¹ Thomas Aquinas writes in the Summa Theologiae, Tertia Pars question 60 article 3:

Hereafter ST 3a q60 a3. I focus on the “form of our sanctification,” specified by Thomas’ binding together of the virtues and sacraments. I treat baptism but other equally rich passages include ST 3a q73 on Eucharist and charity and 3a q85 in which penance is a virtue as well as a sacrament. This paper presumes the continuity of Thomas’ thought between ST 2a and 3a and along similar lines Servais Pinckaers O.P., Romanus Cessario O.P., and Matthew Levering all identify a lacuna in scholarship concerning the connection between his moral thought and Christology in Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1995)Google Scholar and The Pinckaers Reader (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, 2^nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Christ's Fulfillment of Torah and Temple (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002Google Scholar. Thomas P. Harmon begins to address that gap in “The Sacramental Consummation of the Moral Life According to St. Thomas Aquinas,” New Blackfriars 91.1034: 465–480CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Using Thomas’ language, the sacrament of baptism entails (1) a new beginning and new end as orientation toward one's supernatural end and (2) a series of beginnings and ends as reorientation of one's finite ends toward their supernatural goal, thus our attaining or failing to attain these (newly oriented) natural ends.

³ Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI speaks of the sacraments themselves with respect to dynamism: “the Blessed Sacrament contains a dynamism, which has the goal of transforming mankind and the world into the New Heaven and New Earth, into the unity of the risen body,” (87) and “think of the great saints of history, from whom streams of faith, hope, and love really came forth, we can understand these words and thus understand something of the dynamism of Baptism, of the promise and vocation it contains” (223); moreover he speaks of the “dynamism of the liturgy as a whole” (122) in Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco, CA: St. Ignatius Press, 2000). This paper's invocation of the same principle of dynamism would be well complemented by engaging and drawing out Cardinal Ratzinger's treatment to offer a broader treatment of the Christian life.

⁴ Vulgate: “Accipietis virtutem supervenientis Spiritus Sancti in vos et eritis mihi testes…”

⁵ My conclusions fit well with the work of Romanus Cessario, O.P. cited in Footnote 1.

⁶ Augustine, Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding (New York: Random House, Inc.,1998), IX.6.14.

⁷ Augustine, Confessions, IX.7.16.

⁸ Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶ 1269.

⁹ David Aers notes Augustine's concern with baptism being especially a public act, involving neighbors and self, inseparably collective and individual, offered to Christ (Salvation and Sin, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 6–7). Oliver O'Donovan adds to the discussion by noting that man's life as social goes beyond the philosophers, Augustine stressing the “distinctive” capacity of Christian thought to “break free of an individualist notion of the good” and develop “a social one” (“The Political Thought of the City of God, 19,” in Bonds of Imperfection: Christian Politics Past and Present ed. O'Donovan, et al (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004): 48–72, 51–2)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Kenney, John Peter, Mysticism of St. Augustine: Rereading the Confessions (New York: Routledge, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pages 11 and 76; 75.

¹¹ Augustine, Confessions, IX.8.17–22.

¹² The several strands of rhetoric surrounding Augustine's depiction of tears and grief could be another illustration of my point here. One might compare them, pre-baptism and post. His tears over Monica's death are among the most complex. See Griffiths, Paul, “Tears and Weeping: An Augustinian View,” Faith & Philosophy 28.1 (2011): 19–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ ST 2a2ae q47 a14 s.c.

¹⁴ ST 2a2ae q47 a14 ad3; see ST 3a q69 a6.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ ST 1a2ae q62 a1 co. et q109 a2; De veritate 24 a14 co.

¹⁷ See Velde, Rudi te, Aquinas on God: the ‘divine science’ of the Summa Theologiae (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006): c.152Google Scholar.

¹⁸ A dual emphasis on the metaphysical ordering of the Summa with Thomas’ concerns for the formation of his reader is my attempt to synthesize the insights of Jean-Pierre Torrell, Joseph Boyle, and Mark Jordan. (As uneasy as a synthesis this may be with such disparate authors!) Substantiating this claim would bolster exactly the relationship between the Confessions and Summa that I posit here. See Torrell, , Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol I: The Person and His Work. Trans. Royal, Robert. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1996)Google Scholar. Boyle, , Aquinas's Summa Theologiae: Critical Essays, ed. Davies, Brian. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006)Google Scholar:

1–24. Jordan, “The Summa's Reform of Moral Teaching – and Its Failures” in Contemplating Aquinas: On the Varieties of Interpretation, ed. Kerr, Fergus (London: SCM, 2003): 41–54Google Scholar; “Aquinas's Summa theologiae as Pedagogy” in Medieval Education, eds. Begley, Ronald and Koterski, Joseph W. (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2005): 133–142Google Scholar.

For a sampling of different orderings attributed to the Summa Theologiae, see Brian Johnstone, “The Debate on the Structure of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas: from Chenu (1939) to Metz (1998)” in Aquinas as Authority, ed. Geest, Paul Van, Goris, Harm, and Leget, Carlo (Leuven: Peeters, 2002): 187–200Google Scholar.

¹⁹ This rhetoric is best tempered with qualification, but qualification renders the claim more grave rather than less since it has specifically to do with mortal sin. Thomas writes: “Mortal sin is incompatible with the infused virtues, but it is consistent with acquired virtue: while venial sin is compatible with virtues, whether infused or acquired” (ST 1a2ae q71 a4; see too ST 1a2ae q63 a2 ad2). Although the difference between infused and acquired virtue has several explanations, here Thomas concentrates the character of acquired virtue as neither generated nor destroyed in a single action.

Moreover I do not think the point for Thomas is that we are “sinful” without infused virtue, for in fact his emphasis lands somewhere else in ST 1a2ae q71 – that acquired habits enjoy a kind of stability in the face of sin. This is not to downplay the role of sin in alienating creatures from God but to acknowledge what Thomas appears to acknowledge: sin is expected. Although it is possible not to sin, we sin. Rather than dismissing the need for grace, further underscores the needfulness for the sacraments to help fix us against the onslaught of sin. Whereas sin disintegrates, the sacraments integrate. Thomas’ turn first to sin and then to the sacraments means that sin need not have the last word.

²⁰ Catechism of the Council of Trent.

²¹ I imply the dark side of this thesis: that our incomplete participation has gradations ranging from complete rejection to partial perfection, e.g., infused virtues alongside acquired vice.

²² Catechism of the Council of Trent.

²³ ST 1a2ae q110 a3 et 4; 3a q62 a2. Arguably I could strengthen this thesis by way of Thomas’ identification of the sacramental character with the character of Christ in ST 3a q63.

²⁴ Augustine, De Trinitate, trans. Arthur West Haddan, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 3., ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), Book XII, Chapter 9 (Paragraph 14). Thomas cites extensively Augustine's De Trinitate in his account of vice and sin, ST 1a2ae qq71–89, esp. Book XII in q74.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Alasdair MacIntyre, “Who Needs to Learn What from Whom? A partially autobiographical reflection on contemporary academic philosophy and one particular Thomist tradition” (February, 2005), 28.

²⁷ I am indebted to conversations with Paul Griffiths on this topic as well as his “The Limits of Narrative Theology,” Chapter 12 in Faith and Narrative, ed. Yandell, Keith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001): 217–236Google Scholar.