Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004): 1–20 1 Is Truth a Transcendental for St. Thomas Aquinas? L AWRENCE D EWAN, OP Còllege Dominicain Ottawa, Canada I N SOME EARLIER PAPERS 1 I have argued that an important development of doctrine concerning truth is to be found as we move from Thomas’s De veritate to his Summa theologiae.2 My general impression is that I have failed to convince. Accordingly, I decided to make another attempt. I will first list some obvious overall changes as one moves from the De veritate to the Summa theologiae; I will secondly review the De veritate treatment itself. And lastly, I will underline some key features in the Summa theologiae account which, as it seems to me, are intended to alert the reader that Thomas is criticizing his own earlier work. First, the obvious overall changes.Thomas changes the order of treatment. In the De veritate, the questions are in the order: veritas, scientia, idea. In the Summa theologiae the order is scientia, idea, veritas.This difference is not trivial. In the De veritate 1.1 truth is presented as prior to and the cause of knowledge.This accords with treating truth prior to knowledge; on the other hand, the doctrine of truth as cause of knowledge is nowhere to be seen in the Summa theologiae (or anywhere else in St. Thomas that I know of ), and the Summa theologiae questionnaire accords 1 Cf. my papers, “A Note on Metaphysics and Truth,” in Doctor Communis (2002): 143–53 (Volume titled: The Contemporary Debate on the Truth, Proceedings of the II Plenary Session, Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas); and “St. Thomas’s Successive Discussions of the Nature of Truth,” in Daniel Ols, OP, ed., Sanctus Thomas De Aquino: Doctor Hodiernae Humanitatis (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1995), 153–68. 2 Thomas’s De veritate (hereafter, DV ) dates from 1256–57 in its earlier parts; his Summa theologiae dates from 1266–67 in its earlier part. 2 Lawrence Dewan, OP well with the conception of the truth therein proposed, as properly found in the intellect’s composing and dividing (with “idea” relating more to the first operation of the intellect). Looking within the questions on truth in the respective works, we find, again, that the order of articles has been revised. In the De veritate we have first an article on the definition of truth (“what is truth?”), an article which, as can be seen from the objections, focuses on the question of how truth relates to being; secondly, it is asked whether truth is more principally in the mind than in things; thirdly, whether truth is only in the intellect composing and dividing; and fourthly, whether there is one truth by which all [items] are true? In the Summa theologiae we have first an article asking whether truth is only in the intellect; secondly it is asked whether it is only in the intellect composing and dividing; thirdly, concerning the comparison of “the true” to “a being”; fourthly, concerning the comparison of “the true” to “the good”; fifthly, whether God is truth; and sixthly, whether all are true by virtue of one truth, or by many.Thus, the basic difference is that what came first in the De veritate, the relation between being and truth, is placed third in the Summa theologiae, while in the Summa theologiae the query concerning whether truth is only in the mind has become fundamental. Nevertheless, in both works, the first article explains the variety of definitions or explanations of truth, but, as we shall see, the Summa theologiae significantly changes the account of the definitions, as compared with the De veritate. Let us look now at the De veritate treatment. When I say that it has proved very popular with commentators on Thomas, I am speaking mainly of De veritate 1.1, which asks what truth is. Its readers very often3 begin their accounts of truth by stressing that truth is found in things, what is sometimes called “ontological truth.” In my experience of twentiethcentury Thomism there was great insistence on the identity of being and truth, the “truth of things.”This, related to the doctrine of the transcendental properties of being, encouraged a view of truth as an inherent formal feature of things, even if a feature obviously identical with the being of things. Jacques Maritain thus says: The true is being inasmuch as it confronts intellection, thought; and this is another aspect of being, thus revealed, a new note struck by it. It 3 For brevity, I will cite only Jacques Maritain, writing circa 1932; however, one can see this focus in such recent items as John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (London: Routledge, 2001), 9; cf. Leo J. Elders, “The Transcendental Properties of Being,” International Journal of Philosophy [Taipei] 1 (2002): 41–64, at p. 50. Is Truth a Transcendental for St.Thomas Aquinas? 3 answers to the knowing mind, speaks to it, superabounds in utterance, expresses, manifests a subsistence for thought, a particular intelligibility which is itself.An object is true—that is to say, conforms to what it thus says [about] itself to thought, to the intelligibility it enunciates—to the extent that it is.4 No reference to Thomas is given at this point, but the very fact that Maritain here uses the expression “universal modes” to characterize the transcendentals makes it likely enough that De veritate 1.1 is in the background.5 4 Jacques Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics (London: Sheed and Ward, 1939), 66 (the translator is not named; I have changed “Truth” to “the true” at the beginning; and I added the word “about,” which English, and the text being translated, seem to require).The passage continues (pp. 66–67): What is then manifest is of the nature of an obligation attached to being. An I ought to be consubstantial with I am. Every being ought to be and is, insofar as it is, in conformity with the expression of it which a perfect Knowledge would produce. The passage is to be found in Jacques et Raïssa Maritain, Œuvres Complètes, vol. V (1932–35) (Fribourg : Éditions Universitaires, 1982), 595–96 (in the work titled: Sept leçons sur l’être, originally published in 1934 [a course originally given at the Institut Catholique, Paris, in 1932–33]): Vous savez que les métaphysiciens reconnaissent un certain nombre de modes universels de l’être. . . . Le vrai est l’être en tant même que faisant face à l’intellection, à la pensée, et voilà un nouveau visage de l’être qui se révèle, une nouvelle résonance qui sort de lui; il répond à l’esprit connaissant, il lui parle, il surabonde en diction, il exprime, il manifeste une consistance pour la pensée, une intelligibilité telle ou telle qui est lui-même; une chose est vraie,—c’est-à-dire consonante à ce qu’elle dit ainsi d’elle-même à la pensée, à ce qu’elle annonce d’intelligibilité,— pour autant qu’elle est. Ce qui se révèle alors c’est l’ordre d’un certain je dois être consubstantiel au je suis: tout être doit être—et est, pour autant qu’il est—consonant à l’expression que se ferait de lui-même une Connaissance parfaite. Notice, though, that Maritain uses the terme “le vrai,” that is,“the true,” and not, as the translation would suggest “la vérité.” It is that latter word which would suggest most strongly an intrinsic formality. 5 His presentation of the conceptual additions to “ens” as “universal modes” (ibid., 66) suggests strongly DV 1.1: “. . . modus generaliter consequens omne ens.” In contrast, in DV 21.1, where essentially the same topic is addressed, only the categories are called “modes,” while “bonum” and “verum” are simply said to add to “ens” “id quod est rationis tantum.” 