“Dominus Meus et Deus meus:” Divine Faith—St.

Thomas’s Key to Eucharistic Realism

Reinhard Huetter

Thomistic Institute Intellectual Retreat, Hartford Retreat Center, October 6-9, 2017

Pro manuscripto; not for citation; only for personal use

Opening Remarks

My three retreat talks build upon each other. The terminus a quo, the starting point, is the infused

virtue of divine faith, the terminus ad quem, the goal, is Eucharistic adoration. The capstone that

connects and stabilizes the arch between the starting point, divine faith, and the goal, Eucharistic

adoration, is the real, substantial and hence personal presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament

of the Altar. Eucharistic adoration is a central component of this retreat. It involves us in a great

mystery. I hope to explicate some aspects of this mystery with the help of the theology of St.

Thomas Aquinas aided by the kind of philosophy he thought was the proper instrument for sacra

doctrina, holy teaching—as he used to call Christian theology proper.

It is appropriate, on its 10th anniversary to recall the encyclical letter, On Christian Hope, Spe

Salvi, penned by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007. In this profound encyclical letter, the Pope

Emeritus gives the following answer to the question, “What is faith?”

In the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews (v. 1) we find a kind of definition of

faith which closely links this virtue with hope. … ‘Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped

for; the proof of things not seen.’

He continues thus:
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For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek

word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia. The Latin

translation of the text produced at the time of the early Church therefore reads: Est autem

fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium—faith is the

‘substance’ of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. (#7)

In order to elucidate the nature of faith further, the then Pope turns at this point in the encyclical

letter to Thomas Aquinas. Pope Benedict states:

Saint Thomas Aquinas, using the terminology of the philosophical tradition to which he

belonged, explains it as follows: faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit,

through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not

see. The concept of “substance” is therefore modified in the sense that through faith, in a

tentative way, or as we might say “in embryo”—and thus according to the “substance”—

there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: a whole, true life. And

precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also

creates certainty; this “thing” which must come is not yet visible in the external world (it

does not “appear”), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic reality, we

carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence. … Faith

draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet.” The fact that

this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus

the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into

those of the future. (#7)

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After having established the fundamentally eschatological, anticipatory character of faith, the

then Pope passes on an important teaching from the First Vatican Council’s dogmatic

constitution on the Catholic Faith, “Dei Filius.” Consider the opening lines of the constitution’s

third chapter, entitled “De Fide”:

Since human beings are totally dependent on God as their creator and lord, and created

reason is completely subject to uncreated truth (veritas increata), we are obliged to yield

to God the revealer full submission of intellect and will by faith. This faith, which is the

beginning of human salvation, the catholic church professes to be a supernatural virtue,

by means of which, with the grace of God inspiring and assisting us, we believe to be true

what has been revealed, not because we perceive its intrinsic truth by the natural light of

reason, but because of the authority of God himself, who makes the revelation and can

neither deceive nor be deceived.1

This is divine faith. Three features stand out prominently:

First, habitus: “Faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which

eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see.” Second,

substance: “Through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say ‘in embryo’—and thus

according to the ‘substance’—there are already present in us the things that are hoped for.”

“Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a ‘not yet’.” “Substance”

denotes here a tangible beginning of an eventual fulfillment; it indicates that faith is in a concrete

way eschatologically inchoative. Third, the “Uncreated Truth,” the Veritas Increata. This third,

crucial feature, requires further explication.

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If faith is the beginning of eternal life, then the object of faith should be that whereby the

human being attains eternal life. Hence, the object of faith cannot simply be true things about

God, but must be God himself. In St. Thomas’s crisp language: “The direct object of faith is that

whereby the human being is made one of the blessed.” (ST II-II, q. 2, a. 5)

In order to appreciate the act of faith and the specific habitus or stable disposition that

facilitates it, one must first and foremost consider the relation of the act of faith to its proper

object.

