{"id":17226,"date":"2017-06-23T13:00:02","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T17:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/?p=17226"},"modified":"2017-06-24T18:20:04","modified_gmt":"2017-06-24T22:20:04","slug":"complacent-love-role-holy-spirit-creation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oratory-toronto.org\/map-year\/2017\/06\/23\/complacent-love-role-holy-spirit-creation\/","title":{"rendered":"Complacent Love and the Role of the Holy Spirit in Creation"},"content":{"rendered":"

In dealing with the seven days of creation, Thomas Aquinas makes the following statement: \u201cthe Person of the Holy Spirit is implied in the complacency (complacentia<\/i>) by which God sees that what he has made is good.\u201d1<\/sup> Aquinas is trying to explain the work of the Holy Spirit in creation. He ingeniously links a line repeatedly used in Genesis 1 (\u201cAnd God saw that it was good\u201d<\/i>) with complacency.<\/p>\n

The theologian who has done the most work on Aquinas\u2019 doctrine of complacentia<\/i> is the Canadian Jesuit Frederick E. Crowe (1915-2012; pictured above). Crowe\u2019s remarkable 1959 study, \u201cComplacency and Concern in the Thought of St. Thomas,\u201d2<\/sup> continues to generate interest both among interpreters of Aquinas and those grappling with the nature of love.\u00a0 Crowe argued that complacentia <\/i>is the first act of love and thus the most basic act of will for Aquinas. In his influential book, By Knowledge and by Love<\/i>, Michael Sherwin, O.P. praised Crowe for drawing attention \u201ctoward the centrality of complacentia<\/i> in Aquinas\u2019 mature theory of love.\u201d3<\/sup>\u00a0 What does complacency mean for Aquinas? Why does he link this act of love with the Holy Spirit? Why is this idea of complacency important for Trinitarian theology?<\/p>\n

What is Complacency?<\/b><\/p>\n

Complacentia <\/i>is frequently used by Aquinas in his more mature questions on love in the Secunda Pars<\/i> of the Summa Theologiae<\/i>. Here, for example, are three of Aquinas\u2019 most important remarks of complacency.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd similarly the adjustment of sensitive appetite or of will to something good, that is to say, their very complacency in the good [complacentia boni<\/i>], is called sensitive love, or intellectual or rational love.\u201d4<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u201cThus also the desirable gives to the appetite, in the first place, a certain adjustment to itself, which is a complacency in the desirable, from which follows all movement towards the desirable. . . . the first change of the appetite by the desirable is called love, which is nothing else than a complacency in the desirable [complacentia appetibilis<\/i>].\u201d5<\/sup><\/p>\n

\u201cThe very aptitude or proportion of the appetite to good is love, which is nothing else than a complacency in the good [complacentia boni<\/i>].\u201d6<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Crowe recognizes that his translation of the Latin complacentia <\/i>as complacency <\/i>has its drawbacks. \u2018Complacency\u2019 in contemporary English has connotations of irresponsible self-satisfaction. It sometimes means unwarranted contentment with the status-quo. It means acceptance of what should not be accepted. These connotations are \u201cpoles apart from Thomist complacentia<\/i>.\u201d7<\/sup> According to Crowe, the word, complacentia<\/i>, complacency, however, \u201chas the root sense of a concept I take to be altogether basic in Thomist psychology of the will, and I think we must just accept its unwelcome connotations as part of the unavoidable limitations of language.\u201d8<\/sup> The root sense of complacency in Aquinas, Crowe maintains,<\/p>\n

indicates that will, before being the faculty of appetite, of process to a term, is the faculty of affective consent, of acceptance of what is good, of concord with the universe of being, and that the basic act of will is to be understood only if it is regarded not as an impulse to a term, or even the principle of process to a term qua principle, but simply as itself a term.9<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Before love is a principle of our tending towards the good, Crowe is saying, it is itself the end-point of a process that begins in the senses and the intellect. In general, Crowe writes, \u201cwilling basically is the end of a process, a quiescence; only secondarily is it the initiation of another process.\u201d10<\/sup> Complacency according to Crowe\u2019s reading of Aquinas, is the affective completion of a process of receiving reality.<\/p>\n

Crowe denies that the intellect simply takes in what is and the will then goes out to what is. There is an affective dimension both to our reception of being and our moving towards the good.\u00a0 Before love can be a principle of tending towards a good that is not yet<\/i>, there must be a more passive moment of reception in the will regarding what already is<\/i>11<\/sup>. This is Crowe\u2019s basic hypothesis about the way Aquinas envisages the will\u2019s basic act of love.<\/p>\n

Application of Complacency to the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit<\/b><\/p>\n

Crowe finds parallels between Aquinas\u2019 discussions of complacent love and his discussions of the Holy Spirit. Crowe writes: \u201cthe third person is conceived as proceeding from the Verbum <\/i>and Dicens, <\/i>from the Word and the One uttering the Word. That is to say, it is not as tendency that this Love is primarily conceived, but as proceeding, as term, as bringing process to a close.\u201d1<\/sup>2 As complacent love proceeds in us from an uttered judgment, so in God the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Word uttered by the Father. In complacent love, we reach the end of a process of receiving. In God, the Holy Spirit is the term of the two divine processions.<\/p>\n