4 Lawrence Dewan, OP Let us then examine De veritate 1.1, having in mind the question: Is the truth that Thomas speaks of in this article a truth in things, or is it in the mind? (I stress “in this article” because Thomas’s second article here asks whether the truth is more principally found in things or in the mind.) The article is titled “what is truth? [quid sit veritas].” However, the first set of objections (a group of seven) contend that the true [verum] is identical with that-which-is [ens], while the second set (a group of five) argue for diversity between the two. Thus, the issue of identity of being and truth is front and center. We have a presentation of the very roots of definability. The concept expressed by the word “ens” is the concept first conceived, is indeed most known, and all other intellectual concepts are “resolvable” into “ens.” Thus, all other conceptions of the intellect are constituted through addition to “ens.” It is a lesson on our conceptions and their basis in the concept of “ens,” and asks how we can be said to “add” to it. The first point is to steer us clear of the idea that we add some different nature. Everything we add must have the nature of “ens.” Accordingly, the additions are presented as “modes” of “ens.” One sort of addition is a special mode, and thus the conceptions of the categories of “ens” are seen to add to it: “substance,” for example, says “ens per se.” Such additions result in grades of entity. We then come to the sort of mode that attaches to every being, general or universal modes. And this gives rise to a lesson on the variety of ways that this can happen. After explaining how the concepts of “thing,” “one,” and “something” arise, we come to “good” and “true.” They involve consideration of the agreement of one being with another. For this to give rise to such general modes, one must have something whose nature involves agreement with that which is, as such [aliquid quod natum sit convenire cum omne ente].Thomas says that this something is the soul, which is in a way all things. We have come, then, to the conceptions that we add to “a being,” just because of the presence of soul in reality. Thomas points to the soul’s cognitive and appetitive powers, and presents the two new concepts: . . . the agreement of being with appetite is expressed by the word “good” . . . the agreement of being with intellect is expressed by the word “true” [Convenientiam vero entis ad intellectum exprimit hoc nomen verum]. At this point Thomas goes into detail on the concept of verum.We are told: Now, all knowing is brought to perfection [perficitur] through the making like [per assimilationem] of the one knowing to the thing known Is Truth a Transcendental for St.Thomas Aquinas? 5 [cognoscentis ad rem cognitam], in such fashion that the said assimilation is the cause of the knowing: for example, sight, by the fact that it is given a determination [disponitur] by the form of the colour [per speciem coloris], knows the colour. Hence, the primary comparison of that which is to intellect [entis ad intellectum] is that the being is concordant with the intellect: this concord is called “the adequation of thing and intellect” [adaequatio rei et intellectus]; and in this, formally, the intelligible nature of the true is brought to perfection. Therefore, this is what “true” adds to “a being,” viz. the conformity, or adequation, of the thing and the intellect; upon this conformity, as was said, knowledge of the thing follows.Thus, therefore, the entity of the thing precedes the nature of truth [rationem veritatis], but knowledge is an effect of truth. Thomas here is clearly thinking of how the being of things brings about knowledge in the knower. His use of the model of the visible thing and the sense of sight makes this clear, as well as the statement that “the said assimilation is the cause of the knowing.”The thing produces in the sense a likeness of itself, thus causing the knower to see the thing. The thing has primacy, the likeness comes second, and the knowledge comes third. Thomas, having said that the entity of the thing precedes the nature of truth, and that knowledge is an effect of truth, proceeds to use this triadic structure as a key to the variety of definitions of truth and the true [veritas et verum]. Truth and the true is found defined, in one way, in function of that which precedes the nature of truth, and in function of that which constitutes the foundation of the true. Augustine’s “the true is that which is,” Avicenna’s “the truth of each thing whatsoever is the property of its being, which has been established for the thing,” and another’s “the true is the undividedness of being and of that which is”: all these should be so seen. Then, in another way, truth and the true are defined in function of that which formally perfects the nature of the true: thus, Isaac Israeli’s “truth is the adequation of thing and intellect,”6 and Anselm’s “truth is a rightness perceptible only to mind.”7 6 Need it be said that the attribution to Isaac is questionable? Cf. J. T. Muckle, “Isaac Israeli’s Definition of Truth,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 8 (1933): 1–8. 7 Thomas here takes the trouble to explain that the “rightness” spoken of by Anselm comes to the same thing as the “adequation” referred to by Isaac; this can be seen in the light of Aristotle’s saying that, in defining the true, we say it is to say “is” of that which is, and “is not” of that which is not. Lawrence Dewan, OP 6 In a third way, the true is defined in function of the consequent effect: thus, Hilary’s “the true is declarative and manifestative of being,” and Augustine’s “The truth is that by which that which is is shown.”8 The implication is, of course, that these last “definitions” are really about knowledge rather than precisely about the truth which causes it. Where should one “locate” truth in this discussion? In the order of conceptions, which is the basic approach of Thomas in the article, it is taken as adding a general mode to “being,” the added conception of the agreement of being and intellect.The explanatory schema Thomas introduces is definitely of things bringing about a likeness of themselves in the soul, a likeness which results in knowledge. Most properly, the nature of truth is located in the likeness itself. This surely is in the knower, and prior to knowledge. Of course, the context of the sequence of notions, “being,” “thing,” “one,”“something,”“true,” and “good,” suggests somewhat that the “true” we are speaking of is that said of the thing itself. Indeed, this seems to be how many have read the text.9 We ourselves should wait for Thomas himself to answer the question, which he does immediately. De veritate 1.2 asks whether truth is found more principally in the intellect rather than in things. Thomas in the body of the article begins by presupposing that “the true” is said according to priority and posteriority.This, I would say, relates to the fact that we just had the three sorts of definition.Thomas explains that in such cases, it is not necessarily that which has the role of cause10 of the others that has priority as to the common predication; it is rather that in which firstly the complete nature (or intelligible note, ratio) is found.Where is the complete ratio of truth found? In order to establish this, Thomas argues that the completion of a movement is in its terminus. He then contrasts the movement of cognition, terminating in the knower, and in the knower’s own mode, with the movement of appetite, terminating in the thing sought. This leads us to the doctrine that while the good is in things, the true is in the intellect. The “movement” referred to is the same one we saw in a. 1, the causal procedure from the thing to the knowing power. 