Grace via Thomas Aquinas

[Mark Kohut]

Yes! Yes! Yes!!  Double Plus YES...(I do not know the book mentioned
but I'm ordering it right after this)
....but I too thought of Witt....and for those who may not know his
work at all just see the
opening sentence of his first major work:

"The world is all that is the case", which is of course IN, sky-absorbed, V.



On 1/28/18, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> Cool. All echoes LW to my ear.
>
> Wittgenstein and the Metaphysics of Grace
>
> W. Klein Terrance
> Oxford University Press (2007)
>
> On Sun, Jan 28, 2018 at 9:15 AM, 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.
>>>
>>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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