the demonstration of the virtue of Job is materially the same as showing that human affairs are ruled by providence. In the first place, there is a shift in St. Thomas’s statement of the intention of the book. We have seen that in the Prologue, the intention is “to show by probable reasons that human affairs are ruled by divine providence.” The commentary on chapter 1, however, restates this: “the whole intention of this book is ordered to showing how human affairs are ruled by divine providence” (at 1:1).11 The second statement more accurately states the burden of the discussion of Job and his friends. All are already in agreement that human affairs are in fact ruled by divine providence. They disagree only as to how providence works. This does not gainsay the fact that knowledge of how 8. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles: Book Three: Providence, Parts I and II, trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), chaps. 76 and 111–13. 9. St. Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job, trans. Charles Mariott, vol. I, Library of the Fathers, vol. 34 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1844), Preface, III, 7 (19), and VI, 13 (25). 10. See the discussion of intention, with attention to Gregory and Maimonides, in Chardonnens, L’Homme sous le regard de la providence, 35–46. 11. Commentary, 9: “intentio huius libri tota ordinatur ad ostendendum qualiter res humanae providentia divina reganter.”

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God rules, and especially, knowledge of why bad things happen to good people, is necessary to grasp the fact of providence with certitude. How human affairs unfold can, given certain assumptions, lead us to deny the reality of providence relative to human affairs, just as the Prologue intimates. For if you think bad things happen to good people in this life, and if you think that there is no future life in which recompense and reward are justly measured out to humans according to their merits, then you will deny that providence extends to human affairs; that is, you will deny that divine providence, which because of the goodness of God must extend to a just ordering of whatever it orders, extends to human affairs. Or again, if you think you know that if there were a divine providence, it must certainly extend to human affairs not just in general but in particular because of the perfection of the divine knowledge and will, and if you think there is no future life, and if you observe that bad things happen to good people, then you will deny the existence of God altogether. So, knowing how (qualiter) providence rules is indeed germane to our secure possession of the very fact of providence. This second statement of the intention of the book, where the point is to show how God rules, brings us closer to identifying the intention of the book with the point of the story of Job, whereby God wishes to manifest the virtue of Job. A summary section of the Commentary at the end of Job’s long speech in chapter 9 and 10 is helpful. Aquinas takes Job to have shown the following five things regarding the cause of his misery and affliction. Job shows that it is not caused by some impious person into whose hand the earth has been given [cf. 9:24]; that it is not caused by God oppressing Job in falsely accusing him [cf. 10:3]; that it is not caused by God looking into Job’s faults [cf. 10:4]; that it is not caused by God in order to punish his sins [cf. 10:14]; that it is not caused by God insofar He takes pleasure in the suffering of others [cf. 10:18] [at 10:22].12 12. Commentary, 138: “Job . . . ostendit hoc non esse ab aliqo impio in cuius manu data sit terra, non esse a Deo calumniose opprimente, non esse a Deo peccata puniente, non esse a Deo in poenis sibi complacente.”



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Job does not know the cause of his affliction but concludes that “it is necessary for his friends to posit another life in which both the just are rewarded and the evil punished” (at 10:22).13 This addresses the doctrinal difference between Job and his friends. It upholds the justice of God, proposing another life in which the good can be rewarded and the wicked properly punished. But it does not address the question of the reason for Job’s afflictions now, in this life. What we do learn from the summary at the end of the commentary on chapter 10 is that the cause of Job’s affliction will not directly be found in a malicious will, either created or uncreated, where a malicious will is a will that makes the evil that befalls another its own good, and those are the first and fifth of the possible reasons in the summary. Nor can the reason be that God is mistaken about Job, thinking him guilty when he is not, or that he is ignorant about Job and is looking to find out something he does not know about Job; those are the second and third reasons and are excluded by the perfection of divine knowledge. And as to the fourth reason, it cannot be that God is punishing Job, for Job is innocent. The ultimate reason is to be found in no disordered will, either divine or created. (Of course, it is found in what God permits to the evil and so disordered will of Satan.) But again, the ultimate reason is not to be found in the divine mind or any good that could be added to the divine mind, since such a thing is impossible. Therefore, whatever the reason may be for Job’s affliction, it must be looked for in view of the good of some created person. We saw above that the manifestation of the just man’s virtue is good for other good created persons, for the progress of their virtue.14 But also, some good comes to the one suffering adversity, and this is clearly but mysteriously asserted in the Commentary. It is clearly asserted: “It would not have pleased God that someone suffer adversity 13. Commentary, 138–39: “de necessitate inducat eos ad ponendum aliam vitam in qua et justi praemiantur et mali puniuntur.” 14. It is good, too, for showing the justice of the punishment of the damned, as we have seen; and, of course, it is good for the good to know of this perfection of justice in the created order.

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unless on account of some good coming from it” (at 1:21).15 It is rather like a bitter medicine, St. Thomas goes on to explain, that promises and produces health. The ultimate good in question, moreover, is salvation itself, the supreme good promised to man (at 1:21, also at 9:16).16 It is mysteriously asserted, however, since St. Thomas does not always explain much here in the Commentary how the medicine works, how affliction leads to the future good. That affliction perfects a man in the voluntary and affective order and in that way leads to salvation is perhaps more easily understood and is very clearly asserted in Scripture. Romans 5:3–4—“We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”17 Romans 8:18—“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” 2 Corinthians 4:17—“For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”18 At the end of the Commentary, Thomas says that Job is perfected both from his suffering and from the divine teaching, meaning the divine revelation of the last chapters of Job (at 42:5).19 That his suffering conduces to increased virtue is, we have seen, generally taught in the New Testament. Perfection by the divine teaching or revelation, however, bespeaks perfection in the intellectual order, perfection of a person insofar as he has beheld the truth. What of Job’s af15. Commentary, 28: “Non enim esset placitum Deo quod aliquis adversitatem pateretur nisi propter aliquod inde proveniens bonum.” 16. Commentary, 28, 118. See also at 7:1, Commentary, 87, which reads “the life of man is a campaign/militia est vita hominis,” as if to say suffering produces good the way fighting produces future victory. Is this entirely a metaphor? And see at 19:23–29, Commentary, 221–24, where Job expresses his hope for the next life, the good produced, but with no statement that suffering here leads to that good. I collect these four citations from Eleonore Stump, “Aquinas on the Sufferings of Job,” in Reasoned Faith, ed. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 328–57. 17. See St. Thomas, Super Epistolam ad Romanos Lectura, in Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, 8th edition, ed. Raphael Cai, OP (Rome: Marietti, 1953), at 5:3, no. 387: “tribulatio est materia et occasio exercendi patientiae actum.” 18. See further among many other texts Acts 14:21 and Jas 1:2. 19. Commentary, 426.



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fliction in this regard? According to Thomas, it perfects others in this intellectual order: it is good for the good that Job’s virtue be manifest to them. Does Job’s affliction also perfect him in this order? Does he not know that he is virtuous?20 Job’s request to God to explain himself supposes Job knows this. There is something else, however. Job’s virtue cannot be manifest unless the God for whom it is worthwhile to be virtuous for his sake alone also becomes manifest: God shows up within the suffering of Job as the one for whom one should renounce everything (at 1:21).21 And this is the second thing that is revealed in the book of Job and by the action of the story in the opening chapters. So to speak, what shows up with the virtue of Job is also God, precisely in that character of his transcendence whereby he is measured by no created good, because he is the creator, and therefore also encompassingly, perfectly, successfully provident. Job’s virtue, revealed by trial, also reveals the one for whom all else is to be despised. In this light, if the God who makes the world and whose unchanging, unfathomable, indeed infinite goodness shows up in that suffering of Job that itself displays his virtue before God, then it is hard to say Job’s suffering is not worth it. The manifestation of God and the manifestation of Job’s virtue constitute a single reality. The manifestation of God seems sufficient reason, not for God to afflict him, since God does not do this, but for permitting Satan to afflict him, knowing that Satan will act on this permission. Satan’s intention in afflicting Job is to provoke him to blasphemy, which intention of Satan is obviously immoral (at 1:12).22 God’s intention in permitting Satan to afflict Job is that Job’s virtue and therefore God himself be made manifest both to Job and to Satan and Job’s friends. Furthermore, how else can the virtue of Job—and so also God— 20. According to St. Gregory, in an important way he does not. See his Morals on Book of Job, trans. Charles Mariott, vol. III, Part 1, Library of the Fathers, vol. 36 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1847), Book 28, Preface, no. 1 (260): “For what commonly slays a soul more fatally than consciousness of its virtue?” 21. Commentary, 27–28. 22. Commentary, 23.

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become manifest unless Job is afflicted? It is the possibility of deceit, of hidden and sinful intentions in a fallen world, that makes virtue unmistakably and so manifestly appear to men and angels only once it is tested by adversity: “God’s first intention is to give not only spiritual but also temporal goods to the just” (at 1:1).23 But sin has entered the world and so, “for a special reason,” Thomas explains, God permits the affliction of the just (at 1:1).24 But from the beginning, it was not so: “From the beginning, man was so established that he would have been subjected to no troubles if he had remained in innocence” (at 1:1).25 Job is subjected to affliction for a special reason, the manifestation of his virtue in a fallen world. And in no other way can his virtue, and the God for and before whom he is virtuous, show up. For St. Thomas, this is expressly a matter of the manifestation of the glory of the Lord, which manifestation of his glory in a sinful world pertains to the justice of God (at 40:5).26 God’s Speaking and Speech in the Book of Job We have identified what is revealed in Job, namely how his providence works, the qualiter of God’s providence. He so rules human affairs that he uses the affliction of the just to manifest himself, transcendent in perfect power and majesty and justice, to created intellects in a fallen world. The explicit reason for Job’s affliction—the manifestation of his virtue—turns out also to include the knowl23. Commentary, 10: “ex prima Dei intentione iustis semper bona tribuuntur non solum spiritualia sed etiam temporalia.” 24. Commentary, 10: “propter aliquam specialem causam.” 25. Commentary, 10: “a principio homo sic institutus fuit ut nullis subiaceret perturbationibus si in innocentia permanisset.” See St. Thomas, Summa theologiae, ed. Peter Caramello (Rome: Marietti, 1952) I, q. 97, at 1–2. 26. Commentary, 401: “It should be considered that the fact that he makes his saints beautiful pertains to his mercy, but that he uses their beauty unto his glory pertains to his justice/est autem considerandum quod hoc ad misericordiam Dei pertinet quod sanctos suos faciat speciosos, sed quod eorum decore utatur ad suam gloriam ad iustitiam pertinet” (emphasis added).



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edge of the “how” of providence; it is materially the same as the intention of the book of Job, which is to show how God providentially governs human affairs. He governs human affairs in such a way that he himself becomes manifest in the affliction of the just. Remember how the Summa contra Gentiles begins. The first author and mover of the universe is an intellect. The ultimate end of the universe must, therefore, be the good of an intellect. This good is truth.27

The truth in question must also include the ultimate truth about God as the first cause and last end of the universe he makes in order to manifest the truth. Like the universe, the book of Job, too, is most closely concerned to manifest the truth about God. The argument in the Contra Gentiles that the end of the universe is truth is quite apodictic and absolutely demonstrative, and so are the arguments that show the certainty and universal scope of God’s providence, extending to human affairs, in Book III. This is the fact of providence. The intention of Job, however and according to Aquinas, is to accomplish what it does by “probable arguments.”28 This is because it deals with how providence works. For St. Thomas, it is the Holy Spirit who speaks in the wisdom literature of Scripture; he speaks for the education of man. The question of the affliction of the just is so important, moreover, that the book of Job is first in the lineup of wisdom books. The intention of the book of Job, however, is executed only by probable reasons.29 It is the Holy Spirit, therefore, who thus gives “probable reasons” in showing how God rules. Could not the Holy Spirit give demonstrative, apodictic reasons for so important a matter? No; he cannot. The arguments have to be probable; they cannot be strictly meta27. Summa contra Gentiles, Book One: God, trans. Anton Pegis (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1975), chap. 1. 28. Commentary, 8. 29. Commentary, Prologue, 8: “in numero Hagiographorum, idest librorum per spiritum Dei sapienter ad eruditionem hominum conscriptorum, primus ponitur liber Job, cuius tota intention circa hoc versatur ut per probabilies rationes ostendatur res humanas divina providentia regi.”

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physically demonstrative. In the first place, this is so because it is a matter of how God deals with an individual, with Job, and no one else. Demonstrations bear on the universal, not the individual. This is true also of the Holy Spirit’s demonstrations—demonstrations addressed to us, after all. And even though Job typifies the entire plan of how God rules, this plan, just as the divine rule of Job’s life, are determinations of the freedom of God; they cannot be demonstrated the way things are demonstrated about providence in Book III of the Contra Gentiles. Thomas says that Eliphaz argues to the existence of providence “through this that natural things seem to be ordered to an end,” which is “the most powerful argument for showing that the world is ruled by divine providence” (at 5:8).30 But when he extends his argument to the rule of human affairs, at 5:11ff., his arguments, though likely or probable, do not in fact establish the truth. In the disputation, Job deploys probable arguments, too. We saw one above from chapter 10. He lays out another one as Aquinas reads him in chapter 12. The intention of the three friends, Job first says in Aquinas’s reading, is to speak of God’s wonders, “praising his wisdom and power and justice” (at 12:1).31 Job addresses these in 12:11– 25.32 Second, the friends “applied these wonders to certain false doctrines,” holding that human beings prosper in this life because of justice and are afflicted only because of their sins.33 Third, they conclude Job is evil because he is suffering.34 Job argues contrarily that he is innocent (at 13:23).35 Therefore, the second thing, that suffering here and now must be punishment for sin, is false. Again, in 14:7–22, Job is arguing in Aquinas’s reading for the resurrection.36 30. Commentary, 68: “per hoc quod res naturales apparebant esse dispositae propter finem”; “potissimum argumentum est ad ostendendum mundum regi divina providentia.” 31. Commentary, 149: “extollentes eius sapientiam et potentiam et iustitiam.” 32. Commentary, 153–58. 33. Commentary, 149: “magnifica . . . ad falsa quaedam dogmata applicabant.” 34. Commentary, 150. 35. Commentary, 167. 36. Commentary, 175–81.



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At the end of 14, in lecture 5, he argues first from a comparison of man to lower creatures and second from human freedom and intellectual knowledge (at 14:18–20).37 But his arguments are probable, Aquinas says. Thus, not even does Job himself strictly demonstrate the truth of how providence rules human affairs. The Contra Gentiles may strictly demonstrate the fact of providence over human things; how this providence is exercised turns out to be a matter of faith, not of philosophy. The “demonstration” is both historical in the story of Job and by way of the concluding word of God. First, it is historical. It is important for Thomas that we understand Job to be a person in rerum naturae, and not an invented figure. We learn why God actually permits the affliction of the just in the real course of affairs.38 Mary Sommers expresses this historical demonstration of the point of Job excellently: The concept of manifestation, as Aquinas uses it in the Expositio on Job, indicates a quality which an event has because it is sent by God as a measure of the human heart. What becomes manifest in the event is the measuring—the adequation between God’s call to the person and his response. The objective status of the event consists in its being sent, but it is constituted in its form and purpose by the response of the subject. For this reason, it is always part of a story. The event is both the consummation of the call and response: “it is accomplished”; and the revelation of the measurement which has taken place. It is the point, therefore, at which God’s providential governance of humankind becomes available for study.39

Second, the “demonstration” is by way of the concluding word of God. In this concluding word from the whirlwind, which extends from chapters 38 to 41, St. Thomas styles God as one who determines a disputed question, taking the role of a scholastic magister, who renders judgment (at 38:1).40 This is not a joke. God shows 37. Commentary, 180–81. 38. Commentary, Prologue, 8. 39. Mary C. Sommers, “Manifestatio: The Historical Presencing of Being in Aquinas’ Expositio super Job,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 62 (1988): 147–56, at 154. 40. Commentary, 373–74.

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himself as one interested in truth, the truth that is the end of the universe, whose whole point is that it be manifested to men and angels.41 He shows himself as one infinitely distant from the Father of Lies who initiates the action of the story and so of the dispute about the manner of providence. And in a way, moreover, the most important consequence of Satan’s action is to sow confusion in the hearts of men thinking about providence. God permits this sowing of doubt. But he acts at the end of the book to remove it. This confusion and division among men about the ways of providence is the first reason for the divine speech. The disputation between Job and his friends, and between Job and Elihu, ends in disarray. There is no common resolution as to the manner of God’s providence. That there be this confusion of opinions, however, serves as a foil unto our perception of the necessity to hear the pure word of God on such high and difficult matters.42 When he speaks, in St. Thomas’s reading, God reproves Job for speaking in a publically presumptuous manner by insisting God speak with him (at 38:3).43 But he reproves Elihu for speaking falsely (at 38:2),44 and he rebukes the friends for speaking false doctrine and not according to the truth of faith as did Job (at 42:7).45 God’s rendering judgment on the disputation shows by contrast the truth of Job’s faith in a future reward and recompense for his la41. It does not need to be manifested to God; its manifestation in divinis just is the Word. 42. See Bernard Lonergan, SJ, De Verbo incarnato (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964), 208, on the evolution of Christological dogma: “Ipsa evolutio tamquam in causam primam reducitur in divinam providentiam quae quidem universum velle potuit in quo nullus esset error et nullum malum, quae tamen pro infinita sua sapientia atque bonitate universum elegit in quo errores et mala permittuntur ut per errores clarius et plenius cognoscatur verum et per mala fiant bona majora.” [“This evolution is reduced as to its first cause to divine providence, which indeed could will there to be a universe in which there were no error and no evil, but which in accord with its infinite wisdom and goodness chose a universe in which errors and evils are permitted such that the truth be more clearly and fully known through errors and that through evils there be better goods.”] 43. Commentary, 375. 44. Commentary, 374. 45. Commentary, 428.



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bors, expressed most prominently in chapter 19, where Job speaks of faith in Christ’s victory over sin and death (at 19:25–27).46 Without this word of confirmation, Job’s own story is not sufficient for our faith. Rather, as has been said, revelation of how in fact providence rules the course of human affairs is communicated in a pattern of both words and deeds, where the deeds corroborate the words, and the words declare the meaning of the events.47 The speech of God from the whirlwind concentrates on the wonders of creation, and St. Thomas’s analysis has it move from the constituent parts of the universe (38:1–12) to God’s ordering of these parts (38:13–39:35), thence from the marvels of animals (38:36– 39:35) to the effects of God’s providence in man (40:5ff.), and especially in evil men, by the offices of Satan, presented under the figures of Behemoth and Leviathan.48 Unless Behemoth and Leviathan are figures of Satan, we do not have a complete inventory of the grades of created reality. The satisfaction of so including Satan in the inventory is not only metaphysical, however, but also literary and moral. Satan appears no longer as one who initiates action, as at the beginning of the book, but only as an instrument of God. And it is important for the consolation of Job to know that whatever he does is done within the confines of the divine permission, which is not cruel (at 41:1–3).49 The trial of Job is certainly bound up with the revelation of the Creator, who, according to Thomas, so inventories his created effects, effects of which Job is ignorant, just in order that he may “all 46. Commentary, 222–23. 47. Dei Verbum, no. 2. 48. There are many contrasts to draw here. The world is first established by the word of God (“And God said, let there be . . .”), which is no human word, but reported for us in human words. The world once established cannot be grasped by us except in speech, since intuition is of things within the world, not of the world. But it is wonderful that here, in Job, within the world, the world is summed up by a divine speech expressed in human words. The commands of the first chapter of Genesis are spoken to no man, but as it were to the things. The divine speech within the world describing the world is addressed in the first person to a quite determinate second person, Job. 49. Commentary, 415–16.

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the more be convinced that he does not have knowledge of the more sublime things” (at 38:3),50 the sublimity of providence. This evocation of a creation, and so a Creator, we cannot fathom is sometimes taken to be the whole point of the divine speech, a silencing of Job by force majeure: “I am the creator; so shut up.”51 This is not correct. That “human wisdom does not suffice in order to comprehend the truth of divine providence” (at 38:1)52 does not mean God does not give us knowledge of the ways of his providence. There is a distinction to be made between understanding and comprehending. For one thing, as already mentioned, God shows up at the end of the book not simply in order to determine the disputation, but in determining it also to console Job, as befits a true friend, as Thomas has explained much earlier (at 2:11–12).53 He speaks no longer about Job, as in the opening chapters, but to him, in the first person. The form of God’s speech is itself noteworthy, since first personal address to another is very powerful. It acknowledges or establishes a common space between two persons. It may not be a space of equals, and the content of God’s speech makes that point from the beginning. Still, it is a common space: God asks and Job will answer. It is a speech, St. Thomas notes, that God makes for Job’s sake, “propter eum” (at 38:1).54 Elihu, who has spoken just before in chapter 37, is not addressed by God but dismissed by him in the third person: St. Thomas reads God’s disdainful “iste” of 38:2 as referring to Elihu, not to Job.55 What this act of friendship shows is that we can rightly suffer for God, showing God to be worth our suffering, only if he is 50. Commentary, 375: “multo magis convincitur sublimiorum scientiam non habere.” 51. St. Thomas was familiar with the view of Maimonides that we know nothing of how God rules the world and that we must not imagine that his providence is similar to ours; see Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedlander, 2nd ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), Part III, chap. 23, 299–303, esp. 303. 52. Commentary, 373: “humana sapientia non sufficit ad veritatem divinae providentiae comprehendendam.” 53. Commentary, 34–35. 54. Commentary, 374. 55. Commentary, 374. God speaks to Eliphaz, too, at 42:7–8, but only to reprove him and Bildad and Zophar for false doctrine and to command that they make expiation.



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our reward, our final possession. Our suffering for his sake (for virtue’s sake) shows his surpassing worth, indeed. It shows he is greater than the finite goods we forsake or sacrifice. But this surpassing worth has somehow to be promised us as belonging to us—the one who suffers has not just to acknowledge it but already to possess it now in love, and in hope, eternally. God cannot want the manifestation of his glory to be at the price of the destruction of earthly goods and simply by a sheer contrast between them with him. He appears against the contrast in the destruction of earthly good, yes; but he appears as the infinite good who wants to share himself. And if he does not show up like that, then he has not really shown up. So, he has to be evoked as the Redeemer of 19:25, the living Redeemer who will give life beyond the grave. And the final speech of God confirms this evocation.56 For the particular “how” of providence, whereby in a fallen world suffering leads to the good, to God, to the possession of God, we have to have God’s revelation: so God speaks at the end, not touching on supernatural life expressly, but touching on the book’s point of departure, the justice of Job. Job, God says, is just. And he is rewarded even in this life, a token of things in the life to come. As in Hebrews, what is revealed is “that he exists [as Creator] and rewards those who seek him” (11:6). God has to finish the story that begins in his court by speaking. Only this confirms Job’s case, confirms Job as himself evidence of how God rules, himself the probable reason for why bad things happen to good people. The affliction of Job redounds to his own salvation and the salvation of others: what Satan’s malice effects, the affliction of Job, becomes the very instrument for Satan’s undoing. By a very great good, which God directly wills, namely Job’s justice and piety, God uses the evil he does not directly will, Job’s affliction, to subvert the evil 56. For the role of personal pronouns in the revelation of the Trinity, see Robert Sokolowski, “The Revelation of the Holy Trinity: A Study in Personal Pronouns,” 162–77 in Ethics and Theological Disclosures: The Thought of Robert Sokolowski, ed. Guy Mansini and James G. Hart (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003).

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he wills in no way whatsoever but only permits, the empire and malice of sin.57 This is what Bernard Lonergan called the Law of the Cross.58 The subversion of evil consists also in part simply in our beholding the justice of Job and therefore the transcendence and friendship of God, and it is that work of disclosure we have examined in this essay. 57. For the distinction between what God directly wills (the good), what he indirectly wills (the evils of natural defect and punishment), and what he permits with the permission of tolerance (sin), see St. Thomas, Summa theologiae I, q. 19, a. 9. 58. Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, Thesis 17, with Thesis 15, Preliminary Note I: On the death of Christ, nos. 7 and 8. Job plays the role he does here, doubtless, only as a figure of and by the prevenient power of Christ.

Harm Goris

7 Sin and Human Suffering in Aquinas’s Commentary on Job Harm Goris

“Sin” is one of the key concepts in Aquinas’s Commentary on Job. As he says, “almost the whole book deals with the question (quaestio) that temporal adversity is not the proper punishment of sins.”1 Despite the existential and emotional purport of the issue, Aquinas takes the book of Job as a Scholastic disputation (disputatio) between the three friends on the one hand and Job on the other, in which the friends defend the opinion that the evil a man suffers in this life is the proper punishment by God for his sins—and conversely, that his temporal goods are a reward for his virtuousness— while Job argues to the contrary and defends the position that punishment and reward follow only in the hereafter.2 1. In Iob, c. 1, 11, lines 518–24: “Manifestum est quod bona quae agimus non referuntur ad prosperitatem terrenam quasi ad praemium . . . et similiter e contrario adversitas temporalis non est propria poena peccatorum, de quo fere in toto libro quaestio erit.” All references are to the Leonine edition: Expositio super Iob ad Litteram. Opera Omnia iussu Leonis XIII P.M. edita, vol. 26 (Rome: Santa Sabina, 1965). The English translations are my own, but I made extensive use of the English translation by Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, ed. and rev. the Thomas Institute: Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Job (Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2016). 2. See previous note: “de quo fere in toto libro quaestio erit” and In Iob, c. 2, 18, lines 199–219, where Aquinas writes: “inter hos fere vertitur tota disputatio huius libri.”



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Taking the book of Job as a Scholastic disputation, characterized by arguments, conceptual distinctions, and academic scholarship (even including meteorological and geographical data) gives Aquinas a format for writing a truly theological commentary on the book. It is the type of theology he is familiar with. But this is only half the story of the Commentary on Job. Aquinas wrote extensively about sin in many of his other works.3 These treatises are theoretical, general, and systematic in nature. This work is different. Not just the literary genre of the commentary as such, but the very fact that in this biblical book there is one individual character, Job, as the key figure in conversation with other personae, offers Aquinas the opportunity to discuss sin in a more practical and concrete manner. The way he writes about sin in the commentary is truer to life compared to the abstract and formal analyses in his other works. He often makes phenomenological observations about sin and evil, referring to common human experience (“for we often see that”; “it usually happens that”; etc.) and to a range of situations that are familiar to readers and with which they can identify. The price Aquinas might have to pay for this vividness is that his commentary detracts from the comprehensiveness and scope of what sin in general is. I shall discuss four topics that are of interest in what Aquinas writes about sin in his Commentary on Job, and I shall do so with reference to his more systematic analyses of sin, in particular, in the Summa theologiae. The first topic concerns the plausibility of the arguments proposed for Job’s innocence. These arguments are fundamental for defending Job’s position in the disputation, but how convincing are they? Answering this question will help us to appreciate the overall structure and context of Aquinas’s commentary. Next, I shall discuss the concept of sin in the commentary and the different kinds of sin which Aquinas distinguishes. I shall argue that Aquinas takes a broader view of what sin is than in his systematic works. The third section deals with the causal factors of sin and tries to show 3. Cf. e.g. In II Sent. d. 21–44; ST I-II, qq. 71–89 and the questions on particular sins in ST, II-II; De Malo qq. 2–14.



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Aquinas’s integral and holistic approach to sin in the Commentary on Job. The fourth section will deal with the relation between sin and human suffering. A short conclusion will summarize the findings of this chapter. Cogency of the Arguments for Job’s Innocence Job’s friends argue that his present misery is the consequence of his previous sins. In order to refute the argument, it is claimed that Job did not commit any sin and has always been fully innocent. Throughout the commentary, one can distinguish at least four different arguments to support this claim. The first argument is Job’s conscience. At the end of the first speech to his friends, Job states that he is and was not guilty, either in his reaction to the misfortune he suffers, or in any (previous) words or deeds.4 And again, in chapter 6:2–3, as Aquinas reads these verses, Job insists that he is sure that there are no mortal sins in him.5 In response, the friends accuse Job of either being ignorant and presumptuous, as Eliphaz and Zophar do in chapters 4–5, 11, and 15, or dishonest and hypocritical, as Bildad claims in chapter 8. Against these accusations, Job repeats in chapter 27 that he is innocent and did not sin. But now he corroborates his assertion by an explicit appeal to his own conscience. Aquinas explains Job’s words “for my heart does not accuse me of anything my whole life long” (27:6) as follows: “as if he [ Job] says: therefore I am assured that I do not fall away from innocence nor desert justice because I have learnt this from experience: for I do not have a remorseful conscience about any grave (sin) I might have committed throughout my life.”6 In his 4. In Iob c. 3, 26, lines 535–54. 5. In Iob c. 6, 41, lines 28–30: “quasi dicat . . . confido tamen in me non esse [peccata] mortalia.” 6. In Iob c. 27, 148, lines 66–70: “quasi dicat: ideo confido quod non recedam ab innocentia nec iustitiam deseram quia hoc per experientiam didici: non enim habeo conscientiam remordentem de aliquo gravi quod commiserim in tota vita mea.” Cf. also In Iob c. 13,

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systematic writings, Aquinas explains that our conscience can be a witness in the sense that we acknowledge having done something or having not done something; it can also excuse or accuse us in the sense that through conscience we judge having done something well or ill.7 However, human conscience is not infallible and we can never be certain whether we are free of mortal sin. Conscience and personal introspection can only produce conjectural knowledge.8 Also in the Commentary on Job, Aquinas agrees that the argument of a clear conscience is not decisive. When faced not merely with the accusations of his friends but with God and the divine judgment, the testimony of a man’s conscience is not effective (non valet). The security of one’s conscience can help a man in confrontation with human judges, as Job does in arguing with his friends, but not vis-à-vis God.9 In the end, no human being is fully transparent to himself and conscious of all his intentions.10 God, on the other hand, “examines the secrets of conscience.”11 And, finally, even if one is truly innocent and just, one is never completely free of (venial) sins.12 87, lines 290–92: “Certus autem erat Iob quod veritatem loquebatur sibi a Deo per donum fidei et sapientiae inspiratam.” Aquinas mentions the argument from Job’s clear conscience also in In Iob c. 17, 106, lines 29–31, although the text itself of 17, 6 only says “I have not sinned,” without reference to Job’s conscience. See also in In Iob c. 23, 136, lines 242–43. 7. ST I, q. 79, a. 13. 8. Cf. In II Sent. d. 39 q. 3 a. 2 ad 4. In ST I-II, q. 112 a. 5, Aquinas writes: “Tertio modo cognoscitur aliquid conjecturaliter per aliqua signa. Et hoc modo aliquis cognoscere potest se habere gratiam, inquantum scilicet percipit se delectari in Deo . . . et inquantum homo non est conscius sibi alicuius peccati mortalis.” In the response of the article, Aquinas quotes twice from the book of Job. 9. In Iob c. 9, 62–64, lines 381–507. 10. In Iob c. 9, 64, lines 491–507: “Tertius gradus est quando aliquis, etsi sit sibi conscius de peccato, tamen praesumit vel quia non habuit malam intentionem aut quia non fecit ex malitia et dolo sed ex ignorantia et infirmitate; sed nec hoc testimonium valet homini contra Deum, et ideo dicit ‘etiam si simplex fuero,’ idest sine dolo vel duplicitate pravae intentionis, ‘hoc ipsum ignorabit anima mea’; homo enim non potest ad liquidum motum sui affectus deprehendere, tum propter variationem eius tum propter permixtionem et impetum multarum passionum, propter quod dicitur Ier. 18, 9 ‘pravum est cor hominis et inscrutabile; quis cognoscet illud?’ Et propter huiusmodi ignorantiam quod homo se ipsum non cognoscit nec statum suum, redditur etiam iustis sua vita taediosa, et propter hoc subdit ‘et taedebit me vitae meae.’” 11. In Job c. 16, 104, lines 270–71: “testis caeli . . . conscientiae secreta rimatur.” 12. Cf. In Iob c. 9, 62, lines 336–41: “Tunc autem homo sufficienter Deo responderet



Commentary on Job 165

There is a hint at a second argument for proving Job’s innocence. Commenting on 16:9, “The slanderer is raised up against my face contradicting me,” Aquinas mentions two possible interpretations. The first one is that “slanderer” refers to Eliphaz, who had accused Job of being a sinner. The other one is that “slanderer” refers to the devil and that the verse means: “Job knew through the Holy Spirit that his adversity had been administered by the devil with God’s permission.”13 Aquinas prefers the latter reading because it makes more sense of the following -verse, “he has collected his anger against me.” The point is that the phrase “through the Holy Spirit” might indicate that Aquinas thinks that Job had had a special, private revelation through the Holy Spirit, on the basis of which he knew with certainty that his misfortune was not the result of sins and that he was innocent. As Aquinas explains in his systematic works, the privilege of a private revelation can give someone certain knowledge that he is in the state of grace without sin.14 However, Aquinas does not mention explicitly this argument from private revelation; he only seems to hint at it. Aquinas brings in a third proof of Job’s innocence, namely, the assertion by the narrator of the story of Job. Behind the subjective testimony of the conscience of the literary persona of Job, there is the objective report by the biblical author of the book of Job. We have to keep in mind that Aquinas does not think that the story of Job is fictitious. It is true history (res gesta) and not a parable (parabola).15 Aquinas leaves open the question whether the human author of the book is Job, speaking about himself in the third person or quando in eo nihil inveniretur quod iuste a Deo reprehendi posset, quod nulli hominum in hac vita contingit, secundum illud Prov. 20:9 ‘quis potest dicere: mundum est cor meum, purus sum a peccato?”’ 13. In Iob c. 16, 102, lines 90–93: “Vel potest dici quod Iob intellexit per Spiritum Sanctum suam adversitatem a Diabolo procuratam, Deo permittente.” Also, lines 142–43: “Intellexit enim Iob afflictiones suas sibi per Diabolum quidem sed Deo permittente irrogatas.” 14. E.g., ST I-II, q. 112 a. 5. 15. In Iob c. 1, 5, lines 15–16; also c. 32, 171, lines 26–27.

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some other, unknown writer.16 If it was Job, then the strength of this third proof coincides with the reliability of the first, Job’s personal testimony. But if the writer was someone else, this anonymous author would be an independent witness to Job’s innocence. The very first sentence of the story already describes Job as “guileless and upright, and God-fearing, and turned away from evil.” The description shows, as Aquinas explains, that Job was free from sins.17 The authority of the narrator seems to warrant that Job was without sin. But, one could ask, whence comes this authority and what makes the narrator trustworthy? There is a fourth and decisive proof, God’s testimony. The divine testimony plays a double role in the commentary. The first one is within the story itself and the other outside of it, within the larger setting of the text. Job had called upon God before as a participant in the disputation besides his friends, but only in chapter 38 does God make an entry as a third party.18 Aquinas describes this divine intervention using terms that are derived from what a magister did in a Scholastic disputation. He talks about God’s “answer” (responsio) and about God “who determines the question” by divine authority, “as if through the verdict of a judge.” This divine determination corrects the human one, which Elihu had presumed to make in chapters 32–37 through a critical assessment of both the position of Job and the opinion of the three other friends.19 Although God’s response is primarily directed at Job, reprimanding him for his ill-chosen words in defending himself against his friends, God also refutes the view of Elihu and the three other friends that Job was punished for his sins.20 Aquinas does not say explicitly that God’s refutation of Job’s friends includes the affirmation of Job’s innocence, but that seems 16. In Iob prologue, 4, lines 92–96. 17. In Iob c. 1, 5, lines 19–20: “describitur eius virtus, per quam a peccatis demonstratur immunis.” 18. See in particular In Iob c. 13, 87, lines 308–10: “ingrediens ergo disputationem cum Deo, dat ei optionem utramlibet personam eligendi vel opponentis vel respondentis.” 19. In Iob c. 38, 199, lines 7–55. 20. In Iob c. 38, 199, 40–53 and c. 42, 228, lines 50–65.



Commentary on Job 167

to be obvious for him, also in view of the fact that Job is restored by God in all his earthly possessions. Moreover, at the very beginning of the commentary, in interpreting the conversation between God and Satan about Job, Aquinas writes that God wills the virtue of the saints to become known to all and therefore wants Job to be deprived of temporal goods.21 The intention of God then seems to be to show Job’s innocence. But God plays yet another, more basic role in Aquinas’s commentary. The book of Job is part of Sacred Scripture. In the Prologue, Aquinas says that after the Law and the Prophets, the book of Job comes as the first of the writings (hagiographia), which are “the books that have been written wisely through the Holy Spirit for instructing people.”22 God, in particular, the Holy Spirit, is the principal author of Sacred Scripture and the human writer is its instrumental author.23 This means that the trustworthiness of the human writer of the book of Job, who asserts that Job is innocent, is warranted by and dependent upon the principal author, God himself. Kinds of Sins In his systematic works, Aquinas defines “sin” as “an inordinate (i.e., evil) human (i.e., voluntary) act.”24 As a consequence, Aquinas argues that sin can coexist with virtue.25 Therefore, many Thomists think that “original sin,” being a habit and not an act, is only “sin” in an analogous sense, although Aquinas himself is not explicit on this point.26 In the Commentary on Job, a formal definition of “sin” 21. In Iob c. 1, 11, lines 553–54, cf. 10, lines 458–60. 22. In Iob prologue, 3, lines 52–54: “et ideo post legem datam et prophetas, in numero Hagiographorum, idest librorum per Spiritum Dei sapienter ad eruditionem hominum conscriptorum, primus ponitur liber Iob.” 23. Quaestio Quodlibetalis 7, q. 6, a. 1 ad 5: “auctor principalis sacrae Scripturae est Spiritus Sanctus . . . homo, qui fuit auctor instrumentalis.” Cf. also ST I, q. 1, a. 10. 24. Cf. ST I-II, q. 21, a. 1; q. 71, a. 1 and 6; De Malo q. 2 a. 1; In II Sent. d. 35 a. 3. 25. Cf. e.g. ST I-II, q. 71, a. 4. 26. See T. C. O’Brien, “Appendix 7: Sin caused by origin,” in St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (Blackfriars ed.) vol. 26 (London and New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965),

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is lacking and the term is used in a broader sense, which includes vices and original sin. Aquinas does give some general descriptions of “sin,” but they are not strict definitions. In the commentary on 11:5–6, sin is said to be “a deviation from the law of God” (obliquatio a lege Dei).27 However, Aquinas takes “law of God” in a specific sense here. In the context of 11:5–6, Aquinas interprets it either as the eternal law, the providential plan in God’s mind, or as God’s government of the world in time.28 This raises a problem. For how could anything deviate from divine law understood in this sense? After all, Aquinas thinks that everything, also sin, is included in God’s eternal plan and in its historical execution and that nothing falls outside of its scope. Of course, this is not to say that God is the cause of evil or the auctor peccati, but through his voluntary permission and ordering of evil to some good, sin is not exempt from providence. It looks as if Aquinas hints at this problem when he writes: “But divine law, insofar as it God’s wisdom, extends to all particulars and to the smallest things, and so it cannot happen that a man is out of harmony with righteousness in something and not be in disagreement with divine law.”29 However, Aquinas shows no evidence of being aware of the dubiousness of this conclusion, which follows from the ambiguity of the expression “divine law.” Moreover, there is not only the problem of logical consistency (how can sin be excluded from God’s all-compassing 133–43, 136–37. This idea found its way into the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 404, which states, “sin is called ‘original sin’ only in an analogical sense.” 27. In Iob c. 11, 75, lines 33–34. 28. In Iob c. 11, 75, lines 33–61: “Considerandum est autem quod cum peccatum sit obliquatio a lege Dei, non potest plene cognosci peccatum vel quantitas eius nisi lex Dei cognoscatur. . . . Considerandum autem quod ab intellectu divinorum duplici ratione deficimus: primo quidem quia cum invisibilia Dei cognoscere non possimus nisi per ea quae facta sunt, ea vero quae facta sunt multum deficiant a virtute factoris, oportet quod remaneant multa in factore consideranda quae nobis occultantur, et haec vocantur secreta sapientiae Dei. . . . Secundo quia etiam ipsum creaturarum ordinem ad plenum comprehendere non possumus secundum quod a divina providentia dispensatur.” 29. In Iob c. 11, 76, lines 84–88: “Sed lex divina secundum quod est in sapientia Dei ad omnia particularia et minima se extendit, et sic non potest contingere quod homo in aliquo a rectitudine discordet et non contrarietur legi divinae.”



Commentary on Job 169

providence?) but also a moral problem. In the context of the commentary, the conclusion functions within an argument that man may sin without knowing it: “Because man cannot attain at examining divine law according as it is in the secret of God’s wisdom, and consequently cannot know its complexity, it may happen that sometimes a person does not think he is acting against God’s law while in fact he is, or thinks that he transgresses it only in a minor way while he does so greatly.” This seems to imply that man can sin, be blameworthy, and liable to punishment even if he sins out of an absolutely invincible ignorance, not being able to comprehend God’s wisdom and will. It is true that the argument is made in a speech by Zophar, who wants to show that Job must have sinned at least unwittingly. Yet there is no indication that Aquinas disagrees with the conclusion in general, even if he thinks it does not apply to the case of Job. By contrast, in the commentary on chapter 7, Aquinas uses the term “law of God” in a different sense. There, “law of God” consists of both the divine law revealed in Scripture and natural law, when Aquinas writes that “whoever sins, is opposed to God as long as he goes against the commands of God, which are either handed down in the written law or naturally instilled in human reason.”30 When “law of God” is taken in this sense, the description of sin as “a deviation from the law of God” is more in line with what Aquinas writes about sin in his systematic works. In the latter works, Aquinas usually distinguishes the divine law revealed in Scripture from natural law.31 But this distinction does not play a role in the Commentary on Job. A second general characteristic of sin, besides “deviation from the law of God,” is that sin detracts man from his true goal, God, and makes him cling to earthly goods. The just man is motivated by his love for God, while the intention of the sinner is determined by the love for earthly things. According to Aquinas, Satan wants to prove 30. In Iob c. 7, 51, lines 468–71. This twofold rule (regula) for the righteousness of human life is also mentioned and discussed in In Iob c. 23, 135, lines 176–206. There Aquinas speaks of natural law in terms of “imitating God’s goodness” in affections, works, mind-set, and perseverance. 31. See e.g. ST I-II, q. 91, a. 4.

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not that Job’s external acts were wrong but that he lacks the right inner orientation toward God. Job, Satan says to God, is not truly just but simulates justice because he only did good in order to acquire temporal prosperity and not out of love for you.32 Aquinas also makes clear that man cannot reach that ultimate goal in this life but only in the next. The present life of man is like a battle and the victory will come afterwards. Or man is like a day laborer, who will be paid only after his work is finished.33 Aquinas mentions a large number of particular sins in the course of the commentary, but he also offers several general classifications and subdivisions of sin. A first one is that he interprets the threefold characterization of Job in 1:1 as “guileless and upright (simplex et rectus), and God-fearing (timens Deo), and turned away from evil (recedens a malo)” as a description of Job’s virtue, “which shows that Job was free from sin.” This characterization is identified with an apparently exhaustive threefold division of sin: in respective order, sin against one’s neighbor, against God, and against oneself.34 This tripartition was first made in the Summa Sententiarum, ascribed to Hugh of St. Victor.35 It was then taken up by Peter Lombard, without mentioning Hugh’s name, and through Lombard’s Sentences found its way into common Scholastic teaching.36 The same tripartition occurs again in the commentary on 13:23 “show me how many crimes, sins, wicked deeds and faults I have.”37 Aquinas identifies 32. In Iob c. 1, 10, lines 487–91: “Satan ait: numquid frustra Iob timet Deum? Quasi dicat: negare non possum quin bona faciat, sed hoc non agit ex recta intentione propter tuum amorem et honestatis, sed propter temporalia quae a te consecutus est.” See also note 46 below. 33. Cf. In Iob c. 7, 46–51; In Iob c. 14, 93, lines 176–95. 34. In Iob c. 1, 5, lines 19–43. Aquinas subdivides the sin against one’s neighbor in two, either secretly by deceit or openly by violence. 35. PL 176, 113C–D. Aquinas discusses this tripartition also in In II Sent. d. 42 q. 2 a. 2 qc. 2, Super Psalmos 25 no. 3 and in ST I-II, q. 72, a. 4. In the latter text he attributes it falsely to Isidore. Hugh had mentioned the name of Isidore in the sentence that preceeds the threefold division of sin. But Hugh does not attribute that division to Isidore. He mentions Isidore as the author of another twofold distinction of sin, namely, sin out of desire and out of fear. 36. Peter Lombard, Sentences book II, d. 42. 37. In Iob c. 13, 88, lines 335–50.



Commentary on Job 171

the crimes (iniquitates) with the sins against one’s neighbor, for example, theft and murder. The sins (peccata) are directed against oneself, like gluttony or luxury, and wicked deeds (scelera) are the sins against God, such as blasphemy and sacrilege. In the text of 13:3, there is also a fourth category, “faults” (delicta). Aquinas uses it to draw up a wider, twofold classification of sin, namely, sins of commission and of omission.38 The first are offences against the negative commandments or prohibitions (“Thou shall not”), and the second consist in neglecting the positive commandments or order (“Thou shall”). Maybe it was a gloss on Ephesians 2:1 that triggered Aquinas to interpret “faults” as sins of omission. According to the gloss, “faults (delicta) are by omitting to do what is commended, sins (peccata) by doing what is prohibited.”39 The tripartition into sins against oneself, one’s neighbor, and God appears then as a subdivision of the category of sins of commission. A third classification of sin is the division into grave, mortal sins and light, venial sins.40 The former do not exist in the just, like Job, but the just are liable to venial sins. This distinction is mentioned only once, but it plays a key role in the whole commentary. Aquinas thinks of Job as a just man, who is without mortal sin, that is, who has a right relationship God, but who is guilty of a venial sin, a certain thoughtlessness or incautiousness in speech because of which his friends misunderstood what he meant to say.41 Causes of Sin For Aquinas, the agent cause of a sinful act is the human person himself. Being an embodied soul or ensouled body, different powers play a role in his moral acting and therefore a human being can sin 38. Ibid. Also In Iob c. 16, 104, lines 235–38, where “peccata operum” are distinguished from “peccatum indevotionis et omissionis.” In In Iob c. 22, 128, lines 44–46, it is said that man sins more through omitting than committing. 39. Cf. ST I-II, q. 72, a. 6 obi. 1. 40. In Iob c. 6, 41, lines 15–18. 41. Cf. In Iob c. 38, 199, lines 68–70; c. 39, 212, lines 345–67; c. 42, 228, lines 2–3.

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for several reasons. In his systematic writings, Aquinas explains that there are four human powers that are morally relevant: the will, the reason, and the two powers of the concupiscibile and irascibile, which belong to the sensitive appetite and are connected to the body. In each of them there can be a cause or reason for sinning.42 We find this also in the Commentary on Job. Aquinas says that man may sin out of ignorance and also because of his sensual passions.43 Such factors diminish one’s moral responsibility and blameworthiness. For human reason is weak and cannot know or attend to everything. But ignorance is not an excuse if it is deliberate and willful (ignorantia affectata), whereby man chooses to ignore his sins and to neglect God’s will. Human reason can also be overwhelmed by a passion like concupiscence or aggression.44 But the decisive human power involved in sinning is the will, as Aquinas makes clear in his systematic writings.45 The sinner is the one who does not have God as his final end, as that which he desires most, but some earthly, created good.46 In the Commentary on Job, Aquinas usually attributes this intention to the “heart” rather than to the will. This is sin out of malice (malitia) and is sin in the truest sense of the word. In commenting on 21:14–15, Aquinas writes: “Who have said to God,” that is, sinning from a determined heart as if from a confirmed malice “go away from us,” which pertains to a defect of love, 42. ST I-II, qq. 76–78. 43. In Iob c. 12, 83 lines 387–96: “Contingit autem aliquem errare in agendis dupliciter: uno modo per ignorantiam . . . alio modo errant aliqui in agendis propter passiones, quibus eorum ratio ligatur circa particularia ut ne universalem cognitionem applicet ad agenda.” Cf. also In Iob c. 9, 66, lines 679–83. On sudden, overwhelming exterior temptations: In Iob c. 4, 33, lines 536–39. 44. In Iob c. 7, 51, lines 474–77: “Contingit tamen quod ratio interdum ad modicum absorbetur per concupiscentiam vel iram aut alias inferiorum partium passiones, et sic homo peccat.” 45. Cf. ST I-II, q. 74, a. 2 ad 1; “non peccatur nisi voluntate sicut primo movente: aliis potentiis peccatur sicut ab ea motis.” 46. In Iob c. 24, 139, lines 203–6: “illud unicuique pars esse videtur quod quasi potissimum bonum desiderat; peccator autem in rebus terrenis quasi in sua parte ultimum finem constituit.” It raises the question of how Aquinas would think about someone who devotes her life to saving the whales or fighting hunger in poor countries.



Commentary on Job 173

“we do not desire the knowledge of your ways,” which pertains to a defect of knowledge through willful ignorance: but the precepts and judgments of Him are called God’s ways, by which we are disposed by Him; “who is the Almighty that we should serve Him?” pertains to a defect of good works, which comes out of a contempt for God. And “what does it profit us if we pray to Him?” pertains to a contempt of prayer because of a defect of hope.47

Likewise, in commenting on 34:26–28, Aquinas explains the words of Elihu about the unjust, with which he seems to agree, as follows: [W]hile they are “in the place of those who see,” that is in a state in which they could see both through natural reason and through sacred doctrine, what must be done and what must be avoided. But they themselves rejected this, and therefore he [Elihu] adds “who have receded as on purpose (de industria) from Him,” that is from God in sinning out of real malice (ex certa militia). From there, he posits next in them willful ignorance, when he adds “and all his ways,” that is the commandments of God, “they do not wish to know.” And in this way it is clear that they are not excused because of ignorance, but rather become damnable. He shows the effect of such willful malice, when he continues “so that they make that the cry of the poor comes to Him,” as if saying, they show themselves ignorant of the ways of God so that they oppress the poor who God hears.48 47. In Iob c. 21, 124, lines 124–39: ‘“qui dixerunt Deo,’ scilicet ex corde proposito quasi ex certa malitia peccantes: ‘recede a nobis,’ quod pertinet ad defectum amoris, ‘scientiam viarum tuarum nolumus,’ quod pertinet ad defectum cognitionis per ignorantiam affectatam: viae autem Dei dicuntur praecepta et iudicia eius quibus ab ipso disponimur; ‘quis est omnipotens ut serviamus ei?’ Quod pertinet ad defectum bonorum operum provenientem ex Dei contemptu, ‘et quid nobis prodest si adoraverimus eum?’ Quod pertinet ad contemptum petitionis propter defectum spei.” Cf. also In Iob c. 24, 138, lines 125–28: “Causam autem quare Deus hoc inultum non patitur ostendit ex hoc quod non per ignorantiam sed per malitiam peccant, ex qua sapientiam odiunt ipsorum peccata arguentem.” For a lucid explanation of sinning out of malice in Aquinas, C. McCluskey, “‘Willful Wrongdoing: Thomas Aquinas on certa malitia,’” Studies in the History of Ethics 6 (2005): 1–54, available from www.historyofethics.org. 48. In Iob c. 34, 183, lines 304–18: “[E]xistentes ‘in loco videntium,’ idest in statu in quo videre poterant, tum per naturalem rationem tum per sacram doctrinam, quid esset faciendum et quid esset vitandum; sed hoc ipsi respuerunt, unde subdit ‘qui quasi de industria recesserunt ab eo,’ scilicet Deo, peccantes ex certa malitia. Unde ponit consequenter in eis ignorantiam affectatam cum subdit ‘et omnes vias eius,’ idest mandata Dei, ‘intelligere noluerunt,’ et sic patet quod propter ignorantiam non excusantur sed magis damnabiles redduntur. Effectum autem huiusmodi malitiae affectatae ostendit subdens ‘ut pervenire facerent ad eum clamorem egeni,’ quasi dicat: intantum ostendunt se viarum Dei ignaros ut pauperes opprimerent quos Deus exaudit.”

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Willingly and therefore also knowingly turning away from God, man’s true end, implies deviating from God’s law, which is known both through reason and through revelation, and which orders us to God, and it leads to evil deeds to fellow human beings. A reason why in the Commentary on Job Aquinas does not elaborate on the power of the will as the prime mover, as he does in his systematic work, might be that the commentary is not an abstract, general analysis of human acts, but focuses on a concrete, individual person. After all, it is not powers that act, but individual beings (actus sunt suppositorum). Moreover, throughout the commentary, Aquinas does not speak of sins only as particular and isolated acts.49 He places such acts in the wider context of a person’s actual, lifelong process of moral self-constitution, that is, in the context of eradicating vices and cultivating virtues. Aquinas explains 4:19, “how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is dust, who are eaten as by a moth,” as referring not only to physical mortality of human beings but also to sin and the destruction of the life of justice. In a human being, the life of justice can be interiorly consumed step by step through the corruption by the tinder for sin (fomes),50 evil thoughts and the like. He writes, “If one does not take care to repress the beginnings of sin in oneself because of negligence, such inner temptation will slowly destroy him,” the same way “as clothing which is not shaken out is eaten by moth.”51 Such beginnings of sin may be different for different kinds of people. Great and arrogant people are easily provoked to anger, while the fainthearted are prone to envy, as Aquinas states, “But there is no condition of man in which there is no tendency to some sin.”52 There are a number of passages in the commentary which sug49. See, e.g., the extensive discussion of the sins of luxury, deceit (including theft and fornication), superstition, and greed in In Iob c. 31, 165–70. 50. Below, I shall come back to the notion of “tinder for sin.” 51. In Iob c. 4, 33, lines 517–36. Cf. also In Iob c. 27, 147, lines 62–65: “Solent autem qui semel peccaverunt proniores esse ad iterato peccandum, qui vero peccatorum sunt inexperti difficilius ad peccata prolabuntur.” 52. In Iob c. 5, 35, lines 6–7.



Commentary on Job 175

gest that sin is intrinsically connected to the human body. An example can be found at the beginning of the commentary: Because man is composed of a spiritual nature and earthly flesh, the evil of man consists in inhering to earthly goods, which befit him according to earthly flesh, after having abandoned the spiritual goods, to which he is ordered according to his rational mind. And therefore evil men are rightly called “earth” insofar as they follow earthly nature. . . . Because man has been created as it were halfway between God and earthly things, as he clings to God with his mind but to earthly things with his flesh.53

This apparently Platonic negative view of the human body conflicts with Aquinas’s basic anthropological ideas about the hylomorphic unity of the human being and the goodness of the human body and of corporeal reality as created by God. In the same first chapter of the commentary, Aquinas contradicts such a negative view, which he connects with the Stoic ideal of ataraxia. Against the Stoic view that external, earthly things are not good for human beings, he defends the Aristotelian position that “exterior goods are indeed in a way good for man, but not the principal goods. They are rather as it were instrumentally ordered towards the principal good of the mind. . . . This opinion is more true and in agreement with church doctrine.”54 Aquinas does not want to deny that earthly things are good, but what matters is the right order of goods.55 As a consequence, the 53. In Iob c. 1, 9, lines 384–90: “Cum enim homo compositus sit ex natura spirituali et carne terrena, malum hominis in hoc consistit quod, derelictis spiritualibus bonis ad quae secundum rationalem mentem ordinatur, terrenis bonis inhaeret quae sibi competunt secundum carnem terrenam: et ideo mali inquantum naturam terrenam sequuntur recte terra dicuntur” and 10, lines 424–26: “Homo enim quasi medius constitutus est inter Deum et res terrenas, nam mente inhaeret Deo carne autem rebus terrenis coniungitur.” 54. In Iob c. 1, 13–14, lines 740–48: “Nam Stoici dixerunt bona exteriora nulla bona hominis esse, et quod pro eorum amissione nulla tristitia animo sapientis poterat inesse; Peripateticorum vero sententia fuit quod bona exteriora sunt quidem aliqua hominis bona, non quidem principalia sed quasi instrumentaliter ordinata ad principale hominis bonum, quod est bonum mentis. . . . Et haec sententia verior est et ecclesiasticae doctrinae concordat.” The Stoic view is also refuted in In Iob c. 6, 42, lines 78–94 and 43, lines 160–68. 55. Cf. In Iob c. 2, 16, lines 1–9, about the order of good of the soul, the body, and the external things.

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just man may feel sad in view of temporal adversities and that is even natural, but his mind, as it is ordered to a higher good, will not be overcome by sorrow thanks to his virtues.56 That also means that the just person is free “for we are not master of our acts through a passion, but only through our mind.”57 Moreover, in commenting on 4:19, Aquinas emphasizes the hylomorphic unity of the human being: the soul is not the human being, but only his or her principal part.58 The passages that link sin with the human body can be read in a different way, as referring to original sin rather than to corporeality as such. This would also make Aquinas’s commentary more consonant with the biblical meaning of “flesh” (caro, Hebrew basar), which signifies human fragility and sinfulness and not so much the body as one of the two metaphysical constitutive principles of the human person. According to Christian teaching, man had been created by God “in innocence,” that is, in (supernatural) original justice, which also included immunity from adversity in temporal affairs. But he fell.59 When Aquinas speaks of the “fragility of the human condition, because of which no man is free from sin,” he seems not to refer to our natural corporeality, but to the state of corrupted nature (status naturae corruptae) after the fall. In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas explains that in the corrupted state of human nature, the rational and sensitive powers of each human being no longer exist and function in the right order, as was the case in the state of innocence, nor are they in a purely natural, unordered condition, as if in a status 56. Cf. also In Iob c. 3, 20, lines 16–20; c. 5, 39, lines 331–39; c. 6, 42, lines 95–100, and c. 10, 68, lines 37–45. In In Iob c. 4, 28, lines 78–104, Aquinas spells out three virtues by which human beings are prevented from failing in trials: reverence of God, firmness of mind (through fortitude and patience), and love of right action. 57. In Iob c. 3, 20, lines 33–35: “non enim per passionem nostri actus domini sumus sed per solam rationem.” 58. In Iob c. 4, 32, lines 465–89. In In Iob c. 19, 117, lines 316–24, Aquinas rejects the Neoplatonic maxim of Porphyry that “in order to become happy, the soul must completely flee the body.” 59. In Iob c. 1, 5, lines 51–53: “a principio homo sic institutus fuit ut nullis subiaceret perturbationibus si in innocentia permansisset.”



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naturae purae. The consequences of original sin are that these powers are in some way disordered.60 The process of overcoming this vicious disorder and establishing a harmonious order within oneself through virtues continues all one’s life. That also goes for the just, like Job, in whom there are no mortal and grave sins and who had ordered his mind and will to God as his ultimate end.61 The just man remains confronted with the task of fighting his internal disorder and of cultivating virtues.62 The internal disorder, in particular of the lower, sensitive powers in relation to the rational powers, is called “tinder for sin” (fomes peccati). In the just, it leads to light and venial sins.63 During this life, the just suffer from internal attacks (impugnationes) but they are not overcome by them as long as they remain ordered to God. The just hope for this perseverance but cannot be certain of it. It is possible that they might succumb and lose their orientation towards God. Only in the hereafter, in the state of ultimate beatitude, will the just be free from all internal disorder.64 In commenting on 7:20, where Job says, “I have sinned,” Aquinas writes: Note that reason (ratio) is the strongest among all powers of the soul. A sign of that is that reason commands the other powers and uses them for 60. Cf. ST I-II, q. 85, a. 3. 61. In his systematic writings, Aquinas explains that the guilt and liability of original sin have been taken away in the just through grace, but not the disorder of human powers. The catchphrase is: original sin disappears reatu but remains actu. Cf. ST I-II, q. 74, a. 3 ad 2; In II Sent d. 32 q. 1 a. 1. 62. As Aquinas writes in In Iob c. 9, 65, lines 597–629, three things are necessary for anyone striving to an end. First, his heart or intention must be set on nothing but that end, which for Job is the true good (verum bonum). Second, he must acquire the right means to reach the end, which in Job’s case are the virtues (“qui vult ad verum bonum pervenire oportet quod conquirat virtutes quibus illud consequi possit”). And, finally, he must actually reach the end. 63. In Iob c. 6, 41, lines 13–17: “Certum est enim quod ex fragilitate condicionis humanae nullus homo est immunis a peccato quantumcumque iustus appareat, sed tamen in viris iustis non sunt peccata gravia et mortalia sed sunt in eis peccata levia et venialia.” Committing venial sins is inevitable in this life: In Iob c. 13, 88, lines 397–99: “licet Iob gravia peccata non commiserit, tamen aliqua peccata commisit sine quibus praesens vita non agitur.” 64. In Iob c. 17, 106, lines 57–71.

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its own end. Yet it happens that sometimes reason is somewhat absorbed through concupiscence or anger or other passions of the lower parts, and then a man sins. But the lower powers cannot hold reason bound in such a way that it would not always return to its nature, by which it tends to spiritual goods as its proper end.65

Again, this text seems to suggest a dualist view on man and to blame only the lower, bodily powers for sinning. But this would contradict what Aquinas writes elsewhere in the commentary about human vanity (vanitas) and pride (superbia). Man is vain when he seeks the apparent and not the true good, and therefore he commits evil. From vanity, pride follows by which man believes he is not subject to a higher, that is, divine, rule.66 It is obvious that striving for an apparent good and pride belong not to the bodily, but to the higher, rational powers.67 One could read the passage in another way on the basis of its context. Aquinas wants to explain Job’s statement “I have sinned.” Therefore, it seems plausible that he is not talking here about man in general, but about the just man, whose rational powers 65. In Iob c. 7, 51, lines 472–80: “Sciendum est autem quod ratio fortior est inter omnes animae virtutes, cuius signum est quod aliis imperat et eis utitur ad suum finem; contingit tamen quod ratio interdum ad modicum absorbetur per concupiscentiam vel iram aut alias inferiorum partium passiones, et sic homo peccat; non tamen inferiores vires sic possunt rationem ligatam tenere quin semper redeat ad suam naturam, qua in spiritualia bona tendit sicut in proprium finem.” 66. In Iob c. 11, 77, lines 175–95: ‘“Ipse enim novit hominum vanitatem,’ idest hominum facta vana. Vana autem dici consueverunt quae instabilia sunt eo quod debitis finibus non stabiliuntur: ex hoc igitur est vanitas hominis quod cor eius in veritate non figitur per quam solam potest stabiliri, et ex hoc quod a veritate recedit iniquitatem operatur, dum videlicet appetit illud quod apparet bonum loco eius quod est bonum . . . cum igitur ipse [scl. Deus] videat hominum vanitatem, pro iniquitate exigit poenam. Sicut autem ex vanitate contingit quod homo ad iniquitatem declinat, ita ex eadem vanitate provenit quod homo divino iudicio se subiectum esse non reputat, et ideo subdit ‘vir vanus in superbiam erigitur,’ ut scilicet suo superiori se subditum esse non credit.” Cf. also In Iob c. 40, 214, lines 131–39: “Sciendum est autem quod omnis malitia hominum a superbia initium habet, secundum illud Eccli. 10, 15 ‘initium omnis peccati superbia’ . . . superbi quasi Deo rebellant dum ei humiliter subdi non volunt, et ex hoc in omnia peccata incidunt divinis praeceptis contemptis.” Likewise, see In Iob c. 33, 176, lines 194–96. 67. At the end of commentary, Aquinas extensively discusses the pride (superbia) of the demons, see in particular In Job c. 41, 227, lines 442–46. Being incorporeal, demons could never sin through bodily powers. Pride must therefore belong to the spiritual powers.