In light of the contemporary ordinary English meaning of the noun “object,” “object of

faith” (obiectum fidei) is an admittedly less than felicitous technical term, a term that had its

remote origin with Aristotle’s epistemological considerations and made a steep career in Western

medieval philosophy and theology. Contemporary connotations of “object” collide head-on with

what “obiectum” actually denotes.

Let me state up-front in a nutshell the proper denomination of “object” (obiectum): “The

term [obiectum,] “object” stands for the reality, thing or person, that engages an act.”2 What

needs to be highlighted is the verb “engage.” The medieval thinkers deployed “object”

(obiectum) in connection with apprehensive and appetitive powers conveying the “whence the

act of apprehension or appetition originates.”3 The Canadian Dominican Thomist Lawrence

Dewan puts the complex matter succinctly:

In the case of apprehension, “obiectum” expresses movement from the thing toward the

soul. In the case of appetition, it expresses movement from the soul toward the thing.

This suggests that in using the word “obiectum” concerning an apprehensive power, one

is expected to imagine something moving from the thing apprehended to the one who

apprehends: perhaps the best illustration would be sound traveling from the gong or bell
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to the ear. Color, for example, would be imagined as behaving somewhat similarly. The

“obiectum” would be what is hurled at and strikes the observer. To call something an

“obiectum” would be something like calling it “striking,” “a striking thing.” On the other

hand, in the case of motive or appetitive powers, the “obiectum” is “that which we go

for,” the target of our pursuit, that at which we hurl ourselves.4

The powers of apprehension and appetition are passive potencies; they are receptive of their

objects before their specific activities are actualized. The “object” (obiectum) has a causal

function upon the act of apprehension; it is from the “object” (let us say, color) that the act of

apprehension (seeing) receives its specific determination which distinguishes it from other kinds

of acts of apprehension (hearing or smelling). Because the object determines the respective act of

apprehension, St. Thomas takes the “object” to operate after the manner of a formal principle. It

is for this reason that he calls it “formal object.”

If you gain a distinct sense that by considering the full meaning of “object” (obiectum)

you are leaving behind the epistemic presuppositions entailed in the Cartesian rupture between

res cogitans, the mind, and res extensa, the material world, as well as in the Kantian rupture

between the transcendental ego and the “thing in itself” (das Ding an sich)—you are right.

According to the realist epistemology of Thomism, there obtains a primordial causal, that is

specifying, engagement of the apperceptive faculties by the “object.” This engagement antecedes

and indeed enables the secondary epistemological reflection of this very dynamic.5 Moreover,

this engagement of the act by the object presupposes an order between human beings and their

world. We see the color of the apple, we hear the sound of the bell, we feel the wetness of the

rain. “Object” denotes realities, persons, and things in view of our distinct engagement by them

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and interaction with them.6 In virtue of our apprehensive powers we are receptive to persons and

things and in virtue of our appetitive powers we are interacting with persons and things. They

become “obiecta” not by any change in themselves, but by being known and desired in a term

that might best be characterized as “intentional union.” As the English Dominican Thomist T. C.

O’Brien aptly puts:

With respect to knowledge, it is the actuality of being itself that ‘allows’ knowledge and

to which the knowledge is a reaction. In the case of appetition, it is the goodness,

therefore the actual being, of the object that prompts and evokes the corresponding love,

desire, hope.7

It is at this very point that we come to appreciate fully St. Thomas’s teaching that faith,

hope, and charity are theological virtues. They are infused stable dispositions that facilitate acts

of faith, hope, and charity that have God as their respective “object.” This means that God unites

Himself to the human in such a way that the human can know, hope in, and love God, for—

remember—“object” denotes here the term of an intentional union of cognition and appetition.

God becoming “object” does not change God but reduces cognitive and appetitive powers to

certain kinds of acts. These acts are facilitated by the specific operative dispositions that

empower the intellect and will to perform acts that entirely surpass their natural orientation.