8 Here Thomas also includes Augustine’s “The truth is that in virtue of which we judge of inferiors.” 9 I have sometimes myself been guilty. 10 Notice that what Thomas is referring to here, among the applications of the term “true,” is not the adequation which he called “cause of knowledge”; it is rather the thing as “true,” to which the first set of definitions applied, that which “constitutes the foundation of truth” (in quo verum fundatur). Is Truth a Transcendental for St.Thomas Aquinas? 7 At this point, then, having affirmed the primacy of the soul as the “location” of the true,Thomas has this to say about truth and thing: The thing is not called “true,” save inasmuch as it is adequated to intellect: hence, it is posteriorly that the true is found in things, whereas [it is] by priority in the intellect. This, however, is not a sufficient discussion of the situation. A further distinction must be noted, that between speculative and practical intellect.The point is that practical intellect is cause and so measure of things, while speculative intellect is measured by the things which cause it to know.Thus, natural things measure our intellect, but are measured by the divine intellect.This leads to the important determination: The natural thing, constituted between two intellects, is called “true” in function of adequation to each. It is called “true” in function of adequation to the divine intellect inasmuch as it fulfills that to which it is ordered by the divine intellect. . . . But in function of adequation to the human intellect the thing is called “true” inasmuch as it is naturally apt to form concerning itself a true estimate, just as, contrarily, things are called “false” whose nature it is to seem what they are not. . . .11 Having established these two ways in which a natural thing is called “true” by posteriority to mind, Thomas specifies that one of them has priority: The prima ratio veritatis, that is, the first of the two mentioned here as regards the natural thing, is present within the thing by priority [per prius inest rei] to the second. This is because the comparison with the divine intellect has priority over the comparison to the human intellect: Thus, if the human intellect did not exist, the natural thing would still be called “true” in virtue of the order to the divine intellect; but if both intellects were eliminated, and, per impossibile, things remained, they could not be called “true.”The ratio veritatis would in no way remain. We should notice that the grounds here for priority are in terms of the possibility of eliminating the causality of things relative to our intellect. This is not the same doctrine as will be seen in Summa theologiae I, q. 16, where the issue is that it merely happens to the natural thing that it be 11 I might call attention to DV 1.10, which asks whether any thing is false. Rela- tive to the human intellect a thing which has a deceptive appearance can be called “false,” but Thomas here recalls (having said it in 1.4) that the relation of the thing to the human intellect is “accidental,” and concludes that, simply speaking, every thing is true (as per the relation to the divine intellect). Lawrence Dewan, OP 8 known by a human intellect. Here in De veritate 1.2, all we have is grounds for priority of the relation of the divine to the relation to the human intellect. In the Summa theologiae we have grounds for excluding from the discussion the reference of natural things to the human intellect. Here in the De veritate, the “true” said of the thing as expressing the relation of natural thing to human mind is still being given a prominent and honorable place in the proceedings. One of the objections in this article, an objection arguing for the primacy of truth in things, bases itself on the convertibility of being and truth. Thomas’s reply argues that whether true is said of intellect or of thing, convertibility with being remains true. Speaking of the true as found in the soul, he makes it a matter of convertibility, not as to predication but as to agreement. However, speaking of the true as said of the thing, where it is a matter of predicational convertibility, one notes Thomas’s concern to keep in play the duality of intellects.We read: . . . every being is adequate relative to the divine intellect and is able to render the human intellect adequate to itself. . . .12 In the same way, in the reply to an objection arguing that Augustine rejected definitions of truth which included reference to intellect,Thomas says that this has to do with reference to the human intellect, not the divine. However, he goes on to work the human intellect back into the picture, concluding: . . . in the definition of the true thing one can include actual vision by the divine intellect, but not vision by the human intellect, save potentially. . . .13 Thomas, in a. 3, on the truth as found primarily in the intellect’s composing and dividing, concludes by presenting in detail the order of priority. The truth is found by priority in the intellect composing and dividing, secondarily in the intellect forming quiddities (inasmuch as the quiddities imply true or false compositions), thirdly in things as adequate relative to the divine intellect, or as naturally apt to render adequate the human intellect, and so on. I stress how seemingly standard is the reference to the relation of natural things to the human intellect.14 12 DV 1.2, ad 1. 13 DV 1.2, ad 4. 14 It is notable that in the Sent., the DV, and the ST, Thomas uses three different approaches to teaching the doctrine that truth is to be found primarily in the intellect’s composing and dividing. It is also notable that Thomas does not regard the sort of likeness of intellect to thing which compares to the likeness of sensible Is Truth a Transcendental for St.Thomas Aquinas? 9 The unlikeness of De veritate 1.4 to Summa theologiae I, q. 16, a. 6 is a key point for us. In De veritate 1.4 Thomas asks whether there is one sole truth in function of which all are true. He again compares truth to the case of “healthy” as said by priority and posteriority. Accordingly, truth is properly found in the intellect, whether human or divine, just as health is found properly in the animal. In other things it is found relative to the intellect, as health [sanitas] is said of some other things inasmuch as they cause or conserve the health of the animal.Thus, we get this line-up: Therefore, there is in the divine intellect truth properly and firstly; in the human intellect properly and secondarily; in things improperly and secondarily, because only relative to one or other of the [other] two truths. We note again the standard relating of natural things to the two intellects. Thomas now deals with the question of one or many truths.The truth in the divine intellect is one, and from it are derived the many truths in the human intellect.The truths in things are many, just as entity is multiplied in them. That seems a definite enough statement. Thomas however sees the need to give a priority to calling a thing “true” relative to the divine intellect, rather than to the human intellect.This is, of course, of great importance for our project.What sort of reasons will be give for this? He says: However, the “truth” which is said about things in comparison to the human intellect is to some degree accidental to the things [rebus quodammodo accidentalis], because supposing that the human intellect neither were nor could be, still things would remain in their own essence[s]. On the other hand, the truth which is said about them in comparison to the divine intellect is communicated to them inseparably: for they cannot have being save through the divine intellect producing them in being. This is basically the same reason as already seen in 1.2. The use of the word “accidental” is new, but the point is the same. There is now a second consideration of the status of the truth of things relative to the human intellect.We read: Furthermore, the truth of the thing relative to the divine intellect is present in the thing by priority to that relative to the human [intellect], since it is compared to the divine intellect as to a cause, to the human species to thing as sufficient to constitute the adequation of which “truth” speaks! It was regarded as sufficient in a. 1, and was indeed the basis for saying that truth is the cause of knowledge (I cannot go into this here). 