Although human and angelic intelligences perform differently, the classical distinction between what the angels see in the morning and what they see in the evening suggests an important truth about the knowledge available to everyone who lives by faith in Jesus Christ. The notion that the angels possess two kinds of vision first appears in St Augustine’s commentary on the biblical account of creation, the De Genesi ad litteram, Book IV, chapters 22-31, where the Doctor of Grace speaks about a “morning” and an “evening” knowledge of the angels. The subsequent theological tradition enlarged on the distinction, for, as Hugh of St Victor remarks, “there are many questions about this angelic nature, from which the curiosity of the human mind cannot manage to find rest.”De Sacramentis Bk 1, chap. 5, no. 19 (PL 176:254). So in his Summa theologiae, it comes as no surprise to discover that St Thomas Aquinas explains Augustine’s intuition on angelic knowledge.

Augustine invented the expressions “morning” and “evening” knowledge as part of his interpretation of the six days of creation recorded in Genesis… [He] called “morning knowledge” the angels’ knowledge of things in their primordial beginning, namely as they exist in the Word; and “evening knowledge” their knowledge of created reality as existing in its own nature.Summa theologiae Ia q. 58, a. 6.

Because the “darkness of night” more properly characterizes the knowledge of the bad angels who fixate on created reality, Aquinas rejects the view that we can speak about an angelic “nocturnal” knowledge. He goes on to explain that since morning and evening both connote daylight, “both types of knowledge expressed by these terms belong to the angels who are enlightened.”Ibid.

No Christian theologian would contest that what the angels see in the morning, namely, everything as it exists in the divine Word of creation, forms the only basis for genuine theological reflection. St Paul himself testifies to the centrality of this type of knowledge when he reminds the Colossians that Christ “is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Col 1:15,16). While we frequently associate theology with the reality of God and his works, with mysteries such as the Trinity, the resurrection of Christ, and the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin Mary, theological reflection also and properly extends to what men and women do. In other words, Christian faith determines ethical issues. And so the virtues of the Christian life are among those visible realities that find their fullness in Christ. Indeed, the second-century Christian author Origen affirms this truth when he writes: “Do not be surprised that we speak of the virtues loving Christ, since in other cases we are wont to regard Christ himself as the substance of those very virtues.”Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, Bk 1, in Origen, The Song of Songs: Commentary, trans. R.P. Lawson (Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 26; Westminster, MD and London, 1957), p. 89.

Because Christ remains the source of all moral goodness for the person who accepts the message of the Gospel, the Church asserts that Christian moral teaching possesses a distinctive specificity. In a variety of ways, contemporary theologians emphasize the important link between right Christian conduct and authentic Christian belief. Hans Urs von Balthasar, for example, identifies Christ as the “concrete and personal norm” of the moral life.Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Nine Theses in Christian Ethics,” in International Theological Commission: Texts and Documents 1969-1985, ed, Michael Sharkey (San Francisco, 1989), p. 108. This means inter alia that without an effective union with Christ, no human person can in practice achieve the perfection of the moral life that conduces to beatific fellowship with the Trinity, and to the company of the saints and angels. Moreover, “it is Christ, the last Adam, who fully discloses humankind to itself and unfolds its noble calling by revealing the mystery of the Father and the Father’s love.”Gaudium et spes, no. 22. In other terms, only the person who embraces a life of Christian virtue lives fully according to the norm of moral truth that Christ, the “image of the invisible God,” communicates to the world, and so in Christ achieves the perfection of his or her human nature.

Because of their superior intelligence, the angels know the divine mysteries in the Word with great clarity. We on the other hand know faith-truths darkly, that is, only by believing the Word of God, First Truth-Speaking.Aquinas even speculates whether the angels possessed this clarity about faith-truths even before their confirmation in glory (See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 5, a. 1). In any case, St Augustine’s distinction refers to what the angels know after their irreversible choice to love God. And because of the moral darkness that characterizes the sin of the world, faith-truths about human conduct sometimes seem especially obscure to the person who still must learn to appreciate the spiritual measure that Christ establishes for human life. Certainly, a more profound contemplative pondering of revealed truth - an effort, in faith, to see more clearly what the good angels see in the “morning” when everything appears in the “perfect image” - forms a basic feature of the dynamism of Christian living. Does this mean, however, that faith knowledge alone can supply moral instruction for the Christian believer? Traditionally, the Church gives a negative reply to that question. Human reason with its inherent capacity and proper object is not abrogated by the gift of faith. The human being enlightened by faith in Christ continues to engage the world with his or her rational faculty of intelligence. And in order to grasp the full splendor of the Christian life, it is important to know the reasons why authentic human knowledge helps Christian belief, especially in matters that concern the proper conduct of human life.

The fact that reason preserves its full vigor within the context of Christian life indicates a genuine role for philosophy within a Christian understanding of the world and of the human person. In his Gifford Lectures (1931 -32), Etienne Gilson raised the issue of a Christian philosophy: “I call Christian, every philosophy which, although keeping the two orders formally distinct, nevertheless considers the Christian revelation as an indispensable auxiliary to reason.”The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (New York, 1940), p. 37. Whether or not we accept this specific proposal, Gilson at least gives an account as to how the believing Christian can consider the “esse rerum,” the being of things, from a standpoint formally distinct from that of divine faith. And if this personal quest for wisdom develops into an organized intellectual inquiry, we can rightly call the person who practices it a Christian philosopher. Philosophical knowledge seeks after “esse rerum quod in propria natura habent”; that is, it seeks to disclose the proper natures that things have in themselves. Though philosophy can achieve only a limited grasp of the nature of things, philosophical learning still represents a discursive effort on the part of the human person to attain what the angels see in the evening, a “knowledge of created reality as existing in its own nature.” The Church, moreover, encourages this effort, and she does so on the authority of St Paul: “Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made” (Rom 1:20).

The Christian knows that there are limits to the “principles and causes” that philosophers seek. Aristotle’s “first philosophy,” it is true, invites us to contemplate the existence of the highest Truth, but even the few who successfully achieve this goal attain only an oblique, inferential knowledge of this ultimate principle; that is, a knowledge of the dependence of created beings on a unique source that all people call God.See In De Trinitate Bk 5, chap. 4. Because he fully grasped the difference between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Aquinas offers an uncharacteristically melancholic remark about those persons who rely on human reason alone to discover the truth about human existence.

Because Aristotle saw that there is no other human knowing in this life except through the speculative sciences, he held that man cannot reach a complete, but only a relative happiness. Thus it is clear what great anguish the noble genius of philosophers has experienced over the course of time.Contra gentiles Bk III, c. 48.

But while the Christian believer escapes this sad lot, he or she still needs to experience some of the anguish of the philosophers. For as one theologian points out, “if man does not make definite contact with God at one point that is not grace (in the theological sense of the word), then the God who reveals himself cannot address man meaningfully. Hence the solemn declaration by the Church that the existence of God can in principle be naturally known (DS 3004, 3026) and that the human soul is immortal (DS 1440).”Edward Schillebeeckx, Revelation and Theology, vol. 1 (New York, 1967), pp. 154, 155. When the Church champions the dignity of the human calling and restores hope to those despairing of any higher destiny, she recognizes that her message meets the deepest desires of the human heart. At the same time, because of the supernatural sense of faith, the People of God receive a truth that exceeds the capacity of human knowledge, the truth that sets them free (see Jn 8: 32).

Let us return to the distinction that both St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas make between the morning and evening knowledge of the angels - their cognitio “matutina” and “vespertina” - in order to see what application it might have for theological ethics. Aquinas explains the basis for distinguishing the two types of angelic knowledge in the following way: “For the being of things flows out from the Word as from a first [or primordial] principle, and this effusion terminates in the being of things which they possess in their proper nature.” Aquinas talks about a “flow of being” that spreads from the creative source of all things in God and terminates in the variety of created natures that exist in the world.Because he firmly grasps the full implications of the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo, Aquinas recognizes that all created natures possess but never exhaust their proper act of being. The very contingency of created beings derives from the tenuous grip that they have on existence, whereas the divine omnipotence and infinitude rest on the identity of essence and existence that belongs uniquely to God. In other words, Aquinas’s explanation of the “flow of being” remains free of emanationism or other pantheistic connotations. The outpouring of divine truth resembles this flow of being. In Aquinas’s view, one finds the unexpectable completion of metaphysics in Christian revelation. Through divine revelation, God communicates a knowledge of all reality as it exists in his Son, even though believers still enjoy the capacity to acquire a genuine knowledge of real beings as they exist in themselves. One American philosopher even goes so far as to assert that “revealed theology promises a vision of the principles which the metaphysician seeks, even desires.”Mark D. Jordan, Ordering Wisdom: The Hierarchy of Philosophical Discourses in Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN, 1986), p. 178. Jordan further explains this connection: “If there is a methodological difference between metaphysics and theology, there is no material segregation of them in the texts [of Aquinas]. The discourse of metaphysics is not closed at some point below theology in the hierarchy of sciences. The reader passes imperceptibly from one discourse to another. Indeed, it is not as if one were passing outside of metaphysics, even though one knows that metaphysics itself cannot prove the necessity of a higher realm. It is rather that one finds the unexpectable completion of metaphysics in revelation” (p. 177).