Consider St. Thomas’s terse statement:

From God comes forth to us … the knowing of truth …. Thus faith makes a person cling

to God as he is the source of a knowing of truth; for we believe to be true those things

that God speaks to us. (ST II-II, q. 17, a. 6).

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However, God is not just the material “object” of faith insofar as we believe truths about God

and in relationship to God. Rather, by clinging to God himself as the very motive of our assent to

the content of faith, faith reaches God in his very being. And so St. Thomas stresses:

When we believe God by faith, we reach God himself … This is why I have said … that

God is the object of faith not simply in the sense that we believe in God (credimus Deum)

but also that we believe God (credimus Deo). (ST II-II, q. 81, a. 5)

Believing God by faith, cleaving to God by hope, and loving God by charity denote three kinds

of acts facilitated by the three theological that have God as their “object:” faith, hope, and

charity.

We have reached the point where we must turn to the “object of faith.” Because faith is

essentially an act of the intellect—cum assensu cogitare, to think with assent—the “object”

receives a title appropriate to the intellect’s orientation: prima veritas, first truth, a concept we

encountered in Dei Filius under the slight variation of veritas increata, uncreated truth.

Truth does not reside in things, but in the intellect. But what is the case for the human

intellect must supereminently be the case for the Divine intellect. Truth resides first and foremost

in the Divine intellect, first truth, prima veritas. Christ, the Incarnate Lord, can truthfully say “I

am the truth” because he is the Son of God, begotten Truth. As St. Thomas puts it in De Veritate

q. 1, a. 7: “If truth is taken properly in God, it is predicated essentially. Yet it is appropriated to

the person of the Son.” To predicate truth essentially of God means that truth is identical with the

Divine essence. St. Thomas states in Summa theologiae I, question 16, article 5::

God’s being, esse, is the infinite act of understanding, “and His act of understanding is

the cause and measure of the “esse” of every other reality and of every other intellect; and

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He Himself is His own being and act of understanding. Whence it follows that not only is

the truth in Him but that He is the highest and the first truth itself (ipse sit summa et

prima veritas).” (ST I, q. 16, a. 5)

All created things, in virtue of their participation in “esse,” can be said to be true insofar as they

conform to their divine exemplar. And sure enough, for human beings, as endowed with intellect,

this means that we can participate in God and God’s knowledge by inquiring into created truth.

But what happens when the highest and first truth, the summa et prima veritas becomes

“object” of a cognitive act? Specified directly by the First Truth, the act must be a participation

in an entirely more perfect supernatural manner of divine knowledge. As Thomas Aquinas states:

“Believing God, we reach God himself” (ST II-II, q. 81, a. 5).

But now we must remember from Hebrews 11:1 that faith is not vision: “Faith is the

‘substance’ of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen” (Heb 11:1). The First Truth in its

full unmediated presence is “object” of the blessed in heaven. Only insofar as it does not appear

is the first truth the “object” of faith.8 But how then does the “object” engage the intellect and

thus elicit the act of faith? St. Thomas gives us a clue right at the beginning of his treatise on

faith in the Secunda Secundae:

Every habitus of apprehending possesses two aspects: namely, what is apprehended

materially, which is like the material object, and that by which it is apprehended, which is

the formal account of the object. (ST II-II, q. 1, a. 1)

With the distinction between what is apprehended and by way of which it is apprehended

We are returning to the crucial distinction between the material “object” of faith (credere Deum),

believing in God, and the formal aspect of the “object” (credere Deo), believing God himself.
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By distinguishing between the formal and the material “object” and by taking “object”

also as final end toward which the will is directed, St. Thomas identifies a threefold relationship

between the act of faith and its divine “object.” In order to express this threefold relationship, he

adopts an Augustinian formula, widely used in the tradition (ST II-II, q. 2, a. 2). I introduced it

partially already above: “Credere Deo,” to believe God—faith is the reverent submission to God

as revealer, the acceptance of God as prima veritas. This is faith’s formal object. “Credere