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are already ordered to God but in whom the tinder for sin remains. Aquinas’s commentary would then be a warning for the just person to keep fighting the tinder for sin, for the accumulation of venial sins might also lead to grave, mortal sin: In this way, a certain struggle goes on even of man against himself when reason resists that which it has done wrong, absorbed through concupiscence or anger. And because from a past sin a tendency is added to the lower powers to similar acts as a result of habit, reason cannot freely use the lower powers to order them to higher goods and withdraw them for lower goods. And so when man becomes contrary to God through sin, he also becomes a burden to himself.68

Another consequence of original sin is that the whole human body is no longer ruled by the soul, and in this way human beings lost their immortality. That means that even the just remain subject to death. Aquinas speaks about death as punishment for “communal sin” (peccatum commune).69 This expression seems to be equivalent to “original sin.” The notion of original sin as a sin of human nature and not just of an individual person could also help to understand why Aquinas sometimes speaks of a kind of human solidarity in sin. In explaining why Job’s family is also stricken by misfortune, he writes: “when a wife and children are punished for the sin of the 68. In Iob c. 7, 51, lines 480–89: “Sic igitur pugna quaedam fit etiam hominis ad se ipsum dum ratio renititur ei quod per concupiscentiam vel iram absorpta peccavit; et quia ex peccato praeterito inferioribus viribus est addita pronitas ad similes actus propter consuetudinem, ratio non potest libere uti inferioribus viribus ut eas in superiora bona ordinet et ab inferioribus retrahat: et sic homo dum fit contrarius Deo per peccatum fit etiam sibimet ipsi gravis.” I shall come back to this passage below. 69. In Iob c. 9, 64, lines 517–32: “quasi dicat [Iob]: non solum peccatoribus sed etiam innocentibus mors a Deo immittitur, quae tamen est maxima poenarum praesentium. . . . Quod autem mors a Deo sit dicitur Deut. 32:39 ‘Ego occidam et ego vivere faciam’ . . . detur quod flagellum mortis omnibus sit commune, videretur tamen rationabile quod innocentibus, qui ex propriis peccatis non sunt rei, praeter mortem quae debetur peccato communi aliam poenam infligere non deberet.” In In Iob c. 10, 70, lines 214–33, the issue of whether death is only natural or also a divine punishment is raised in the form of a question. Cf. also In Iob c. 10, 72, lines 447–48: “peccatum originale quod est caligo inducens ad mortem” and In Iob c. 14, 93, lines 152–53: “cum credamus mortem ex peccato primi hominis provenisse.” Also In Iob c. 19, 116, lines 25–57, with reference to Rom 5:12.

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man, this is not unjust because they have also participated in the guilt.”70 From a philosophical viewpoint, Aquinas already thinks of the human being as a social animal, which by its very nature lives in a community. The theological doctrine of original sin can then highlight the social character of human existence even more. However, in the Commentary on Job Aquinas is not very explicit about the collective dimension of sin. Sin and Human Suffering Aquinas’s view on the relation between sin and human suffering in the Commentary on Job is nuanced. On the one hand, and this is the main thrust of the commentary, Aquinas denies that there is an intrinsic link between one’s personal sins and the temporal adversity a human being may experience in this life. Misery and suffering can befall righteous people like Job. Reward for upright living and punishment for sins will only come in the afterlife through God’s judgment. Job’s suffering is not the punishment for his sins but serves to reveal his virtuousness as an example to others so that they may better their lives or that their depravity become obvious.71 However, Aquinas does not think that punishment for sins is exclusively limited to the hereafter and to God’s intervention. In the commentary on 7:20, “why have I become a burden to myself?” (already discussed above), he writes: “And so when man becomes contrary to God through sin, he also becomes a burden to himself, and that is why he adds ‘and why have I become a burden to myself?,’ from which it becomes clear that sin immediately has its punishment.”72 It seems then that sin already punishes itself as it leads to 70. Cf. In Iob c. 4, 29, lines 194–96. Also, Job did not only care for his personal purity but also for that of his sons: In Iob c. 1, 7, lines 170–73. However, in In Iob c. 21, 125, lines 189–90, Aquinas speaks of “poena patris pertingit usque ad filios imitatores paternae malitiae.” The term “imitatores” might suggest that it is not about original sin as such. Yet this passage also suggests a social dimension to sin. 71. In Iob c. 1, 10, lines 458–75; 11, lines 553–60 and In Iob c. 23, 135, lines 163–70. 72. In Iob c. 7, 52, lines 487–91: “Et sic homo dum fit contrarius Deo per peccatum



Commentary on Job 181

an inner struggle within the sinner. However, as I suggested above, one could read this passage as referring not to someone who is in mortal sin but to the just person, who still experiences the temptations from his lower powers because of the tinder for sin. On this reading, the self-punishment of sin is limited to the just, because only they feel remorse for their sins. On the other hand, it could also be argued that if sinning out of malice includes willfully ignoring what one’s reason knows is really better, choosing a lesser good would provoke some kind of psychological and spiritual tension in every person, also in the one who is in mortal sin. Aquinas does not elaborate on this issue and it is not fully clear what his position is.73 Aquinas mentions that sin can also lead indirectly and externally to bad consequences. That is another way in which sin punishes itself. A sinner can choose something of which he knows that it is harmful to himself, and sins can also provoke retaliation from others.74 But such consequences are not necessary, according to Aquinas. A sinner may as well enjoy good health and social prestige. Besides the earthly causal connections that may exist between sin and adversity or suffering, God can also strike sinners during this life with suffering, for example through natural disasters or sickness.75 Such divine interference during this life has the character of fit etiam sibimet ipsi gravis, et hoc est quod subdit ‘et factus sum mihimet ipsi gravis?’ in quo apparet quod peccatum statim suam poenam habet.” Cf. also In Iob c. 24, 139, lines 219–23, where Aquinas states that the impious do not strike the golden mean of virtue, but lapse into either of the vicious extremes and he continues: “Et ista poena consequitur omnes malos quia ‘inordinatus animus sibi ipsi est poena,’ ut Augustinus dicit in I Confessionum.” In In Iob c. 33, 176, lines 200–203, Aquinas says that Elihu speaks of the “spiritual punishment of the soul . . . which happens through the disorder of the powers of the soul.” 73. Besides internal, spiritual struggle, there remains also physical death as a consequence of original sin, also for the just, cf. note 67 above. 74. In Iob c. 18, 110, lines 118–46; c. 24, 140, lines 263–66, and c. 31, 165, lines 46–48. In In Iob c. 20, 119–21, lines 139–260, Aquinas explains Zophar’s position that there is an intrinsic connection between deeds and their consequences also in this life. It seems that Aquinas does not disagree totally with Zophar, but only denies that the connection is necessary. 75. In Iob c. 9, 59, lines 140–46; c. 38, 202, lines 271–73. In Iob c. 33, 178, lines 324–27, Aquinas explains that Elihu argues that God warns people “by rebuking them through pains.”

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punishment, but at the same time it is meant as a warning and a correction that the sinner may have remorse and return to God.76 This is in contrast with the divine punishment in the hereafter, which is nothing but punishment. On the other hand, although Job experiences physical and emotional suffering, spiritually he remains connected with God. As we saw above, Aquinas rejects the Stoic ideal of ataraxia. It is only natural for Job to feel pain and to grieve about his sufferings. But he is not overcome by grief and does not suffer from spiritual despair (desperatio).77 As a just man, in his adversity Job still had the support (fulcimentum) of virtue and consolation of God, which the impious lack. Unlike the latter, Job is therefore not fully dissipated (non totaliter dissipatur) by the loss of temporal goods.78 It seems then that Aquinas thinks that unlike those in mortal sin, Job did not suffer from an existential, spiritual crisis when confronted with the loss of all his earthly goods. Aquinas also speaks of a “spiritual joy” (laetitia spiritualis) that the righteous person has when he contemplates God’s goodness, imperfectly in this life and perfectly in the next.79 Aquinas mentions this joy in commenting on the speech of Elihu (33:28), but there is no indication 76. In Iob c. 35, 187, lines 141–45: “in praesenti vita, ‘non infert furorem suum,’ idest magnitudinem poenae, ‘nec ulciscitur scelus valde,’ idest non punit in praesenti secundum quod exigit gravitas culpae, quia poenae praesentis vitae sunt ad correctionem.” Cf. also In Iob c. 36, 189, lines 72–101. In In Iob c. 21, 126, lines 304–14, Aquinas explains that a sinner is not punished by God in this life for two reasons, namely, that God foresees that the sinner will not learn from such punishments, and second, that his guilt is so great that temporal punishments do not suffice. Also In Iob c. 24, 140–41, lines 272–308. 77. Cf. note 56 above. On the hope that Job had about God and his resurrection, see In Iob c. 19, 116–117, lines 219–349. In In Iob c. 1, 10, lines 435–36, Aquinas speaks of “spirituales affectus quibus mens Deo coniungitur.” 78. In Iob c. 21, 125, lines 166–86: “Est autem considerandum ulterius quod adversitas impii gravior est quam iusti, quia cum iustus adversitatem patitur temporalem remanet ei fulcimentum virtutis et consolatio in Deo, unde non totaliter dissipatur; sed malis, amissis temporalibus bonis quae sola sibi quaesierunt, nullum remanet fulcimentum . . . ita etiam impii, veniente adversitate, resistere non possunt quia carent fulcimento divinae spei, et per diversas cogitationes disperguntur carentes humore virtutis.” 79. In Iob c. 33, 177, lines 297–301: “Et ex hoc sequitur in homine fiducia cogitandi de Deo cum quadam spirituali laetitia, unde subdit ‘et videbit,’ scilicet homo, ‘faciem eius,’ idest considerabit bonitatem ipsius, in praesenti quidem vita imperfecte in futura autem perfecte ‘in iubilo,’ idest in quodam inexplicabili gaudio.”



Commentary on Job 183

that he disagrees with Elihu in this respect. Also Job himself speaks of “the hope of the just . . . that in time of trial, they may enjoy the divine delight and rejoice in his praise.”80 On the other hand, nowhere in the commentary does Aquinas say explicitly that Job himself actually experienced this divine delight and the spiritual joy that accompanies the contemplation of God and the exercise of virtues. In the Summa theologiae, he writes that “sensible pain prevents experiencing the soul’s delight in virtue,” unless “a superabundant grace of God” is given as, for example, in the case of blessed Tiburtius, “who walking with bare feet over glowing coals, said that he seemed to be treading upon rose petals.”81 It seems that such special grace was not given to Job. Conclusion Aquinas’s discussion of sin in the Commentary on Job is not as detailed, precise, comprehensive, or well-ordered as in his more systematic works. It also has some ambiguities. But these flaws are compensated for by the more concrete, holistic, and realistic image it gives of how sin can exist in the ordinary lives of people. The commentary shows the intricacies of sinful acts, choices, and temptations and how they are interwoven with distinct human powers in the embodied, social, and historical state of human beings. In this way, it gives a more pastoral than legalistic approach to sin. Aquinas has a theocentric conception of sin in the commentary. In the end, sin consists in a willful turning away from God. But this does not exclude for Aquinas the importance of the right relationship to one’s fellow human beings: “the reverence which one must have for God is also that because of which and in which one’s neighbour must be loved.”82 80. In Iob c. 27, 148, lines 118–21: “Secunda autem spes iustorum est quod cum deficit eis temporalis consolatio in tempore tribulationis, fruuntur delectatione divina et delectantur in laude ipsius.” The impious lack such hope. 81. ST II-II, q. 123, a. 9. 82. In Iob c. 6, 43, lines 194–96: “reverentiam quam debet habere ad Deum, propter quem et in quo proximus diligendus est,” with reference to 1 Jn 4:20.

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As to the connection between human suffering in this life and sin, Aquinas’s Commentary on Job is balanced. The basic idea is that there is no intrinsic link: evil can happen to righteous people and the wicked may flourish. Definite punishment for sins occurs only in the hereafter through God’s judgment. However, Aquinas thinks that sin may also punish itself during this life, either in the form of an internal conflict within the sinner or by way of bad external consequences, for example, for one’s health or social security. Moreover, God may intervene in this life by inflicting suffering on sinners, but this suffering is not just punishment, rather a warning and incentive for people to see that they sinned, to repent, and to better their lives. Finally, the corporeal and emotional suffering that can happen to a just person will not crush him completely because existentially and in his heart of hearts he clings to God and places his hope in God. Maybe this is the key message Aquinas reads in the book of Job: it is not about modern theodicy or moral casuistry; rather, it is about God’s joyous comfort for those who suffer.

John F. X. Knasas Suffering and the “Thomistic Philosopher”

8

Suffering and the “Thomistic Philosopher” A Line of Thought Instigated by the Job Commentary John F. X. Knasas

The perspective that I will maintain throughout this article is that of a “Thomistic philosopher” whom I do not consider necessarily to be a religious believer. It is important to remember that Aquinas did not consider philosophy to be a sectarian study. For example, one would be incorrect to assume that Aquinas thought that his metaphysics could be understood just by fellow Catholics. It is true that Aquinas thought that philosophy was very difficult and that the truths of his religious faith were a boon to correct philosophizing. This is the attitude that Pope Leo XIII later called “Christian philosophy.” But in that attitude faith never supplies the premises for the philosophizing. Rather, the mode of thinking could be compared to learning mathematics by a book with the answers at the back. A disagreement with the answers at the back helps one to learn mathematical truths by driving one back to consider the numbers themselves. Likewise, Christian truths that contradict philosophical ideas direct the Christian philosopher to reconsider the facts in order to see if there is something that the philosopher may have missed ei-



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ther because of his distraction or because of the subtlety of the evidence. But my point is that once philosophers have been brought to truth by this manner of philosophizing, they can teach that truth to others who may not share a belief in Christianity. Likewise, someone who has been taught mathematics through books with the answers at the back can teach others who lack the mathematics book. A final analogy would be a detective who, in solving a case on the basis of a hunch, ends up with a substantial body of evidence that in court that will convince others who never shared the hunch of the detective.1 So, even though Aquinas was not sanguine about philosophy that was done in pagan times without the benefit of revelation,2 philosophy since then has had the benefit of philosophers who are Christians. Christianity makes reality claims in metaphysics and about the human person. These claims drive the believing philosopher to look more intently at the facts to see if other philosophers have missed something. Christianity provides the focus but leaves the philosopher to do the philosophizing. For example, Christianity teaches about a creative God. Creation is a way of causing something without needing to presuppose something else. We do not seem to find creators in our experience. Experience shows agents causing by presupposing, for example, Michelangelo causes the Pietà presupposing the block of marble, the carpenter causes the house presupposing the lumber. Can philoso1. With this understanding of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni patris (August 4, 1879), I read Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes (1965), no. 22, in which the mystery of man takes on light only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word. For a postmodern reading in which the words of the Second Vatican Council document express an understanding of tradition in which tradition produces, or constitutes, the very rationality we use, see Tracey Rowland, Culture and the Thomist Tradition after Vatican II (Routledge: London and New York, 2003), 37–39. For her reading of John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio, see ibid., 127–30. For my assessment of Rowland, see my Thomism and Tolerance (University of Scranton Press: Scranton and London, 2011), 123–38. 2. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (hererafter, ScG) I, 4, Remaneret; trans. Anton C. Pegis, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One: God (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), vol. 1, 67: “If the only way open to us for the knowledge of God were solely that of reason, the human race would remain in the blackest shadows of ignorance (in maximis ignorantiae tenebris).”



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phy know creative causality? That question led Christian philosophers to probe more deeply philosophical understandings of what it means to be an existent. Here one of them, Aquinas, succeeded in deepening the Greek understanding of being in terms of having form. For Aquinas, to be an existent was to have existence understood as an attribute sui generis because of its fundamentality to the thing.3 The cause of this attribute had to be a Creator. Aquinas’s attribute understanding of the existence of a thing was a genuine metaphysical innovation on the level of philosophy, but it was occasioned by his faith. His faith led him to peer more intently into existents and to catch something that had evaded the gaze of pagan philosophers. The same dynamic can be observed as a result of Christian teaching on human freedom and human dignity. Again, these teachings provided a powerful impetus for Aquinas to develop a philosophical psychology of the human as intellector of being (ratio entis). As I will note below, that psychology was in the core ideas of the philosophical tradition but was left unobserved and undeveloped by the tradition. It took a Christian working under the truths of his faith to catch the philosophical insights. So the successful practice of Christian philosophy by Thomists engenders an interesting effect. The effect is students who are Thomistic but not yet Christian. As mentioned, if the detective successfully uses the hunch to develop a solid body of evidence, then there is no need for the jurors to share the hunch in order to be convinced. Likewise, Christianity can lead the philosopher to develop a philosophy that can stand on its own. Hence, there can be proponents of the philosophy who are not yet Christian. When such proponents are proponents of Thomistic metaphysics, then we have the meaning of “Thomistic philosopher” that will furnish the perspective of this article. 3. Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, I, d. 19, q. 2, a. 2c; my translation: “Just as motion (motus) is the act of the mobile insomuch as it is mobile; so too being (esse) is the act of the existing thing (actus existentis), insomuch as it is a being (ens).” For other texts and for my understanding of Aquinas’s all-important philosophical approach to esse from the secunda operatio intellectus, see John F. X. Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), ch. 6.

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From this perspective of the “Thomistic philosopher,” I will argue that Aquinas’s commentary on Job indicates that Thomistic metaphysics has no comprehensive account of human suffering and evil because it has too many. By a “comprehensive” account I mean an account that provides sufficient rational solace for the types of evil in human experience. In contrast, some accounts of evil explain why humans suffer, for example, for moral development but leave the suffering of infants and adolescents unexplained. They lack comprehensiveness. By “too many” I mean that the Thomist philosopher cannot determine by the available evidence which of the comprehensive accounts is in fact true. Somewhat similarly, students of medieval philosophy are familiar with Aquinas’s neutral metaphysical stance on the issue of the world’s creation from eternity or in time. The conclusion of a creative first cause in metaphysics enables Aquinas to neutralize both Bonaventurian arguments for the world’s creation in time and Averroean arguments for the world’s creation from eternity. From the available philosophical evidence, either could be true. The philosopher must leave it at that. The resolution of the two possibilities to the true one must wait upon the Creator telling the philosopher how the Creator did it. As a Christian, Aquinas believes that he has that communication in the Bible. In the book of Genesis, Aquinas, with the rest of the Christian theological tradition, took God to say God created the world in time. I want to argue that Aquinas adopts a similar philosophical neutrality on human suffering. Just as the Thomistic philosopher does not know how the universe was created, that is, in time or from eternity, so too the Thomistic philosopher does not know why he or others suffer. This multiplicity of comprehensive explanations for human suffering is itself rooted in a similar multiplicity of understandings of human destiny. In short, the Thomistic philosopher does not know why we suffer because from among all the possibilities for human destiny, the philosopher does not know which one the creator intends.



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Hence, my article has two main parts. First, there is a presentation of Aquinas’s philosophical neutrality about human destiny. I will claim that this neutrality is discoverable in his commentary on Job and in supporting texts mostly from his Summa contra Gentiles. Second, there is the presentation of possibilities for solace while one experiences suffering in the context of this neutrality. By a connection made between providence and natural law in the Summa theologiae, I will claim that one’s solace derives chiefly from the motivating factor of Aquinas’s natural law ethics. In general, Thomistic philosophers have not incorporated Aquinas’s Job commentary in their attempts to handle the problem of evil. This avoidance seems to stem from the overtly religious character of the text. Of course, in respect to Aquinas’s writings, a judgment like that is always tricky. For example, his commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate is a treasure chest for Aquinas’s thoughts on philosophical knowledge of God and on the ambits and divisions of the theoretical side of philosophy. But a quick look at the Job commentary is enough for a reader to know that it is not like the De Trinitate commentary. Like Aquinas’s Aristotelian commentaries, the Job commentary plods line by line through the biblical text. Nevertheless, the Job commentary does contain one thesis that is of immense importance for the Thomist confronting evil. That thesis is the inscrutability of divine providence. Aquinas presents God as using this thesis to upbraid both Job and his interlocutors, who in Aquinas’s account seem to be Christians of an Averroistic bent. Aquinas says, But since human wisdom is not sufficient to comprehend the truth of divine providence (sed quia humana sapientia non sufficit ad veritatem divinae providentiae comprehendendam), it was necessary that the debate just mentioned be determined by divine authority. But since Job had the right opinion about divine providence but had been so immoderate in his manner of speaking that scandal was produced from it in the hearts of others when they thought that he was not showing due reverence to God, the Lord, therefore, just like the determiner of debate, criticized Job’s friends

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because they did not have the right opinion, Job himself because of his inordinate manner of speaking, and Elihu for his unsuitable decision.4

Job’s error is to think that he can prove the resurrection when in fact it is a truth of faith. A future resurrection is a key theme for Job’s handling of his adversities. But in the commentary Aquinas never refers to the resurrection as a truth demonstrated in philosophy. Rather, Aquinas describes the resurrection as a work of “grace” (per auxilium tuae gratiae) for the “hope” (hanc spem) of which “plausible reasons” (probabilibus rationibus) are forthcoming.5 Also, the position of Job’s interlocutors that God’s providence is confined to this life is not described as a philosophical error but an error against the “truth of the faith” (a veritate fidei).6 It is also among proposals “plausible though false” (aliqui aliqua probabilia licet falsa proponent).7 On the other hand, Job foresaw the resurrection through the “certitude of faith” (per certitudinem fidei).8 Moreover, in the commentary, the incorruptibility of the human soul and the reasons for it show only a “fittingness” and a “hope of restoration” of soul to body.9 Readers of Aquinas may think that my emphasizing the theological character of the resurrection belabors the point. Aquinas himself quite clearly concedes the point at the beginning of Book IV of his Contra Gentiles.10 Nevertheless, this admission has not stopped 4. Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job: A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence, trans. Anthony Damico (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1989), 415. Bracketed Latin given here and in other quotes from the Job commentary is from Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Iob ad litteram, Opera Omnia XXVI, ed. Leon. (Rome: Santa Sabina, 1965). 5. Ibid., 229. 6. Ibid., 471 and 214: “they were in error concerning the faith with which God is worshipped” (circa fidem qua Deus colitur errabant). 7. Ibid., 214. 8. Ibid., 269. 9. Ibid., 230: “Man, however, although he may be corrupted according to the body, nevertheless remains incorruptible according to the soul, which transcends the whole class of corporeal beings, so that in that way the hope of restoration (spes reparationis) remains.” 10. ScG IV, 1, Quia vero; Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Four: Salvation, trans. Charles J. O’Neil, (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), vol. 4, 39–40: “third,



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Thomists from making the case that the resurrection of the dead is a demonstrated philosophical truth.11 It is claimed that a text from the same fourth book of the Contra Gentiles provides that philosophical argument. In chapter 79, Book IV, and from the immortality of the soul, Aquinas argues, It is, then, contrary to the nature of the soul to be without the body. But nothing which is contrary to nature can be perpetual. Perpetually, then, the soul will not be without the body. Since, then, it persists perpetually, it must once again be united to the body; and this is to rise again. Therefore, the immortality of the soul seems to demand a future resurrection of bodies.12

In unquoted just previous lines Aquinas appeals to the arguments he has made in Book II for the immortality of the human soul and for the soul being by nature the form of the body. With these bases the above text seems to argue philosophically for the resurrection. Also, further aiding this impression is the philosophical character of the major premise, namely, what is against nature cannot be perpetual. This assertion comes from the pagan Aristotle’s De Caelo I [2, 269b 7–10]: “It would be remarkable and indeed inconceivable that this [unnatural circular] movement be continuous and eternal, being nevertheless contrary to nature.” But appearances can be deceiving. In Aquinas’s recap at the start of chapter 81, Aquinas indicates an ambiguity in the term “natural.” To solve problems with the resurrection, Aquinas says that we have to recall something from chapter 52’s discussion of original sin: “When He established human nature, [God] granted the human body something over and above that which was its due in its natural principles: a kind of incorruptibility, namely, by which it was suitably adapted to its form, with the result that, as the life of the however, the things surpassing reason which are looked for in the ultimate end of man, such as the resurrection and glorification of bodies, the everlasting beatitude of souls, and matters related to these.” 11. See Montague Brown, “Aquinas on the Resurrection of the Body,” The Thomist 56 (1992): 165–207. 12. ScG IV, 79, Ad ostendendum, trans. O’Neil, 299.

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soul is perpetual, so the body could live perpetually by the soul.”13 Aquinas then says that this incorruptibility is not natural in its active principle but is “somehow natural” in its order, the end of which is the human soul. But importantly, the subsequent paragraph makes clear that Aquinas is speaking of the human soul as already within a special and more intimate divine providence: “When the soul, then, outside the order of its nature, was turned away from God, that disposition was lost which had been divinely bestowed on the soul’s body to make it proportionally responsive to the soul: and death followed. Death, therefore, is something added as an accident, so to say, to man through sin, if one considers the establishment of human nature.” The “establishment of human nature” refers to an idea further back in Book IV where Aquinas discusses the knowability of original sin. In chapter 52 Aquinas refers to a divine providence which for every perfection provides a proportionate perfectible and whose effects are gratuitous gifts (gratuiti doni).14 So, when Aquinas says “the unnatural is not perpetual,” the nature about which he is speaking is a nature considered within a special and undue divine providence. Precisely within a context of an especially solicitous divine providence over the human soul, no resurrection appears as contra the nature of the human soul. The mentioned reference to Aristotle’s De Caelo would simply be a theological extrapolation from ungraced nature to graced nature. 13. Ibid., 302. 14. An interesting question is why knowledge of this special providence does not strictly prove original sin. One would think that knowing that God created the body in perfect subjection to the human soul would be a surefire reason for concluding that something went wrong. But at ScG IV, 52, Aquinas says that it renders original sin only “probable enough.” The current debilities suffered by human nature could still well be “natural defects” and not any sign of an original human transgression. One possible reason is that Aquinas is aware that the scriptural text to which he appeals for this perfect subjection of body to soul does not quite say that. The scriptural text is quoted in ST I, q. 95, a. 1c: “But the very rectitude of the first state, with which man was endowed by God, seems to require (videtur requirere) that, as others say, he was created in grace, according to Eccles. vii, 30, God made man right” (The Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Anton C. Pegis, vol 1. [New York: Random House, 1945], 911). “Right” can be taken naturally or supernaturally.



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Returning to the Job commentary, the divine critique of Job indicates that for Aquinas the resurrection is both a religious truth and a philosophical possibility. The resurrection is not so much a theological truth that it would fail to occur to a philosopher at least as a possibility. The incorruptibility of the human soul is a philosophical truth that should lead the philosopher to entertain the possibility of the resurrection. This rebuke of Job enables one to understand God’s rebuke of Job’s interlocutors. Their thesis is that human life is confined to this earth and so Job’s sufferings are God’s just punishment for some evil committed by Job. But since the possibility of the resurrection cannot be eliminated, then the interlocutors are wrong to say that this life is our only life. Rather, the correct philosophical opinion should be only the possibility of simply an earthly life. The claim that this life is possibly our only life will strike many as ludicrous,15 though others are resigned even to the fact of it. That Aquinas is serious about the possibility of it can be shown by investigating another option for human destiny. What becomes evident is that this other option, like the resurrection, is supernatural. In other words, the philosopher can establish that by the free initiative of the Creator, the human could be made to do what he lacks the natural ability to do, but the philosopher cannot determine with certitude if the Creator exercises that initiative. The further option for human destiny that I want to consider is the possibility of a future life as a separated soul. Aquinas does ascribe a certain cognition to the separated soul. Its cognition is an extension of the divine light that shines through the angelic hierarchy. The key issue here is whether this extension is a gratuitous act on God’s part or not. As the divine light shines through the angelic hierarchy, the divine light is something necessary for angels to be fully actual knowers as required by their intellectual natures.16 Aquinas’s 15. Though conceding that immortality is philosophically indemonstrable, Jacques Maritain nevertheless argues for “the instinctive and natural, lived and practiced belief in man’s immortality” in his “The Immortality of Man,” ed. Donald and Idella Gallagher, A Maritain Reader (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), 204. 16. Quaestiones Disputate de Veritate (henceforth, De Ver.) 19, 1, ad 13m; trans. James

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justification for claiming an extension of the divine light to separated souls is their likeness to the angels. Both are separate substances in the sense that both are subsistents, that is, natures having their own act of existing.17 But it is important to note that this likeness is not perfect. It is only to an extent. Separated souls are unlike angels insofar as separated souls are not complete natures. Hence, the infusion of the divine light necessary to make angelic natures complete is not necessary for the separated soul. But the infusion is still a possibility. At Summa theologiae I, 89, 1c, Aquinas calls such knowing by the soul “praeter naturam,” not “contra naturam.”18 In sum, if an afterlife as a separated soul is a possibility, then a life limited to this earthly life is a possibility also. Here it is also important to know that the separated soul is the result of death, but death for Aquinas is understandable as a natural defect following upon the perfection of the universe. God wills corV. McGlynn, The Disputed Questions on Truth (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1953), vol. 2, 392: “But the infusion of species mentioned above, which is given when the soul is separated from the body, belongs to the natural state of separated substances.” ST I, q. 89, a. 3c; Basic Writings, trans. Pegis, vol. 1, 856: “the separated soul, like the angels, understands by means of species received from the influence of the divine light. Nevertheless, as the soul by nature is inferior to an angel, to whom this kind of knowledge is natural.” 17. De Ver. 19, trans. McGlynn, 1c, 390: “But, when it will have its being free of the body, then it will receive the influx of intellectual knowledge in the way in which angels receive it.” ScG II, 81, Sciendum tamen, trans. James F. Anderson, Summa Contra Gentiles: Creation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), vol. 2, 265: “[the separated soul] will understand through itself, in the manner of substances which in their being are totally separate from bodies.” ST I, q. 89, a. 1c; Basic Writings, trans. Pegis, vol. 1, 852: “the mode of action in every agent follows from the mode of its being. Now the soul has one mode of being when in the body, and another when apart from it, though its nature remains the same.” 18. It is true that Aquinas at De Ver. 19, 1, ad 13m describes the infusion of species into all separated souls, including those of the damned, as belonging “to the natural state of separated substances.” As mentioned when discussing ST I, q. 89, a. 1, the state of the separated soul and the natural state of separated substances are not strictly congruent. There is enough likeness to conclude the possibility of a supernatural extension of the divine infusion of the angelic knowledge into the separated soul. There is, however, enough unlikeness for the Thomistic philosopher to hesitate strictly making this inference. Aquinas’s remark at Questiones de Anima XV, ad 14m: “it is not natural (non est naturale) to the soul that when it is united to the body, it understands through infused species, but only after it is separated.” should be taken in the same qualified way.



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ruption so that the perfection of the universe consisting in diverse species is preserved.19 The thinking involved seems to be that if the universe is not to destroy itself through the proliferation of its higher members and the exhaustion of its lower members, then a cycling of matter through the various species of things is demanded.20 Aquinas admits that a divine override of this situation is possible for a human being because by the soul “immortality would be fitting to him” but that the completion of this natural aptitude is from “a supernatural power.”21 Hence, in a sense, the separated soul is in a natural condition. As mentioned, Aquinas’s description of it as “contra naturam” at Contra Gentiles IV, 79, seems to be from a theological perspective that knows how God initially established the soul.22 What is becoming apparent is Aquinas’s tendency to present theological truths in a philosophical guise. The result of this tendency is a possible philosophical confusion. The philosopher can think that Aquinas intends these theological truths to be also philosophical conclusions in the same way that the theological truths of God’s existence and creative status, for example, are philosophical truths in Aquinas’s understanding of metaphysical science. Aware of that possible confusion, I would like to address some other apparent texts for philosophical knowledge of a further life for humans. The texts cen19. Basic Writings, trans. Pegis, vol. 1, 210: “The evil of natural defect, or of punishment, He does will, by willing the good to which such evils are attached. Thus, in willing justice He wills punishment; and in willing the preservation of the order of nature, He wills some thing to be naturally corrupted.” For a critical discussion of the view of some Thomists that the relation of God’s will to all evil is “praeter intentionem,” as in the double effect principle, see John F. X. Knasas, Aquinas and the Cry of Rachel (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press), 95–109. 20. Such is how I understand Aquinas’s words about “the proportional attribution of matter to form by the universal agent” at ST I-II, q. 85, a. 6c. 21. De Malo 5, 5c. 22. For further reading on the topic of activity in the separated soul, see Joseph Owens, “Soul as Agent in Aquinas,” The New Scholasticism 48 (1974): 40–72, and Towards a Philosophy of Medieval Studies, The Étienne Gilson Series 9 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986), 11–13. See Mary Rousseau, “The Natural Meaning of Death in the Summa Theologiae,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 52 (1978): 87–95. Owens argues for no natural activity in the separated soul; Rousseau argues for a natural activity so imperfect that life here and now would be better.

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ter around two topics: first, natural desires of the human and second, God’s providence over rational creatures. Is not the possibility of a solely earthly destiny contradicted by implications in what Aquinas calls our natural desires to see God, to be happy, and to live forever?23 For Aquinas, a natural desire cannot be in vain. But satisfaction of these desires would be impossible if we only had this life to live. That frustration is not quite true. One could say that these desires are not in vain because they are not for the impossible. The fact that the desire is not fulfilled does not mean that it is useless. But is not God somehow delinquent if God creates us with these desires and in fact never fulfills them, just as a parent is delinquent for producing a child that the parent refuses to nourish? Here too I believe that the conclusion fails to follow. In the case of the first two desires, the desires follow great fulfillments in human nature. So God is more like a parent who has already given the child a nutritious meal, yet the child wants more. First, the natural desire to know what God is follows the “metaphysical”24 achievement of knowing that God exists. Despite Aquinas’s mantra that we can only know that God is but not what God is and his repeatedly quoting Aristotle that our minds are to the higher substances like the eyes of the owl are to the light of the sun, Aquinas 23. For the natural desire to see the divine quiddity, see ST I, q. 12, a. 1, and I-II, q. 3, a. 8; for happiness, see ScG III, 48; for everlasting life, see ST I, q. 75, a. 6. Further discussion can be found in Knasas, Aquinas and the Cry of Rachel, 182–93. 24. Aquinas appears to assign philosophical knowledge of God’s existence exclusively to metaphysics: “Philosophers, then, study these divine being only insofar (nisi prout) as they are the principles of all things. Consequently, they are the object of the science that investigates what is common to all beings, which has for its subject being as being. The philosophers call this divine science” (In de Trin. V, 4 c., trans. Armand Maurer, Division and Methods of the Sciences [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963], 44). Two paragraphs later Aquinas refers to this divine science as metaphysics. I know of no corresponding text that explicitly says, “The philosopher proves God in natural philosophy or physics.” For a listing and discussion of possible textual claimants for the view that Aquinas reaches God in natural philosophy, see John F. X. Knasas, “The ‘Suppositio’ of Motion’s Eternity and the Interpretation of Aquinas’s Motion Proofs for God,” ed. Anselm Ramelow, in God: Reason and Reality (Munich: Philosophia Verlag GmbH, 2014), 147–51.



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also insists that we cannot know that God exists without also having at least a confused and imperfect knowledge of what God is.25 The confused and imperfect knowledge of the divine quiddity seems to be a result of the effect from which the causal argument for God proceeds. As Aquinas says, If the effect is proportionate to its cause, we take the quiddity itself of the effect as our starting point to prove that the cause exists and to investigate its quiddity, from which in turn its properties are demonstrated. But if the effect is not proportionate to its cause, we take the effect as the starting point to prove only the existence of the cause and some of its properties while the quiddity of the cause remains unknown. This is what happens in the case of the separate substances.26

That we know “some of its properties” indicates that Aquinas does not mean that the quiddity of the cause is totally or completely unknown. What is the effect from which God is known? Since, as mentioned, Aquinas philosophically reaches God from the subject of metaphysics, ens inquantum ens, of which the defining note is esse,27 then the metaphysician should attain God in virtue of the esse of a thing. In fact, Aquinas’s texts do contain a causal argument that explains how one reasons from esse to God as esse tantum. The classic instance is from chapter 4 of the De Ente et Essentia where Aquinas states that “What belongs to a thing is caused.”28 For my purposes, 25. Aquinas, In de Trin. VI, 3c; trans. Armand Maurer, Division and Methods, 77: “we cannot know that God and other immaterial substances exist unless we know somehow in some confused way, what they are.” For the debate among Thomists on whether the metaphysician has some knowledge of the divine quiddity ( Jacques Maritain and John Wippel) or none at all (Étienne Gilson, Anton Pegis, and Joseph Owens), see Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, 238–9. 26. Aquinas, In de Trin. VI, 4, ad 2m; trans. Armand Maurer, The Division and Methods, 84. At In de Trin. I, 2, ad 5m, Aquinas says that “When something is not known through its form but through its effect, the form of the effect takes the place of the form of the thing itself ” (Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason and Theology, trans. Armand Maurer [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1987], 24). 27. See supra, no. 3. 28. For an elaboration of the text, see John F. X. Knasas, “The Intellectual ‘Phenomenology’ of De Ente et Essentia, Chapter Four,” The Review of Metaphysics 68:1 (2014): 107–54.

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it will suffice to say that there is some reflection of the first cause understood as ipsum esse per se subsistens in the nature of this effect of creaturely esse. Does Aquinas speak of the nature of creaturely esse and does he make assertions about the first cause on the basis of this effect? He does both in question four of the Prima Pars. In article three, he speaks of ipsum esse as a commonality that is analogous: “sed secundum aliqualem analogiam, sicut ipsum esse est commune omnibus.” In the responsio analogical likeness is described as things communicating in the same form but not according to the same formality: “aliqua similia, quae communicant in eadem forma, sed non secundum eandem rationem.” Before continuing to speak of ipsum esse, it is worth thinking about this formula for analogical likeness. At first thought it sounds oxymoronic. If things do not have the same ratio, how can they have the same form? If things have the same form, how can they each have a different ratio? But as confusing as it sounds, the phenomenon of sameness within difference is not just true of ipsum esse and not absent from ordinary experience. Consider Rome and Paris. Both are charming cities. Charming city is a commonality that extends to both but not to Detroit or Manila. Yet if you are asked to explain why Rome is a charming city like Paris, you are driven to speak about the ruins, the profusion of Baroque, the narrow winding alleys, and the gelato. But these things that are mentioned to explain why Rome is a charming city like Paris also serve to differentiate Rome from Paris. In sum, the sameness is found in the differences. This phenomenon of analogy is obviously not a fully satisfying experience. Because the sameness comes across in and through the differences of the instances, it is intellected but intellected confusedly and imperfectly. We see it but we see it as dumbed down by the differences of the instances. Our imperfect vision of the sameness in the difference is sufficiently stunning, however, to engender a wonder about what other different ways exist to realize a charming city. And so a lifelong interest in traveling is born. The complaint that if



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you have seen one charming city then you have seen them all reveals a woeful intellectual immaturity. Insofar as Aquinas uses analogy to understand ipsum esse, then he brings all the fascination of analogy to esse. Even though ipsum esse is not a form but the act of all form,29 it is intellected as a perfectio and an actus which makes things more than nothing insofar as things have ipsum esse after some fashion: “enim aliqua perfecta sunt, quod aliquo modo esse habent.”30 So Aquinas does more than judgmentally grasp the individual esse of a thing. Subsequently, he can succeed to a degree in penetrating the nature of this metaphysical principle. In this case he discovers an analogical sameness whose intelligible wealth is unlike that of charming city. As mentioned, not all differences carry that sameness. But anything is nothing apart from having esse aliquo modo. With ipsum esse the intellect discovers an analogous commonality whose intelligible wealth and plentitude is without limit. In the case of metaphysical notion of ipsum esse, we know something of the divine nature understood as ipsum esse per se subsistens. It is not surprising that at Summa theologiae I, 4, 2c, Aquinas argues something of the divine quiddity is reflected in ipsum esse such that the infinite perfection of ipsum esse can be transferred to God. Hence, one can say that God has the perfections of all things.31 This use of analogically conceived esse to fashion some representation of esse subsistens is stunning enough to understand why Aquinas, at Contra Gentiles I, 5, agrees with Aristotle that the little 29. ST I, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3m, Basic Writings, trans. Pegis, vol. 1, 38: “Hence, being (esse) is the actuality of all things, even of forms themselves.” 30. ST I, q. 4, a. 2c. 31. In the commentary on the De Trinitate, VI 3c, Aquinas asserts a role for “negation” in our fashioning some understanding of the divine quiddity. In this article I cannot go into that use of negation, but for further elaboration of how negation is necessary to make ipsum esse representative of ipsum esse per se subsistens, see Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, 239–44; Knasas, Aquinas and the Cry of Rachel, 273–76; finally, Knasas, “Existential Thomist Reflections on Kenny: the Incompatibility of the Phoenix and Subsistent Existence,” in “Analyzing Catholic Philosophy,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. 89 (2015): 195–208.

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we know of higher substances is loved and desired more than all the knowledge about less noble substances. Furthermore, this little and imperfect knowledge produces “intense joy” (vehemens sit gaudium eius) and brings the “greatest perfection to the soul” (maximam perfectionem animae). Later at chapter 8 of Contra Gentiles I, Aquinas expresses the matter in terms of intellectual vision and consideration, weak as they may be: “For to be able to see (posse inspicere) something of the loftiest realities, however thin and weak the sight may be (parva et debili consideration) is, as our previous remarks indicate, a cause of greatest joy.”32 Thought through in terms of analogical intelligibilities, Aquinas’s metaphysics produces an undeniably profound satisfaction in its student. In that respect, it is not true that without grace the human is totally frustrated and destitute. The human desire to know what God is follows upon an impressive rational achievement. Our desire for happiness should be placed in the same metaphysical context. For Aquinas the happiness that is naturally desired is the completely satiating good.33 But the good is just another name for the notion of being, the ratio entis, which as non-generic has intrinsically the perfections of all things.34 Before knowing that as ip32. Summa Contra Gentiles: God, trans. Pegis, vol. 1, 76. 33. ST I-II, q. 10, a. 2c; Basic Writings, ed. Pegis, vol. 2, 262: “And since the lack of any good whatever is a non-good, consequently, that good alone which is perfect and lacking in nothing is such a good that the will cannot not will it; and this is happiness.” 34. The notion of being is non-generic insofar as unlike a univocal notion, being contains the very differences of its instances under penalty of reducing the differences to non-being. In a word, the notion of being is another analogical intelligibility. De Ver. I, 1c; Truth: St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Robert W. Mulligan (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), vol. I, 5: “But nothing can be added to being as though it were something not included in being—in the way that a difference is added to a genus or an accident to a subject—for every reality is essentially a being (quia quaelibet natura essentialiter est ens).” And ibid., XXI, 1c; Truth: St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Robert W. Schmidt (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), vol. 3, 5: “for there is no real being which is outside the essence of being in general, though some reality may be outside the essence of this being (nulla enim res naturae est quae sit extra essentiam entis universalis; quamvis aliqua res sit extra essentiam huius entis).” I have noted Aquinas referring to ens as a ratio. In his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (henceforth, In Sent.) I, d. 19, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1m, Aquinas refers to ens as a



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sum esse per se subsistens, the first cause instantiates ipsum esse, the intelligible heart of the ratio entis, humans would not pursue happiness as just defined. Rather, the human pursuit of the good would consist in the pursuit of goods. The reason that happiness would not be pursued as completely satiating is that at this point no one is thinking that there could be a good that was the good itself because it was a being that was being itself. What results is the pursuit of “imperfect” happiness which at Summa theologiae I-II, 3, 5c, Aquinas describes this way: “But imperfect happiness, such as can be had here, consists first and principally in contemplation, but secondarily, in an operation of the practical intellect directing human actions and passions.”35 That the primary element of contemplation is metaphysical is clear from another text on imperfect happiness. At In de Trin. VI, 4, ad 3m, Aquinas says, “Man’s happiness is twofold. One is the imperfect happiness found in this life, of which the Philosopher speaks; and this consists in contemplating the separate substances through the habit of wisdom.” But elsewhere, Aquinas describes this principal element of contemplation as metaphysical wisdom.36 The secondary element of imperfect happiness is clearly a reference to his natural law ethics. As I will note below, the first principle of practical reason and of the natural law is that the good ought to be done. As I mentioned when speaking of the natural desire to know what God is, metaphysics is, for Aquinas, not just a word game or idle speculation. The analogical perception of being, dim as it may be, brings about the greatest natural joy in the soul. But most imporcommon nature, natura communis. Both ways of speaking, “ratio” and “natura communis,” are for objects of what the De Ente et Essentia, ch. 4, calls the intellect’s absolute consideration and what Aristotle’s De Anima III, 6, describes as the first operation of the intellect. 35. Division and Methods, trans. Maurer, 84. 36. At ScG III, 44, Aquinas says: “And at the beginning of the Metaphysics, [Aristotle] calls the science he intends to treat in this work, wisdom” (Summa Contra Gentiles: Providence, trans. Vernon J. Bourke, vol. 3, pt. II [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975], 151). Also, In de Trin. V, 4, in Division and Methods, trans. Maurer, 44: “Philosophers, then, study these divine beings [God and the angels] only insofar (nisi prout) as they are the principles of all things. Consequently, they are the objects of the science that investigates what is common to all beings, what has for its subject being as being.”

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tantly for discussion of happiness, metaphysics demonstrates that the perfection of esse is realized in some being.37 That being is the first cause which as subsistent being, ipsum esse per se subsistens, instantiates the intelligible heart of the notion of being, the ratio entis. That conclusion is the human’s license to desire perfect happiness. Where before the desire appeared foolish and nonsensical, now the thought of having the good itself appears as at least possible. It is at least possible because reality is now known to contain a being that is the good itself and that possesses the resources to introduce itself to us. Again, before the human desires perfect happiness, it is not true that the human is totally destitute and so without any happiness. Because of its own excellence, philosophy cannot eliminate joy. But its very excellence evokes a desire for a greater joy. Whether the possibility of perfect happiness is made real is left to the initiative of the creative first cause. The point is, however, that the human is like the child who has been given a nutritional meal but wants more. The child cannot properly complain if the parent decides to stop. Likewise, like the child, after philosophy there is the desire for more and, like the child, the human is left waiting with interest to discern what the divine parent will do. Hence, again there is no demonstrative exclusion of the possibility that this life is our only life. Aquinas mentions a third natural desire in the course of arguing for the incorruptibility of the human soul. This third desire is the desire to exist always. He speaks of this desire as a response to our in37. Aquinas describes this point in terms of a concession to Plato. Consider the following from Aquinas’s proem to his commentary on the Divine Names: “The Platonists considered by an abstraction of this kind not only the ultimate species of natural things but also the most common species, which are the good, the one, and being (bonum, unum et ens). They maintained one first thing that is the essence itself of goodness and of unity and of being (ipsa essentia bonitatis et unitatis et esse), which we call God and which [we say] all others are called good or one or beings through derivation from this first thing. . . . Hence, this position of the Platonists is not agreeable to the faith or truth insofar as it contains separate natural species, but in respect to what they say about the first principle of things, their opinion is most true and consonant with the faith of Christians” (my trans.).



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tellection of a mysterious object that he names as “esse absolute et secundum omne tempus (existence absolutely and for all time).”38 Since the fulfillment of such a natural desire is totally impossible if the soul is corruptible, then so that this desire not be in vain, the soul must be incorruptible. Much could be said about this text,39 but for the purposes of this article it suffices to note that Aquinas draws simply the conclusion of the soul’s incorruptibility. It is unclear, however, how far one can philosophically proceed from that incorruptibility. As noted above, from the separated soul, Aquinas did not think that the philosopher could conclude to an afterlife and a resurrection, though the philosopher could know them as possibilities. As mentioned earlier, a second topic that appears to contradict the possibility that humans have only this life is Aquinas on God’s providence over rational creatures. The key text in this regard is Contra Gentiles III, 112. There Aquinas seems to argue for an intimate providence insofar as God’s providence over the rational creature is said to be for its own sake. If there is any doubt about that, the recapitulation at the start of the next chapter seems to confirm that Aquinas did so argue. In other words, the divine governance of the rational creature is not for the good of the species but for the good of the individual. Moreover, Aquinas is still within the philosophical portion of the Contra Gentiles. So it appears that he is arguing this thesis philosophically and so is at odds with the “probable but false” position of Job’s interlocutors. But, again, appearances can be deceiving. Arguments in philosophy can be demonstrative and probable. In the first book of the Contra Gentiles, Aquinas admits that he will use both.40 So the issue 38. ST I, 75, 6. 39. See Knasas, Aquinas and the Cry of Rachel, 192–93. 40. ScG I, 9; Summa Contra Gentiles: God, trans. Pegis, vol. 1, 78: “We shall first seek to make known that truth which faith professes and reason investigates. This we shall do by bringing forward both demonstrative and probable arguments (rationes demonstrativas et probabiles), some of which were drawn from the books of the philosophers and of the saints, through which truth is strengthened and its adversary overcome.” On the basis of a remark in chapter 1 of Book IV, this remark from Book I is taken to refer to the first three books of the Contra Gentiles. The remark from Book IV is: “In what

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is the nature of the arguments in chapter 112. Are they demonstrative or only probable for the rational creatures that are humans? That these seven arguments are only probable is clear if one begins with the middle term of the fifth argument. The middle term is “whole,” and the major premise is that the whole is that for the sake of which the parts exist. But the rational creature only has “a closer relationship to the whole” than other things. It has this approximate relation because the rational creature intellects the whole of being (totius entis). Though not mentioned here, I believe that the reason such creatures only come close to being but fail to achieve identification is that the intellection of being is analogical. Grasped as a sameness-in-difference, the notion of being does not perfectly seat itself in the created intellect. Hence, for all of its exalted status as an intellector of being, the human is still a part of the whole. Hence, not perfectly fitting the middle term of the argument, the argument cannot strictly conclude that the rational creature is governed for its own sake. In fact, Aquinas presents the conclusion of the fifth argument in terms of fittingness: “Convenienter igitur alia propter substantias intellectuales providentur a Deo.” Except for the seventh argument, all the others stay within this context of the human being as not quite a whole but remaining a part. This fact should make the other arguments only probable also. For instance, in the fourth argument Aquinas explicitly calls the rational creature a part of the created universe, albeit the principal part. In light of the fifth argument, Aquinas’s claim “Principal parts are willed for themselves” should be rendered “Principal parts are fittingly willed for themselves.” The third argument focuses on the natural ability of rational creatures to reflect God, as final cause of creation, through their knowledge and love of God. The idea that the human is a part of the whole has preceded we have dealt with divine things according as the natural reason can arrive at the knowledge of divine things through creatures” (Summa Contra Gentiles: Salvation, trans. O’Neil), vol. 4, 39.



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is not too obvious. But one can argue that it lurks in the nature of human cognition. Human knowledge is built up through sensation. As requiring bodily organs, sensation situates the human as a part in the material cosmos with its mentioned natural requirement of generation and corruption of things. The same rootedness in matter can be presumed in the first two arguments. In these arguments, the middle term for concluding that the rational creature is governed for its own sake is the freedom of the rational creature. Here it is important to realize that this freedom is not the intellectually ungrounded freedom of Kant’s autonomous will or the “authentic” existence of the twentieth-century existential philosophers Heidegger and Sartre. In their cases choice has no intellectual prompt. Hence, what is good is simply what we have decided to be good. But for Aquinas the act of the will has an intellectual prompt and in the case of humans, intellection is rooted in sensation. So we return to the human as a part, albeit a principal part, of the material cosmos. The sixth argument attempts to get to its conclusion by studying how rational creatures act in the course of nature. But to be in the course of nature, these creatures must be parts of nature. So if we employ the fifth argument as a hermeneutical key for these others, we can see that they do not strictly conclude. The reason is that in each argument Aquinas’s philosophical understanding of the rational creature never goes beyond that of a part. What about the seventh argument? There the middle term is “everlasting creature.” The major premise is “An everlasting creature is something that the creator desires for its own sake.” But as in the fifth argument, Aquinas admits that the rational creature fails to fit perfectly the middle term. He states that the rational creature “comes closest to existing always.” Obviously, Aquinas is not contradicting the incorruptibility of the human soul. The full everlastingness that he is denying is the separated soul’s above-mentioned natural ability to operate. Hence, understood as presenting probable arguments of fitting-

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ness, chapter 112 offers nothing to contradict the possibility that the Creator intends for humans only an earthly life. It should not be forgotten that for the philosopher that possibility stands along with the other possibility of a more intimate providence in which the rational creature is governed for its own sake. The philosopher would not be correct to claim that this life is our only life. Such is the error of Job’s interlocutors. In the face of the inscrutability of divine providence, with what is the “Thomistic philosopher” left? It is not a total darkness. Just as in the middle of our ignorance about whether the world was created in time or from eternity, there remains certain knowledge of the creator and the creator’s attributes, so too in the middle of our ignorance about our ultimate destiny, there remains clear norms of behavior. It is to these that the sufferer can and should cleave. To argue this claim Thomistically, it is necessary to connect Aquinas’s talk about providence with his talk about eternal law. The connection is especially made in the Summa theologiae I-II, 91, 1c. Eternal law is the divine exemplar of God’s governance or providence.41 Interestingly Aquinas claims that we are not totally ignorant of the eternal law. He states, For every knowledge of truth is a kind of reflection and participation of the eternal law, which is unchangeable truth, as Augustine says. Now all men know the truth to a certain extent, at least as to the common prin41. Basic Writings, ed. Pegis, vol. 2, 748: “[L]aw is nothing else but a dictate of practical reason emanating from the ruler who governs a perfect community. Now it is evident, granted that the world is ruled by divine providence . . . that the whole community of the universe is governed by divine reason. Therefore the very notion of the government of things in God, the ruler of the universe, has the nature of a law. And since the divine reason’s conception of things is not subject to time but is eternal, . . . therefore it is that this kind of law must be called eternal.” At De Ver. 5, 1, ad 6m, Aquinas uses “eternal law” differently than in the Summa theologiae. In the De Veritate Aquinas describes eternal law as like the principles from which our practical reasoning takes its start. Providence is the implication of this. As such eternal law seems to be God himself as he is the good primarily specifying his will and in the light of which he creates and orders things. See also ScG III, 97, “Providence Has a Rational Plan.”



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ciples of natural law. As to other truths, they partake of the knowledge of truth, some more, some less; and in this respect they know the eternal law in a greater or lesser degree.42

Aquinas will elaborate the two points about the knowledge of natural law in the very next question. Article 2 of question 94 deals with the principles of natural law that are self-evident to us. Article 4 explains how the subsequent precepts vary in human knowledge. This turn to the precepts of Aquinas’s natural law ethics may seem to be, for my purposes, a senseless detour. How can mere rules provide solace amid suffering? But this reaction is woefully ignorant of the intensely personal insight at the basis of the natural law precepts. To convey that insight, I want to speak about what 94, 2 calls the first principle of practical reason. Practical reason’s first principle is “Good ought to be done.” Aquinas describes the proposition as self-evident to all. He says that a self-evident proposition is one in which the meaning of the predicate is contained in the meaning of the subject. Hence, how is the notion of the good, the ratio boni, understood so that the notion of the good includes oughtness?43 Earlier in the Summa, Aquinas presented the notion of the good, the ratio boni, as the notion of being, the ratio entis.44 This connection seems fair since, as I mentioned at n. 34, the notion of being is unlike other intelligibilities. First, being is a sameness in all things. Not everything is a triangle, a human, or an animal. But every sensible thing is a being. Second, the commonality of being englobes or embraces all the things to which it applies.45 Aquinas says that being must somehow continue to embrace 42. ST I-II, q. 93, a. 2c, Basic Writings, ed. Pegis, vol. 2, 764. 43. For some Thomistic reasons to regard the predicate in the synderesis rule as expressing moral/ethical necessity, see Vernon Bourke, “The Synderesis Rule and Right Reason,” The Monist 66 (1983): 74–75. For a discussion of Germain Grisez’s many reasons to the contrary, see Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, 272–81. 44. ST I, q. 5, a. 1c; Basic Writings, ed. Pegis, vol. I, 42: “But everything is perfect so far as it is actual. Therefore, it is clear that a thing is perfect so far as it is being (ens); for being (esse) is the actuality of everything (omnis rei).” 45. Hence, Hegel and Aquinas disagree on this second respect. Hegel maintained that the notion of being is “immediacy itself, simple and indeterminate” (Gottfried

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the very differences of all the things to which it applies. Fidelity to sense realism underwrites this need to nuance the way in which the notion of being relates to the differences of things. For to place the differences of things outside of being, as one does the differences of a genus, would consign the differences of being to oblivion. Because of these two respects the notion of being has in Thomism an unspeakable but often ignored richness46 and also merits being called the good. Because of this richness, being can function as a final cause that ignites volition and so be denominated the good. But an issue emerges. Earlier in the Summa, Aquinas described two psychic effects engendered by the intellection of the ratio boni, but neither are the obligation of the first practical principle. The first effect is the just-mentioned eruption of volition subsequent upon the intellect’s presentation to the will of its object.47 Volition here is automatic and necessary and so is not something obligatory. The second effect is the will’s indetermination or freedom before any instance of the good.48 Against the notion of being understood as the good, any Wilhelm Hegel, The Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, trans. William Wallace [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968], 158). Such talk implies that being has a content in inverse relation to its extent. Hence, because being is the widest notion, being is the emptiest. But for Aquinas, as widest being is the richest. 46. Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite, or, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 212–13, writes eloquently and passionately of the intellection of the ratio entis. Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1985), 63–65, stays remarkably unexcited. Of course, in the two mentioned De Veritate texts, Aquinas is the same. 47. At ST I, q. 82, a. 1c, Aquinas insists that natural necessity (necessitas naturalis) is not repugnant to the will. For just as the intellect of necessity adheres to first principles, so too the will necessarily adheres to the last end which is happiness (ultimo fini, qui est beatitude). But “happiness” here is the ratio boni for elsewhere the last end is the object of the will (rationem finis, est obiectum voluntatis), I-II, q. 9, a. 1, and the object of the will is the ratio boni (ratio boni, quod est obiectum potentiae), I-II, q. 8, a. 2c. Aquinas reiterates the point by saying that the will “tends naturally” (naturaliter tendit), I-II, q. 10, a. 1 to the bonum in communi which is its object and last end just as the intellect knows naturally the first principles of demonstration. 48. At ST I-II, q. 10, a. 2c, Aquinas explains that since the will necessarily tends to the universal and perfect good, then before any particular or finite good the will does not necessarily tend. The will can either set aside or approve these particular goods. This conclusion makes sense in terms of the ratio boni as the ratio entis. If things profile themselves as individual beings before the ratio entis, then they should also profile themselves



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thing comes across as only a good. Hence, the instance can be willed but also need not be willed. Here there is simple freedom without obligation. So, how must the good, the subject of the first practical principle, be understood so that precisely obligation emerges? Elsewhere,49 I have argued that the answer is found in the realization that the subject of the first practical principle is not the notion of the good pure and simple but as present in humans thanks to their intellection of being. Such a construal of the subject transfers the preciousness of being to humans insofar as they are intellectors of being. Precisely our intellection of being gives us a dignity not had by other things in our experience. The notion of being is not equally present throughout its instances. That is already true with the instances of substance and accident. But even among substances this inequality exists. Thanks to our intellection, we have being in a more heightened way than a rock, a cow, and a daisy. We are also heightened presentations of the good. Hence, Aquinas would be translating our dignity as “rational animals” into our dignity as intellectors of being, also known as the good. Some confirmation of my interpretation of the subject of the first practical principle is afforded by the previously discussed central text from Contra Gentiles III, 112. As mentioned, the fifth argument from fittingness for a special providence over rational creatures noted that we are closest to the whole because we intellect the whole of being. The fourth argument’s characterization of us a “principle parts” seemed to be another way of saying that we are “closest to the whole.” But if it is fitting that because of this status God governs us for our own sakes, then among ourselves it is more than fitting that as individual goods if the ratio entis is also the ratio boni. Poised before beings seen in the light of the ratio boni, the will is indeterminate or free. As individual goods, the will can go for beings, but as individual goods, the will need not go for them. This freedom is known and understood as real and non-illusory because it has been built up from the ratio entis whose objectivity is assured by its abstraction from the real beings given in sensation. Aquinas’s direct realist epistemology regarding sensation has a crucial and basic role to play here. 49. See especially Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, ch. 8, but also Thomism and Tolerance, ch. 2, and Aquinas and the Cry of Rachel, ch. 2.