The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et spes, acknowledges the legitimacy of a twofold source for moral truth. For example, in one place, the Church affirms “that underlying all changes there are many things that do not change, and which have their ultimate foundation in Christ who is the same yesterday, today, and forever,” whereas in another place the Council itself “seeks to recall before all else the unchanging force of the natural law of peoples and of its universal principles.”Gaudium et spes, nos. 10 & 79. Gaudium et spes, then, gives us reason to suppose that the Christian believer can respect two complementary sources for moral truth, namely: (1) the explicit revelation of Christ, and (2) the created structures of human reality that the Christian tradition calls natural law. Each one, of course, possesses its distinctive methodology, certitude, and object. With the eyes of faith, the believer learns the marvelous things that lie hidden in Christ, whereas a metaphysics of morals instructs about “the being of things which they possess in their proper nature.” This twofold approach to moral truth explains why the Second Vatican Council described the supreme norm for all human conduct as a law that is both “natural and gospel (lex naturalis et evangelica)”Gaudium et spes, no. 79.

Within the realm of human conduct, the Christian thinker can legitimately ponder the “esse rerum,” the “being of things” from two standpoints. From the first standpoint, the believer peers into the actual economy of salvation and beholds what even the angels long to see. As a communication of the truth about God and the secret purpose of his will (see Eph 1:9), revelation concerns divine and supernatural realities. But this knowledge comes only through faith in Christ, for “in fact, it is only in the mystery of the Word incarnate that light is shed on the mystery of humankind.”Gaudium et spes, no. 22. From the second of these standpoints, the believer gains a universal perspective from “the unchanging force of the natural law of peoples and of its universal principles.” This results in a knowledge of natural law and virtue that holds true for all humankind. Just as the angels gaze on the same truth in the morning and in the evening, so faith and reason bring the human person face to face with the single truth that remains rooted in the divine Being and is made known “from seeing the light of the gospel of glory of Christ who is the image of God” (2 Cor 4:4).

The truths of faith, however, surpass the scope of the human intellect; they cannot be measured by the human intellect’s inherent criteria for evidence. In believing, therefore, the intellect, under the impulse of the will’s command, effected by grace, assents to what exceeds its natural requirements and capacities, namely, the truthfulness of God revealing. According to the truth of the Catholic faith, Christ himself stands at the center of the entire revelatory process. Faith then comes from God, both as a free gift of grace that causes faith’s required assent, and as a lavish outpouring or effusion of doctrine about those things that pertain to our salvation.

The New Testament clearly affirms that the human person discovers God in knowledge and love, and that the perfection of Christian existence achieves a consummation of this intentional union. In the Gospel of John, Jesus himself instructs us: “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me” (Jn 6:45). This means that Christian theology effectively includes “all knowledge taught us by God’s grace.”In primam partem, q. 1. So in its certitude, intrinsic worth, and ultimate purpose, Christian theology ranks above all other human sciences. And the Christian tradition accordingly reserves the attribution of “truly wise” for the person who seriously learns about God: “That person who considers maturely and without qualification the first and final cause of the entire universe, namely God, is to be called supremely wise; hence wisdom,” says Aquinas, “appears in St Augustine as knowledge of divine things.”Summa theologiae la, q. 1, a. 6. Whereas some knowable things, such as developments in medical science, do not fall immediately under the purview of divine faith, the Church understands the divine wisdom that she mediates as inclusive of truths about human life. “When,” therefore, “the Magisterium proposes ‘in a definitive way’ truths concerning faith and morals, which, even if not divinely revealed, are nevertheless strictly and intimately connected with Revelation, these must be firmly accepted and held.”Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, no. 23.

God graciously extends his saving instruction to matters of human conduct in order to promote the welfare of the human race; indeed, as St Gregory of Nyssa expresses it, only the believer grasps that the goal of a virtuous life is that we become like God himself.St Gregory of Nyssa, Orationes de beatitudinibus, Sermon 1, in St Gregory of Nyssa, the Lord’s Prayer and The Beatitudes, trans. Hilda Graef (Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 18; Westminster, MD and London, 1954), pp. 85-96. When Aquinas talks about human actions as ordered to beatific union with God, he carefully points out how God’s holy instruction sacra doctrina both treats divine realities and regulates human conduct.

The sacra doctrina is more theoretical than practical, since it is mainly concerned with the divine things that are, rather than with things men do; it deals with human acts only in so far as they prepare men for that achieved knowledge of God on which their eternal bliss reposes.Summa theologiae Ia q. 1, a. 4. Because moral truths can fall under the same “formal light” or reason, v/z, God as First Truth Speaking, moral theology forms a true part of the sacra doctrina.

Christian theology falls within the larger communication of divine truth that constitutes God’s holy instruction to his people. Moral theology thus differs from philosophical ethics, even though the history of religious ethics verifies the tendency to consider practical sciences separately from dogmatics, and eventually as purely secular studies. Thus the 18th-century English philosopher David Hume in his Natural History of Religion (1757) mistakenly anticipated that “religion will be driven out by stronger secular convictions derived from natural regularities.” But nothing exhibits more natural regularity than “the supreme rule of life that is the divine law itself.” The Church identifies this supreme rule of life with “the eternal, objective and universal law by which God out of his wisdom and love arranges, directs and governs the whole world and the paths of the human community.”The Decree of the Second Vatican Council on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis humanae no. 3. And so the Second Vatican Council does not hesitate to repeat the celebrated phrase from the Confessions of St Augustine, “It is for yourself that you have made us, Lord, and our hearts are restless, until they repose in you.”St Augustine, Confessions, Bk 1, chap. 1 (PL 32: 661), as cited in Gaudium et spes, no. 21.

When Aquinas describes the unique characteristic of gospel life, he writes: “Now it is the grace of the Holy Spirit, given through faith in Christ, that is predominant in the law of the New Covenant, and that in which its whole power consists.”Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 106, a. 1. Because as St Ambrose reminds us, “the Holy Spirit does not proceed by slow, laborious efforts,” the Christian Church must always remain attentive to the active interplay of human nature and divine grace that expresses the heart of the New Law.St Ambrose, Commentary on Luke, Bk 2, chap. 19, no. 22 (CCL 14:39). Gaudium et spes affirms that the Holy Spirit “leads the Church into all truth (see Jn 16:13), and he makes it one in fellowship and ministry, instructing and directing it through a diversity of gifts both hierarchical and charismatic, and he adorns it with his fruits (see Eph 4:11 -12; 1 Cor 12:4; Gal 5:22).”Gaudium et spes, no. 4. The moral theologian must recognize the supreme importance that the grace of the Holy Spirit holds in the life of the member of Christ’s Body.The German philosopher Martin Heidegger has exercised considerable influence on 20th-century European philosophy, and consequently on a great deal of theological thought and writing. In a recent study, a French author has remarked that his influence has sometimes led Christian thinkers to confuse the “destiny of Being” with the “design or plan, to use a Pauline term of grace.” See Daniel Bourgeois, Uun et Vautre sacerdoce (Paris, 1991), p. 84. For some further considerations, see Otto Herman Pesch, “Christian Existence According to Thomas Aquinas,” The Etienne Gilson Series 11 (Toronto, 1989). For the Christian believer, the theological life amounts to the exercise of both the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity, and the moral virtues, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. However, because this virtuous life reflects the fullness of Christ’s messianic grace, the theological tradition further holds that each believer enjoys the special divine assistance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, who “intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom 8:27).

The inspired Word of God supplies an instruction, a Torah, that is quite detailed, and that in the interpretation given it by Jesus and his New Testament followers enjoys universal validity. While the Ten Commandments summarize the Old Testament Torah, the virtues of love, faith, and hope, the cardinal virtues and their facilitating gifts of the Spirit, as well as the differing gifts of ministry given to the members of the Body of Christ express the moral teaching of the sacred Scripture in its Christian fullness. For the precepts of Scripture do not of themselves constitute a complete ethics apart from the virtues of character which they form and express. As Christ himself teaches, “A good tree brings forth good fruit” (Mt 7:17).