There is one text in Aquinas that especially is important for Crowe\u2019s thesis as it applies to the procession of the Holy Spirit. In Summa Theologiae<\/i> I, q. 37, a. 1, Aquinas speaks of a \u201ccertain impression . . . of the thing loved in the affection of the one who loves.\u201d13<\/sup> Instead of speaking of love as an impulse towards the loved object, Aquinas uses the language of impression<\/i> or imprint when he is talking about the Holy Spirit. Crowe thinks we can interpret this impression of love as complacentia<\/i>. He refers us back to some texts he mentioned earlier from Aquinas. In Summa Theologiae <\/i>I-II q. 28, a. 2, Aquinas speaks about something being \u201cimprinted on its affections by a kind of complacency.\u201d14<\/sup> Crowe thinks that this imprint or impression is the way Aquinas thinks that the loved thing (amatum<\/i>) is in the lover (amans<\/i>).<\/p>\n

By Fr Michael Eades, Cong. Orat.<\/p>\n

\n

1. \u201cPersona Spiritus Sancti [insinuatur] in complacentia qua vidit Deus esse bonum quod factum est\u201d (Summa Theologiae<\/i>, I, q. 74, a. 3, ad. 3.<\/p>\n

2. This long, three-part essay, first appeared in Theological Studies<\/i> 20 (1959) 1-39, 198-230, 343-95. The essay was reprinted with two of Crowe\u2019s other essays: Frederick E. Crowe, Three Thomist Studies<\/i>, ed. Michael Vertin, Supplementary issue of Lonergan Workshop<\/i>, vol. 16, ed. Fred Lawrence (Boston: Lonergan Institute of Boston College, 2000).<\/p>\n

3. Michael Sherwin, O.P., By Knowledge and by Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas<\/i> (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2005) 78n67. Sherwin is not alone in lauding Crowe\u2019s achievement in these articles. See Diana Fritz Cates, Aquinas on the Emotions: a Religious-ethical Inquiry<\/i> (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, c2009) 19n11 and Choosing to Feel: Virtue, Friendship, and Compassion for Friends<\/i> (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997) 100. See also, William McDonough \u201cEtty Hillesum\u2019s Learning to Live and Preparing to Die: Complacentia Boni<\/i> as the Beginning of Acquired and Infused Virtue,\u201d Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics<\/i>, 25, 2, (2005) 183-7.<\/p>\n

4. \u201cEt similiter coaptatio appetitus sensitivi, vel voluntatis, ad aliquod bonum, idest ipsa complacentia boni, dicitur amor sensitivus, vel intellectivus seu rationalis\u201d (ST I-II <\/i>q. 26 a. 1).\u00a0 See Three Thomist Studies<\/i>, 99.<\/p>\n

5. \u00a0\u201cSic etiam ipsum appetibile dat appetitui, primo quidem, quandam coaptationem ad ipsum, quae est complacentia appetibilis; ex qua sequitur motus ad appetibile. . . Prima ergo immutatio appetitus ab appetibili vocatur amor, qui nihil est aliud quam complacentia appetibilis\u201d (ST <\/i>I-II <\/i>q. 26 a. 2).\u00a0 See Three Thomist Studies<\/i>, 100 for the places from which I pieced this translation together.<\/p>\n

6. \u00a0\u201cIpsa autem aptitudo sive proportio appetitus ad bonum est amor, qui nihil aliud est quam complacentia boni\u201d (ST <\/i>I-II <\/i>q. 25 a. 2). See \u201cComplacency and Concern,\u201d Three Thomist Studies<\/i>, <\/i>99.<\/p>\n

7. Ibid., 76.<\/p>\n

8. Ibid.<\/p>\n

9. Ibid., 76-7. Serenity, and not complacency, is the word Crowe began to prefer to use around 1969 when translating complacentia boni. <\/i>He explained his reasons in this way: \u201cThe Thomist terms are usually complacere <\/i>and intendere, <\/i>but to translate the first by \u2018complacency,\u2019 as I did in a series of articles in Theological Studies, <\/i>vol. 20 (1959), is to sabotage what seems to me an important idea. \u2018Serenity\u2019 is better, but it suggests the somewhat helpless attitude adopted in adversity, as in the AA’s serenity prayer. The Thomist complacere <\/i>is a more positive joy in what is, manifested most purely, I think, in the spontaneous joy that a child has in people and things before his psychological life becomes complicated by the concerns of older realism. But \u2018joy\u2019 itself lacks the intellectual connotation. In fact, we have no word in English for the idea\u201d (\u201cPull of the Future and Link with the Past: On the Need for Theological Method.\u201d Continuum <\/i>7.1, [Chicago: St. Francis College, 1969] 41n26).<\/p>\n

10. Three Thomist Studies<\/i>, 77.<\/p>\n

11. Crowe thinks that the best avenue of all for approaching the Thomist idea of complacentia boni<\/i> may be found \u201cin Jean-Pierre de Caussade\u2019s abandon<\/i> to divine providence\u201d (Three Thomist Studies, <\/i>77).\u00a0 See Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence<\/i>, tr. A. Thorold (London: Burns & Oates, 1933).<\/p>\n

12.\u00a0Three Thomist Studies<\/i>, 138.<\/p>\n

13. \u201cIta ex hoc quod aliquis rem aliquam amat, provenit quaedam impressio, ut ita loquor, rei amatae in affectu amantis, secundum quam amatum dicitur esse in amante\u201d (ST <\/i>I q. 37. 1).<\/p>\n

14. \u201cAmatum continetur in amante, inquantum est impressum in affectu eius per quandam complacentia\u201d (ST<\/i> I-II, q. 28, a. 2, ad. 1)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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