Grace via Thomas Aquinas

[Thomas Eckhardt]

I take this opportunity to return to the discussion about grace from 
August which I did not find the time to continue back then. The 
following is not yet very well structured, and the English could use 
some editing, but here goes.


*Direct references to Aquinas in Pynchon*

To judge from his essay on Sloth, Pynchon knows his Aquinas rather well:

'In his classical discussion of the subject in the "Summa Theologica," 
Aquinas termed Sloth, or acedia, one of the seven capital sins. He said 
he was using "capital" to mean "primary" or "at the head of" because 
such sins gave rise to others, but there was an additional and darker 
sense resonating luridly just beneath and not hurting the power of his 
argument, for the word also meant "deserving of capital punishment." 
Hence the equivalent term "mortal," as well as the punchier English 
"deadly."'

'But Sloth's offspring, though bad -- to paraphrase the Shangri-Las -- 
are not always evil, for example what Aquinas terms Uneasiness of the 
Mind, or "rushing after various things without rhyme or reason," which, 
"if it pertains to the imaginative power... is called curiosity."

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/sloth.html

(Anybody who mentions the Shangri-Las and Thomas Aquinas in the same 
sentence is my friend.)

Siegel's mother in "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna", "(...) at the age of 
19 had struggled with her soul one night in a railroad flat somewhere in 
Hell's Kitchen and, half-drunk on bootleg beer, had ended up refuting 
Aquinas and quitting the Roman church (...)"

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/vienna.html


*Grace and understanding that things are exactly what they are*

The text in question was:

"One mild and ordinary work-morning in Chicago, Lew happened to find 
himself on a public conveyance, head and eyes inclined nowhere in 
particular, when he entered, all too briefly, a condition he had no 
memory of having sought, which he later came to think of as grace."

Next paragraph:

"He understood that things were exactly what they were. It
seemed more than he could bear."

AD, p. 42.

This is of particular relevance as the final word of the novel is "grace":

"They will put on smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to part 
the sky. They fly toward grace."

AD, p. 1085.

Monte Davis quoted Laura Kelber on this (from 2007):

"A couple of reviewers seemed to take the mention of grace at the end of 
the book in its religious sense.  The Inconvenience has become sort of a 
public conveyance, the world in microcosm, and it flies toward grace. 
But if grace is understanding that things are exactly what they are, it 
seems that TRP has something other than the religious connotation in 
mind.  Things that are exactly what they are don't have any particular 
grace of god bestowed on them.  They belong more to the preterite than 
the elect."

I believe that this is one of the rare cases of Laura being wrong. 
Pynchon does not necessarily use "grace" in its religious sense but he 
definitely uses a Thomist concept of grace according to which perceiving 
things "as they are", i.e. in their whatness or quiddity, indeed means 
partaking in divine grace.

This does not mean that Pynchon embraces the concept, or that "grace" 
carries the same meaning in each and every instance. How and why Pynchon 
uses the Thomist concept for his own literary purposes, may well be a 
matter for discussion. *That* he uses it, to me seems indisputable.

Professor Krafft helpfully reminded us of Gottfried's ascent in GR which 
also, if obliquely, seems to refer to understanding "that things were 
exactly what they were":

"'This ascent will be betrayed to Gravity. But the Rocket engine, the
deep cry of combustion that jars the soul, promises escape. The
victim, in bondage to falling, rises on a promise, a prophecy, of
Escape....
Moving now toward the kind of light where at last the apple is
apple-colored. The knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting
an apple. Everything is where it is, no clearer than usual, but
certainly more present.'"

GR, 758-759 (Penguin 20th Century Classics)

Professor Krafft commented:

"If observing/perceiving/understanding things to be exactly as they are
is grace in AD, compare this passage from the end of GR. Surely
Gottfried isn't flying toward grace, is he?"

I suggest that Gottfried may not be flying toward grace but very much 
hopes that he is. Or, as these thoughts are very much out of character 
and we cannot be sure who exactly is speaking here, the narrator 
suggests that he hopes he is.

