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Aquinas on the Nature of Christ's Punishment and its Role in His Work of Satisfaction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Daniel Waldow Open the ORCID record for Daniel Waldow [Opens in a new window]
Daniel Waldow*
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Duquesne University
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poverello12@gmail.com
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Abstract

The purpose of this work is to explicate Thomas Aquinas' teaching regarding the nature of satisfaction, punishment, and the relation between the two in the Passion of Christ. This task is undertaken as a response to recent treatments of Aquinas' soteriology that misinterpret his understanding of the penal nature of Christ's work of satisfaction. I argue that Aquinas' explication of Christ's ‘satisfactory punishment’ on the cross does not reduce the salvific significance of the Passion to the mere endurance of a penalty in order to fulfill an arbitrary legal requirement, nor does it reflect a notion of God as wrathful and delighting in human suffering. Rather, the punishment that constitutes the Passion is a complex reality that is willed by God and chosen by Christ as a fitting means of attaining the end of his saving mission, namely, the healing and elevation of sinners.

Keywords

aquinassatisfactionpunishmentcharitypassion
Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 103 , Issue 1103 , January 2022 , pp. 7 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 O'Collins, Gerald, Jesus Our Redeemer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 136CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 137.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid., pp. 137-8. The seventh chapter of the Council of Trent's Decree on Justification taught that Christ's passion ‘made satisfaction for us to God the Father’ (pro nobis Deo Patri satisfecit), . See Denzinger, Heinrich, Enchiridion Symbolorum: 43rd Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012)Google Scholar, paragraph 1529.

5 O'Collins, Jesus Our Redeemer, p. 138.

6 Council of Trent session 22, chapter 2, Denzinger paragraph 1743.

7 O'Collins translates the Latin placare as ‘to appease,” and interprets this as meaning that Christ's sacrifice ‘appeases’ the anger of God.

8 Ibid., pp. 138-139.

9 Ibid., p. 139.

10 The current Catechism of the Catholic Church promulgated by Pope John Paul II maintains the language of ‘satisfaction’ in reference to Christ's death. See paragraphs 615 and 616.

11 Peterson, Brandon, ‘Paving the Way? Penalty and Atonement in Thomas Aquinas’ Soteriology’, International Journal of Systematic Theology 15, no.3 (2013), p. 278CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 279.

13 Ibid., p. 270.

14 Ibid., p. 276.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., p. 275.

17 Ibid., pp. 274-275. In a more recent article, Peterson again critiques those who interpret Anselm's teaching on satisfaction in penal terms. Yet, he also argues that Anselm's teaching on satisfaction is best interpreted according to its auxiliary role in the ‘person-centered’ soteriology of Thomas Aquinas. Thus, it is not clear if he still thinks Thomas's view of satisfaction corrupted Anselm's along penal lines. See Peterson, Brandon R., ‘Would A Forgiving God Demand Satisfaction? An Examination of Mercy and Atonement’, Angelicum 93, no. 4 (2016): pp. 875-894Google Scholar.

18 Jeffery, Steve, Ovey, Michael, and Sach, Andrew, ed. Pierced For Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2007), p. 162Google Scholar.

19 Ibid., p. 184.

20 Ibid., citing Summa Theologiae III, q. 47, a. 3.

21 Ibid., p. 185, citing ST III, q. 48, a. 4.

22 Ibid.

23 ST III, q. 85, a. 3 and q. 90, a. 1, ad 2, respectively. All citations from the Summa are based on the Latin Leonine Edition and the English translation by Lawrence Shapcote, of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province.

24 ST III, q. 85, a. 3.

25 ST III, q. 85, a. 2.

26 Davies, Brian, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 327Google Scholar.

27 ST III, q. 85, a. 2. Thomas explains that compensation is needed for ‘the destruction of past sin’.

28 ST III, q. 85, a. 3.

29 ST III, q. 90, a. 2.

30 Ibid.

31 ST III, q. 48, a. 2.

32 Ibid.

33 ST III, q. 48, a. 2, ad 2.

34 ST III, q. 48, a. 2, ad 3.

35 White, Thomas Joseph, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015), p. 358CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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37 ST III, q. 49, a. 3, ad 2.

38 ST III, q. 49, a. 3, ad 1.

39 ST III, q. 49, a. 1. See also ad 4 and 5, as well as a. 3, ad 2 and 3.

40 Nieuwenhove, Rik Van, ‘‘Bearing the Marks of Christ's Passion’: Aquinas’ Soteriology’, in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Nieuwenove, Rik Van and Wawrykow, Joseph (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p. 296Google Scholar.

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43 Koritansky, Peter Karl, Thomas Aquinas and the Philosophy of Punishment (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), p. 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the other hand, malum culpa (‘fault’) is ‘the evil we do’ (p. 103). See Aquinas’ De Malo q. 1, a.4 and Augustine's On Free Choice, bk 1, chp 1.

44 Ibid., pp. 103-4.

45 Davies, Brian, Thomas Aquinas on God and Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 ST III, q. 14 (bodily defects) and q. 15 (defects of soul).

47 ST III, q. 14, a. 1. Emphasis added.

48 See also ST III, q. 14, a. 3, ad 1.

49 ST III, q. 14, a. 4, ad 1.

50 ST I-II, q. 85, a. 5.

51 Noia, J.A. Di, O.P. ‘Not ‘Born Bad’: The Catholic Truth about Original Sin In A Thomistic Perspective’, The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review, no. 81 (2017), p. 350Google Scholar.