Deum,” to believe in God—faith is assent to what God has revealed, first and foremost about

himself. This is faith’s material object. Both “credere Deo” and “credere Deum” indicate the

intellect’s relationship to God. Finally, “credere in Deum,” tending toward God. Faith is a

dynamic movement into God. This aspect signifies the intellect’s act informed by an affective

union with its end, charity. This threefold relationship between the act of faith and its “object”

does not designate three distinct acts but rather the three aspects constitutive of every

consummate act of faith. Hence, while being essentially an intellectual act, trust and affectivity

are integral to—as St. Thomas would call it—“living” or “formed” faith.9 By way of the

simultaneously infused theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity the Christian achieves in

this life nothing less than an intentional union with the Triune God.

St. Thomas characterizes the inchoate as well as unfathomable nature of this intentional

union thus:

As a person shares in God’s own knowing by the virtue of faith in the mind, and in God’s

own loving by the virtue of charity in the will, so also in the nature of the soul he shares

by likeness in the divine nature through a new birth or new creation. (ST I-II, q. 110, a.

4).

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And in his discussion of the missions of the Divine Persons in ST I, q. 43, a.3, Thomas famously

states:

There is one special mode belonging to the rational creature wherein God is said to be

present as the object known in the knower, and the beloved in the lover. And since the

rational creature by its operation of knowledge and love attains to God Himself,

according to this special mode God is said not only to exist in the rational creature, but

also to dwell therein as in his own temple.

This divine indwelling is nothing but the objective reality that “‘in embryo’—and thus according

to the substance” subsists in living faith, the presence of “things that are hoped for: a whole, true

life” (Spe Salvi #7), the life of the Blessed Trinity.

We have reached the apposite point to transition to the Eucharist. We shall turn right

to the heart of the matter, to article 1 of question 75 of the Tertia Pars. Here St. Thomas asks

whether the body of Christ is in the sacrament in very truth, or merely as in a figure or sign. In

the “on the contrary,” which prepares his own answer to the question, St. Thomas adduces the

authoritative positions of two important Fathers of the Church: St. Hilary of Poitiers and St.

Ambrose of Milan:

Hilary says (De Trin. viii): “There is no room for doubt regarding the truth of Christ's

body and blood; for now by our Lord's own declaring and by our faith His flesh is truly

food, and His blood is truly drink.” And Ambrose says (De Sacram. vi): “As the Lord

Jesus Christ is God's true Son so is it Christ's true flesh which we take, and His true blood

which we drink.”

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The “on the contrary” essentially settles the matter. But consider now, how St. Thomas opens his

own response:

The presence of Christ's true body and blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by

sense, nor understanding, but by faith alone, which rests upon Divine authority. Hence,

on Lk. 22:19: “This is My body which shall be delivered up for you,” Cyril says: “Doubt

not whether this be true; but take rather the Saviour’s words with faith; for since He is the

Truth, He lieth not.”

While God, as Scripture’s ultimate author,10 surely speaks by way of and through all of

Scripture, the dominical words are exceptional, since they directly appeal to the immediate

assent of faith. Remember that St. Thomas understands that faith adheres to the First Truth. In

Summa theologiae II-II, question 5, article 3, ad 2, he states: “[F]aith adheres to all the articles of

faith by reason of one mean, namely, on account of the First Truth proposed to us in the

Scriptures, according to the teaching of the Church who has the right understanding of them.”11

According to the Church’s right understanding of the First Truth, that is, according to the

teaching of the Church, in Luke 22:19, “the First Truth proposed to us in the Scriptures” speaks

himself, and thus constitutes immediately a principle revealed by God (principium revelatum a

Deo); and St. Cyril’s theological judgment (together with St. Hilary’s and St. Ambrose’s

teaching as adduced in the sed contra)12 represents for St. Thomas paradigmatically “the

teaching of the Church that has the right understanding of [the Scriptures].”