Another possiblity would be that the passage refers to Fausto 
Majistral's "task of living in a universe of things which simply are" 
and its "innate mindlessness" (V., 326 Picador). Laura Kelber argued 
that this idea could provide comfort to Gottfried:

"For Gottfried, that point at the top of the parabola -- where the knife 
cutting the apple is just a knife cutting an apple, where there's a 
complete absence of knowledge or morality -- is a comfort. For the 
Chums, it's a safe haven from the impending horrors. Don't we all 
attempt to retreat to that frame of reference - the cold, amoral 
universe, where things just are what they are - when confronted with the 
insanities of the day? I know I do."

I am familar with the sentiment but doubt that it applies to Gottfried's 
(God's peace) state of mind here. There are quite a few  frames of 
reference for Gottfried's doomed ascent -- e.g. the Kabbalah, S&M, 
sacrificial ritus, death-wish -- but most of all to me it seems to be a 
savage satire or demonic inversion of the Christian myth of man's 
elevation to divine grace and glory, toward the revelation of the deity 
(I believe I am in line with the mainstream of Pynchon criticism here). 
Gottfried's ascent in this view is the expression of Blicero's desire 
for apocalypse (which is then, along with the technology and Wernher von 
Braun, transferred from Germany to the US via Project Paperclip -- "If 
you're wondering where he's gone, look among the successful academics, 
the Presidential advisers, the token intellectuals who sit on boards of 
directors. He is almost certainly there. Look high, not low." 749).

My hypothesis would be that Gottfried's or the narrator's thoughts 
during the ascent have to be viewed against the background of Thomist 
theology. For one, the ability of understanding that things are just 
what they are, is explicitly called grace in Lew's case. My view is also 
supported by the fact that "the kind of light where at last the apple is 
apple-colored" is a direct reference to Aquinas:

"For if we understood or said that color is not in a colored body, or 
that it is separate from it, there would be error in this opinion or 
assertion. But if we consider color and its properties, without 
reference to the apple which is colored; or if we express in word what 
we thus understand, there is no error in such an opinion or assertion, 
because an apple is not essential to color, and therefore color can be 
understood independently of the apple."

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1085.htm

This is about essence and accidents, and with regard to Gottfried again 
about seeing things as they actually are.

(I do not know what to do with the phrase "no clearer than usual", I 
have to admit -- things *should* be clearer than usual in the "kind of 
light" Gottfried hopes for.)



*Quiddity*

The idea of perceiving things as being just what they are is related to 
the Thomist concept of quiddity or whatness:

"But the angelic and the Divine intellect, like all incorruptible 
things, have their perfection at once from the beginning. Hence the 
angelic and the Divine intellect have the entire knowledge of a thing at 
once and perfectly; and hence also in knowing the quiddity of a thing 
they know at once whatever we can know by composition, division, and 
reasoning. Therefore the human intellect knows by composition, division 
and reasoning. But the Divine intellect and the angelic intellect know, 
indeed, composition, division, and reasoning, not by the process itself, 
but by understanding the simple essence."

Summa Theologica, I, Question 85, Article 5

To perceive things exactly as they are, to "have the entire knowledge of 
a thing at once and perfectly", means to perceive things like angels do 
or God does. It also means that God's essence is revealed to man. It 
should be noted here that there are various stages of revelation in 
Thomist thought, each of them vaguely related to a certain kind of 
light: lumen naturae (light of nature), lumen gratiae (light of grace), 
lumen gloriae (light of glory).

These different kinds of light play an important role in Dante's "Divine 
Comedy". Compare this comment by John S. Carroll on "Paradiso", Canto 30:

"It will be noticed that I speak of this central circular sea as lumen 
gratiae, for it is still the light of grace which once flowed in form of 
a river; but that light of grace has now reached its perfect form of 
eternity, the lumen gloriae. The change of the river into the circular 
sea is Dante's symbolic way of stating that the grace by which a soul is 
saved and strengthened to persevere to the end of the earthly life, is 
not something different in kind from the glory to which it leads. 
According to Aquinas, 'grace is nothing else than a certain beginning of 
glory in us' [Summa, ii-ii. q. xxiv. a. 3: 'Gratia et gloria ad idem 
genus referuntur; quia gratia nihil est aliud quam quaedam inchoatio 
gloriae in nobis'], and the light of glory is simply the perfected form 
of the grace of earth [Summa, i-ii. q. cxi. a. 3.]"