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we find a moral injunction to be respectful and solicitous. Hence, my suggestion is that the subject of the first practical principle be initially understood as the ratio boni understood as intellected by the human person. Before such an object we are not just free but also morally obliged.50 The perspective of the psychology of the intellection of being lies behind the primary precepts of Aquinas’s natural law ethics that Aquinas goes on to mention at 94, 2. Accordingly, in his mention of natural inclinations, Aquinas is not conducting an inductive survey to discern how things like us act even for the most part. Rather, human experience involves various epiphanies of being. Around these epiphanies form injunction of practical reason. So when Aquinas remarks that “those things to which man has a natural inclination reason naturally apprehends (apprehendit) as being good and so as a work to be done,” Aquinas does not mean that the natural inclinations invest these thing with the appearance of being good. Rather, it is because things are first apprehended as good that one has natural inclinations to them. The present tense of “apprehendere” is open to this reading. 50. For a discussion of other interpretations of the subject “bonum” in the first practical principle, e.g., Jacques Maritain, Eric D’Arcy, Ralph McInerny, Germain Grisez, and Denis Bradley, see Knasas, Being Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, 262–64, n22. Concerning my own, some readers might object that by rooting the appearance of obligation in instances that are appreciated as intellectors of being, I make Aquinas’s natural law ethics too narrow. His ethics would not extend to humans who for some reason could not intellect being. These humans could be the unborn, children, the insane, the elderly. But this criticism fails to utilize a distinction that we make all of the time and is implicit in an ethics based upon the “nature” of a thing. The distinction is between essential presence and actual presence. For example, an open and extended hand is a gesture that by its very character is friendly. In other words, the open and extended hand is essentially friendly. Compare that gesture to a raised fist. Each gesture just as a gesture says something quite different. But in fact an open hand can be offered by a conniving politician. So something, for example friendship, can be absent actually but present essentially. Now the essential presence of the intelligible object of being is true of all humans as human—born or unborn, insane or comatose. Even though I approached ethics in and through the actual intellection of being, what we learn there must be extended even to those in which the intellection of being is only potentially but nevertheless essentially present. In other words, just as we realize that if we are going to shake hands, then we should be actually friendly, so too we realize that if we are to deal with any human we should be respectful and solicitous.



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And so Aquinas says that the first inclination is to the preservation of one’s own being. This is easily seen to follow an understanding of ourselves as intellectors and willers of the ratio boni. As mentioned, for Aquinas the human is a special instance of the good. Unlike other things, a human through intellection has the ratio boni present in a heightened fashion. Hence, we see that, in a real way, to strike at ourselves is to strike unseemly at the good. The heightened presence of the good in us produces an injunction to cherish oneself. Another epiphany of the good is sexual intercourse. To appreciate what Aquinas says, it is necessary to recall, as I said at note 50, how something can be essentially so but perhaps not actually so. When Aquinas speaks of the sexual embrace, he is speaking about it essentially. So first, the sexual embrace is essentially procreative. Because of its procreative aspect, sex confronts us with another epiphany of being in and through the generation of offspring who themselves will intellect being. So, in deference to this epiphany of being, we see that sexual activity should not be casual. Aquinas concludes that sexual intercourse and the education of offspring belong to natural law.51 Second, besides being essentially procreative, sexual activity of its own character is unitive of the persons involved. The sexual embrace is a total giving and surrender of one person to another, even if the people involved are not aware of it. Aquinas acknowledges this other essential aspect of sex in one of his reasons for claiming that between husband and wife there seems to be “the greatest friendship: maxima amicitia.” The reason is that they are “united in the act of fleshly union (adunantur . . . in actu carnalis copulae).”52 My previous remarks underline this reason. The person is an intellector of being as the good. Hence, in one’s partner one is handling the good. This realization seems to entail that sexual activity should actually take place in an exclusive and permanent context. To say otherwise is to say that one can handle the good and then deliberately throw it away. But that is as unseemly as deliberately striking at the 51. Aquinas extensively develops this line of thought in ScG III, 122–24. 52. ScG III, 123, Amplius.

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good was in suicide. Aquinas has been called a misogynist, a hater of women. And it is true that he says some things about women that are very politically incorrect today. But in this treatment of sexuality, he treats both the man and the woman as intellectors of being. Finally, further loci for encountering the analogon of being are human reasoning and society. First, in human reasoning that is metaphysical, one concludes to a first cause.53 The metaphysician does this from the ratio entis defined as habens esse, a haver or possessor of the act of existing. By saying that a being or an existent is a haver of existence, Aquinas means that any existing thing is a composition of the thing itself plus its act of existing. Usually in ordinary conversation but in much of philosophy also, we understand the existing of a thing to mean simply the fact of the thing. But for philosophical reasons, Aquinas enriches our understanding. The thing is a fact by a distinct act of existing. Just as a man is a runner when he possesses the act of running, so too the man is a being or an existent when he has another distinct act, his act of existing. But the thing’s act of existing is unique among the acts of a thing. Its uniqueness lies in its fundamentalness to the thing. Aquinas says that actus essendi, or esse, is “prius” and “profundius” in respect to its subject. Other acts are subsequent and posterior to their subject; the act of existing is basic and fundamental. Such a status logically entails two points. First, all the previously noted perfection of the ratio entis funnels down into the esse dimension of the ratio entis. Second, the status of esse as a prior and fundamental act entails that the thing’s act of existing not be completely dependent upon its subject. Complete dependence would entail the logical impossibility of the thing being prior to its existence. Hence, the thing’s esse is also dependent upon something else. Ultimately, the first cause of the act of existing is not a thing that has existence, but a thing that is existence. Also, as a cause of what is most fundamental in beings, this first cause is a creator, a cause that produces its 53. For the texts and elaboration of the following points, see supra, n. 28.



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effect without a presupposed material upon which to work. Aquinas refers to this first cause as subsistent existence, esse subsistens. As such, the first cause has all the perfection of the ratio entis and is a supreme epiphany of the ratio entis. To understand this conclusion is to discover another bearing upon which to set our moral compass. Hence, Aquinas speaks of natural inclination to the truth concerning God. Aquinas always quickly identifies this first cause with the God of his religious belief. Aquinas’s apparent reason is God’s revelation to Moses at Exodus 3:14 that God’s name is “I AM WHO AM (Ego sum qui sum).” With many of the medieval Christian thinkers, Aquinas took this to mean that God was saying that he was being. But the formulation of a metaphysics requires all the time and leisure that a well-functioning society allows. In his Contra Gentiles III, 37, Aquinas points out that rightly considered, all things serve the contemplation of truth: In fact, all other human operations seem to be ordered to this one, as to an end. For, there is needed for the perfection of contemplation a soundness of body, to which all the products of art that are necessary for life are directed. Also required are freedom from the disturbances of the passions— this is achieved through the moral virtues and prudence—and freedom from external disorders, to which the whole program of government in civil life is directed. And so, if they are rightly considered, all human functions may be seen to subserve the contemplation of truth.54

Who can fail to see that Aquinas is describing a perfect society here? In sum, the lamp of metaphysical reasoning burns only in a social context. Hence, the inclination to the former is an inclination to the latter. Consequently, Aquinas finishes 94:2 with the injunction to live in society.55 54. ScG III, 37, Ad hanc etiam omnes; Bourke trans., Summa Contra Gentiles: Providence, 124. 55. Another approach to the good of society is from the realization that in the intellection of ourselves and our fellows being acquires a voice; it can speak to us. Does not this insight lead to a desire to live among our fellows rather than among voiceless instances of being like limestone, cows, and daisies?

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The evils of life are deadly. An ethics needs to propose a strong motive in order to survive. The understanding of the human person as an intellector of being provides that motivation. Because of the excellence of being, the intellector acquires a preciousness that calls to our freedom to be exercised in a respectful and solicitous manner. So when one is tempted to lie, cheat, steal, kill, etc., one can recall the appreciation of one’s self and one’s fellows as heightened presentations of the good insofar as they are intellectors of being. Despite the vehemence of the temptation, one has the consolation of being faithful to being and its most heighted expression in our natural experience—fellow humans. Likewise, a proponent of Aquinas’s natural law ethics can find some consolation for sometimes being a pariah. When one remembers that for Aquinas intellection is an abstractive affair in which the focus of intellectual attention is sensible data,56 it is no surprise that most humans have only a vague sense of themselves as intellectors of being. The ratio entis can hide itself in the process of revealing itself. This vague sense can provide some recognition of human dignity but not a sense of human dignity sufficiently accurate to demonstrate correctly the secondary precepts of natural law. Hence, people can believe that casual sex is ethical as long as the sex is consensual and no one is getting hurt. Or people can believe that euthanasia is the proper response to a long lingering death.57 The play of the sense appetites only adds to the confusion. By occluding the intellection of being, the sense appetites can construe what is really immoral as at least apparently good and so set the stage for a use of human freedom at odds with the natural law. So the natural law proponent will understand that the selfevident character of the primary precepts never entailed that the 56. ScG III, 26, Non autem; Summa Contra Gentiles: Providence, trans. Bourke, vol. 3, pt. I, 109–10: “more people . . . seek sensual pleasures than intellectual knowledge and its accompanying pleasure, because things that are external stand out as better known, since human knowledge starts from sensible objects.” 57. For an attempt to use Aquinas’s psychology of the intellection of being to understand cultural pluralism, see my Thomism and Tolerance, ch. VI.



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proponent would not have opponents. The subject of the first practical principle is open to various depths of understanding. That realization provides some consolation while suffering ostracism. But the same realization also keeps the proponent engaged with the opponents. The opposition stems unwittingly from the presence of the intellection of being. And so the possibility exists for dialogue and eventual agreement. As I mentioned, ordinary experience provides abundant examples of analogy. The clever Thomist can seize upon these examples from ordinary experience to guide the interlocutor to the analogy of being. The deep psychology both of proponent and opponent of natural law is the intellection of being and so we are never left total strangers to one another. At this point, however, a previously mentioned item in Aquinas’s understanding of providence may appear to cancel this natural joy. How is this natural law ethics with its cherishing of the person compatible with a possible providence in which we naturally have only this life to live? Does God not appear to be destroying what we are struggling so hard to achieve? Is God not indifferent, if not outright opposed, to the person of natural virtue? How can this appearance not be depressing and not cause an interminable mental anguish? In sum, how does Aquinas’s third primary precept to seek the truth about God survive the possibilities of divine providence? One would think that a creator who possibly has given us only this life to live would not be something with which one would want to become more intimate. These questions express the reoccurring personalist view in discussion of the problem of evil.58 According to this view, the evils suffered must rebound to the good of the sufferer. To speak about a good brought about elsewhere is to betray an insensitivity to the value of the human person. The problem of evil debate includes both some Thomist and many non-Thomist personalists. But as my reader can discern, I do not think that Aquinas is, without qualification, a per58. For a discussion of various personalist treatments of the problem of evil, see Knasas, Aquinas and the Cry of Rachel, chs. 6 and 8.

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sonalist. The qualification is “from the viewpoint of his theology.” From his theology he knows that God is not just our creator but our father, our loving parent, who through supernatural grace has made us his adopted children. But from the viewpoint of Aquinas’s philosophy, one cannot verify this adopted status and so also verify the importance that personalists place upon human life. The dignity to which humans are naturally entitled rests upon the intellection of being. But since this intellection is analogical, that is, a sameness intellectually perceived in difference, then the notion of being never perfectly seats itself in the human intellect. Hence, by its unaided power the human never rises above the status of a principal part of the whole, as I noted Aquinas to state at Contra Gentiles III, 112. Consequently, it was only “fitting,” and not required, that God provided for us for our own sake. Congruent with this is that Aquinas never states that the human person is the most perfect thing. Rather, at Summa theologiae I, 29, 3c, he says that the human is the most perfect thing “in all of nature.” It sounds harsh. But I believe it must be said. Though supernaturally we might be made immortal, naturally we are mortal. It is no surprise, then, that Aquinas speaks of corruption as something willed by God for the perfection of the whole. To contemplate our own mortality should lead us to appreciate what we truly love naturally. It is not simply ourselves but ourselves as intellectors of being. It is the intellectual presenting of the notion of being that fundamentally enlivens the will. The intellection of being causes a proresponse in the will. So what we fundamentally love is being; our love for ourselves is a consequence of the love of being insofar as being becomes present to us through our intellection. This insight should assuage bitterness at our natural lot. It was never about ourselves. Just as a dying soldier is consoled by seeing his comrades advance, so too the mortal can find some consolation in the thought that the presence of being continues in the intellects of others and that natural corruption is some condition for that continuance. More challenging is the suffering and death of humans before maturity. Sickness, disease, natural disaster, and the viciousness of



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other humans all contribute to this challenge. In these cases the divinely willed natural order and perfection of the universe seems thwarted. Aquinas calls these instances of evil quandoque evils. In the subhuman world they are truly “sometimes,” but in human affairs they proliferate. The reason for the proliferation is the fallibility of human providence.59 For example, a people leave the pestilence of the jungle for the healthiness of the coast only to be swamped by tidal waves. Or they leave the coast for the protection of the mountains only to be caught in earthquakes. So humans learn to provide for themselves gradually and with cost. Nevertheless, human providence is a good. In fact, as Aquinas argued in Contra Gentiles III, 112, human providence is a good sufficient to offer a fitting argument for a special divine providence over rational creatures. What is the natural solace in the face of these quandoque evils? Since they wreck the order and perfection of the universe, we can know that they are an abomination not just to us but to God also. Hence, God does not will them but only permits them. The motivation for the divine permission is twofold. First is the mentioned antecedent good of human providence.60 Second is some consequent good to which God will order the quandoque evil. Because of his metaphysically known infinite perfection, the creator has the resources to reduce any permitted evil to good. Somehow someway the creator will not allow quandoque evils to spin out of control.61 That sure conclusion is our consolation. But as sure as that conclusion is, we cannot determine philosophically if that consequent good is natural or supernatural.62 59. De Ver. V, 5, ad 2m: “But human acts can be defective because of human providence. For this reason, we find more failures and deordinations in human acts than we do in the acts of natural things.” See In I Sent. d. 39, q. 2, a. 2, ad 4m, and ST I, q. 49, a. 3, ad 5m. 60. Ibid.: “Yet, the fact that man has providence over his own acts is part of his nobility. Consequently the number of his failures does not keep man from holding a higher place under God’s providence.” 61. De Ver. V, 4c: “A defective act which results occasionally in the generation of natural monstrosities is, of course, directed by God to some useful purpose.” Also, see In I Sent. d. 46, q. 1, a. 4. 62. De Ver. V, 5, ad 6m, trans. Mulligan, 224: “It is because we do not know His

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So a line of reflection instigated by Aquinas’s commentary on Job leads us to envisage a comprehensive dealing with suffering from the vantage point of his natural law ethics. The practice of natural virtue has a motivating ground in the deepest ideas of Aquinas’s speculative thought. This approach to suffering is not Job’s way with its belief in the resurrection. Nor is it Aquinas’s stated approach in the Prologue of the Job commentary. As Aquinas argued at Contra Gentiles III, 112, so too in the Job commentary, Aquinas will provide philosophically probable arguments (per probabiles rationes) for a theological understanding of divine providence. Aquinas’s interest remains Christian. The Christian view of providence in which the human is a child of God is what Aquinas wishes to defend against the pernicious view that human affairs are bereft of providence. Aquinas leaves undeveloped a defense of the “Thomistic philosopher’s” view of providence. Nevertheless, the “Thomistic philosopher’s” view is implied by the theological nature of Job’s way and the philosophically probable arguments of Aquinas. If God upbraids Job for too easily assuming this truth among his interlocutors and if Aquinas’s arguments are probable, then what else might be theological and possible? I have argued that even though the incorruptibility of the human soul is a philosophical truth, a disembodied afterlife is a theological truth. This conclusion leaves the question of what is naturally available with which to face suffering. I have argued that Aquinas’s answer would be a life of natural virtue based upon the precepts of natural law and so with some measure of joy but with the hope that the creator relates to us in a more personal manner. This state of natural virtue lacks any lassitude that would render supernatural elevation of little interest to the human. The Thomistic natural desires of which I spoke are operating. These desires leave the human not reasons that we think many things happen without order of plan. We are like a man who enters a carpenter shop and thinks that there is a useless multiplication of tools because he does not know how each one is used; but one who knows the trade will see that this number of tools exists for a very good reason.”



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only open to supernatural elevation but interested in the claims of various religions to have communication from the creator regarding the creator’s de facto providence over our affairs. At this point, the “Thomistic philosopher” hands over the conversation to the Thomistic theologian.

Joseph P. Wawrykow Human Suffering and Merit

9

Human Suffering and Merit Joseph Wawrykow

In his Expositio super Iob ad litteram, Aquinas offers a vigorous teaching about merit, a teaching that resembles in a number of important ways the teaching about merit offered in the later Summa theologiae. Thus, in both the Expositio and the Summa, merit is related to reward and to the scriptural affirmation that God is rewarder; and, in both writings, the principal reward of human activity is identified as eternal life—the beatific vision in the next life, immediate and direct communion with God—rendered by God to the just. And yet, while in its essentials the teaching remains constant, the Expositio differs from the Summa, in tone and approach and in particular formulations. It is thus worthwhile to attend as well to what is proper to the Expositio super Iob in the teaching of merit. The following falls into two main parts. I begin with Aquinas’s account of merit in the Summa theologiae, as presented in the Summa’s ex professo treatment on merit (ST I-II, q. 114) and elsewhere in this writing. This part is divided into four sections: merit and its reward; the possibility of merit; merit and temporal good; and merit in connection with charity and hope. I then turn in the second main part of the chapter to the Expositio super Iob, to show the agreement on merit while indicating what is distinctive in the Expositio.



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The ex professo treatment of merit in the ST is subtle and nuanced, and it fits well in Aquinas’s mature teaching on human salvation.1 In ST I-II, q. 114, Aquinas affirms merit, thus upholding the contribution of a human to the working out of salvation. What humans do, receives its reward from God. At the same time, talk of merit and its reward, from God, is wholly in keeping with Aquinas’s basic conviction, articulated throughout the Summa, that human salvation is radically gift, a gift of God rooted in God’s predestining love. The ten articles of ST I-II, q. 114 fall into two, unequal main parts. In aa. 2–10, Aquinas reflects on reward,2 that is, what might be given by God, in justice, for human acts. In these articles, Aquinas is concerned to specify the conditions under which merit might occur: who merits, and what must be the case of the one of whom meriting is affirmed? Aquinas in the unfolding at the same time pays considerable attention to what cannot be merited, is not reward. These articles are plotted by Aquinas against a picture of human existence as journey; the human person is a journeyer or traveler (viator). The framework of “journey” has been deployed throughout the treatise on grace (qq. 109ff), of which the question on merit is the culmination; it shapes as well the entire Prima Secundae, which has to do with the movement of the rational creature to God as beatifying end. 1. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, cura et studio Instituti Studiorum Medievalium Ottaviensis (Ottawa: Commissio Piana, 1941–). Quotations of the ST in English in this chapter are taken from the translation by the English Dominicans, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, rev. ed. (1920; repr., 5 vols., Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1981), also available online at newadvent.org. The review in the first part of this chapter of the teaching on merit in the Summa is meant to facilitate the retrieval in the second part of the chapter of the teaching in the Super Iob. For a fuller discussion of the teaching on merit in the Summa, see my God’s Grace and Human Action: ‘Merit’ in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), especially ch. 3. I do not discuss the Super Iob in that book. 2. As at ST I-II, q. 114, a. 1 sed contra, Aquinas can use the word merces for reward, or the word praemium, as at q. 114, a. 10, obj. 1. He uses both words at the beginning of a. 10c.

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This is a journey that runs from the present to the future. The end of the journey is eternal life, is the union in knowing and loving of God, in the next life. That knowing and loving is direct, immediate: it is the direct encounter with God. The present life should be ordered to that end and will be when one’s affections and actions have God as their end.3 Such action will mark a movement toward God; it is a preparing of oneself for beatitude,4 a disposing of the person through good act for the attainment of beatitude. This is a spiritual journey, with a spiritual goal. Aa. 2–10 asks about different rewards, at different points in the journey. Can eternal life be a reward, merited by human act (aa. 2–4)? Those articles insist that for meriting from God, grace and charity are essential. Merit is, as the opening of q. 114 reminds us, the effect of grace, of cooperative grace; and, one should add, it presupposes the grace that is operative (whose effect, justification, is treated in the question immediately preceding, q. 113).5 Only someone who is in God’s grace, understood as God’s favor and as endow3. While journey is important for the Prima Secundae, it already finds mention in the Prima pars. See for example the discussion in ST I, q. 12, of knowing God. Much of that question is given over to beatific vision, in the next life; and Aquinas notes (a. 6c) that it is by love in this life that one moves forward to the vision of the next life. One will receive the light of glory, needed for direct vision of God, in proportion to one’s love in this life. 4. Aquinas can offer different definitions of merit. In the main, it means having a right to a reward from another. It can also mean the preparing or disposing of the matter of the self for the attainment of eternal life; for this secondary account of merit, see ST I, q. 23, a. 5c, a passage which I will discuss in greater length later in this part of the chapter. 5. For the distinction between operative and cooperative grace, see ST I-II, q. 111, a. 2c. Prior to that article (as in q. 109, on the need for grace), Aquinas has distinguished between habitual grace and the grace of auxilium. In q. 111, a. 2c, he goes on to say that each of those graces in terms of their effects can be further distinguished into operative and cooperative. Operative habitual grace justifies, heals, and makes one pleasing to God; cooperative habitual grace disposes one to acts that are meritorious. Operative auxilium is defined as God moving the will or mind, and the mind is simply moved; it is pertinent to Aquinas’s account of conversion to God and of perseverance in the state of grace. Cooperative auxilium is defined as God moving the will or mind, the will is moved, and the will moves itself. It can be credibly argued that while operative auxilium provides good intention, cooperative auxilium provides good choice of means and execution of the human act. Qq. 113 and 114 are continuing the discussion of grace as operative and cooperative, as initiated in q. 111, a. 2c.



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ment received from God, can merit from God and can merit eternal life as reward from God. In the discussion of the meriting of eternal life, Aquinas introduces kinds of merit, condign and congruent (a. 3). The same graced act can be assessed from two perspectives. As the act of the human (a creature), the act lacks a dignity or worth equal in value to what God might render in response. Thus, there is no condignity here; but there is a congruency in God yet giving a reward for the act (here, divine generosity seems especially in view). Yet that act presupposes grace and charity; and there is a worth to grace precisely as the grace of the Holy Spirit. And so here there is place for talk about condignity, about condign merit: as the act of the person as moved by God’s grace, there is an equality in worth of act and divine response. Thus, eternal life is rendered by God, deserved through acts that are at once condign and congruent in merit. It is, then, the person who is in grace and charity who merits eternal life. But what about grace (and charity) itself (aa. 5–7)? Can that be merited, that is, can the entry into the journey that aspires to God as end be the work of a human, to be rewarded by God with the infusion of grace?6 Does someone, of his own initiative, start off the process, doing something that might elicit a reward (that of grace) from God? No; someone outside of the state of grace does not move into the state of grace by his own efforts, by his own (natural) powers, as if the infusion of grace were due a person who “does his best.” Grace is gift, and it is given by God to those to whom God wills it. It is God who moves the person into the state of grace, working the conversion to God; and since the person is moved, not moving himself, there is no place for positing a dignity to the person that attaches to what he does (he doesn’t do, in conversion; God works the conversion of the person).7 6. The grace in question is habitual grace. In ST I-II, q. 110, aa. 3–4, Aquinas has discussed the virtues that are infused with habitual grace as the term of conversion (which is set in motion by God’s operative auxilium). He is distinguishing habitual grace and those virtues: habitual grace perfects the essence of the soul, the infused virtues, the powers of soul. 7. For an earlier discussion of conversion in terms of a saying that is traditional by

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What about someone who is in grace, by God’s action, and moving toward God as end? Are there other rewards, proper to the path of the present life, that the graced good action of the person might deserve (aa. 8–10)? In this set of articles, Aquinas asks in turn about habitual grace (a. 8), the grace of perseverance (a. 9), and temporal goods (a. 10). Habitual grace and the grace of auxilium have been prominent in the previous questions on grace, and Aquinas allows that growth in habitual grace can be a reward for graced good acts (a. 8); one who acts out of a habit grows in that habit by repeated acts. However, Aquinas denies that persevering in the state of grace can be merited by the person (a. 9). Perseverance is not a reward. Rather, that someone on the way to God stays in correct relationship to God and makes it to the end of the earthly journey in grace is due to God’s gift, of the auxilium of perseverance. Here, Aquinas, on the grace of perseverance, stands in continuity with the late Augustine, who too insists on perseverance as gift, linked to God’s predestining will.8 The Possibility of Merit The first main part of the Summa’s ex professo treatment of merit is constituted by the first article of q. 114, which is on the possibility of merit. The article is foundational in an obvious way: only if merit is possible will the remaining articles, on meriting reward (or not) be needed. In the sed contra of a. 1, Aquinas cites a scriptural affirmation of reward as authorizing talk about merit. The good acting of the Christian will find its reward, as Jeremiah 31:16 states. In the corpus, Aquinas teases that out, noting that reward and merit have to do with the same thing. Thus, for Aquinas reward will be rendered by God, in response to the good that the Christian does; the reward Aquinas’s time—“facienti quod in se est, Deus non denegat gratiam”—see ST I-II, q. 112, aa. 2–3. God works the preparation, by operative auxilium; God infuses habitual grace, with the attendant virtues, in the one so prepared. 8. I am deferring the discussion of ST I–II, q. 114, a. 10 until later in this part of the chapter.



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is deserved. The affirmation of merit is scriptural, implied by Scripture’s talk of reward. Aquinas incidentally thinks that other types of Scripture also provide the warrant for affirming merit as part of the working out of human salvation: thus in the sed contra of a.3, he quotes a scriptural text (2 Tm 4:8) that speaks of God as the just judge rendering the crown of justice. Thus, God rewards; God judges human action and acts accordingly, in response to what people do. Yet much would nonetheless seem to speak against theological merit, against reward implying merit, against the affirmation of the quality of deserving allegedly attached to what people will and do before God. The objections in ST I-II, q. 114, a. 1 attend to aspects of merit that would pertain in relations between humans, of one human meriting from another, to show the difficulty. Merit involves giving something to another which is not due to that other; but all that humans have comes from God, and so in acting out of one’s God-given abilities, one is simply returning to God what is God’s (obj. 1). So too the meritorious act involves (in human-to-human relations) doing something that profits the other, who is then expected, in justice, to respond appropriately. But, in doing what is proper and good, no human can profit God, will add to God, who is perfect (obj. 2).9 And to merit from another is to put that other in one’s debt; but God, as Scripture says, is no man’s debtor (obj. 3). To these arguments against merit (or at least, the straightforward ascription of merit to humans before God) the corpus adds the observation of the distance between God and humans. Merit and reward fall under justice; and justice pertains to equals. Where such equality is lacking, there can be no merit, in a simple or strict sense. And there is to be sure an ontological gap between God and humans, between the creature and God (to say nothing of the moral distance established by human sin). Aquinas, however, does affirm merit before God. To solve these 9. At ST I-II, q. 114, a. 1 ob 2, Job 35:7 is quoted: “If thou do justly, what shalt thou give Him, or what shall He receive of thy hand?” Job 22:3 could also have been cited in support of the objection.

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difficulties, he invokes an ordination of God: God has ordained that what a human being wills and does, out of the abilities that God has provided (hence, through the proper exercise of the free will that distinguishes the human from others), will find its reward from God. Ordination is a wisdom term; it has to do with a plan that God has. God’s intention is that human beings who attain to God as end will do so through the correct use of the will and their good acts; and God will treat those good acts as meritorious of the reward that is God. The divine ordination makes merit possible. It bridges, as it were, the ontological gap, establishing a kind of equality between the one who acts and God who responds. There is a sort of equality that pertains to the agent and the rewarder, rooted in God’s wise willing. The ordination that grounds merit allows for the answering of the arguments of the objectors. God is indeed not a debtor to humans; but in rewarding, God is acting in accordance with the ordination and so in rewarding is a debtor to God (ad 3). And, yes, in willing and doing what God seeks, one is returning to God what one has received from God as made possible by God; that return is, by the divine ordination, meritorious of eternal life as reward (ad 1). And there is indeed no profit to God, no adding to God, that meritorious action confers. But, as intended by God, the good acting of the human, made possible by God and God’s gifts (which include grace, as the subsequent discussion in this question makes clear), is testimony to the goodness of God, and thus proclaims the glory of God.10 ST I-II, q. 114, a. 1c is not the first time in the Summa that Aquinas has referred to the ordination that makes talk of merit before God plausible. Aquinas has already noted its importance in his discussion in the Prima Pars of predestination and the place of merit in the working out of predestination (ST I, q. 23, a. 5c). 10. ST I-II, q. 114, a. 1 ad 2: “God seeks from our goods not profit, but glory, i.e., the manifestation of His goodness; even as He seeks it also in His own works. Now nothing accrues to Him, but only to ourselves, by our worship of Him. Hence we merit from God, not that by our works anything accrues to Him, but inasmuch as we work for His glory.”



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Predestination is a part of providence, which is treated in ST I, q. 22. Providence is the plan that God has for all creatures, according to which God orders all creatures to their apt end, to which they will attain by their characteristic activity. Providence secondarily is the carrying out of the plan, which God does by government (discussed in detail much later in the Prima Pars).11 Predestination too is plan: God in God’s eternity directs some rational creatures to a special end, to the end that is God.12 It is God’s will to share God’s own life with the elect. And predestination secondarily too involves the carrying out of God’s predestining will, which is through grace (the effect of predestination) and graced good acts.13 The discussion of both providence and predestination as plan and execution is rooted in a preceding discussion of God’s love and the good. In that discussion (ST I, q. 20), Aquinas insists on the causal character of God’s love. God does not love in response to existing good, as if God’s love were elicited by an existing good. Rather, all good is due to God’s loving, to God’s sharing of good out of God’s own good. The dissemination of God’s good outside of God is intentional, purposeful; God’s causing of good is sapiential, wise, according to God’s plan. Thus, in bringing creatures into existence and bringing creatures of different sorts, with differing capacity, into existence, God is causing good, wisely; and in ordering creatures to their apt ends, God is loving wisely; and in predestining, calling the elect to the special end which is God Godself, and bringing the elect to that end, God’s love, wisely expressed, is for Aquinas surely to the fore. ST I, q. 23, a. 5 is asking whether there is a place for merit in predestination. Is predestination itself subject to merit, as if a per11. See ST I, q. 22, a. 1c for the definition of providence, and ad 2, where mention of government is made as well. Qq.103ff. of the Prima pars are given over to divine government. 12. For this definition of predestination, see ST I, q. 23, a. 1c. 13. On grace and graced good acts subject to free will, carrying out predestination, see ST I, q. 23, a. 5c, where Aquinas notes that some have drawn a distinction between that which flows from grace, and that which flows from free will, “as if the same thing cannot come from both.” Aquinas is refusing that distinction in the carrying out of election.

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son would deserve being so ordered to God as end? That, however, would be to ignore the eternal character of predestination, that God chooses the elect prior to and apart from their existence; it is also to ignore the causal character of God’s love, to mess up the sequence. Good follows on God’s causing. Nor will there be a meriting of grace in the first place. As in the treatise on grace in the Prima Secundae, Aquinas does not here vest an initiative in the journey in the person, as if it lay within the person’s powers to take the first step to God, to convert and so enter on the way to God. Rather, ST I, q. 23, a. 5c already insists that grace in the first place is sheer gift, given in conformity with the ordering of that person by God to eternal life. Yet there is nonetheless a place for merit in this teaching on predestination, which trumpets God’s causal love. Merit may be affirmed of the person who is in grace and who is being led by God to the end to which God has ordered that person. In this regard, Aquinas makes note of the ordination that grounds merit. The merit of graced acts can be affirmed, for God has ordered one part of the salvific process—graced good acts—to another—eternal life, full and immediate communion with God, in the next life—as meritorious of it. And so eternal life is indeed truly a gift, showing God’s love of the elect; it can also be deemed a reward, by virtue of the divine ordination, thus displaying as well the good of God’s justice in rendering eternal reward to those who have used their God-given ability (as human) in obedience to God, made possible by the grace that God gives to those whom he has called. In this light, the comment in ST I-II, q. 114, a. 1 ad 2, about the manifesting of God’s goodness, takes on added resonance. Merit and Temporal Good The final article in ST I-II, q. 114 has a different tone from what has preceded, in aa. 2–9. Here, it is helpful to recall a distinction that Aquinas has drawn earlier in the ST, which he can state in different ways. There are different goods which can be noted when it comes



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to the human person: goods of the soul; goods of the body; external goods.14 Or, as in the present article, Aquinas can observe that some goods are temporal; there is an implicit contrast with spiritual goods. It is with the latter, spiritual goods, with which Aquinas has been concerned in this investigation of merit and its rewards. Eternal life is a spiritual good, as is grace, in whatever form that comes. So too are spiritual the operations that can be deemed meritorious, by divine ordination and as worked out by grace and charity, as God implementing God’s will for the elect: these are operations of loving and knowing, as ordered to God. As the preceding articles in the question have shown, it is possible to speak of merit when it comes to spiritual good—provided one acknowledges that in q. 114, Aquinas is concerned with the merit of the elect, of those who from eternity have been loved by God and ordered to eternal life and who have been provided the means to attain that gracious end. In a. 10, then, the terrain has shifted. Aquinas is asking about temporal goods: are they too subject to merit and reward, to the rules that govern the meriting of spiritual reward, as the person moves to the end set for the elect by God? Or are they to be accounted for otherwise? The heading of a. 10 is in itself interesting: do temporal goods fall (cadunt) under merit? That question can be taken variously. In an obvious way, it is asking whether God renders temporal goods as the reward for good behavior. The first objection in fact takes this tack, referring to Deuteronomy 28. In Scripture, temporal good does seem to be identified as the reward for good action; and so God is just in giving the just what they deserve, in this case temporal prosperity. A person does what is good, and that person receives, temporally, as apt reward from God, temporal prosperity. In the article, Aquinas does not unequivocally reject a connection between doing good and temporal prosperity; such might exist, or at least occasionally exist, although he does not concede that temporal prosperity inevitably and always, as a matter of justice, follows on willing and 14. The reference is to ST I-II, q. 87, a. 7, to which I will return below in the text.

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doing good. Indeed, while some scriptural examples of such reward can be adduced,15 Aquinas observes that temporal prosperity can be given to the wicked too, not only to the just.16 In this particular response (ad 1), his reluctance to endorse a straightforward, unvarying connection between moral good and temporal prosperity is evident. He here quotes Augustine (in the Contra Faustum), about the difference between the Old and the New, and how in the Old Testament temporal goods are invoked and promised as a figure of the spiritual goods (to be precise, eternal life) promised in the New. The response to this objection, then, is to repeat the teaching of earlier articles in q.114: the reward of the good that any person does now, will find its final and full reward only in the next life.17 It is another approach that is more important in this article, in asking about what “falls” under merit. Attention moves away from what a person might do to elicit from God a response now, that brings about temporal goods. Rather, the teaching about providence and predestination as ordered to spiritual fulfillment, and the carrying out of each, is central. Can temporal good in some way contribute to the attaining of the person’s spiritual goal, as set by God and as promoted by God, through the grace that moves the person to good operation, now, and toward eternal life as reward? Aquinas’s answer is in the affirmative. God is provider. God provides temporal good and provides such good to aid in the movement toward God as end, 15. See, e.g., the story of Sodom (Genesis 19), mentioned in ST I-II, q. 114, a. 10 obj. 2. And, what holds of demerit, bringing punishment, holds of good, bringing reward. 16. ST I-II, q. 114, a. 10 obj. 4, quoting Eccl 9:2. 17. Predestination is a part of providence, having to do with the elect. Not all humans are elect. Yet all humans fall under providence. And, just as for predestination there is an aid that works out election (which in the Prima Secundae is distinguished as auxilium and habitual grace), so for the acting of the non-elect God’s “aid” is needed to reduce them to act. In the final paragraph of ST I-II, q. 114, a. 10c, it would seem that Aquinas is concerned for the working out of providence by such help (which, as not tied to predestination, would not be “grace”). And thus it is stated here that people can be moved, by God, to their temporal acts and reap the benefits of such act. Obj. 2 and ad 2 are likewise concerned with those covered in the corpus’s final paragraph. This is an interesting point, but not directly relevant to this recovery of the teaching on merit before God according to the Summa.



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in the next life. And God provides enough such good as needed to attain heaven, providing such to the just and the wicked alike. The idea here is, again, not that the person has earned temporal goods (an obvious counterexample that I might note is the baby born into a wealthy family, with the temporal and societal advantages that that provides). And it is certainly not to say that these temporal goods are for their own sake. Rather, in this teaching temporal goods are located in an account of the movement of the person to God as end, a movement which is dependent on God’s initiative and governing motion in grace. God provides, including temporally; the person operates as conditioned by such temporal goods. Progress in the journey is made when such goods are treated appropriately (that is, not as ends in themselves), employed to do what God seeks of those whom he calls to God. In one of the responses in this article (ad 3), God’s provision is extended, to include temporal evils. Temporal evils are provided by God (in the sense that God allows them, and they are in accordance with God’s providential plan), and they might well promote the journey to God. There is a cross-reference here to an earlier discussion in the Prima Secundae, in which Aquinas considers the punishment for sin. In ST I-II, q. 87, a. 7, Aquinas is asking whether every punishment is inflicted for sin. In that article, as in q. 114, a.10, Aquinas is concerned as well to consider God as provider, showing here how the provision of affliction in this life may work toward spiritual progress. Sin is of two types: actual sin (the sin of the person) and original sin. Each finds its punishment: original sin, by the withdrawal of original justice, and the corruption of the nature and disorder in the self and other consequences that are found in this life that that entails; actual or personal sin, by due punishment, which, as an earlier article in q. 87 has noted (a. 3), comes finally and definitively for grave sins in the next life. Aquinas also notes here that as is sin, punishment is an evil, which is a deviation from the good, a lack of the good. There are three goods pertinent to a human (as previously mentioned): those of the soul, of the body, and, external goods.

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Among these there is a hierarchy, with the goods of soul at the peak, external goods at the bottom. It is at this point that Aquinas factors in divine providence and its carrying out and how the loss of a lower good may in fact be spiritually beneficial. Such is the case when an external good is lost for the sake of a higher good. Thus, someone might be afflicted with loss of material wealth or worldly honor or some such external good, and that will, as provided by God, be to the person’s spiritual benefit, when that leads to increase in spiritual good. That would be the case when the temporal affliction does not defeat the person—which would occur if that loss as apprehended by the person led to, say, despair—but occasions, provides the opportunity for, the good attitude and action that marks spiritual progress and is pleasing to God, in giving glory to God. In this regard, Aquinas differentiates what is punishment simply from what is punishment relatively, a punishment that can be termed “medicinal.” Thus, the deprivation of the lower good is put in medical terms: a doctor may prescribe bitter potions (an affliction) for the health of the patient. Such medicinal punishment, Aquinas continues, is perfectly apt in a fallen world and for people who are born into original sin. Indeed, to the extent that such punishment is occasioned by sin (recall the topic of this article), it is by original sin, not the actual sin, that is, the sin of the person. By temporal affliction, God is providing for people for where they are at, that is, as subject to original sin. Such affliction is afforded to all, to the just and the wicked alike, for all stand under God’s providential rule. When there is progress in virtue and renunciation of sin, the punishment is in fact medicinal; if there is not, the punishment is simply penal.18 18. For the Expositio super Iob ad litteram, I have used Saint Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Job, trans. Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, OP, ed. The Aquinas Institute, Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 32 (Lander, Wyo..: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2016). In citing the Super Iob, I give the chapter and lecture number and page number(s) to which I am referring. As a point of information, the three goods again receive mention in the Super Iob; see, e.g., ch. 2, lect. 1, 33. The notion of affliction as bitter medicine too is noted in the Super Iob; see, e.g., ch. 1, lect. 4, 28. The distinction found in ST I-II, q. 87, a. 7, between original



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Not incidentally, in one of the responses in this article, Aquinas extends the teaching to cover temporal goods as well as temporal evils, thus looking forward to what he proclaims in ST I-II, q. 114, a. 10 and underscoring that the imposition of temporal good and evil can have different outcomes, for the just and the wicked. As he writes in ST I-II, q. 87, a. 7 ad 2: It belongs to Divine justice to give spiritual goods to the virtuous, and to award them as much temporal goods or evils, as suffices for virtue: for, as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. viii), “Divine justice does not enfeeble the fortitude of the virtuous man, by material gifts.” The very fact that others receive temporal goods, is detrimental to their spiritual good; wherefore the psalm quoted concludes (verse 6): “Therefore pride hath held them fast.”

In sum, God dispenses; such is the nature of providence. The quote also calls into question any easy, straightforward connection between the doing of the person and the reception of the goods, or evils, of the present life. Charity, Hope, and Merit In ST I-II, q. 114, charity enjoys a great prominence. That Aquinas here (a. 4) plays up charity for meriting is understandable. By this virtue, infused at the term of conversion along with habitual grace, a person is related to God as to a friend. One is enabled by charity to will God above all things and to love all else in light of God. Charity perfects the will, inclining the person to will God and others more spontaneously and generously and to undertake all that God seeks from those with whom God is friend, including what is most difficult for a human. As Aquinas states elsewhere in the Sumand actual sin is important. Job himself was not suffering for any actual sin; he was just, as God says. And Aquinas accepts completely Job’s analysis that there is no cause of his affliction in himself, i.e., a personal sin that would have brought on the affliction. However, Job was born into original sin; and while in his case he has been gifted with grace (as will be noted in the second part of this chapter), his affliction can be termed apt, appropriate for God, who permits his affliction, to work toward Job’s spiritual progress.

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ma,19 charity as the greatest of the virtues is the “form of the virtues,” taking “form” in terms of efficient causality. Charity directs the other virtues in their acts, relating and ordering the specific acts of a graced person to God as beatifying end. Talk of charity as form of the virtues reminds us, however, that other virtues, with their acts, can be involved in the movement of the human person to God in heaven and in their meriting from God spiritual reward. And the discussion of other virtues can nicely fill out the account of the person journeying to God as end through the good operation that is meritorious. The Summa’s handling of the virtue of hope is especially worthy of consideration in this regard.20 Hope is a desire for a difficult or arduous good that is possible to attain. The theological virtue of hope (infused with habitual grace and charity, as well as faith as the term of conversion) has as its main object God, the God who beatifies. By hope, one aspires to full and final communion with God, which occurs, if it does, in the next life. God transcends the person and thus the arduous or difficult aspect in hope. Yet reaching God as final end is possible; if it were not, one would despair, not hope. The possibility of hope is grounded in God, in the aid of God by which attaining to God as end is made possible. What lies beyond the natural powers of the person is put within reach by God’s aid. And so Aquinas is affirming a twofold object of hope, in each instance, God, and allowing for a double act of the virtue of hope, two acts by which the journeyer is related to God. By desire, one aspires to God as end; one trusts in God, in God’s aid, to reach that end. This virtue is a mean between two vices, between two extremes: despair and presumption. By hope, one aspires to God and trusts in God; there is a confidence that by God’s aid attaining to God as end is possible. One despairs when one lacks such confidence, when 19. For charity as the form of the virtues, see ST II-II, q. 23, a. 8. 20. Aquinas discusses the theological virtue of hope, with its acts, in ST II-II, qq. 17–22. The virtue of hope is to be distinguished from the passion of hope; the passion is discussed at I-II, q. 40. Both the virtue and the passion figure in Aquinas’s Super Iob. For the passion, see the discussion of Job 3 in the second part of the chapter.



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one has come to believe that what is generally true (God’s aid makes possible an attaining) does not apply to oneself; and lacking that aid, attaining God is impossible and deemed impossible. 21 Presumption, the other extreme, can take different forms. One can presume when one trusts too much in oneself, thinking that one can do what is needed to achieve God as end. This is to underplay the difficulty of the attainment; it is also to make far too much of oneself and not enough of God (and God’s aid). Another type of presumption has to do with, in effect, over-reliance, when one knows of the help of a friend and simply trusts in the friend to do it all. Such a presumption touches directly on merit, on the good acts by which one attains the end of eternal life as reward. Here, hope and merit would be incompatible, for trying to do good would be viewed as a shifting of trust, from God as friend to oneself and to one’s doing. All should be left to God. For Aquinas, however, authentic hope and merit are indeed complementary. God seeks the good operation of those whom God has called to eternal life. Such good operation is in conformity with God’s will to bring the elect to their end by their good acts; and God provides grace not to eliminate good operation but to render it possible.22 And such operation is meritorious, as ordained by God. Thus, by hope and merit, humans do aspire to God and trust in God’s aid and contribute as God wills to the working out of their salvation, attaining eternal life not of themselves but by God’s grace working with them and in accordance with God’s will. Merit in the Expositio super Iob: Summary Statement The teaching about merit in the Expositio super Iob stands in broad agreement with that advanced in the Summa, and we meet in the Expositio key elements of the Summa’s presentation. Life is a jour21. On the vice of despair, opposed to the virtue of hope, see ST II-II, q. 20. 22. On the compatibility of hope and merit, see ST II-II, q. 21, a. 1c, where the idea of presuming too much on the friend is also expressed.

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ney, and the human person in this life is characterized as one who is on the way, is a journeyer.23 The goal of the journey is in the afterlife, and is constituted by God. The goal of the journey is to be in the presence of God and to know God directly, as God is.24 In that direct knowing, the person will find peace and fulfillment. This life is ordered to the next, and what one does and wills in this life should prepare one for the final encounter with God, moving the person closer to that knowing. Attaining to God presupposes grace, 23. Mention of the sojourner is made at Super Iob ch. 17, lect. 1, 202, where Aquinas distinguishes between a man in statu viae and the one who is in the state of perfection, in the next life. For a striking invocation of the journey, see the discussion of the soldier and the hired man: see ch. 7, lect. 1, 88; and ch. 14, lect. 4, 178. Each does his work, now, i.e., in this life, and each will receive his pay at the end of his work, i.e., in the next life. For the book of Job and its reception, see Carol Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Mark Larrimore, The Book of Job: A Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Susan E. Schreiner, Where Shall Wisdom be Found? Calvin’s Exegesis of Job from Medieval and Modern Perspectives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Lawrence L. Besserman, The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, ed. Franklin T. Harkins and Aaron Canty, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, vol. 73 (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Eleonore Stump, “The Story of Job: Suffering and the Second-Personal,” ch. 9, in her Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010), 177–226; David J. A. Clines, “Why Is There a Book of Job, and What Does It Do to You if You Read It?” in his Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 205 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press Ltd, 1995), 122–44. For the teaching of Aquinas’s Super Iob, see Denis Chardonnens, L’Homme Sous le Regard de la Providence (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin: 1997); Martin D. Yaffe, “Interpretive Essay and Notes,” in Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job: A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence, trans. Anthony Damico (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 1–65; Schreiner, op.cit., ch. 2; Mauricio Narváez, “Intention probabiles rationes and Truth: The Exegetical Practice in Thomas Aquinas. The Case of the Expositio super Iob ad litteram,” in Reading Scripture with Thomas Aquinas. Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions and New Perspectives, ed. Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen, Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales Textes et Études du Moyen Age, 80 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015), 141–69; Eleonore Stump, “Aquinas on the Sufferings of Job,” in Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, ed. Eleonore Stump (Cornell: Cornell University Press, 1993), 328–357; Franklin T. Harkins, “Christ and the Eternal Extent of Divine Providence in the Expositio super Iob ad litteram of Thomas Aquinas,” in A Companion to Job in the Middle Ages, ed. Harkins and Canty, 161–200. 24. As Aquinas states at Super Iob ch. 13, lect. 2, 165, the ultimate salvation of humans consists in the seeing of God. See as well ch. 19, lect. 2, 223 (on 19:26).



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and the successful journeyer will be acting out of the grace, and virtues, provided by God.25 With God’s aid, one can attain God as end. There is plenty of mention in the Expositio of love as essential to the journey;26 but other virtues come into the account, including hope.27 The one who is moving towards God as end does so in the hope of attaining God, with the aid of God. The journey is contextualized by the activity of the God who is Creator and provider.28 God brings humans into existence and makes them such that they are in control of their actions; they have been endowed with free will.29 God provides in several ways, making possible the voluntary movement toward God: God gives law and precepts; God gives grace and virtues, enabling correct free choice; God provides 25. On the need for grace, see, for example, Super Iob, ch. 16, lect. 1, 199; ch. 21, lect. 1, 239; ch. 40, lect. 1, 403. For a general statement of the importance of the virtues for the journey, see ch. 14, lect. 1, 172. I note below the contribution of particular virtues. 26. For representative instances of Aquinas’s claim that love is important for the journey, see, e.g., Prologue, 8 (where love is put in tandem with a fear that is reverential); ch. 5, lect. 3, 73, where Aquinas distinguishes between a love of things of the world, as if they were the end of the person (they are not), and the love of the God who is the end of the person; and ch. 27, lect. 1, 279, where Aquinas paraphrases Job as saying that he has not fallen from reverence and love of God, adhering instead to the path of justice (via iustitiae). Aquinas can also refer to Job’s faith (and wisdom), as at Super Iob, ch. 13, lect. 2, 166. 27. On the contribution of the theological virtue of hope to the journey, see, e.g., Super Iob ch. 13, lect. 2, 165, where Aquinas says that Job’s hope is not in temporal goods but in God, hoping for the spiritual goods of the afterlife, such that even if God were “to afflict me [ Job] unto death, the hope which I have in him will not end.” See too ch. 27, lect. 1, 280. Later in this chapter, in the discussion of Job 3, mention will be made of the passion of hope and its concern for the temporal. 28. That God is attested as Creator is found in several of the Book’s chapters. For a passage where Aquinas in his Expositio links creating and providing, see Super Iob ch. 27, lect. 1, 281. In that passage, Aquinas notes that since God is Creator and provider, all humans receive something from him like an inheritance from a father; in the passage, Aquinas refers to both temporal and spiritual goods. Included in God’s providential rule is the examining of deeds (including thoughts and the spirit in which they are done) and rendering, in the next life, what is owed; see ch. 13, lect. 2, 169. 29. Super Iob, ch. 7, lect. 3, 94–95: “Rational creatures merit or demerit because of free will (propter liberum arbitrium). Because of this, rewards and punishments are due to them. Irrational creatures, however, neither merit rewards nor incur punishments since they do not have free will.” See as well ch. 21, lect. 1, 239, where Aquinas notes that in the power of the human are certain goods, namely, voluntary works of virtue of which he is master through free will aided by the grace of God.

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the temporal goods, and evils, that condition the movement in this world toward God in the next. And God takes human activity seriously, examines what people do, and renders apt reward, or punishment, for what they do, doing so in the next life. The goal of the journey, to which God orders humans and for which God provides for the attainment, is then the reward for good affection, willing, doing and undergoing.30 Eternal life, life with God, is rendered in justice in the next life to those who have journeyed well in this life, following the path of justice. Any other rewards, to be given justly by God, that might be posited are subordinate to this spiritual good, the principal reward. Yet, while the agreement is substantial,31 there are differences between the teaching in the Expositio and that in the Summa. Two main differences, having to do with style and emphasis, may be noted here. First, while the Expositio anticipates the Summa on the need for grace for merit—no grace, no merit—the discussion of grace in the Super Iob is streamlined, barebones. Aquinas affirms grace and the need for grace for merit; but he doesn’t make use of the distinctions important for the presentation in the Summa. Thus, grace in the Expositio is just “grace,” not “habitual grace” or the “grace of auxilium”; and the distinction between operative and cooperative grac30. The Super Iob is rife with talk about reward, praemium, which is hardly surprising given the main point in dispute. At ch. 31, lect. 2, 319, Aquinas refers to the “crown of reward” (praemii corona), reserved in the next life for those who have served God well in this life. The Latin text of Job also makes use on occasion of merit-language. See, e.g., Jb 6:2 and 11:6. Here, merit is referring to the quality of a sinful act that deserves its punishment. In his Expositio, Aquinas frequently employs merit-language, as will be clear from what follows in this chapter, to denote what humans do and undergo to deserve from God. 31. The same can be said of the Summa contra Gentiles, a work that is closer in time of composition to the Super Iob than is the ST. The ScG lacks an ex professo treatment of merit, but in what it does assert, it displays a nice anticipation of what is to be proclaimed in greater detail in the ST. The discussion of rewards and punishments, of grace and merit, comes in the final block of chapters (chs.139–63) at the end of ScG Bk. III, a book devoted to divine providence. God does reward and punish; people receive eternal life for their graced good acts. Grace in the first place cannot be merited; and perseverance in grace would seem a gift. The final chapter (163) invokes predestination, of some to eternal life, worked out through grace and graced good acts; thus both providence and predestination contextualize the discussion of the movement to God.



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es, whether auxilium or habitual, is left unsaid. So too the Expositio leaves to the side a division of merit into condign and congruent; at least, such language is not explicitly used.32 And, finally, while predestination must be invoked in rendering merit according to the Summa, in the Expositio “predestination” is but rarely mentioned;33 God’s providence (of which predestination is a part) suffices in the Super Iob to contextualize merit, and whatever happens in and through the journeyer that finds its reward in the next life. A second difference emerges more obviously from the different genres of these writings. The Summa is meant to be methodical, systematic, prosecuted according to the pedagogical instincts of the theologian, sketching, introducing, problematizing in a more or less comprehensive, and pointed, manner. Thus, Aquinas teaches merit in the order that makes sense to him, to be faithful to the full scriptural witness, and with the nuances and stresses that he accordingly provides. In the Super Iob, by contrast, the occasioning text provides the lead, and the commentator is drawing out what is put forth by the text.34 And so what is emphasized by the book of Job will find its echo in the comment; that too is where the stress will be put. For Aquinas, the book of Job is about divine providence:35 does it extend to human affairs? Seemingly speaking against the extending of providence to human affairs is the suffering of the just. If their suffering is undeserved—that is, is not due to, owed to, their personal sinning (which is excluded by definition by deeming them “just”)— how can that suffering be in accordance with the providence of a God whom Christians proclaim to be just, loving, and wise? Thus, 32. See, however, the final section of this chapter, in which the possibility that Aquinas is allowing what is tantamount to a congruent merit of Job’s temporal restoration is considered. 33. See Super Iob ch. 7, lect. 4, 100. 34. In the ex professo treatment of merit in the ST, it was important for Aquinas to investigate the possibility of merit, to show that merit before God is possible. There is no equivalent discussion in the Super Iob; Aquinas simply assumes that merit is possible on the basis of the scriptural testimony to reward and to God as just judge, rendering in justice what is owed to the graced person for his voluntary acts and sufferings. 35. For what follows in the text, see Aquinas’s Prologue to the Super Iob, 8.

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in teaching merit in the Super Iob, Aquinas will be attentive to the connection between sin (especially personal or actual sin) and punishment and affliction and, correspondingly, to that between good willing and doing and flourishing in the good. And the crucial distinction here will be between temporal and eternal/final, whether talking of punishment (of sinners) or reward (of the just). The Disputation The book of Job falls into three unequal parts. The book opens (chs.1–2) with a description of Job in his temporal prosperity and spiritual condition; notes the two sessions of the heavenly court, in which God gives permission to Satan to subject Job to a series of temporal afflictions; and recounts these afflictions, by which Job is deprived of his worldly wealth, his children, and his physical health, while observing that Job accepts these afflictions, refusing to curse God, who has allowed them. The major portion of the Book (chs. 3– 42:6) is given over to several speeches by various interlocutors. In ch. 3, Job expresses his pain and sorrow at his afflictions, not least his physical suffering. In succeeding chapters (chs. 4–31), there is a series of exchanges with the three friends who have come to comfort him. The first two friends, Eliphaz and Bildad, each speak three times, at length, over the course of these chapters; after each speech Job responds, also at length. The final friend, Zophar, ends up speaking only twice, with Job again responding to each of those speeches. In chs. 32–37, an observer, Elihu, intervenes, to offer his own analysis, taking exception to what has proceeded, finding fault with both the three friends and with Job; Job does not respond to this speech. The final speech is that of God, from the whirlwind (chs. 38–41), in which God anew proclaims divine power and wisdom, offering a chastisement of Job, who accepts this rebuke humbly and in repentance (42:1–6). The book concludes with an Epilogue (ch. 42:7–16), in which the three friends are rebuked and Job is vindicated and his temporal prosperity restored, actually doubly



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so, and he is given a new set of children in the stead of those killed at the instigation of Satan. Aquinas styles the speeches in the central portion of the book as a disputation, along the lines of an academic disputation.36 In their speeches, Job and the three friends, and then Elihu, are articulating their different positions on the main points in dispute. Eventually it is God, as master, who offers the final determination and does so in favor of Job, addressing almost all of God’s comments to Job. The speeches of the human interlocutors are directed at each other. The three friends, and Elihu, address their comments to Job. In their estimation, they are speaking for God, describing how divine providence plays out, in a temporal justice. Job’s speeches in his responses to the three friends in the main are directed to these others. He is not, in Aquinas’s estimation, addressing God, speaking to God, other than to call God to witness in support of his claims and to guide him and to add whatever might be needed to present the right teaching about divine providence as extending to human affairs against what the friends propose.37 For Aquinas, when Job in these chapters does turn in his words to God, he does so not as if in rebellion or to call God into account, as if questioning God’s justice. Rather, in his speeches, Job is the disciple, and subjects himself to the master. 36. For comments about the “disputation,” and what the human participants intend to do in the debate, see, e.g., Super Iob, ch. 6, lect. 2, 84–85; ch. 7, lect. 4, 100; ch. 13, lect. 1, 160; ch. 33, lect. 2, 331. And see ch. 38, lect. 1, 374, where God is said to the “determiner of the question” (quaestionis determinator). 37. See, e.g., Super Iob, ch. 33, lect. 2, 331: Job is not disputing with God as contradicting God as an equal; rather, he wished to “dispute with God” as a student does with his master. And, see especially, ch. 13, lect. 1, 160, where Aquinas speaks for Job to convey Job’s intent as follows: “I want to address God by opening the movement of my heart to Him who is the searcher and judge of hearts, and by searching for the truth from Him who is the doctor of all truth. So, he adds, ‘and I desire to dispute with God,’ not to disprove of his judgments of men, but to destroy your [i.e., the friends’] errors, according to which it would follow that there would be injustice in God. So he continues, ‘first I will show that you are makers of lies,’ because they had invented the lie that Job had led an evil life. They had arrived at this lie because they were mistaken about the faith with which one honors God, believing that recompense of merit and punishment only happen in this life, and he therefore says, ‘and you are cultivators of perverse dogmas.’ . . . He wills his dispute with God first in execution as means to this intended end,” that is, to destroy their false doctrines.

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He wants to teach the truth, what conforms to the reality of divine providence and its execution, and to learn from the master what he does not yet know. As read by Aquinas, all of the human participants in this disputation agree that human affairs are subject to divine providence; they disagree about the scope of that providence and the nature of its operation in this life. For the three friends, providence governs life in this world, and there is a strict justice in force.38 God cares how people act and examines their deeds. God renders to them what they deserve and does so in this life. To the wicked, God sends temporal afflictions as punishment; to the just, God gives temporal goods. Those who are in correct relationship to God, acting out of that relationship, benefit temporally from that relationship. In the position that the three friends share, the cause of reward and punishment rests in the human person. The person does; the person receives from God an appropriate, just response. Temporal affliction is a sign of sin; temporal flourishing, of virtue and personal justice. Yet temporal punishment need not be irrevocable. There is a way out of it: if a person repents of the sin that has brought on affliction, and then he turns to God and adheres to God, afflictions will end and temporal prosperity will return. This is the consolation that the three offer to their friend. As applied to Job: he has brought upon himself his afflictions, for he was a sinner; he should repent and so be restored; that he won’t acknowledge his sins and repent of them means that he will stay in his afflictions, and justly so. Indeed, in protesting his innocence and refusing to accept God’s judgment, he is sinning the more. For Aquinas’s Job, providence has a broader scope, as does human existence.39 There is more to life than life in this world. There is an afterlife; and God’s providence covers both this world and the 38. For a useful summary of the position shared by the three friends, see, e.g., Super Iob, ch. 2, lect. 2, 34. For the consolation offered to Job by the friends, see, e.g., Super Iob, ch. 8, lect. 2, 105. 39. Super Iob, ch. 2, lect. 2, 34, also renders in brief Job’s differing position.



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next. There is reward and punishment; but such are meted out in the next life, when God gives to people what they deserve for their affections and willing and doing in this life. Payment does not come in this life. Rather, God gives temporal goods and evils to the just and wicked alike; what they do with them will lead to either eternal life or eternal damnation, rendered by God in the next life. Those who are provided with many temporal goods can use them poorly (becoming over-attached to them and seeking them rather than God), or use them well, as when one uses one’s wealth justly and mercifully, helping others and in a way pleasing to God. Those who are afflicted can succumb to the afflictions, turning away from God or refusing to turn to God or setting themselves against God; or, affliction can be the opportunity for the exercise of virtue and so further movement toward the spiritual good that is God, the true end of human existence. For Job, that reward and punishment are not to be found principally in the world can be shown variously, drawing on experience and observation. The just might be temporally prosperous, but they might not be; and if prosperous for a while, that need not be their final state in this world. Conversely, the wicked do not always get what they deserve, temporally. While some of the wicked can be afflicted, others prosper temporally and prosper for a long time, and they can even die peacefully in their sleep. Observation does not support the position that insists on a cause of temporal good, temporal evil, in the person, with God rendering, in this life, what is due. Job himself, of course, is the great argument against such a straightforward, simple equation of temporal good and evil corresponding to the attitude and behavior of the person, falling under God’s strict (retributive) justice in this life. From the opening chapters ( Jb 1:8; 2:3), we know God’s assessment of Job: he is truly just; he is innocent, and not a sinner; he shows fear and reverence for God. Thus, for the reader of the book in its canonical form, the analysis of the friends rings hollow. He isn’t getting, temporally, what he deserves; as just, he doesn’t deserve punishment. There must be another “cause” for his afflic-

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tion; and that rests in God, as God provides for his spiritual growth. For Aquinas, there is movement in Job’s argument.40 For much of the time, he is working, as it were, from within the friends’ position, adopting their terms and pressing their assumptions to show their teaching as faulty. He is also repeatedly forced to reject their charge against him of sin, as if he were personally responsible for what has befallen him. He knows himself innocent; and he calls on God to confirm this truth. Yet, Job, in Aquinas’s telling, eventually introduces the more distinctive elements of his position in defense of God’s providence over human affairs: the affirmations of an afterlife, and, of God’s rendering in the afterlife what is owed to humans for their acts in this life, a teaching that attests the immortality of the soul and especially a general resurrection. A high point comes in ch.19, when Job proclaims the Redeemer and his confidence that he will see God, in the next life.41 Thus, when it comes to the final end and its attainment, there is reason for Job to allow of a cause in the person: for the person who voluntarily acts out of the grace and virtues that God provides and meets adversity in a way pleasing to God deserves the end to which he comes, deserves the reward that God gives the just, in the next life. Such a person has been proved as gold which passes through fire ( Jb 23:10). Virtue—indeed, many virtues—are exercised: those previously had and others suited to the new condition of affliction. With regards to the latter, Aquinas refers to constancy in adversity;42 so too Job’s patience is surely put to the test.43 By the graced acts of virtue, the just person who is afflicted 40. Super Iob, ch. 7, lect. 4, 100: Job proceeds according to the manner of a disputator, for whom it suffices at the beginning to disprove false opinion and afterwards to explain what he himself thinks is true. See as well ch. 10, lect. 3, 138–39. For Aquinas, Job 13:4ff. marks a turning point toward explaining what Job himself thinks is true. However, in the later chapters, we continue to meet Job’s lamentation and defense of his innocence, and his efforts at undercutting the analysis of the friends. 41. Jb 19:25–27: “For I know that my Redeemer is living, and I shall arise on the very last day from the earth. I will encircle myself again with my skin and in my flesh I shall see God, whom I myself will see and my eyes will behold him and another. This my hope has been put in my heart.” 42. For constancy in adversity, see Super Iob, ch. 2, lect. 1, 30. 43. For Job’s patience, see, e.g, Super Iob, ch. 2, lect. 1, 31.