10 Lawrence Dewan, OP intellect in some measure as to an effect [quodammodo quasi ad effectum],15 inasmuch as the intellect receives from things. This is the issue of priority of one of the considerations over the other, rather than accidentality. It is not yet the doctrine we will see in Summa theologiae I, q. 16, a. 1. On the basis of these two points, it is concluded that a thing is called “true” more principally relative to the divine intellect rather than to the human intellect.This is a significantly mild conclusion, as compared with what we will find in Summa theologiae I, q. 16, a. 1. The reason for here introducing this issue, viz. the diminishing of the status of the relating of things to the human intellect, must affect the present question—one truth or many. Thus, Thomas now comes to a more general conclusion for that issue (and the article).We read: If, therefore, “truth” be taken as properly said, in the way in which all are “true” principally, thus all are true by virtue of one truth, i.e., the truth of the divine intellect. And it is thus that Anselm speaks of truth in the book On Truth. But if “truth” be taken as properly said, according as things [sic] are secondarily called “true,” thus of the many true [items] there are many truths and even of one true [item] several truths in diverse souls. However, if “truth” is taken as improperly said, according as all are called “true,” thus, of the many true items there are many truths, but of one thing there is only one truth. I read the first of these three as speaking merely about God thinking of things. The second is about created intellect thinking of things. The third is about the things in their own being. Thus far, the diminishing of the status of the relation to human intellect does not seem to have made any difference. However, we have not finished.We now get what I must say is a very odd conclusion to the article.We read: For16 THINGS are called “true” from the truth which is in the divine intellect or in the human intellect [!] as food is called “healthy” from 15 The seeming hesitation to use the word “effect” here perhaps relates to Thomas’s consideration, in DV 1.10, that truth and falsity, pertaining as they do to the intellect’s judgment, as distinct from its apprehension, means that the intellect is the agent rather than the patient as regards truth. 16 The text has “autem” here, but I am reading “enim”:The only way I can understand this passage is as an explanation of the just-made statement about truth as improperly said. Is Truth a Transcendental for St.Thomas Aquinas? 11 the health which is in the animal and NOT AS FROM AN INHERENT FORM; but from the TRUTH which is in the thing itself [a veritate quae est in ipsa re], which is nothing else but the entity [entitas] conformed with the intellect OR CONFORMING THE INTELLECT TO ITSELF, it is denominated AS FROM INHERENT FORM [sicut a forma inhaerente], just as food is called “healthy” from its own quality, from which it is called “healthy.” It is not the first part of this that surprises, for it is the usual doctrine of how things are called “healthy” (though I once again salute the relation to both intellects). It is the startling assertion that food can be called “healthy,” not merely relative to the health of the animal, as causing it, but also in itself, based on its own quality.Why would one call something not taken in relation to the animal “food,” let alone “healthy”? We do not find this doctrine elsewhere in Thomas, as far as I know. It seems designed to make possible a doctrine of an intrinsic form of truth in things, even if identical with the entity of the thing.Yet, at the same time, this “in itself ” consideration of the thing, as to its entity, is also said to concern the thing’s being “conformed with the intellect” (presumably the divine intellect) and also “conforming the intellect to itself ” (presumably the human intellect).Thomas seems here to be aiming both not to take the thing in relation to intellect and also to take it in relation to intellect!17 In any case, De veritate 1.4, while giving a certain conception of the secondary status of truth in things as related to our intellect, definitely teaches that truth is a form inherent in things, even if one identical with the entity of things. Moreover,Thomas continues to describe the truth-in-things situation by referring to the TWO intellects.18 17 In Sent. 1.19.5, where Thomas speaks of truth, and (1) whether it is identical with the essence of things, and (2) whether all are true by the one divine truth, in the former article he uses the doctrine of “healthy” in order to make the point that the esse of the thing is only the foundation for the truth, which is formally in the intellect. However, when he comes to the second article, where he asserts the many formal truths in things (and expressly says that it is the same case as with bonitas!), he is challenged in the first objection precisely on the basis of his just having used the doctrine of analogy (with the example of “healthy”!); he answers by the doctrine of the threefold form of analogy, where the first mode of analogy is the case of “healthy,” but truth actually pertains to the third mode, where the “common nature” is found in each of the things but in more and less perfect realizations. This suggests that he is both using and not using the “healthy” model for truth! Perhaps we should read the second article as really only about “truth” as found in created mind and divine mind. 18 Concerning DV 1.6, on whether created truth is mutable:Thomas clearly treats it as an inherent form. Speaking of its relation to the divine intellect, he says that, 12 Lawrence Dewan, OP Let us now look at the Summa theologiae I, q. 16 treatment. As I mentioned earlier, the order of articles is different.We start right off with the query as to whether truth is only in the intellect.The article begins by contrasting meanings of the words “good” and “true.” “The good” names that toward which appetite tends, whereas “the true” names that toward which intellect tends. This is simply declared. We then have a consideration of the difference between appetite and cognition.19 This seems to me fundamentally the same approach as in De veritate 1.2, though there is not quite the same featuring of a move from the thing to the soul. Rather, the doctrine is simply that the thing known is in the knower. This makes it easier subsequently for Thomas to focus on the difference between a thing depending on the intellect for its being and a thing merely being knowable by an intellect. Thus, when Thomas has made it clear that the ratio veri is in the intellect as conformed to the thing