The moral theologian can make fruitful use of the notion of habitus as a way to explain the virtues of character. Habitus provides a way for the theologian to explain that grace really transforms the principal psychological capacities of human nature, and at the same time allows the person to use these capacities in ways that are creative and easily adapted to new situations. As real habitus of the supernatural order, the theological and infused moral virtues enable a person to sustain an interpersonal communion with God. Habitus do not establish routine. Indeed, instead of inhibiting the exercise of human autonomy, habitus provide the indispensable condition for the realization of authentically free and responsible Christian behavior.Aquinas stresses that the radical source or principle of human action, and consequently freedom, remains the human potencies/capacities, viz, in Summa theologiae lallae q. 49, a. 4: “But it is obvious that the nature and notion of a capacity is to be a source of action. And so every habitus whose possessor is a capacity is connected primarily with action.” Sometimes, it is true, we refer to sanctifying grace as an “entitative” habitus of the soul, but this way of speaking represents an extended use of the concept.See Summa theologiae lallae q. 50, a. 2. Rather, as real habitus of the supernatural life, infused virtues shape the capacities or powers of the human soul (potentiae animae) that form the basis for knowledge and love - namely, the intellect for faith and prudence, and the rational appetite, or will, for the virtues of charity, hope, and justice. Only sanctifying grace can simultaneously elevate and perfect these powers, so that a person can “do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col 3:17). To consider theological faith, for example, as a habitus proper to the Christian reflects a longstanding theological intuition about how God bestows the gift of faith. In his treatise entitled The Divine Names, the 5th-century Christian author known as Dionysius the Areopagite writes:

Faith is the permanent Ground of the faithful, which builds them in the Truth and builds the Truth in them by an unwavering firmness, through which they possess a simple knowledge of the Truth of those things which they believe.Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology, trans. C. E. Rolt (London: SPCK, 1979), chap. 7, no. 4 (p. 153).

By a judicious and creative use of the Aristotelian category of habitus, the moral theologian affirms that for those “justified by faith in Christ” (Gal 2:17), this “unwavering firmness” forms a personal quality or trait of their whole moral lives.

In the Old Testament we find emphasis on such key virtuous habitus as righteousness (sedeq), mercy (hesed), and fidelity (’emet), but it is clear from Christ’s own teaching on the Great Commandment and from St Paul’s discourse in First Corinthians 13 that charity (the equivalent to hesed) constitutes the supreme Christian virtue and that it extends to both God and neighbor. Additionally, St Paul makes it clear that both faith and hope remain directly related to charity. In the history of moral theology, these three virtues, traditionally called the theological virtues, have always been regarded as providing the whole shape of Christian ethics and with full biblical warrant.

The four cardinal virtues (temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence), derived from Plato, reinterpreted by Aristotle, and transmitted by the Stoics, are referred to once in the Book of Wisdom: Wisdom “teaches temperance and prudence, justice, and fortitude, and nothing in life is more useful for men than these” (Wis 8:7).’ For a complete Biblical introduction to moral theology, see Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., Living the Truth in Love (New York: Alba House, 1996). While this one quotation, in a work marked moreover by Greek influence, hardly suffices to give the cardinal virtues their capital importance, their traditional use as organizing principles for ethics still can be explained by the following considerations. Prudence signifies the equivalent of the “wisdom” constantly portrayed in the Old Testament as a gift of God without which a righteous life is impossible. The New Testament repeatedly speaks about this wisdom as given even to the little ones in the messianic age and encourages the Church to maintain a prudent watchfulness “for the sake of prayer” (1 Pt 4:7). Justice of course constitutes a central theme of both the Old and the New Testament; it is necessarily included in the very notion of “love of neighbor.” Thus the sacred Scriptures constantly exhort and guide us to respect the rights of others and to do so with a practical wisdom or prudence that exceeds mere legalism, and this out of piety for the heavenly Father (see Col 4:1). The mystery of the Cross gives a central place in Christian virtue to martyrdom and the patient endurance of suffering for the sake of Christ, that is, to fortitude and with it to nonviolence rather than the aggressiveness which predominated in the Greek notion of virtue. “In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world” (Jn 16:33)! Finally, the celibacy of Jesus, his teaching on divorce, and St Paul’s pastoral instructions make clear that temperance in the form of chastity, whether married, celibate, or virginal, has a special Christian emphasis. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope, and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Tit 2:11 -13).

The traditional view originating in St Augustine that the theological and cardinal virtues are completed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the beatitudes, and the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) helpfully organizes a considerable amount of Christian revelation. According to patristic exegesis, the “fruits” are acts of the virtues, whereas the beatitudes are perfect fruits that proceed from the virtues operating under the influence of the gifts. The gifts, which are to be distinguished from the special gifts of ministry mentioned by Paul in First Corinthians 12, are recounted as given to the Messiah in Isaiah 11:23 (see Rev 5:6). According to the official teaching, these gifts are given to all Christians in baptism to facilitate the working of the other virtues by rendering the Christian docile to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, so that he or she shares in a divine, rather than a merely human, mode of judging and acting. This theory of the gifts is of utmost importance in the history of spiritual theology, and to neglect it would be to reinforce the disastrous separation of moral from ascetic and mystical theology which took place in the post-Tridentine period. An example of this separation of the virtues and gifts from moral theology is to be found in the Directorium Asceticum or, Guide to the Spiritual Life, first published in 1752 by the Jesuit spiritual author Giovanni Battista Scaramelli.Giovanni Battista Scaramelli (1687 -1752), *Direttorio ascetico (*1752); English translation, 4 vols. (London, 1924). At the same period, then, that Hume announced the divorce of revelation from human reason, the Directorium Asceticum disengaged both the moral virtues, which it describes as the “immediate dispositions for Christian perfection,” from the theological virtues, especially charity, which it recognizes as “the essence of Christian perfection,” from the canons of moral theology. It was possible to conceive of such a divorce during a period when moral theology was exclusively governed by the juridically-inspired principles of the casuists’ manuals.

But Christian revelation offers no grounds for such an awkward separation. If we ponder the pneumatology that runs throughout the New Testament, there can be no doubt that in promising the Paraclete Jesus in fact promised that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that was to herald the messianic Age (see Acts 2:14-36) was about to begin. True Christian freedom, which leads to the pursuit of a good life, comes only from the Holy Spirit; “the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). And the early Church experienced the distinction between the observance of the commandments in the human mode of dutiful obedience and the Spirit-inspired and facilitated fulfillment of these same precepts with profound insight and joy. With this end in view, St Paul constantly urges his converts to grow to Christian maturity and docility to the Spirit. The numbering and classification of the gifts is less significant than the fact they are given in the plenitude symbolized by the number seven. Actual reference to the various qualities of action and insight assigned to the traditional seven names of the gifts, Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of the Lord can be found scattered through both Testaments. But the important truth remains what St Paul teaches the Romans about the meaning of adoptive childhood: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God . . . and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:14,17).

The received tradition of the Middle Ages provided Thomas Aquinas with the resources required for constructing a theology based on the gifts of the Holy Spirit.For a general history of the theology of the gifts, see G. Bardy, F. Vandenbroucke, A. Bayez, M. Labourdette, C. Bernard, “Dons du Saint-Esprit” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualite 3, cols. 1641-1957. For the development of the doctrine in the patristic tradition, consult Albert Mitterer, “Die sieben Gaben des HI. Geistes nach der Vaterlehre,” Zeitschriftf?r katholische Theologie 49 (1925), pp. 529-566 and Ambroise Gardeil, “Dons du Saint-Esprit II. Partie documentaire et historique,” in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique IV, cols. 1748-1781. Although published in 1911, the latter work still remains a principal source for the period up to Aquinas. Over the course of roughly two decades (1252-1272), Aquinas applied his extraordinary talent for consolidation and synthesis to the biblical glosses and patristic texts that furnished sundry interpretations of the well-known text of Isaiah 11:2 -3.“And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.” The traditional list of seven Gifts results from the fact that the Septuagint version used “piety” instead of “fear of the Lord” in verse 2. Aquinas’s teaching about the gifts integrates his doctrines on the intra-Trinitarian life of relations and processions, on the temporal missions of the Son and Spirit, and on the indwelling of the Paraclete in the souls of the just with his practical theology of the Christian life. Indeed, as a comparative study of his writings indicates, Aquinas’s views concerning the nature and function of these gifts continued to evolve even while he was drafting the Summa theologiaeEdward D. O’Connor, C.S.C., provides one of the best studies of Thomist theology of the gifts in The Gifts of the Spirit, vol. 24 of the Blackfriars translation of the Summa theologiae (London/New York, 1974). For a detailed examination of the evolution of St Thomas’s thought on the gifts, see especially Appendix 4, pp. 110-130. The final redaction of his gift-theology falls within the treatise on the individual virtues in the secunda pars.The only text in the tertia pars that says anything significant about the gifts occurs in IIIa q. 7, a. 5, where Aquinas inquires concerning the grace of Christ.