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remains in justice, correctly related to God, and merits eternal life. Job’s affliction comes from Satan; it at the same time comes from God, falling under divine providence. The respective intentions of God and of Satan differ.44 Satan asks permission to test Job, impugning Job’s motive for acting justly. Doesn’t Job do what he does and adhere to God for the temporal goods that he thus wins? In this view, taking away his temporal benefits would reveal Job as he truly is and likely induce Job to abandon God. God for his part is not intent on the downfall of Job; nor, as the Book clearly states, does he doubt the genuine justice of Job. God’s intention in permitting the afflictions rather is for the spiritual benefit of Job, to allow his affliction so that his virtue might be exercised, that he might grow in virtue, and that his virtue might be displayed to all, for emulation.45 In the process Job will move closer to God as end, deserving through his willing God as his reward. The afflictions applied by Satan, then, do not escape God’s providential rule; God allows them, for God’s purpose. For Aquinas, the afflictions of Job have in fact been planned by God, from eternity;46 and they will, as Romans 8:28 says, “work together for the good of those who love God,”47 among whom is Job. Job’s arguments made little impression on two of the friends. Eliphaz and Bildad seem oblivious to his talk of the afterlife and steadfastly insist on the link in justice between sin and affliction, good demeanor and reward, in this life, as well as on the personal sinfulness of Job, who, they think, is getting what he deserves. In Aquinas’s telling, there is some movement in the position of the third friend, who seems to come to an affirmation of the afterlife, in which, he allows, a final reckoning will be made.48 But Zophar 44. For the intention of Satan in afflicting Job, see Super Iob, ch. 1, lect. 1, 20. 45. For the intention of God in afflicting Job, permitting his afflictions, see, e.g., Super Iob, ch. 1, lect. 1, 21; ch. 7, lect. 4, 98 and 100; ch. 40, lect. 2, 407. 46. See, e.g., Super Iob, ch. 2, lect. 1, 30, for the claim that God had arranged from all eternity to afflict Job in time, to prove his virtue in order to preclude all calumny of the wicked. 47. The Romans verse is quoted at Super Iob, ch. 9, lect. 3, 116. 48. For Zophar’s modest evolution in position, see Super Iob, ch. 20, lect. 1, 226.

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hasn’t in the process abandoned his previous stance, and his focus continues to be on this world and the alleged link in justice between moral goodness and temporal flourishing as reward, and between sinning and temporal affliction as punishment. Sinners do get their due, now, the just their due, now, as a foretaste of what is to come. And Zophar remains convinced of the personal sinfulness of Job himself, as cause of his predicament; Job has to be held culpable, for Zophar to hold what he does about temporal flourishing, temporal affliction. In substance, the position of young Elihu would seem to be rather close to Zophar’s final stance. He too allows for an afterlife, in which people will receive their reward or punishment.49 He too continues to put the emphasis on this life and the giving by God of what is due to the person—temporal good to the just, temporal affliction as punishment for personal sin. Elihu however puts a certain stress, absent in Zophar, on the corrective character of temporal punishment, thinking of such in terms of God’s mercy.50 By afflicting the sinner, God is calling the sinner back to God, calling the sinner to repentance and to the overcoming of sin. All the person need do is repent and adhere in God; that will bring a return of temporal goods and put in a claim on the future. In sum, the consolation of the three friends is offered anew,51 now framed in terms of correction.52 By asserting an afterlife, Elihu, of course, also stands in continuity with Job. But Elihu is quite severe in his judgment of Job (he is a sinner and stubborn in his sin) and seems unaware that Job has been maintaining divine providence and its working out through final 49. Aquinas summarizes Elihu’s position, showing its agreement in part with the friends and in part with Job, at Super Iob, ch. 37, lect. 2, 371. 50. For Elihu, according to Aquinas, on God’s corrective punishment, see Super Iob, ch. 33, lect. 2, 334–35. 51. For the agreement on consolation as temporal, see Super Iob, ch. 37, lect. 2, 371. 52. Eliphaz too refers to correction; see Super Iob, ch. 5, lect. 3, 72–73. However, Elihu would seem the more insistent on this point; and he has moreover a future component in his teaching lacking in that of Eliphaz.



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payment in the next life.53 Rather, his focus is on Job’s putative sin and present affliction and his stubbornness in his sin, which increases as Job opposes (in Elihu’s assessment) God. With the friends, he thinks that in being afflicted, Job is getting what he deserves; and in refusing God’s correction, Job is acting presumptuously and in pride, becoming ever more deserving of the punishment he is now receiving as well as of that yet to come. After an opening rebuke of Elihu,54 God speaks to Job, interiorly. God asserts what Job has acknowledged: divine power and wisdom and God’s rule over all. All things are made by God and lie in God’s power, wisely executed. God’s power and wisdom transcends human capacity and full intellectual grasp. God also announces the overcoming through Christ of the devil, who is figured in these chapters, according to Aquinas, as Leviathan and behemoth.55 At the end,56 God, in Aquinas’s rendering, offers his tacit approval of what Job has taught—on the full extent of divine providence; God’s distribution of temporal good and temporal evil to just and wicked alike; the deferring to the next life of the rendering of reward and punishment for human acts. God severely rebukes the three friends, who have taught falsely; as Aquinas underscores, their sin has been grave. Yet God also throughout the speech from the whirlwind chastises Job: not for the content ( Job has taught the truth) but, says Aqui53. For Elihu as unaware of his continuity with Job about divine providence and the afterlife, see Super Iob, ch. 35, lect. 1, 372. 54. Aquinas takes Job 38:2 (“Who is this man who envelops his opinion with inept arguments?”) as spoken by God of Elihu; see Super Iob, ch. 38, lect. 1, 374. What then follows in God’s speech is directed to Job. At 42:7, God offers an assessment of the three friends and Job (but not of Elihu). In favor of Aquinas’s reading of 38:2 is that otherwise, God’s opinion of Elihu would be left unstated in the Book. 55. For Aquinas on the devil as figured by Leviathan, behemoth, see Super Iob, ch. 40, lects. 2–3; ch. 41, lects. 1–2. Satan/the devil has been absent from the book since the opening two chapters; Aquinas’s interpretation thus perceives his return to the narration, that he might be treated accordingly by God, through Christ. 56. See Jb 42:7: “the Lord spoke . . . to Eliphaz the Temanite: My fury is enkindled against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken correctly in my presence like my servant, Job.”

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nas, for the tone of his presentation.57 In the exuberance of his language and argumentation, he can sound (as he did to the friends) proud and presumptuous, and, accusatory of God, thus cause scandal. They have taken him to put himself in opposition to God, claiming that his justice is equal, indeed, superior to God’s, inasmuch (in their perception) as his insistence on his innocence thus removes from himself the cause of punishment, insinuating that God would be unjust in afflicting Job. Again, Aquinas knows that the friends have been uncharitable in their interpretation and will not concede that Job has crossed the line. Aquinas defends Job: this is a student in service to the master, a student who is seeking to defend God’s providence, not impugn God’s justice, a student who wants to learn. Yet Aquinas can also allow a (slight) element of sin in Job’s procedure.58 He has at times been flirting with pride, although he does not succumb finally (as the friends think) to that temptation. Thus, God is chastising him for sin in dispute—a sin that is minor, not grave or mortal, but still calling for humility and repentance. Rewards of Merit Aquinas’s interpretation of the book of Job is surely not without controversy. His reading of Job 19:25–27 is not that of modern biblical scholars and others. Aquinas reads these verses as a prophecy of Christ, the Redeemer, and of the vision of God in the afterlife. The Latin text on which Aquinas is commenting supports that reading; but the original Hebrew is difficult and subject to a rather different translation and may well have to do with Job’s asking for an advocate who will enter into the dispute, on his side. Similarly, 57. For Aquinas’s account of God’s chastising of Job, see Super Iob, ch. 39, lect. 1, 397; ch. 42, lect. 2, 428. 58. That Job’s sin is not grave is stated at Super Iob, ch. 42, lect. 2, 428; there Aquinas says that he had sinned from a speaking ex levitate (in Mullady’s translation, “from unbecoming flippancy”). See as well ch. 6, lect. 1, 78: in just men, sins are not grave and mortal sins but trivial and venial sins which occur as a result of negligence and deception. For the hint of pride in Job’s disputing, see ch. 41, lect. 2, 424.



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Aquinas takes the references to Leviathan and behemoth in God’s speech from the whirlwind as figurative expressions about the devil, and he correspondingly affirms God’s victory, through Christ, over the devil.59 Aquinas is not alone in the tradition in advancing that interpretation; but Job’s/God’s point here may simply be to affirm God’s power over creation, over even the greatest of creatures. Most pertinent for this investigation of merit in the Super Iob is the ascription to Job of a belief in the afterlife; this has indeed been doubted.60 Might the references in the text to the future have to do, not with an afterlife when all might be resolved, as Aquinas thinks, but with a this-worldly future? Perhaps, although Aquinas’s ascription does seem plausible. And the argument of Aquinas’s Job is in fact quite appealing. It disentangles the temporal fortunes of a person from the moral or personal worth of that person. The poor will not be blamed for their poverty (or at least should not be); nor will the wealthy be praised for their wealth, as if that were a sign of prowess in virtue. And the argument of Aquinas’s Job at the same time upholds the importance of moral agency and responsibility. People ought to act justly, mercifully; God knows what people do and takes that seriously; and he will reward or punish accordingly, in the next life. As in the Summa, the reward for merit is eternal life. It is tempting to ask which of the main protagonists in the book would be considered by Aquinas to deserve eternal life, to have merited that by their arguing, stance, and attitude in the dispute, as well as actions toward each other. Merit of eternal life presupposes being in correct relationship to God, which means acting and undergoing, out of the grace and virtues that make possible good willing, doing, and undergoing; principal among these virtues is love, but others too are important. Conversely, the person who sins gravely will not be in 59. For a review of the Christology of the Super Iob, including the discussions of the Redeemer (in ch. 19) and Christ vis-à-vis Leviathan, see now Harkins, art cit. There are also comments about Christ in the Exposition scattered throughout Chardonnens, op. cit. 60. See, for example, Besserman, The Legend of Job, 32.

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correct relationship with God, will have forfeited grace and virtue (if had) and so will be unable to merit eternal life. With Elihu it is not easy to decide: God does rebuke him, but for Aquinas his sin is not grave, but minor;61 and so if he had been in correct relationship to God, his acts might have qualified him for eternal life. With Job, the assessment is easier. From his comments on the final chapter, it is clear that Aquinas thinks that Job will attain eternal life (as have the children who were killed: they all will share with their father in eternal life).62 Acting and suffering, out of his grace and virtues, Job will have merited eternal life as his reward. Aquinas is convinced from the outset that Job remains in good relationship with God, even under his affliction. The first of Job’s speeches, in ch.3, is a striking departure from the placid description of the book’s first two chapters. Here, Job vividly gives vent to a despair, ruing his conception and the day of his birth (v.3). For Aquinas, Job’s pain at his physical suffering, sorrow, and the loss of his temporal goods is real and understandable: the afflicted life is unpleasant, and anyone would rather be blessed by temporal good than afflicted by want. And Aquinas knows that such pain and sorrow continue throughout Job’s ordeal. They have even affected Job’s disputation: the friends have it easier than he, for they are not suffering, not feeling pain, as is he.63 However, Aquinas will not concede, here or elsewhere in the Super Iob, that in these vivid utterances, Job is expressing anger at God, calling God and God’s justice into question, removing himself from correct relationship to God, or indeed sinning (gravely). Job’s speaking out of his passions is proportionate and appropriate; it is subject to his reason and ultimately to God.64 61. At Super Iob, ch. 42, lect. 2, 428, Aquinas says that Elihu had sinned from inexperience and that his sin was slight. At ch. 32, lect. 1, 325, Aquinas refers to Elihu’s vainglory, his desire to show off his (intellectual) excellence by intervening in the dispute. 62. For the observation that Job, as well as his lost children, will get eternal life, see Super Iob, ch. 42, lect. 2, 430. 63. At Super Iob, ch. 16, lect. 1, 194, Aquinas’s Job says the friends have it easier in the dispute because they aren’t laboring under affliction, as is he. 64. See Super Iob, ch. 3, lect. 1, 37: Job is giving expression to his sorrow but as ruled by his reason. A comparison is offered to Christ (38), who too sorrowed; Christ, Aquinas



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For Aquinas, original sin brings a disruption to the self, taking it out of relationship with God and introducing disorder in the self, as the lower self (in passions and the body) rebels against the rule of the reason and rational will, and so against God, as it seeks its own good, without regard to the ultimate and proper good of the person. Grace restores the hierarchy within the self and subjection to God. And so when Job—the graced Job—proclaims his pain and suffering, he is giving expression to what the self in its passions is experiencing; but that expression, Aquinas insists, is itself regulated by reason, as made possible by grace. Thus, when Job proclaims a despair, this is not the despair that is the vice opposed to theological hope; it is rather that that is attached to the passions, expressive of regret at temporal loss and refusing to put one’s end in temporal goods. For Aquinas, Job continues by the theological virtue which remains to hope in God as his end and his aid; he is hoping for the spiritual good that is God, which can be obtained through grace and its virtues and their acts. Correspondingly, when in chapter 6 Job goes on to ask for his death (v.9), that too is an expression of a passion regulated by the reason of a graced person. Job is aware that his afflictions are also a temptation, a temptation to pit himself against God, to move out of correct relationship to God. Rather than succumbing to that temptation, he’d rather die.65 He doesn’t, of course; and he continues to be in correct relationship to God, to grow in that relationship, as he overcomes such affliction and fights the good fight that is the journey to God.66 As for the three friends, Aquinas actually states his opinion notes, was full of virtue and wisdom. For a later statement that in expressing his passion, Job was well ordered in his self, see ch. 10, lect. 1, 128. 65. Super Iob, ch. 6, lect. 1, 79: “But although it is true the wise man suffers sadness, nevertheless his reason is not absorbed by this sadness. Job shows as a consequence that although he might suffer sadness, he still had the greatest concern and caution to protect himself against sadness, so as to be led by sadness to do something evil. To avoid this, he preferred death.” 66. My language in the text is meant to echo Job 7:1 (“Man’s life on earth is combat”) and Aquinas’s comment on it in Super Iob, ch. 7, lect. 1. For Aquinas’s use of this verse, see n23 above.

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about their merit. They claim to speak for God, but their teaching is false. It is limited, for they ignore the afterlife (Eliphaz, Bildad) or give it insufficient attention even when the prospect of afterlife is entertained (Zophar). And their teaching is rooted in a lie—about Job and his sin. Their position about temporal good as reward, temporal evil as punishment, requires them to insist that Job is a sinner. Thus, although claiming to uphold God’s providence, they are undermining it. Their “consolation” is moreover hardly that; the obtaining of temporal goods should not be thought to be the goal of the spiritual journey. And so, Aquinas says, they have merited by their sin punishment from God.67 However, as it turns out, that is not the final word on their status or end. In the final chapter, we are told (42:8–10) that after God had rebuked them for grave sin, they had repented; and on God’s direction, they had gone to Job, to have Job offer sacrifice for them. By their repentance and this sacrifice, they have returned to God’s favor; they are in correct relationship to God and God’s anger is averted. In their case, then, what they deserve has been changed; the eternal punishment which they had merited is no longer their due. Their subsequent demeanor, action, and undergoing are not described in the book; but, assuming that they have absorbed the lesson of Job68 and stayed in this correct relationship to God, they would come to deserve eternal life by their graced acts. In his account of Job’s action on their behalf, Aquinas refers to Job’s merit, thus introducing another reward for the merit of Job, in addition to that of eternal life. He has merited for his friends their return to God’s favor; he has merited removal of God’s anger against 67. Super Iob, ch. 13, lect. 1, 162: “those who use a lie to defend God not only do not receive a reward as though they pleased Him, but they also merit punishment as acting against God.” 68. As observed in Super Iob, ch. 17, lect. 1, 203 (here on Jb 17:6), according to Job Eliphaz has made a proverb and example of him to the crowd, presuming that he was afflicted for his personal sin. See, as well, Job 30:9 (“now I am a verse in their songs, and I have become a proverb for them”). For his part, Job asks that his words be written down, his words engraved in a book ( Jb 19:23), saying this as he is about to announce his hope in the Redeemer and for the vision of God (vv. 25–27). See Super Iob, ch. 19, lect. 2, 221–22.



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them and so their new grace from God.69 Here, there is in the Expositio an anticipation of what Aquinas will teach in his ex professo treatment of merit in the Summa. Articles 5–7 of ST I-II, q. 114 are given over to the merit (or not) of first grace. Aquinas, as we have seen, denies that a person can merit the first grace for himself; for in conversion, God moves the person, prepares the person, for the infusion of (habitual) grace, which is given in accordance with God’s will. But might the person who is already in grace merit the first grace for another (a.6)? In that article, Aquinas returns to the distinction in merit of two kinds of merit, condign and congruent. Christ can merit grace for others condignly; but only Christ can so merit (given the fullness of his grace and his status as Savior, as head of the church). Others, Aquinas continues, can merit the first grace and do so by congruent merit. That will occur, however, only when certain conditions are met: when there is no obstacle (as of sin) in the person for whom one might be meriting congruently and when this is in accordance with God’s will for that person.70 Otherwise, there will be no congruent merit of first grace for another. In ch.42, the conditions have been met: the friends have repented, and God has directed them to have Job, who is in God’s favor, intercede on their behalf. Thus, without using the technical term (“congruent”) here, Aquinas does affirm of Job a merit for them of grace that is aptly viewed as congruent. The Epilogue to the book of Job (42:7–16) is intriguing and offers its own challenge, speaking to the consistency of the book. Not only is divine anger against the friends removed, Job is restored to temporal prosperity (see vv.10–16). Friends return to him and contribute to his material reestablishment; and that grows into temporal wealth that is double what he had originally possessed. And he receives new children, same in number as the original set; and he 69. Super Iob, ch. 42, lect. 2, 429. 70. For the teaching about congruent meriting for another, see ST I-II, q. 114, a. 6. I have supplemented what is explicitly stated there by reference to the adjacent teaching in ST I, q. 23, a. 8c on how prayer and good works can be employed by God in the working out of predestination.

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goes on to live a long, healthy, and prosperous (in this world’s terms) life. All of this follows his repentance for his wayward speech. What is to be made of this removal of affliction and restoration in temporal goods? Has in the Epilogue the argument of the friends, with its consolation—“Turn to God, and temporal prosperity will follow”— been proven correct, after all? On the surface, Job’s restoration might well seem a matter of the retributive justice, in this world, that has been championed by the friends and Elihu.71 There is much in the book, however, that should disrupt this surface impression. For one thing, there is the story of the friends and what is—and what is not—said of them. They have sinned in their argument and fallen out of favor with God. They need to be restored to God’s favor, and they are, by their repentance and through Job. There is nothing in the book, whether earlier or in the Epilogue, however, that makes mention of their material conditions. If they were wealthy, there is nothing about their decline into poverty, even though they have sinned gravely against God. If they were poor, there is nothing about a rise to wealth that would trace their return to favor to God. In describing their return to God, the text focuses simply, exclusively, on their spiritual relation to God; their temporal good, or evil, is simply left out of consideration. So too the case of Job (his temporal restoration) on closer inspection actually proves not to conform to what the friends had prescribed. In their analysis, grave temporal affliction follows on grave sin; and freedom from grave temporal affliction follows upon repentance and adherence to God. Job has repented; but his sin—in Aquinas’s telling—has been minor, not grave. His speech could have been more refined, less exuberant, less provocative and open to misunderstanding; but he never ceased to be in correct relationship to God, nor did he forfeit the grace and virtues out of which he might act in a way pleasing to God. Restoration to temporal prosperity has not been tied to a radical reorientation by Job; for such radical conver71. David J. A. Klines, art.cit., 141.



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sion was not needed nor did it occur. His is the “conversion” of a justified person who has sinned venially and needs to overcome that sin.72 Yet, while temporal prosperity doesn’t inevitably follow on moral good (the friends are wrong on that), it might follow; such giving, as reward, is not by definition excluded from God. God can punish, temporally; he can reward, temporally;73 although, in the analysis of Aquinas’s Job, it is not a strict justice that with inevitable regularity governs the temporal but rather a providential God, distributing temporal good and evil as God wisely wills, not subject irrevocably to a strict temporal justice. Is then the situation of Job as described in the Epilogue a matter of a temporal reward, given by God now for Job’s spiritual acts and sufferings? Does Aquinas think that in the end, God has decided to reward Job temporally for his spiritual faithfulness? Aquinas’s reflections are worth quoting at length: A person’s penance is more useful for himself than for others. Therefore, if the prayer and penance of Job merited (meruit) the removal of divine indignation from the friends, it was even more fitting (multo decentius) that he should be freed from adversity. Although Job did not put his hope in recovering earthly prosperity but in capturing future happiness, the Lord still also restored him to temporal prosperity from his bounty, as Matthew [6:33] says, “seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all else will be given to you.” This was fitting (congruum erat) in time according to the state of the Old Testament in which the promised goods were temporal goods, so that by this prosperity which he recovered, he would give an 72. Aquinas’s comments about imperfect (first) and perfect conversion (which entails a growth in charity of the one who has already turned to God), at ST I-II, q. 113, a. 10c, seem pertinent here. 73. See Super Iob, ch. 7, lect. 4, 100: here, Job is reported to allow three reasons for afflictions in this life, the third of which is for God to punish sinners. See too ch. 36, lect. 1, 356, where Aquinas contrasts Job’s position with that of Elihu. Elihu agrees with the three friends that present adversities are punishments for sins and that through repentance one returns to his former state: “Although this sometimes happens, this is not always true according to Job.” Allowing that sin can find punishment in this life (and good, reward in this life), is not to make that punishment the proper punishment of sin (or that reward the proper reward for the just). The temporal will always remain secondary to the spiritual goods (or ills) of the next life.

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example to others of conversion to God. It was also fitting (congruum) to the person of Job himself, whose reputation had been sullied among other people because of the many adversities which had come upon him. Therefore, to restore his good reputation, God led him back to a state of even greater prosperity.74

Aquinas’s lengthy comment is rich and suggestive. For one thing, there is an anticipation here of the mention in ST I-II, q. 114, a. 10 ad 1 of the difference between the Old and the New. To what Aquinas states in the present paragraph, one could extend, as in the ST, that what is stated in the Old Testament of temporal rewards is to be taken figuratively, of spiritual rewards. There is an appropriateness in referring here in Job to the temporal, but such temporal goods are not to be taken as goods in and of themselves. They point beyond themselves. The language of fittingness used in this passage is also significant. This may be a gesture at a merit that is congruent, one that earns temporal reward. In that case, temporal relief and benefit would then fall under merit as reward, even in this attenuated form. That, however, would lie uneasily with the thrust of Job’s argument, according to Aquinas, about divine providence and its temporal execution, presented at great length throughout the rest of the book. Allowing a congruent merit in this context would also press beyond where the Summa will go. In the Summa, the distinction between condign and congruent merit is pertinent to an account of meriting eternal life as reward and of first grace for another; it is not invoked in describing how temporal goods might “fall under merit.” Or the language of “fittingness” might rather be taken in terms of wisdom, such that it is fitting for God, who is wise, to relieve Job of his afflictions and give him temporal benefit. There would not, then, be an implicit affirmation of congruent merit but a recognition of the wisdom and freedom of God in dispensing temporal goods (and evils), which is in fact the teaching of Job, as read by Aquinas, elsewhere in the book. This in fact seems the more likely. There is a telling lack of parallelism in the opening of this passage. Job merited the 74. Super Iob ch. 42, lect. 2, 429.



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return to God’s favor of the three friends; Thomas doesn’t likewise assert that Job merits his temporal restoration. In this sense, there is a happy ending, temporally speaking, to the story of Job, which has moved from temporal prosperity to severe deprivation and affliction and now back to even greater temporal good. But that part of the account would not be tied to his personal worth or to what he deserves for his virtuous acts done out of grace and charity. Graced, virtuous act, and suffering are pertinent to the afterlife and God’s rendering of spiritual reward. But, for the present, Job’s restoration would be due to God’s wisdom in providing. God has deemed this fitting. In the first lecture on ch.42, commenting on v.5, Aquinas observes that Job had grown from his suffering and from God’s instruction.75 He surely grew in terms of his merit, by his steadfast adherence to God, by grace and virtue, throughout his adversities. He also grew in his understanding of God, who has spoken to him directly, of divine providence and its operation, and of merit and reward, which is Aquinas’s point here. Now, for Aquinas, Job knew prior to his afflictions that his original temporal prosperity had not been due to his own efforts, as if given by God for his merits. Job, Job himself informs us, had this prosperity from his youth (29:4), before he could have done anything so meritorious; God had aided him, blessed him, beyond his efforts and his desert.76 But, from that same chapter, in which Job is reflecting on his prior state, it seems apparent that during his original temporal prosperity, prior to his afflictions, Job had in fact linked perseverance in temporal good to good moral behavior and to merit. Thus, in vv.18–20, he says: “I said: I will die in my little nest, and like a palm tree, I will multiply my days. My root was spread out near the water, and dew will remain in my harvest. My glory always will be renewed, and my bow will be restored to my hand.” Aquinas glosses that in terms of merit and presumed 75. Super Iob, ch. 42, lect. 1, 426. 76. Super Iob ch. 29, lect. 1, 297: “to answer the objection that this [all the forms of divine aid, all the forms of temporal goods that he had received] is due to him from the merit of past justice, he adds, ‘as I was in the days of my youth,’ when I as yet could not have merited such great prosperity.”

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reward.77 That original expectation seems reasonable enough; but what Job subsequently undergoes is enough to show the error, and so for him to learn. Even the just man might fail to persevere in temporal goods; retaining such goods is not owed as a matter of justice for continued good acts, due to the personal worth and activity of the agent. Thus, when subsequently in the Epilogue we are told that Job was restored in temporal goods and went on to live a long and prosperous life, we should not be tempted to imagine that he would now think that perseverance in temporal good should be counted among the rewards of merit. It isn’t, and he now knows that. God distributes temporal goods, and evils, in accordance with God’s providential plan, and God is free to dispense, or withdraw, as God intends. 77. Super Iob ch. 29, lect. 1, 299: “Because of all these good works, he was confident that his prosperity would endure”; and Aquinas adds that by “‘I will die in my little nest’” (v.18), Job means that ‘because from my past merits that I would quietly die in my house, not exiled from my house, or even in a troubled house.’”

Part 3 The Moral Life and Eschatology

Daria Spezzano The Hope and Fear of Blessed Job

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In his scriptural commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:15–19, Thomas Aquinas calls Job as witness to the truth of apostolic preaching about the resurrection: “If God did not raise Christ from the dead, as we preach, we are found to be false witnesses; and if the dead do not rise, God did not raise Christ from the dead: ‘does God need your lie?’ ( Jb 13:7).”1 To attribute something to God which he does not do and so give him false praise is unfitting in the worst way, for it places one above God, implying that one knows better than God what he should do. If God had not raised Christ from the dead, and the apostles were to lie on God’s behalf by claiming that he did so, their proclamation and their faith would be in vain; having hope in Christ only for this life, they “would be the most miserable of men.” Indeed, Thomas argues along with Paul, “the apostles and Christians have suffered many evils in this world”; they would be most miserable unless such trials were ordained to the future good of the 1. Super primam Epistolam ad Corinthios Lectura, in Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, vol. 1, ed. R. Cai (Rome: Marietti, 1953) ch. 15, lect. 2 [920]. Thomas’s commentaries on the Pauline corpus from 1 Cor 11 through Hebrews are only known in the form of a reportatio by Reginald of Piperno; Torrell notes the difficulty of dating Thomas’s Pauline corpus but concludes that this text “could be the fruit of Thomas’s teaching from the years 1265 to 1268 in Rome” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, 255; italics in the original).



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resurrection.2 In the Expositio super Job ad litteram, Thomas’s exegesis of the same text in Job 13:7 also presents Job as witness to the truth of life after death, against the falsehood into which his friends were led through their error “about the faith with which God is worshipped, believing that in this life only was the retribution of merits and punishments accomplished.”3 Job’s friends intended to defend the excellence of divine justice by accusing Job of impiety, because, misled by their “false dogmas,” they thought his temporal suffering must be a punishment for injustice; but in this they lied.4 Thomas presents Job correcting their false teaching with his own on God’s just rewards and punishments in the life to come, and he quotes the text of 1 Corinthians 15:15 to show the foolishness of a lie on God’s behalf.5 Thomas thinks that Job, unlike his friends, believes with Paul in the truth of life after death; Job soon goes on to say (in Thomas’s Vulgate text), “even though he kills me I will hope in him” (13:15). According to Thomas, Job rejects the idea that he would lose hope in God because of his temporal suffering: “because my hope in God is on account of spiritual goods which remain after death, even if he afflicts me as far as killing [me], the hope I have in him will not cease.”6 Thomas’s juxtaposition of these texts from Job and 1 Corinthians in his two commentaries, in order to argue in both commentaries that one should speak the truth about life after death, not only demonstrates his integral reading of Scripture, in which the Old and New Testament shed mutual light, but highlights an important theme in the Expositio on Job itself: the virtue, 2. Sup. ad I Cor. 925. 3. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Job ad litteram, 13:4. The Latin edition is found in Sancti Thomae de Aquino, Opera Omnia, Iussu Leonis XIII P.M. edita, vol. 26 (Rome: Santa Sabina, 1965) (hereafter, Leonine). Translations are my own, although assisted by consultation of two recent translations: Thomas Aquinas: The Literal Exposition on Job, trans. Anthony Damico, with interpretive essay and notes by Martin Yaffe (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1989); Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas: Commentary on the Book of Job (Lander, Wyo..: The Aquinas Institute, 2016). 4. Super Job, 13:7. 5. Super Job, 13:9–10. 6. Super Job, 13:15.



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in the face of adversity, of giving faithful witness to hope in God for life after death. Yet, in spite of Job’s fraternal correction of his friends at this point in the narrative, it becomes evident by the end of the Expositio that Job himself, in Thomas’s view, had need of correction in his speech about God in order to give perfect witness to divine excellence; while unlike his friends he spoke “faithful dogmas,” he had done so with some pride and foolishness in his words.7 Job, although a just and virtuous man from the outset, still grows through his experience of adversity. Thomas remarks that Job engages in three successive types of discourse; first, he expresses his sensible reaction to suffering, then the deliberation of his human reason, and finally speaks words under divine inspiration.8 Denis Chardonnens comments that in this, “Thomas furnishes us with a veritable key to interpretation of the sacred book.”9 As the editors of the Leonine edition point out, these three stages indicate that Thomas’s Job undergoes a process of internal transformation as the story of his trials unfolds. One can follow the successive stages through which the afflicted just man passes, from the original overturning of his sensibility up to his total conversion to God, without doing violence to the unity of his person. For it is the same man who curses the day of his birth and confesses having spoken without understanding, who regrets not having died in his mother’s womb, and who repents in dust and ashes. This unity is not artificial; it respects the most profound laws of human and religious psychology.10

By the end of the story, Thomas writes, “since reason should be directed by divine inspiration,” Job “reproves the words which he had said according to human reason [alone].”11 The trajectory of his 7. Super Job, 42:3. 8. Super Job, 39:35. 9. Denis Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de la providence: Providence de Dieu et condition humaine selon l’“Exposition littérale sur le Livre de Job” de Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1997), 179. All translations are my own. 10. Leonine, vol. 26, 29*. 11. Super Job, 39:35.

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discourse—speaking first according to his passions, then his reason, then his guidance by inspiration—describes an increasingly perfect expression of the integrity of the human person whose powers are properly ordered by grace. Divinely instructed, Job leaves passionate sorrow and reasonable self-justification behind, learning to speak with wisdom and holy fear, and so he becomes a better witness to his faith and hope in God. Pope Benedict XVI writes in Spe Salvi that the Christian message of faith and hope is not only “informative” but “performative,” not only the communication of information, but a life-changing message, opening the door to the future. Hope in future salvation makes one live differently in the present, especially in situations of adversity, because “the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.”12 Thomas says something similar in the Summa contra Gentiles, written in the same period as the Expositio:13 If some difficulty should arise among things ordered to a desired end, hope of attaining the end provides solace. For instance, the bitterness of medicine is lightly borne because of the hope of health. In our process of working towards beatitude, which is the end of all our desires, many present difficulties are sustained. . . . Therefore in order that man may tend towards beatitude smoothly and readily, it was necessary to give him hope of obtaining beatitude.14 Thomas thinks that Job, as a just patriarch, has anticipatory Christian faith and hope according to the literal meaning of the text, although this does not emerge clearly until Job has to face the opposition of his friends and, seemingly, even of God.15 I will argue that in Thomas’s view, Job’s trans12. Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, Encyclical Letter (November 30, 2007), 2, available from w2.vatican.va. 13. Jean-Pierre Torrell agrees with the editors of the Leonine edition in assigning the Expositio to Thomas’s time in Orvieto , the years 1261–1264, the same period in which he wrote the Summa contra Gentiles; Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work. trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 120; Leonine, Vol. 26, 17*–20*. 14. S. Thomae Aquinatis Liber de Veritate Catholicae Fidei contra errores Infidelium seu Summa contra Gentiles, ed. Ceslai Pera (Turin: Marietti, 1961) (hereafter, ScG), 3.153.4. 15. Other essays in this volume address Thomas’s exegetical method in the Expositio, so I provide no general discussion of that here. Many scholars have noted, however, that



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formation, and so his more faithful final spoken witness to God’s goodness, come about especially through the more perfect realization of his hope, in proportion to that of his fear of God, which become fully “performative” as the story moves forward, changing his response to present suffering. In relation to this, I propose that Thomas’s treatment of fear and hope in the context of this scriptural commentary adds to that in his more systematic works and perhaps even contributes something to them, for through his narrative exegesis, Thomas is able to show the process by which this growth takes place and so give instructive insight into the difference it makes to live by the theological virtues and gifts, especially in adversity. Thomas’s Job is moved by the help of grace from calling himself the most miserable of men to one who, in hope and filial fear, confidently proclaims like the apostles that his current sufferings are ordained in providence to the future glory of the resurrection. Among the many fruits of his exegesis of the book of Job, Thomas draws from Job’s witness a moral lesson of ongoing relevance.

Blessed Job, the servus amoris In his Prologue to the Expositio on Job, Thomas introduces Job, “a man perfect in every virtue” as the paradigmatic case of a just person Thomas’s understanding of a “literal” reading of the text cannot be equated with what modern exegetes mean by the “literal sense.” John Yocum points out that for Thomas, this means more than simply “the conscious intention of the human author.” Rather, God as the author of Scripture may intend meanings which “go beyond what the human author understood.” The literal meaning as intended by God “emerges from reading the Bible as a whole, the work of a single divine author.” This means that Thomas reads the book of Job in the context of reflection on both Testaments, in light of the whole tradition of theological interpretation of Scripture, for instance, on the doctrine of the resurrection. John Yocum, “Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” in Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to His Biblical Commentaries, ed. Thomas G. Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating, and John Yocum (N.Y.: T&T Clark, 2005), 26–27, 40–41. On Thomas’s use of the “literal sense,” see Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de la providence, 21–34; Wilhelmus Valkenburg, Words of the Living God: Place and Function of Holy Scripture in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Leuven: Peeters, 2000); Franklin T. Harkins, “Christ and the Eternal Extent of Divine Providence in the Expositio super Iob ad Litteram of Thomas Aquinas,” Viator 47 (2015): 123–52. On Thomas’s exegesis in general, see Thomas Prügl, “Thomas Aquinas as Interpreter of Scripture,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph P. Wawrykow (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 386–415.

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suffering grave afflictions, a situation which “especially seems to impugn God’s providence about human affairs.” The book of Job, “composed wisely through the Spirit of God for the instruction of men,” is intended, Thomas proposes, to show the plausibility of the claim that divine providence does govern human lives—and if in this most extreme case, we understand, then in all others. This divinely inspired instruction in wisdom is necessary for the human race, because without belief in providence, “no reverence or fear of God based on truth will remain among men.” The purpose of the book of Job, therefore, as Thomas understands it, is not only to demonstrate the plausibility of divine providence governing even the most difficult circumstances of human life, but in doing so to undergird moral instruction, for “nothing calls men back from evil and induces them toward good so much as fear and love for God,” arising from the belief that God is ordering human affairs even when bad things happen to good people and vice versa.16 Faith that God bestows just rewards and punishments in eternal life inspires hope as well as love for God, for as Thomas writes in the Compendium theologiae, belief in God’s providence over human affairs stirs up hope in the soul that by God’s help one will attain what he desires in faith.17 The book of Job opens with a description of Job as a man “simple and upright, fearing God and withdrawing from evil” ( Jb 1:1). There can be no doubt of Job’s true virtue, for God himself repeats this laudatory description of Job twice to Satan in the heavenly court, as they discuss his upcoming trials. Thomas remarks that, since the in16. Prologue, Super Job. Yocum points out that Thomas means more here than that reverence and fear of God should “place a kind of constraint on human behavior, a means to a good end.” Rather, “Thomas takes reverence for God to be the proper end of the human being” (Yocum, “Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” 24). 17. Compendium theologiae seu Brevis compilatio theologiae ad fratrem Raynaldum. Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, vol. 42 (Rome: Editori di San Tommaso, 1979) 2.1. Torrell notes that it has been difficult to date this work conclusively, but the first part of the Compendium (on faith) was probably written in the years 1265–1267, while the second (on hope) may have been taken up after an interruption, at the end of Thomas’s life in Naples (after 1272), when it was left incomplete by his death (Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, 164).



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tention of this book is to demonstrate the work of providence even in the lives of the just who suffer affliction, Job’s virtue is established so that none might believe his adversities were punishment for sins. In his simplicity and uprightness, Job was neither deceitful, violent, nor unjust to his neighbors; in his reverent fear he did not sin against God; withdrawing from evil, he did not sin against himself.18 Thomas takes the text’s description of Job’s initial prosperity as a further opportunity to demonstrate his good character, for Job was equally virtuous amidst the temptations of prosperity and the onset of adversity. The discipline of Job’s house, in which there was “charity and concord” among Job’s children, “was free of those vices which wealth usually generates.”19 Job had a “holy solicitude for purity, which riches frequently overwhelm, or at least diminish,” abstaining from every evil. He guarded the sanctity of his children too, offering holocausts for them after their daily banquets; Thomas notes that sacrifices and offerings for sin existed even before the Law. So Job appears here as a kind of pre-Israelite priest, a model of the virtue of religion by the internal “perfection of his devotion” and the external offering of satisfactory sacrifices for the expiation of others’ sins, daily “persevering in divine worship with constant devotion.”20 Job passes his first trial, the loss of the external goods of his property and children, apparently unshaken in virtue. Thomas understands Job’s adversities to be a test of his fear of God or, rather, a perfection and manifestation of that fear, rooted in properly-ordered love. When Satan responds to God’s praise of Job by asking, “Does Job fear God in vain?” (1:9), Thomas explains that the devil accuses him of serving God with the wrong intention, not out of true love and reverence, but for the sake of temporal gain. Satan wants to show 18. Super Job, 1:1. 19. Super Job, 1:4. 20. Super Job, 1:5. Cf., Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job 14.1 [PL 75: 1041BC]: “Almighty God, in order to correct the minds of those placed under the law, brought forward the life of blessed Job for a testimony, who did not know the law and yet kept it, who kept the precepts of life, which he had not received in writing.” In his “sufferings and well-instructed speeches,” Job is “a figure of Holy Church” [1042B].

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that Job will stop fearing God when his earthly prosperity ceases and that therefore his justice is a pretense. In effect, Satan accuses Job of sharing the worldly perspective against which Job will argue with his friends, that God’s providence is limited to temporal punishments and rewards. Thomas never explicitly distinguishes in this commentary between the traditional four types of fear named by Peter Lombard—worldly, servile, initial, and filial or chaste—although he had discussed them in his earlier Scriptum on the Sentences,21 but it seems that Satan is accusing Job of having a worldly fear of God. The four types of fear are differentiated by their particular objects, the evil which they move one to avoid. This in turn depends on what is loved as one’s end. “Love is the cause of fear,” for one fears losing what one loves.22 Servile fear causes one to act out of fear of punishment (based on love of self); initial and filial (or chaste) fear, out of fear of separation from the love of God (in imperfect and perfect degrees). Initial fear—that “usually found in men at the beginning of their conversion”23—is less perfect than filial fear because while it is also moved by charity, it is mixed with a servile fear of punishment, so there is as yet an aspect of self-centered love.24 Worldly fear is based on mercenary love, which fears the loss of earthly goods. As a motive for serving God, it is always evil.25 But Thomas prefaces his 21. Scriptum super libros sententiarum, eds. P. Mandonnet and M. F. Moos, 4 vols. (Paris, 1933–47) (hereafter, Scriptum) 3, d. 34, q. 2. Peter Lombard distinguishes the four fears in Sententiae, 3, d. 34, ch. 4. Thomas began to compose the Scriptum in the period of his teaching as a young academic in Paris (1252–1254), although it was not as yet complete by 1256 when he began his work as a master (Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 332). 22. Scriptum, 3, d. 34, q. 2, a. 1, qc 3, ad 3. In the Summa theologiae (Latin text in Instituti Studiorum Medievalium Ottaviensis, 5 vols [Ottawa: Commissio Piana, 1953]) (hereafter: ST) II-II, q. 19, a. 3, Thomas clarifies this, drawing from Augustine’s 83 Quaestionum, 33 [PL 40:22]. 23. Super Epistolam ad Romanos Lectura, in Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, ed. R. Cai, vol. 1, (Rome: Marietti, 1953) (hereafter, Sup. Rom.), ch. 8, lect. 3 [640]. Torrell notes difficulties in dating Thomas’s commentaries on the Pauline epistles, but the first eight chapters of the Super ad Romanos date “very probably” to 1272–73 (Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 340). 24. Scriptum, 3 d. 34 q. 2 a. 3 qc. 2 co.: Initial fear is “the fear mentioned in the Psalm: ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom’ (Ps 110:10).” 25. ST II-II, q. 19, a. 2 ad 5.



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discussion of this trial by indicating that Satan will be proved wrong in attributing worldly fear to Job. When God says to Satan in Job 1:8: “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is no one like him on earth?” Thomas explains that the Lord means Job is, in a sense, separated from the earth, by clinging closely to God with his mind, although he is joined by his flesh to earthly things; his spiritual love for God exceeds his love for earthly goods. And so he is a true servant of God, “for a servant is one who is not his own cause. But he who clings to God with his mind orders himself toward God as a servant of love, not of fear.”26 This characterization of Job as servus amoris non timoris helps to clarify further what kind of fear of God Thomas thinks Job has, as well as hinting that he possesses the gift of grace. Thomas draws the distinction between the servitude of fear and of love in a number of texts beginning early in his career, connecting the “service of love” to freedom and charity that prefers God to worldly things.27 In his early Contra impugnantes, defending mendicant poverty, Thomas writes: There are two kinds of servitude, of fear and of love. He who accepts gifts from cupidity is the servant of fear; for the things acquired by cupidity are possessed in fear, and from this servitude the servants of Christ ought to be free. For, as St. Paul says (Rom 8:15), “You have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear.” But he who accepts gifts in charity is the servant of love, and the servants of Christ are not free from this servitude.28 26. Super Job, 1:8. 27. In his Catena on Matthew on the words, “You cannot serve both God and mammon” (Mt 6:24), Thomas places a text from the Gloss which seems to bear on Job’s “separation from the earth”: “He seems to allude to two different kinds of servants; one kind who serve freely for love, another who serve servilely from fear. . . . But as the world or God predominate in a man’s heart, he must be drawn contrary ways; for God draws the one who serves him to things above; the earth draws to things beneath; therefore, he concludes, ‘you cannot serve God and mammon’” (S. Thomae Aquinatis Catena aurea in quatuor Evangelia, ed. A. Guranti, 4 vols. 2nd ed. [Turin: Marietti, 1953]); Catena Mt, ch. 6, lect. 16. Torrell dates the compilation of the Catena to 1262–1263, in the same period as Thomas wrote the Expositio (Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 136). 28. Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem, in Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, Vol. 41A (Rome: Santa Sabina, 1969) pars 2, ch. 6, ad2. This work was completed in Paris in 1256, in Thomas’s first year of magisterial teaching (Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 346).

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That Job is a servus amoris not only means that he values spiritual above temporal goods, but identifies him early in the Expositio as one living, in anticipation of Christ, under the New Law; he is one of the “children of God impelled by the Holy Spirit freely out of love,” of which Paul speaks in Romans 8:15.29 In his scriptural commentary on Romans, Thomas writes: One should say that there are two kinds of servitude. One is the servitude of fear, which does not befit saints: “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of the adoption of sons” (Rom 8:15). The other is the servitude of humility and love, which does befit saints.30 Romans 8:15 was a traditional scriptural authority for the comparison between filial and servile fear; servile fear of punishment may be salutary but insofar as it is without charity it is imperfect.31 Filial fear of being separated from God flows from charity and is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.32 Job’s service of God out of spiritual love indicates that his fear of God is filial, the gift of those who “have received the Spirit of the adoption of sons” (Rom 8:15).

That Job is a servus amoris, then, implies that he has the New Law gift of grace, along with the theological virtues and gifts of the Holy 29. ScG 4.22.5. 30. Sup. Rom, ch. 1, lect. 1 [21]. Cf. Thomas’s commentary on Rom 8:15 for discussion of different kinds of fear belonging to servants and sons, which bears parallels to his treatment of the gift of fear given to those led by the Holy Spirit in the ST II-II, q. 19. Also see Thomas’s commentary on Jn 15:15 (Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura, ch.15, lect. 3 [2015]), which draws on Augustine’s Tractate 85.3 on John as source, where Thomas distinguishes the imperfect fear of servants, which is cast out by love, from the “clean fear” of sons: “Since, therefore, he has given us power to become the sons of God, let us not be servants, but sons: that, in some wonderful and indescribable but real way, we may as servants have the power not to be servants; servants, indeed, with that clean fear which distinguishes the servant that enters into the joy of his lord, but not servants with the fear that has to be cast out, and which marks him who does not abide in the house for ever. But let us bear in mind that it is the Lord that enables us to serve so as not to be servants.” 31. The Gloss, which draws from Augustine’s exegesis of Rom 8:15 in De spiritu et littera 32.56, and Confessions Bk.1, 12.19, is the authority quoted in Peter Lombard’s Sent., Bk. 3, d. 34, 4.3; see Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book 3, trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: PIMS, 2008) 139n10. Cf. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 34 q. 2 a. 2 and a. 3. 32. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 34 q. 2 a. 1 qc. 3.



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Spirit, although Thomas does not state that clearly at this point in his commentary. Job’s hope will be founded on his faith, in particular, his faith in God’s providential plan for resurrected life after death; in Thomas’s understanding of the relationship of the theological virtues, faith gives rise to hope and hope to charity, in the order of their acts; both are perfected by charity.33 Later, when Job is impelled by debate to clarify his teaching, Thomas says more explicitly that “Job was certain that he was speaking the truth inspired by God through the gift of faith and wisdom,” that “he understood through the Holy Spirit” the cause of his adversity and that he is assisted by grace to keep his conscience pure.34 As will be discussed below, Thomas thinks that Job foresees Christ’s redemption “through the spirit of faith,” hoping with confidence in “the future glory of the resurrection.”35 And God plans that he will have it; the Expositio ends with Thomas explaining that Job died with an abundance of “the goods of grace, by which he was led to future glory.”36 Thomas’s Job, before Christ and before the Law, is therefore among those “who are led by the Spirit of God” and so are “children of God” (Rom 8:14). In Thomas’s commentary on Romans, he borrows from the Gloss to give Job as an example of one who “waits for the revelation of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19): “We . . . wait for this in virtue of the grace received into our nature, as we might say that matter waits for its form or colors wait for the completed picture, as the Gloss says: ‘all the days of my service I would wait until my release should come’ 33. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 23 q. 2 a. 5; ST I-II, q. 62, a. 4. Jacques-Guy Bougerol, in his magisterial monograph, La théologie de l’espérance aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985), notes how surprising it is that St. Paul gives no definition of hope; important scriptural referents for the development of medieval thought on the virtue of hope were Heb 11:1 and Rom 5:3–5, which primarily give descriptions of faith and of charity, respectively. It was Haimo of Auxerre around 850, commenting on these texts, who “inaugurated a vocabulary” for the definition and discussion of hope which would be taken up by later scholastics (35–36; all translations of Bougerol are my own). The theology of the virtue of hope, then, was especially developed in the context of its relationship to the other theological virtues. 34. Super Job, 13:19, 16:9 and 16:20. 35. Super Job, 19:25–27. 36. Super Job, 42:16.

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( Job 14:14).”37 Job’s service of love as one who “clings to God with his mind” allows him to wait in patient expectation until God completes his work in him. Thomas’s assumption that the just who lived before Christ could have the gift of grace with some form of anticipatory faith and hope was well-founded in patristic tradition. In the Scriptum, following Peter Lombard, whose authorities are Augustine and Gregory the Great, Thomas had already made an argument, shaped by his understanding of salvation history, that the human race had saving “faith in the Redeemer” in different ways at different times relative to the coming of Christ.38 Even before the Law, “revelations about Christ were made by angels to many,” such as the Sybil, “who openly prophesied Christ.”39 After sin but before Christ, the learned “to whom revelation was given” could even be said to have “explicit” faith in the Redeemer, although their knowledge was incomplete in comparison to those who lived closer to Christ’s coming. The simple had implicit faith in that of the learned, who “offered the sacrament of redemption under sacrificial signs.”40 For Thomas, Job’s offering of 37. Sup. Rom. ch. 8, lect. 4 [659]. 38. Cf. Peter Lombard, Sent., Bk. 3, d. 25. 39. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 25 q. 2 a. 2 qc. 2 ad 3; Thomas refers to Augustine, Contra Faustum 13.15. 40. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 25 q. 2 a. 2 qc. 2 co. It is interesting to note that by the time of the ST, Thomas refines this explanation to refer more precisely to faith in different aspects of the mystery of the Incarnation, connecting the sacrifices offered “both before and after the Law” to anticipatory faith in the Passion for deliverance from sin. Before sin, Adam and Eve “believed explicitly in Christ’s Incarnation, in so far as it was intended for the consummation of glory, but not as it was intended to deliver man from sin by the Passion and Resurrection, since man had no foreknowledge of his future sin.” After sin, “man believed explicitly in Christ, not only as to the Incarnation, but also as to the Passion and Resurrection, whereby the human race is delivered from sin and death: for they would not otherwise have foreshadowed Christ’s Passion by certain sacrifices both before and after the Law, the meaning of which sacrifices was known by the learned explicitly, while the simple folk, under the veil of those sacrifices, believed them to be ordained by God in reference to Christ’s coming, and thus their knowledge was covered with a veil, so to speak. And, as stated above, the nearer they were to Christ, the more distinct was their knowledge of Christ’s mysteries” (ST II-II, q. 2, a. 7). The text to which Thomas refers in this passage is ST II-II, q. 1, a. 7; in the sed contra of that article, as authority for the notion that knowledge became more distinct the



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sacrifice, as well as his confession of faith in the Redeemer further on in the story, would place him in the category of those with explicit (though anticipatory) faith. Thomas’s consideration of Job’s faith in the Expositio may be reflected in his later Summa theologiae: in the parallel text there, Job 19:25 (“I know that my redeemer lives”) is conspicuously inserted before the Sibyl as the first example of a pagan with explicit faith, who received revelation of Christ.41 Thomas had precedent too in claiming for Job the gift of hope before the coming of Christ; in the Sentences, Peter Lombard argued that it can be said of the ancient fathers “held in hell until Christ’s Passion . . . that they had the virtue of faith and hope, because they believed and hoped that they would see God’s face in a way in which they could not then do.”42 Thomas comments on this in the Scriptum that although there is affliction in the very nature of hope because of the absence of what is hoped for, yet hope’s certitude causes delight; for these just ancients waiting in limbo, “the delight caused by their certitude absorbed every affliction” from delay in attaining the object of their hope.43 For Job, too, as the narrative unfolds, the certitude of hope, looking forward to the attainment of future good, ultimately absorbs even the reasonable affliction of present suffering. As is often noted, Thomas frames the book of Job as a scholastic disputatio.44 In this pedagogical exercise, God, the master teacher, permits Job’s suffering to teach a lesson to others about the eschatonearer the human race came to Christ, Thomas supplies Gregory the Great’s Homily 16 on Ezechiel. In the answer to the first objection, Thomas extends this idea to hope by saying that the further the ancients were from Christ’s advent, the further they were from what they hoped for. Thomas also mentions Gregory’s idea in Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 25 q. 2 a. 2 qc. 3 co. 41. ST II-II, q. 2, a. 7 ad 3; the reference to Job is not present in the parallel text in the De veritate (q. 14, a. 11), written in Paris (1256–1259); Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 334), prior to the Expositio (S. Thomae Aquinatis Quaestiones Disputatae, vol. 1: De Veritate. 9th rev. ed., ed. Raymond Spiazzi [Turin: Marietti, 1953]). 42. Peter Lombard, Sent., Bk. 3, d. 26. 43. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 26 q. 2 a. 5 qc. 3 co. Cf. ST III, q. 52, a. 2 ad 2; a. 5. 44. E.g., Yocum, “Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job”; Martin Yaffe, “Interpretive Essay,” in Thomas Aquinas: The Literal Exposition on Job, trans. Anthony Damico, with interpretive essay and notes by Martin Yaffe (Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, 1989), 25–28.

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logical extent of providence; the demonstrative living “proof ” of this argument is the genuineness of Job’s virtue in spite of his temporal adversity. Midway through the narrative, protesting his innocence of sin, Job responds to accusations of impiety by asserting that God himself will be the one to “prove me like gold which passes through fire” (23:10). Here, Thomas remarks, [ Job] first manifestly explains the reason for his adversity, which was brought upon him so that he might appear to men to have been proved by it, just as gold which can sustain the fire is proved. And just as gold does not become true gold from the fire, but its truth is manifested to men, so Job was proved through adversity not so that his virtue might appear before God, but so that it might be manifested to men.45

Thomas makes clear throughout the Expositio that God permits Job’s adversity because “the Lord wants the virtue of the saints to be known to all, both good and bad.”46 The authority of Scripture itself demands this interpretation, for the Vulgate Bible puts “blessed Job” forward as “an example . . . to posterity of his patience” in temptation (Tb 2:12, Vulgate).47 God wills that Job’s right intention in fearing God should be made manifest to others for moral instruction. Thomas proposes that God intends to make Job’s virtue shine forth especially by testing his trust in God’s goodness and justice; 45. Super Job, 23:10. 46. Super Job, 1:12. 47. Ibid.: “From what has been said already it is clear that the cause of the adversity of blessed Job was that his virtue should be made clear to all, as is also said of Tobias, ‘Thus the Lord permitted him to be tempted so that an example might be given to posterity of his patience, like holy Job’ [Tb 2:12, Vulgate].” This verse occurs only in the Vulgate, in a short section comparing Tobias to Job “most likely composed” by Jerome “when he was translating the Aramaic version” (Robert J. Littman, Tobit: The Book of Tobit in Codex Siniaticus [Boston: Brill, 2008], 67–68). It is notable that in this inserted section Tobias, like Job, is challenged to defend his hope and responds with a witness to his faith in God’s reward of a future life: “For as the kings insulted holy Job: so his relations and kinsmen mocked his life, saying: ‘Where is your hope, for which you gave alms, and buried the dead?’ But Tobias rebuked them, saying: ‘Do not speak thus, for we are children of the saints, and look forward to that life which God will give to those that never change their faith from him’ (Tb 2:15–18, Vulgate).” Job is also proposed as an example of patience in suffering in Jas 5:11, a text which Thomas quotes in the Prologue to the Expositio.



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in permitting Satan to harm Job, God purposefully allows it to appear as if he intended to afflict Job painfully, “so that it might be impressed on his mind, as it were, that he was suffering persecution not only by men but from God, and so he might be more easily provoked against God.”48 The unusual way in which his livestock and children are killed, and even the order in which his losses are made known to him, are all meant to increase Job’s pain and make him think God is persecuting him, so as to provoke him to doubt the goodness of God’s providence. Job’s response to this first adversity, however, only further manifests his virtues of patience and constancy. Although Job shows sadness, it is moderated by reason and subordinated to his humility and devotion, as he confesses “his true opinion of divine providence about human affairs” that it is the cause of both worldly prosperity and adversity and must be accepted by God’s friends as conforming to the divine will. Job blesses the name of the Lord, who both gives and takes away, at the end of this first trial, for he has “knowledge of [God’s] goodness, namely, that he dispenses all things well and does nothing unjustly.”49 However, while Job’s initial witness to God’s goodness and justice shows that his fear of God is not worldly, he has not yet been fully tested and has not yet spoken of his hope in eternal life. It is not until he is painfully afflicted in his body that the filial nature of his fear of God is truly tested and his hope becomes manifest to all. Does Job himself, apparently convinced from the outset of the priority of spiritual over temporal goods, learn anything in this process? It is in the nature of such a proof that Job’s trust in God’s ultimate plan of goodness towards him—that is, the strength of his hope—must be tested as it is made manifest, perhaps even to himself. One’s own suffering and the prospect of death quickly show whether one’s trust in God’s providential goodness is more than theoretical, but with the help of grace such trials can be the context in which hope becomes genuinely performative. As Thomas’s Job moves through the stages 48. Super Job, 1:16. 49. Super Job, 1:21.

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of response to his own innocent suffering, goaded on by the challenges of his interlocutors, he articulates ever more clearly and confidently his hope in God, assisted by a filial fear which leads him to give a properly reverent witness to the primacy of God’s goodness. Job’s Hope and Fear Become Performative The relationship between Job’s hope and fear is an important one in the commentary, which, I will argue, may have contributed to developing Thomas’s thought on this theological virtue and gift. Hope and fear, whether as irascible passions in the sensitive appetite or as infused virtue and gift, have in common their orientation towards a future, difficult object, for hope a good to be attained, for fear an evil to be avoided. In the Scriptum, Thomas describes the infused virtue of hope as that of looking to the future arduously attained good of beatitude in eternal life with certitude of expectation; it is a theological virtue, for that beatitude is God himself.50 The gift of filial fear, 50. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 26 q. 2 a. 2: “Spes de ratione sua dicit extensionem appetitus in aliquod arduum, quod non omnino excedit facultatem sperantis. Ea enim quae excedunt, et velut excedentia apprehenduntur, desperationem magis quam spem faciunt; unde secundum hoc quod inest alicui facultas in aliquod arduum, secundum hoc est inclinatio in illud arduum; et ideo in illud arduum quod proportionatur facultati naturae sensitivae, inclinatio sensitivi appetitus spem facit, quae est passio; in illud vero arduum quod proportionatur naturae intellectivae, inclinatio illius facit spem, quae est actus voluntatis. Sed quia est aliquod arduum quod excedit facultatem naturae, ad quod homo per gratiam potest pervenire, scilicet ipse Deus, inquantum est nostra beatitudo; ideo oportet quod ex aliquo dono gratuito naturae superaddito fiat inclinatio in illud arduum; et illud donum est habitus spei et quia habet objectum ipsum Deum, ideo oportet quod sit virtus theologica: et ideo in secunda definitione spei quam Magister ponit, exprimitur tota ratio spei secundum quod est virtus theologica. Expectatio enim, ut ex dictis patet, proprie loquendo, dicit extensionem appetitus in aliquod arduum; certa autem dicit completionem praedictae extensionis, et quasi determinationem; et in hoc completur ratio spei absolute. Objectum autem quod facit spem esse theologicam virtutem, est futura beatitudo. Illud autem unde est facultas perveniendi in finem istum, est gratia, et merita, sive accipiatur gratia pro divina liberalitate, sive pro dono gratuito.” On Thomas’s treatment of hope in the context of the history of medieval thought on this virtue, see Bougerol, La théologie de l’espérance, especially 277–89. In the Scriptum, Bougerol observes, Thomas locates the certitude of hope in the “divine liberality ordaining us to the end” (see Scriptum bk. 3 d. 26 q. 2 a. 4); Bougerol, 285.