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3024.htm

It could be argued, I believe, that Gottfried desires the light of 
glory, a full revelation or apocalypse, whereas Lew unexpectedly 
experiences the "beginning of glory" in him.


*Joyce's epiphanies*

Quiddity is one of the many scholastic terms James Joyce uses and 
discusses in his novels. Stephen Dedalus talks about claritas and 
quidditas in "Portrait of the Artist", referring to artistic creation:

"You see that it is that thing which it is and no other thing. The 
radiance of which he speaks is the scholastic /quidditas/, the 
/whatness/ of a thing."

"Portrait", 231 (Penguin 20th Century Classics)

In "Stephen Hero" we find the following, where Stephen ties the concept 
of quidditas to the idea of epiphany, again with regard to aesthetic ideas:

"Claritas is quidditas. After the analysis which discovers the second 
quality the mind makes the only logically possible synthesis and 
discovers the third quality. This is the moment which I call epiphany. 
First we recognise that the object is one integral thing, then we 
recognise that it is an organised composite structure, a thing in fact: 
finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are 
adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is that thing which 
it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its 
appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is 
so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany."

http://theliterarylink.com/joyce.html

There is a subtle but important difference between Stephen's take on 
Aquinas in "Stephen Hero" and in "Portrait of the Artist" which is 
discussed by Tudor Balinisteanu in "Violence, Narrative and Myth in 
Joyce and Yeats: Subjective Identity and Anarcho-Syndicalist Traditions":

"In Richard Kearney's words, from Aquinas, Joyce seems to have 'gleaned 
an understanding of epiphany as "whatness" (/quidditas/), meaning an 
experience of luminous radiance (/claritas/), wherein a particular thing 
serves to illuminate a universal and transcendental Form.'"

Kearney's argument according to Balinisteanu is that Joyce moves from 
this understanding of epiphany -- "the experience of ascension from the 
world to the divine, as with Aquinas" -- to the "experience of a reality 
'where the divine descends into the world'"

(The latter idea Kearney ascribes to Duns Scotus and his concept of 
"thisness" (/haecceitas/). Scotism is referred to on p. 596 of M&D in 
what I take to be positive terms.)

https://books.google.de/books?id=7BprhEnSeQ0C&pg=PT57&lpg=PT57&dq=ascent+to+God+grace+aquinas&source=bl&ots=YgIjcLRpeY&sig=EoTnQTv6L3bpbrVcpPAWMBa62XA&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwin1Nawi_DYAhXqLsAKHeMoAis4FBDoAQg2MAE#v=onepage&q=ascent%20to%20God%20grace%20aquinas&f=false

I am quoting this because it seems to describe the fundamental 
difference between Gottfried's desire for epiphany or revelation or 
apocalypse (all related to a manifestation of deity) and Lew's 
experience. See below.

Epiphany:

"The Feast of the Epiphany is celebrated in the Christian calendar on 6 
January each year, and commemorates the revelation of Jesus’ divinity to 
the Magi, the three wise men who had followed the star to Christ’s 
birthplace. Derived from Greek, the word ‘epiphany’ means a sudden 
manifestation of deity. In Christian theology, it also means the 
manifestation of a hidden message for the benefit of others, a message 
for their salvation. "

http://jamesjoyce.ie/epiphanies/


*Lumen gratiae*

To come back to Aquinas and Pynchon: As I said, perceiving things in 
their quiddity means to perceive them like angels do or God does. For 
man this means to gain at lest partially angelic or divine knowledge, 
angelic or divine powers of perception. This is only possible through 
God's grace, because grace adds to nature and thus elevates man and his 
intellectual capacities:

"All rational and intellectual creatures have a natural desire to see 
God. While they can reach a knowledge of God commensurable with their 
natural capabilities it is simply beyond the reach of these natural 
capacities to know Him in his essence. For this they need divine help. 
This help God freely and gratuitously offers them; we name it grace. For 
Aquinas the angels needed this help if they were to be converted to God 
and to be beatified by Him through the vision of his essence."

http://catholic-church.org/grace/western/scholars/lap1.htm

Or, as the man himself puts it:

"(...) the human understanding has a form, viz. intelligible light, 
which of itself is sufficient for knowing certain intelligible things, 
viz. those we can come to know through the senses. Higher intelligible 
things of the human intellect cannot know, unless it be perfected by a 
stronger light, viz. the light of faith or prophecy which is called the 
"light of grace," inasmuch as it is added to nature.