In the secunda-secundae, Aquinas makes a key methodological decision that shapes his theology of the gifts. He accepts the established pairing of the seven gifts with the seven cardinal moral and theological virtues. This tradition of the Spiritus septiformis, the sevenfold Spirit, dates from the Latin Church of the fourth century.In 385, Pope Siricius, for instance, speaks of “the invocation of the sevenfold Spirit with imposition of hands by the bishop.” See his Letter to Himerius (DS 183). Although theologians had previously suggested other means of inserting the gifts into the structures of Christian theology, Aquinas settles for the paradigm that associates the gifts with the virtues, the Beatitudes, and the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

A simple reading of the New Testament itself urges the theologian to ponder the gifts of the Holy Spirit. For example, in taking leave of his disciples, Jesus told them, “It is good for you that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (Jn 16:7). In brief, theological reflection concerning the status, function, and purpose of the gifts of the Holy Spirit articulates the precise nature of this promised divine aid. According to the formulation of Aquinas, for example, these gifts shape the personal psychology of a believer in such a way that the person can respond positively to those instinctus that we customarily ascribe to the Holy Spirit.Fr Servais Pinckaers continually emphasizes the importance of the gifts for those issues that nettle contemporary theology, for example, see his Les sources de la morale chretienne. Sa methode, son contenu, son histoire, 2e edition revue et augmented (Fribourg, 1990), pp. 164-167. In other terms, the gifts round out the exercise of the moral and theological virtues in the commonplace experiences of the Christian life, to the extent that they remain indispensable for Christian perfection.

Aquinas presents some basic elements of his teaching on the gifts in question 68 of the prima secundae.Although the eight articles of this question assume a conception of the gifts that Aquinas will later modify, a brief résumé of certain pertinent points nonetheless provides important basic information. In the plan of the prima secundae, qq 68 - 70 treat the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Beatitudes, and the Fruits of the Holy Spirit respectively. Following a schema established by St Albert the GreatSee his In III Sententias, ed. Borgnet (Paris, 1894), d. 34, A, a. 1 [614 - 620]: “An dona sunt virtutes?”, St Thomas relates that his predecessors supplied a variety of arguments to explain how one can distinguish the gifts from the virtues. The rudimentary scholastic thesis that one ought to differentiate the virtues from the gifts apparently originates with Philip the Chancellor.See Philip the Chancellor, Summa de bono, edited by Nicolai Wicki, Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevii. Opera Philosophica Mediae Aetatis Selecta, Vol. II (Berne, 1985), Pars Posterior, De bono gratie in homine II, D, “De septem donis Spiritus Sancti,” Q. I “Utrum dona sint virtutes” [1106-1113]. In addition, see O. Lottin, Psychologic et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe siecles, vol. Ill (Louvain, 1929, 1930), p. 363. Aquinas, however, argues that these earlier attempts to provide a suitable reason for the distinction missed the mark. Thereupon, he ventures another approach. Taking his cue from Scripture’s own way of speaking, St Thomas observes that Holy Writ uses the term “spirit” for what the theologians call a gift. By underscoring the inherent connection between spiritus and motus, Aquinas then defines the gifts as habitual dispositions in the believer to receive special divine inspirations or promptings that surpass the basically human mode of acting established by virtue.This definition represents a change from Aquinas’s earlier opinion in Scriptum super Libros Sententiarum ed., M. A. Moos (Paris, 1929-1947) HI, d. 34, q. 1, a. 1 [1110-1115], where he describes a gift simply as perfective of a superhuman mode of action in the individual: “dona a virtutibus distinguuntur in hoc quod virtutes perficiunt ad actus modo humano, sed dona ultra humanum modum…”

According to the seventeenth-century Dominican theologian John of St Thomas, this new mode of gift-activity produces some startling outcomes.See John of St Thomas, “De donis Spiritus Sancti,” in Cursus theologicus. In Summam Theologicam D. Thomae MI, Disputatio XVIII in the Vives edition, vol. VI (Paris, 1885). Written in 1644, this commentary is among the classical loci for a theological understanding of the gifts; thus, the 17th-century Carmelite theologians at Salamanca said: “De hac materia tarn docte, tarn profunde et luculenter agit, ut palmam aliis, immo et sibi ipsi alia scribenti, praeripere videatur” (Cursus theologicus, De spe, Disp. 4, dub. 4, n. 43). For further information, see Javier Sese, “Juan de S.T. y su tratado de los dones del Espiritu Santo,” Angelicum 66 (1989), pp. 161 -184. For example, he argues that once a virtuous act comes under the influence of the gifts, the action acquires an entirely new moral character or species. For the Thomist tradition of moral theology, this means that one deals with an entirely new sort of action. The reason, of course, for this strong affirmation lies in the unique regulatory principle that governs the working of the gifts. In order to illustrate how diverse modes of activity can work on the same material action, the Iberian commentator uses the simple image of a boat moved both by the rowing of oarsmen and by the force of the wind:

This interior illumination, this experiential taste of divine things and of other mysteries of the faith, excites our affections so that they tend to the object of virtue by a higher mode than these very same ordinary virtues do themselves. This happens to the extent that our affections obey a rule and measure dependent upon higher realities, v/z, that interior prompting (instinctus) of the Holy Spirit according to the rule of faith and his illumination. As a result, the gifts effect a different kind of moral action, that is, they establish a distinctive moral specification; indeed we are led to a divine and supernatural end by a mode which differs from the rule formed by our own efforts and labors (even in the case of infused virtue), that is, one formed and founded upon the rule of the Holy Spirit. In a similar way, the work of oarsmen moves a ship differently than the wind does, even though the waves waft it toward the same port.Disp. XVIII, a. 2, n. 29.

John of St Thomas employs the example of two categorical causes, viz, oarsmen and wind, to explain two modes of a single divine activity in the person: a human mode, when the infused and theological virtues remain under the direction of our own ingenuity and resources, and a supra-human mode, when the same virtues come under the influence of the gifts.

Common experience supports this distinction. As the evident contrasts in fervor among the members of the Church make clear, each justified believer retains the capacity to direct the progress of his or her supernatural life. In simpler terms, human reason remains the directive rule or measure for the virtues, even for the infused moral and theological virtues. But the Holy Spirit, like a prompter on a theatrical set, can inspire a virtuous action in accord with a measure that surpasses that of human reason. The First Letter of John refers to this action: “… but the anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that any one should teach you; as his anointing teaches you about everything… “ (1 Jn 2: 27).Cajetan uses this text in his commentary In primam secundae q. 68, a. 1, in loco.

The believer requires these special gifts so that a virtuous Christian life may achieve its full flourishing.For a brief, but comprehensive, treatment of how Aquinas understands the importance of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life, see Luc Somme, “La role du Saint-Esprit dans la vie chr&ienne, selon saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Sedes Sapientiae 26 (1988), pp. 11 -29. In order fully to appreciate the import of this thesis, we must recall that no adequate proportion exists between human nature and the goal of beatific fellowship with God. As we learn from everyday experience, even Christians engage in the pursuit of those created goods that remain proportionate to them more easily than they aspire to the divine Good, which constitutes subjective Beatitude. “And so the moving of reason is not sufficient,” affirms St Thomas, “to direct us to our ultimate and supernatural end without the prompting and moving of the Holy Spirit from above.”Summa theologiae Ia-IIae q. 68, a. 2. In other terms, the life of faith and grace in itself does not ensure that the Christian will use these divine gifts in a godly way.

As Advocate and Comforter, the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, pushes the believer beyond the restrictions of human inclination and judgment in matters that pertain to eternal life. As we have seen, St. Paul corroborates this basic theological truth when he speaks about those who are led by the Spirit of God as “heirs” to the Kingdom (see Rom 8:14-17). But the process unfolds step-by-step, and so Aquinas compares the Holy Spirit to a teacher who gradually leads an apprentice to a sure grasp of a particular discipline by providing moments of insight that elucidate both its methods and content.

Although the topic has no parallel in his other writings and, for that matter, no precedent in any other theologian’s work, Aquinas next inquires whether or not the gifts themselves form distinctive habitus The biblical term spiritus of course suggests something transient, even charismatic, in character. But as the gifts render an individual continually and actively receptive to divine promptings indispensable for Christian perfection, so they form a permanent part of the believer’s moral character. Wherefore, Aquinas contends, the Gospel of John recounts that Jesus reassures his disciples with the promise that the Counselor “dwells with you, and abides with you” (Jn 14:17). In explaining this fusion between the spontaneity of an inspiration and the permanence of a settled disposition, John of St Thomas frequently points to the Scriptural witnesses that authorize this scholastic thesis.See for example, Disp. XVIII, a. 2, n. 8: “Ratio et fundamentum est, quia in primis in ipsa Scriptura significantur ista dona dan per modum permanentiae, dum dicitur Isai. XI: ‘Requiescet super eum Spiritus Domini, spiritus sapientiae, et scientiae, etc.’… ergo ista dona habent statum permanentiae.”