52 Ibid., p. 352.

53 ST III, q. 14, a. 4.

54 ST I-II, q. 87, a. 7.

55 ST III, q. 15, a. 4.

56 Titus, Craig Steven, ‘Passions In Christ: Spontaneity, Development, and Virtue’, The Thomist 73 (2009), pp. 66-67CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘The notion of passio as a ‘defect’ . . . entails that his passiones involve . . . his capacity to hunger, suffer, and die. In the wake of various denials of the passibility of Christ (esp. Hilary of Poitiers), Aquinas needs to underscore the possibility and psychosomatic reality of Christ's physical pain and psychological suffering’.

57 ST III, q. 15, a. 6.

58 Gondreau, Paul, The Passions of Christ's Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2009), p. 310Google Scholar. Joseph Wawrykow explains, ‘Basically, Aquinas ascribes those perfections and those defects to Christ that will further his salvific work, confirm his genuine humanity, and allow him to serve as the moral exemplar of other humans who aspire to God as end. And he denies to Christ those defects that would put his salvific work in jeopardy’, such as sin and concupiscence. See his chapter ‘Grace’, in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Nieuwenhove, Rik Van and Wawrykow, Joseph (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), p. 214Google Scholar.

59 ST III, q. 15, a. 6, 7, and 9, respectively.

60 ST III, q. 15, a. 6.

61 Ibid.

62 Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald, The Love of God and the Cross of Jesus: Volume One, trans. Marie, Sister Jeanne (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co. 1948), p. 209Google Scholar.

63 ST III, q. 15, a. 6, ad 3.

64 Ibid.

65 ST III, q. 46, a. 6.

66 ST III, q. 46, a. 5.

67 ST III, q. 46, a. 6.

68 ST I-II, q. 87, a. 7.

69 Ibid.

70 Sweeney, Eileen, ‘Vice and Sin’, in The Ethics of Aquinas, ed. Pope, Stephen J. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), p. 157Google Scholar.

71 ST I-II, q. 87, a. 6.

72 ST I-II, q. 6, a. 6.

73 Ibid.

74 ST III, q. 14, a.1, ad 1.

75 Ibid.

76 ST III, q. 46, a. 6, ad 2.

77 Ibid.

78 Wallace, Joel Matthew, ‘Inspiravit ei voluntatem patiendi pro nobis, infundendo ei caritatem’: Charity, the Source of Christ's Action according to Thomas Aquinas (Siena: Cantagalli, 2013), p. 374Google Scholar.

79 Ibid., p. 378 and p. 372, respectively.

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82 Ibid., p. 95.

83 Ibid., pp. 76-78. Aquinas ‘sees God as the subsistent exemplar cause by which other things, through participation, have their being and goodness’ (p. 76), and thus ‘exemplar causality sketches a ‘theocentric’ ethics in which the human person, as the image of God, is made by God, for God, and like God’ (p. 78).

84 Legge, Dominic, The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 57Google Scholar.

85 ST I, q. 43, a. 3 and 5.

86 Stump, Eleonore, ‘Providence And The Problem of Evil’, in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, ed. Davies, Brian and Stump, Eleonore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 403Google Scholar.

87 Long, Steven A., The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act: Second Edition (Ave Maria: Sapienta Press, 2015), p. 92Google Scholar.

88 Ibid., p. 93.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid., p. 88.

91 ST III, q. 14, a. 3, ad 1.

92 ST III, q. 14, a. 4, ad 1.

93 ST III, q. 14, a. 1.

94 ST III, q. 14, a. 1, ad 4.

95 ST III, q. 15, a. 2, ad 3.

96 ST III, q. 49, a. 2, ad 2.

97 Ibid.

98 ST III, q. 15, a. 1, ad 5.

99 ST III, q. 48, a. 1.

100 Ibid.

101 Loewe, Lex Crucis, p. 136.

102 ST III, q. 42, a. 1, ad 2.

103 ST III, q. 40, a.1, ad 1.

104 Spezzano, “Be Imitators of God’ (Eph 5:1): Aquinas on Charity and Satisfaction”, Nova et Vetera (English) 15, no. 2 (2017), p. 636.

105 ST I-II, q. 109, a. 8.

106 Wawrykow, Joseph, ‘Grace’, in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Nieuwenhove, Rik Van and Wawrykow, Joseph (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 194-5Google Scholar.

107 ST II-II, q. 104, a. 3, citing St. Gregory. Emphasis added.

108 ST II-II, q. 104, a. 3.

109 Guy Mansini, ‘Obedience Religious, Christological, and Trinitarian’, Nova et Vetera (English) 12, no. 2 (2014), p. 401. See also ST III, q. 47, a. 2, where Aquinas references 1 Kings 15:22: ‘Obedience is preferred to all sacrifices’.

110 ST I-II, q. 87, a. 7.

111 Spezzano, “‘Be Imitators of God’ (Eph 5:1): Aquinas on Charity and Satisfaction”, p. 637.

112 ST III, q. 85, a. 4.

113 Spezzano, “‘Be Imitators of God’ (Eph 5:1): Aquinas on Charity and Satisfaction”, p. 634; citing ST III, q. 85, a. 2.

114 Cessario, Romanus, The Godly Image (Petersham: St. Bede's Publications, 1990), pp. 62-63Google Scholar.

115 Ibid., p. 62.

116 Eileen Sweeney, ‘Vice and Sin’, in The Ethics of Aquinas, p. 157.

117 ST III, q. 49, a. 3, ad 3.

118 ST III, q. 48, a. 2, ad 1.

119 ST III, q. 49, a. 3, ad 2.

120 Garrigou-Lagrange, The Love of God and the Cross of Jesus: Volume One, p. 221.