Hence we must say that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man 
needs Divine help, that the intellect may be moved by God to its act. 
But he does not need a new light added to his natural light, in order to 
know the truth in all things, but only in some that surpass his natural 
knowledge."

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2109.htm

Elsewhere, Aquinas states that the "light of grace" or lumen gratiae 
means "participation of the Divine nature."

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2110.htm

Not suprisingly, given this background, the light of grace in all but 
name also turns up in AD. The narrator describes what Lew sees while in 
a state of grace, then states:

"Lew found himself surrounded by a luminosity new to him, not even 
observed in dreams, nor easily attributable to the smoke-inflected sun 
beginning to light Chicago."

AD, p. 42.

Then:

"He understood that things were exactly what they were. It
seemed more than he could bear."

Note also that Lew is being described as "transfigured" on p. 43. -- a 
transfiguration being "a momentary transformation of a man or woman into 
someone having the aspect of the divine."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfiguration


*Difference between Gottfried's and Lew's experience*

To be able to perceive things in their quiddity means that one has been 
touched by God's grace, partakes in the divine. It may even mean a 
revelation of the essence of the divine being. It is what Gottfried 
aspires to, what he desires, hopes to ascend to, but does not achieve, 
and what Lew receives as a spontaneous gift, "generous, free and totally 
unexpected and undeserved", as it should be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_in_Christianity

Gottfried's ascent is linked, at least by him but surely also by 
Blicero, to finality: a telos, a violent revelation or apocalypse. 
Insofar as the purpose of the rocket is concerned, which, the novel 
suggests, may bring about the end of the world in a thermonuclear 
catastrophe, the Thomist meaning of an ascent through grace to the 
revelation of the divine essence is turned on its head.

Northrop Frye would probably call this "demonic imagery" ("Anatomy of 
Criticism, 147). Wiki provides a summary:

'At one pole we have apocalyptic imagery which typifies the revelation 
of heaven and ultimate fulfillment of human desire. (...) At the 
opposite pole lies demonic imagery which typifies the unfulfillment, 
perver[s]ion, or opposition of human desire.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_Criticism

Lew, on the other hand, experiences a comparatively mundane epiphany, on 
an "ordinary work-morning". I suggest to see this as an epiphany in the 
Joycean sense discussed above: The divine descending to the world 
instead of man ascending to the divine, as in Aquinas.

I do not believe that Pynchon uses "grace" in its religious sense here 
(after all, the grace bestowed on Lew qualifies him for "Pinkerton 
work") but he uses Aquinas' frame of reference.

As for the Chums, in the light of what I noted above, I believe the 
ending of the novel is highly ambiguous. Remember, they have to shield 
their eyes against the revelation that is to come:

"They will put on smoked goggles for the glory of what is coming to part 
the sky. They fly toward grace." (1085)

It has been pointed out to me that among the things they are flying 
toward is WW II and the atomic bomb.

Again, notions of revelation, apocalypse, a blinding light, grace...


P.S. In BE Horst ponders why he was saved on 11 September and links his 
luck to his "weird talent" for predicting market behaviour:

'"So if you guys hadn't decided to sleep in..."

"Back in the pits, I used to know this Christer coffee trader who told 
me it was like grace, something you don't ask for. Just comes. Of 
course, it can be withdrawn at any time."'

BE, 320.




Am 22.01.2018 um 21:46 schrieb David Morris:
> http://religion.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.001.0001/acrefore-9780199340378-e-335
> 
> Most interpreters have rightly understood that in Luther’s view, to have 
> a gracious God means to have a God who does not require human beings to 
> fulfill a set of prerequisites in order to receive God’s gift in Christ 
> or to reciprocate God’s giving in order to continue receiving Christ and 
> his benefits. For Luther, to have a God of grace means to believe and 
> trust that through Jesus Christ, God has already met all prerequisites 
> and fulfilled all reciprocations. On this point, Luther found himself 
> breaking new ground (or recovering lost ground) in the understanding of 
> divine grace. Luther “broke” with those theological forebears who taught 
> that divine grace was, in one way or another, partly dependent on human 
> willing and doing.
> 
> 
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l