known, and derives from the intellect to the thing understood, so that the thing understood is also called “true” according as it has some order to intellect, he immediately raises the issue of the relation of the thing to the intellect.We read: The thing understood can have an order toward an intellect either intrinsically [per se] or incidentally [per accidens]. It has an intrinsic order toward the intellect on which it depends for its being; however, it is ordered incidentally toward an intellect by which it is knowable. For example, we may say that the house is intrinsically related to the mind of the architect, whereas it is merely incidentally related to the mind on which it does not depend. But the judgment concerning a thing is not made on the basis of what belongs to it incidentally, but according to what is present in it intrinsically. Hence, each thing is called “true” unqualifiedly in accordance with the order toward the intellect on which it depends. . . . Natural things . . . are called “true” according as they attain to a likeness of the ideas [specierum] which are in the divine mind: that stone is because it is a form as universal as “ens,” the creature may change, and so the truth change, but truth remains:The change is from one truth to another.There is great insistence on truth as an inherent form, even when speaking of the truth of things as related to the divine intellect.This is perhaps also the meaning in the Sent. 1.19.5.2, ad 1. 19 Cf. ST, I, q. 16, a. 4, ad 1; I, q. 80, a.1, ad 3; I, q. 14, a. 16; I–II, q. 9, a. 1, ad 3; I–II, q. 9, a. 1, ad 3: I am not sure whether I should get into this, but it does seem as if “tendency” suggests inclination and appetite.The true is being presented, paradoxically here, as “the good” but of cognition as such. It might be considered, nevertheless, that this view of truth as something at the terminus of cognition’s own tendency is quite different from the DV 1.1 doctrine that truth is cause (in an obviously efficient-formal sense) of cognition. Is Truth a Transcendental for St.Thomas Aquinas? 13 called “true” which attains to the proper nature of the stone, in accordance with the preconception in the divine mind. . . .20 Thus, we have the ultimate statement of the conclusion: Thus, therefore, truth is principally in the intellect; but secondarily in things inasmuch as they are related to the intellect as to a principle.21 The mention of the relation of natural things to the human mind has been formally excluded from the discussion; and that, in the very first article, in the most prominent way possible. Indeed, all three replies to objections in the first article turn on the rejection of the mere per accidens relationship of the thing to a mind as a basis for calling the thing “true.” Thomas could not be more explicit: “It is the being of the thing, not its truth, which causes the truth of the intellect.”22 It is hard to imagine a more categorical exclusion of consideration of the relation of things to our intellect, for the doctrine of “true” and “truth” as said of natural things. Is this stance maintained? First of all, we have not finished with the first article.Thomas goes on to pass in review “one more time” the various definitions of truth. I would like at least to note the considerable difference between this treatment of them and that found in De veritate 1.1. There, we remember, the treatment was based on the triad: entity as foundation; truth as assimilation of the knower to the known; knowledge as effect of truth. So we had, first, the sort of thing said by Augustine: “the truth is that which is” (the foundation); second, “adequation of thing and intellect,” (the formal nature of truth); third, the sort of thing said by Augustine and Hilary: “truth is that by which that-which-is is shown,” “truth is manifestative of being” (the effect following upon truth). Here, in Summa theologiae I, q. 16, a. 1, we lead off with Augustine and Hilary: “truth is declarative or manifestative of being.”This pertains to truth as it is in the intellect (its principal reality: no longer a mere “effect of truth”!); then we get such definitions as relate things to intellect; for 20 ST, I, q. 16, a. 1. My translation. 21 ST, I, q. 16, a. 1. 22 ST, I, q. 16, a. 1, ad 3. In the ad 1,Thomas explains that Augustine, speaking of the truth of the thing, excludes relation to our intellect; and Thomas concludes:“that which is incidental is excluded from any definition.” In the ad 2, the problem of the ancient atheists was that they had to constitute the truth of things themselves through the relation to our intellect:This difficulty is eliminated, says Thomas,“if we lay it down that the truth of things consists in a relation to divine intellect.” 14 Lawrence Dewan, OP instance, Augustine’s “Truth is the highest likeness of the principle, which is without any unlikeness.” Here Thomas carefully stresses how the definitions indicate relation to intellect as to a principle. Then, lastly, Thomas mentions “adequation of thing and intellect”:This can refer to either the truth in the intellect, or to the truth of the thing related to the intellect as to a principle; clearly, it is no longer the key definition it was in De veritate 1.1. The treatment of the definitions is carefully following the new approach, eliminating any reference to a “truth” said of natural things relative to the human mind. In the sequence of articles in Summa theologiae I, q. 16, the next issue is the location of truth in the intellect’s act of composing and dividing. Here, I will only mention that we have a new way of explaining the answer to this question, relative to the De veritate 1.3 approach. However, there is nothing very relevant to our present topic.23 Summa theologiae I, q. 16, a. 3 asks about “convertibility” of “a being” and “something true.” The answer is yes, and the basis for the answer is that “the true” expresses order to knowledge, and that anything is knowable to the extent that it has something of being [inquantum habet de esse]. Thus,“the true” is interchangeable with “a being,” but adds to that expression the notion of relation to intellect. When asked how the true can be convertible with being, since the true is primarily in the intellect, two ways of being “convertible” are noted, just as in the De veritate 1.2. ad 1. “The true,” said of things, is convertible with “a being,” as to predication; said of knowledge, it is convertible as that which makes manifest with that which is rendered manifest.Thus, the reply has been revised, moving from mere “agreement” in De veritate 1.2. ad 1 to Hilary’s definition, truth as “manifestative.” (Thomas even includes a backward reference to it here: “Hoc enim est de ratione veri, ut dictum est.”) Summa theologiae I, q. 16, a. 624 whether there is only one truth by which all [true items] are true, is most important for our interest. The article begins by announcing the position that in one way there is one truth by virtue of which all are true, and in another way this is not the case.We then have a reference to the doctrine of analogy, as illustrated by 23 On this article, cf. my “St. Thomas’s Successive Discussions of the Nature of Truth,” in Daniel Ols, OP, ed., Sanctus Thomas de Aquino: Doctor Hodiernae Humanitatis (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1995), 153–68. 24 With ST, I, q. 16, a. 4, we have the issue of priority of good or of true as to notion. This has no parallel in the DV 1, and we will leave it aside. ST, I, q. 16, a. 5 asks whether God is truth. Again, it does not really relate to the DV discussion (though DV 1.7 has some parallel features). Is Truth a Transcendental for St.Thomas Aquinas? 