St. Thomas gestures to this cardinal mode of receiving the First Truth in a hymn he wrote

that became part of the new Office of the Blessed Sacrament. He was asked to write this hymn

for a new feast that originally arose locally from the Church’s living faith.13 On August 11, 1264,

in his bull Transiturus, Pope Urban IV instituted this feast for the universal Church: it is, of
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course, the feast of Corpus Christi.14 The sequence for Corpus Christi Mass, Lauda Sion,

Salvatorem, opens its eleventh stanza with the line “Dogma datur Christianis,” which has been

translated as “[t]his truth to Christians is proclaimed,” but it can as well be translated as “this

definite teaching, this truth from and about the Word himself to Christians is given,” namely by

way of the Church’s teaching, “that bread passes over [transit] into flesh and wine passes over

[transit] into blood.” Allow me to cite this beautiful stanza in its Latin original:

Dogma datur Christianis,

Quod in carnem transit panis
Et vinum in sanguinem.
Quod non capis, quod non vides,
Animosa firmat fides
Praeter rerum ordinem.

This truth to Christians is proclaimed: /

That to flesh, bread is transformed, /
And transformed to blood is wine. /
What you can neither grasp nor see, /
A lively faith will yet affirm /
Beyond this world’s design.15

Divine faith, in assent to the dominical words, forbids the intellect to follow the path of the

senses. For, as St. Thomas reminds us:

substance, as such, is not visible to the bodily eye, nor does it come under any one of the

senses, nor under the imagination, but solely under the intellect, whose object is what a

thing is . . . And therefore, properly speaking, Christ’s body, according to the mode of

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being which it has in the sacrament, is perceptible neither by the sense nor by the

imagination, but only by the intellect, which is called the spiritual eye.16

Accordingly, St. Thomas stresses that “[Christ’s body] can be seen by a wayfarer through faith

alone [sola fide], like other supernatural things.”17 Hence, there is no deception at all taking place

in the sacrament. “For,” as St. Thomas argues, “the accidents which are discerned by the senses

are truly present. But the intellect, whose proper object is substance . . . is preserved by faith

from deception . . . because faith is not contrary to the senses, but concerns things which sense

does not reach.”18 Remember St. Thomas’s terse definition of faith as “the act of believing,” that

is “an act of the intellect assenting to the Divine truth at the command of the will moved by the

grace of God.”19 Like any other act of assent, the assent of faith does not terminate in a

proposition, but rather in a res, a “thing,” a “reality.” “For,” he avers, “as in science we do not

form propositions, except in order to have knowledge about things through their means, so it is in

faith.”20 In short, all true assents, be they of science or of faith, terminate in the reality made

intelligible by the proposition formed. And remember, quid res est, “what a thing is,” that is, its

“quiddity” or substance is the object of our intellect, our understanding. And it is only by way of

our intellect beholding the substance of a thing that we can say what it is. For we name things as

we know them.21

The res, the “thing” of this particular truth of faith—“hoc est corpus meum”—is

recognized by way of hearing alone, solo auditu. By way of beholding the pronoun “this” (hoc)22

in its substantive sense, the “obscure knowledge” of faith does occur, and it is the will that “uses

such knowledge well, to wit, by assenting to unseen things because God says that they are

true.”23 By giving assent to the divine truth, received by way of the dominical words, faith’s
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obscure knowledge preserves the intellect from deception. It is by way of the eye of faith (whose

gaze is, so to speak, directed by the will’s assenting to the truth of the proposition “This is my

body, this is my blood”) that the intellect beholds obscurely the substance of Christ’s body and

blood and hence indeed beholds the truth, the objective truth of the sacrament.

To summarize: The intellect obscurely beholds Christ’s substantial presence under the

Eucharistic species, informed not by the senses, but by assenting to the divine truth solo auditu,

by hearing alone, at the command of the will, moved by the grace of God. By directing the

intellect to the truth beyond the senses (a truth that in all its obscurity can indeed only be attained

by the intellect), faith prevents the intellect from deception. And therefore, at the moment the

priest recites Christ’s words “This is my body; this is my blood,” we—on account of divine

faith—may respond with the words Thomas the Apostle uttered in the presence and sight of the

risen Lord: “Dominus meus et Deus meus.” “My Lord and my God.” For faith does not come

from sight but from hearing. Let me close with the famous and beautiful stanza from St.

