Prima Pars
Lecture 11: Metaphor, Multiple Senses, and Sacred Scripture

Transcript
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So you say God is fire, right? This is an interesting metaphor, right? But fire can be a metaphor both for the divine nature and a metaphor for the, what, trinity, right? Now, as a metaphor for the divine nature, the light of the fire, right, represents the divine, what, understanding, and the warmth of the fire represents his love, right, and his ability to transform things, right? But also we can say that from fire proceeds, what, light and warmth, right? And from the Father proceeds the Son, who is light, and the Holy Spirit proceeds as love and therefore as warmth, right? So it's a metaphor both for the divine substance and for the trinity, right? So it actually says our mind to see that lightness under this metaphor, right? But in other places, you will be taught opening these things, huh? We have to stop here, and we'll come back to the Tertsian and see if you were things about metaphors and you may get into the next question. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, ordinal illumine our images, and rouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us, and help us to understand all that you're written. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. I think we're up to the third, reply to the third objection in Article 9, is that the third objection was, as some creatures are more sublime, right, so they more approach to a likeness to God. If therefore one takes some things from creatures to carry over to God, we're not going to take things especially from more sublime creatures, and not from the lowest. But this nevertheless is frequently done in Scripture. The Lord is a rock, huh? Well, it's just saying the Lord is a soul. It's a rock, right? To the third, it should be said, as Dionysius teaches, that it is more suitable that divine things in Scripture be treated under the figures or likenesses of lowly bodies, right, vile bodies, than of noble bodies. And this for three reasons. First, because through this or by this, the human soul is more freed from mistake or error. For it's manifest, it appears, that these things are not said property about divine things, which could be a doubt, if they were described under the figures of noble, what? Bodies. Okay? So the great philosopher, Anak Segrist, got in trouble for saying the sun is a stone on fire. We know it's the god Apollo, right? Okay? But nobody would think maybe the rock is the god Apollo, but maybe the sun is, huh? So if you take it from lowly bodies, then you're not going to be so deceived, huh? And they especially would be deceived, who cannot enable to think of anything more noble, right, than bodies, and that's most beautiful, right? I remember, you know, a conversation there to one of my philosophical associates there and his mother, you know, and trying to explain that God and His divine nature has no body, and she just couldn't understand this. She didn't know she was a good Catholic, you know? So it's hard for people to rise above their body, right? Right above bodies. Secondly, because this way is more suitable to the knowledge which we have about God in this life. For He's more made known to us what He is not than what He is. And therefore, likenesses of those things which are more distant from God give us a truer estimate about Him. That He is something above what we can, what, say or even think, huh? I thought, you know, Father Boulay said at one time, in that sense, symbolic theology is higher than other theology, right? Because that's kind of the ultimate thing in this life. You know, He's above all of our thinking, huh? Third, because through things of this sort, the divine things are more, what, hidden from the, what, unworthy, right? Okay. You know, it's a reason He gave an answer to another rejection as well, huh? In the book on the Sentences, He gives other reasons why we should use metaphors, huh? And one reason, of course, is that every part of man should be, what, subject to God, right? So if we subject the legs and we genuflect, let's say, right, or kneel, how much more so the imagination, which is higher than the legs. And so if we, you know, use our hands and everything like that, but the imagination is, you know, mixed to the reason and the will, huh? And, of course, the imagination is a great cause of deception and so on. So you want to bring the imagination into subjection to God, and that's what these metaphors do, huh? Okay? So, going back for a moment to the use of metaphors by the theologian, or by scripture, rather, and by the poet, huh? It goes back to that thing we saw in the second book of wisdom, that the difficulty in knowing can have two different causes, right? The difficulty can be in the things themselves, or it can be in the weakness of our mind, huh? And in the case of the poet, the weakness, the difficulty, is in the thing itself, that they're not