15 “health.” The point is that the thing predicated is found as regards its proper nature only in one of the items of which it is predicated, though in the others there is something which causes or signifies what is spoken of.This is the case with “truth.”We are told: As has been said [a. 1], truth is by priority in the intellect, and posteriorly in things in virtue of their being ordered to the divine intellect. Let us note, in passing, the absence of all reference to a relation of natural things to our intellect (quite unlike the De veritate parallel). And we continue: Therefore, if we speak about truth as it exists in the intellect, in accord with its proper nature, thus in the many created intellects there are many truths; and even in one and the same intellect, as regards many known items. . . . [In this respect] from the one divine truth there result many truths. We then move to the case of the truth of things: But if we speak about truth according as it is in things, thus all are true by one first truth, to which each one is rendered similar according to its own entity [entitatem]. And thus, though there are many essences or forms of things, nevertheless there is one truth of the divine intellect, according to which all things are denominated “true.”25 Thomas has completely eliminated from the doctrine of the truth of things any “inherent form.” There is only one truth by which all these things are called “true.” I believe that the point Thomas is making can only be adequately appreciated by looking at the corresponding discussion of the good in Summa theologiae I, q. 6, a. 4: whether all are good by virtue of the divine goodness.The point is very simple. It is taught that all are good by virtue of the divine goodness: . . . each thing is called “good” by the divine goodness, as by the first exemplar, efficient and final principle of goodness in its entirety. 25 ST, I, q. 16, a. 6: Si vero loquamur de veritate secundum quod est in rebus, sic omnes sunt verae una prima veritate, cui unumquodque assimilatur secundum suam entitatem. Et sic, licet plures sunt essentiae vel formae rerum, tamen una est veritas divini intellectus, secundum quam omnes res denominantur verae. Lawrence Dewan, OP 16 However, it is explicitly added: Nevertheless each thing is called “good” by the likeness of the divine goodness inhering in itself, which is formally its goodness denominating it. And so there is one goodness of all things, and also many goodnesses.26 Goodness requires a different conclusion than truth, because, precisely, the good and the bad are in things, whereas the true and the false are in the mind!27 My point, then, is that Thomas, in the Summa theologiae 1.16, has revised his presentation of truth. Truth, as always, is primarily in the intellect; so taken, there are many created truths. We can speak of natural things themselves as “true,” in so doing, relating them to the divine intellect. However, such a way of speaking in no way involves an intrinsic form called “truth,” not even one identical with entity. Rather, they are called “true” by virtue of the one divine truth 26 ST, I, q. 6, a. 4. 27 In Cajetan’s commentary on ST, I, q. 16, a. 6 (cf. the Leonine edition of the Summa theologiae ad loc.), he introduces (para. IV) an objection against the text in that it seems to make “true” an extrinsic denomination, whereas it must beformally present in things, just as goodness is as per I, q. 6, a. 4; Cajetan replies (para. VII) as follows: . . . the reply is had from the text, where it says that though there are many essences or forms of things, nevertheless there is one truth etc. These words are added after the proved conclusion to make clear the difference between goodness and truth in this respect; because all things are called “good” in two ways, intrinsically and extrinsically, as is said in q. 6; but they are called “true” solely by extrinsic denomination, in such a way that there is no truth in things formally [nulla est in rebus formaliter veritas]; but rather imitatively or fulfillingly relative to the divine intellect, and causally with respect to our speculative intellect. For, if there were no intellect, then no thing, and no sense, could be called “true,” save equivocally, as is said in De veritate 1.4: just as, if there were no animal health, no medicine, no diet, could be called “healthy.” And the reason for all this is one and the same: because in the notion of truth as applied to things there occurs the truth of the intellect; and animal health occurs in “healthy” as applied to medicine and diet; and so on with other such things: for, if the definition is removed, the same name remains only equivocally. We note, nevertheless, that Cajetan cannot resist mentioning the relation of natural things to the human intellect, even though Thomas has set it aside explicitly in a. 1.What is more disturbing, Cajetan actually makes a reference to DV 1.4 but says nothing about the statements therein about truth as an “inherent form” in things. Is Truth a Transcendental for St.Thomas Aquinas? 17 In this respect, the truth of things is different from the goodness of things. Obviously, the good is convertible with being, just as the true is. The goodness of things is even, it would seem, more identical with the esse of things than is their truth.Thus, we read: . . . though each thing is good to the extent that it has esse, nevertheless the essence of the created thing is not precisely esse; and so it does not follow that the created thing is good by virtue of its own essence. . . . And: . . . the goodness of the created thing is not precisely its essence, but something added on: either its very esse, or some added perfection, or order to a goal. . . .28 Yet while, as we saw, that “esse” can rightly be called “goodness,” as an inherent form in the thing, the esse or essence29 of the natural thing cannot be called “truth,” taken as naming an inherent form. Rather, it is by virtue of the essence or esse AS SUCH that the thing, taken as deriving from the divine intellect, is called “true.” All of this serves to underline that the truth is in the mind, not in things.When I presented this view of change of doctrine to my friend Jan Aertsen, he protested that the truth would no longer be a “transcendental.” Is this so? I said to him, and I continue to believe, that it would be a “logical transcendental.” After all, the transcendentals are so called as transcending the Aristotelian categories.30 The doctrine of the categories is one that pertains to logic, but is used in metaphysics as well. It should not be surprising that some transcendental predicates have different sorts of verification than others. This seems, in Thomas’s mind, to be the case with “good” and “true.” Both are predicated of 28 The first of the two quotations is from ST, I, q. 6, a. 4, ad 2, and the second from ad 3. 29 In ST, I, q. 16, a. 1, ad 3, it is the esse rei which is said to cause the truth in the human intellect; in I, q. 16, a.6 , it is the entitas, or the essentia, or the forma which is considered as related to the divine intellect and so called “the true.” (In ST, I, q. 16, a. 4, on the conceptual priority of the true over the good, it is said that the true “respicit ipsum esse simpliciter et immediate; ratio autem boni consequitur esse secundum quod est aliquo modo perfectum.” This immediacy of the true relative to esse, I take it, has to do with esse as causing the truth in our intellects.) 