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as we have seen, causes one to avoid the evil of fault by which one might be separated from God, considering “all things as rubbish” out of reverence for the divine majesty.51 Their common importance in the Expositio derives from the futurity of their objects; both have evident roles in the human response to God’s providential plan for rewards and punishments in a future life. Job’s trials are an exemplary proving ground, especially for filial fear and hope, for he is tested precisely by allowing him to suffer in such a way that he would be tempted to give poor witness to the plan of God’s providence by seeming to show attachment to temporal goods over future spiritual ones, even though the latter are attained only with difficulty. Job’s second trial of bodily affliction tests the right intention of his fear at a deeper level than the loss of his worldly possessions and even of his children; does he love God more than his own body? Thomas remarks that this will be a “perfect demonstration of Job’s virtue,” showing Job’s intention to order rightly the threefold human good, in which “the body is for the sake of the soul, while external things are for the sake of the body and soul.”52 Thomas argues elsewhere that, especially for corrupt human nature, such a rightly ordered state, in which passions are properly subordinated to reason, can only be brought about by grace.53 Thomas states his preference for the Peripatetic view of the role of passions in the human response to temporal suffering: while the Stoics argued that the wise man should suffer no sadness over the loss of external goods, the Peripatetics held that such goods, though not principal, are ordered to the good of the mind, so the wise man may be saddened over their loss in a way moderated by reason.54 Job’s suffering in this second trial is again so extreme as to make him seem to be specially punished by God; Thomas emphasizes that it is only exacerbated by the “exasperating words” of his wife and the 51. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 34 q. 1 a. 2; q. 2 a. 1 qc. 2. 52. Super Job, 2:1. 53. See, e.g., ST I, q. 95, a. 1; cf. ST I-II, q. 82, a. 3; q. 85, a. 5; q. 109. 54. Super Job, 1:20 and 3:1. It is interesting to note that Thomas makes a similar argument against the “Stoics” about Christ’s reasonable suffering in the ST III, q. 46, a. 6 ad 2.

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arguments of his friends.55 Yet Thomas underlines throughout that Job’s experience of suffering is ruled by reason. Job’s first response is silence, to show, Thomas says, that when he did speak, he was not driven by passion. But since the wise reasonably express their passions by speaking, Job then speaks openly of the misery he experiences and abhors in the lower part of his soul. The discourse of passion in Chapter Three expresses the natural fear and sadness Job feels in the face of evils, but even in the midst of this bitter lament, Thomas thinks, Job’s words, “For I would now be silent in sleep,” hint at an underlying hope: “he calls death sleep, indeed, because of the hope of resurrection, about which he will speak more fully later.” His words imply a belief in the afterlife: “one should consider that since to rest only belongs to what subsists, from these he gives us to understand that man subsists after death in his soul.”56 At this point in the narrative, however, Job is not engaged in a discourse of reason, which might take account of future merit for present suffering, but speaks according to “his sensual part, expressing his feeling, which has room only for the present corporeal goods and evils.”57 For Thomas, it is reasonable for Job to lament his misery, yet its intensity crowds out the possibility of articulating the hope in future good which he possesses in a still hidden manner. In the course of the debate into which Job enters with his friends, the discourse of reason gains the upper hand, and Job is provoked into expressing more clearly his faith in an afterlife, the basis for his theological hope. Thomas identifies the objections of Eliphaz, Job’s first interlocutor, specifically, as accusations against Job of presumption and despair—sins against hope—and of impatience, a vice associated with lack of hope. Job must be impatient because of his complaint, presumptuous because he claimed innocence, and despairing because he said he hated his present life of suffering. However, the mistaken premise of Eliphaz, as of Job’s other friends, is that 55. Super Job, 2:9. 56. Super Job, 3:13. 57. Ibid.



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the adversities of this world do not come to anyone except as punishment for sins and conversely, prosperities for the merit of justice. Hence, in his opinion, it seems unfitting that anyone innocent should perish temporally or that anyone upright, that is, just in virtue, should be destroyed through the loss of temporal glory, which he believed to be the reward of justice.58

While Eliphaz correctly argues that everything in the world is ruled by divine providence and that God rewards and punishes justly, he is limited by his temporal perspective. Thomas observes that if one looks at adversity in this way, the suffering person must be unjust for God to be just in punishing him, and so a protestation of innocence amounts to a presumptuous claim that one is more just than God.59 After rebuking Job for his presumption, Eliphaz offers consolation for his apparent desperation by proposing that Job’s temporal prosperity will at last return after he is corrected by the Lord.60 Job’s refutation of these charges of sins against hope, as of the other faults of which he is accused, will be grounded in his exemplary faith that God’s providential plan extends into the afterlife, and so in his teaching that the object of hope—and its consolation—is not in this life but the next, not anything temporal but God himself. Thomas’s analysis of the literal meaning of the text of the debate between Job and his friends is thus structured at the outset as an argument not only for the eternal extent of providence, but, among other things, as a demonstration of how that perspective is the foundation of the virtue of hope. In this framework, Thomas understands even what seems to be Job’s desperate desire for death (“who would grant . . . that he . . . may himself destroy me?” [6:9]) to be evidence of his filial fear, which makes him value witness to God’s justice over his own life, and so moves him to begin to articulate his faith and hope in life after death. Although Job protests his innocence from any sin proportionate to his adversity throughout the debate with his friends, and although 58. Super Job, 4:7 59. Super Job, 4:17 60. Super Job, 5:17–18.

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his sadness was reasonably expressed, he still, according to Thomas, had the greatest worry and fear, prompting him to guard himself against sadness, lest he be led by sadness into some vice. To avoid this, he preferred death, and to express this he says, “what my soul did not want to touch before are now food in my anguish.”61 Job’s preference that God destroy him in death, so that he can escape his affliction, is motivated by a filial fear of offending God out of weakness: Job shows why he wishes for this, adding “And let me not contradict the speeches of the Holy One,” that is the speeches of God which are the judgments or sentences by which he has afflicted me. For Job feared that by his many afflictions he might be led into impatience, so that his reason might not be able to repress his sadness.62

The willingness of Thomas’s Job to die rather than offend God is born of filial fear. It leads him to begin to articulate more fully his faith that life does not end with death, and therefore to reach out in hope for eternal life. When Job says that “man’s life on earth is a campaign, and like the day of the hired worker is his day” (7:1), he wants to show, Thomas argues, that “man’s present life does not have in it the ultimate end,” but is like that of soldiers or workers who strive towards an end; this life is motion rather than rest, a journey rather than an end. The very insufficiency of earthly prosperity as a final end leads human desire to “stretch (tendit) into the future,” on account of the afflictions of the present and “the defect of the perfect final good which one does not have here.”63 Chardonnens provides a helpful discussion of the way in which Thomas employs the notion of “stretching (tension) towards the ulti61. Super Job, 6:7. 62. Super Job, 6:9. 63. Super Job, 7:1. A traditional interpretation: Gregory, Moralia on Job 8.7: “The hired worker longs for his days to pass more quickly, so that he may reach the reward of his labors without delay; so the days of a man of true and eternal wisdom are rightly compared to the days of a hired worker, because he considers the present life to be the way, not the fatherland; a battle, not the palm; and he sees that he is farther away from his reward, the more slowly he comes to his end” [PL 75: 0808B].



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mate end,” which is proper to hope, in the Expositio.64 He examines another passage, Thomas’s treatment of Job 9:25–26.65 Here Thomas presents Job as an example of “those who do not place their end in the prosperity of this world but tend towards another end.” For such people, three things are necessary: “first, that they not fix their heart on anything else by which they can be retarded from their end but hasten to achieve the end”; because Job’s intention is toward the “true good,” he does not seek present reward.66 Chardonnens comments on this requirement that it “outlines the horizon of the human condition,”67 noting that Job’s intention towards the “true good” of spiritual happiness, in which lesser temporal goods must be ordained to higher ones lest they become obstacles, finds echoes in the “negative ascending steps” of Thomas’s discussion of the true happiness of man in his systematic works.68 Second, Thomas says, “one who is tending to some end must acquire for himself those things by which he can reach it”; Job has accumulated virtues by which he reaches toward the end, rather than unstable fortunes.69 Chardonnens observes that in the perspective of the moral life, which must seek God as the “summit and source of the hierarchy of goods,” the importance of the practice of these virtues emerges, especially in the 64. Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de providence, 169–75. Bougerol associates this “protensio” of hope with the expectant waiting (l’attente), understood, along with confidence, to be one of the two “constitutive elements of hope” by twelfth-century theologians: This kind of waiting “does not designate a passive attitude of repose ‘in waiting’; it is an active striking forward (démarche), an energetic movement (élan), a ‘protensio’” (La théologie de l’espérance, 279); Thomas refers to the expectant protensio of hope in Scriptum bk. 3 d. 26 q. 1 a. 3 ad 3: “Ad primum ergo dicendum, quod, sicut supra dictum est . . . expectare importat protensionem appetitus in aliquid cum quiete privante fugam vel recessum. Haec autem quies contingit ex difficultate ejus in quod motus appetitus tendit, sed non in promptu est ut habeatur: quod enim in promptu est, sine mora acquiritur. Et quia bonum cum difficultate, proprie est objectum irascibilis, ideo expectare proprie ad irascibilem pertinet tendentem in aliquod bonum. Habet autem se ad spem sicut commune ad proprium, inquantum spes addit certitudinem circa expectationem.” 65. “My days have been swifter than a foot-racer; they have fled and have not seen the good; they have passed like ships carrying fruit, just like an eagle flying toward food.” 66. Super Job, 9:25. 67. Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de providence, 171. 68. Ibid., 172. 69. Super Job, 9:26.

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case of the theological virtues, above all charity, which bring one directly to the end.70 Thomas identifies the third requirement as “the acquiring of the end.”71 Chardonnens notes, with reference to Thomas’s exposition of Job 28, which will be discussed below, that the final achievement of the end already to some extent belongs in this life to the just, who have come to a participation in divine wisdom.72 Chardonnens’s observations are valuable because they help to explain Thomas’s “eschatological perspective” on the book of Job.73 Thomas’s Job is willing to forgo even the temporal good of life in order to stretch out to the ultimate end, because he is not only like a soldier or worker waiting for his pay, he is a pilgrim on the earth. Thomas observes that the more sorrow one has on earth, the more one “is always tending toward the future through desire”; so Job, “to show that this desire is powerfully in him . . . adds, ‘and I will be full of pains until dark,’ because of which pains the present time is made tedious for me and I desire the future more.”74 Therefore, when Job says that his days “have been consumed without hope” (7:6), he means, without hope of returning to his former days. Although human eyes will not see him again, Job says to God, “Your eyes will be upon me” (7:8); Thomas explains that he means: “for the dead are clearly seen by God, who looks upon spiritual things, since the dead live according to the spirit, not according to the flesh which man can look upon.”75 This eschatological perspective also shapes Thomas’s interpretation of Job’s words of apparent despair in 7:15–16 (“Therefore, my soul has chosen hanging and my bones have chosen death. I 70. Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de providence, 174. 71. Super Job, 9:26. 72. Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de providence, 175. 73. Ibid. 74. Super Job, 7:4. Thomas may have drawn this notion of Job’s “stretching out” from Gregory’s Moralia on Job 8.9: “For in the night, day is sought, in the day, evening is desired; for such pain will not let the things before one be pleasing, and while the mind is affected by present experience, it is always stretching out (tendit) to something in expectation as if by a consoling desire. But because the afflicted mind is drawn out by appetite, and yet its pain, even though seduced by desire, is not ended, it is rightly added, ‘I will be filled with pains until dark’” [PL 75: 0812CD]. 75. Super Job, 7:8.



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have despaired; to no avail will I live longer”). Thomas says that Job intends to show by a “deduction to unfitting (conclusions)” the insufficiency of earthly prosperity as the object of hope proposed by Eliphaz.76 If Job were to rely on that false consolation, “since that hope is frivolous . . . he would have to remain in sadness, to utter words of sorrow, and to despair completely.”77 When Job says, “I have despaired: to no avail will I live longer,” he means that such a hope of earthly prosperity would lead to despair; rather, Job “shows what remains to him to be hoped for from God, namely, that the trial imposed on him may cease, and so he says, ‘Spare me, Lord,’ as if to say: I have given up hope of earthly prosperity; it is sufficient that you spare me, that is, that you cease scourging me.”78 Indeed, the very fact that God delays in sparing Job is witness to a future life in which God will bring about just judgment.79 Thomas reads Job’s seeming statements of despair at this point in the story in light of what he holds to be the meaning of the whole text, which, hidden here for rhetorical purposes, will later become manifest. In these passages, Thomas thinks, Job “proceeds in the manner of a debater,” speaking hypothetically “from the position of his adversaries [that there is no life after this one], before the truth is manifested”; but later, he “will manifestly indicate the truth of the resurrection.”80 Thomas’s claim that Job’s desperate words apply only to a loss of hope for this life but demonstrate his desire for a higher one, while it might seem on the surface to turn the literal sense on its head, is adopted from traditional readings of the text. Gregory the Great, for instance, in the Moralia on Job, comments on 7:16 that “the holy man, his mind divided from earthly desires . . . says, ‘I have despaired, I will not live any longer,’ since for a just man ‘to despair’ is to desert the things of the present life, by the choice of the goods of eternity, to seek what will remain, and to put no trust in temporal pos76. Super Job, 7:11. 77. Ibid. 78. Super Job, 7:16. 79. Super Job, 7:18. 80. Super Job, 7:7; 7:21; 10:21.

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sessions.”81 Certain key passages in the Vulgate text—especially, as we will see, Job 19:25–27—govern Thomas’s reading of the whole. As noted in the introduction, for instance, for Thomas, Job’s declaration in 13:15 (“even though he kills me I will hope in him”) proves Job’s hope in God is not affected by the temporal evils he suffers. Job means by this, “if my hope were in God because of temporal goods only I would be forced to despair—as he said above ‘I have despaired’ [7:16]—but since my hope is in God because of spiritual goods which remain after death, even if he afflicts me to the point of killing me the hope which I have in him will not cease.”82 Likewise, in defending himself from the derision of his friends, the biblical Job says, “Someone who is derided by his friends, like I am, will call on God and he will hear him” (12:4). Thomas explains that this is because “where human help is absent, divine help is maximally present,” so that his Job goes on to add, “I do not have to wait longer to pray faithfully because by the fact that my friends deride me, I am given the hope of having recourse to God.”83 Texts like these are thus for Thomas a hermeneutical key to reading 7:16 and others, which seem to say quite the opposite. Job’s rebuttal of his friends’ false dogmas about life after death leads him to more positive assertions as he begins to “posit his own opinion about resurrection” in Chapter 14.84 Although “man’s days are brief ” (14:5) in the present life, Job “premises the expectation of a second life when he says, ‘Withdraw a little while from him so that he may rest until his wished-for day may come, even as the days of the hired worker’ (14:6).” By this, Thomas says, Job means that God 81. Gregory, Moralia on Job, 8.26 [PL 75: 0829C]. 82. Super Job, 13:15. Thomas’s later Commentary on Romans refers to Job 13:15 as an example for Rom 15:4: “For whatever things were written were written for our learning, that, through patience and the consolation of the Scriptures, we might have hope.” Job is given as a model of patience and hope’s consolation: “For as we are instructed by sacred Scripture that whoever sustained tribulations from God patiently was divinely consoled, we receive hope and are also consoled, if we will be patient in the same things. Jb 13:15: ‘Even if he kills me, I will hope in him’” (Sup. Rom. ch. 15, lect. 1 [1148]). 83. Super Job, 12:4. 84. Super Job, 14:13.



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withdraws when he takes away the present life, but “man’s death is not everlasting; he will be restored again to immortal life”; so, “from men who perish such that they may rise again,” God withdraws “for a moderate time.”85 Thomas interpolates a dense succession of intralinear glosses on Job’s words in the scriptural text to show that Job’s desire for this resurrection is evident and that it will be fulfilled by God: “Who will grant me that” even after death “You would protect me in hell,” that is, that you would hold me under the special care with which you protect men, “until your fury passes,” that is, the time of death. . . . Now he explains how he wishes to be protected even in hell, adding, “and you determine a time for me in which you will remember me?” . . . To determine a time in which God may remember a man who has died, then, is nothing other than to determine the time of resurrection.86

Thomas’s Job confidently expects the wished-for end to his campaign on earth, “a life in which he would not battle but triumph and reign; therefore, he says, ‘I wait for my relief to come.’” This relief is not into another natural life but into a future one by divine power. As noted above, Thomas uses this verse in his commentary on Romans as an illustration of the graced person who, like God’s unfinished work of art, “waits for the revelation of the sons of God” (Rom 8:19). Job adds: “[T]o the work of your hands you will stretch forth your right hand,” as if to say: The man who rises again will not be the work of nature but the work of your power, to which work, indeed, you will stretch forth your assisting right hand when, by the help of your grace, he will be exalted into the glory of newness.87

Later in the debate, after this confession of the power of God’s helping grace, and impatient with the false consolation of his “wordy friends” who offer him the hope of renewed temporal prosperity, Job professes in the clearest terms yet his desire for the true object of his hope: 85. Super Job, 14:6. 86. Super Job, 14:13. 87. Super Job, 14:14–15.

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My consolation is not in recovering my temporal goods but in obtaining the enjoyment of God, and so he adds, “my eye pours out for God,” (16:21) that is, it weeps with desire for God, according to Psalm 41:4 [Vulgate]: “My tears were my bread day and night, while it was said to me daily, ‘Where is your God?’”88

In the Summa theologiae, Thomas will say that the same psalm verse describes the sorrow mixed with joy of those who, considering God’s goodness with devotion, still do not yet enjoy him fully.89 Job, Thomas explains, desires to stand in God’s presence and “know the reasons for the divine works and judgments in which human happiness consists, in the hope of which was his consolation.”90 Job wishes to be “perfectly set next to God (17:3) with his mind in the state of . . . ultimate happiness in which he cannot suffer from temptations”; his example of “hope for spiritual goods” opposes true “spiritual teaching” to his friends’ false doctrine.91 At this point in the narrative, spurred on by the opposition of his interlocutors, Thomas’s Job—although he still experiences suffering in his passions—looks up with desirous expectation to eternal happiness with God and so is consoled in spite of his affliction. As Eleonore Stump notes, for Thomas such consolation in the midst of suffering comes from the Holy Spirit.92 She quotes from Thomas’s commentary on Galatians 5:22 on the fruits of the Spirit, the works of virtue which flow from grace and give delight. Charity, joy, and peace perfect one inwardly with respect to good things; Thomas groups patience and longanimity (or long-suffering) as the fruits by which the Holy Spirit “perfects and orders” one against evils suffered: First, against the evil that disturbs peace, which is disturbed by adversities. In this, the Holy Spirit perfects one by patience, which makes one tolerate 88. Super Job, 16:21. 89. ST II-II, q. 82, a. 4. 90. Super Job, 16:21. 91. Super Job, 17:3. 92. Eleonore Stump, “Aquinas on the Suffering of Job,” in Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, ed. Stump (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 328–57, at 352.



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adversities patiently. . . . Second, against the evil which hinders joy, namely, the delay of the thing loved, to which the Spirit opposes longanimity, which is not broken by expectation.93

In the Scriptum Thomas explains that hope is the principle of patience and longanimity, which share the expectation of God’s help in attaining the future difficult good.94 In the Summa contra Gentiles, as noted in the introduction, Thomas writes that it is especially the virtue of hope, flowing from the grace of the Holy Spirit, that allows one to bear present burdens, by giving the solace of future happiness.95 And this consolation is given to those whom the Spirit makes friends of God, for “it is especially in our sorrows that we hasten to our friends for consolation.” So “through the Holy Spirit we have joy in God and security against all the world’s adversities and assaults.”96 Thomas’s Job receives little consolation from his earthly friends who offer empty promises of renewed temporal prosperity; his hope of being “set next to God” in future happiness anchors his patience, which waits on God’s providence.97 This is the expectation “in which Job had his consolation in the midst of bitter things.”98 Thomas’s insistent glossing of the text to demonstrate Job’s faith in God’s providential plan for life after death prepares the way for Job’s increasingly explicit expression of the eschatological object of theological hope and the demonstration in his own person of hope’s transformative power, as the lesson of his exemplary fraternal correction. Thomas locates Job’s clearest declaration of theological hope in 93. Super Epistolam ad Galatas Lectura, in Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, vol. 1, ed. R. Cai (Rome: Marietti, 1953) ch. 5, lect 6 [328]. 94. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 26 q. 2 a. 2 ad 3: “The expectation of patience is the expectation of divine help in danger; the expectation of longanimity is the expectation of divine help in laborious actions directed to obtaining some arduous good. From this it is clear that the expectation of patience and longanimity participate in the expectation of hope, as virtues participate in those prior to them.” 95. ScG 3.153.4. 96. ScG 4.22.3. 97. Super Job, 17:15. 98. Super Job, 17:3.

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19:23–27, a text claimed by many patristic and medieval Christian exegetes to be a prophecy of Christ’s redemption and future resurrection, based on the Vulgate text:99 Who would grant that my speeches be written down? Who would grant me that they be engraved in a book with an iron stylus, or on a sheet of lead, or certainly that they be carved on flint? For I know that my redeemer lives, and on the last day I will rise from the earth. And I will be surrounded by my own skin again and in my flesh I will see God, whom I myself am going to see and my eyes are going to behold, and no one else. This hope of mine is stored up in my breast.

Because Job is about to say “great and wonderful and certain things,” he asks that his speeches be written down, so that they will be “perpetuated in the faith of posterity.” Job will be a witness not only to his friends but to believers for all time. Job’s (natural) hope 99. E.g., Gregory considered this to be the literal interpretation of the text (Moralia in Job 14.67–77); the Gloss on this passage records this opinion. The Gloss also quotes Chrysostom’s commentary on this text, in which he says that “the resurrection of the body is openly attested.” Yocum discusses Thomas’s traditional reading of the passage, which is “not without its interpretive difficulties, both in understanding the meaning of the underlying Hebrew term goel, which the Vulgate here translates redemptor, and in determining whom Job is calling upon” (Yocum, “Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” 35–36). Yocum refers to the work of Robert Gordis ( The Book of Job: Commentary, New Translation, and Special Studies [New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1978]), who points out that while modern exegetes are in consensus that “the passage does not refer to resurrection after death” (528), some “older Jewish and Christian exegetes saw in 19.25 and the following an affirmation of faith in bodily resurrection” (204), owing to different possible readings of the text, including that of Job 13:15 discussed above (“Even though he kills me, I will hope in him”). Matthew Levering discusses the difficulty presented by Thomas’s reliance on the Vulgate text, no longer accepted by modern scholarship, noting the helpful insight of Jon Levenson into the resolution of Job’s suffering. Levenson sees in the book the message that Job was “wrong to doubt that a blessed future could lie beyond his affliction,” for “current affliction is no disproof of future redemption” ( Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006], 70–71). Levering argues that although Levenson does not think, like Aquinas, that Job knows there will be a resurrection of the dead, “for both Levenson and Aquinas, the hopelessness and gloom that Job experiences can only be answered by encountering the God who providentially and eschatologically will restore all things in justice” (Matthew Levering, “Aquinas on the Book of Job: Providence and Presumption,” in The Providence of God, eds. Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip G. Ziegler [New York: T&T Clark, 2009], 7–33, at 22).



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of recovering temporal prosperity, whether by human or divine help, has been taken away “as if from an uprooted tree” (19:10), but now Job “manifestly discloses his intention, showing that he had not said the things before as if despairing of God but because he bore a higher hope in him, related not to present but to future goods.”100 The words which Job wants to be preserved must be engraved on lasting materials because they will not be fulfilled until the end of time. And Job holds these memorable words “for certain”: “Therefore, he says expressly, ‘For I know,’ namely, through the certitude of faith. Now this hope is in the glory of future resurrection, concerning which he first assigns a reason when he says, ‘my redeemer lives.’” Job’s “higher hope” of future good is specifically in a future resurrection on the last day, made possible by Christ, his redeemer who lives “yesterday and today and for all ages” (Heb 13:8).101 The certitude of Job’s faith and hope, at first hidden and overshadowed by the expression of his sensible suffering, is now fully expressed in a prophetic utterance. In these words, Thomas says, Job “foresaw through the spirit of faith” that the human race would be redeemed from sin by Christ’s death and would receive life through his Resurrection. Quoting John 5:25 (“The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear it will live, for just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted to the Son to have life in himself ”), Thomas concludes, “the life of the Son of God, therefore, is the principal cause of the resurrection of man.”102 Wilhelmus Valkenberg notes that although the commentary, as an expositio ad litteram, generally makes limited reference to other scriptural texts, in this section Thomas places a number of New Testament quotations, for he takes the prophetic theological meaning of Job’s words to be the literal sense.103 Franklin Harkins, discussing the significant 100. Super Job, 19:23. 101. Super Job, 19:25. 102. Ibid. 103. Valkenberg, Words of the Living God, 181–82: “As a theologian, Aquinas proceeds from the assumption that there can be no contradiction in God’s revelation through Scripture; because of his higher hope in God, Job truly foresaw future redemption by

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role of Christ in the Expositio, points out that Job 19:25–27 has a specifically Christological meaning for Thomas, who focuses in this section of the commentary on the themes of Christ’s redemptive death, Job’s faith and hope in Christ’s redemption, and bodily resurrection.104 Harkins correlates this text to the Summa theologiae’s treatment of these themes, noting that “it is Job who provides scriptural confirmation” for Thomas’s argument there that Christ’s resurrection was fitting because it raises our hope.105 Thomas explains in ST III, q. 53, a. 1 that “when we consider the resurrection of Christ, who is our head, we hope that we too will rise,” quoting Job 19:25– 27 as witness to the hope of resurrection born of faith: “Job 19 says, ‘I know,’ namely, through the certitude of faith, ‘that my redeemer,’ that is, Christ, ‘lives,’ rising again from death, ‘and’ therefore ‘on the last day I will rise from the earth; this hope of mine is stored up in my breast.’”106 Harkins points out that Thomas attributes the same “certitude of faith” to Job in the Expositio, where a “pattern of faith followed by hope (which is in turn followed by love) reflects what Thomas takes to be the order of generation of the theological virtues.”107 It is interesting to note that Thomas’s use of Job 19:25–27 in his mature Summa, specifically as a witness to the way the resurrection inspires hope, seems to be a development from his earlier works and so may have been influenced by his work on the Expositio. Thomas’s parallel treatment of Christ’s resurrection in the Scriptum includes neither the argument that it raises our hope, nor the text from Job 19:25–27,108 although Job is quoted quite often in the work as a whole, including reference to these verses.109 Job 19:25–27—without, howthe Son of God who is the same yesterday, today and in the future. The literal sense of his words, therefore, is their theological sense.” 104. Harkins, “Christ and the Eternal Extent of Divine Providence,” 140. 105. Harkins, “Christ and the Eternal Extent of Divine Providence,” 142. 106. ST III, q. 53, a. 1. 107. Harkins, “Christ and the Eternal Extent of Divine Providence,” 142. 108. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 21 q. 2 a. 1; this is only one among a number of differences in a treatment that is considerably less developed than in the ST. 109. 1196 times, according to the Index Thomisticus (ed. Roberto Busa, SJ; available



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ever, the final part of verse 27, which refers to Job’s hope—appears a number of times both in the Scriptum and in the Summa contra Gentiles to reject heretical opinions about the truth and manner of the resurrection, particularly its bodily and yet glorified nature, as well as about the way in which resurrected eyes will see God.110 Gregory the Great himself in the Moralia on Job had underlined that these verses refute errors such as that of his opponent Eutyches of Constantinople, who held that resurrected bodies would not be truly corporeal, and Thomas quotes him explicitly in the Scriptum.111 Thomas argues in the Expositio too that by Job’s foretelling of a resurrection that will be both corporeal and spiritual, in his own body made incorruptible, he excludes several erroneous opinions about the manner of the resurrection, including that of Eutyches (though anonymous here). Job’s confident claim that he will “see God” with his own eyes refutes Porphyry’s Platonic view that the soul must flee the body in order to do so.112 Job’s flesh made incorruptible “will in no way impede the soul from being able to see God but will be entirely subject to it,” the eyes of his body sharing in the vision as they “see God made man” and “the glory of God shining in his creation.”113 Up to this point in the Expositio, Thomas’s arguments about the resurrection are similar to those made with reference to 19:25–27 in his early systematic works, but here he continues his exegesis of the passage, which culminates in Job’s expression of the certain hope that arises from these considerations: online at the Corpus Thomisticum website, ed. Enrique Alarcón, SJ, for the Fundación Tomás de Aquino, at Corpusthomisticum.org). 110. Scriptum, bk. 4 d. 43 q. 1 a. 1 qc. 1; d. 44 q. 1 a. 1 qc. 1 s.c. 1; d. 44 q. 1 a. 1 qc. 1 co.; d. 44 q. 2 a. 2 qc. 1 co.; ScG 4. 79.9; 84.8. 111. Book 14.72; Thomas refers to Gregory’s rejection of this opinion and his quote of Job 19:25–26 in Scriptum, bk. 4 d. 44 q. 1 a. 1 qc. 1; cf. Scriptum, bk. 4 d. 44 q. 2 a. 2 qc. 6 s.c. 2. 112. Super Job, 19:26–27. Cf. Scriptum, bk. 4 d. 43 q. 1 a. 1 qc. 1 co; ST I-II, q. 4, a. 6. 113. Thomas states that he draws from Augustine’s City of God (22.29) in the latter quote, but the first may draw from Hugh of St. Cher’s Postilla on Job 19:26’s “I will see God”: “Salvatorem meum venientem ad judicium in forma Deitatis, oculis mentis; in forma humanitatis, oculis carnis.” Postilla Hugonis de Sancto Charo, 8 volumes, ed. N. Pezzana (Venice, 1703), 422. Available from www.glossae.net (Gloses et commentaires de la Bible au moyen âge).

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These things having been premised about the cause of the resurrection, the time and manner, and the glory of the one rising and his identity, he adds, “This hope of mine is stored up in my breast,” as if to say: My hope is not in earthly things which you vainly promise but in the future glory of the resurrection. He expressly says, “is stored up in my breast” to show that he did not only have this hope in words but hidden in his heart, not doubtful but most firm, not as if it were cheap but as something most precious, for what is hidden in the breast is held in secret, is firmly preserved, and is considered dear.114

Thomas’s reading of this verse to mean that Job’s hope is “most firm” may also be derived from Gregory, who, in a passage which became a source for the Gloss, presents Job’s hope, arising from his faith in Christ’s glorious Resurrection, as an antidote to the doubt and despair resulting from erroneous opinions: The holy man joins to the assurance of resurrection by which he has hope, the certitude with which he awaits it. It goes on: “This hope of mine is stored up in my breast.” Job is most certain about his resurrection. We believe we hold nothing more certainly than what we have in our breast. Therefore, he held his hope stored up in his breast because he had already established true certitude in hope of the resurrection.115 114. Super Job, 19:27. 115. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, Book XIV, ch. 17–18 [PL 75: 1080C]. The Glossa ordinaria quotes Gregory with an interlinear gloss, “Hoc est mihi certissimum,” and a marginal gloss, “Nihil enim nos certius habere credimus, quam quod in sinu tenemus. In sinu ergo spem reposita tenuit, quia vera certitudine de spe resurrectionis praesumpsit” (Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria, 4 vols., ed. Adolf Rusch [Strasbourg, 1480/1481]). Thomas’s reference to the secrecy of Job’s hope may suggest a reading of the Postillae of Hugh of St. Cher, who draws himself from the Gloss: “‘This hope of mine is stored up in my breast,’ that is, in the secret of the heart, as if he says, this is most certain to me, for we believe nothing more certainly than that what which we hold in our breast” (Postilla Hugonis, 422). In relation to the certitude of hope in general, Peter Lombard’s two definitions of hope in Sent. bk. 3 d. 26 ch. 1 as “the virtue by which spiritual and eternal goods are hoped for, that is, awaited (expectantur) with trust” and “the certain expectation of future beatitude, coming from the grace of God and preceding merits” were influential in the Middle Ages and have been the subject of scholarly discussion; see Bougerol, La théologie de l’espérance, 76–99, 101–23, 200–206; Joseph Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action: ‘Merit’ in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 132–35.



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For Thomas, the certainty of Job’s hope in future glory counters the despair arising not only from erroneous opinions about the resurrection but also from misplaced hope in earthly reward. Job shows “the height of the hope which he had in God,” proving to his friends that they were wrong to think that he had “cast away hope in and fear of God since he was not putting hope in temporal things.”116 Job was not despairing; on the contrary, his trust in God’s providence is proven by his hope in the “future glory of the resurrection,” based on faith that his “redeemer lives.” Thomas’s narrative treatment in the Expositio, in the context of his exegesis of the entire passage and perhaps a renewed reading of Gregory, adds to his discussion of the resurrection a consideration of the certain hope it engenders, compared to his earlier systematic works, possibly contributing to his later inclusion of this theme and the supporting full quotation of Job 19:25–27 in the Summa theologiae. In Thomas’s later commentary on Colossians, too, Job 19:27 is an authority for the certitude of hope, glossing Colossians 1:5 (“For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven”), where Paul enumerates the faith, hope, and love in which, Thomas says, “our good principally consists”: it consists in hope “because of your eternal glory, which is called hope because it is held as certain: ‘this hope is stored up in my heart,’ Job 19:27.”117 In the context of the Expositio’s description of the transformation of Job’s discourse, the declaration of his firm faith, hope, and fear of God, elicited in the course of rational debate, is the clearest evidence yet of his “perfect virtue.” His integrated state, in which bodily passions are subjected to his soul, itself docile to grace, anticipates the perfect subjection of his glorified body to his soul in the resurrection, when, we can infer, he will be able to “cling to God with his mind” as a perfectly ordered servus amoris.

116. Super Job, 19:28. 117. Super Epistolam ad Colossenses Lectura, in Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, vol. 1, ed. R. Cai (Rome: Marietti, 1953), ch. 1, lect. 2 [11].

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Job’s troubles are far from over after he openly declares his firm hope in God, but this hope becomes the evidence of his justice, the spiritual gold manifesting his virtue to others by proof in the fire.118 As he continues to debate with his friends, in order to “convert them totally to the true opinion” about temporal prosperity and adversity,119 Job contrasts the hope of the just in eternal life with its lack in the unjust, who trust only in earthly goods. The impious who may “spend all the days of their lives in prosperity”120 have not merited their temporal goods, for they reject knowledge and love of God, asking “what does it profit us if we adore him?” (21:15), a question which, Thomas says, “pertains to contempt for prayer because of a lack of hope.”121 But even though the unjust may be rich, their prosperity is not really in their power, since such wealth can fail; the only goods which are truly in the hands of a man are “voluntary works of virtue of which he is master through free will aided by the grace of God,” works which can always be retained by the just.122 For this reason, “the adversity of the impious man is graver than that of the just, since when a just person suffers temporal adversity there remains to him the support of virtue and consolation in God; hence, he is not totally dissipated.”123 But the impious are like “ashes which the whirlwind scatters”; they “cannot resist when adversity comes since they lack the support of divine hope, and they are scattered by diverse thoughts, lacking the moisture of virtue.”124 Job’s stable hope in spiritual reward is itself a sign of his justice, and the support of his strength. Having established that Job receives consolation from his hope 118. Cf., Super Job, 23:10. 119. Super Job, 21:2. 120. Super Job, 21:13. 121. Super Job, 21:15. 122. Super Job, 21:16. 123. Super Job, 21:17. 124. Super Job, 21:18.



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in the midst of adversity, Thomas reiterates further on that temporal goods, in addition to their fragility, are “of little value without the hope of just men which the holy have.”125 In fact, Thomas explains, the impious are deprived of two hopes which belong to the just, for the text says of the impious person, “Will God hear his cry when anguish comes over him? Or will he be able to delight in the Almighty and invoke God at all times?” (27:9–10). But the just have hope, first, that “in time of necessity God will hear their prayer,” and second, that because of their love of God, “when they are lacking in temporal consolation in the time of tribulation they may enjoy divine delight and be delighted in his praise.”126 Both hopes of the just—first, that God will assist them in their need, and second, that they will enjoy God—are expressed in acts of prayer, which Thomas in a number of his works describes as the fitting way given in providence to human beings “of obtaining what they hope for from God.”127 While the impious despise prayer because they have no hope, prayer transforms the one who prays by increasing humility and desire for God and “makes us intimate” with God by a familiar affection that increases hopeful confidence in him.128 Paul Murray, commenting on Thomas’s late Postilla super Psalmos, notes his emphasis on the theme of God’s goodness and “the hope or confidence which that goodness inspires in the one attempting to pray.”129 In his exegesis of Vulgate Psalm 32:20–22, Thomas refers to Job as an example of both patience in suffering (on “our soul waits for the Lord” Ps 32:20) and of hope in future blessing (on “in him our hearts will rejoice,” Ps 32:21), defining prayer as “the interpreter of hope,” inspired by confidence in God’s mercy.130 125. Super Job, 27:8. 126. Super Job, 27:8–10. 127. Comp. theol. 2.2; cf. ScG 3.95. 128. Ibid.; cf. ST II-II, q. 83, a. 2 129. Paul Murray, Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism and Poetry (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 142. 130. Super Psalmos, in Opera omnia, Vol. 14: In psalmos Davidis expositio (Parma: Typis Petri Fiaccadori, 1863). Sup. Ps. 32, no. 17; Murray, Aquinas at Prayer, 144.

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Job’s prayerful hope in God gives him confidence that he will receive wisdom, a wisdom learned from God’s instruction, a spiritual good which is the lasting inheritance of the just.131 Wisdom indeed sums up all the spiritual good of the just; it is more precious than anything temporal and precarious and is unshaken by adversity.132 Job’s confidence has roots in God’s own gift to him of filial fear, for “fear of the Lord itself is wisdom, and to withdraw from evil is understanding” (28:27). With reference to Job 28:28 Thomas goes on to say that although only God fully knows the depths of divine wisdom, he made men investigate it . . . “and said to man,” namely, by illuminating him through interior inspiration and communicating wisdom: “Behold, the fear of the Lord,” namely, which I am giving you by my presence [or, face to face: praesentialiter], “itself is wisdom” since through fear of the Lord man clings to God, in whom is the true wisdom of man as the highest cause of all things; and “to withdraw from evil,” that is, from sin, by which man loses God, “is understanding,” namely, since understanding is especially necessary so that through understanding man may discern evil from good and having avoided evils through the execution of good works may arrive at a participation in divine wisdom.133

God actively and intimately communicates the gift of fear to Job by an “interior inspiration” in an encounter with the divine presence, in order to help him move through good action to a God-like participation in divine wisdom. Job’s wise fear makes him withdraw from evil and cling to God, as a servus amoris, hoping only for a spiritual reward. Job’s gift of fear, then, helps him to attain the object of his hope and give witness to the “rationale of divine providence,” which is “upheld in the fact that spiritual goods are given to the just as the better goods.”134 Job is a model of how filial fear helps one attain the hoped-for inheritance of the just. Job puts himself forward too as a living example of both hopes 131. Super Job, 27:11, 27:13. 132. Super Job, 28:1, 28:23. 133. Super Job, 28:28. 134. Ibid.



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of the just, for God’s assistance and for the enjoyment of God. Job especially gives witness to the first hope of the just for God’s help, in both prosperity and adversity. It was noted earlier that Thomas portrays Job as consoled by hope and encouraged to pray in the face of his friends’ derision, because “where human help is absent, divine help is maximally present.”135 Job attributes his former temporal prosperity, in “the days in which God watched over me” (29:2), “neither to fortune nor to his own powers but to divine help (auxilium).” God protected him from adversities and directed him toward good even above his own intention: “‘His lamp’ that is, his providence, ‘shone over my head,’ that is, my mind, directing it toward many good things which my mind had not reached”; in other things, “by his light I walked in the darkness” (29:3); that is, “he was directed by God as though instructed by him about what was to be done” even in the darkness of doubt, although he had done nothing to merit such gifts. Most importantly, in prayer and contemplation, he felt the “divine familiarity” of the presence of God; in action, Job says, “‘the Almighty was with me,’ as though cooperating with me to do good.”136 Job delighted in the familiar affection of prayer that strengthens hope and trusted in God’s constant providential help to direct him toward the good. Given his claims elsewhere that Job has grace, the language Thomas uses here of God’s auxilium, direction, and cooperation suggests that he is referring to the work of God elevating and guiding human action through the infused gifts and the help of grace.137 Some support is given to this inference by devel135. Super Job, 12:4. Super Job, 19:10, “He has taken away my hope as if from an uprooted tree,” which Thomas takes to refer to Job’s loss of hope in restoration of temporal prosperity; he comments that “the root of hope is two-fold; one on the part of divine help, the other on the part of human help.” 136. Super Job, 29:2–5. 137. As discussed above, Super Job, 14:14–15, Thomas does refer explicitly to the divine help of grace “exalting one to the glory of newness” in the resurrection: “Quia mortui ad imperium Dei non solum resurgent ad vitam sed in quendam altiorem statum immutabuntur, et hoc virtute divina, propter hoc subdit, operi manuum tuarum porriges dexteram, quasi dicat: homo resurgens non erit opus naturae sed opus tuae virtutis, cui quidem operi adiutricem dexteram tuam porriges dum per auxilium tuae gratiae in gloriam novitatis exaltabitur.”

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opments in Thomas’s theology of grace in the contemporaneous Summa contra Gentiles, where he begins to recognize the necessity of positing God’s continual involvement, by the divine auxilium of grace, in moving the human person to the end of eternal life.138 Job’s acknowledgment that his prosperity was due not to his own strength but to God’s unmerited assistance is mirrored by the recognition that his present adversity had been sent upon him by God, without cause on his part, in the designs of providence. Job’s adherence to the first hope of the just—that “in time of necessity God will hear their prayer”—is specifically tested by this adversity, for much of his suffering comes from his apparent present abandonment, in spite of his fidelity in prayer: “‘I cried out to you,’ asking to be freed from this adversity, ‘and you did not hear me.’ . . . ‘I stood fast,’ that is, I persevere in praying, ‘and you do not heed me,’ namely, by freeing me from adversity.” So Job says to God, “if I were to consider the temporal state only I would deem you a cruel and harsh enemy.”139 But Job is convinced that man is not totally consumed by death since the immortal soul remains, hence he adds, “but yet, not for their consumption,” namely of living men, “do you send forth your hand,” namely, so that through your power you may reduce them to nothingness, “and if they be corrupted,” namely, through death, “you yourself will save them,” namely, by beatifying their souls (animas beatificando), and I expect this from your kindness, however cruel and hard you seem to me in my temporal adversities.140 138. Although Thomas does not distinguish clearly between habitual and auxiliary or cooperating and operating grace in the ScG, as he will in the ST, he does begin to emphasize the absolute necessity of the “divine auxilium” of prevenient grace to help human action attain the supernatural end; see ScG 3.147–50. On the development of Thomas’s theology of grace, which takes increasing account of the need for the divine auxilium, see Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Aubier, 1944); Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 1, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000; rpt., 2005); and Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action; Wawrykow also provides a helpful analytic summary of the work of Bouillard and Lonergan (34–55). 139. Super Job, 30:20. 140. Super Job, 30:24. Eleonore Stump argues that “when it comes to the most important personal relationship in the book, the one between Job and God, Aquinas is



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Job’s confident expectation, even in his anguish, of God’s help and kindness towards him to bring him to eternal life is the expression of a hope, based on faith in divine providence and supported by prayer, that looks not only to the difficult future good of blessedness after death, but to God’s assisting help in getting him there, no matter what the circumstances. The two hopes of the just—that God will hear their prayer and assist them and that God will let them enjoy divine delight—belong to him, making him an example to his friends of the working of divine providence in the lives of the just. Job’s filial fear and hope in God are proof of his virtue because these can belong only to the just person, in whom they are performative, transforming the present by giving him consolation in adversity through the possession of spiritual wisdom rather than temporal goods. Thomas’s identification in the Expositio of two objects of hope for the just and his explanation of how the gift of fear leads them to the spiritual good of wisdom as their inheritance are worth noting, for they hint at significant later developments in Thomas’s thought on this virtue and gift. Joseph Wawrykow observes insightfully that Thomas’s treatment of the object of hope shifts from the Scriptum to his later works.141 In the Scriptum, hope has one proper object, God as the future good of beatitude. In the Summa, hope’s object is more explicitly defined as twofold, not only God as the future good to be attained (the final cause of hope), but secondarily, God’s present help in attaining him (the efficient cause); God’s assistance “grapeculiarly insensitive.” Stump thinks that Thomas does not take sufficient account of the added suffering which comes to Job because his adversity makes him “uncertain or double-minded about the goodness of God, and so his trust in God, which had formerly been the foundation of his life, is riven to the roots. Aquinas’s presentation of Job is oblivious to this side of his suffering, so that Aquinas’s Job lacks the conflict with God and the bitter anguish many of the rest of us think we see in Job” (“Aquinas on the Suffering of Job,” 333). I would argue, though, that in Thomas’s narrative exposition of the full unfolding of Job’s hope, he shows exactly this; Job grapples with, and overcomes, the fear that God has abandoned him, by digging in his heels, as it were, on his hope in God’s goodness towards him. 141. Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action, 247–59.

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ciously makes possible in contact with the individual the attainment of the first object of hope,” effectively bringing the person to himself by the help of grace at every step of the way.142 That is, in the Summa Thomas presents God’s help as an object of hope not only in the sense that God makes it possible in a general way for people to be saved by grace, but also in that “the God who alone is able to save is in fact working the salvation of the possessor of hope.”143 Wawrykow shows that this development takes place in the context of Thomas’s maturing understanding of God’s continual involvement by grace in the lives of the predestined, in particular his insight, by the time of the Summa theologiae, into the work of God’s unmerited auxiliary grace, both operative and cooperative, that “maintains one on the course to God” from beginning to end, leading one successfully to eternal life.144 Demonstrating the link in the Summa between Thomas’s discussion of the auxilium of God as the second object of hope and his treatment of auxilium in the treatise on grace and merit, Wawrykow argues that “the discussion of hope completes the treatment of merit in the Summa,” for, “[W]ith regard to auxilium all one can do is hope. One trusts in the God who has initiated the movement back to God and prays that God will complete this work through the continued gift of grace.”145 In light of this development, it is perhaps significant that in the Expositio, written between these two works, Thomas finds two ob142. Wawrykow, 129–37; 248–55; cf. ST II-II, q. 17, a. 2, a. 4, a. 5 ad 1, a. 6 ad 3, a. 7. In the late disputed question De spe, a. 1 (dated by Torrell to 1271–72; Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, 336), Thomas distinguishes the two objects of hope, in parallel with those of faith, as the material and formal objects (S. Thomae Aquinatis Quaestiones Disputatae, vol. 2: De Virtutibus: De spe, ed. P. Bazzi et. al. [Turin: Marietti, 1965]). 143. Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action, 132. In the Scriptum Thomas refers to the “divine liberality” as the cause for the certitude of hope, and the reason why God makes himself “communicable,” but does not identify God’s help itself as the object of hope (Scriptum bk. 3 d. 23 q. 2 a. 1; q. 2 a. 4). Bougerol supports Wawrykow’s conclusion that Thomas develops a teaching on hope’s twofold object, although he finds hints of this already in De veritate q. 14 a. 2 arg. 3 and locates the fully developed teaching in the De spe rather than the Summa (“La théologie de l’espérance,” 285–86). 144. Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action, 251. 145. Ibid.



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jects of hope for the just in the text, one having to do with the enjoyment of God’s goodness, the other with God’s present assistance for which one prays in time of need, on which “auxilium” Job depends.146 Certainly there is no formal definition of a twofold object as such, nor a clear reference in these particular passages to God’s auxilium as the help of grace.147 Yet there is some sense that Job sees God as having been personally involved in the past by cooperating with him to do good and as one from whose kindness he expects the beatification of his soul in the future. Job’s trust in God’s ultimate plan of kindness for him is not unlike a description of hope in the Summa theologiae: “Hope makes us cling to God as the source of perfect goodness, since through hope we lean on the divine help to obtain beatitude.”148 Although Thomas does not explicitly identify a twofold object of theological hope in the Expositio in the same way as he will do in his later systematic works (e.g., in terms of final and efficient cause), his reflection on Job arguably contributes to the development of his thought, giving him deeper insight into the need for hope not only in beatitude but also in God’s gracious help throughout the difficult process of movement towards that end, with human life’s inevitable experiences of struggle and adversity. Thomas’s reflection in the Expositio on the role of Job’s fear in disposing him to receive the spiritual good for which he hopes may also have contributed to his special association of the gift of fear with hope in the Summa theologiae, another development in his thought. In the early Scriptum, Thomas touches on the relation between the 146. Chardonnens also observes that the Expositio proposes a double object of hope, although he assumes a straightforward equivalence with the teaching of the Summa theologiae, without noting the development of Thomas’s thought (L’homme sous le regard de providence, 166–68). Chardonnens draws evidence for the secondary object of the divine assistance from texts additional to those discussed here, e.g., on Job 17:2 (“My eye lingers on bitter things”) Thomas writes, “He attributes bitter things to the eye because of the weeping about which he had said above, ‘My face has grown swollen from weeping’ and ‘My eye pours out for God,’ since his eye was weeping in the midst of bitter things in such a way that it was aiming at divine help (auxilium) alone.” 147. But see on 14:15. 148. ST II-II, q. 17, a. 6.

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virtue of hope and the gift of fear in the course of differentiating them from hope and fear as passions. While the latter are contraries, the hope which is a virtue is not opposed to the fear which is a gift, because hope reaches out to God from consideration of the divine liberality, while fear recoils from the consideration of one’s own weakness; thus the recoil of fear and the extension of hope do not regard the same thing, so they are not contraries.149

In this text Thomas presents filial fear and hope as unopposed, but does not argue for any special working relationship between them, as he would later do in the Summa, where his treatment of the theological virtues and gifts differs in many ways from his earlier work, including the association of each theological and cardinal virtue with one or more of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In the Scriptum, hope has no perfecting gift, and fear is more associated with temperance; in the Summa, the gift of filial fear and hope are not only unopposed, but perfect one another: Filial fear is not opposed to the virtue of hope: since thereby we fear, not that we may fail of what we hope to obtain by God’s help, but lest we withdraw ourselves from this help. Wherefore filial fear and hope cling together, and perfect one another.150

Here Thomas explains that the reverent fear of doing anything to separate oneself from God prevents one from resisting the movement of the Holy Spirit towards God; so it perfects one’s hope of attaining him as the principal good, by his help.151 The gift of fear does not simply make one recoil from one’s weakness, it specifically moves one not to withdraw from God’s help in overcoming that weakness. The recognition of a secondary distinct object of hope and the association of hope with the gift of fear can thus reasonably be related to one other. Filial fear in the Summa does not make one fear the first object of hope, God himself, who is sheer goodness; it specifically helps to at149. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 26 q. 2 a. 1 ad 4. 150. ST II-II, q. 19, a. 9 ad 1, ad 2. 151. Ibid.



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tain the second object of hope, for by avoiding sin, it assists one not to resist the divine help in being led to the end.152 Thomas’s mature treatment of the perfective association between filial fear and hope in the Summa is dynamic, shaped by his mature understanding of the gifts as habitus disposing one to be docile to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit who leads the children of God by grace to beatitude.153 The gift of fear, helping one to be moved by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to avoid offending God, makes it easier to hope in God, depending on his help more than on oneself, and hope in God in turn increases one’s reverence for God and desire to serve him with filial obedience. In the Expositio, written in Thomas’s mid-career before he has developed his mature theology of grace, virtues, and gifts, it is not surprising to find no systematic identification of the objects of hope, nor of the association of hope and the gift of fear. Neither are present in his brief presentation of hope in the contemporary Summa contra Gentiles. Yet there are hints that Thomas’s reflection on the book of Job helped to develop his mature insight into the twofold object of hope and the mutually perfective relationship between filial fear and hope. As we saw in Thomas’s explanation of Job 28:27–28, Job possesses the two hopes of the just in God’s assistance and in the enjoyment of God, and so his “fear of the Lord,” which “itself is wisdom” makes him cling to God, “in whom is the true wisdom of man,” and withdraw from the evil of sin, “by which man loses God,” so that he can arrive by good works at “a participation of divine wisdom.”154 His filial fear paves the way for hope in eternal life by making him willing even to consider temporal life itself “as rubbish” rather than being separated from God,155 and his 152. See ST II-II, q. 19, a. 1. 153. On this, see Servais Pinckaers, “Morality and the Movement of the Holy Spirit: Aquinas’s Doctrine of Instinctus,” ch. 20 in The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, ed. John Berkman and Craig Titus, trans. Mary Thomas Noble, OP, Craig Titus, Michael Sherwin, and Hugh Connelly (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005). 154. Super Job, 28:28. 155. Scriptum, bk. 3 d. 34 q. 1 a. 2; q. 2 a. 1 qc. 2.

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hope helps to increase his reverence and desire to serve God as faithful witness. Job’s Witness to the Divine Goodness As an exemplar of the filial fear and hope that belong to the just, Job must not only reverently withdraw from evil, lean on God’s providential help, and direct all his expectation to the future spiritual enjoyment of God’s goodness, he must also give effective witness to others that he does so. Such a witness must point primarily not to his own justice but to the divine goodness which is its source, and it is in this respect that Job’s discourse is purified in the final stage of his transformation, when he speaks words according to divine inspiration. In the course of rational debate with his friends, as he asserts his true filial fear and hope in God for eternal life, Job must defend his innocence to show he has not merited temporal punishment, and he does so vociferously. Job “shows the perfection of his own virtue,” refusing to admit any reproach or judgment against himself.156 At various points in the narrative, he challenges God to a debate to prove his innocence,157 he demands that God show him the reasons for his punishment,158 and although he acknowledges that “something is always found in human works which falls short of the purity of divine justice,”159 he manages to give the impression to his listeners that he is presumptuously charging God with being unjust.160 The reader knows that Thomas’s Job is motivated in the vehement defense of his innocence by the intention to demonstrate that there is no necessary correspondence between temporal adversity with punishment nor of prosperity with merit and, therefore, to prove the truth of the eternal extent of providence. Thomas explains that Job “wished to debate with God to learn, as it were, like 156. E.g., on 13:6, 13:18,16:18, 27:6, 31:29. 157. Super Job, 13:3, 13:22. 158. Super Job, 13:23. 159. Super Job, 9:32. 160. Super Job, 33:10, 34:5.



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a student with a teacher,” nor were his words said “by way of contention but because he desired to know the reasons of divine wisdom.”161 Job “did not intend to impute iniquity to divine judgment, as his three friends and Elihu perversely understood,” but rather meant to show that his trials proved his innocence:162 “But yet, this thing seemed reprehensible, that he so commended his justice that it seemed to the others to redound to the derogation of divine justice.”163 Job’s fault lies not in his intentions but in his “levity of speech,” which had been so inordinate that “scandal was produced from it in the hearts of the others when they thought he was not showing due reverence to God.”164 Job does not give good enough witness to his fear of God or to God’s justice, lessening the effectiveness of his example for the divine pedagogy. So the Lord, “responding to Job from the whirlwind” (40:1), rebukes him, asking, “‘Will you make my judgment ineffective?’ as if to say: does it seem to you that by commending your own justice you make my judgment be reputed ineffective, that is, false, by men?” Ironically, Job has made God “seem worthy of condemnation before others” while intending to defend the wisdom and justice of divine providence.165 Although he has said true things about his own justice, his fundamental fault is that he has failed to acknowledge its source in the divine excellence. Because God is so much more excellent than any human, Thomas comments, “a man ought rather to allow fault to be referred unjustly to him than that it be unjustly referred to God.”166 This would, it seems, be the perfection of filial fear, which prefers anything to offending God. Commenting on the words, “surround yourself with beauty (decor), and raise yourself on high (in sublime) and be glorious, and put on splendid vestments” (40:5), Thomas explains that the Lord 161. Super Job, 33:12–13. 162. Super Job, 40:2. 163. Super Job, 40:3. 164. Super Job, 38:1, 39:34. 165. Super Job, 40:3. 166. Ibid.

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means to demonstrate the divine excellence over human beings, especially in his effects of beauty, sublimity, and glory, which belong essentially to God but are participated by creatures. God’s very essence is beauty, “by which is understood clarity or truth, and purity or simplicity,” but “a man cannot have beauty unless it has been put around him as if participating it from God as superadded to his own essence.” He goes on to say that likewise, sublimity (or grandeur) “belongs to God essentially,” but man in the weak condition of his nature “cannot attain to divine sublimity unless he raise himself above himself.” Finally, glory, “which includes the knowledge of goodness” is in God alone, for only he perfectly knows his own infinite goodness, but “man cannot attain to this glory unless by participating in the divine knowledge,” for “he does not have glory essentially.” Good angels and men are only clothed in splendor because they are “splendid from their participation in divine wisdom and justice”; all the beauty of their holiness “redounds to the adornment of God, because the goodness of God is commended by it.” God’s mercy makes his saints splendid, but it is part of his justice to use their beauty for his glory.167 In other words, Job’s strenuous defense of his own justice has given the appearance of pride, in that he did not acknowledge that his virtue is only a participation of divine goodness. Job did not adequately witness, in effect, to the metaphysical distinction between essential and participated goodness; so he presumed to speak of what is beyond human wisdom and to diminish the dependence of his own justice as a creature upon God’s. Although it is clear that he did lean on God’s assistance as the first hope of the just, he failed to adequately acknowledge his ontological limitation as a creature. God is not only his helper from the outside, as it were, but the very source of all perfection of virtue. So the Lord says to him, “if you can do these works which are proper only to God, you can reasonably attribute to yourself that you do not need divine help (auxilium) to 167. Super Job, 40:5.



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be saved. But as you cannot do the former, nor can you do the latter; so you should not glory in your own justice.”168 Job has undermined his witness of hope and filial fear by seeming to disregard God’s help and to lack proper reverence, so giving scandal to the weak. He must instead be taught to profess not only his certainty that his justice will have future reward but also the ground of that reward, God’s assisting goodness, in which his justice is only a participation. In Thomas’s commentary on Hebrews 10:23 (“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he is faithful who has promised”), Thomas remarks on the same necessity for adequate witness: “Let us hold fast,” he does not say to hope, but “to the confession of our hope,” for it is not enough to have hope in the heart, but it must also be confessed with the mouth . . . furthermore, it must be confessed not only in words, but also in deeds; against those who of whom it says in Titus, “they profess that they know God, but in their works they deny him” (Tit 1:16). This confession is made by works, by which one tends to things hoped for: “hold fast what you have, that no one take your crown” (Rev 3:11). “Without wavering,” i.e., not turning aside from that confession either in prosperity or adversity. . . . The reason for this is because “he is faithful that has promised,” and he cannot lie.169

Before Job’s friends, who profess to know God’s ways but foolishly tell lies on his behalf, Job must openly confess in both words and deeds the certain hope stored up in his breast. By the purification of his confession in both prosperity and adversity, Job finally gives perfect witness to the fidelity of God, who does not lie. In Job’s last divinely inspired discourse, in which he “reproves the words spoken by reason alone” that had “seemed to some to approach derogation of divine judgment,” he responds humbly by ac168. Super Job, 40:9 169. Super Epistolam ad Hebraeos Lectura, in Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, vol. 2, ed. R. Cai (Rome: Marietti, 1953) ch. 10, lect. 2 [507]. Like the latter part of Thomas’s commentary on 1 Corinthians (see n1) this is a reportatio by Reginald of Piperno, possibly based on Thomas’s teaching from 1265 to 1268 (Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, 255).

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knowledging the divine excellence and his own guilt in speaking unwisely, “namely, not showing due reverence for divine excellence in my words.”170 Job’s final witness is not to his own perfection of virtue but to God’s greatness, before which he says to the Lord, “I no longer dare to speak of it but only to ask you about these things. Hence he adds, ‘I will ask you,’ namely, by asking, seeking, knocking, ‘and you respond to me,’ namely, by instructing me inwardly.” 171 Thomas’s glossing of Job’s words with Christ’s instruction on prayer to the Father from Matthew’s Gospel is a fitting expression of how Job’s prayer, as the “interpreter of his hope,” has been transformed by divine inspiration.172 Job’s petitionary and expectant stance expresses well the perfection of his filial fear and hope, which now make him lean entirely, as an obedient son, on God’s external assistance and his inward instruction. Job ends this last discourse as he began, in silence, no longer one of mute struggle to moderate his passionate suffering, but a prayerful silence of humility, gratitude, and awe. He “shows why he has changed so, saying ‘my ear heard you,’ once when I was speaking foolishly; ‘now, however, my eye sees you,’ that is, I know you more fully than before.” Job “has grown both from being stricken and from divine revelation.”173 His last words, informed by a fuller knowledge of God, express God’s greatness in contrast to the “frailty of corporeal nature.”174 Job’s words in 42:5–6 (“I heard with the hearing of my ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore, I reproach myself and I do penance in dust and ashes”) appear in a number of Thomas’s scriptural 170. Super Job, 42:3. 171. Super Job, 42:4. 172. Matthew Levering points out that in this section of Matthew 7, Jesus goes on to warn his disciples to “enter by the narrow gate (Mt 7:13); while God’s love is great, God permits some creatures to reject that love. In the face of the mystery of predestination and reprobation, Job provides an example of how we can learn, without presumption, ‘to await the fullness of God’s answer—the yes’ (2 Cor 1:19) who is seen ‘in a mirror dimly’ (1 Cor 13:12) in Christ Jesus—in the vision of our Redeemer and our God” (Levering, “Aquinas on the Book of Job,” 24). 173. Super Job, 42:5. 174. Super Job, 42:6.