really, what, that understandable. But in the case of God, he's too understandable for us. So it's due to the weakness of our mind that we don't understand God very well. So, in that sense, it's because of the difficulty in knowing that we use metaphors, both the poet and the sacred scripture, but for exactly different difficulties. But he has something similar, and it's something, in a way, beyond our reason to some extent, huh? So, you know, when he talked about a play, in Aristotle, in the book on the poetic art, he says that Homer taught all the Greeks how to write a good play, how to write a good story. And he taught them that the unity of a play doesn't consist in being about one man. There's all kinds of things that happen to one man. But it should be a course of action as a beginning, a middle, and an end. And so they fit together. And if it really is a beginning, a middle, and an end, you can't take this out or take that out, you see? But if you look at your life or my life as it really is, it's a jumble of things that don't really have any, what, connection one with another. And I did one thing at this hour, and then another hour I did something else. And they don't fit together into any kind of a whole, right? So when you give a plot that's a beginning and an end, you're giving an order, and therefore an understandability, more than it really has. And so the metaphors are what? Raising this up, huh? Okay. And you have something like that, of course, with music, too. That secular music is trying to represent something that you can't quite say in words. I was looking at Roman Juliet again, and there's words in Romeo where he's talking about let music express our joy, or it's like you can't say in words, right? But the joy is. And that's because it's not quite understandable. You can't quite say what God is either, but that's for a different reason. That the weakness of the mind. So you have those two. So it's interesting that Thomas has this article here, although in the Summa Theologiae you're not going to be proceeding metaphorically, right? Right. This would be more appropriate to certain parts of Scripture and so on. But perhaps one reason why he does it, and this is kind of a particular reason, is to guard us against thinking that the argumentative part is getting us as far as it might think it's getting us. But also because some of the objections in trying to understand, what we can understand about God, proceed from taking the metaphors, what? Literal. Literal. Taking them as being said properly, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, let's look now at the 10th article here. Whether Sacred Scripture has under one letter many senses, huh? To the 10th he proceeds thus. It seems that Sacred Scripture does not under one letter have many senses, which are the historical. Now, how should you translate Luterales, huh? I think I've maybe spoken about this before. I mean, some people translate it in the literal sense, right? Mm-hmm. But I think there's a danger in doing that, because as Thomas will explain, when Scripture uses a metaphor, people say, well, that's not the literal sense, you see. You see, God is a rock. Well, Thomas will put that under the sense of the, what? Letter. Literal. So, to avoid that, I in English often say, what? Sense of the letter. Mm-hmm. Okay? So, when it says that the Lord is my rock, the sense of the letter is not that he's a rock. Right. You're saying metaphorically. You're saying metaphorically. that God is what? Our support or something of this sort, right? Just like if the husband says his wife, honey, right? His meaning is not that she's honey, but that she's sweet, nice, so, okay? So a lot of times people take literal sense as excluding metaphors, right? Yeah. Okay? So you've got to be careful about that. The allegorical, the tropological, which is not the most common word for that, the moral sense is better, right? And the onagogic, okay? Now the first one would be the sense of the letter, but they also call it the historical sense. And then the other three would be the, what, three spiritual senses, huh? Okay, now the first objection. For the multiplicity of senses in one scripture gives rise to confusion and deception and takes away the firmness of, what, argument, right? Whence from many statements does not precede argumentation, but according to this some fallacies are assigned. But sacred scripture ought to be efficacious to showing the truth without any deception or without any fallacy. Therefore, there ought not to be, under one letter, many senses to be treated, huh? Moreover, Augustine says in the book about the usefulness of believing that the scripture, which is called the Old Testament, huh, is treated fourfold according to, what, history, according to etiologium. I guess that's probably from the Greek word for cause, huh? Nityas, huh? So you're giving me the cause, huh? What's that word? Etymology, right? You know, we used to use, I have a copy of it at