30 Cf. ST, I., q. 30, a. 3, ad 1 (and the entire article). On the relation between logic and metaphysics, cf. my paper: “St. Thomas and Analogy: the Logician and the Metaphysician,” forthcoming in a festschrift for Armand Maurer, CSB. Lawrence Dewan, OP 18 every being, but the real foundation for every creature being called “true” is the divine mind, whereas the real foundation for every creature being called “good” is both the divine goodness and that creature’s own inherent goodness. What philosophical importance has the change, if any? My contention is that the attribution to things themselves of a real “truth” role, relative to our minds, a position which invites a view of truth as an intrinsic quality in things (even though identical with entitas), is one which tends to break down the distinction between the mode of being of things in their own proper nature and the mode of being of those things in a mind.This, in turn, is a recipe for metaphysical idealism.31 What I believe Thomas is reinforcing is the unqualified priority of the ratio of being over that of truth.32 Thus, in Summa theologiae I, q. 13, a. 7, we read: Sometimes the relation is a natural thing in one of the extremes and is merely a thing of reason in the other. And this occurs whenever the two extremes are not of one order. For example, sense and science are related to the sensible [thing] and the scientifically knowable [thing], which inasmuch as they are certain things existing in natural being are outside the order of sensible and intelligible being; and therefore in the science and the sense there is a real relation, inasmuch as they are ordered toward scientifically knowing or sensing things; but the things themselves, considered in themselves, are outside the order of such [events]. Hence, in them there is no relation really to science and sense.33 31 Failure to appreciate that difference was exactly the error with which Thomas charged Plato: ST, I, q. 84, a. 1. 32 Thus,“being” is obviously considered a more proper name for God than “truth”: ST, I, q. 13, a. 12. 33 This is, of course, an extremely delicate area of discussion. Thus, in ST, I–II, q. 110, a. 2, on whether grace is a quality of the soul, it is argued by an objector that it cannot be a mere quality, since substance is more noble than quality, and yet grace is more noble than the substance of the soul.Thomas replies: It is to be said that every substance either is the very nature of the thing of which it is the substance, or else is a part of the nature (in which way the matter or the substantial form is called “substance”). And because grace is above human nature, it cannot be that it is the substance or the substantial form: rather, it is an accidental form of the soul itself. For that which is in God substantially is brought to be accidentally in the soul participating the divine goodness: as is clear in the case of science. Therefore, in accord with that, because the soul imperfectly participates the divine goodness, the very participation in the divine goodness which is grace has being in a more imperfect mode in the soul than [the mode of being by which] the soul subsists in itself. Nevertheless, it is more noble than the nature Is Truth a Transcendental for St.Thomas Aquinas? 19 The things we quite rightly call “intelligible” are outside the order of intelligible being. They are the principle of our intellect, precisely inasmuch as they participate in being. Such a role of “principle” does not suppose a real relation in them to our mind.34 N&V of the soul, inasmuch as it is an expression or participation of the divine goodness, though not as to the mode of being [non autem quantum ad modum essendi]. So also, I would say, the thing outside the soul has substantial being, even though it is material being; in the soul it has immaterial being, but not substantial being. Thus, we read, as well: The actually intelligible [intelligibile in actu] is not something existent in natural being [in rerum natura], speaking of the nature of sensible things, which do not subsist apart from matter. [ST, I, q. 79, a. 3] Cf. ST, I, q. 18, a. 4, ad 3. 34 As for their being a principle, cf. ST, I, q. 16, a. 5, ad 2: verum intellectus nostri est secundum quod conformatur suo principio, scilicet rebus, a quibus cognitionem accipit. That this passivity of our intellect relates to things precisely as participants in being, we can gather from ST, I, q. 79, a. 2, on the passivity of all created intellect, where this is explained in terms of the intellect, as such, relating to ens universale as its object.—That the known is the principle and the measure of the truth of the mind, and that it is thus not really related to the mind, is once again affirmed in Thomas’s In Metaph. 5.17 (1003–4 and 1026–27):While the known acts on the knower, the knower’s operation does nothing to the known: To be known is not to have something done to one, the way to be hit or burnt is. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004): 21–42 21 Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues: Toward a Reconciliation of Virtue Ethics and Natural Law Ethics F ULVIO D I B LASI Libera Università Maria SS. Assunta Palermo, Italy THE CONTEMPORARY Aristotelian-Thomistic debate in ethics is marked by a strong contrast between “natural law” and “prudence,” or, what is the same, between the so called “natural law ethics” and “virtue ethics.”1 A clear example of this contrast is Daniel Mark Nelson’s claim that “for Thomas, the moral life as well as reflection on it depend on prudence and not on knowledge of the natural law.”2 Another example comes from Edward A. Goerner, who considers natural law as “the bad man’s view”: the view of a man who obeys general extrinsic rules out of fear of punishment. According to Goerner, the full standard of right/ good belongs to “the good man’s view”: that is to say, the view of those who possess practical wisdom and prudence.3 Other examples could be 1 I would like to thank Christopher Mirus for correcting my English and for his comments. 2 Daniel Mark Nelson, The Priority of Prudence: Virtue and Natural Law in Thomas Aquinas and the Implications for Modern Ethics (University Park, PA:The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), xii. 3 Edward A. Goerner, “On Thomistic Natural Law: The Bad Man’s View of Thomistic Natural Right,” Political Theory 1: (1979), 101–22; Edward A. Goerner, “Thomistic Natural Right: The Good Man’s View of Thomistic Natural Law,” Political Theory 3 (1983): 393–418. Goerner’s interpretation of Aquinas is not reliable. His legalistic concept of natural law should be rather traced back to the utilitarian natural law theory advanced by John Austin (1790–1859) in The Province of Jurisprudence Determined and the Uses of the Study of Jurisprudence (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971). But one can also think of Ethical (Rational) Egoism as described (and criticized) by Henry B.Veatch in his Human Rights: Fact 22 Fulvio Di Blasi cited,4 but what is important now is to focus on the theoretical root of the contrast: namely, the difficulty (apparently insurmountable) of joining together the universal nature, or character, of law and the contingent and particular nature of moral life.5 Precisely because of its universal character, law, allegedly, cannot reach “the particular” and so cannot be a real guide for moral life.The particular has therefore “priority,” and the nature of the good is “fragile.”6 Usually, even authors who try to reconcile law and virtue, by means of rediscovering the concepts of natural inclinations, first principles of practical reason, and so on, accept this dualism. On the one hand, there is the realm of universality, with natural law, natural