Thomas’s famous prayer Adoro Te Devote, Latens Deitas:

Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,

sed auditu solo tuto creditur;

credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius:

nil hoc verbo Veritatis verius.

Sight and touch and taste here fail;

Hearing only can be believed.

I trust what God’s own Son has said,

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Truth from truth is best received.24

1
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 2: Trent—Vatican II. Ed. by Norman P. Tanner, S.J.
(London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 807.
2
T. C. O’Brien, O.P, “Appendix 1: Objects and Virtues,” in St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa
theologiae. Vol. 31: Faith (2a2ae 1-7), English translation, introduction, notes appendices and
glossary by T.C. O’Brien. Reprint of the 1974 original edition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), 178.
3
Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “‘Objectum’: Notes on the Invention of a Word,” in idem, Wisdom,
Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 414.
4
Ibid.
5
Besides the recent book by MacDonald, Knowledge and the Transcendent, see the two classics
of Thomist epistemology: Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge (Distinguish to Unite).
Newly Translated from the fourth French edition under the supervision of Gerald B. Phelan
(New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1959), and Étienne Gilson, Thomist Realism and the Critique of
Knowledge, trans. by Mark A. Wauck (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986; reprint 2012).
6
See chapter 5, “Perception and Abstraction,” in James Ross’s important book Thought and
World: The Hidden Necessities (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008) for a lucid
and astute defense of what amounts to be an essentially Aristotelian-Thomist epistemology
(absent of scholastic technicalities) in conversation with and critical engagement of
contemporary analytic philosophy of mind.
7
O’Brien, “Appendix 1: Objects and Virtues, 182.
8
De Veritate, q. 14, a. 8, ad 3:
“First Truth, insofar as it appears in its proper species, is the object of the vision in heaven. But
insofar as it does not appear, it is the object of faith. So, although the object of both acts is the
same in reality, it differs in its intelligible aspect.
First Truth is the object of faith as well as of vision, but in each case under different aspects.”
9
ST II-II, q. 4, a. 3; “[T]he act of faith is directed to the object of the will, i.e., the good, as to its
end: and this good which is the end of faith, viz., the Divine Good, is the proper object of charity.
Therefore charity is called the form of faith in so far as the act of faith is perfected and formed by
charity.” O’Brien states, as tersely as rightly: “Only in one who loves God does faith reach its
fully intended meaning as the beginning of eternal life” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa
theologiae. Vol. 31 [2a2ae 1-7]: Faith, 125). For a brilliant and exacting study of the precise
correlation between the theological virtues of faith and charity in Thomas’s theology, see
Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., By Knowledge & By Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral
Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press,
2005).
10
ST I, q. 1, a. 10, c.: “[A]uctor sacrae Scripturae est Deus.”
11
ST II-II, q. 5, a. 3, ad 2: “[O]mnibus articulis fidei inhaeret fides propter unum medium,
scilicet propter veritatem primam propositam nobis in Scripturis secundum doctrinam Ecclesiae
intellectis sane.”