As formed habitus in the believer, the gifts shape the moral character of the Christian in determined ways. For instance, they perfect us in the sequela Christi in the same way that the virtues of personal discipline, i.e., fortitude and temperance, are said to perfect the irascible and concupiscible appetites. The virtue of temperance, in the Aristotelian view, so moderates the concupiscible powers of the soul that the truly temperate person performs actions according to the measure of right reason, but without the strain, interior struggle, and determined effort that accompanies the exertion of those who do not possess the virtuous habitus The gifts establish this kind of conformity in the Christian, so that we need not struggle after the promptings of the Holy Spirit. And as the witness of the saints unmistakably indicates, the gifts do this without inducing a colorless uniformity into Christian living.

It is worthwhile to observe that, like any philosophical concept put to use in theology, the notion of habitus takes on a certain analogical elasticity. An infused habitus supplies certain personal dispositions in the believer which render the creative living of a Christian life prompt, joyful, and easy.For a neglected but still useful study on the notion of habitus in the Christian life, see Placide de Roton, O.S.B., Les Habitus. Leur Caractere spirituel (Paris, 1934), pp. 149-163. In the case of the gifts, for instance, although Aquinas does not seem to envisage that one can reject a divine prompting, he would still insist that the habitus does not destroy human freedom. Rather, the gifts infallibly produce in the believer a sort of ordered spiritual liberty that characterizes New Testament existence.In more technical terms, theology understands the Gifts as instances of a gratia operans, i.e., graces in which the divine initiative accounts for the direction of the human will. In the case of a gratia operans, the action of the will does not proceed because of a prior discursive process of the mind as regulated by the virtue of prudence. A movement of divine grace supplies for this ordinary working of our self-determination. Still, the will must consent to its own act. Hence, once the divine initiative is freely, though passively, received, the individual becomes the active cause of his or her own subsequent activity. The divine causality prolonging itself into this action forms a gratia cooperans. St John of the Cross seeks to capture the paradoxical status of the gift- habitus when he writes: “From the time I sought nothing because of what I myself wanted,” he wrote, “everything was given to me by God, even though I did not ask for it.”For example, see his teaching in Subida al Monte Carmelo Lib. Ill, c. 20, n. 4: “Hay otro provecho muy grande y principal en desasir el gozo de las criaturas, que es dejar el corazón libre para Dios, que es principio dispositivo para todos las mercedes que Dios le ha de hacer, sin la cual disposicion no las hace.”

Two gifts of the Holy Spirit particularly aid the faith in Christ that the New Testament says remain indispensable so that the power of the Holy Spirit might be set loose in the world.For a fuller treatment of the gifts that aid the theological virtue of faith, see my Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996). And for this reason, the theological tradition situates and interprets the gifts of Understanding and Knowledge within the framework of theological faith. Because theological faith sanctifies human intelligence, it constitutes a special theological virtue. Through faith, says Aquinas, the mind is wed to God. God’s own Truth and Word achieves this union in the human person such that the one who believes the preaching of the Gospel gives full credence to what is set forth as divinely revealed. The Second Vatican Council has this important word to say about the relationship of theological faith to the growth of the Church. ‘Tradition and scripture together form a single deposit of the word of God, entrusted to the church.“ Through a personal assent to the credal propositions that embody divine revelation, the Christian believer is progressively shaped into a full member of Christ’s body. “Holding fast to this [deposit], the entire holy people, united with its pastors, perseveres always faithful to the apostles’ teaching and shared life, to the breaking of bread and prayer.”Dei verbum, no. 10. Christian belief changes every aspect of human life and makes out of the human race a holy people ready to confess the “treasure of revelation.”Dei verbum, no. 26.

The gifts that facilitate theological faith particularly sustain the act of belief by which the Christian lays hold of and appropriates the articles of faith that represent the mysteries of the Christian religion. The fifth-century abbot Faustus of Riez takes up the theme of the union that faith accomplishes between God and humankind: “What wedding can this be,” he inquires concerning the Marriage Feast of Cana, “but the joyful marriage of man’s salvation, a marriage celebrated by confessing the Trinity and by faith in the resurrection.”Faustus of Riez, Sermo 5, de Epiphania 2 (PLS 3: 560 - 562). Aquinas’s teaching on the articles of faith emphasizes their instrumentality in the effusion of divine instruction that comes from God to the Church, and so he treats them as truth-bearing propositions over which the Magisterium enjoys particular prerogatives.Aquinas in fact considers the articuli as directly related to the structure of the Church. For example, the distinction which he draws between “implicite credere” and “explicite credere” reveals the instrumental nature of the articuli fidei. In coordination with this distinction, Aquinas further establishes a hierarchization of the articles themselves and a certain hierarchy among believers (see Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 2, a. 6; q. 2, a. 5; q. 2, a. 7; q. 2, a. 8; q. 5, a. 3 & ad 2). Moreover, this view represents the common understanding of the Church: “The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether in its written form or in that of tradition, has been entrusted only to those charged with the Church’s ongoing teaching function, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.”Dei verbum, no. 10. The Magisterium fosters theological faith, and everything that it proposes for belief, as being divinely revealed, is drawn from the one deposit of faith. In exercising its magisterial authority, the Church fulfills Christ’s promise to his disciples that they would never be left spiritual orphans.

As the “spouse of the incarnate Word,” the Church enjoys the continued help of the Holy Spirit. Although rationalist interpretations of Christian belief, such as those provoked by the seventeenth-century Cartesian spirit of clear and distinct ideas, eclipse this important qualification, it remains true that human cognition, even in the act of faith, experiences its limitations more than its prowess in the face of divine truth.For an original essay about the cognitive and the affective dimensions of Christian belief, see Richard Schaeffler, “Spiritus sapientiae et intellectus-spiritus scientiae et pietatis — Religionsphilosophische Uberlegungen Verhaltnis von Weisheit, Wissenschaft und Frommigkeit und ihrer Zuordnung zum Geiste” in Weisheit Gottes-Weisheit der Welt. Festschrift fur Kardinal Ratzinger zum 60. Gerburtstag (St Ottilien, n.d.) Band I, pp. 15-35. The author frames his reflections with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Because of this in-built cognitive limitation, the gifts of Understanding and Knowledge although perfective of the act of faith must draw their effective power from the virtue of charity. Unlike the virtues of faith and hope that do not accompany the Christian to heaven, charity even now abides in the Church here below as the identical reality that flourishes in the company of the saints above. This given of the theological life explains why Aquinas associates the gift of Wisdom, which is the most eminent gift of the Holy Spirit, with charity, which is the theological virtue that most perfectly embodies the divine reality.

As its two components, viz, “intus” and “legere” indicate, the Latin etymology for understanding (“intellectus”) suggests a sort of intuitive reading between the lines. In the Aristotelian account of human knowledge, the intellectual habitus called “understanding” triggers the intellect to scrutinize the indemonstrable first principles of the speculative intellect. Precisely as indemonstrable, we can fittingly compare these first principles with the articles of faith, for the supernatural mysteries of Christian faith rest on nothing other than the divine Truthfulness. Hence, Aquinas posits the analogy between natural understanding and the gift of the same name.In accord with his revised vision of the gifts in the Secunda secundae, Aquinas discusses understanding as part of the treatise on the virtue of faith (see IIa-IIae q. 8). His treatment takes into account four distinct elements: First, the nature of the gift of understanding (aa. 1 - 3); second, the subject in which the gift resides (aa. 4 - 5); third, the relationship of understanding to the other gifts (a. 6); and lastly, the Beatitude and Fruit of the Holy Spirit which the medieval tradition associated with this gift (aa. 7, 8). In general, the treatises on the gifts in the Summa theologiae provide a good example of Aquinas’s organizational method and of his via doctrinae. Just as natural understanding enables the human mind to grasp the first principles of speculative and practical reasoning, so the gift of Understanding aids theological faith to penetrate what is contained in the article of faith. In this way, the gift of Understanding fosters theological faith. Even if the believer can neither immediately see nor demonstratively know the object of faith, he or she can still perceive “the light [which] shines in the darkness” (see Jn 1:5). Since the articles serve as notional principles for the development of faith-knowledge, the gift of Understanding enables the infused habitus of faith to fathom the truths expressed in these propositions as formulated.