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commentaries to express the idea that the more one knows of God’s greatness, the more one recognizes one’s own smallness, and also therefore the generosity of divine goodness. In his commentary on Ephesians 5:18–20, he explains that one effect of being “filled with the Holy Spirit” is thanksgiving, for when someone is moved by charity to spiritual meditation and exultation, “he recognizes that everything he has is from God”: For the more someone is moved towards God, and knows him, the more he sees God as greater and himself as lesser, indeed almost as nothing, in comparison to God. Job 42:5: “my eye sees you, therefore I reproach myself,” etc. And so [Paul] says, “giving thanks always for all things,” namely, for his gifts, whether of prosperity or adversity. “I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall be always in my mouth” (Ps 34:1). For adversities are also gifts to us on the way.175

Murray notes, commenting on this text, that Thomas uses the phrase “prosperity and adversity” a number of times in his sermons and prayers as well as in his Scripture commentaries to represent “a willing surrender to the mysterious providence of God.” Thanksgiving in both prosperity and adversity depends upon the humble recognition that “everything one has comes from God”; in this knowledge it is possible to find the “strength, even in the most trying of circumstances, to surrender ourselves to the omnipotent and mysterious power of divine providence.”176 Job has received gifts of grace both in prosperity and adversity which have helped him to surrender in humility to divine providence and become a model of gratitude for God’s generous assistance. This is perhaps why in Thomas’s later Lectura super Matthaeum, Job is quoted three times in succession as Thomas explains why 175. Super Eph., ch. 5, lect. 7 [314]. Cf., Super Psalmo 30, n. 19; Super Io., ch. 1, lect. 13; ch. 3, lect. 5; ch. 4, lect. 6; Super Philip., ch. 3, lect. 3. 176. Murray, Aquinas at Prayer, 121: “This prayer of thanksgiving . . . is possible only when a man ‘recognizes that everything he has is from God.’ For it is only then, in profound humility, that we are able to give thanks to God for both ‘adversity and prosperity,’ and find strength, even in the most trying of circumstances, to surrender ourselves to the omnipotent and mysterious power of divine providence.”

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Christ says that one should love God more than father, mother, or child (Mt 10:37): “God is to be loved before all; ‘I will not accept the person of man, and I will not equate God and man’ ( Job 32:21). For God is goodness itself; therefore, he is to be loved more.”177 Furthermore, Thomas says, God teaches us more than the beasts of the earth or birds of the air ( Job 35:11), he feeds us, and finally, He keeps us safe forever. And a man has this more from God than a son from a father. Therefore, God should always be loved more: “For I know that my redeemer lives, and in the last day I will rise from the earth, and I will be surrounded again by own skin, and in my flesh I will see God.” ( Job 19:25–27)178

Here Job provides a witness to all the ways God should be loved most as father in his providential care for the human race, but Job’s prophecy of the future glory of the resurrection, in which he will enjoy the vision of God, especially shows God’s goodness. For Thomas, it would seem, Job moves closer to glory and manifests more clearly the divine beauty in the fuller knowledge of God he has gained by the end of the Expositio, for glory “includes the knowledge of goodness” which belongs to God alone and makes holy people splendid by “participation in divine wisdom and justice.”179 Thomas’s Job, the servus amoris, progresses in faith, filial fear, hope, and the love of God through his adversity, with the help of grace, becoming a better witness to the excellence of the divine goodness. Conclusions Thomas’s intention to explain the “literal meaning” of the book of Job might seem to provide little scope for the development of substantial theological insights, compared to his more systematic works. 177. Super Evangelium S. Matthaei lectura [Reportatio Leodegarii Bissuntini], ed. R. Cai (Turin: Marietti, 1951), ch. 10, lect. 2 [891]. Torrell dates this work to 1269–1270; Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, 339. 178. Ibid. 179. Super Job, 40:5.



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His Job, however, like a Dominican in training, is a student being formed as a teacher in a divinely initiated disputatio that reveals truths to posterity about the eschatological extent of divine providence. As a student, Job is transformed “both by being stricken and by divine revelation,” learning to give “due reverence to the divine excellence,”180 which exceeds the creaturely limitations of his knowledge. In the course of his struggle, especially through the provocation of debate, Job comes to openly profess his faith in Christ’s Resurrection and so to articulate the certain hope of his own future resurrection in glory. Job’s hope and filial fear become “performative,” not removing his present adversity, nor indeed explaining it, but transforming his experience of it, as he himself is transformed and consoled by the power of grace. The narrative structure of the Expositio allows the reader to see this process as it unfolds and so to gain theological insight into how the theological virtues and gifts operate “on the ground” in the midst of genuine suffering, which always has a deeply mysterious aspect. I have argued that Thomas’s own reflection on the book of Job may have contributed in part to the development of some aspects of his theology of hope and fear that appear in his later works, in particular the role of Christ’s Resurrection in eliciting hope, the distinction of two objects of hope, and the perfective association of hope with the gift of fear. Job’s own transformation makes him a better teacher and preacher of God’s providence, a better witness to the divine goodness in which he hopes both for delight and for assistance. If Job has been God’s teacher to his friends about trust in divine providence throughout this disputatio, his lesson at the last is perhaps that of the exercise of the beatitudes, the first of which is poverty of spirit, the beatitude which corresponds to the gift of fear.181 The beatitudes, perfect acts flowing from the gifts, all have a relation to hope and increase hope, because by them holy people attain future happiness, although they may experience “a kind of imperfect inchoation” 180. Super Job, 42:3; on 42:5. 181. ST II-II, q. 19, a. 12

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of that happiness even in this life.182 The beatitudes therefore “pertain to the perfection of the spiritual life.”183 The merits named in the beatitudes—for example, poverty of spirit—dispose one for beatitude, while the corresponding rewards—for example, the kingdom of heaven—refer either to the perfect happiness of the future life or its beginning in this life, in those who have reached perfection: “For when someone begins to make progress in the acts of the virtues and gifts, it is to be hoped that he will arrive at perfection, both as a wayfarer (viator), and as a citizen of the heavenly kingdom.”184 Job, even in his adversity, began to taste as viator many rewards of the beatitudes, for they all proceed from hope’s expectation, which inverts worldly values, elevating spiritual over temporal happiness; in his mourning he was consoled; in the moderation of his passions with meekness, he “possessed the land,” which “denotes the wellordered affections of the soul that rests, by its desire, on the solid foundation of the eternal inheritance”; in his purity of heart, his “eye being cleansed by the gift of understanding,” he saw God.185 But to Job in his final state of perfection especially belongs poverty of spirit, by which one withdraws from “temporal and perishable things” and tastes the reward of the enjoyment of “excellence and abundance of good things in God.”186 In his exegesis of the beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel, Thomas comments that the Lord placed poverty of spirit first, “to distinguish the old law,” with its promises of temporal riches, “from the new.”187 182. ST I-II, q. 69, a. 1 and a. 2. 183. ST II-II, q. 19, a. 12 ad 1. 184. ST I-II, q. 69, a. 2. 185. ST I-II, q. 69 a. 2 ad 3. 186. ST I-II, q. 69, a. 4. 187. Super Evangelium S. Matthaei lectura [Reportatio Petri de Andria], ed. R. Cai (Turin: Marietti, 1951) ch. 5, lect. 2 [417]. Parts of this section of the text (after [443]) are missing from the 1951 Marietti edition but have been made available from the Leonine Commission in Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, Appendix: Transcription of Basel Manuscript B V 12, ed. H. Kraml and P. M. Kimball (Dolorosa Press, 2012). The entire commentary, drawing from the best editions, has been reprinted in Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 1–12, trans. Jeremy Holmes and Beth Mortensen (Landers, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute, 2013).



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Job, it might be said, represents the perfection of the New Law, in contrast to his friends. Poverty of spirit corresponds to the New Law gift of fear, because “filial fear is concerned with showing reverence and being subject to God,” and such submission includes “a disinclination to seek to be magnified in oneself or anyone else, but only in God.”188 Job’s final humility, the reverent acknowledgment in filial fear of his ontological limitation as a creature, perfectly manifests his virtue, showing his poverty of spirit even more than his wise preference for spiritual over temporal goods. God’s final restoration of his temporal prosperity, since Job had already shown that he based his hope on future happiness, is justified, Thomas thinks, for pedagogical reasons; Job has shown that he obeys Christ’s command to “seek first the kingdom of God” (Mt 6:33), but God wishes him “to give an example to the others,” who still live under the Old Testament, “so that they might be converted to God.”189 In his “fullness of days,” Job has “abundance . . . both with respect to the goods of fortune and with respect to the goods of grace, by which he was led to future glory, which lasts forever and ever.”190 God’s plan to make Job’s virtue known is fulfilled; he is a perfect exemplar of obedience to the providential work of grace that leads to eternal life. Does Thomas’s Job still have anything to teach us? His stance of grateful, dependent, ontological humility stands in contrast to what Joseph Pieper calls the “enlightened despair of secular man,” dominated by an anxious existentialism that privileges individual freedom while it “fails to recognize the true nature of human existence, because it denies the ‘pilgrimage’ character of the status viatoris, its orientation toward fulfillment beyond time, and hence, in principle, the status viatoris itself.”191 In effect, such a secularism leads to despair because it denies divine providence. Created things stand, by nature, in “proximity to nothingness”; even apart from the freedom 188. ST II-II, q. 19, a. 12. 189. Super Job, 42:10. 190. Super Job, 42:16. 191. Josef Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 95.

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of human beings to choose the nothingness of sin, they depend at every moment on God’s providential upholding to preserve them from annihilation, for they have potential and participated rather than essential existence.192 Yet God freely wills, Thomas argues, to preserve all things in existence, which especially manifests his power and goodness.193 From the secularist perspective of a limited temporal horizon, the contingency and finitude of human life with its experience of suffering are reason only for the dread and avoidance of natural fear, giving rise to “anxiety in the face of nothingness.”194 While Job’s friends are hardly secularists in Pieper’s sense, they share this limited temporal perspective and so had fallen into false teachings, presumptuously telling lies on God’s behalf that would only result in confusion and terror if they should suffer adversity.195 But Job is a pilgrim and knows himself to be so; this faith-knowledge gives him certain hope, perfected by filial fear and expressed in poverty of spirit, that steers him between despair and presumption, allowing him to taste even in the midst of adversity the spiritual goods of the kingdom of heaven. Such hope alone can overcome “the uncertainty of human existence.”196 Suffering and death, seen only from a temporal perspective, are naturally the greatest test of confidence in God’s goodness. Blessed Job, as Thomas presents him, does not provide an explanation for the problem of suffering but offers a model for how to respond to it, relying on the help of grace which, leading him to glory, gives him the wisdom to see all things in the true perspective of divine providence. 192. Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, 93, 97; see Thomas Aquinas, S. Thomae Aquinatis Quaestiones disputatae, vol. 2: Quaestiones disputatae de potentia, ed. P. M. Pession (Turin: Marietti, 1965) q. 5, a. 1, ad 16; ST I, q. 104. 193. ST I, q. 104, a. 4. 194. Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, 137. 195. Super Job, 13:11. 196. Pieper, Faith, Hope, Love, 129.

Brian Thomas Beckett Mullady, OP

11 Moral Principles in Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Job Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, OP

Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on the Book of Job is one of his most important Scripture commentaries. It is the only one of his commentaries on the Old Testament written in his own hand. Father Torrell states: “As an invitation to the reading of this book, we can say that it is among the most beautiful scriptural commentaries that Thomas has left us.”1 The beauty of the Commentary is a fitting expression of the importance of the theme. Most authorities believe that St. Thomas worked on this Commentary at the same time as he was preparing Book III of the Summa contra Gentiles,2 which has a similar theme: that of the ultimate end of man discoverable by reason alone. They both address important questions about human destiny which are not only of great importance to the subject of nature and grace but also have important ramifications for Moral Theology. Of added importance is the fact that St. Thomas’s intention in writ1. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1: The Person and His Work (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 120. 2. James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d’Aquino (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974), 153.



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ing this Commentary was to comment on only the literal sense of the book. He did not address the allegorical sense which he thought had been well addressed by Gregory the Great’s Moralia.3 This essay will address the following moral themes treated in the Commentary: the place and nature of the passions in moral freedom; the ultimate end of human life; and the nature and punishment of sin. The Background for the Moral Discussion The basis for the moral discussion of the literal sense of the book is the prosperity and adversity of Job, a just and virtuous man. The problem is caused by the great difficulty that an omnipotent God, who orders and guides the universe, could allow the just to suffer and the wicked to prosper: “The whole intention of this book is directed to this: to show that human affairs are ruled by divine providence using probable arguments.”4 The prosperity of Job is great and his adversity is even greater as he loses all his material goods, his family (excluding his wife), and his health practically instantaneously. The stated reason for God tolerating this is to demonstrate that Job fears God for a right intention. The accusation of Satan is that Job only reveres God because of his material prosperity, thus arguing that man only fears God as a means to an end of temporal prosperity. This makes materialism, not God, the ultimate end of man: “So he [God] willed to deprive Job of his earthly prosperity so that when he persevered in the fear of God, it would become clear that he feared God from a right intention and not on account of temporal things.”5 This causes the ensuing moral discussion as to why Job suffers. Is it for sin? Is temporal suffering truly the proper punishment for per3. Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Job ad litteram, Prologue, Leonine edition, ed. Robert Busa, SJ (Rome: Santa Sabina, 1965). 4. Iob, Prologue. 5. Iob, ch. 1, lect. 2.



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sonal sin? What place do the passions play in this experience? How do human free choices in sins or virtues relate to the ultimate end of man? How does divine revelation relate to this? What indeed is the ultimate moral end of human choices? For St. Thomas, this discussion proceeds from probable arguments as opposed to demonstrative arguments. This is partially because one can demonstrate that the ultimate end of man is not in this world. But the reward of the resurrection, though its necessity is something which can be proven by reason, cannot be proven as a fact by demonstrative arguments. The fact that the vision of God is the ultimate end of our moral life as something human beings can arrive at in both soul and body depends on divine revelation. If this is the true final experience, then a right intention would demand that God be this end and all other goods would only be means which include temporal goods, personal relations, and health. A related problem is that if these goods are only means, does it make sense to so lament their loss that one’s sorrow is deep and paralyzing? Why does God allow the unjust to prosper? Does this not involve an approval of their evil? The literal sense of the book of Job accepts this dilemma and then treats it under three different levels: from passion, from reason, and from revelation. This is the key to the truths taught by divine inspiration in this book. Job spoke in three ways in this book. First, he represented the affective desire of the senses in his first loud complaint, when he says, let the day when I was born perish ( Job 3:3). Second, he expressed the deliberation of human reason when he disputes against his friends. Finally, he spoke according to divine inspiration when he introduced words from the person of God. Because human reason must be directed according to divine inspiration, when the Lord has spoken, Job reproves the words which he had said according to human reason.6

6. Iob, ch. 39, lect. 1.

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The Commentary of Thomas Aquinas represents the first attempt in the Church to produce a commentary on the literal sense of the book of Job. The reason seems to be that Job was declared to be a just man and the book celebrates the patience of Job, and yet Job curses the day of his birth. He even wishes he had died in the womb: “Why did I not die in the womb?” (3:11). The place of the passions in morals has long been a problem for Christians. Many were heavily influenced by Stoic philosophy, which basically holds that passions are sicknesses of the soul and the virtuous man must become as dispassionate as possible. Apathy was celebrated as a Christian virtue and recommended, for example, by Fathers of the Church like Evagrius Ponticus: “Agape is the progeny of apatheia. Apatheia is the very flower of ascesis. Ascesis consists in keeping the commandments. The custodian of those commandments is the fear of God which is in turn the offspring of true faith.”7 Though it is questionable whether the apatheia spoken of here involved a suppression of the passions, popular Christian interpretation sometimes enshrined in less careful teaching tended to suggest that the passions were evil in themselves and needed to be suppressed. A number of moral theologians also taught the same. St. Thomas then takes up the question of the passionate expression of Job concerning the loss of temporal goods as a necessary topic to engage the moral objections that spiritual and patient people should not experience deep passions. He confronts the traditional problem of the passions by first explaining the hierarchy of goods: “Since there are three goods of man: of soul, of body and exterior things, these goods are so ordered to each other that the body exists for the sake of the soul, but exterior things exist for the sake of both the body and the soul.”8 Satan had accused Job of fearing God for a wrong intention. This would result in higher goods being subordinate to lower goods. God wishes to demonstrate the good in7. Evagrius Ponticus, Prakticos, 81. 8. Iob, ch. 2, lect. 1.



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tention of Job and so allows Satan to deprive him of these goods of body: “So the Lord arranged from all eternity to afflict Job in time to prove the truth of his virtue in order to preclude every calumny of the wicked.”9 The horrible affliction Job then experiences is not only the result of the loss of all temporal goods including his health, but also the reaction of his wife to this; she basically holds his living of a virtuous life to be foolish given the pass to which he has been led. The friends console him by silence and St. Thomas begins his antiStoical treatment by attributing Job’s words to a natural reaction to great suffering quoting Ovid: “Who but one of inept mind would forbid a mother to weep at the funeral of her child?” Yet St. Thomas teaches that this is “the perfect wisdom of man, for since temporal and corporeal goods should not be loved except because of spiritual and eternal ones, when the latter are conserved as the more principal ones, man should not be dejected if he is deprived of the former nor puffed up if he has an abundance of them.”10 Since Job held to this despite intense suffering, “he consoled himself very much according to reason.”11 The Morality of the Passions Job passes seven days in silence to demonstrate his rationality despite intense suffering. When he speaks, though, it is with such an outpouring of passion and he says such radical things that for more than a thousand years Christian authors could not reconcile his exaggerated words with the normal picture of a virtuous man who would always be in perfect control of his tongue. Such a reconciliation seemed morally impossible. Since St. Thomas in no way shrinks from a literal commentary, he takes up the challenge of reconciling Christian patience in suffering 9. Iob, ch. 2, lect. 1. 10. Iob, ch. 2, lect. 2: “In quo perfectam hominis sapientiam docet. Cum enim temporalia bona et corporalia non sint amanda nisi propter spiritualia et aeterna, istis salvatis quasi principalioribus, non debet homo deici si illis privetur nec elevari si eis abundet.” 11. Iob, ch. 2, lect. 2: “sed magis ipse secundum rationem consolabatur se ipsum.”

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and the extraordinary grief of Job at his own suffering by reference to Aristotelean philosophy. In his answer he does a great service to future moral theologians and even points the way to a realistic solution to the problems of mental illness so common today. His solution is also useful to an explanation of the seemingly extreme words of the patient Christ: “My soul is sorrowful unto death” (Mt 26:38; Mk 14:34). His solution also represents the true interpretation of the apatheia so dear to people like Evagrius Ponticus. As already stated, it is important to note that the Stoics looked upon the passions as sicknesses of the soul. This was especially true of the passion of sorrow. If a person were virtuous, it was their teaching, he should never experience sorrow. A virtuous person could not be sad about the loss of material goods, for, since he is a spiritual person, and spiritual goods are more important than material goods, material suffering should not affect him. He should not feel sorrow over the loss of spiritual goods because he has no sin and as a result there is nothing he should feel sorry for. For this reason, the lament of Job, which expressed such great sorrow, seemed unreasonable to those Christians influenced by Stoical ideas. St. Thomas explains: “In Chapter II, I explained there were two opinions held by ancient philosophers about the passions. The Stoics held there was no place in the wise man for sorrow.”12 St. Thomas rather finds the key to understanding this paradox by applying moral principles gained from Aristotle about ethics: “The Peripatetics said that the wise man is indeed sad, but in sad things he conducts himself with moderation in accord with reason. This opinion accords with the truth.”13 The foundation for this teaching is in the manner in which reason uses the passions as instruments of freedom as opposed to the body. The physical body has no knowing life of its own. As a result, there is no way in which it can resist the 12. Iob, ch. 3, lect. 1: “Sicut supra dictum est, circa passions animae duplex fuit antiquorum opinion: Stoici enim dixerunt tristitiam in sapientem non cadere.” 13. Ibid.: “Peripatetici vero dixerunt sapientem quidem tristari sed in tristitiis secundum rationam moderate se habere, et haec opinion veritati concordat.”



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commands of reason and will. Aristotle called the manner in which reason governed the body as despotic rule. This was the rule of master to slave because when reason commands, the body cannot resist such a command. Such is not the case with the passions though people have often morally sought to treat them that way. When temptation arises in a person, many normally assume that if they make an act of will which does not consent to the temptation and it does not go away then they must be consenting in some way. This is not the case. One can fail to consent, but the passions do not obey such a lack of consent in the will like the hand. The reason is that they have a knowing life of their own in the senses and so they do not have to obey the directives of reason and will. All things being equal, they should do so, but common human experience shows they do not. This is because reason governs the passions by political rule, as a wise governor to a free citizen. This is also the reason virtues must be introduced into the passions to allow a person to act spontaneously. Virtues must be introduced to allow the passions to support the actions and directions of reason and will, not so that the passions can be replaced by reason and will. Thomas goes on to explain that reason does not destroy nature or the condition in which it is found. Sensible nature naturally rejoices in things which befit it and feels pain and sorrow about suffering. Reason does not take this away in man. Given the political rule of the passions, it is not natural for the spiritual powers of man to supplant the natural objects of the sensible powers but rather direct them to their proper objects. This would be the case if being a reasonable, rational, and virtuous person meant becoming unfeeling, cold, and aloof. A wise man can indeed feel intense passions if this befit the objective situation in which he finds himself: “This opinion also accords with Holy Scripture which places sorrow in Christ, in whom there is every fullness of virtue and wisdom.”14 In fact, Christ 14. Ibid.: “Concordat etiam haec opinio Sacrae Scripturae, quae tristitiam in Christo point, in quo est omnis virtutis et sapientiae plenitudo.”

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is said to have had propassions, which mean passions perfectly guided by reason. To maintain that his intense expressions of sorrow were somehow inhuman would mean that Christ is less than altogether human, which is heretical. The Council of Chalcedon is clear that each of Christ’s natures perfectly exercises those acts which accord with it. Aquinas develops his thought on this in the Summa theologiae: Now although what is virtuous is man’s chief good, and what is sinful is man’s chief evil, since these pertain to reason which is supreme in man, yet there are certain secondary goods of man, which pertain to the body, or to the exterior things that minister to the body. And hence in the soul of the wise man there may be sorrow in the sensitive appetite by his apprehending these evils; without this sorrow disturbing the reason. And in this way are we to understand that “whatsoever shall befall the just man, it shall not make him sad,” because his reason is troubled by no misfortune. And thus Christ’s sorrow was a propassion, and not a passion.15

So Job demonstrated both by speech and by keeping silent seven days that, like Christ, his experience of passion was reasonable, moral, and so a paradigm of patience. This virtue of patience is not demonstrated by feeling no sorrow or replacing the feeling of sorrow by reason, but rather in preserving reason despite feeling intense sorrow in perseverance: “In speaking he showed the sorrow he experienced and showed patience. Wise men usually express the motion of the passions which they feel in a reasonable way.”16 Christ did that. Job also does it when he finally speaks: “Also, Boethius, at the beginning of the Consolation of Philosophy, opens with the expression 15. ST III, q. 15, a. 6 ad 2: “Quamvis autem honestum sit principale hominis bonum, et inhonestum principale hominis malum, quia haec pertinent ad ipsam rationem, quae est principalis in homine; sunt tamen quaedam secundaria hominis bona, quae pertinent ad ipsum corpus, vel ad exteriors res corpori deservientes. Et secundum hoc, potest in animo sapientis esse tristitia, quantum ad appetitum sensitivum, secundum apprehensionem huiusmodi malorum, non tamen ita quod ista tristitia perturbed rationem. Et secundum hoc etiam intelligitur quod non contristabit istum quidquid ei acciderit, quia scilicet ex nullo accidente eius ratio perturbatur. Et secundum hoc tristitia fuit in Christo, secundum propassionem, non secundum passionem.” 16. Iob, ch. 3, lect. 1: “Loquendo autem tristitiam quam patiebatur ostendit: consuetum est enim apud sapientes ut ex ratione loquantur passionum motus quos sentient.”



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of his sadness, but he shows how to mitigate it by reason. So Job expresses his sorrow verbally.”17 Job’s lament is therefore powerful and deep but also reasonable. He avoids two pitfalls which would give the lie to his virtue. The first is to actually curse God. Instead he demonstrates his great suffering by cursing the day of his birth, not in itself, but because it has led to him experiencing such great suffering. In this he demonstrates the passionate response to pain, which is not mitigated just because a person is virtuous. But, on the other hand, he does not attribute this great suffering nor his sorrow to his own personal sin. In this he flies in the face of what most people who are materialists and yet affirm some kind of divine providence evaluate as the cause for great suffering. The reasonable logic behind this position would be that when one loses material goods, this must be due to some moral imperfection. If a person were truly virtuous, he would consider that he had lost nothing unless he concluded this was due to sin, which of course he should not have. Though material goods are not the highest goods, they are still goods in man. The virtuous man would be inhuman if he did not experience great pain and suffering on the level of the senses responding to this loss. God may allow this, but not as a punishment for sin. This point will be even more clearly made in the discussion of the kinds of evil in man which the friends have in the next section of the book. This will entail the distinction between the manner in which evil of fault and evil of punishment relate to each other, as well as the difference between physical and moral evil. Job, in fact, is not aware of personal sin, and so the weight of his argument will be that though he is suffering intensely, there must be another reason for this, since he is not thereby deprived of the highest goods in man which are spiritual: “To summarize what Job said in his lamentation, note that three things are contained in it. First, he shows his own life is wearisome; 17. Ibid.: “Sic etiam et Boetius in principio de consolation tristitiam aperuit ut ostenderet quomodo eam ratione mitigaret.”

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second, the greatness of the unhappiness which he was suffering; third, he shows his innocence.”18 The primary moral principle taught in this section of the book is that the passions are born to naturally be obedient to reason. Reason, however, rules the passions not as master to slave, but as wise governor to free citizen. Introducing a virtue into the passions, then, does not mean that reason supplants the natural movements of the passions to their own goods on their own levels and thus does not produce a Stoic and aloof character. The sorrow one experiences in the passions which respond to the loss of material goods is normal and natural. This may even be very intense at times. However, since the goods lost are not the final or deepest goods of man, even intense expressions of sorrow are not wrong or inhuman, as long as one preserves the correct order of the passions with reason. An important conclusion concerning contemporary ideas of mental illness and psychological therapy arises logically from this treatment. The psychological community is influenced by Freud, whose clinical work was brilliant but suffered from an erroneous picture of the soul. His ideas concerning reason, freedom, and emotional illness played off reason interpreted as the exterior expectations of society against human emotional drives. The inability to sublimate the conflict between the two was the occasion of emotional illness. Therapy for such illness involved identifying the source of the conflict and attempting to free the passions from such societal expectations. In other words, reason was the cause of such illness. Though, of course, this whole discussion comes from a very different world than that of St. Thomas, his analysis of Job points out that the purpose of the passions is to be guided by reason. One could conclude then that emotional illness would be a problem within the passions themselves, which does not allow true reason to penetrate and 18. Iob, ch. 3, lect. 3: “Si quis igitur colligere velit quae in hac deploratione Iob dicta sunt, sciendum est tria in ea contineri: primo, enim ostendit sibi suam vitam esse taediosam, secundo magnitudinem miseriae quam patiebatur, ibi antequam comedam, etc, tertio ostendit suam innocentiam cum dicit none dissimulavi, et cetera.”



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guide the emotional life. The patient could not then experience true freedom in the development of the virtues therein. Therapy could then return the passions to free obedience to the truth of intellectual guidance. So sublimation in the Freudian sense would not correspond to the truth of human nature: “Virtue does not consist in sublimation, taking the word in the ordinary sense of the expression of the lower through the higher. Rather does virtue consist in assumption, a process in which the higher agency takes up and transforms from within the lower powers, giving them a new and intrinsic form and determination, moderating and changing them in a real physical way, and giving them a . . . proportion to a higher end.”19 The Moral Dimension of the Ultimate End The ensuing discussion between Job and the friends (chapters 4–37) examines the problem of the suffering of the just and the prosperity of the wicked from the point of view of reason. This discussion has important implications for moral principles because truths about the proper punishment for sin are directly connected to the problem of the ultimate end sought in all moral actions. The real issue then turns on the natural destiny of human life and, thus, what alone can make man finally happy. The argument is carried on like a Scholastic disputation according to St. Thomas, with the friends constantly opting for the ultimate happiness and punishment of man being in this life and Job constantly pointing out that this is unreasonable. If this is unreasonable, then moral action must always be seen in terms of a human future in the next life and ultimate punishment be reserved for this. In the New Testament it is clear that the final fulfillment of man is in the spiritual and bodily perfection of the next life, but this was not clear in the Old Testament and is still not generally held by much of the human race not influenced by Christianity. 19. A. A. A. Terruwe, The Priest and the Sick in Mind (London: Burns and Oates, 1958), 4.

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The friends argue that the final human rewards and punishments are in this life because therein lies the final fulfillment of hope of human nature. Job disproves this: The ultimate end of man is in that place where he expects final retribution for good or evil. So if man is rewarded by God for goods deeds and punished for evil deeds in this life as Eliphaz is eager to prove, it seems necessary to conclude that the ultimate end of man is in this life. But Job intends to disprove this opinion and he wants to show that the present life of man does not have the ultimate end in it, but is compared to this end as motion is compared to rest and the journey to the destination.20

The friends argue from many different positions that physical rewards and punishments are all reasonably given only in this life as the reward for virtuous deeds and punishments for wicked deeds. Job demonstrates that this cannot be true and does not accord with divine wisdom. The long argument with the friends commences with Job proving that the hope of man cannot just be in this life. Aquinas summarizes these arguments: “First, they were eager to speak about the wonderful things of God, extolling his wisdom, power, and justice, to make their case appear more favorable. Second, they applied these wonderful things which are accepted by everyone about God to certain false dogmas, specifically, that men prosper in this life because of justice and have tribulations because of sins, and that after this life one should hope for nothing. Third, from these assertions, they denounced Job as evil because of the adversity which he had suffered.”21 20. Iob, ch. 7, lect. 1: “Ibi enim est ultimus finis hominis ubi expectat finalem retributionem pro bonis aut malis: unde si in hac vita homo remunerator a Deo pro bene actis et punitur pro malis, ut Eliphaz astuere nitebatur, consequens videtur quod in hac vita sit ultimus hominis finis. Hanc autem sententiam intendit Job reprobare et vult ostendere quod praesens vita hominis non habet in se ultimum finem, sed comparator ad ipsum sicut motus ad quietem et via ad terminem.” 21. Iob, ch. 12, lect. 1: “Primo enim studebant ad dicendum aliqua magnifica de Deo, extollentes eius sapientiam et potentiam et iustitiam, ut ex hos eorum causa favorabilior appareret; secundo huiusmodi mangifica de Dao assumpa ad falsa quaedam dogmata applicabant, utpote quod propter iustitiam homines prosperarentur in hoc mundo et propter peccata tribularentur, et quod post hanc vitam non esset aliquid expectandum; tertio ex huiusmodi assertionibus, propter adversitatem quam patiebatur Iob.”



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Before examining the answers to their arguments which Job makes, one should observe the differences between physical evil and moral evil and the way they relate to nature. Their distinction is important to the argument. To understand this difference, one must remember the distinction between being and action or first act and second act. First act is the existence of a given nature with all the potentials present in that nature for further perfection. Only God would have no potential for further perfection in his being because in him essence and existence are one. These perfections are carried out in the acts which befit the given nature. This is, of course, an application of the famous axiom: operari sequitur esse (action follows being). In the case of man, judgments about the ultimate end of man determine the nature of man and the powers of his soul. The various powers of the human soul and the human soul itself exist, but they exist in potential to further participation in the nature of beings outside themselves, including the nature of God. This requires an action beyond mere existence. In natures which are not free, their evil in action is caused by an evil in being. Now good designates a certain perfection. And perfection is twofold: namely the first, which is form or habit, and the second, which is operation. But everything we use in operating can be referred to the first perfection, the use of which is operation. Consequently, and conversely, a twofold evil is found: one in the agent himself, according as he is deprived either of form or of habit or of whatever else is necessary for operation, thus blindness or crookedness of leg is an evil; but the other evil is in the defective act itself, for instance if we should say that limping is an evil. In natures which are free it is the opposite. Evil in action which results from freedom of will, causes evil in being.22 22. Aquinas, De Malo, 1, 4, ad corp: “Bonum autem quamdam perfectionem designat. Perfectio autem est duplex: scilicet prima, quae est forma vel habitus; et secunda, quae est operatio. Ad perfectionem autem primam, cuius usus est operatio, potest reduci omne illud quo utimur operando. Unde et e converso duplex malum invenitur. Unum quidem in ipso agente, secundum quod privatur vel forma, vel habitu, vel quocumque quod necessarium sit ad operandum: sicut caecitas vel curvitas tibiae quoddam malum est. Aliud vero malum est in ipso actu deficiente, sicut si dicamus claudicationem esse aliquod malum.”

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A deformed leg causes someone to walk lame. Adulterous action precludes the soul from participating in divine nature because to act against the nature God created is to act against God. But these two evils are ordered differently in natural operations and in voluntary operations. For in natural operations the evil of the action follows from the evil of the effective cause, for example, limping follows from a crippled leg; but in voluntary operations the reverse is true, the evil of the agent, i.e., punishment, divine providence regulating fault by punishment, follows from the evil of the action, i.e., the fault.23

A fortiori, the same would be true in good things. Goodness of agent causes goodness of action in natural things. Goodness of action causes goodness of agent in moral matters. The intellect and the conscience apply moral reasoning which determines how the various actions relate to the agent who is man and the basis for this are the objects of all the powers of the soul and their relationship to one another. Without this objective basis, morals degenerate into a freedom which is license. As Pope John Paul II remarks, “Certain tendencies in contemporary moral theology under the influence of . . . subjectivism and individualism . . . involve novel interpretations of the relationship of freedom to the moral law, human nature and conscience, and propose novel criteria for the moral evaluation of acts. Despite their variety, these tendencies are at one in lessening or even denying the dependence of freedom on truth.”24 In the case of the Commentary, the argument of the friends would be that physical punishments in being would be the proper result of a morally evil action, which suggests that there are no spiritual powers in man. This materialist perspective, though understandable in the Old Testament, becomes incomprehensible in the time of the New Testament, as reflected in the statement of John Paul II quoted above about freedom ceasing to depend on truth. Job’s an23. Ibid.: “Sed haec duo mala aliter ordinantur in naturalibus et voluntariis; nam in naturalibus ex malo agentis sequitur malum actionis, sicut ex tibia curva sequitur claudicatio; in voluntariis autem e converso, ex malo actionis, quod est culpa, sequitur malum agentis, quod est poena, divina providentia culpam per poenam ordinante.” 24. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, Encyclical Letter (August 6, 1993), no. 34.



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swers to the arguments of the friends are thus crucial in even a contemporary context to demonstrate the proper relationship of reward and punishment in man because of the constitution of his nature. Job answers each one of these arguments. As to the first, he demonstrates the problem with placing the wisdom of God in physical goods proper to time by showing that the just do not seek temporal goods but rather seek righteousness. This shows the greatness of the power of God, which is the source of true wisdom. That wisdom teaches that people who put their trust in material things will always come up short. These are easy to lose; their possession or loss is fleeting and depend on slight causes; and both the good and the wicked can experience either. True wisdom then means that one must look for hope in spiritual goods because when the soul is separated from the body, one is stripped of material goods and even the body dissolves into its basic elements. Job had wondered about this frail state of the present life. But his answer is that there is another life: “This admiration would cease if one considers that after this life there is another life reserved for man in which he remains for all eternity.”25 It is at this point in the argument that Job posits as a reasonable conclusion that the final rewards and punishments are not in this life but in another life: “For he does not deny that the present adversities are punishments, as though God did not reward or punish the acts of man, but states that the time of retribution is in the other life.”26 The primary reason for this is that all things desire by nature to perpetuate their existence. This perpetuity could only be preserved if man could experience the resurrection of the dead as the Catholic faith teaches. Aquinas maintains that the opinion of Job is exhibited beginning in chapter 14 of the Commentary. The necessity of the resurrection is a conclusion of reason: “It would be a horrendous and unhappy thing if man should so disappear after death that he could 25. Iob, ch. 14, lect. 2: “Sed haec admiration cessat si consideretur quod post hanc vitam homini alia vita reservatur in qua in aeternum permaneat.” 26. Iob, ch. 14, lect. 2: “Non enim si negat adversitates praesentes esse punitiones quasi Deus hominem actus non remuneret vel puniat, sed quia tempus retributionis proprie est in alia vita.”

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never be brought back to life again. So Job shows his own desire for the future resurrection.”27 This conclusion follows from logical necessity of the Aristotelean position on the relation of the body and the soul. Plato discovered the immaterial form and so discovered the existence of God also. However, he had difficulty making sense of the nature of matter. Since the forms were immaterial, the reality of matter became something he questioned. This led him to the famous theory that knowledge consists of remembering forms which were learned before birth in the body and then forgotten in this life. There was no necessity for the mediatorship of the body in knowledge and, even more, the body was regarded as a prison which was not necessary for human life. The spiritual form of the soul was man, and the body was therefore superfluous. Many Greek philosophers followed Plato in this. St. Paul confronted these various philosophers in the Areopagus at Athens. They listened very intently until he mentioned the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead and most walked away. The immortality of the soul is affirmed, but the body is not necessary for human perfection in heaven as a result. This may make some logical sense but does not correspond to human experience. Aristotle completely disagreed with Plato’s idea of the relation of the soul to the body. For Aristotle, the soul was the spiritual form and the body was the matter of which man was composed. Both principles are necessary for the substance “man” to exist. This has important implications for knowledge. Knowledge was not remembering, but instead the soul is a tabula rasa and knowledge, though it does involve spiritual forms, cannot be divorced from material reality. All human knowledge naturally comes through the senses. As a result, if the soul is immortal and spiritual, then it would be unnatural for the soul and the body to be eternally separated in death so that the body no longer exists. 27. Iob, ch. 14, lect. 4: “Esset autem valde horrendum et miserabile si homo per mortem, quia unumquodque naturaliter esse desiderat: unde Job suum desideratum ostendit de resurrectione futura.”



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For Aristotle, unnatural conditions cannot endure in perpetuity. The problem Aristotle had was that human death is a fact which cannot be disputed. There is a natural desire in all things to exist. Material things cannot preserve their individual existence perpetually. If the soul exists perpetually and man is a necessary composite of body and soul, then the body should also exist perpetually. The problem is that there is nothing in the human soul which can make the body exist perpetually and nothing in the body to do the same thing. The necessity of resurrection for human fulfillment is thus a truth open to reason. The solution of man which is based on this truth is not. Man by reason is led to a dilemma for which there is no solution by reason. In a more immediate sense, the death of the body is a fact which results from sin as to its corruption. For man to have a true and perfect hope, then, for that good alone which can fulfill all the desire of his nature to exist, the body must rise from the dead. This can only be accomplished by God as a miracle. This is a grace and, corresponding to the suffering of painful death, this can only be brought about by Christ. The central text in the whole Commentary concerns the ultimate end of human life, which is brought about by Christ, 19:25–27. Though contemporary exegetes generally deny that this can be prophecy of Christ, for St. Thomas the language and the doctrine can only point to Christ. Only Christ can bring man to eternal life in both body and spirit and thus authenticate and realize the true hope of man: “Thus the primordial cause of the resurrection of man is the life of the Son of God, who did not take his beginning from Mary as to his person, as the Ebionites say, but always was.”28 This flesh which will come to life is not, according to Job, just a return to earthly existence in the manner in which human flesh exists here, nor is it some flesh which was in no way a part of the living body which Job has and causes so much affliction: “So no one can see God while living in this mortal flesh; but the flesh which the soul resumes in the resurrection will certainly be the same in substance, 28. Iob, ch. 19, lect. 2: “Est ergo primordialis causa resurrectionis humanae vitae filii Dei, quae non sumpsit initium ex Maria, sicut Ebioneitae dixerunt, sed semper fuit.”

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but will be preserved incorruptible by a divine gift. . . . Therefore the former flesh will be of this latter condition because it in no way will impede the soul from being able to see God but rather be completely subject to the soul.”29 The natural desire of man to exist must include both the soul and the body as a part of the composite which makes up man. Obviously desire here does not mean appetite of the will; and the body has no knowledge and thus no willed desire. It simply refers to the potency of nature and the final perfection in action to which this nature is ordered. The body is ordered to union with the soul for its existence and the soul is finally ordered to the vision of God because of the presence of the intellect. So there is a natural potency in man to exist forever that includes the soul and the body. Though the body does not obviously see God, who is only spiritual, still a resurrected and glorified man sees the humanity of Christ. By a miracle, this body lives forever, and a man who has done good on earth and not died in the state of sin also participates in the experience of the soul knowing directly the divinity of Christ without medium. So the necessity of resurrection is natural because of the body/soul composite, but the fact of resurrection is supernatural because it is a miracle: “Porphyry, not knowing this, said, the soul must completely flee from the body to become happy, as though the soul and not the whole man will see God.”30 The belief that body and soul are resurrected in eternal life reflects the proper purpose and order of divine providence, which shows that all things that exist, exist for man and man exists for God. This perfection of man is in the intellect when man knows God as he is, but since not just the intellect has a passive natural potency to know God, all the other powers of man must participate in it. Also, since this natural potency or desire can only be realized by grace in 29. Iob, ch. 19, lect. 2: “Sed caro quam anima in resurrectione resumet eadem quidem erit per substantiam sed incorruptionem habebit ex divino munere, . . . et ideo illa caro huius erit condiciones quod in nullo animam impediment Deum quin Deum possit videre, sed erit ei omnimo subiencta.” 30. Ibid.: “Quod ignorans Porphyrius dixit quod animae, ad hoc quod fiat beato, omne corpus fugiendum est, quasi anima sit Deum visura non homo.”



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both the soul and the body, grace and the supernatural order are the proper fulfillment of human perfection. If one applies the logic of evil present in first and second act evoked already, an act of free choice in second act which was contrary to the truth of human nature in a significant way (mortal sin and evil of fault) would lead to a lack in first act (evil of punishment). This would be the true frustration of the existence of man. The fact that the proper reward and punishment of man is his inability to arrive at the vision of God, which is begun in the soul in the intellect but completed in the resurrection of the dead, is in accord with both reason and faith. To deny that man can see God, then, would be against both, and this is why the necessity of resurrection is brought up in the argument with the friends. Aquinas points this out at the very beginning of the Summa theologiae where he reflects on how man knows God. He affirms that God is known by both reason and faith as the cause and final purpose of the world. But then he goes a step further and states that man must also know God in his essence, which is a conclusion of both reason examining the intellect and its nature and of faith as taught in Scripture. Therefore some who considered this, held that no created intellect can see the essence of God. This opinion, however, is not tenable. For as the ultimate beatitude of man consists in the use of his highest function, which is the operation of his intellect; if we suppose that the created intellect could never see God, it would either never attain to beatitude, or its beatitude would consist in something else besides God; which is opposed to faith. For the ultimate perfection of the rational creature is to be found in that which is the principle of its being; since a thing is perfect so far as it attains to its principle. Further the same opinion is also against reason. For there resides in every man a natural desire to know the cause of any effect which he sees; and thence arises wonder in men. But if the intellect of the rational creature could not reach so far as to the first cause of things, the natural desire would remain void. Hence it must be absolutely granted that the blessed see the essence of God.31 31. ST I, q. 12, a. 1: “Hoc igitur attendentes, quidam posuerunt quod nullus intellectus creates essentiam Dei videre potest. Sed hoc inconvenienter dicitur. Cum enim

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The natural desire of the human person to exist in perpetuity, then, is a reference to the presence of the intellect in man. This fact means that the ultimate end of man cannot be realized here on earth, including the ultimate punishment for sin. St. Thomas says that this is because the vision of God is the end of man; and he arrives at this point as a conclusion of faith and also of reason. This end or goal of our intellectual nature does not include the fact of resurrection, which is a miracle. But it does mean that even though Job may have lost material goods on earth and the wicked may prosper in material goods, this situation is not unreasonable on the part of God. The argument with the friends continues then in light of this truth with an attempt to explain from reason, using probable arguments, why Job suffers but the wicked prosper. Prosperity or adversity regarding temporal goods is no sign of virtue or lack thereof. In fact, the wicked would suffer more in the loss of temporal goods than the virtuous man, because the wicked have nothing to fall back on, as St Thomas points out: “But it should be considered further that the adversity of an impious man is graver than that of the just, because when the just man suffers temporal adversity there remains for him the support of virtue and the consolation of God. Hence, he is not completely dissipated. But for wicked men, with the loss of temporal goods which alone they sought for themselves, there remains no support.”32 Since the moral dimension of the ultimate end which desired is after this life and free will is a preparation for this ultima hominis beatitude in altissima eius operatione consistat, quae est operation intellectus, si nunquam essentiam Dei videre potest intellectus creates, vel nunquam beatitudinem obtinebit, vel in alio eius beatitudo consistet quam in Deo. Quod est alienum a fide. In ipso enim est ei principium essendi, intantum enim unumquodque perfectum est, inquantum ad suum principium attingit. Similiter etiam est praeter rationem. Inest enim homini naturale desiderium congnoscendi causam, cum intuetur effectum; et ex hoc admiration in hominibus consurgit. Si igitur intellectus rationalis creaturae pertingere non possit ad primam causam rerum, remanebit inane desiderium naturae. Unde simpliciter concedendum est quod beati Dei essentiaum videant.” 32. Iob, ch. 21, lect. 1: “Est autem considerandum ulterius quod adversitas impii gravior est quam iusti, quia cum iustus adverstiatem patitur temporalem remanet ei fulcimentum virtutis et consolation in Deo, unde non totaliter dissipatur; sed malis, amissis temporalibus bonis quae sola sibi quaesierunt, nullum remanet fulcimentum.”



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purpose, God in his providence from his wisdom provides the necessary aid for this in one who is open, his grace: “One should know that in the hand of man that is in his power, there are certain goods, namely voluntary works of virtue, of which he is master through his free will aided by the grace of God.”33 The weight of all the arguments from reason has rested on the fact that divine providence would be compromised if Job experienced physical and temporal adversity without having committed sin. His friends argue that Job is fooling himself to deny his sin. If he will only confess and admit it, they say, then he will return to temporal rewards. Job has remonstrated constantly against all the friends that he is not aware of any sin, that his conscience is pure, and thus that the suffering he experiences cannot be punishment for sin. He seeks to expand the materialistic understanding of his friends by showing that only being raised to know God in the next life can be the proper reward for virtue. He also wishes to demonstrate that this is in God’s power through grace. The fact that God is the only end of human life is something which is open to demonstration by reason alone. The fact that grace and resurrection are a part of this is something that can only be argued from probable arguments and that demands faith. The disputants refuse to accept the fact that Job has a pure conscience so the author of the book of Job can demonstrate a more complete wisdom about divine providence. Since the state of his conscience is something which only can be known by God, God resolves the question by revelation. Providence and Morals Beginning in chapter 38 of the Commentary, God speaks directly to finally resolve the question: “Because human wisdom is not suf33. Iob, ch. 21, lect. 1: “Circa quod sciendum est quod in manu hominis, idest in potestate ipsius, sunt quaedam bona, scilicet voluntaria virtutum opera quorum est dominus per liberum arbitrium gratia Dei iuvatum.”

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ficient to understand the truth of divine providence, it was necessary that the dispute should be determined by divine authority.”34 God’s wisdom must now be invoked in order to resolve the difficulties posed in the book. The final judgment in the book, then, comes not from reason but from faith, though it is not contrary to the arguments which have thus far been introduced. Morally, Job has told the truth. But, because of the manner of his speech, he may have caused scandal in those who heard him: “Job thought correctly about divine providence, but in his manner of speaking he had gone to excess because he had caused scandal in the hearts of others when they thought that he did not show due reverence to God.”35 The Lord, therefore, evaluates the moral stance of all the participants in the discussion because he occupies the role of a master who determines the truth of a question in the same manner as the master in the disputed questions in the medieval universities. But, in this case, the truth of the question is not the only object of the determination; there is also the moral stance of those who engaged in the disputation: “Therefore, the Lord, as the determiner of the question, contradicts the friends of Job because they did not think correctly, Job himself for expressing himself in an inordinate way, and Elihu for an inadequate determination of the question.”36 Though Job had spoken the truth about rewards and punishments being reserved to after this life, the manner in which he had presented these arguments led the friends and others to scandal. This was done in his seeming to challenge God to dispute with him: “He (God) begins his determination to accuse Job for having spo34. Iob, ch. 38, lect. 1: “Sed quia humana sapientia no sufficit ad veritatem divinae providentiae comprehendendam, necessarium fuit ut praedicta disputatio divina auctoritate determinaretur.” 35. Ibid.: “Sed quia Job circa divinam providentiam recte sentiebat, in modo autem loquendi excesserat intantum quod in aliorum cordibus exinde scandalum proveniret dum putabant eum Deo debitam reverentiam non exhibere.” 36. Ibid.: “Ideo dominus tamquam quaestionis determinator, et amicos Iob redarguit de hoc quod no recte sentiebant, et ipsum Iob de inordinate modo loquendi, et Eliud de inconventienti determinatione.”



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ken presumptuously when he provoked God to discussion.”37 God then proceeds to question Job about the physical workings of the whole universe. This is not because God needs any information but in order that he might instruct Job through questioning. After this intense questioning in which God seeks to convince Job of God’s omnipotence and that he is not a worthy subject of dispute, then Job acknowledges in humility that he had spoken rashly, not in the truth which he had explained, nor in his declaration if innocence, but rather in the manner in which he had declared his innocence. He has indeed explained his inner conscience with a right intention, but morally he has been at fault for sometimes doing so in a way which could lead people to think otherwise. Job is speaking here in the presence of God and his conscience does not accuse him of speaking falsely or of a proud intention, for he had spoken from the purity of his soul, but of thoughtlessness of speech. This is because even if he had spoken from pride of soul, his words still seemed to taste of arrogance, and so his friends took occasion of scandal. For one must not only avoid evil things, but also those things which have the outward appearance of evil.38

The teaching of St. Thomas on the moral nature of scandal is quite thorough in the Summa theologiae. The term expresses a spiritual stumbling block. Scandal has to do with disposing another person to experience sin. Thomas defines it as “Something done or said less rightly that occasion’s another spiritual downfall.”39 Aquinas goes on to say that such an action must be exterior because another cannot take occasion for evil from thoughts. Further, this action 37. Iob, ch. 38, lect. 1: “Primo autem incipit in sua determinatione Iob arguer de ho quod praesumptuose videbatur esse locutus dum Deum ad disputandum provocaret.” 38. Iob, ch. 39, lect. 1: “Ubi considerandum est quod Iob coram Deo et sua conscientia loquens non de falsitate locutionis aut de superba intentione se accusat, quia ex puritate animi fuerat locutus, sed a levitate sermonis: quia scilicet etiam si non ex superbill animi locutus fuerat, verba tamen eius arrogantiam sapere videbantur, unde amici eius occasionem scandali sumpserant; oportet autem vitare non solum ala sed etiam ea quae habent speciem mali.” 39. ST II-II, q. 43, a. 1: “Et ideo convenienter dicitur quod dictum vel factum minus rectum praebens occasionem ruinae sit scandalum.”

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must be either evil in itself or have the appearance of evil. In addition, nothing can be a sufficient cause except the will of the sinner. So scandal is more an occasional cause. Aquinas distinguishes between direct scandal, which involves not only an evil action but also the intent to lead another into sin, and accidental scandal. The former is active scandal; the latter is passive scandal. Passive scandal results when a person does not do an evil deed as such and does not intend to lead another into sin. According to this distinction, active scandal is in the person giving it; passive scandal in the person scandalized regarding moral responsibility, which would lead to sin. A person could take scandal from a good deed, as was the case with the leadership of Israel being scandalized at the miracles of Our Lord. Active scandal may be a venial sin if it is accidental. This would be the case “when, through a slight indiscretion, a person either commits a venial sin, or does something that is not a sin in itself, but has the appearance of evil.”40 Job had seemed in the eyes of friends to contend against God and so he had led them into a condition in which they had taken passive scandal. The truth of what he has said, though, is not in doubt. He has suffered as an innocent man. On the other hand, God convicts the friends of error because their view of the correct punishment for sin is so materialistic. Physical and temporal suffering may be a result of God withdrawing his protection from the human race as a result of original sin, which is a sin of nature. It is not, however, the proper moral punishment for sin because of the nature of the human soul. The friends are held guilty of a serious falsehood that the whole experience of the suffering of Job has been permitted by God to correct. The only true punishments for moral evil are spiritual, not corporeal, and the primary one is the loss of heaven.

40. ST II-II, q. 43, a. 4: “Puta cum aliquis vel actum peccati venilais commitit; vel actum qui not est secumdum se peccatum sed habet aliquam speciam mali, cum aliqua levi indiscretione.”



Moral Principles in Commentary on Job 339 Moral Principles in Job

There are thus a number of important moral principles taught by Aquinas in the Commentary on Job. To understand them, the charge must be considered again. Satan had charged that Job fears God from an evil intention. Job wished to make God a means to some earthly end, whether it was material prosperity or physical health. The Lord permits the devil to test Job to demonstrate that this is not true. Job survives the temptation and thus proves Satan wrong. Job’s loud lament in his suffering and his denial that material rewards and punishments were the final good man obtained by moral rectitude led the friends to accuse him of moral error. Indeed, the very words spoken in his lament have often led Christian scholars influenced by Stoicism to doubt that he is a just person. Aquinas argues against the first by maintaining that Job spoke in his lament about the suffering of the just from the point of view of the passions. Though his lament was loud and quite deep, he still did not curse God. Instead, he demonstrated his faith that in the providence of God material prosperity is not the final or the deepest good in man, though it is a good. This is a rehearsal for the lament of Christ in the Passion. Aquinas will point out that in the celebrated prayer in the Garden at Gethsemane, when Christ says, “Let this cup pass me by,” he is only speaking from the level of the passions and the physical body. Moral choice does not occur on this level but in the intellect and will. When he says, “But not my will, but thine be done,” he is speaking from the level of the choosing will. In the same way, Job expresses the depth of his suffering in the name of the human race, but he shows that he is still a virtuous person on the level of his choosing and moral will by refusing to despair. This argues to the fact that morally there must be habits in the passions which support the movement of the will. Sorrow is one of them. The will does not supplant the passions in the virtue of temperance; rather, each level of the soul must be allowed to perform the actions characteristic of that level in unity.

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The debate with the friends frames the moral truth concerning the true rewards and punishments for virtue and sin in the issue of the final purpose of man. The ultimate end of man is not something material but is God himself. The vision of God is the final good of man. Thus, a man may lose all other goods as long as he has not lost the vision of God, and he remains in the complete sense of the word a human being. Since this is the case, spiritual rewards reflect the true condition of the soul and not material rewards. More than that, they are what the just finally seek. This includes the resurrection of the dead. Far from being a denial of divine providence or an evidence of sin, material reward and suffering affect the just and the sinner in a different way. The just do not lose their hope when deprived of material goods, as their hope is not in them. When God allows the sinner to prosper, this is not an approval of the inner life of the wicked but demonstrates the divine patience. Since the hope of the wicked is only in material things, God allows the wicked to prosper to allow them the time to still convert. Were they deprived of their material goods, they would certainly curse God and die. Though Job is morally accused of the venial sin of scandal at the end of the book, his innocence in suffering is vindicated. This leads to the glory of God. Job, in his perseverance in suffering and in the truth, has proven that he fears God for a right intention, as the final good of the world and man. He has also proved this to Satan, thus confounding his accusation; to the friends, thereby instructing them in the truth; to himself; and finally, in the presence of God, the only infallible judge. This vindication, which was caused by the divine permission of Satan to torment Job, has served the cause of advancing moral truth and also adding glory to God. Now the whole world knows both of Job’s innocence and that only seeing God in the resurrection of the dead or the loss of such a vision can be the true reward for virtue or punishment for sin. Finally, as a bow to the values of the Old Testament, this startling but reasonable truth is then grounded in the material vindication of Job at the end of the book, in which he is blessed to receive twice the goods he lost.

Anthony T. Flood Friendship

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Friendship in the Literal Exposition on Job Anthony T. Flood

The Literal Exposition on Job offers a unique glimpse into Aquinas’s mind on a variety of topics, including friendship. Aquinas addresses friendship in most of his major works, offering many insights into both its general nature and role in human happiness in his characteristic speculative style. In the Expositio, he addresses friendship in terms of the lives of concrete persons, the interactions between them, how they relate to God, and how God relates to them. Because of this, the Expositio provides us with a different kind of context to examine and understand his account. Moreover, Aquinas’s general views on friendship allow us to better understand the Expositio. He interprets Job to concern principally providence, particularly God’s desire and activity to lead human persons to their ultimate end. The ultimate end toward which human beings aim and the destiny for which human beings were created is union with God. Aquinas affirms and explains in other writings that the most complete kind of union possible between any two conscious beings is friendship. Thus, friendship with God provides the greatest realization of the greatest union for which human beings can hope. When Aquinas speaks to the nature and importance of providence throughout the Expositio, we should read this as the means by



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which God draws each human being into friendship with himself. In terms of this chapter, I will address the nature and place of friendship in the Expositio. The first two sections will treat Aquinas’s general account of love and friendship as found throughout his writings. The third section will introduce the broad arc of the Expositio. The fourth section will examine some aspects of friendship found throughout the commentary, with a focus on human relationships. The last two sections will look at the nature of friendship with God and its connection to the theme of providence that runs throughout the Expositio. The Nature of Friendship Friendship, according to Aquinas, falls under the category of love.1 More to the point, it is the highest kind of love. Amicitia, or friendship between two human persons, represents the highest natural love, while caritas, or friendship between a person and God, forms the highest supernatural love. Accordingly, in order to address comprehensively Aquinas’s notion of friendship, we will begin with his account of love. In its most general sense, love as amor constitutes the principle of movement toward some end.2 In the proper sense for human beings, love as dilectio is an act of the will—the rational movement toward a good as apprehended by the intellect. The rational movement terminates in union with the good. With respect to the role of union, Aquinas relies heavily on a Dionysian principle throughout his own analyses, namely, that love is a uniting and binding force. The unitive process of love culminates in the bringing together of two things. The foundation of union between two things is the unity 1. Aquinas follows Aristotle in distinguishing three levels of friendship: use, pleasure, and true. My overview focuses only on true or complete friendship, as the first two only involve the love of concupiscence and not the love of friendship. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Allen, Tex.: Christian Classics, 1948) (hereafter, ST), I-II, q. 27, a. 3. 2. ST I-II, q. 26, a. 1.

Friendship 343 of one thing. The unitive process of love tends toward a union with another that approximates most closely to one’s unity with himself. For Aquinas, such approximation comes in various degrees given the ontological constraints of metaphysical separation as well as more practical exigencies of human existence. Aquinas lays out the basic tenets of his view in the following passage on the three kinds of union found in any act of love. There is a union which causes love; and this is substantial union, as regards the love with which one loves oneself; while as regards the love wherewith one loves other things, it is the union of likeness. . . . There is also a union which is essentially love itself. This union is according to the bond of affection, and is likened to substantial union, inasmuch as the lover stands to the object of his love, as to something belonging to himself. . . . Again there is a union, which is the effect of love. This is real union, which the lover seeks with the object of his love.3

Before there is any act of love, an underlying union must allow for its possibility. In the case of an individual’s love for himself, it is substantial union, which Aquinas also refers to as “unity.” Unity constitutes the metaphysical foundation of the love of self. In the case of two things, there must be some shared likeness, the union of similitude, which grounds and makes possible love’s attractive and affective dimension. He calls the latter the “union of affection,” and it constitutes the primary phenomenon that we call “love.” Within this affective bond the lover relates to the beloved as another self and wills the good to him for the other’s sake. Lastly, the affective bond tends toward real union with the beloved.4 The activity of relating to another in love and ultimately forming 3. ST I-II, q. 28, a. 1. 4. Christopher Malloy gives the following overview of the three unions: “Love is the second of these unions—union of affection. Love depends on the first union, and it impels (through desire) towards the last union, in which it rests (by delight). The union of similitude is the fittingness or compatibility of one thing for another, without which love is not possible. . . . So, both union of similitude and cognitive recognition of that similitude are necessary conditions for love. Hence, the union of similitude precedes love.” See Malloy, “Thomas on the Order of Love and Desire,” The Thomist 71 (2007): 65–87, at 68.

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a friendship with him takes its cues from the more basic activity of relating to oneself: We must hold that, properly speaking, a man is not a friend to himself, but something more than a friend, since friendship implies union, for Dionysius says (Div Nom. iv) that love is a unitive force, whereas a man is one with himself which is more than being united to another. Hence, just as unity is the principle of union, so the love with which a man loves himself is the form and root of friendship. For if we have friendship with others it is because we do unto them as we do unto ourselves, hence we read in Ethic. ix. 4, 8, that “the origin of friendly relations with others lies in our relations to ourselves.”5

Aquinas distinguishes between the love of concupiscence and the love of friendship. In the former, a person wills goods to another for the lover’s own sake; while in the latter, a person wills goods to another for the beloved’s own sake. In the love of self, a person learns to will those goods to himself that truly perfects his personal nature. As he learns to love other persons, he wills those same kind of goods to others, not so much because it is good for him but because it is good for them. The priority of self-love over love of others entails that to be capable of friendship with others, a person must relate to himself properly. Put negatively, improper self-love closes off a person from healthy relationships with others. The love of friendship does not, by itself, constitute a sufficient condition for friendship. A person can (and should) will the good to another for the latter’s own sake even if there is no friendship between them. Expectedly, though, the love of friendship is a necessary and central condition to friendship. One of the reasons for this pertains to the object of the love. In the love of friendship, a person seeks the personhood of the other as the proper object of that love. Now friendship cannot be extended to virtues or any accidents . . . because friendship makes a man want his friend to exist and to have what is good. But accidents do not exist on their own, nor have they goodness on their own; being and well-being are theirs only when they exist in substances. 5. ST II-II, q. 25, a. 4.