home, in fact, a book by Partridge, you know, called Origins. Have you seen that? About this thick, so it's kind of a nice one. I mean, there are more complete etymologies. This is pretty useful, and it's one that they kind of, you know, get you from your personal library, huh? What does the word etymology mean, you see? Well, he used to have the book here, Origins. That's what it says what etymology means, right? A logos about the ideas, the beginning of the cause, right? Maybe it translates more to the sense of beginning, right? So he had that little bit here in the same word here, etiologia. According to analogy, according to allegory, right? Which four from the four, four said, seem to be altogether, what? Alien, something kind of different. It's not, therefore, suitable that the same letter of second scripture be laid out according to the four senses before. The second objection is a different one, right? It's not so much denying the multiplicity of senses, or they should be, but they're not the ones that he just mentioned. Augustine has this other one, huh? Moreover, and then the other one, and the third objection, which has let something out. Moreover, in addition to the four said senses, right, there's found the, what, parabolical, or the parabolic, which is not contained among those, what, four senses. Okay? So the first objection is quite different from the second and the third, right? The third one is accusing that distinction as being, suffering a sin of omission, right? And then the second one is saying, well, Augustine seems to give a different list than that one, right? Well, the first one is saying they shouldn't be on list at all. They shouldn't be on list. It's making an evident sense, huh? But against this is what Gregory says. This is what Gregory the Great, huh? Not too many greats around, huh? Gregory the Great. In the 20th book of the, what, morals, huh? Thomas is always quoting that morals, really. Secunda, secundi, right? He gets down to the details of moral matters, huh? And it was that Gregory gives the four species of pride and so on, huh? And Thomas will often talk about those seven capital sins, huh? Gregory has a lot of things to say about these. So Gregory says that sacred scripture transcends all the sciences, right? By its, what, way of speaking. Because by one and the same speech, while it narrates something that's taken place, it, what, brings forth a mystery, right? I think Thomas sometimes calls the spiritual sense, mystical sense, huh? I think that's fairly common in the, at least common in scripture, right? Okay? And this suggests the, like, use of the word, you know? Okay? I used to puzzle, what does he mean by that? Does he mean the same thing as the spiritual sense? But I think he does, mainly, you know? But, anyway. Okay, now in the body of the article. This is the key point now. I answer, it should be said, that the author of sacred scripture is God. That's where he got us again. In whose power it is, that not only does he accommodate, what, vocal sounds, huh? To signifying something, right? Which even man is able to do. But also, the things themselves, right? And therefore, since in all sciences, voices, vocal sounds, I used to say, signify something. This science has proper or private which, you might say, huh? Sorry, the problem there, how you translate proprium in English, right? Because you talk about, say, the bonum proprium, and the bonum commune, the common good. You only should recall, not the proper good, but the private good, right? You know? But it's something that belongs exclusively, often, to something, huh? So it's private, this science, you might say. And that the very things themselves that are signified through the vocal sounds, huh? Also signify something, right? So what he's saying is that, in all the sciences, vocal sounds signify something. They better. Okay? What's unique here, because the author is God, right? His providence extends to all things. That not only do the vocal sounds signify something, but the things themselves, right, in turn, signify something further. So there's a, what, order there, right? And the first is called the sense of the letter. And the second, which is more than one, is called the spiritual sense, huh? Okay? The spiritual sense presupposes the sense of the, what, letter. Okay? So he says, that first, now again, that's why I'm just saying, first implies order, right, huh? So he calls that the first signifying, the first meaning, if you wish, right? That first signifying, by which vocal sounds, meaning words, signify, what? Things, right? Pertains to the first sense that we enumerated, which is the historical sense, right? Or as I translate, the sense of the, what? Letter. Okay? But that signifying, by which the things that have been signified to the vocal sounds, right, again, signify other things, right, is called the, what, spiritual sense, which is founded upon the sense of the letter, and supposes it, right? Okay? So it's