The gift of Understanding does not so illumine the act of belief that faith no longer operates in its characteristic darkness. And since the penetration or seizure of the articles of faith does not result in a discernment that destroys the mystery of faith, the act of belief still remains constituted by its lack of evidence. Hence, the gift of Understanding does not have a special object other than that of theological faith. On the contrary, since the gift allows the believer to perceive more clearly the distance between the hidden res or divine reality itself and the enunciabile or truth-bearing proposition that manifests it, the gift actually heightens the suspense of faith’s inevidence. And Understanding accomplishes this goal, even as it bolsters the believer to adhere with greater precision and clarity to the truth that is believed.To arrive at knowledge by a means other than that of seizing a representation of the thing known accounts for the “quasi-experiential” character of such a knowledge. The mystics speak about a “ray of darkness” which strengthens the intellect in conformity to Truth. “Since it develops out of connaturality for and union with divine things, the gift of Wisdom,” explains John of St Thomas, “does not supply a comprehensive knowledge concerning the highest causes; the gift rather deepens our grasp of these causes by way of a quasi-affective, mystical knowledge.”Disp. XVIII, a. 4, n. 8 [636]. The same holds true for the gifts of Understanding and Knowledge.

Only charity, of course, can account for the quasi-instinctive discernment which the gift of understanding brings to the act of belief.The gift of Understanding belongs to everyone who participates in divine charity. The function of a gift always remains “to aid” the act of its respective virtue. Thus, the act of “assent” which constitutes divine faith is complete in itself. According to the teaching of the Church, it can exist even in one who does not actually love God thus, a “dead” faith, as it is called. The gift of understanding, however, supposes this assent. Charity moves the believer to an “understanding” of divine things which results in concretely appreciating as a personal truth that which faith proposes for assent. See Summa theologiae II-II q. 8, a. 4. Given its own proper dynamics, affective knowledge tends to degage from the human mode of conceptual knowledge. Yet, John of St Thomas rightly emphasizes that this penetration denotes a judgment; it is not achieved immediately as a result of simple apprehension. But in order to distinguish Understanding from the judgment of discursive reasoning associated with the other intellectual gifts, John of St Thomas speaks about a simple or discriminative judgment. He describes this as a “certain sympathy with spiritual things [which] arouses understanding to discern spiritual realities from corporeal ones… “Disp. XVIII, a. 3, n. 19 [609]. It remains a constant element of Thomist epistemology that the appetite cannot acquire knowledge. Even divine charity cannot know something except in a metaphorical way. So, in order to explain how the gift of Understanding grows as a result of the union of the believer with God who is the Highest Good, one must have recourse to knowledge by conformity. Formed faith observes the measure of faith as a knowing; it represents a human mode of knowing because the mind still must appropriate the articuli fidei. Faith illumined by the gifts corresponds to a supra-human mode of knowing. Love penetrates the representation of faith’s Object. Nonetheless, the gift does not replace or subordinate the theological virtue. As a distinct gift of grace, Understanding remains a cognitive attainment of First Truth, but as a Truth actually loved. Consider the article of faith that Mary is immaculately conceived. The gift of Understanding makes possible a sharpened and superior penetration of the terms which express the mystery “immaculate”; “conception”; “mother.” The penetration of these terms, moreover, opens up a world of religious experience unique to each of the faithful, grounding the personal depth and affective resonance of the believer’s relationship to the immaculate Mother of God. At the same time, the common propositions enshrined in the articles of faith guarantee a unity of faith and practice within the one Body of Christ.

In his discussion of the acquisition of the virtues, Aristotle describes two different ways to learn about a virtuous life, and these methods help to explain how the judgment of Understanding functions in the life of the believer. First, an individual can acquire a specific moral virtue through learning about the virtue; for example, by studying about the principles of good nutrition, a person can develop the techniques for maintaining a healthy diet. But the same person can also learn about temperance in food and so acquire the virtue of abstinence through observing closely how an abstemious person eats. For even if a temperate person knows nothing speculatively about good nutrition, he or she has developed the knack for making right judgments concerning nourishment as a result of having consumed the right amount of food over a long period of time. In other words, the person who connaturally observes moderation in eating, experiences the virtue. If this occurs in ordinary human experience, why cannot the believer know of and judge about divine truths as a result of having experienced and loved them?Disp. XVIII, a. 3, n. 48 [620]. Understanding works in this connatural way. “But the knowledge which moves one toward a right ordering of love, thereby reaching a more profound experience of divine things, belongs to the gift of Understanding.”Disp. XVIII, a. 3, n. 46 [619].

As a distinctive endowment of the spiritual life, “the gift of Understanding does not sharpen and perfect the mind through study and metaphysical inquiry, but by mystical connaturality and union with divine truths.”Disp. XVIII, a. 1, n. 46 [619]. In the case of the gift, however, divine love itself begets the desire for a right appreciation or estimate or understanding of the loved reality. John of St Thomas portrays this dynamic as follows:

Knowledge and judgment of spiritual and supernatural truths happens both through study and speculative inquiry… and through connaturality, love, and experience. In his On the Divine Names, c. 3, Dionysius wrote concerning Hierotheus that “he had not only attained to divine things, but he had suffered them as well.” Anyone suffers divine things when he is stirred to love and is moved by the Holy Spirit above the level measured by human rules. The term suffer is employed since acting under obedience and subjection to the motion of another amounts to a sort of suffering or receiving.Disp. XVIII, a. 3, n. 45 [619].

The saints even speak about the “pondus amoris” - the weight of love - that draws the believer towards God. This weight of divine love enables the saints to penetrate the hidden mysteries of divine truth. It is through the gift of Understanding that the Fathers of the Church gain a depth of insight into the implications of the biblical witnesses. For instance, St Ambrose recognizes in the biblical account of the Visitation a significance for the spiritual well-being of the whole Church: “Mary’s son, who is beyond our understanding,” the saint assures us, “is active in his mother in a way that is beyond our understanding.”St Ambrose, Homily on Luke, Bk2, chap. 19,22-23 (CCL 14, 39-42). Since it comes about “through the intimate understanding of spiritual things which they experience,” the theological exegesis practiced by the Fathers surpasses in value for the Church that which is developed exclusively on the basis of scientific expertise in higher criticism.

The gift of Understanding grasps the Christian mysteries, especially those that disclose the economy of salvation, as actual happenings. Those saints who see into the events of Christ’s life, for example, the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Passion, the Resurrection, and so forth, best personify the gift of Understanding. For those who possess this gift love to meditate on the Scriptures and to “ponder with assent,” according to the apt phrase of St Augustine, the incarnate truths of salvation.See On the Predestination of the Saints, c. 2; Aquinas interprets this definition in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 2, a. 1. Aquinas, moreover, links this pondering with the moral life: “Only the one who makes no mistake about the final end of human life possesses a correct appreciation of it, and firmly cleaves to this end as the greatest good.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 8, a. 5. In the Christian view, the moral life instrumentally obtains the doctrina which gives ultimate meaning to the human vocation the beatific vision, so that all the mysteries of the economy pertain equally to the moral teaching of the Church.John of St Thomas even considers that the gift of Understanding segues into the lumen gloriae. See Disp. XVIII, a. 3, n. 66 [627]: “Ergo donum intellectus in patria non est aliquid distinctum a virtute attingente Deum in se, qui est habitus luminis gloriae.” In the following number (n. 67), the commentator qualifies this position. There exists then an organic link between the practice of the Christian faith and the articles of doctrines of the faith. To ponder the truth of faith facilitates the practice of Christian virtue, and from a different perspective, a virtuous life opens our hearts and minds to the illumination that the Christian mysteries offer to those who accept them.See The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 89.

As the Aristotelian notion of “science” suggests, the gift of Knowledge (scientia) aids theological faith by means of a different sort of graced-activity.Aquinas treats the gift of Knowledge in the four articles of Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 9 as follows: the nature and object of the gift (aa. 1,2); its speculative character (a. 3); and the associated Beatitude (a. 4). John of St Thomas again explains:

[Knowledge] grounds a movement of the Holy Spirit which moves the mind not by a direct light, as if one were to shine a light into a dark room, but through an internal experience an affective connaturality with the truth by which it can supernaturally seize the realities about which it judges.“Disp. XVIII, a. 4, n. 56 [653].

