Grace via Thomas Aquinas

[Mark Kohut]

Wow. wonderful.

And I can only add suggestively, questioningly....Aquinas' meaning(s)
are very different
from Calvinist (Protestant) self-justifications via Grace. To probably
oversimplify, the Calvinist meaning of Grace is "I'm one of the Saved
and you're (maybe) not". All my personal "hard work', within a
graceless world, shows that! The Protestant Ethic.


On 1/28/18, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> 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.
>>
>>
> -
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>
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