important to see the order there, right, huh? Okay? Now as I say, people sometimes get mixed up with the metaphor, right? Because they'll think that the sense of the letter, you say God is a rock, maybe it is it is a rock, maybe it is a rock, maybe it is a rock, maybe it is a rock, maybe it is a rock, maybe it is a rock, maybe it is a rock, maybe it is a rock, maybe it is a rock, maybe it is a rock, maybe it is a rock. That is not so, right? Thomas has an explanation of figures of speech very good in the commentaries on St. Paul, right? And it's a text in St. Paul there where St. Paul uses some irony, huh? And therefore Thomas has to defend that he's not lying, right? And he explains what figurative speech is, and he says that when a man speaks figuratively, the meaning of his words is not the meaning of the speaker. But there's some connection between the meaning of the words and the meaning of the speaker. So, and then he contrasts these two figures of speech, irony, the one that St. Paul happens to be using there, and metaphor, right? Because metaphor is based upon what? Likeness, huh? Okay. So when the husband calls his wife honey, or a more general metaphor, sweet, right? What he means is, oh, thou pleasant one. Thou agreeable one. You see? And that's by reason it's sort of a likeness, huh? Because it's sweet, it's pleasant, and agreeable. Every kid likes candy. If a kid doesn't like candy, I suspect there's something wrong with it, right? If I can't agreeable. And so what is the meaning of the husband? He says, honey, you know, not the sticky stuff, you know, that's hard to handle. But, oh, thou pleasant one, he means, right? You see? So the connection between what his word means and what he means is, what? One of likeness, huh? Okay? And I talk to the students of the college there about irony, you know. I say, now suppose I come in here on the weekend and I find you drunk under the table. And I say, what a fine example of an assumption college student, right? You know what I mean, don't you? But there, I mean, the connection is just the opposite of what I said, right? Okay? I was watching a movie there, one of the Bond movies or something like that, in the theater. And the guy in the bathroom, he knocks the other guy over into the tub and grabs the wire and, ah! Who's the guy? And I hear somebody around me say, nice guy. But a lot of times in day life, you know, you hear something a little bit nasty, somebody say, gee, you're nice. You know? And everybody knows that they're speaking ironically, right? So, the sense of the letter is the opposite of what the words mean. The sense of the letter is not that you are nice. Okay? And so, some people, you know, make the mistake then of making the sense of the letter, what the word rock means, right? In which case, scripture would be found upon something false, right? And he's saying God is a rock. He's not saying that, right? He's speaking metaphorically. Okay? So, you've got to see, that's one place where people get mixed up on the distinction here, right? And I think our use of the expression in English, literal sense, you see, people tend to use that for the non-figurative, non-metaphorical, right? And therefore, it gets them all caught up when they try to understand these things. Okay. Now, the second sense is going to be divided into what? So, notice, although there are four senses, the human mind breaks down and can't understand the distinction into four, right? It doesn't, doesn't march, right? It's like that, by the French, yeah, yeah. So, you distinguish the sense of the letter against the spiritual sense, which is a distinction into what? Two. And then, you subdivide the spiritual sense into three. So, every single division is into either two or three, yeah? Okay. It's like when Thomas takes up Gregory's, the four senses, or four kinds of pride, right? Well, usually divide them into three and then subdivide one of them to get the four. Don't go into pride today, but guard ourselves against that. Okay, now he goes into describing these three spiritual senses. For as the Apostle says, huh? Now, that's the example, again, of Antonia Masia. Paul and Peter, right, are called the Apostles by Antonia Masia. A little bit like John Paul II often called them the Princes or the Apostles, huh? And that's why that feast, what is it, June 29th? I mean, no. The feast of Peter and Paul is the one where the guy from Constantinople, you know, comes and he goes over there for Andrew's feast, you know. Well, we got the big names. Peter and Paul. So, Thomas will often refer to St. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles. By the Apostle, huh? It's the Apostle. For as the Apostle says in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the old law is a figure of the, what? The new law, right? A little bit like David, the psalm, the figure of Christ, huh? And then he quotes Dionysius for the second one here. And the new law itself, as Dionysius says in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, is a figure of, what? Future glory, right? And then, in the new law, those things which are done and narrated in the head, meaning Christ, right, are signs of those things which we ought to do, huh? Okay, now he's going to talk about the name of these three senses. According, therefore, as those things which are the old law signify those which are the new, there is the allegorical sense, huh? According as those things which are done in Christ or by Christ, or in those things which signify Christ, are signs of those things which we ought to do, there is the moral sense, huh? And insofar as it signifies those things which are in eternal glory, it's the anagogicus, huh? Anan in Greek means what? I can not only, huh? Cut up. So the anagogicus is what? Leading up, right? But now, Thomas associates himself with the great Augustine in this next paragraph, right? Because, however, the sense of the letter, which the author intends, since the sense of the letter is that which the author intends, but the author of the sacred scripture is God, who comprehends, right, all things at once by his understanding. It is not inconvenient, unsuitable, it's not unfitting. As Augustine says in the 12th book of the Confessions, if even according to the sense of the letter, in one sense, in one letter of scripture, there are many, what? Senses, huh? Okay? And that's the opinion of both Bestin and Thomas, huh? I think if you go through church documents and see the use of scripture, huh? You'll see that there is more than one sense of the letter. Like, for example, take one example here. I am the way, the truth, and the life, huh? Now, sometimes I've seen the popes talking about these three in reference to the three attributes of what Christ is man. He's king, he's priest or prophet, right? And he's what? Priest, right? Okay? And so life, priest, right? Truth, the teacher, the prophet. And the way, huh? Is what? Kingship? Commandments, right? Okay? And sometimes you divide sacred doctrine or Christian doctrine that way, huh? Almost the same, like dividing according to faith, hope, and what? Charity, right? Okay? So that's the way they understand that scripture, right? These are, you know, it's the beginning, right? So the way you can divide these things. But now, if you look at it, The text there, another sense of the letter that might come to mind before that, because they're asking him, where are you going and how do you get there? And Christ is answering the two questions by saying, I am the way, the road, the truth and the life. He's the end and the goal as God, as truth and life itself, eternal life. And as man, he's the road to get there. That's a different understanding, isn't it? Of the same thing, you know? One of my favorite songs there, what was it, 62, and it goes something like this. O God, you are my God, whom I seek, for you my flesh pines, and my soul thirsts, like the earth, parts lifeless and without water. Thus that I gaze towards you in the sanctuary, to see your power and your glory. Okay. And then it goes on to say, what? He's going to, what? Your kindness is a greater good than life. And so on. And then it talks about, what? The banquet, huh? The riches of a banquet. That's mostly satisfying. And the result of this, my now praise you. But what does that banquet signify? It seems to be heaven. Well, I think it would be understood to refer either to the banquet of heaven or of the Eucharist. I'm influenced by Thomas' prayer, because in his communion prayers, you know, the famous one of sacrum convivium, and co Christus sumitu, and so on. There he's calling the Eucharist a sacred banquet. But then, but then, in a fabulic convivium, you know, the inexpressible, he's referring to heaven, right? At the end of his communion prayers. So maybe you could have these two senses, right? Okay. Or, maybe you could say that the banquet signifies the Eucharist, and then the spiritual sense is the next slide. It's kind of a foretaste of the banquet of heaven, right? So, there's more and more way to look at it. So I think that's interesting, and both Augustine and Thomas say that the sense of utter can be more than one, right? And sometimes, you know, there's a reference to Augustine there at the end of the Confession, where he's talking about those who say, now this is what the Scripture means, right? And your sense can't be right, huh? And Augustine's saying, well, any sense that is orthodox, right, and can be fitted to the thing, can be a sense of the, what? Scripture. And I might see something in a scripture or passage that you don't see, right? And you see something that I don't see. And it's not that I'm right and you're wrong, or vice versa. But they're both, could be, what? Senses of the letter. Thomas, in the commentary on Isaiah, it's there, you know. There's kind of beautiful ways where scripture is metaphorically called water. Sometimes it's called fire, sometimes it's called water. Because