In addition, he describes the gift’s proper activity as resolutive or analytical judgment-making; so, like Wisdom, the gift of Knowledge scrutinizes the causal explanations underlying the sacra doctrina.Disp. XVIII, a. 4, n. 1 [634]. The gift of Knowledge itself principally concerns the ascending relationships between effects and their causes and, only in an oblique way, the descending relationships between the sovereign causes and their effects. Since the theological tradition associates the highest explication of divine truth with the gift of Wisdom, the gift of Knowledge remains fixed on the created effects of the divine agency in the world.John of St Thomas briefly recapitulates this distinction: “Haec [scientia] autem est habitus judicativus evidenter veritatum scibilium per causas vel effectus (ut comprehendamus scientiam propter quid et quia, a priori et posteriori) ita tamen quod quando fit hoc judicium per causas inferiores et creatas, est scientia; quando per supremas, est summa scientia, quae sapientia dicitur, juxta quod etiam Augustinus dicit XIII de Trinitate, cap. XIX: ‘Sapientia divinis et aeternis, scientia humanis et temporalibus attributa est rebus’” (Disp. XVIII, a. 4, n. 50 [650]). The commentator immediately remarks, however, that one must interpret this augustinian distinction between divine and human things as referring to two formally distinct ways of thinking about reality. And though indissociably linked with Christ’s instrumentality and energized by divine charity, the gift’s proper activity in the believer compares favorably with the “evening knowledge” of the angels, that is, when the angels learn from God’s perspective about the innate structure of reality in itself.Aquinas explains St Augustine’s distinction between the “morning” and “evening” knowledge of the angels in Summa theologiae la q, 58, aa. 6,7. In the French edition (Paris, 1984), p. 556, n.6, J.-H. Nicolas explains that the two “knowledges” do not entail diverse objects, but two different ways of knowing; he translates the definition in article 6 as follows: “connaissance du soir [est] la connaissance de 1’etre cree comme existant dans sa nature propre” (p. 554).

The cognitive links between the mind and its object remain an underlying basis of the process of knowledge-judgment which does not, however, imply a falsifying distance or separation between subject and object. In other terms, the beginning and the end of this process lies in the object as really existing. According to the canons of realist epistemology, the judgment of knowledge preserves the mind from being confined to the closed world of its own creations, by leading it back to the open world of things as they actually exist. The gift of Knowledge aids the believer to escape from the vicious circle of subjectivity which confuses human concepts for the truth about the living God. The gift “resolves” because it brings together disparate truths acquired by faith into a single vision about God’s action in the world. Aquinas, therefore, explains that “only those enjoy the gift of Knowledge who possess a sure judgment on matters of faith and practice from the outpouring of grace, so that they never stray from the straight path of righteousness.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 9, a. 3 ad 3. The long tradition of the Church affirms that the mind cannot be satisfied by anything less than this, for theology remains a continuation of faith’s quest for something which surpasses the confines of human imagination.

Although in a mode different from that of discursive theology, knowledge scrutinizes the composition of a given article as well as its possible relationship to other doctrines of faith. “Although knowledge proceeds from created causes,” explains John of St Thomas, “it can still move from them to the divine, just as we can grasp something of the invisible God by knowledge of those things which he has produced.”Disp. XVIII, a. 4, n. 60 [654]. The commentator further remarks that, inversely, the gift of Wisdom extends to created things, with the result that together the gifts of Knowledge and Wisdom equip the believer to interpret reality from God’s standpoint. This capability of Knowledge suggests theology’s explicative function, for Knowledge analyzes a truth-statement or faith-proposition. As a “science of the saints,” Knowledge leads us to appreciate aspects of a divine mystery that purely rational argumentation in itself can not disclose. All in all, the gift of Knowledge strengthens the believer’s hold on the aggregate of the articles of faith as expressed in the Creed.

To continue with the example of the immaculate conception, the gift of Knowledge facilitates our judging the implications of this doctrine for other mysteries of the faith. These include both those that are articulated in propositions and those that are not. For example, one can consider Mary’s unique privilege as a starting point for additional inquiries concerning such questions as whether it was possible for her to commit sin, whether during her lifetime our blessed Lady possessed full knowledge of Christ’s person and his mission, whether the example of her virtues succors Christian living, and still other questions that can develop this faith-proposition. Knowledge also illumines the relationship of this article of faith to other Marian doctrines, such as the Assumption, as well as to all the other doctrines of faith, especially those that touch the reality of sanctifying grace. The one who lovingly contemplates the immaculate conception does not confront simply a “dogma” about the Mother of God, but the whole drama of salvation as the blessed Virgin personally represents it. “Her Son,” St Ambrose reminds us, “is active in his mother in a way beyond our understanding,” so that from Mary we learn about the true joy of life.

The Church Fathers traditionally coupled the beatitude “Blessed are those who mourn” with the gift of Knowledge. John of St Thomas explains this connection in light of the judgment which knowledge enables the believer to make concerning created realities.

To have a perfect union with God and experience his immense goodness, requires stripping oneself of creaturely things and possessing a knowledge of their poverty, humiliation, and bitterness; such considerations, furthermore, lead us to cling more closely to God, whom we come to know better as we distance ourselves from creatures.Disp. XVIII, a 4, n. 57 [653].

The gift of Knowledge, he continues, helps the believer to make accurate and precise judgments about created goods in the context of a Christian value system.Ibid. And since knowledge provides a correct estimate about created realities in themselves, it also allows the believer to recognize the privative results of misusing created goods. This does not mean, however, that the gift of Knowledge leads to a dour moralism, as if a gift of the Holy Spirit would develop a rigid spirit. Indeed, the gifts bring “sweet refreshment from above.” Nonetheless, because knowledge critically regards the entire body of revealed truth - and, the immaculate conception serves as a good example in this context - this gift also moves the believer to make the right judgment about human failures and their providential purpose in the Christian life.

Because there exists an intrinsic relation between knowledge as the right estimation about created realities in themselves and knowledge as analysis of the propositions of faith, only those moved by the Holy Spirit enjoy the gift of right judgment in matters of faith and morals. Why is this so? We discover the answer in what the Holy Spirit teaches the Church about the truth of God’s yearning: “Love, then, consists in this: not that we have loved God but that God has loved us and has sent his Son as an offering for our sins” (1 Jn 4, 10). Indeed, only the saint both knows and understands that God loves us, not because we are good, but because he is. By faith therefore, the saint already possesses God’s mercy, his life, and his love. This vocation, moreover, remains open to all those who hear the saving doctrine which the ministers of Christ’s church preach. Thus, in his Book on the Holy Spirit, St Basil writes: “As we contemplate the blessings of faith even now, like a reflection in a mirror, it is as though we already possessed the good things our faith tells us that we shall one day enjoy.”See On the Holy Spirit, chap. 15, nos. 35-36 (Sources Chretiennes, vol. 17 bis, pp. 364- 370).

In the commentary that accompanies the following verse from the Spiritual Canticle, St John of the Cross observes five specific characteristics of divine wisdom:

The breathing of the air,

The song of the sweet nightingale,

The grove and its living light

In the serene light,

With a flame that is consuming and painless.John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, 39.

First, the Carmelite mystical author explains that the verse speaks about the giving of the Holy Spirit from God to the person and from the person to God. Secondly, John of the Cross tells us that we read here about the rejoicing that comes from the fruition of God’s work. Next, the verse speaks, he says, about the possessing of knowledge of creatures and of their orderly arrangement. Then, it tells about contemplating God in himself. Lastly, the text points to the person’s total transformation in charity. On this fifth point, St John of the Cross offers a description of the transformative powers of divine Wisdom.

This transformation is not like the one the soul possesses in this life, for although the flame in this life is very perfect and consummating in love, it is still also somewhat consuming and destructive, acting as fire does on coal; although coal is conformed with and transformed into the fire, and does not fume as it did before the transformation, still the flame which consummated the coal in fire consumed and reduced it to ashes.Ibid., 14.

This remark from the Carmelite tradition introduces the gift of Wisdom that accompanies divine charity. Because the gift of Wisdom crowns the whole of the Christian life, we can suitably consider this gift by way of introduction to the virtues that develop human character in the image of Christ.

Aquinas clearly gives the gift of Wisdom central place in his moral theology. We know that Aquinas takes up the Augustinian theme that identifies beatific fellowship as the goal or end to which all human life tends by reason of the very nature that God’s wise providence and design bestows on it. As a complement to this important intuition about the meaning of human life, Aquinas develops a full moral teaching. He analyzes the human act, its object, end, and circumstance; the form of the moral good, the passions, habitus, and virtues, sin and law, and the peculiar features of the new dispensation of grace. These matters all precede the discussion of the theological life that is contained in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae qq. 1-44. Significantly, Aquinas places his treatise on the gift of the Holy Spirit that represents the perfection of the Christian life, the gift of Wisdom, before the long discussion of the moral virtues (qq. 47-170) and of the states of life (qq. 171-189) that are established in the Church. And though Aquinas gives no other example of vices that thwart the gifts of the Holy Spirit, he does devote a short question to the contrary of wisdom, folly. By these literary devices, Aquinas reminds us that all the moral virtues and the states of life represent so many different ways in which the Christian believer embodies divine wisdom in the world. For through a life of virtue, the Christian exhibits a “measure of judgment in contemplating divine things or in directing human affairs according to divine standards.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 45, a. 5.