Friendship 345 Hence, we do want virtues and accidents to exist, yet not for themselves, but for a subject to which we want being or well-being to come by way of those accidents.6

Aquinas emphasizes that it is personhood that makes one “incommunicable and distinct from others.”7 In the love of friendship, a person does not merely love the replaceable qualities of the beloved but rather the unique subject who anchors and is expressed through these qualities.8 For this personhood-directed love to become integrated into friendship, two further basic conditions need to be satisfied. In friendship, the love must become habitual. While a person might have occasional moments of willing to the good to someone, such as a stranger encountered who might need help or even an acquaintance reached out to from time to time, only if he wills the good consistently does he have a friendship with the other. Secondly, the beloved must reciprocate the same kind of love. If all of these conditions are met, two persons are friends in the full Thomistic sense of the term. Having determined the essence of true and complete friendship, Aquinas identifies five of its essential properties. Every friend wishes his friend to be and to live; secondly, he desires good things for him; thirdly, he does good things to him; fourthly, he takes pleasure in his company; fifthly, he is of one mind with him, rejoicing and sorrowing in almost the same things.9

A friend longs for the continued existence and presence of the beloved. Through benevolence he wills goods to her and through 6. Thomas Aquinas, On Love and Charity: Readings from the “Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard,” trans. Peter Kwasniewski, Thomas Bolin, OSB, and Joseph Bolin (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2008), III, d. 28, a. 1. I 7. Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, trans. English Dominican Fathers (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1952), 9, 4. 8. Linda Zagzebski offers a helpful analysis that focuses on the repeatability of qualities versus the non-repeatability of persons in “The Uniqueness of Persons,” Journal of Religious Ethics 29 (2001): 401–23. 9. ST II-II, q. 25, a. 7.

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beneficence he obtains goods for her. If the beloved reciprocates, the mutual presence of friends elicits delight, and among them there is concord or the unity of wills. Friendship with God Aquinas’s account of the relation between union and unity might seem to imply that not only is the love of self prior to and greater than the love of others, it is also greater than the love of God— for substantial unity seems to be greater than one’s union with God. However, this is not the case, as uncorrupted human nature would have allowed, and grace restores the love of God over self.10 To explain how, given his views on love, unity, and union, Aquinas draws upon the notion of participation.11 He characterizes participation as follows: “when something receives in a particular way that which belongs to another in a universal way, it is said ‘to participate’ in that.”12 Participation conveys the idea of being united in a fundamental metaphysical manner to the thing in which one participates. Every creature, while metaphysically distinct from God, participates in his goodness and perfection. By nature, each person loves God more 10. In connection to ST, I, q. 60, a. 5, Osborne notes, “If a human’s nature were integral, he would be able to love God more than himself even out of his own natural powers. This ability to so love God is based on the natural inclination planted in him by God. It is only because of the weakness of fallen nature that this purely natural love is now impossible without grace. The natural inclination of the will towards God shows that the natural elective love of God is possible” (Thomas M. Osborne Jr., Love of Self and Love of God in Thirteenth-Century Ethics [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005], 108). Also, in the sed contra of ST I-II, q. 109, Aquinas affirms: “As some maintain, man was first made with only natural endowments; and in this state it is manifest that he loved God to some extent. But he did not love God equally with himself, or less than himself, otherwise he would have sinned. Therefore he loved God above himself. Therefore man, by his natural powers alone, can love God more than himself and above all things.” 11. I am indebted to John W. Wippel’s analysis of participation in The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000). 12. Thomas Aquinas, The Exposition of the “On the Hebdomads” of Boethius, trans. Janice L. Schultz and Edward A. Synan (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), lecture 2, 70.

Friendship 347 than self, in part because he seeks the full actualization of his unity, which necessarily refers to the whole good. Moreover, the “whole good” necessarily refers to God. In terms of human friendships, the goodness of one person attracts the other to enter in a relationship and vice versa. The union of similitude between the two persons creates the condition for mutual affection and the desire for real union. Due to the difference in kind between God and man, the union of similitude does not entirely account for how a person can love God more than self.13 Aquinas’s explanation for the latter is participation in God. I contend that we can draw the following conclusion from these considerations: a person is united to God in such a way that is more basic than the person’s own metaphysical unity.14 This is the case due to Aquinas’s affirmation of three principles: first, unity is greater than union as principle to principled; second, unity is a cause of greater love than union; and third, a person can and should love God more than himself. These three principles entail one of two options: first, there exists a metaphysical unity of God and self; or a second, weaker option, a person’s metaphysical relation to God constitutes something more fundamental than the person’s own substantial unity. Aquinas’s disavowal of pantheism rules out the first option.15 Thus, we are left with the second option: a person’s participation in God is a deeper metaphysical fact than his own substantial unity. This same fact grounds the possibility of a greater love of God over self. While sin has undermined participation’s natural tendency to affective and real union with God, the metaphysical foundation remains and grace restores nature and the desire for God. 13. It does play a role, as human beings do have a similitude with God. However, God does not have a similitude with human beings. We will examine this in greater detail later in this chapter. 14. I offer extended arguments for the views in this section in “Aquinas on Self-Love and Love of God: The Foundations for and Perfection of Subjectivity,” International Philosophical Quarterly 56 (2016): 45–55. I offer revised arguments in The Metaphysical Foundations of Love: Aquinas on Participation, Unity, and Union (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018), ch. 3. 15. Aquinas, ST I, q. 3, a. 8.

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From the priority of the love of God over self, the next step is friendship with God. Aquinas characterizes the basic essence of charity as friendship with God.16 The deep metaphysical connection between a human person and God allows for a greater friendship than is possible between one human person and another. Sin has wounded the natural disposition for the greater love of God over self, which is why charity as an infused virtue is necessary to restore it. In terms of the Expositio, Aquinas cannot directly appeal to charity to explain friendship with God, as Job precedes Christ, but he provides an explanation drawing on the text of Job. The Central Drama of the Expositio Aquinas treats the topics of love and friendship with both God and fellow human beings throughout the Expositio, both directly and indirectly. In chapter 1 and then again in chapter 13, Aquinas affirms Job’s righteousness and lack of serious sin. Aquinas outlines three ways a person can sin: against self, neighbor, and God. He then proceeds to show how Job is innocent of all three forms. Sin undermines the appropriate love-based relations we should have, namely, the love of God, the love of self, and love of neighbor. The trajectory of Aquinas’s commentary concerns the task of providence to properly order these three loves against the forces of Satan and sin. To live rightly, a person must first love God, then self, and finally neighbor. This is not an accidental ordering. The love of God rightly regulates and perfects the love of self, which in turn allows for the proper love of neighbor. Commenting on the conversation between God and Satan that begins the book of Job, Aquinas lays out the big picture of Job and human existence in terms of the wicked and good paths: For since man is composed of a spiritual nature and of earthly flesh, man’s evil consists in clinging to the earthly goods which belong to him by vir16. Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1.

Friendship 349 tue of his earthly flesh after he has abandoned the spiritual goods towards which he is ordered by virtue of his rational mind. Therefore, evil men, inasmuch as they follow earthly nature, are rightly called earth. Satan, then, not only goes about such earth but also walks through it, because in earthly men he completes the effect of his malice. For in walking through is designated the completion of the process itself, just as on the contrary it is said of just men that God walks among them.17

Aquinas concludes his overview by noting that following the good path in this life achieves only imperfect results: And one should note that earthly affections imitate remotely in some way spiritual affections by which the mind is joined to God, but they can in no way arrive at a similarity with them. For earthy love, and consequently every affection, falls short of the love of God, for love is the source of any affection.18

The key implication for my present purpose is that a person does not direct his own self-love in the absence of the influence of a higher power. If a person shuns God, he will cast his lot either explicitly or implicitly with Satan, who will pervert and disorder his self-love so that no proper relationship with another—including friendship— will be possible. The person will live in a condition of self-isolation, in which he will live life cut off from the inner lives of others. Conversely, if a person cultivates a loving relationship with God, his selflove becomes rightly ordered, which creates the proper conditions and motivation for entering into loving relations and friendships with others. Aquinas uses the title “blessed” when referring to Job because he exemplifies the right path. While Job is not perfect, he does entrust himself to God and does not allow Satan to undermine his loving 17. Thomas Aquinas, The Literal Exposition on Job: A Scriptural Commentary Concerning Providence, trans. Anthony Damico, with an interpretative essay and notes by Martin D. Yaffe (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholar’s Press, 1989), ch. 1, lines 385–93. Citation lines refer to Expositio super Iob litteram, Vol XXVI of Sancti Thomae de Aquino, Opera Omnia, Iussu Leonis XII P.M. edita (Rome: Santa Sabine, 1965). 18. Iob, ch. 1, lines 434–40.

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trust in God and God’s loving providence. In the end, God rewards Job with additional children and the restoration of his material possessions. These possessions serve less as a reward in themselves and more as a sign of Job’s union with God—a union which begins imperfectly on earth but culminates in heaven. The Expositio and Human Friendships Aquinas addresses several characteristics of friendship throughout the Expositio. This section will look at these features as they apply to a general account of friendship. While these characteristics, as general, apply to both human and divine friendship, I will chiefly focus on human friendship and devote the next two sections specifically to divine friendship. The majority of Job revolves around conversations between Job and various interlocutors. The four human speakers are Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu. Job identifies the first three as his friends, while Elihu’s relationship to Job is left vague. As mentioned in the introduction, the Expositio offers the reader an opportunity to see Aquinas’s take on concrete instances of friendship with God and man versus speculative analysis alone. I do not want to overemphasize this element, as he does relate his analyses elsewhere to imagined scenarios. However, in the biblical commentary, the text, versus imagination, provides the content— content that includes richly nuanced and layered descriptions of relationships. A handful of characteristics pertaining to friendship form thematic arcs in Aquinas’s analysis. The first quality is patience, while the second are the interrelated notions of presence, compassion, and consolation. Patience is a virtue necessary to sustain relationships over time as that which allows one or both persons to withstand trials that may test a relationship. Regarding the second, as mentioned in section I, delight from the presence of the beloved constitutes an essential characteristic of friendship. In times of adversity, the delight derived from presence manifests itself as consolation and comfort.

Friendship 351 Patience and Impatience In the course of the Expositio, Aquinas addresses patience both in terms of relating to others and God. Also, due to the nature of the book of Job itself, many of the qualities addressed by Aquinas involve extensive considerations of contrary states. Accordingly, Aquinas addresses impatience as much as patience and so forth. For instance, Eliphaz, the first friend to address Job, charges his friend with impatience. In his defense of Job, Aquinas articulates a very clear view of the natures of patience and impatience. Aquinas links patience and impatience to how one responds to the suffering caused by the grave emotion of sadness from the loss of some good and/or the presence of some evil. How ought Job and persons similarly affected respond to such great adversity? Aquinas charts three ways that a person can react: the way of despair, the way of the Stoics, and the way of Aristotle. To characterize these three states, Aquinas draws upon his customary analysis of virtue as the intermediate state between the two extremes of excess and defect. Despair is the excess state whereby sadness over the loss of some good/s overcomes a person’s reason. By doing so, despair destroys the possibility of hope and rational action. The position of the Stoics occupies the other end of the spectrum: “For the Stoics said that external goods are not the goods of man and that there could be no sadness in the spirit of the wise man over their loss.”19 The Stoic does not experience any sadness, as the “adversity” caused by external fortunes does not take away anything of real value. On this mindset, even though Job is afflicted with the loss of virtually every material good, as long as he is virtuous, he has no cause for sadness or impatience with God or anyone else. The middle position of Aristotle, which Aquinas accepts as his own, recognizes the legitimacy of sadness over the loss of external goods, as such goods are “ordered as it were instrumentally toward 19. Iob, ch. 1, lines 737–39.

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the principal good of man, which is the good of the mind.”20 Provided that the sadness in question does not overwhelm one’s reason, the sadness is appropriate and healthy. Impatience, then, involves immoderate sadness, while patience moderates sadness. Having sketched this understanding of patience, Aquinas employs it to defend Job against the charges of impatience leveled by his friends. For Job feared that by his many afflictions he might be reduced to impatience so that his reason might not be able to repress his sadness. Now the condition of impatience exists when someone’s reason is so reduced by sadness that it contradicts divine judgements. But if someone should suffer sadness according to his sensual side but his reason should conform to the divine will, there is no defect of impatience, and so Eliphaz was charging Job in vain.21

Job does not fall into impatience with respect to God, and the fact that Job’s reason moderates his sadness allows him to maintain an appropriate relationship with God. The patience Job shows before God stems from the trust he has in God. He lacks the understanding to know why God allows him to suffer, but the sadness from the loss of goods and the presence of evil does not destroy his ability to reason and love. He waits patiently, though still with sadness, for an understanding of his afflictions. Patience performs an analogous role in human relationships and friendship. The potential for a lack of understanding poses a challenge to any close friendship. To use the example of marriage, which Aquinas elsewhere characterizes as “the greatest friendship,” 22 adversity will strike the relationship at some point. More to the point, adversity caused, in part or wholly, by poor communication/lack of understanding between the spouses will happen in the span of the vast majority of relationships. If one spouse acts in a way perceived 20. Iob, ch. 1, lines 741–44. 21. Iob, ch. 6, lines 126–34. 22. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, III, 123, 6, trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956).

Friendship 353 harmful by the other, the aggrieved spouse will experience frustration and sadness over the loss of some good. Moreover, he will not understand why she would do such a thing. The loss of the good in these cases tends to be twofold. One, there is a good particular to the circumstances that the frustration ostensibly concerns, for example, a missed engagement or some task left uncompleted. Second, the action of the “offending” spouse threatens the good of the harmonious relationship. The loss of the latter good constitutes the deeper source of the frustration/sadness. For the non-Stoic Aquinas, the spouse should be frustrated and saddened by the action. However, if these affections are left unchecked and unmoderated by reason, they will contribute to the undermining of all of the essential characteristics of friendship. The more the frustration with the other increases, the less he will desire her presence. Even less will he actively will the good through benevolence or seek the good through beneficence. As the immoderate sadness intensifies, the presence of the beloved will not be a source of comfort and will become an occasion for sorrow. Lastly and most pointedly, impatience undercuts the concord of wills, which requires mutual effort and cultivation. The more the two interact under the cloud of impatience, whether by one or both, the more discord will be had. If the aggrieved spouse tempers and moderates the initial experience of frustration through patience, the friendship will not be so severely threatened. Maintaining patience in the face of frustration increases the chances of communication. He will seek a better understanding of the actions in question. Assuming no malice or serious misjudgment on the part of the spouse, when he acquires the understanding he seeks, the frustration will dissipate, thereby causing little or no harm to the friendship and perhaps even strengthening it.

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Anthony T. Flood Presence and Consolation

While Aquinas discusses patience principally in terms of relating to God, he treats the connected notions of presence, compassion, and consolation equally in terms of friendship with God and with one’s fellow human beings. In his other works, Aquinas discusses a key notion at the heart of friendship, which he terms “mutual indwelling.” For instance, in the Summa theologiae, he characterizes it as follows: The beloved is contained in the lover, by being impressed on his heart and thus becoming the object of his complacency. On the other hand, the lover is contained in the beloved, inasmuch as the lover penetrates, so to speak, into the beloved.23

The presence of mutual indwelling goes well beyond the mere physical presence of two people and reaches to an intimate interior presence. When I use the term “presence,” I mean the interior presence of mutual indwelling. In the Expositio, Aquinas does not employ the term “mutual indwelling,” but he does frequently speak to the property of friendship most closely connected to it, namely, the delight derived from the presence of a friend. He characterizes the property of delight in the context of adversity as consolation. Commenting on the initial arrival of Job’s friends, he states: Now one should consider that the compassion of friends is consoling either because adversity, like some burden, is borne more lightly when it is carried by several, or more likely because every sadness is alleviated by the admixture of pleasure, but it is very pleasant to have the experience of someone’s friendship, especially that which is derived from compassion in adversity and therefore affords consolation.24

Through the dynamism of loving indwelling, as a friend perceives the suffering of the beloved, he will show compassion—the empathetic co-passion with the suffering of the other. The text of Job provides Aquinas the occasion to examine failures 23. ST I-II, q. 28, a. 2 ad. 1. 24. Iob, ch.. 2, lines 244–52.

Friendship 355 within friendship. After being accused of presumptuousness and impatience by his friends, Job laments their presence and accuses them of acting as “burdensome consolers.” Aquinas remarks: For the duty of a consoler is to say the things by which pain may be softened. A burdensome consoler, then, is one who speaks the things which exasperate the spirit more. Nevertheless, these things could be excused when exasperating words were uttered for some good use and contained truth, or even when they were said briefly and in passing, but if someone should go on falsely, uselessly, and at great length with exasperating words to sadden another, he would seem to be a burdensome consoler.25

Aquinas offers several points to ponder in this brief passage. First, when a friend lacks compassion, he fails to meet a basic criterion of the love of friendship. The presence of a friend in adversity should provide consolation precisely because the friend should be compassionate. Yet, and this is the second point, this does not mean that a friend should flatter the beloved and tell him only what he thinks the other wants to hear. Truth is a necessary component of friendship and sets parameters for appropriate exchanges. Third, Aquinas displays a realistic stance toward the messiness of life. Even good friends are not perfect; occasionally, one might offer an unfair accusation. This does not destroy the friendship, provided that he lacks ill intent and demonstrates restraint. In light of such an accusation, the accused party should show patience toward the other, and the accuser should in due course express remorse. In response to their burdensome consolation, Job exhorts his friends to show compassion and grant him the consolation he desires: “When he has listed his adversities, then, he invites his friends to compassion, doubling his plea for pity because of the multitude of his miseries.”26 In an earthly life fraught with trials and adversity, the consoling presence of a friend is a thing of immense, perhaps even immeasurable, value, though such relationships require nurturing and if neglected tend to deteriorate. 25. Iob, ch. 16, lines 11–19. 26. Iob, ch. 29, lines 196–98.

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While human friendship factors into human happiness and flourishing in fundamental ways, Aquinas counts divine friendship as the greatest treasure of human existence. While the delight drawn from dwelling with the divine presence is partial and inchoate in this life, it nevertheless forms a great source of joy in good times and consolation in times of adversity. Moreover, the very hope of a perfect union with God in the next life is itself consoling. Aquinas contends that Job never abandons this hope, which accounts for his ultimate perseverance. Commenting on a speech by Elihu, Aquinas notes the following concerning God and friendship: One is given to understand from this fact that with [God] there is a certain more excellent light, namely, a spiritual light, which God reserves for men as a reward for virtue. Hence, he adds He makes an announcement of it, namely, of spiritual light signified through corporeal light, to His friend, namely, the virtuous man, whom God loves, that it is his possession, that is, that that spiritual light is a treasure which God reserves for His friends as a reward.27

Through the cultivation of virtue, human beings are capable of entering into a deeper, mutual relationship with God versus the asymmetrical relation of worship alone. Moreover, the spiritual light offered by God allows for an understanding and pleasure qualitatively higher than any human friendship can offer. Aquinas explicitly addresses the notion of friendship with God in the Expositio, but the topic does pose an interesting challenge to him. Since he is writing a literal commentary, Aquinas articulates his vision of providence, friendship, and God mostly in terms of the framework of the Old Law.28 However, Aquinas’s account of charity forms the pinnacle of the New Law, as that by which we enter into 27. Iob, ch. 37, lines 24–32. 28. Aquinas cheats a bit by maintaining Job foresees the reality of resurrection through Christ.

Friendship 357 a true friendship with God. Consequently, as charity is an infused virtue made possible by the salvific role of Christ, Aquinas cannot directly draw upon this account to explain the nature of friendship with God in Job. Nonetheless, he still affirms the reality of divine friendship and does so in a way that serves as a sort of conceptual prologue to his full Christian explanation. The general challenge posed by the notion of friendship with God in both the context of the New and Old Law revolves around the notion of similitude or likeness. Recall from the first section, through love, a person seeks an affective and real union with another that approximates to the degree possible the unity of his own self, but these unions are dependent on the union of similitude. Each person’s unity is the root of union with others; insofar as another human being resembles himself, he is able to enter into loving relations with the other and vice versa. Friendship with God requires a similitude between God and the human person. As created in the image and likeness of God, human beings do have a resemblance to God, but it is a one-way affair; God does not share a resemblance with human beings:29 “For, we say that a statue is like a man, but not conversely; so also a creature can be spoken of as in some sort like God; but not that God is like a creature.”30 In terms of his account of charity, Aquinas overcomes the problem through the notion of communication (communicatio): Accordingly, since there is a communication between man and God, inasmuch as He communicates His happiness to us, some kind of friendship must needs be based on the same communication. . . . The love which is based on this communication, is charity: wherefore it is evident that charity is the friendship of man for God.31 29. For more on the nuances of Aquinas’s understanding of the relation between image and likeness, see Michael A. Dauphinais, “Loving the Lord Your God: The Imago Dei in Saint Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 63 (1999): 241–67. 30. ST I, q. 4, a. 3 ad 4. 31. ST II-II, q. 23, a. 1. Joseph Bobik comments on this passage as follows: “Whenever two persons, a superior and an inferior, have nothing in common, but the superior offers a shareable gift to the inferior, not only do the two begin thereby to have something in common . . . which makes friendship between them possible, but it becomes fitting

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In the Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas offers a detailed analysis of this communication in light of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and how a person experiences this intimate indwelling in each of the marks of friendship. In terms of the Expositio, Aquinas appeals to the more general notion of participation in God’s glory to establish the basis for divine friendship. Commenting on God’s speech to Job, Aquinas states: [God] touches upon [man’s] glory when He adds and be glorious. Glory, of course, suggests the knowledge of someone’s goodness; hence Ambrose says that glory is “clear knowledge with praise.” Now God’s goodness is infinite, but there is no perfect knowledge of it except with God. Therefore, glory is in God alone inasmuch as He knows Himself, and man cannot arrive at this glory except by participation in divine knowledge.32

Aquinas is not using the term “participation” to refer to the human person’s essential metaphysical connection to God, as addressed in section II. Rather, “participation in divine knowledge” refers to a gratuitous act by God that enables a person to unite to him in friendship. Sin has wounded the natural ability of the person to relate to God, but God can initiate the process of restoration. While charity is reserved for the New Law, participation in divine knowledge is the glory of the human person, and this glory configures him to make possible friendship with God. In terms of consolation, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the New Law produces a far greater and most intimate source versus the Old Law. Even so, as evident in the context of Job, divine friendship is a possibility, and such friendship provides the greatest consolation of this life. The affirmation of friendship with God in Job casts greater light on Aquinas’s account of providence. As he states in the prologue, Job chiefly concerns whether the world and human affairs are governed by chance or providence. Affirming the latter, Aquinas insists that that the inferior respond to the initiative of the superior by doing whatever he can to help make actual the friendship to which he has been invited.” See Bobik, “Aquinas on Communicatio, The Foundation of Friendship and Caritas,” The Modern Schoolman 64 (1986): 1–18, at 15. 32. Aquinas, Expositio, ch. 40, lines 94–102.

Friendship 359 God provides for human beings and continually draws them to him even in those instances, such as the afflictions of Job, that seem incompatible with any loving care. Moreover, Aquinas insists that God provides for human beings not merely for the sake of the species, as with the brute animals, but for the sake of each individual person.33 Viewed through the lens of friendship, providence amounts to the concrete realization of the properties of friendship, particularly, longing, benevolence, and beneficence on God’s part. God longs to be united with Job. As discussed in the previous section, to be united in friendship encompasses the personal presence of mutual indwelling. It is not merely two persons side by side but two persons experiencing the inner lives of each other. In turn, such presence forms the source of great delight in general and consolation in times of adversity. In terms of benevolence and beneficence, the chief good that God wills and seeks for the person is precisely this union with him.34 Concord, too, plays a very significant role in Aquinas’s account of providence, and the next section treats it in greater detail. The Love of Self, Satan, and God As mentioned earlier, Aquinas affirms the priority of the love of self over love of others due to the fact that a person’s substantial unity forms the basis for union with other persons. Love of self constitutes the template by which a person relates to others. If he loves himself properly, he becomes capable of loving others appropriately; if his love is disordered, he becomes trapped within himself. Even though self-love is naturally greater than love of others, Aqui33. Iob, ch. 7. 34. Eleonore Stump argues that the book of Job focuses on the intertwining effect of God’s providential goal of closeness or union with each individual, exemplified in the opposed parties of Job and Satan: “Both Job and Satan are the objects of God’s providential care, and each is shepherded by that care toward the goal best for that person, even though Satan is Job’s enemy. Providential care for each of the opposed parties is possible because the ultimate aim of God’s providential care in the narrative is closeness to God and the greatest consequent on that closeness.” Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 222.

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nas contends that a person’s love of God should exceed even selflove. Consequently, if a person fails to love God properly, his selflove becomes disordered and self-isolation results. On the other hand, if he loves God well, healthy self-love will naturally extend to communion with others. In the Expositio, Aquinas adds an additional element into the development or lack thereof of love. He identifies Satan, a being greater than human persons, as a force capable of destroying proper self-love and leaving malice and self-isolation in its place. By way of perverting the appropriate ordering of love, Satan’s malice performs an analogous role to God’s love. Through a loving relationship with God, God orders and perfects a person’s self-love; relating to and uniting with Satan allows him to disorder and corrupt a one’s selflove. Given the threat that Satan poses, God’s providence takes on the role of not only providing goods but actively opposing destructive forces. God offers the means by which the deleterious effects of Satan’s activities can be overcome. Commenting on God’s speech to Job, Aquinas explicates the variety of means for subjecting things to the human will and concludes that none of these apply to Satan: Having shown, then, that man cannot in any way by his own power overcome the devil, [God] concludes, as it were, from all that has been premised, adding Put your hand upon him, supply “if you can,” as if to say: In no way by your own power can you put your hand upon him to subject him to you. But although he cannot be overcome by man, he is nevertheless overcome by divine power.35

If a human being cannot overcome Satan by his own power, then the cultivation of love toward communion with others and away from self-isolation is also not purely a function of the human will and reason. The human will must conform to the divine will in order to effect the proper cultivation of love. God makes known his will by means of the divine law. Human beings need to configure their ac35. Iob, ch.. 40, lines 653–59.

Friendship 361 tions in accord with the divine law in order to overcome Satan’s power and achieve union with God and others. This brings us back to the topic of friendship, particularly in terms of its fifth property of concord. From the perspective of the human being, concord with God entails conforming to the divine will. Commenting on Job’s first words in the text, Aquinas notes: [ Job] shows the same thing from the good pleasure of the divine will, saying as it has pleased the Lord, so has it been done. Now, it is the mark of friends to want and to reject the same things. Hence, if it proceeds from divine good pleasure that someone be despoiled of his temporal goods, if he loves God he ought to conform his own will to the divine will.36

In human friendships, concord results from the unity of wills in wanting and rejecting the same things. In effect, the friends agree in important matters and pursue the same fundamental ends. As there is an equality between human beings, concord involves a mutual give-and-take on the part of both friends in terms of willing. While God communicates his life in such a way as to make friendship possible with human beings, there nevertheless remains an inequality between them—an inequality manifested quite sharply in terms of knowledge and goodness. God possesses perfect knowledge and goodness, while human beings are fallible in both respects. The only way for the human person, then, to seek goodness and “to want and to reject the same things” as God is to conform to the divine will.37 Aquinas characterizes the effects of nonconformity to the divine 36. Iob, ch.. 1, lines 831–36. 37. Daniel Schwartz discusses the interplay of these two aims in the following way: “From studying Aquinas’s notion of friendship between God and human beings, one can learn much about what kind of conformity of wills friendship requires. However, one runs the risk of confusing two separate elements: the kind of conformity of wills required by friendship on the one hand, and the kind of conformity of wills needed for the wills of friends to be good on the other hand. Clearly it is difficult to separate between these two elements when one is discussing the relationship between human beings and God. Presumably, what is against friendship with God is also against morality, and vice versa. Yet in human relationships it is clear that the requirements of morality and the requirements of friendship do not always concur. Human beings, unlike God, are fallible” (Aquinas on Friendship [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 45).

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will in striking terms in De Veritate: “Every being has the act of existing in the proportion in which it approaches God by likeness. But according as it is found to be unlike Him, it approaches nonexistence.”38 Stump characterizes this aspect of Aquinas in terms of integration/disintegration. A person becomes psychically disintegrated (undergoes the process of disintegration), when his will is conflicted. On the other hand, an integrated person’s desires for particular goods are in harmony with his second-order commitments and beliefs.39 Stump notes the following connection between integration and love of others: To the extent to which a person is divided against himself, to that extent he cannot be at one with others either. The lack of internal integration is therefore inimical to the union desired in love. . . . If he wills wholeheartedly, he will ipso facto be integrated in the will. A person who lacks internal integration in the will is, then, a person who does not will what he needs to will in order to be internally integrated. Consequently, the fact that others are kept from being close to him because of the lack of internal integration in his will is a result of the state of his own will.40

For Aquinas, conformity to the divine will forms a necessary condition for personal integration and love of others. Moreover, allowing Satan to influence one’s actions constitutes a sufficient condition for dis-integration, tending toward nonexistence and selfisolation. These two conditions form the central drama of providence expressed in Job, according to Aquinas. God provides the resources necessary to overcome Satan. If a person shuns God’s will, over time the malice of Satan will incline that person toward wicked self-love 38. Aquinas, De Veritate, trans. Robert W. Schmidt, SJ (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), 23, 7. The passage continues: “And the same must be said of all the attributes which are found both in God and in creatures. Hence His intellect is the measure of all knowledge; His goodness, of all goodness; and, to speak more to the point, His good will, of every good will. Every good will is therefore good by reason of its being conformed to the divine good will.” 39. See also my The Root of Friendship: Self-Love and Self-Governance in Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2014), ch. 6. 40. Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 130.

Friendship 363 and internal disorder.41 The wicked person, in turn, will be unable to relate to others in love and friendship. Conversely, God’s offer of friendship begins by providing the means of perfecting the love of self, which leads to internal peace and concord. In turn, the good person will naturally seek and will good to others out of a love of friendship. God provides for or extends his providence to each individual human being as the means by which one is drawn into a greater union with God and the perfection of all of the properties of friendship. Aquinas concludes the Expositio by focusing on Job’s relationship with God, where the restoration of his temporal prosperity serves as a sign of the greater union with God effected by the trials and adversities he underwent: “Hence by the fullness of days is also designated his abundance, both with respect to the goods of fortune and with respect to the goods of grace, by which he was led to future glory, which lasts forever and ever. Amen.”42 41. In ST II-II, q. 25, a. 7, Aquinas addresses the internal effects of wicked self-love as follows: “On the other hand, the wicked have no wish to be preserved in the integrity of the inward man, nor do they desire spiritual goods for him, nor do they work for that end, nor do they take pleasure in their own company by entering into their own hearts, because whatever they find there, present, past, and future is evil and horrible; nor do they agree with themselves, on account of the gnawings of conscience, according to Ps. xlix. 21: I will reprove thee and set before thy face.” 42. Iob, ch. 42, lines 204–8.

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The Spirit of the Letter St. Thomas’s Interpretation of Scripture in His Reading of Job’s Eschatology Bryan Kromholtz, OP

St. Thomas’s Expositio super Iob ad litteram does not contain an extensive treatment of eschatology, or even of any eschatological theme. Indeed, being a Scripture commentary, it only contains occasional references to such matters as the last judgment and the general resurrection. Yet seeing Job as one who hopes in the resurrection and in a final, just judgment is central to St. Thomas’s interpretation of the entire book. It is the aim of this chapter to show that, in the eschatology found in this Expositio, St. Thomas uses a particularly unified theological interpretation that is also sound philosophically, drawing on the truth accessible through the resources of reason alone, as well as that truth available through faith.1 In this way, he describes the book as a coherent account of the provident care of the Creator for humanity—even in the face of its worst apparent injustices. We will also suggest that this approach is an example for us today. To prepare 1. A version of this chapter was presented as the St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture at the Thomistic Institute at the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C., January 24, 2017.



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the way for our own considerations, we should first make some preliminary remarks about the general nature of St. Thomas’s commentary and its central theme.2 Its Character: An expositio ad litteram Thomas’s commentary on Job was written probably between 1261 and 1265, while Thomas was teaching the brethren at Orvieto.3 It is correct to say it was “written,” for it is an expositio, as distinguished from a reportatio. While a reportatio is a commentary on Scripture that is a set of notes taken by one or more listeners to St. Thomas’s oral teachings on the book, an expositio is a work whose words are directly written by the author—whether in his own hand or by dictation. That is, we are dealing with a text that unambiguously represents the direct work of the author. It is a commentary ad litteram—a “literal” commentary.4 Thomas himself, drawing the classic distinction between the “literal” and the “spiritual” interpretation of Scripture, states near the beginning of the work that he will be undertaking a “literal” commentary, noting by way of contrast that “its mysteries”—that is, its spiritual 2. For the commentary and translation, we have made use of St. Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, vol. 26, Expositio super Job ad litteram (Rome– Paris: Leonine Commission, 1965), and St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Book of Job, trans. Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, Old Testament Commentaries, Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 32 (Lander, Wyo.: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2016). We have made ample use of the translation supplied by the latter work, while only occasionally modifying it. In any case, we make reference to St. Thomas’s work only using the abbreviation Exp. super Iob, referring to the Leonine text by page and line numbers. The lectio numbers are not listed in the Leonine text, though the divisions among them are discernible there; we have listed them here particularly for the convenience of anyone referring to the translation cited above or other editions that may employ them. 3. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1: The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 120–21, 338. 4. Exp. super Iob Prologue, 4, lines 96–99. It is known that in the Middle Ages, just prior to Thomas’s day, there occurred a turning of attention toward the literal sense; see Nicholas M. Healy, “Introduction,” in Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to His Biblical Commentaries, ed. Thomas Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating, and John P. Yocum (London: T&T Clark, 2005), 1–20; here, 7–9.

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sense—have already been opened by Pope Gregory “so subtly and eloquently” that nothing of that sort needs to be added.5 Of course, for Thomas, the “literal” meaning involves so much more than what we usually mean by the term.6 For example, if we consider the use of the word “cold” in Matthew (24:12) where it says that “the love of many will grow cold,” we would speak of this as a figurative use of the word, as opposed to the literal. However, for Thomas, the “literal sense” would include that meaning, because the literal meaning includes all to which the words directly refer, as we may read even in a passage from early in this commentary: Even though spiritual things are conceived using the images of corporeal things, nevertheless those things that the author intends to reveal about spiritual things through sensible images do not pertain to the mystical sense, but to the literal sense, because the literal sense is what is first intended by the words whether properly speaking or figuratively.7

It is only when what is described in the intention of the text refers to other things that one speaks of the mystical sense—as the binding of Isaac may be said to refer mystically to the Crucifixion of Christ. Thomas holds that any interpretation of the spiritual sense of a text of Scripture must in some way be able to be found elsewhere in Scripture under the literal sense; thus, the literal sense is primary. The subtleties of all that could be included in the literal sense cannot be adequately addressed in this paper.8 For the present, we merely point out that, in Thomas’s commentary, there are only a few oc5. Exp. super Iob Prologue, 4, lines 99–102; see also Mary L. O’Hara, “Truth in Spirit and Letter: Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Maimonides on the Book of Job,” in From Cloister to Classroom: Monastic and Scholastic Approaches to Truth: The Spirituality of Western Christendom, ed. E. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Cistercian Publications, 1986), 47–79; here, 47–49. 6. N. Healy, “Introduction,” 16–17; John P. Yocum, “Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” in Aquinas on Scripture, 21–42, esp. 26–27. 7. Exp. super Iob 1:6, lect. 2, 7, lines 230–34. 8. See, for example, the references in Peter Junípero Hannah, “The Metaphysics of Meaning: Applying a Thomistic Ontology of Art to a Contemporary Hermeneutical Puzzle and the Problem of the Sensus Literalis,” Nova et Vetera (English) 14.2 (2016): 675–97, esp. 677n5.



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casions where the Common Doctor gives an interpretation of the “spiritual sense” of part of the text, as he understands the term. For the vast majority of the writing in this work (and in all the occasions that we will be citing), we can be confident that Thomas is offering a “literal” interpretation—that is, an interpretation to which, he believes, the text lends itself directly, without necessary dependence on any other particular texts of Scripture. While he will occasionally show the congruence of the meaning of the book of Job with that of other biblical texts, the use of other authorities is rather sparing. Its Theme: Providence As others have pointed out, and as the text makes clear, the central theme of Thomas’s Literal Exposition on the Book of Job is God’s providence: “The whole intention” of the book of Job “is directed to this: to show, using probable arguments, that human affairs are ruled by divine providence.”9 In particular, the commentary considers God’s providence in the face of the difficulty posed by the suffering of the just—in particular, the just man, Job. “The affliction of just men is what seems especially to impugn divine providence in human affairs,” St. Thomas declares. For “that the just are afflicted without cause seems to undermine totally the foundation of providence. Thus the varied and grave afflictions of a specific just man called Job, perfect in every virtue, are proposed as a kind of theme for the question intended for discussion.”10 For Thomas, the book of Job shows that, even for the most difficult kind of case, God really cares for us. The book of Job itself may be said to ask the question of theodicy: “If God is all-good, all-loving, and all-powerful, why does he allow bad things to happen to good people?” While it may be true to say that this difficulty is not the explicit theme that Thomas con9. Exp. super Iob, Prologue, 3, lines 55–57; Denis Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de la Providence: Providence de Dieu et condition humaine selon l’“Exposition litterale sur le livre de Job” de Thomas d’Aquin, Bibliothèque thomiste 50 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1997). 10. Exp. super Iob, Prologue, 3, lines 60–71.

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siders in his commentary, it is never too far from his mind. While he does not explain exactly why the just suffer (just as the book of Job is difficult to interpret on this matter), he does offer an explanation as to how the suffering of the just is limited in comparison to their final reward.11 To make this argument, Thomas is required to refer to eschatological realities.12 He holds that, for Job the man and for the book of Job, it is only by reference to an afterlife that one can explain how the just and the wicked are appropriately rewarded and punished, respectively—because in this life, it is clear that the just sometimes suffer greatly, while the wicked too often prosper. Only a resurrection to a state that allows for humans to reach their goal definitively and a judgment that provides for an everlasting reward for the just (and a fitting punishment for evildoers) will allow for a just, final outcome for those who suffer unjustly in the present life (an unjust suffering that, Aquinas holds, often occurs).13 St. Thomas, indeed, interprets Job as making a series of arguments that uphold such a view. For Thomas, Job is a just man, although there is at least one place (on 38:1) in which Thomas admits that in Job’s “way of speaking” he went to excess in that he had “caused scandal” in others when they thought he had spoken without due reverence for God.14 Nevertheless, by and large, Thomas takes Job’s argumentation to be sound and his content inspired, whereas his interlocutors’ opinions are taken to be seriously mistaken, limited, or at least partly incorrect (which is not surprising, given the Lord’s assessment at the end of the book, 42:8–9). Yet Aquinas 11. See Eleonore Stump, “Aquinas on the Sufferings of Job,” in Reasoned Faith: Essays in Philosophical Theology in Honor of Norman Kretzmann, ed. E. Stump (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), 328–57. 12. See Martin D. Yaffe, “Providence in Medieval Aristotelianism: Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas on the Book of Job,” in The Voice from the Whirlwind: Interpreting the Book of Job, ed. Leo G. Perdue and W. Clark Gilpin (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1992), 111–28; here, 134. 13. Not all agree that some kind of afterlife is needed in order to understand Job as receiving a satisfactorily just outcome; see, e.g., Timothy Patrick Jackson, “Must Job Live Forever? A Reply to Aquinas on Providence,” The Thomist 62 (1998): 1–39. 14. Exp. super Iob 38:1, lect. 1, 199, lines 10–11.



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does not offer anything like an extended or systematic account of the overall argument of the book. In the style of commentary that he has undertaken here, he stays close to the text, interpreting the text itself as an account of a set of arguments between Job and his visitors concerning why he is suffering and what his own righteousness may or may not have to do with it. Thomas regards the book as a kind of argument, a collection of arguments in narrative form, but he does not take the occasion to make many extended, accompanying arguments of his own. Unlike some of his other commentaries on Scripture (such as, for example, the Commentary on the Gospel of John), in this one, Thomas never inserts any kind of quaestio into the proceedings, as a way of making an extensive inquiry into an issue raised in the text. For that matter, he makes few breaks into extensive, explanatory expositions of any kind, though he will use the beginning and/or end of a chapter, or even a given lectio, to make certain summarizing comments about whatever content is under discussion at that point in the book.15 As already noted, this commentary is not a systematic treatment—so piecing together a kind of “eschatology” of it is not a fitting task. Yet there are a few eschatological themes that are important for Thomas’s interpretation of the book, including the final judgment with the reward and retribution that follow from it, as well as the general resurrection. We will show that these allow Thomas to make sense of the book’s narrative of Job’s travails, along with the dialogues that surround them, as an account of God’s providence. We will describe those themes—which are interrelated—and then we will briefly consider how aspects of Thomas’s unified approach to the book, including both theological and philosophical aspects, offer an example for the task of interpreting Scripture today.

15. In the Middle Ages, a scriptural commentary was not ordinarily the place for extended treatments on doctrine; see Gilbert Dahan, “L’eschatologie dans les commentaires thomasiens des épîtres pauliniennes,” Revue Thomiste 116.1 (2016): 13–34; here, 24.

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Bryan Kromholtz, OP The Connection between Providence and Eschatology

A few texts will be sufficient to show that, for Thomas, there is a strong, even necessary, connection between divine providence and eschatology. Having established the principal aspect of providence that is of concern in the book—that God shows great care for man, even for each individual man—Thomas, commenting on the line “You visit him at dawn and immediately test him” (7:18), states: “For if man is considered only as he appears exteriorly, he seems small, fragile, and perishable. So it would be astonishing for God to have such great care for man unless he should have something hidden which makes him capable of perpetual existence.” Thus, he goes on to say that “the very care which God has especially for man demonstrates that there is another life of man after the death of the body.”16 Here, Thomas proposes God’s providential care for man as an argument for the perpetual existence of man. Another text argues similarly from God’s concern for what man does. On 13:27–28, he states: “It seems unreasonable that God should have such great care for human acts if they disappear completely in the death of the body.”17 In this way, we have a very general kind of argumentation explaining God’s care for man, saying that it would make little sense for God to pay attention to something that exists for a brief and thus insignificant time. But it is by reference to a final divine judgment and a decisive, permanent reward for the just (and a retribution for the unjust) that Thomas finds a way to offer an interpretation of this book that is unified and coherent. It is to the themes of judgment and reward as found in this commentary that we now turn. Judgment and Reward Very early in the commentary, St. Thomas makes a programmatic observation regarding Satan’s argument that Job is righteous only for 16. Exp. super Iob 7:18, lect. 4, 51, lines 417–19. 17. Exp. Super Iob 13:27–28, lect. 2, 89, lines 417–19.



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the purpose of receiving temporal goods in this life. Thomas says (on 1:10): “the good things which we do are not referred to earthly prosperity as a reward . . . [and] temporal adversity is not the proper punishment of sins.” He notes that “this question will be the theme dealt with in the entire book.”18 We are clearly dealing with something that Thomas considers to be a central question of the book—one that gives a coherence that cannot easily be obtained otherwise. Just a few examples will illustrate the way that Thomas uses this insight to bring unity to the interpretation of this book. One passage, part of Job’s response to Eliphaz (7:1–4), becomes the occasion for Thomas to describe what he takes as Job’s belief that a just reward for any human person is not found in this life: [1] Man’s life on earth is combat and his day is like the day of the hireling. [2] Like the slave, he sighs for the shade, or the workingman for the end of his work. [3] So I, too, have passed empty months and I have counted sleepless nights. [4] If I sleep, I say: When will I arise? And again I will wait for evening, and I will be filled with pains until dark.

Unlike Eliphaz, who seemed to hold that (7:1) “ultimate happiness was experienced in this life,” Job, Thomas states, holds that “the present life of man does not have the ultimate end in it, but is compared to this end as motion is compared to rest and the journey to the destination.” Thus, he compares this life to “combat” and the toil of the “day of the hireling”—the reward of each being deferred until some later time. Thus, “this life is ordered to another end like warfare is ordered to victory and the hired man’s day is ordered to his pay.” If one were to read this passage in isolation, one might simply see a lament over the unrelenting struggle of life. Thomas, however, insofar as he is taking it as a part of a broader argument regarding this life and the next, sees a statement about the nature of the current life. But given that there must be an “ultimate end” to human life, any just end to human life must be found beyond the present life in the temporal world as it is currently constituted. 18. Exp. super Iob 1:10, lect. 2, 11, lines 518–24 (emphasis mine).

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For Thomas, those who posit that “rewards and punishments of good and evil works are repaid in this present life,” are forced “to use lies” about Job “in defending the justice of God” because “it is evident that some innocent and just men are oppressed by adversities in this life” (13:6). There is no denial, on Job’s part, that his difficulties are punishments “as though God did not reward or punish the acts of man.” Yet Job maintains “that the time of retribution is properly in the other life.”19 Job’s argument that there is to be a future reward for the just is not, of course, made from a disinterested situation; it is his own hope. One passage in the book of Job, in particular, sparks a comment about that hope. Thomas, referring to the line: Even if [God  ] should kill me, I will hope in him (on 13:15a), states it is as if Job were saying, “even if he afflicts me unto death, the hope which I have in him will not end.” While the text itself does not make explicit reference to an afterlife, it is difficult to make sense of the text without doing so. How could one continue to “hope” after death, unless one, in some way, lives after death? Nevertheless, it is the well-known passage later in the book (19:25–27) that contains potentially the most explicit reference to life after death. This will be considered in more detail below. For now, we can note how Thomas ties this passage to the question of a final judgment. In one of his summarizing moments, at the end of chapter 21, Thomas says that Job “has explained his idea in a gradual order, first showing in Chapter Nineteen (v. 25) that the hope of the just tends to reward of the future life,” and then expressing the opinion that “punishment is reserved for evil men after death,” So Job argues “from both sides,” that is, disproving that either rewards for the just or punishments for the wicked are sufficiently “assigned to men in this life.”20 Thomas thus gives a favorable appraisal of what he takes to be Job’s argumentation that the proper assignment and provision of 19. Exp. super Iob 14:6, lect. 2, 91, lines 60–61. 20. Exp. super Iob 21:34, lect. 2, 127, lines 340–50.



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both reward and retribution by God for human life will come only after death, in another life, in which a final judgment must take place. This view of judgment is, of course, consistent with Catholic teaching regarding the judgment. However, in his argumentation (whether we consider it to be the book’s implicit argumentation or Thomas’s interpretation of the book), Thomas does not often refer to other texts of Scripture. The argumentation is from resources accessible to observation and natural human resources—he is staying close to the text as it is, while also maintaining that the book as a whole is in continuity with the Catholic faith and that there is a unity of faith with reason—even if reason alone cannot derive the teachings of that faith.21 Without going through the painstaking process of laying out all the pieces in formal analysis, we can readily see how Thomas argues: God is just and cares for men, even for each man and his acts—so men and their actions must be more significant than would be the case if each man’s life were merely temporary. Further, we know that the good suffer trials—sometimes even over an entire lifespan. If they are to be justly rewarded for their righteousness—as a good God would do—they ought to be rewarded. This requires that they receive some later, post-death reward—because, if this life constituted their only existence, they would be receiving a raw deal. This is not to say that this argumentation claims to be deriving the doctrine of final judgment from the book of Job alone. Thomas is, in his interpretation, guided by the faith. Yet his arguments are not those that draw on authority—except insofar as the book of Job itself is an authority. The teachings of faith act here as a guide to the argumentation, not as a substitute for it. Yet it is certainly a pursuit that is guided by the faith—by revelation as a source—as to the conclusions that Thomas reaches. It is well known that Thomas was likely writing the Commentary 21. See also St. Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, vols. 13–15, Summa contra Gentiles (Rome, Paris: Leonine Commission, 1918, 1926, and 1930), lib. III, cap. 140–44. Hereafter, ScG.

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on Job at the same time he was writing the third book of the Summa contra Gentiles and that Thomas’s attention while working on each was perhaps influenced by his work on the other.22 In both works, divine providence is a kind of unifying theme. Recall that Thomas believes that the intention of the book of Job itself is to employ “probable arguments” to “show that human affairs are ruled by divine providence.” It is worth noting, also, the similar language that St. Thomas uses when he discusses his ways of arguing in the Summa contra Gentiles.23 In this four-volume work, the first three books would make known “that truth which faith professes and reason investigates,” shown by “bringing forward both demonstrative and probable arguments”; the fourth book would make known that truth which surpasses reason’s reach “by probable arguments and by authorities.”24 We can see that “probable arguments” are found as potential tools to be used in either of the two major parts of that work. Now, it is difficult to make a direct comparison between a biblical book, which itself is an authority, and a work by a later writer, even a doctor of the stature of St. Thomas. Yet we can see that, if we take the book of Job as an “authority” (of the highest kind, in sacra doctrina), it may not be surprising that Thomas considers the kind of arguments being put forth as “probable”; they are the kind made by an authority, discussing that truth which surpasses the reach of reason alone. Yet it is also worth noting that Thomas cites “probable arguments” in the Summa contra Gentiles as also among the ways he himself discusses matters that do not surpass the unaided natural powers (that is, in books one through three). Thomas indeed asserts that the book of Job makes probable arguments, and it seems that he sees himself as elucidating or “fleshing out” those arguments. The occasional reference to other books of Scripture is made; but for this question concerning the judgment—and the reward and punishment due to a per22. See Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, 120–21. 23. We are not the first to notice parallels between the approaches taken in these two works. See Antoine Dondaine, “Praefatio,” to the Leonine text of the Expositio super Job ad litteram (cited above), *19–*20. 24. See ScG lib. I, cap. 9, sec. 3.



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son’s whole life—his argumentation is virtually free of references to other authorities. He believes that Job is making a kind of argument for it, based on belief in God’s loving care for each human person and the human condition.25 We now turn to resurrection—a necessary condition for complete fulfillment of the human person.26 Final Resurrection There are many places in his commentary in which Thomas holds that Job is arguing for a final resurrection.27 But one passage, more than any other, stands out as a kind of foretelling of the Resurrection of Christ and of the resurrection he brings. It is the foundation upon which the Christian tradition generally interpreted Job as believing in an afterlife, general resurrection, and, by extension, a final judgment (19:25–27): [25] For I know that my Redeemer lives, and I shall arise on the very last day from the earth. [26] I will be surrounded again with my own skin and in my flesh I shall see God, [27] whom I myself will see and my eyes will behold him and not another. This my hope has been put in my heart.

Thomas is no exception to this tradition. Thomas holds that Job knows “by the certitude of faith” that his Redeemer lives.28 Citing several New Testaments texts, including one from Romans (5:12), “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death,” he says that “Job foresaw through the spirit of faith that the human race must be redeemed from this sin through Christ.” Thomas then proceeds to explain how “Christ redeemed us from sin by death, dying for us, but he did not so die that he was consumed by death, because although he died according to his humanity, yet he could not die according to his divinity. From the life of the divinity, the humanity 25. See Exp. super Iob 41:2, lect. 1, 222, lines 24–30. 26. See Bryan Kromholtz, “La perfection de la nature: la doctrine de saint Thomas d’Aquin sur la résurrection du corps, sa réception et son développement,” Revue Thomiste 116.1 (2016): 57–70. 27. See especially Exp. super Iob 14:13–17, lect. 4, 92–94, lines 136–246; but also see Exp. super Iob 3:13, lect. 2, 24, lines 349–51 and Exp. super Iob 14:5–6, lect. 2, 91, lines 28–61. 28. Exp. super Iob 19:25, lect. 2, 116, lines 250–51.

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has also been restored by rising up to life again,” citing Second Corinthians (2 Cor 13:4), “For although he was crucified because of our infirmity, yet he lives by the power of God.” He then says that the “life of the Risen Christ, moreover, will be diffused to all men in the general resurrection,” again citing Second Corinthians (11:4), as well as the Gospel of John (5:25–26). Thus, Thomas says, Job refers to “the primordial cause of the resurrection of man,” that is, the divinity of “the Son of God,” as well as its time, “the very last day,” thereby excluding the erroneous idea that the heavens and the earth in their current form “will endure forever,” which, he says, “is consonant with the statement of the Lord, who says in John, ‘I will raise him up on the very last day (novissimo die)’ (6:40).”29 Thomas states clearly that he is referring to the faith of the Church in interpreting Job. Certain particular verses make it difficult, but not impossible, to suppose that Job is arguing for an afterlife and resurrection (14:10–12): “Where, I ask you, is man when he has died, been stripped, and destroyed? As the waters recede from the sea and the rivers dry up empty, so when a man sleeps, he will not rise again; until heaven passes away, he will not awaken nor will he arise from his sleep.” Thomas sees an opening in the words “until heaven passes away,” stating that “the sense would be: While this world lasts, man will not rise again from the dead. The Catholic faith, however, does not hold that the substance of the world will perish, but only the state of this world as it now exists.” Citing First Corinthians (7:31), he notes that “the common resurrection of the dead at the end of the world is expected, as John says, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”30 Thus, he is able to portray Job as holding that a resurrection will take place, which allows for reward (and punishment) beyond the transitory conditions of the present world. In this, Thomas takes the position that Job had, already, a kind of belief in resurrection that is consonant with the “Catholic faith.”31 29. Exp. super Iob 19:25, lect. 2, 116, lines 251–94. 30. Exp. super Iob 14:12, lect. 3, 92, lines 126–35. 31. Exp. super Iob 14:12, lect. 3, 92, lines 127–28; see also Yocum, “Aquinas’s Literal Exposition on Job,” 28.



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It would be wrong to say that Thomas never offers any argument for the resurrection from reason.32 In this commentary, there is at least one implicit reference to one of the chief bases of such an argument; on the line “You will call me and I will answer you; you will stretch forth your right hand to the work of your hands” (14:15), Thomas mentions that the soul “naturally desires to be united to the body,” although only the divine power can effect this reunion.33 Nevertheless, Thomas makes sense out of the Job narrative by reading Job as a believer in resurrection—one who had a special faith in it—rather than someone who only argues for resurrection. Before making some overall observations about Thomas’s interpretation, we will note also how he deals with the last chapter of the book, which seems, on the face of it, to challenge Thomas’s interpretation. Loose Ends: The “Happy Ending” of the Book of Job For Thomas, it is clear that Job’s argumentation assumes that the just do not always receive comfort in this life; in fact, the just are often severely afflicted. Because of this, Aquinas holds, Job argued that only a postmortem reward, greater than the afflictions of this life, could compensate for such a state of affairs. What, then, does Thomas make of the seemingly incongruous “happy” ending that the book of Job supplies?34 That is, Job himself is depicted, at the end of his life, as having his health restored, his prosperity doubled (as compared to his former state), and even as having new offspring in place 32. Thomas sometimes argued for a general, bodily resurrection occasionally even from reason alone; in this, his approach was different from most of his contemporaries. See Bryan Kromholtz, On the Last Day: The Time of the Resurrection of the Dead according to Thomas Aquinas, Studia Friburgensia 110 (Fribourg, Switzerland: Academic Press Fribourg, 2010), 121–122n30. 33. Exp. super Iob 14:15, lect. 4, 93, lines 208–18; citation from ibid., lines 215–16. 34. Especially today, scholars find “dissonance” in this “happy” ending; Kenneth Numfor Ngwa, The Hermeneutics of the ‘Happy’ Ending in Job 42:7–17, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, vol. 354 (Berlin, New York: Walther de Gruyter, 2005), 143.

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of those who had died. He appears vindicated in this world, not just in the next life. This would seem to undermine Thomas’s interpretation of Job’s argument (and the book as a whole) as holding that only a supernatural reward in the afterlife can do justice to the just sufferer.35 It is as if the author (or a later redactor) decided—for whatever reason—that the story would be too grim without the happy conclusion. But Thomas finds a way to make sense of this “happy ending.” On Job’s material restoration, Thomas states: Although Job did not put his hope in recovering earthly prosperity but in attaining future happiness, the Lord still also restored him abundantly to temporal prosperity, as Matthew says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all else will be given to you” (6:33). This was fitting in time according to the state of the Old Testament in which temporal goods were promised, so that in this way by the prosperity which he recovered, he would give an example to others that they might convert to God. It was also fitting to the person of Job himself, whose reputation had been sullied among other people because of the many adversities which had come upon him. Therefore, to restore his good reputation, God led him back to a state of even greater prosperity. So the text continues, And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.36

In this, Thomas shows that he notices the general pattern that it is merely temporal recompense that is usually promised and recognized in the “state” of the Old Testament. And he offers a simultaneously theological and human reason for Job’s having been rewarded in a bodily way: if he weren’t restored in this life, he would not have been able to be an example to the people of that time. One particular aspect of the ending of Job also deserves some attention: Job’s “new offspring.” He is given seven new sons and three new daughters—the same number of sons and daughters as he had before. Why were they not “doubled”? One reason Thomas gives is that “the sons which he had [before] were not completely lost to him, but were saved in the future life to live with him.”37 Thus, 35. Yocum, “Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” 39. 36. Exp. super Iob 42:10, Epilogue, 229, lines 103–19. 37. Exp. super Iob 42:13, Epilogue, 230, lines 162–65.



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Thomas does not see a need to face directly the question of whether the new children can be considered adequate compensation for children lost—because those who have died are not really lost forever. They will be restored in the resurrection. In these ways, then, Thomas has tried to make a coherent whole out of a difficult text. St. Thomas’s Mode of Interpretation At this point, we wish to make some observations about Thomas’s overall approach to scriptural interpretation. The first aspect we will consider is a theological criterion: clearly, Thomas interprets the book of Job according to the analogia fidei, the analogy of faith. This is the principle, developed from a line in Romans (12:6), that one ought to interpret any text or part of the Scriptures in accord with the whole of the faith, including the whole of Sacred Scripture as well as Tradition. It has been said by others that this is characteristic of Thomas’s mode of interpretation generally.38 We have seen, in his interpretation of Job 19:25–27, that Thomas was able to see Job as affirming the general resurrection (and even the coming of a Savior). The use of the analogy of faith as a principle of scriptural interpretation was counseled by Dei Verbum and in subsequent Magisterial teaching, such as Benedict XVI’s Verbum Domini.39 Yet, again, there may remain some suspicion that such a principle may bring something foreign to the text, such that one is not drawing out from the text the truth that it contains (exegesis) but is rather reading into it the knowledge that one brings to it (eisegesis). In the present case, 38. Thomas’s recognition of the unity of the canon and his use of a hermeneutic of faith has been noted in Mary Healy, “Aquinas’s Use of the Old Testament in His Commentary on Romans,” in Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 183–95, esp. 193–95. 39. See Vatican II, Dei Verbum: The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (November 18, 1965), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 58 (1966): 817–36, esp. no. 12; and Pope Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini: On the Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation (September 30, 2010), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 102 (2010): 681–787, esp. no. 34.

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the suspicion could be that, by bringing an already established faith in resurrection, the interpreter makes Job into a believer in the resurrection (even foretelling Christ himself) when such may not have been his belief.40 If theological knowledge—faith—can affect one’s interpretation of a text, so, too, can one’s philosophical knowledge—knowledge that, in principle, could be based on reason alone. This philosophical interpretive lens is the second aspect that we will consider, though we will not attempt any extended investigation of Thomas’s use of philosophy in this commentary.41 However, even without such an investigation, it is clear that Thomas brings a certain philosophical outlook to his scriptural interpretation—this outlook is very evident when he deals with eschatological issues. In particular, it is typical of Thomas to use the four causes—the four classically Aristotelian causes—as a kind of framework for analysis.42 For eschatology, naturally, it is final causality that is often invoked as a way of getting at the crux of what is being said in any given text.43 40. It is far beyond the scope of this paper to consider the significant amount of scholarship from the past century on the question of whether Jb 19:25–27 refers to the afterlife or resurrection. It should be noted, though, that at least some recent biblical scholarship has shown that belief in the afterlife is expressed even in parts of the Hebrew text of the book of Job—in one case, finding parallels with similar, contemporaneous beliefs in Egypt. See Christopher Hays, “‘There Is Hope for a Tree’: Job’s Hope for the Afterlife in the Light of Egyptian Tree Imagery,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 77, no. 1 ( Jan 2015): 42–68. Compare Johannes Schnocks, “The Hope for Resurrection in the Book of Job,” in The Septuagint and Messianism, ed. M. A. Knibb (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 291–99. 41. A kind of categorized listing of the themes of the commentary’s philosophical anthropology can be found in Marcos F. Manzanedo, “La antropología filosófica en el comentario tomista al libro de Job,” Angelicum 62 (1985): 419–71. A similar accounting of the work’s theological anthropology is seen in idem, “La antropología teológica en el comentario tomista al libro de Job,” Angelicum 64 (1987): 301–31. 42. It will not be surprising that Aristotle is the pagan author most often referenced in Thomas’s Scripture commentaries; see Jörgen Vijgen, “The Use and Function of Aristotle in Aquinas’s Biblical Commentaries,” in Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions and New Perspectives, Textes et Études du Moyen Âge vol. 80, ed. Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015), 287–346, esp. 338; Vijgen finds 164 occasions, including 18 in Exp. super Iob; ibid., 290, 339. 43. Both the ScG and the Exp. super Iob are particularly teleological and eschatological (though not the sole works of St. Thomas with those characteristics); Chardonnens, L’homme sous le regard de la Providence, 176.