you know these have to be said metaphorically, because the same thing can't be hot and cold and wet and dry and so on. But one of the reasons why it's called water is that water adapts itself to what? The shape of anything, right? So your problem in life might be different than my problem in life, and your situation is different than mine. But the scripture fits my situation, and lo and behold, it fits your situation. So metaphorically, it's like water, right? It fits my container and your container, even though they're quite differently shaped, right? And so something like that, with there being more than one sentence of the letter, right? I read this word and say, hey, this, this, you know? And I've seen that done a lot, you know, in capable statements and those, you know, in authority and things of that story. So it shows the richness of it, huh? Even the comic book, the songs there, Thomas Sticks, some places, you know, there's more than one interpretation of it, right? There's more than one interpretation of understanding it. And sometimes the two senses may be even, you know, talking about something good, something bad, huh? I've seen that 17th Psalm, in fact. Okay, now let's come back to the first objection. Doesn't this multiplicity of senses be, you know, what? Confused, huh? And I remember my cousin down, you know, saying, what a scandal there when you first started reading the golden chain, you know? And you get, you know, the Church Fathers, you know, giving a different explanation to the same passage, you know? This is terribly, you know? I mean, is that really a confusion? Is that simply a richness of the Word of God, huh? And you don't, there's some Psalms, you know, I know by heart. I don't know, I'm 50, but, you know. 20 or so, I don't know. But the ones that I know and use in my own prayer life, huh? As years go by, I see these again and again. I set to see, you know, another meaning in them. That's really very, very interesting, you know? So, whether it be the same author seeing another meaning in the same thing he's read, or two different authors saying different things, you know? It shouldn't be too much, you know, my sense. Because that means that I like this sense, not because it's true, but because it's my sense. And then, you know, you're driven, as Augustine says, from truth, which is common, and not my good, more than your good, to falsehood. And he goes back to that passage, and the devil spoke from himself, and he lied. Okay, to the first, therefore, it should be said that the multiplicity of these senses does not make, what, equivocation, huh? Okay? Or another species of multiplicity. Because, as has been said, these senses are not multiplied on account of this, that one vocal sound signifies many things. But because the very things themselves signify the vocal sounds are able to be, what, signs of other things, huh? Okay? So, he's just, he's not talking here now about, you know, any question arising from the big multiplicity of senses of the letter. He's talking about the distinction between the sense of the letter and the spiritual senses, right? The sense of the letter there is not multiple, because the sense of the letter signifies these things, right? And it's the things that now signify something further, right? Mm-hmm. Okay? So, it's not one and the same thing there that is signifying more than one. Okay? The sense of the letter is signifying this thing, and this thing, in turn, signifying something else. It's not the same thing that's signifying more than one. And thus, there is no, no confusion follows in sacred scripture, because all the senses are founded upon one, namely the sense of the letter. And from this only is one able to draw, what? An argument, right? Okay? Not, however, from those things which are said by allegory, as Augustine says in his epistle against, what, Vincent the Donatist, that's one of the heretics there in North Africa, right? But, nevertheless, from this, nothing is, what, taken away or lacking in the sacred scripture, because nothing that is contained under the spiritual sense necessary for a faith, that scripture does not treat elsewhere manifestly through the sense of the, what? A letter, yeah. It's sort of like the other objection, you know, about the metaphor, right? But it's metaphoric in one place, it's said openly in another place. Okay, now, the second objection was this apparently different enumeration of four things by Augustine, huh? But as Thomas goes on to explain, those three, history, etiology, analogia, pertain to one, one, what, sense of the letter, this is a certain distinction there. For history, as Augustine himself lays out, when simply something is proposed, right? Okay? Etiology, when the cause of the thing said is assigned, huh? As when our Lord assigns the cause, wherefore Moses permitted the license of repudiating their wives, because otherwise he'd kill them. On account of the hardness of their hearts, right? Huh? Thank you.