From all of this we can conclude that the gift of Wisdom differs considerably from the other gifts that the tradition associates with the theological and cardinal moral virtues. Aquinas never relented on his original intuition that because of the perfection that charity possesses, the highest virtue does not require a special gift to assist its implementation. In this completeness, charity remains substantially different from both faith and hope. But Aquinas still held to the established pattern of assigning the gift of Wisdom to the theological virtue of charity, so that his small treatise on Wisdom more describes the entire life of Christian virtue, than a special help for a particular virtue.See Kieran Conley, O.S.B., A Theology of Wisdom (Dubuque, Iowa 1963), especially pp. 1-104.

Aristotle’s Metaphysics supplies Aquinas with a definition of Wisdom that serves to open up this reflection on Christian life: it belongs to the wise person to consider the highest cause of things.Metaphysics Bk, chap. 2 (982a8) Commenting on this definition, Aquinas remarks that one can consider the highest cause in one of two ways, either simply, as when one considers the highest cause in a particular area of inquiry, or universally, as when one looks at everything that is from a total and universal perspective. For Aquinas, only the person capable of measuring and ordering things in accord with divine norms, viz, how God knows the world to be, participates in this universal or supremely objective viewpoint.

At first glance, the approach of Aquinas might seem to differ from that of St Augustine, who describes wisdom as a conformity to the highest love instead of a quality of intellect. Aquinas of course recognizes the intrinsic ordination of knowledge to love that directs the Christian life, but he also affirms that this direction leads to a fuller and more comprehensive grasp of the “object” as both known and loved. Thus he concludes, “the gift of Wisdom differs from the acquired intellectual virtue of wisdom. The latter comes through human effort, the former ‘comes from above’ (Jas 3: 15).”See Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 45, a. 1, ad 2.

Within the total plan of the Summa theologiae, the gift of Wisdom appears as the full and existential deployment of the sacra doctrina For this gift enables the believer “to judge aright through a certain connaturality with divine things.”See the crucial text in Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 45, a. 2: “A correct judgment made through rational investigation belongs to the wisdom which is an intellectual virtue. But to judge aright through a certain fellowship with them belongs to that wisdom which is the gift of the Holy Spirit… Now this sympathy (compassio), or connaturality with divine things, results from charity which unites us to God: he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him (1 Cor 6: 17).” While the root of this connaturality with divine things remains theological charity, which alone makes us true friends of God, the gift of Wisdom nonetheless remains an intellectual endowment. Why? The proper act of wisdom is to judge, and judgment necessarily involves an act of the intellect. John of St Thomas has this to say about the difference between Wisdom and the gift of Counsel that assists the act of prudential judgment.

Finally, the gift of Wisdom differs from the gift of counsel. It is true that Wisdom is directive of actions in as much as they are regulated through eternal laws contemplated in wisdom. Nevertheless, over and above this there is need for the gift of Counsel corresponding to prudence, which directs the moral virtues. The virtue of prudence is distinguished from the virtue of wisdom in this, that prudence regulates according to human rules acts done here and now. On the other hand, wisdom is not immediately regulative of action. It is contemplative and knows the Supreme Cause, upon which depends the essential knowledge of the rules of the actions. Furthermore, it establishes and defends the universal principles upon which such rules depend. The relation of the gift of Counsel and the gift of Wisdom is as follows: The gift of Counsel directs immediately the actions of the soul moved by the Holy Spirit to choose correctly and well and to find the mean even in things which are very doubtful. It is noted in the Book of Machabees: “Good counsel came into their minds (1 Mach 4: 45).” The gift of Wisdom, on the other hand, is not immediately regulative of activity. It contemplates divine things, both as they are in themselves, and secondarily, as they are the higher rule of action. Activity is still immediately directed by human rules.John of St Thomas, The Gifts of the Holy Spirit, trans. W. D. Hughes (New York, 1950), chap. 4, no. 28.

This interpretation of Wisdom does not enhance the intellectual part of the human person to the detriment of the whole person; indeed, the Christian must always be ready to account for the reasons of the heart that the mind knows not. At the same time, the authentic Thomist understanding of Wisdom does not require us to make the will a knowing capacity. The New Testament texts that insist on the primacy of love in the Christian life encourages us to respect the importance of thinking about the truth in love. From this, one can easily discern that the gift of Wisdom also shapes the way in which the Christian tradition conceives of the contemplative life.

In his biblical commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, St Augustine associates the gift of Wisdom with the seventh beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God” (Mt 5:9). According to patristic exegesis, a peaceful spirit above all characterizes the person who remains united with Christ. For according to the testimony of the angels at the nativity of the Lord, peace belongs by preference to “those whom God favors” (Lk 2: 14). St Paul further develops the notion of God’s favor in explicitly Christological terms: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren” (Rom 8: 29). As an icon of the divine tranquillity, the peacemaker embodies the order of divine wisdom and love in the world.

An ancient spiritual adage reminds us that the supremely peaceful God settles his peace on everything. “Tranquillus Deus tranquillat omnia.” Thus Aquinas assures us, a peacemaker is one who brings about peace in himself or in others. The spiritual authors customarily recommend a recollected life as the surest path to both attaining personal peace and establishing peace within the human community. The recollected spirit, nourished by a life of vocal prayer and meditation, especially manifests itself through the correct judgments that the person of interior peace makes concerning divine things and the world. In sum, peace flows from a recollection, and recollection from the knowledge that we are God’s children. “Now we are called children of God,” says Aquinas, “in so far as we participate in the likeness of his only begotten and natural Son, according to Romans, They are the ones he chose especially long ago to become true images of his Son,’ who is Wisdom Begotten.”Summa theologiae IIa-IIae q. 45, a. 6.

As the fruit of charity and the gift of Wisdom, peace points to a number of Christological themes pertinent to the fullness of the theological life: First, God’s wise, though hidden, plan for establishing and renewing the order of creation; secondly, the requirement that sinful men and women attain the renewal of their godly images, so that they might become more and more conformed to the image of the Eternal Son, “who is Wisdom Begotten;” and consequently, the reality of the communion of saints, or the Church that embraces all those to whom God effectively addresses the call to sanctity. St Paul hints at the pattern that exists between the Covenant of creation and the New Covenant that is written in the blood of Christ: ’’For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ“ (2 Cor 4: 6). And as images of this glory, the Christian believer enjoys the benefits of a tranquil life, even amid the anxieties of a changing and hostile world.

St Paul warns, “Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God” (1 Cor 3: 18). As a warning against this sort of perverse foolishness stultitia, the Christian tradition urges us to adopt a life of prayer and spiritual discipline in order to acquire divine wisdom. For those who do not accept the wisdom of the Gospel, no matter how much human wisdom they may have, stand condemned to an impoverished, if not outright silly, sort of life. “The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2: 14).

St John of the Cross says that the fire of divine charity is “somewhat consuming and destructive.” In order that we might be made worthy partakers of the divine life, what is unspiritual in every believer requires the purification that the Holy Spirit brings. “God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor 2: 10,11). This sort of spiritual purification runs so deep in the human soul, that superficial conformity to rules or a mere general intention to do God’s will never suffices to bring about what St Paul carefully designates as being “conformed to the image of his Son.” In the Church, one discovers this kind of divine wisdom; in fact, spiritual authors speak about the Holy Spirit as the soul of the Church.

In their spiritual treatises, the medieval authors of the Cistercian Order frequently applied a verse from the Book of Wisdom to the Blessed Virgin: “From eternity, in the beginning he created me, and for eternity I shall not cease to exist” (Wis 24: 9). The Church venerates Mary as the Seat of Wisdom because the virgin mother of the Savior, who as St Ambrose reminds us “remains active in his mother in a way that is beyond our understanding,” ranks first among all the elect. She also reigns as Queen of Peace. Mary’s place in the Church derives principally from her divine maternity. In fact, we hear the Trinitarian echo in the words that announce her special mission in the Church: “And the angel said to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God’ “ (Lk 1: 35). Because she is the mother of Christ, Mary also serves as the spiritual mother of all those who are incorporated into Christ. Rightly do the Christian faithful venerate our Lady as the Mother of the Church. Those who look for peace in themselves or human insight, rather than in Mary and the wisdom that God alone provides through the power of the Holy Spirit, will do well to recall the words from the Book of Wisdom that the Church’s liturgy allegorically places on Mary’s lips: “Come to me, you who desire me, and eat your fill of my produce… Those who eat me will hunger for more, and those who drink me will thirst for more” (Wis 24: 19, 21).