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Above (regarding Job 7:1), we saw Thomas express the view that “the present life of man does not have the ultimate end in it, but is compared to this end as motion is compared to rest and the journey to the destination.” In speaking of the “end” of life, Thomas is certainly using a philosophical (even, Aristotelian) concept: finality. But the analysis never ceases having a theological bent. Saying that life in this world, like all else, has an end, a purpose—but an end that is not found within it—is not to allow a philosophy to determine the interpretation. Rather, the philosophy has merely suggested that one consider life’s end or purpose as a way of getting at the text’s meaning—but such a philosophical question has not suggested the shape of that end. If we may put the matter so simply, while final causality prompts the question, only the larger theological vision of the text provides any answer. We may say something similar about Thomas’s arguments for a postmortem judgment and reward for the just. He holds these to be the key to understanding Job’s argument in the whole book. Thomas has Job arguing that, since the just often are afflicted gratuitously in this life, it is fitting that, if God is just, they be adequately compensated, in some way, after death. Such is certainly what Thomas would call a “probable argument.” It does not “demonstrate” that there is a final judgment—which is known only by revelation—but shows how reason alone can point toward such a judgment. And while he spends little time arguing from reason for the fittingness of the general resurrection, this kind of argument, too, is possible. But the confidence that there will be a resurrection comes from its having been revealed by God. What we are suggesting is that the eschatology of this commentary provides a particularly apt case for seeing the overall unity of Thomas’s approach to Scripture. It is a unity that is based on the unity of truth. After all, there cannot be two separate truths: one of faith vs. the other of reason. Even if the ways one may come to truth may be manifold, and even if the grasp that each of us has may differ, one from another, there can be no doubt that bringing what one knows

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into the task of interpretation is not only possible, but necessary— and even unavoidable. Furthermore, to seek a unity in the truth— though it is difficult for us—is the reason we speak with one another about texts. To confront this question is to confront the modern and contemporary questioning of metaphysics altogether—a task that goes far beyond the scope of this paper. Others have noted this kind of overall unity as a particular characteristic of Thomas’s approach to Scripture.44 What we are suggesting that we can learn from the example of St. Thomas, in this commentary and elsewhere, is a kind of theological-ontological reading, where “ontology and the Bible form together a real unity.” 45 And because we speak of bringing one’s faith and one’s knowledge to the exegetical project, what we are proposing here is certainly a form of what Matthew Levering calls “participatory” exegesis.46 Yet what prevents such “participation” from becoming “projection”? That is, what keeps this participatory reading from becoming a kind of “eisegesis”? What prevents it from being a “reading into” the text what one already knows, thus yielding nothing for the reader? There is no easy answer to this difficulty—but it should also be noted 44. Mauricio Narváez finds a “triple unity” in Thomas’s Super Iob: narrative, thematic, and “veritative” (truth-related); see “Intention, probabiles rationes and Truth: The Exegetical Practice in Thomas Aquinas: The Case of the Expositio super Iob ad litteram,” in Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas, 141–69, esp. 166–69. Two other authors in the same volume also note the “unity” of Thomas’s overall approach to Scripture. Robert J. Woźniak finds Aquinas’s reading of Scripture to be marked by a unity of the exegetical and the speculative; see Woźniak, “An Emerging Theology between Scripture and Metaphysics: Bonaventure, Aquinas and the Scriptural Foundation of Medieval Theology,” in Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas, 415–34, esp. 417. Yet another scholar observes that the divisio textus typical of Aquinas’s commentaries indicate an approach that sees an overall unity to the particular biblical book under discussion as well as highlighting the harmony between divine revelation and human knowledge; see Margherita Maria Rossi, “Mind-space: Towards an ‘Environ-mental Method’ in the Exegesis of the Middle Ages,” in Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas, 171–98, esp. 174–75. 45. Woźniak, “An Emerging Theology between Scripture and Metaphysics,” 423; see also 420–23; this author has also said (422) that the basic characteristic of Thomas’s method is the “strong emphasis on the combination of Revelation and reason.” 46. Matthew Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008).



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that the very same difficulty remains, regardless of the approach we take to exegesis. When it comes to interpretation, we have no choice but to bring something of what we know to that interpretation; no one approaches a text as a true tabula rasa—and, in fact, being a tabula rasa is not even desirable. Greater knowledge allows one to look for more, to see more, and to distinguish better the meaning and meanings of the text. Without claiming to resolve the matter, we can say that legitimate interpretations of the text’s literal meaning (in the sense understood by St. Thomas) should arise, in some way, from the text—even if that which constitutes “in some way” is not easy to define.47 In the end, Thomas gives a plausible interpretation to the overall shape of the book of Job, with Job’s plea of fidelity and innocence in the face of severe trials, while never attempting to explain away those trials.48 In a way, we can note that Thomas’s medieval, theological reading the text allows one to see that the “happy ending” is somewhat out of place—or at least, that it is not the principal message of the book. In this way, Thomas agrees with modern exegetes who see the happy ending as extraneous to the core of the narrative. Without that ending—and even with it—one wonders how to interpret the Lord’s answer to Job and the Lord’s treatment or non-treatment of Job’s suffering. But with Thomas’s interpretation that Job is holding on to the possibility of future relief and vindication—the book has a coherent unity, with or without the aforementioned ending (especially without it). Job’s insistence on his own innocence, his hope, and his fidelity despite all manner of suffering, would make little sense without some final vindication. Without that vindication, there would be no hope, and Job would be only a tragic figure. We might say that the reason the book of Job makes more sense in light of the faith, including the promise of a glorious resurrection for the just, is that life makes more sense in that light.49 47. Hannah, “The Metaphysics of Meaning,” 693. 48. Roger W. Nutt, “Providence, Wisdom, and the Justice of Job’s Afflictions: Considerations from Aquinas’ Literal Exposition on Job,” Heythrop Journal 56, no. 1 ( Jan 2015): 44–66. 49. For help with resources, I wish to thank Fr. Tomasz Gałuszka, OP.

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Contributors Contributors

Contributors

Serge-Thomas Bonino, OP, is dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Angelicum in Rome. For many years, he served as the editor of the Revue thomiste. He is presently secretary of the International Theological Commission (since 2011), and president of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas (since 2014). He is the author and editor of numerous books, including most recently Saint Thomas d’Aquin, lecteur du Cantique des cantiques and Angels and Demons: A Catholic Introduction. John F. Boyle is professor of Catholic studies and theology and chair of the Department of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota. An expert in Aquinas’s biblical commentaries, he has authored Master Thomas Aquinas and the Fullness of Life and is the coeditor of the critical Latin edition of Thomas Aquinas’s Lectura Romana in primum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi. He received the Aquinas Medal from the University of Dallas in 2013. Anthony T. Flood is associate professor of philosophy at North Dakota State University. The author of The Root of Friendship: Self-Love and Self-Governance in Aquinas and The Metaphysical Foundations of Love: Aquinas on Participation, Unity, and Union, he has published essays on aspects of Aquinas’s thought in Journal of Philosophical Research, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, International Philosophical Quarterly, and Nova et Vetera.



399

400 Contributors Harm Goris is assistant professor of theology at Tilburg School of Catholic Theology. A longtime member of the Thomas Instituut of Utrecht, he is the author of Free Creatures of an Eternal God: Thomas Aquinas on God’s Infallible Knowledge and Irresistible Will. He has coedited Aquinas as Authority, The Virtuous Life: Thomas Aquinas on the Theological Nature of Moral Virtues; and Faith, Hope and Love: Thomas Aquinas on Living by the Theological Virtues. John F. X. Knasas is professor of philosophy at the Center of Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. Besides numerous scholarly articles, he is the author of The Preface to Thomistic Metaphysics and Thomism and Tolerance, as well as Thomistic Existentialism and Cosmological Reasoning and Aquinas and the Cry of Rachel. Bryan Kromholtz, OP, is professor of theology at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology and at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He is the author of On the Last Day: The Time of the Resurrection of the Dead according to Thomas Aquinas. Matthew Levering holds the James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary. He is the author of twenty-five books, including Paul in the Summa Theologiae and An Introduction to Vatican II as an Ongoing Theological Event. He is the coeditor of numerous books, including Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas and Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas. Guy Mansini, OSB, is professor of theology at Saint Meinrad School of Theology and Max Seckler Chair of Fundamental Theology at Ave Maria University. He is the author of What Is Dogma?, Promising and the Good, The Word Has Dwelt among Us, and Fundamental Theology. He has published numerous scholarly essays in such journals as The Thomist, Angelicum, and Nova et Vetera. Brian Thomas Becket Mullady, OP, has taught theology at the Angelicum and at several colleges, universities, and seminaries

Contributors 401 in the United States. His popular and scholarly books include Both a Servant and Free: A Primer in Fundamental Moral Theology and Man’s Desire for God. Most recently, he is the translator of Aquinas’s Commentary on the Book of Job (Latin-English edition). Piotr Roszak teaches theology at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, where he is assistant dean of the Faculty of Theology. He has also taught at the University of Navarre. He is the author of numerous articles on Aquinas’s biblical exegesis, published in journals around the world. His books include Credibilidad e identidad: En torno a la Teología de la Fe en Santo Tomás de Aquino; and (coedited with Jörgen Vijgen) Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions and New Perspectives, and Towards a Biblical Thomism: Thomas Aquinas and the Renewal of Biblical Theology. He is an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Daria Spezzano is associate professor of theology at Providence College. She is the author of The Glory of God’s Grace: Deification according to St. Thomas Aquinas. Rudi te Velde is professor of philosophy at Tilburg School of Catholic Theology in the Netherlands, and from 1998 to 2016 he taught at the University of Amsterdam. A longtime member of the Thomas Instituut of Utrecht, he is the author of Participation and Substantiality in Aquinas and Aquinas on God: The “Divine Science” of the Summa Theologiae, as well as the editor of Homo sapiens: Thomas van Aquino en de vraag naar de mens. Jörgen Vijgen is professor of philosophy at the PhilosophicalTheological Institute St. Willibrord, Tiltenberg (The Netherlands). He is an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas and a Fellow of the Thomas Instituut of Utrecht at Tilburg University. He is the author of The Status of Eucharistic Accidents Sine Subiecto: An Historical Survey up to Thomas Aquinas and Selected Reactions. With Piotr Roszak, he coedited Reading Sacred Scrip-

402 Contributors ture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions and New Perspectives and Towards a Biblical Thomism: Thomas Aquinas and the Renewal of Biblical Theology. Joseph P. Wawrykow is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame. The recipient of a Kaneb Teaching Award and the supervisor of numerous dissertations in medieval theology, he is the author of God’s Grace and Human Action: “Merit” in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas and The Westminster Handbook to Thomas Aquinas. He has coedited Christ among the Medieval Dominicans and The Theology of Thomas Aquinas.

Index Index

Index

abandonment, 298 Achtemeier, Elizabeth, 70 active principle, 192 acts: graced, 228, 244, 252; human, 134, 135, 174, 217n59, 221, 222, 247, 370; moral, 136, 171, 325 adolescents, 188 adopted children, 216 adultery, 76, 328 adversary, 26, 38, 39, 203n40 adversity, 16, 25, 44, 50, 53, 75, 78, 79, 129, 139, 144, 146, 149, 152, 161, 165, 176, 180, 181, 182, 190, 244, 255–57, 263–65, 267, 271, 274, 275, 279, 286, 287, 294–99, 301, 304, 307, 309–12, 314, 316, 326, 329, 334, 335, 350–52, 354–56, 359, 363, 371, 372, 378 affection, 117, 122, 169n30, 222, 238, 243, 295, 297, 312, 343, 347, 349, 353 affective dimension, 343 afterlife, 17, 180, 194, 203, 218, 236, 237n27, 242, 244, 245, 246, 247n53, 248, 249, 252, 257, 278, 279, 368, 372, 375, 376, 378, 380n40 agency, 128, 132, 136, 249, 325 agent, 59, 134, 171, 186, 194n17, 195n20, 226, 258, 327, 328 Albert the Great, 1–3, 11n33, 44n9, 57n69, 59n75, 59n78, 60, 61n81, 62, 63, 64n96, 65n100, 100n17 amor, 342 analogia fidei, 379 analogy, 14, 95, 120, 123, 186, 198, 199, 215, 379 angel, 99, 100, 101, 126n78, 134, 137, 147,



152, 156, 193, 194, 201n36, 272, 306; hierarchy, 193 anger, 13, 30, 31, 52–54, 129, 165, 174, 178, 179, 250, 252, 253 animal seed, 64 animation, 59 annihilation, 74, 85, 122n67, 314 anthropology, 13, 58n70, 62, 380n41 apatheia, 16, 318, 320 apocalyptic writings, 72 apostolic preaching, 261 appetite, 52, 172, 214, 276, 282n74, 322, 332 archer and arrow, 58 Aristotle, 4, 13, 14, 43, 46–61, 67, 191, 192, 196, 199, 201n34, 201n36, 320, 321, 330, 331, 342n1, 351, 380n42 artisan, 59, 98 ascesis, 318 ashes, 263, 294, 308 ataraxia, 175, 182 Athens, 330 auctor peccati, 168 Augustine, 51n38, 54, 55, 95n4, 99, 206, 224, 230, 268n22, 270nn302-31, 272, 291n113 Auschwitz, 93 author: authorial intention, 5; biblical, 165; divine, 5, 13n38, 69, 265n15; human, 5, 6, 12, 89, 165, 265n15 auxilium, 136, 190, 222n5, 223n6, 224, 230n17, 238, 239, 297, 298, 300, 301, 306 Averroean arguments, 188 Averroes, 48–50, 60 Avicenna, 48 Ayo, Nicholas, 111n43

403

404 Index battle, 170, 280n63, 285 beatification, 301 beatific vision, 220, 222n3 beatitudes, 177, 191n10, 208n47, 222, 264, 276, 292n115, 299, 301, 303, 311, 312, 333, 334n31 beauty, 152n26, 305, 306, 310, 315 Behemoth, 145, 157, 247, 249 Bellamah, Timothy, 4, 5n14 Benedict XVI (pope), 95, 264, 379 Bible, 68, 69, 88, 143, 188, 265n15, 274, 382 biblical scholarship, 3, 5, 9, 10n28, 12, 72, 248, 380n40 Bildad the Shuhite, 11n32, 26, 27, 31, 77, 78, 79, 158n55, 163, 240, 245, 252, 350 birth, 64, 74, 75, 250, 263, 318, 323, 330 blasphemy, 30, 36, 151, 171 Bobik, Joseph, 357n31 body, 2, 11, 15, 16, 17, 57, 60, 61, 93, 115n50, 138, 139, 142, 171, 172, 175, 176, 179, 186, 187, 190–92, 194nn16–18, 213, 229, 231, 251, 275, 277, 288n99, 291, 293, 317–22, 329–33, 339, 370, 377 body-soul dualism, 52 Boethius, 52, 189, 322 Bonaventurian arguments, 188 bondage, 269 Bonino, Serge-Thomas, 14 Bougerol, Jacques-Guy, 271n33, 276n50, 281n64, 300n143 Boyle, John F., 13 breast, 288, 290, 292, 307 Brown, Raymond, 70, 72 builder and building, 63 burden, 115n50, 145–47, 179, 180, 287, 354 campaign, 47, 150n16, 280, 285 canon, 17, 87, 88n59, 379n38 Cappadocians, 98 casuistry, 184 Catholic faith, 55, 84, 329, 373, 376 causal principles, 131 cause: agent, 171, 328; definite, 59; divine, 65, 106, 109; efficient, 65, 234, 299, 301; final, 46, 130, 141, 146, 204, 208, 299– 381; first, 101, 108, 109, 133, 153, 156n42, 188, 198, 201, 202, 212, 213, 333; material, 45; natural, 46; occasional, 338; primary, 59; primordial, 331, 336; principal, 83, 289; second, 59; secondary, 5, 59, 134; universal, 48, 133 celestial bodies, 61, 132, 134

Chardonnens, Denis, 3, 263, 280–82, 301n146 charity, 220, 222, 223, 229, 233, 234, 255n72, 257, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 282, 286, 309, 348, 356–58 chastisement, 240 children of God, 270, 271, 303 Childs, Brevard, 12 Christ, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11n32, 13n38, 52, 70, 73, 77, 81, 83, 88n59, 117n58, 136, 157, 160n58, 247–49, 250n64, 253, 261, 269– 73, 277n54, 288–90, 292, 308, 310, 311, 313, 320–22, 331, 332, 339, 348, 356n28, 357, 366, 375, 376, 380 Christianity, 186, 187, 264, 325 Christology, 6, 7n19, 249n59 citizen, 312, 321, 324 civil life, 213 Clines, David, 9 clothing, 62, 174 cloud, 48, 49, 54, 58, 64, 74, 353 cognitive recognition, 343n4 comfort, 24, 26, 38, 139, 184, 240, 350, 353, 377 commandments, 171, 173, 318 commentary: biblical, 4, 7, 8, 43, 69, 87, 350; litteral, 68, 69, 319, 356, 365 Commentary on the Gospel of John, 369 communion, 89, 220, 228, 234, 360 compassion, 17, 350, 354, 355 Compendium theologiae, 266 concupiscence, 63, 172, 178, 179, 342n1, 344 condemnation, 66n105, 73, 305 condignity, 223, 239, 253, 256 confession, 37, 94, 263, 273, 275, 285, 307, 335 conformity, 122, 228, 235, 361n37, 362 conscience, 33, 36, 39, 122, 163–65, 271, 328, 335, 337, 363n41 consciousness, 99, 151n20 consolation: false, 283, 285; temporal, 295 Consolation of Philosophy, 52, 322 construction, 12n36, 63 consummation of the kingdom, 82 contemplation, 103, 131, 183, 201, 213, 297 Contra Faustum, 230 Contra impugnantes, 269 conversion, 222n5, 223, 233, 234, 253, 255, 256, 263, 268 converts, 228, 294, 313, 340, 378 corporeal bodies, 61, 176

Index 405 Corpus Aristotelicum, 67 corruptibility, 141 corruption, 54, 142, 174, 205, 216, 231, 331 cosmology, 13, 54, 58n70 cosmos, 46, 84, 100, 101, 134, 205 Council of Chalcedon, 322 counsel, 38, 155n50 created effects, 106, 109, 110, 157 created intellect(s), 152, 204, 333 creation, 3, 63, 64, 71, 72, 84, 85, 97, 98, 99n13, 104n26, 106, 108, 111, 120, 130n5, 132, 133, 134, 141, 157, 158, 186, 188, 204, 249, 291 creative act, 108, 120, 121 creator, 89, 95n5, 100, 107, 108, 121–23, 151, 157–59, 186–88, 193, 205, 206, 212, 215, 216–19, 237, 364 creature, 14, 74, 96–99, 102, 106–11, 113, 115, 122, 124, 130, 133–38, 141, 204, 205, 223, 225, 227, 249, 306, 308n172, 313, 346, 357, 362n38; corporeal, 101; everlasting, 205; intellectual, 137; irrational, 137, 140, 237n29; lower, 155; rational, 37, 128, 130, 135, 137, 149, 196, 203–6, 209, 217, 221, 227, 237n29, 333; spiritual, 98, 99, 110, 126, 134 crime, 28, 170, 171 Cross: Law of the, 160; Word upon the, 86 crucifixion, 366 cupidity, 269 Dahan, Gilbert, 1, 2, 42, 66 damnation, 145, 243 De Anima, 52, 57, 194n18, 201n34 De Caelo, 55, 60, 63, 65, 191, 192 De Generatione Animalium, 54, 59, 65 De Iuventute, 62 De Trinitate, 189, 199n31 De Veritate, 46–49, 194n16, 206n41, 208n46, 273n41, 300n143, 362 death, 6, 10n28, 32, 50, 56, 68, 70, 74, 79, 82, 83n41, 84, 88, 89, 138, 142, 157, 160n58, 179, 181n73, 192, 194, 214, 216, 237n27, 251, 262, 263, 266n17, 271, 272n40, 275, 278–80, 282, 284, 285, 287, 288n99, 289, 290, 298, 299, 314, 320, 329–31, 370, 372, 373, 375, 381 Decalogue, 86 deifying action, 121 Dei Verbum, 379 deliberation(s), 9, 117, 135, 263, 317

deliverance, 272n40 Democritus, 45 demons, 134, 178n67 demonstrative arguments, 317 desire: affective, 317; human, 15, 200, 202, 280; natural, 56, 196, 201–3, 218, 331, 332, 333n30, 334; vain, 39 despair, 25, 26n17, 182, 232, 234, 235n21, 250, 251, 278, 282–284, 289, 292, 293, 313, 314, 339, 351 destiny, 17, 188, 189, 193, 196, 206, 315, 325, 341 destruction, 80, 159, 174 destructive forces, 360 devil, 37, 74, 75, 79, 80, 86, 165, 247, 249, 267, 339, 360 devotion, 267, 275, 286 dialogues, 24, 26, 40, 146, 215, 369 Didascalion, 4 dignity, 136–38, 142, 187, 209, 214, 216, 223 dilectio, 342 Dionysian principle, 342 Dionysius, 118, 126n78, 233, 344 discourse, 79, 97, 115, 117n58, 263, 264, 278, 293, 304, 307, 308 disease, 75, 216 disorder, 31, 34, 149, 177, 181n72, 213, 231, 251, 349, 359, 360, 363 disposition, 26–28, 30, 47, 54, 57, 59, 79, 113, 114, 192, 348 disputants, 11, 22, 24, 34, 40, 335 disputation, 2, 11, 21–24, 26, 29–36, 38–41, 143, 154, 156, 158, 161, 162, 166, 240, 241, 242, 250, 325, 336 divine arbitrariness, 122 divine attributes, 124 divine authority, 34, 166, 189, 336 divine call, 82 divine correction, 38 divine disclosure, 6n19 divine essence, 109, 113, 120 divine excellence, 37, 263, 305, 306, 308, 311 divine familiarity, 297 divine help, 284, 287n94, 289, 297, 301, 303, 306 divine infusion, 194n18 divine intervention, 166 divine liberality, 276n50, 300n143, 302 divine majesty, 277 divine matters, 26, 28, 80n34, 105, 125 Divine Names, 202n37

406 Index divine operation, 63 divine pedagogy, 23, 305 divine perfection, 99, 124 divine permission, 157, 217, 340 divine plan, 51, 63, 88n59, 120, 130 divine presence, 87, 296, 356 divine providence, 2–4, 6n19, 11, 13, 17, 21, 23, 25, 27, 34, 44–50, 61, 63, 65, 66, 77, 78, 80n34, 125, 127–42, 146–48, 154, 156n42, 158, 189, 192, 206, 215, 217, 218, 232, 238n31, 239, 241, 242, 245–47, 256, 257, 266, 275, 279, 296, 299, 305, 309, 311, 313, 314, 316, 323, 328, 332, 335, 336, 340, 367, 370, 374 divine realities, 69 divine rebuke, 36 divine response, 223 divine teaching, 150 divine voice, 82 divinity, 123n70, 332, 375, 376 divisio textus, 4, 382n44 doctrine, 2, 6n19, 10, 11, 14, 31, 38, 39, 44, 51, 66, 89, 95, 146, 154, 156, 158n55, 173, 175, 180, 241n37, 265n15, 286, 330, 331, 369n15, 373 dogma, 29, 30, 33, 34, 40, 156n42, 241n37, 262, 263, 284, 326 dominion, 79, 135, 136 dream, 101, 102 dualist view, 178 Earth, 14, 16, 28, 46, 47, 58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 79, 80, 84, 87, 108, 115, 139, 140, 142, 148, 175, 193, 244n41, 251n66, 269, 280, 282, 285, 288, 290, 310, 332, 334, 349, 350, 371, 375, 376 earthquakes, 58n73, 217 Ebionites, 331 economy, 140 Eden, 74 education, 153, 211 eisegesis, 379, 382 Elders, Leo, 56 elect, 145, 227–29, 230n17, 235 election, 227n13, 230n17 Elihu, 23, 32–36, 39, 62, 102, 109, 115, 121, 123, 145, 146, 156, 158, 166, 173, 181n72, 181n75, 182, 183, 190, 240, 241, 246, 247, 250, 254, 255n73, 305, 336, 350, 356 Eliphaz the Temanite (Themanite), 11n32, 25–27, 30, 48, 52, 53, 112, 115, 119n61, 138, 139, 154, 158n55, 163, 165, 240, 245,

246n52, 247n56, 252, 278, 279, 283, 326, 350–52, 371 embryology, 59–60n79 emotional drives, 324 emotional illness, 324 emotion, 52, 117n58, 351 Empedocles, 45, 49 empirical observation, 63 end: beatifying, 221, 234; definite, 59; final, 137, 172, 234, 244, 280; fundamental, 361; moral, 317; ultimate, 16, 136, 139, 153, 177, 191n10, 280, 282, 315, 316, 317, 325–27, 331, 334, 340, 341, 371, 381 enemy, 62, 298, 359n34 envy, 174 Epicurus, 93 epilogue, 240, 253–55, 258 epiphany, 93, 211, 213 epistemological limitation, 6n19 epistemology, 209n48 eruditio, 43 eschatological extent, 311 eschatological issues, 380 eschatological object, 287 eschatological perspective, 282 eschatology, 4, 16, 17, 259, 364, 369, 370, 380, 381 eternal decrees, 143 eternal inheritance, 312 eternity, 99n13, 113, 142, 188, 206, 227, 229, 245, 283, 319, 329 Ethica Nicomacheia, 53, 54, 58, 62 ethics, 4, 122, 124, 189, 201, 207, 210, 214, 215, 218, 320, 344 Eunomius, 98 euthanasia, 214 Eutyches of Constantinople, 291 Evagrius Ponticus, 318, 320 evil: appearance of, 36, 337, 338; chief, 322; moral, 323, 327, 338; physical, 327; temporal, 231, 233, 243, 247, 252, 284 evildoer(s), 75, 368 evolution(s), 64, 84, 156n42, 245n48 exegesis, 1, 2n4, 4n11, 5, 12, 13, 17, 42, 57, 89, 262, 265, 270n31, 291, 293, 295, 312, 379, 382, 383 existence: bodily, 138; earthly, 139, 141, 331; of God, 106, 116n53, 148, 330; human, 139, 180, 221, 242, 243, 313, 314, 343, 348, 356; individual, 331; of man, 333, 370; perpetual, 138, 142, 370; physical, 142 existentialism, 313

Index 407 faith, 13, 17, 40, 48, 55, 67, 73, 84, 94, 95, 116, 117n58, 120, 125, 126, 129, 155–57, 185, 187, 190, 202n37, 203n40, 234, 237n26, 241n37, 261, 262, 264, 266, 271–73, 274n47, 278–80, 287–90, 292, 293, 299, 300n142, 310, 311, 318, 329, 333–36, 339, 364, 373–77, 379–83 fatalism, 135 fathers, 65, 80, 83, 86, 108, 122, 145, 156, 216, 237n28, 250, 273, 289, 308, 310, 315, 318 fault, 148, 170, 171, 240, 277, 279, 305, 323, 328, 333, 337 fear: fearing God, 146, 266, 268, 274, 318; filial, 16, 265, 268, 270, 276, 277, 279, 280, 294, 296, 299, 302–5, 307, 308, 310, 311, 313, 314; gift of, 270n30, 296, 299, 301–3, 311, 313; of God, 30, 44, 125, 135, 265–70, 275, 293, 305, 316, 318; initial, 268; natural, 278, 314; reverent, 267, 302; worldly, 268, 269 females, 59, 65; softness, 62 fidelity, 208, 298, 307, 383 First Vatican Council, 143 flesh, 54, 55, 120, 144, 175, 176, 244n41, 269, 282, 288, 291, 310, 331, 332, 348, 349, 375 Flood, Anthony T., 16, 17 foolishness, 40, 96, 262, 263 foot, 76, 122, 281n65 form, 4n11, 11, 22, 40, 49, 63, 64, 66n105, 72, 96, 111, 115, 119n61, 122, 130, 133, 136, 155, 158, 179n69, 184, 187, 191, 195n20, 197n26, 198, 199, 210, 229, 234, 235, 243, 256, 257n76, 261n1, 271, 272, 325, 327, 330, 342, 344, 348, 350, 356, 359, 362, 369, 376, 382 formation, 41, 54, 63, 64 fortitude, 54, 176n56, 233 fortune, 45, 47, 106n31, 131, 249, 281, 297, 313, 351, 363 Fourth Lateran Council, 95n5 fraternal correction, 263, 287 free choice, 237, 317, 333 freedom, 8, 95n4, 115, 132, 154, 155, 187, 205, 208, 209, 213, 214, 254, 256, 269, 313, 316, 320, 324, 325, 327, 328 friends, 4, 9–13, 16, 17, 23–32, 34–36, 38– 40, 50, 53, 62, 76, 115, 117, 126, 129, 143, 145–47, 149, 151, 154, 156, 158, 161, 163, 164, 166, 171, 189, 233, 235, 240–48, 250– 55, 257, 262–64, 268, 275, 278, 279, 284– 88, 293, 294, 297, 299, 304, 305, 307, 311,

313, 314, 317, 319, 323, 325, 326, 328, 329, 333–40, 344–46, 350–52, 354–56, 361 friendship, 4, 16, 17, 158, 160, 210n50, 211, 341–63 fruit, 9, 15, 38, 60, 80, 103, 122, 261n1, 265, 281n65, 286 garden at Gethsemane, 339 Gauthier, R.-A., 48 generation, 59, 64, 65, 104, 108, 142, 205, 211, 217n61, 290 Gesta, 5, 165 gifts, 16, 75, 102, 116, 121, 126, 192, 221, 223, 224, 226, 228, 233, 238n31, 264, 265, 269–73, 276, 296, 297, 299, 300–303, 311–13, 332, 357n31 glory, 26, 38, 39, 85, 87, 145, 150, 152, 159, 222n3, 226, 232, 257, 265, 271, 272n40, 279, 285, 289, 291–293, 297n137, 306, 307, 310, 311, 313, 314, 340, 358, 363 Glossa Ordinaria, 1, 292n115 gold, 76, 244, 274, 294 good: chief, 322, 359; corporeal, 278, 319; earthly, 159, 169, 175, 182, 268, 269, 294, 348; material, 316, 320, 323, 324, 329, 334, 340, 351; spiritual, 175, 178, 229, 230, 232, 233, 237nn27–28, 238, 243, 251, 255n73, 262, 284, 286, 296, 299, 301, 314, 320, 329, 349, 363n41; temporal, 152, 161, 167, 182, 220, 224, 228–31, 233, 237n27, 238, 242, 243, 245–47, 250–52, 254–58, 270, 275, 277, 281, 282, 284, 286, 294, 295, 299, 313, 317–19, 329, 334, 361, 371, 378 goodness: assisting, 307; divine, 16, 94, 107, 121, 122, 146, 304, 306, 309, 310, 311; providential, 275 Goris, Harm, 15 Gospel of John, 4, 14, 68–73, 80, 81, 82, 85, 87–89, 376. See also Johannine themes Gospel of Luke, 145 Gospel of Matthew, 308, 312 governance, 3, 6n19, 11n32, 123, 155, 203, 206 government, 3, 96, 98, 113, 121, 123, 124, 130, 136, 168, 206n41, 213, 227 governor, 321, 324 grace, 16, 101, 114n48, 116, 118, 120, 136, 137, 165, 177n61, 183, 190, 192, 200, 216, 221– 24, 226–31, 233, 234–38, 239n34, 244, 249–54, 256, 257, 264, 265, 269, 270–72, 275, 277, 285–87, 292n115, 293, 294, 297, 298, 300, 301, 303, 309, 310, 311, 313–15, 331–33, 335, 346, 347, 363

408 Index Gregory the Great, 1, 8, 11n33, 43, 147, 267n20, 272, 273n40, 283, 291, 292n115, 316, 366 grief, 182, 320 habit, 167, 179, 201, 224, 327, 339 hagiographical books, 23, 167 Haimo of Auxerre, 271n33 happiness, 15, 16, 126, 138, 139, 200–202, 208n47, 255, 281, 286, 287, 311–13, 325, 341, 356, 357, 371, 378 Harkins, Franklin T., 6, 7n19, 11n32, 13n38, 289, 290 health, 51, 150, 181, 184, 232, 240, 264, 316, 317, 319, 339, 377 Healy, Mary, 5, 73, 88 heaven, 14, 45, 48, 49, 55, 60, 61, 65, 81, 84–86, 99n13, 108, 115n50, 122, 131, 135, 144, 145, 231, 234, 293, 312, 314, 330, 338, 350, 376 heavenly court, 240, 266 Heidegger, Martin, 205 hell, 80, 108, 273, 285 Historia Animalium, 43n7, 57, 62 Holy Spirit, 16, 115n50, 116, 153, 154, 165, 167, 223, 270, 271, 286, 287, 302, 303, 309, 358 hope, 4, 6, 16, 17, 51, 74, 78, 82, 126, 139, 150, 159, 173, 177, 182n77, 183, 184, 190, 218, 220, 233–35, 237, 244n41, 251, 252n68, 255, 261–314, 326, 329, 331, 340, 341, 351, 356, 364, 372, 375, 378, 383 Hugh of St. Victor, 4, 170 human affairs, 6n19, 11n32, 22, 23, 25, 45, 47, 106n31, 113, 127, 128, 135, 146–48, 152–55, 157, 217, 218, 239, 241, 242, 244, 266, 275, 316, 358, 367, 374 human condition, 30, 50, 52, 139, 176, 281, 375 human destiny, 188, 189, 193, 315 human race, 186n2, 266, 272, 272–73n40, 289, 310, 325, 338, 339, 375 humility, 17, 36, 38–40, 53, 248, 270, 275, 295, 308, 309, 313, 337 hylomorphic unity, 175, 176 ignorance, 31, 35, 85, 105, 111, 114, 126n78, 169, 172, 173, 186n2, 206 illness, 320, 324 imagination, 350 immorality, 57n69 immortality, 179, 191, 193n15, 195, 244, 285, 330

impatience, 25, 278, 280, 351–53, 355 impiety, 262, 274 incarnation, 83, 272n40 incorruptible, 47, 54, 56, 57, 132, 190n9, 203, 291, 332 inheritance, 237n28, 296, 299, 312 iniquity, 25, 29, 30, 33, 75, 305 innocence, 15, 24, 25, 27, 38, 76, 79, 152, 162, 163, 165–67, 176, 242, 244n40, 248, 274, 278, 289, 304, 305, 324, 337, 340, 383 inspiration, 9, 86, 101, 115, 117, 118, 263, 264, 296, 303, 304, 308, 317 integrity, 39, 264, 363n41 intellect, 45, 56, 97, 111n43, 131, 152, 153, 199, 201, 204, 208, 209, 210n50, 211, 216, 328, 332–34, 339, 342, 362n38 intellection, 204, 205, 208–11, 213n55, 214–16 intelligence, 38, 46, 94, 98, 100, 103, 108– 10, 119 intelligent being, 58 intelligibility, 94–100, 124, 200n34 intention, 5–7, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 33, 36, 45, 69, 94, 113, 120, 121, 122n67, 135, 145–48, 151–54, 164, 167, 169, 172, 177n62, 222n5, 226, 245, 265n15, 267, 274, 277, 281, 289, 297, 304, 305, 310, 315–18, 337, 339, 340, 366, 367, 374 interlocutor, 6n19, 67, 116n53, 189, 190, 193, 203, 206, 215, 218, 240, 241, 276, 278, 286, 350, 368 intralinear glosses, 285 Isaac, 366 Isidore, 170n35 Israel, 119n61, 338 Jesus, 70, 71, 73, 77–83, 85, 308n172 Jews, 55 Johannine themes, 14, 68, 71, 72, 81, 88 John Paul II (pope), 328 Jonas, Hans, 93, 94, 124 joy, 50, 51, 60, 87, 182, 183, 200, 201, 202, 215, 218, 270n30, 286, 287, 356 Judaism, 72 justice, 11, 12, 17, 27–29, 33, 34, 36, 37, 53, 54, 79, 95, 96, 122–24, 127–29, 135, 140, 144, 145, 149, 152, 154, 159, 160, 163, 170, 174, 176, 195n19, 221, 225, 228, 229, 231, 233, 237n26, 238, 239n34, 241–43, 245, 246, 248, 250, 254, 255, 257n76, 258, 262, 268, 274, 275, 279, 288n99, 294, 304–7, 310, 326, 372, 378

Index 409 Kant, Immanuel, 137, 140, 205 kingdom of God, 82, 255, 313, 378 kingdom of heaven, 312, 314 kinsman-redeemer, 83n41 Knasas, John F. X., 15 knowledge: created, 118; divine, 85, 105, 126, 148, 149, 306, 358; human, 105, 106, 111, 118, 119, 205, 207, 214n56, 330, 382n44; intellective, 57; intellectual, 57, 155, 194n17, 214n56; of God, 57, 105–10, 126n78, 186n2, 189, 196n24, 308, 310; philosophical, 189, 195, 196n24, 380; supernatural, 96, 116, 118; theological, 380 Kromholtz, Bryan, 17 Lactantius, 93n2 laments, 10, 11, 25, 26, 139, 244n40, 278, 317, 320, 323, 339, 355, 371 last day, 83–85, 87, 244n41, 288, 289, 290, 310, 375, 376 laudative mode, 10 law: of the Cross, 160; divine, 113, 114n47, 168, 169, 360, 361; eternal, 168, 206, 207; moral, 122, 328; natural, 113, 121, 122n67, 169, 189, 201, 207, 210, 211, 214, 215, 218; New Law, 270, 313, 356, 358; Old Law, 312, 356–58; written, 169 Lazarus, 85 lector, 2, 128 Lectura super Matthaeum, 309 Leo XIII (pope), 185, 186n1 Levering, Matthew, 7, 13, 288n99, 308n172, 382 Leviathan, 74, 75, 126n78, 145, 157, 247, 249 life: eternal, 16, 73, 83, 86, 142, 220, 222, 223, 226, 228–30, 235, 238, 243, 245, 249, 250, 252, 256, 266, 275, 276, 280, 294, 298–300, 303, 304, 313, 331, 332; moral, 16, 38, 259, 281, 317; preservation of, 59; spiritual, 312 likeness, 49, 86, 95n5, 118, 121, 122, 194, 198, 343, 357, 362 Lincoln, Andrew, 70, 72 Literal Exposition on Job (Expositio super Iob ad litteram), 1–4, 7–9, 11n32, 13n38, 14, 15, 17, 21n2, 42, 43, 58, 66, 68–89, 93–126, 138n11, 141n17, 144, 155, 220, 235, 237–39, 253, 262–65, 266n16, 269n27, 270, 271, 273, 274, 277, 281, 290, 291, 293, 299–301, 303, 310, 311, 341–65 literal meaning, 264, 265n15, 279, 310, 366, 383

literal sense, 1, 5–7, 10, 11n33, 13n38, 59, 69, 89, 265n15, 283, 289, 290n103, 316–18, 365n4, 366 logic, 323, 333 Logos, 95–97 Lombard, Peter, 170, 187n3, 200n34, 268, 270n31, 272, 273, 292n115 Lonergan, Bernard, 156n42, 160 longanimity, 286, 287 Lord, 24, 34, 64, 65, 74, 88n59, 101, 102, 115n50, 117, 118, 138n10, 144, 152, 189, 247n56, 255, 268n24, 269, 270n30, 274, 275, 279, 283, 295, 296, 303, 305, 306, 308, 309, 312, 317, 319, 336, 338, 339, 361, 368, 376, 378, 383 love, 8, 16, 44, 73, 77, 96n5, 121, 135, 145, 146, 159, 169, 170, 172, 176n56, 204, 216, 221, 222n3, 227, 228, 233, 237, 245, 249, 266–70, 272, 277, 290, 293–95, 308n172, 310, 342–49, 352, 355–57, 359–63, 366 magister, 42, 155, 166 Maimonides, 11n33, 11n34, 147, 158n51 Malloy, Christopher, 343n4 Mansini, Guy, 14 Martha, 85 master, 1, 2, 11, 21, 23, 32, 35, 38, 176, 237n29, 241, 242, 248, 268n21, 273, 294, 321, 324, 335, 336 materialism, 316, 323, 328, 335, 338 material wealth, 232 mathematics, 185, 186 mediation, 116, 118, 130, 134 medicine, 51, 150, 232n18, 264 mental illness, 320, 324 mercy, 28, 73, 80, 86, 152n26, 246, 295, 306 merit, 4, 15, 140, 148, 208, 220–58, 262, 278, 279, 292n115, 294, 297, 300, 304, 312 metaphysical connection, 348, 358 metaphysical distinction, 306 metaphysics, 42n1, 43, 185–88, 196n24, 197, 200–202, 213, 343, 347, 382 Meteorologica, 64, 65 methodological perspective, 130n5 Meyer, Ruth, 2, 11n33 Middle Ages, 1, 8, 95n4, 292n115, 365n4, 369n15 mind, 8, 12, 22, 23, 26–28, 45, 48, 51, 57, 71, 74, 80, 94, 98, 99n13, 100, 101, 107, 115n50, 120, 121, 130, 143, 149, 165, 168, 175–77, 196, 222n5, 267n20, 269, 270n30, 272, 275, 277, 282n74, 283, 286, 293, 297, 319, 341, 345, 349, 352, 368

410 Index miracle, 331, 332, 334, 338 misery, 25, 74, 148, 163, 180, 278 misfortune, 24, 25, 129, 163, 165, 179, 322 Moloney, Francis, 70, 71 moral theology, 315, 318, 320, 328 Moralia in Iob, 8, 11n33, 43, 53 morality, 122, 319, 361n37 mortality, 15, 174, 216 Moses, 86, 119n61, 136, 147, 213 Mullady, Brian, 16 murder, 76, 171 Murray, Paul, 295, 309 mutual indwelling, 354, 359 mystery, 87–89, 96, 102n22, 108, 120, 124, 186n1, 272n40, 308n172, 365 natural disasters, 181, 216 nature: corporeal, 37, 308; corruptible, 134, 142; divine, 199, 328; divine ordering of, 58; earthly, 175, 349; fallen, 346n10; glorified, 291; human, 52, 176, 179, 191, 192, 196, 277, 325, 326, 328, 333, 346; intellectual, 193, 334; personal, 344; spiritual, 175, 348 necessitarianism, 132 new creation, 84, 85 New Testament, 73, 87, 150, 262, 289, 325, 328, 375 Nicholas of Lyra, 2 noetic patrimony, 100 obedience, 40, 145, 228, 303, 313, 325 objective mode, 99, 100 offspring, 211, 318, 377, 378 Ovid, 319 Old Testament, 14, 68–70, 73, 87, 230, 255, 256, 313, 315, 325, 328, 340, 378 On Minerals, 61n81 On the Celestial Hierarchy, 118 ontology, 110, 306, 313, 382 order: harmonious, 177; hierarchical, 45; intellectual, 150, 151; just ordering, 148; moral, 113, 122, 127, 129, 134, 140; mutual, 146; natural, 46, 133, 217; ordered arrangement, 61; practical, 102; rational, 131, 132; supernatural, 98, 333; temporal, 50, 64 ordination, 226, 228, 229 Orvieto, 2, 128, 264n13, 365 Paris, 21, 41, 268n21, 269n28, 273n41 passions, 9, 13, 16, 25, 28, 43, 50, 52, 67, 172,

176, 178, 201, 213, 234n20, 237n27, 250, 251, 264, 272n40, 273, 276, 277, 278, 286, 293, 302, 312, 316–22, 324, 325, 339 patience, 1, 17, 25, 44, 51, 176n56, 244, 274, 275, 284n82, 286, 287, 295, 318, 319, 322, 340, 350–55 Paul, 96n5, 269, 271n33, 330 peace, 236, 286, 363 pedagogical instincts, 239 penance, 37, 255, 308 perfection: divine, 99, 124; final, 133, 332 perfective association, 303, 311 Peripatetics, 48, 51, 52n46, 277, 320 persecution, 275 perseverance, 169n30, 177, 222n5, 224, 238n31, 257, 258, 322, 340, 356 personalism, 215, 216 philosophers, 3, 42–67, 111n43, 113n45, 131, 185–219, 320, 330 philosophy, 12n36, 14, 17, 42, 43, 55, 57, 58, 62, 64, 67, 155, 185–90, 196n24, 202, 203, 212, 216, 318, 320, 380, 381 Physica, 61, 63, 64 Pieper, Josef, 313, 314 piety, 144, 145, 159 pilgrims, 16, 282, 313, 314 Plato/Platonists, 24, 59n75, 130, 202n37, 330 Porphyry, 176n58, 291, 332 possession(s), 9, 16, 17, 54, 102, 144, 145, 148, 159, 167, 277, 299, 329, 350, 356 posterity, 274, 288, 311 Postilla super Psalmos, 295 poverty, 16, 249, 254, 269, 311–14 power: creaturely, 82; divine, 58, 59, 61, 81, 109, 110, 111, 123, 124, 133, 135, 240, 247, 285, 360, 377; of God, 76, 81, 82, 109, 123, 133, 247, 249, 335; higher, 349; intellectual, 40; lower, 178, 179, 181, 325; natural, 223, 234, 346n10, 374; spiritual, 178n67, 321, 328; supernatural, 195 prayer, 40, 76, 78, 117n58, 173, 253n70, 255, 294, 295, 297–99, 308, 309, 339 praying, 28, 30, 37, 39, 40, 78, 173, 284, 295, 297, 298, 300, 301 preacher, 21, 311 predestination, 226, 227, 228, 230, 230n17, 238n31, 239, 253n70, 308n172 pride, 28, 30, 36–38, 73, 178, 233, 247, 248, 263, 306, 337 prime mover, 174 principal parts, 147, 176, 204, 205, 216

Index 411 prohibitions, 136, 171 propassion(s), 322 prophets, 10, 23, 102, 116, 119n61, 167 prosperity: earthly, 25, 255, 268, 280, 283, 316, 371, 378; material, 316, 339; temporal, 170, 229, 230, 240, 242, 253–55, 257, 279, 285, 287, 289, 294, 297, 313, 316, 363, 378 protensio, 281n64 providence: divine, 2–4, 6n19, 11, 13, 17, 21, 23, 25, 27, 34, 44–50, 61, 63, 65, 66, 77, 78, 80n34, 125, 127, 128, 130n5, 131, 135, 136, 138, 139, 141, 146–48, 154, 156n42, 158, 189, 192, 206, 215, 217, 218, 232, 238n31, 239, 241, 242, 245–47, 256, 257, 265, 266, 275, 279, 296, 299, 305, 309, 311, 313, 314, 316, 323, 328, 332, 335, 336, 340, 367, 370, 374; general, 136; God’s, 6n19, 15, 79, 127, 128, 132, 134, 135, 137– 40, 142, 146, 152, 153, 156, 157, 190, 196, 203, 217n60, 239, 242, 244, 248, 252, 266, 268, 275, 277, 287, 293, 311, 360, 367, 369; human, 78, 217; particular, 11, 43, 48–50, 66 provident care, 364 providential care, 17, 127, 128, 137, 138, 142, 310, 359n34, 370 prudence, 103, 213 psychology, 187, 210, 214n57, 215, 263, 324 punishing, 10, 25, 29, 32, 33, 36, 74, 76, 79, 80, 114, 136, 142, 148, 149, 166, 179, 180, 181, 182n76, 184, 238n31, 249, 255, 277, 279, 326, 329, 368, 372 punishment: divine, 27, 179n69, 182; future, 25; medicinal, 232; temporal, 182n76, 242, 246, 268, 304 purity, 33, 36, 145, 180n70, 267, 304, 306, 312, 337 Pythagorean claim, 65 Quiddity, 196n23, 197, 199 Qumran literature, 72 rational animals, 141, 209 rational creatures, 37, 128, 130, 135, 137, 140, 196, 203–6, 209, 217, 221, 227, 237n29, 333 rationality, 132, 186n1, 319 reason: divine, 130, 132, 206n41; human, 9, 102, 117, 169, 172, 212, 263, 317, 378; natural, 101, 173, 204n40; philosophical, 16, 51, 57, 212; practical, 201, 206n41, 207, 210

rebellion, 76, 77, 241 reception history, 12 reconciliation, 40, 319 Redeemer, 9, 82, 83, 159, 244, 248, 249n59, 252n68, 272, 273, 288, 289, 290, 293, 308n172, 310, 375 redemption, 271, 272, 288, 289n103, 290 Regensburg Lecture, 95 reincarnation, 84, 85 relationships, 10n28, 69, 89, 137, 171, 183, 204, 224, 242, 249–52, 254, 271, 276, 298n140, 302, 303, 328, 329, 342, 344, 347, 349, 350, 352, 353, 355, 356, 360, 361n37, 363 religion, 219, 267 repentance, 11, 36, 39, 62, 80, 138, 184, 240, 242, 246, 248, 252–54, 255n73, 263 reprobation, 308n172 restoration, 55, 56, 71, 84, 88, 167, 190, 239n32, 240, 242, 251, 253–58, 285, 288n99, 297n135, 313, 346–48, 350, 358, 363, 376–79 resurrected life, 83, 271 resurrection, 6, 9–11, 13, 15–17, 43, 54–57, 67, 81, 82, 83, 85, 87, 154, 182n77, 190–93, 203, 218, 244, 261, 262, 265, 271, 272n40, 278, 283–85, 288–93, 297n137, 310, 311, 317, 329–35, 340, 356n28, 364, 368, 369, 375–77, 379, 380, 381, 383 revelation: biblical, 94; divine, 6, 37, 38, 115, 150, 308, 311, 317, 382n44; God’s, 38, 159, 213, 289n103; objective, 116; private, 165; secret, 119n61; supernatural, 114 reward: eternal, 17, 228; everlasting, 368; final, 329, 368; material, 339, 340; permanent, 370; spiritual, 25, 146, 229, 234, 256, 257, 294, 296, 340; supernatural, 378; temporal, 255, 256, 335 Rhetoric (Rhetorica) 50, 52 riches, 8, 9, 62, 267, 294, 312 righteousness, 16, 129, 138, 146, 168, 169n30, 329, 348, 369, 373 Roszak, Piotr, 43, 68–70 Rousseau, Mary, 195n22 sacrifice, 39, 94, 159, 252, 267, 272n40, 273 sacrilege, 171 saints, 152n26, 167, 203n40, 270, 274, 306 salvation, 12, 47, 80, 145, 150, 159, 221, 225, 235, 236n24, 264, 272, 300 salvific process, 228, 357 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 205

412 Index Satan, 7, 24, 62, 126n78, 144, 145, 149, 151, 156, 157, 159, 167, 169, 170, 240, 241, 245, 247n55, 266–69, 275, 316, 318, 319, 339, 340, 348, 349, 359–62, 370 satisfaction, 37, 40, 60, 157, 196, 200 scandal, 9n27, 35, 36, 189, 248, 305, 307, 336–38, 340, 368 scholastic disputation, 4, 11n32, 11n33, 161, 162, 166, 273, 325 Schwartz, Daniel, 361n37 science(s), 46n16, 103, 112, 195, 196n24, 201n36 scientism, 46 Scotus, John Duns, 95n4 scriptural commentaries, 261, 265, 270, 315, 369n15 scriptural witness, 239 Scripture, 4–6, 8, 10, 13, 14, 17, 23, 42, 43, 48, 52, 55, 56n63, 57, 61, 65–67, 69, 87, 96, 150, 153, 167, 169, 225, 229, 262, 265n15, 274, 284n82, 289n103, 309, 315, 321, 333, 364–67, 369, 373, 374, 379, 380n42, 381, 382 sectarian study, 185 secularism, 313 sense: analogous, 167; literal, 1, 5–7, 10, 11n33, 13n38, 59, 69, 89, 265n15, 283, 289, 290n103, 316–18, 365n4, 366 sensible effects, 37 sensual passions, 172 Sentences, 170, 187n3, 200n34, 268, 273 Sermon on the Mount, 80, 143, 145 serpent, 74, 75 servitude, 269, 270 servus amoris, 265, 269, 270, 293, 296, 310 sex, 211 sexuality, 212 silence, 35, 278, 308, 319 similitude, 6, 7, 13n38, 343, 347, 357 simplicity, 144, 267, 306 sin: actual, 15, 231, 232, 233n18, 240; of commission and omission, 171; communal, 179; grave, 35, 177, 231, 252, 254; grievous, 28, 39; mortal, 163, 164, 171, 179, 181, 182, 248n58, 333; original, 79, 167, 168, 176, 177, 179, 180, 181n73, 191, 192, 231, 232, 233n18, 251, 338; particular, 162n3, 170; personal, 180, 231, 233n18, 239, 246, 252n68, 323; punishing, 28; serious, 348; venial, 164, 171, 177, 179, 248n58, 255, 338, 340 sinner, 16, 25, 29, 30, 32, 73, 75–77, 79, 87,

165, 169, 172, 181, 182, 184, 240, 242, 243, 246, 252, 255n73, 338, 340 slave, 79, 321, 324, 371 slavery, 79, 88, 270 sleep, 65, 243, 278, 371, 376 social animal: man as, 180 soldier, 47, 139, 216, 236n23, 280, 282 solitude, 111n43 Sommers, Mary, 155 Son of God, 81–83, 289, 290n103, 331, 376 Song of Songs, 8 sorrow, 13, 176, 240, 250, 264, 282, 283, 286, 287, 317, 320–24, 339, 353 soul, 16, 36, 52, 60n79, 62, 115n50, 140, 151n20, 171, 175n55, 176, 177, 179, 181n72, 183, 190–95, 200–203, 205, 218, 223n6, 229, 231, 232, 244, 266, 277, 278, 280, 282, 291, 293, 295, 298, 301, 312, 317, 318, 320, 322, 324, 327–33, 337–40, 377 speech, 4, 5, 14, 17, 27, 29, 31, 34, 36, 37, 79, 106, 110, 138, 143–60, 163, 169, 171, 182, 240, 241, 247, 249, 250, 254, 263, 267n20, 280, 288, 305, 322, 336, 337, 356, 358, 360 Spe Salvi, 264 Spezzano, Daria, 16 Spirit, 12, 13, 16, 22, 23, 25, 27, 53, 62, 95n4, 95n5, 115n50, 116, 126, 237n28, 266, 269, 270, 271, 282, 286, 287, 289, 311–314, 331, 351, 355, 375. See also Holy Spirit spiritual benefit, 232, 245 spiritual condition, 75, 240 spiritual darkness, 81 spiritual goal, 222, 230 spiritual good, 175, 178, 229, 230, 232, 233, 237nn27–28, 238, 243, 251, 255n73, 262, 284, 286, 296, 299, 301, 314, 320, 329, 349, 363n41 spiritual happiness, 281 spiritual journey, 222, 252 spiritual meditation, 309 spiritual progress, 231, 232, 233n18, 244 spiritual things, 282, 366 spouse, 352, 353 stars, 63, 74, 84, 87, 112, 131 Stoics, 16, 51, 52, 130, 175, 182, 277, 318, 320, 324, 339, 351, 353 structural limit, 105, 107, 108 study, 3, 8, 11, 22, 96, 144n2, 155, 185, 196n24, 201n36, 205, 361n37 Stump, Eleonore, 150n16, 286, 298n140, 359n34, 362

Index 413 subjective mode, 99 subjectivism, 328 substance, 48, 54–57, 85, 112, 134, 194, 196, 197, 200, 201, 209, 246, 330, 331, 344, 376 sufferer, 2, 15, 25, 29, 78, 89, 127, 135, 149, 158, 159, 161, 163, 177, 182, 184, 188, 192n14, 206, 215, 251n65, 261, 267, 277, 284, 286, 294, 314, 316, 324, 326, 334, 338, 352, 368, 373, 378 suffering, 4, 6, 10–12, 14–17, 25, 28, 29, 44, 51, 77, 80n34, 87, 91, 118, 127–29, 138, 140, 142, 146, 148–51, 154, 158, 159, 161, 163, 180–85, 188, 189, 193, 207, 215, 216, 218, 220, 233n18, 239, 239n34, 240, 250, 251, 255, 257, 263, 265, 266, 267n20, 273, 274n47, 275–79, 286, 288n99, 289, 295, 298, 299n140, 308, 311, 314, 319, 320, 321, 323–25, 331, 335, 338–40, 351, 354, 367– 69, 383; material, 320; present, 265, 273, 278; sensible, 289; temporal, 262, 277, 316, 338 suicide, 212 Summa contra Gentiles, 3, 14, 15, 21, 55, 66, 128, 129, 132, 144n2, 153–55, 186n2, 189, 190, 191, 194n17, 195, 199, 200, 201n36, 203, 209, 213, 214n56, 216–18, 238n31, 264, 287, 291, 298, 303, 315, 358, 374 Summa Sententiarum, 170 Summa theologiae, 15, 22, 56, 98n9, 99n13, 130n5, 136, 152n25, 160n57, 162, 176, 183, 189, 194, 199, 201, 206, 216, 220, 268n22, 273, 286, 290, 293, 300, 301, 322, 333, 337, 354 surrender, 211, 309 Sybil, 272 systematic theology, 96 systematic works, 15, 66, 162, 164, 165, 167, 169, 172, 174, 177n61, 183, 265, 281, 291, 293, 301, 310 te Velde, Rudi, 14 teacher, 2, 13, 22, 23, 118, 125, 273, 305, 311 teaching, 2, 3, 13, 15, 29, 53, 80, 96, 119, 120, 124, 150, 170, 176, 187, 220, 221, 228, 230, 231, 233, 235, 236n23, 238, 240, 241, 244, 246n52, 252, 253n70, 256, 261n1, 262, 268n21, 269n28, 271, 279, 286, 300n143, 301n146, 307n169, 314, 318, 320, 337, 365, 373, 379 temperance, 302, 339 temporal afflictions, 232, 240, 242, 246, 254

temporal benefits, 245, 256, 267 temporal flourishing, 242, 246 temporal life, 303 temporal loss, 251 temporal perspective, 279, 314 temporal things, 293, 316 temporal wealth, 253 temptation, 172n43, 174, 181, 183, 214, 248, 251, 267, 274, 286, 321, 339 testimony, 164–66, 226, 239n34, 267n20 thanksgiving, 309 theologians, 3, 67, 120, 125, 219, 239, 281n64, 289n103, 318, 320 theological vision, 381 theology, 12n36, 17, 21, 42, 88n59, 95, 96, 130, 162, 216, 271n33, 298, 303, 311, 315, 328 theodicy, modern, 184 Tiburtius, 183 tinder, 174, 177, 179, 181 tombs, 81, 82 Torah, 72 Torrell, Jean-Pierre, 12, 261n1, 264n13, 266n17, 268n23, 269n27, 300n142, 310n177, 315 tradition, 8, 13, 44, 72, 130, 186n1, 187, 188, 249, 265n15, 272, 375, 379 transformation, 9, 263, 293, 304, 311 transgression, 192n14 tree, 80, 81, 257, 289, 297n135 trials, 94, 151, 157, 176n56, 183, 261, 263, 266, 267, 269, 275, 277, 283, 305, 350, 355, 363, 373, 383 tribulations, 24, 29, 32, 38, 284n82, 295, 326 Trinity, 89, 108, 159n56 truths, 5, 6n19, 14, 22–24, 26–35, 38–41, 45, 50, 51, 69, 80n34, 88, 95, 97, 99, 104, 117, 121, 124–29, 131, 150, 153–56, 158, 185–87, 189, 190, 191, 193, 195, 202n37, 203n40, 206, 207, 213, 215, 218, 241n37, 242, 244, 247, 261, 262, 266, 271, 274, 283, 291, 304, 306, 311, 317, 319, 320, 325, 328, 331, 333, 334, 336–38, 340, 355, 364, 374, 379, 381, 382 union, 75, 101, 142, 211, 222, 332, 341–44, 346, 347, 350, 356, 357, 359, 361–63 unitive process, 342, 343 unity, 14, 16, 69, 87, 88, 120, 147, 175, 176, 202n37, 263, 339, 342–44, 346, 347, 357, 359, 361, 371, 373, 379n38, 381–83

414 Index universe, 14, 47, 55, 96, 98, 99, 130, 132, 133, 135, 137, 138, 140, 141, 146, 147, 153, 156, 156n42, 157, 188, 194, 195, 204, 206n41, 217, 316, 337 universities, medieval, 10, 336 University of Paris, 21 univocal notion, 94, 200n34 Valkenberg, Wilhelmus, 289 vanity, 39, 178 vengeance, 31, 52, 53 Verbum Domini, 379 vestigia, 107, 122n67 vestments, 305 vice, 44, 53, 60, 168, 174, 234, 235n21, 251, 267, 278, 280 victim, 76, 80n34, 129 victory, 26, 38, 39, 47, 126n78, 139, 150n16, 157, 170, 249, 371 Vijgen, Jörgen, 13, 14, 380n42 vindication, 81, 240, 340, 378, 383 violence, 33, 123, 124, 170n34, 263 virtue, 1, 15–17, 23–25, 39, 44, 51, 52, 54, 60, 95n4, 101, 105, 112, 133, 144–52, 159, 167, 170, 174, 176, 177, 181n72, 182, 183, 197, 223n6, 224n7, 228, 232–34, 235n21, 237, 242–45, 249–51, 254, 257, 262, 265–67, 271, 273–75, 276n50, 277, 279, 281, 286, 287, 292n115, 293, 294, 299, 302–4, 306, 308, 312, 313, 317–19, 321–25, 334, 335, 339, 340, 344, 345, 348–51, 356, 357, 367; cardinal, 302; infused, 16, 223n6, 276, 348, 357; moral, 213; natural, 215, 218; perfect, 293; of religion, 267; theological, 234, 237n27, 251, 265, 270, 271, 276, 282, 290, 302, 311 vision of God, 137, 222n3, 248, 252n68, 310, 317, 332–34, 340 volition, 114n47, 208 voluntarism, 95nn4–5 voluntary operations, 328 voluntary permission, 168

Vulgate, 8, 76, 80, 84, 85, 262, 274, 284, 286, 288, 295 warfare, 139, 371 Wawrykow, Joseph, 15, 16, 298n138, 299, 300 wayfarer, 312 weakness, 30, 77, 85, 108, 139, 280, 302, 346n10 wealth, 8, 199, 232, 240, 243, 249, 253, 254, 267, 294 whirlwind, 6n19, 86, 118, 155, 157, 240, 247, 249, 294, 305 wife, 144, 145, 179, 211, 277, 316, 319 will: autonomous, 205; disordered, 149; divine, 113, 275, 352, 360, 361, 362; free, 129, 131n6, 134, 135, 137, 140, 226, 227n13, 237, 294, 334, 335; malicious, 149; rational, 251 wisdom: acquired, 14, 102, 115–18; divine, 32, 35, 72, 77, 99, 101, 111, 125, 126, 146, 282, 296, 303, 305, 306, 310, 326; human, 17, 34, 96, 105, 116, 117, 158, 189, 306, 335; infused, 14, 96, 101, 114–19; literature, 8, 153; metaphysical, 201; objective, 98; personified, 72; philosophical, 13; spiritual, 299 womb, 59, 65, 144, 263, 318 Word Incarnate, 68, 71, 72, 82–84, 88, 186n1 Word of God, 4n11, 82, 89, 99n13, 143, 155, 156, 157n48 worker(s), 280, 282, 284 worship, 96n5, 190n6, 226n10, 262, 267, 356 Yaffe, Martin, 10, 11n34 Yocum, John, 7n19, 88, 265n15, 266n16, 288n99 Zophar the Naamathite, 9, 11, 29, 31, 108, 158n55, 163, 169, 181n74, 240, 245, 246, 252, 350

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