Of What Benefit to Himself Was Christ’s Suffering?: Merit in Aquinas’s Theology of the Passion

The Thomist 65 (2001): 385-407 OF WHAT BENEFIT TO HIMSELF WAS CHRIST'S SUFFERING? MERIT IN AQUINAS'S THEOLOGY OF THE PASSION W. JEROME BRACKEN, C.P. Immaculate Conception Monastery Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey Romanus Cessario, in his study Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas, rightly sees Thomas moving from a juridic to a personalist understanding of Christ's suffering. While it is true that Christ's suffering and death pay the penalty for original and personal sins, it is His personal act of love and obedience that satisfies for the original disobedience and lack of love of Adam. Consequently, by Christ acting in "solidarity with suffering humanity, penal suffering becomes 'once and for all' truly restorative and rectifies human willing." It is the rectification of human willing that enables us to join with Christ and enter into full communion with God, which is itself a triune communion. Thus Christ's satisfaction restores us to the image of God, which had been damaged by sin, and Christ's merit perfects that image so that we attain full communion with God in beatific vision.1 This, we understand, is how Christ saves us. But what about Christ Himself, whose human image needed no restoration? Was His suffering only for us? Thomas contends that it was not. In fact, he seems to assume that Christ's suffering was for His own salvation when he writes, "Consequently, Christ by His Passion 1 Romanus Cessario, Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas: Towards .a Personalist Understanding (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, Inc., 1982), 255; 260; 257; 166-67, 207. 385 386 W. JEROME BRACKEN, C.P. merited salvation, not only for Himself, but likewise for all His members."2 How is this possible? He certainly did not merit the salvation of His soul, which is union with God, since, Thomas contends, from the moment of His conception Christ had sanctifying grace and was intellectually united with the very essence of God,3 the source of beatitude.4 The only thing Christ could merit was the "glory of His body" and "whatever ... [pertains] to His outward excellence, as HisAscension, veneration, and the rest."5 However, Thomassays that Christalready merited "the glory ofimmortality . . . in the first instant of His conception."6 This would make Christ's Passion but another cause of this glory. But why accomplish the same thing in another way, when one way is enough? Furthermore, in what meaningful way does Christ's Passion contribute to His salvation when the ultimate salvation is beatificvision, and Christ had this vision from the moment of His conception? It will be the task ofthis paper to develop answers to these questions. Cessario gives us a clue as to how to do this. Aquinas, he says, lays out his programmatic investigation of Christ's Passion in the first three articles of question 46.7 Shifting from the viewpoint according to which God and His justice required Christ's Passion, Thomas points to three ends for which Christ's Passion was willed: (1) that we be "delivered by His Passion" so that we might attain "life everlasting," (2) that Christ might merit "the glory of being exalted," and (3) that God's own "determination regarding the Passion of Christ" would "be fulfilled."8 God's purpose, therefore, is much broader than the fulfillment of His justice. Furthermore, Thomas envisions the Passion as involving "various concurring means" which "are themselves helpful to such an 2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica III, q. 48, a. 1. Translations from the Summa are from the Benziger edition (New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1947). 3 STh III, q. 34, a. 4 4 STh Ill, q. 34, aa. 1, 4; III, q.19, a. 3 5 STh Ill, q. 19, a. 3. 6 STh Ill, q. 34, a. 3, ad 3 7 Cessario, Satisfaction in Aquinas, 190. 8 STh III, q. 46, a. I MERIT IN THE THEOLOGY OF THE PASSION 387 end." These means involve human acts oflove and the virtues, the merit of sanctifying grace and the glory of bliss, our being "more bound to refrain from sin" and the attainment of "man's greater dignity."9 Consequently, we can expect that Thomas...