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12
ST III q. 75, a. 1, s.c.: “Hilary says (De Trin., viii [PL 10, 247]): ‘There is no room for doubt
regarding the truth of Christ’s body and blood; for now by our Lord’s own declaring and by our
faith His flesh is truly food, and His blood is truly drink.’ And Ambrose says (De Sacram., vi
[cap. 1; PL 16, 473]): ‘As the Lord Jesus Christ is God’s true Son, so is it Christ’s true flesh
which we take, and His true blood which we drink.’”
13
It was through the initiative of St. Julienne of Mont-Cornillon that this feast began to be
celebrated around 1240.
14
See Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert
Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), pp. 129-36.
15
The Aquinas Prayer Book: The Prayers and Hymns of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. and trans.
Robert Anderson and Johann Moser (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2000), pp. 102-
104.
16
ST III, q. 76, a. 7: “Substantia autem, inquantum huiusmodi, non est visibilis oculo corporali,
neque subiacet alicui sensui, neque imaginationi, sed soli intellectui, cuius obiectum est ‘quod
quid est,’ ut dicitur in III De anima. Et ideo, proprie loquendo, corpus Christi, secundum modum
essendi quem habet in hoc sacramento: neque sensu neque imaginatione perceptibile est, sed solo
intellectu, qui dicitur oculus spiritualis.” “Consequently the devils cannot by their intellect
perceive Christ in this sacrament, except through faith, to which they do not pay willing assent;
yet they are convinced from the evidence of signs, according to James 2:19: ‘The devils believe,
and tremble’” (Unde daemones non possunt videre per intellectum Christum in hoc sacramento,
nisi per fidem: cui non voluntate assentiunt, sed ad eam signorum evidentia convincuntur, prout
dicitur, Iac. 2, [19], quod ‘daemones credunt et contremiscunt’). See also In II De anima, l. 14,
§420.
17
ST III, q. 76, a. 7.
18
ST III, q. 75, a. 5, ad 2 and 3: “[I]n hoc sacramentum nulla est deceptio: sunt enim secundum
rei veritatem accidentia, quae sensibus diiudicantur. Intellectus autem, cuius est proprium
obiectum substantia, ut dicitur in III De anima, per fidem a deceptione praeservatur.”
19
ST II-II, q. 2, a. 9, c.: “Ipsum autem credere est actus intellectus assentientis veritati divinae ex
imperio voluntatis a Deo motae per gratiam.”
20
ST II-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2: “Actus autem credentis non terminatur ad enuntiabile, sed ad rem: non
enim formamus enuntiabilia, nisi ut per ea de rebus cognitionem habeamus, sicut in scientia, ita
et in fide.” In an unjustly forgotten, but still highly important document, the International
Theological Commission reminds us that this is not Aquinas’s personal opinion but indeed the
Church’s teaching: “All revelation ultimately is the self-revelation and self-communication by
God the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit, so that we may have communion with God
(Dei Verbum, §2). God is therefore the one and all-encompassing object of faith and theology
(Thomas Aquinas). Therefore the following is true: ‘The act of the believer comes to its term not
in a formula but in a reality’ (ST II-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2).” (International Theological Commission,
“On the Interpretation of Dogmas,” p. 9.)
21
ST I, q. 13, a. 1: “Secundum igitur quod aliquid a nobis intellectu cognosci potest, sic a nobis
potest nominari.” In our particular case of faith’s assent, though, the naming is received first,
solo auditu, and subsequently, a knowing occurs, but an “obscure knowing,” precisely because it
is received solo auditu.
22
Brock, “St. Thomas and the Eucharistic Conversion,” p. 556: “What the pronoun stands for is
‘that which is contained under these species, in general,’ or, more precisely, ‘the substance
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Reinhard Hütter Thomistic Institute Intellectual Retreat, Hartford Retreat Center, October 6-9, 2017

contained under the accidents,’ which previously was bread, and afterwards is the body of
Christ.”
23
De malo, q. 1, a. 3, ad 11: “[F]ides non est meritoria ex hoc quod est cognitio enigmatica, set
ex hoc quod tali cognitione uoluntas bene utitur, assentiendo scilicet his que non uidet propter
Deum.” (Text and translation from The De Malo of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Brian Davies, trans.
Richard Regan [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001], pp. 90, 91.) In this particular response
to an objection, Aquinas accounts for the fact that a deficient vision (i.e., a “malum”) can be the
cause of merit. The key is that faith is meritorious insofar as the will uses the obscure knowledge
by assenting to unseen things for God’s sake.
24
The Aquinas Prayer Book: The Prayers and Hymns of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. and trans.
Robert Anderson and Johann Moser (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2000), pp. 68-69.

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