inclinations, first precepts (or principles), inclination to happiness, and so on. On the other hand, we have the realm of particularity, with prudence and the virtues.7 or Fancy? (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 33–48. A good response to Goerner is found in Pamela Hall, “Goerner on Thomistic Natural Law,” Political Theory 4 (1990), 638–49; see her Narrative and the Natural Law: An Interpretation of Thomistic Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). Hall’s main criticism coincides with the one Veatch addressed to Ethical Egoism: that is, the incapacity to go beyond a mere technical rationality and to reach the ethical dimension of human life. I am afraid to say that in his “Response to Hall.” Political Theory 4 (1990): 650–55, Goerner shows no sign of accepting Hall’s invitation to focus on a moral meaning of natural law. 4 In Italy, the most important example would be Giuseppe Abbà: see his Lex et Virtus: Studi sull’Evoluzione della Dottrina Morale di san Tommaso d’Aquino (Roma: LAS, 1983); Felicità, Vita Buona e Virtù: Saggio di Filosofia Morale (Roma: LAS, 1989); Quale Impostazione per la Filosofia Morale? (Roma: LAS, 1996). I criticized Abbà’s concept of natural law in my God and the Natural Law: A Rereading of Thomas Aquinas [Italian edition: 1999] (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2003). Abbà’s work is remarkable, though, and deserves close attention. 5 Thomas S. Hibbs focuses correctly on this epistemological problem in his “Principles and Prudence:The Aristotelianism of Thomas’s Account of Moral Knowledge,” The New Scholasticism 3 (1987): 271–84. 6 I am thinking, of course, of Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). For a recent criticism of Nussbaum (but also of Nancy Sherman and Sarah Broadie) on “the priority of the particular,” see Moira M. Walsh,“The Role of Universal Knowledge in Aristotelian Moral Virtue,” Ancient Philosophy 19 (1999): 73–88.Walsh’s strongest claim is that every act of phronêsis “presupposes at least implicit knowledge of the universal human telos.” 7 See Maria Carl, “Law, Virtue, and Happiness in Aquinas’s Moral Theory,” The Thomist 61 (1997): 425–48. The best example of this tendency is given by the exponents of the so called neoclassical theory of natural law: namely, Germain Grisez, John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, Robert George,William May, etc. For a basic Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues 23 Stanley Hauerwas, appropriately, has spoken about a “context versus principle debate.”8 The opposition between natural law and prudence is also the outcome of the trend that the contemporary rediscovery of practical reason has taken over the last fifty years or so. Especially in the Anglo-Saxon area, this rediscovery is marked by a strong cultural reaction to Hume’s “is–ought” question and, more generally, to modern philosophy’s approach to ethics.9 To the Humean idea that moral judgments as such are no more than a matter of feelings or emotions, philosophers object today that there is “the perception that moral reasoning does occur, that there can be logical linkages between various moral judgments of a kind that emotivism itself could not allow for (‘therefore’ and ‘if . . . then . . .’ are obviously not used as expressions of feeling).”10 This clear perception led both to the analysis of practical reasoning in terms of (objective) reasons for action, and to the search for the first value-premises (basic reasons for actions) of moral reasoning. Hart’s “internal point of view” played a significant role in this context.11 The value-character of the good as it exists in practical reasoning cannot simply be deduced from a theoretical “is–knowledge”; and this insight, claim Grisez, Finnis, and others, is exactly what grounded Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s ethical theories. For my present purposes it is important to stress that this trend, even if valuable under several respects, increases the “natural law vs. prudence debate” because it leads to a rediscovery of natural law simply in terms of universal moral (or premoral) principles (or values). Practical knowledge is a kind of “value knowledge” but it still belongs to the realm of our universal and abstract knowledge. Even the natural inclinations, in this context, seem to aim merely at universal objects: that is, the general human values, rights.12 bibliography on (and criticism of) this school of thought let me refer again to my God and the Natural Law. 8 Stanley Hauerwas, Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Ethical Reflection (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 49. I found this appropriate expression by Hauerwas while reading Thomas Hibbs,“Principles and Prudence: The Aristotelianism of Thomas’s Account of Moral Knowledge.” 9 The obvious reference is to G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy 33 (1958): 175–95. 10 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 19. 11 See Herbert L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961). 12 Russell Hittinger focuses correctly on this narrow approach typical of contemporary natural law theory in his “Natural Law and Virtue: Theories at Cross Purposes,” in Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays, ed. Robert P. George (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 42–70. 24 Fulvio Di Blasi Contemporary interpretations of the practical syllogism also reveal the difficulty of joining together universal (theoretical?) knowledge and particular, or contingent, moral life.These interpretations tend either to take “action” in a metaphorical way or to take “syllogism” in a metaphorical way. The practical syllogism, in other words, either does not really conclude in the action but in a statement/proposition peri tas praxeis—which regards, relates to an action—or is not a proper syllogism at all, “syllogism” being just a nontechnical term which refers to the various arguments used by the agent as justifications of his action.13 In both cases, a universal moral law, or a universal moral knowledge, could not be really practical because there is no logical connection between the universal (knowledge) and the particular (action). If there is still room for something else between the end of practical reasoning and the action, then it follows that the real cause, the engine, the final dominus of our behavior is not our reason or intellect but something else (Autonomous will? Emotion? . . . ?). On the other hand, it is obvious that a nondeductive reasoning cannot be addressed by any conclusive objective moral criticism. I think there are strong reasons to distrust the relevant terminology and the concepts used in the contemporary debate as misleading with respect to both Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s ethical theories. Natural law certainly relates, in the first place, to universal principles; but these principles are grasped through induction from experience. They not only can be (better) understood in and through experience of moral action, but are also properly practical only when they in turn can reach and guide that experience. Natural law can be a true moral guide only if it is truly able to reach the particular action to be performed here and 13 For this way to look at the contemporary debate, see Giuseppe Nicolaci, “Può l’Azione Concludere un Sillogismo? Sulla Teoria Aristotelica del Sillogismo Pratico” (hereafter, “Può l’Azione Concludere un Sillogismo?”) [1994], in G. Nicolaci, Metafisica e metafora: Interpretazioni aristoteliche (Palermo: L’EPOS Società Editrice, 1999), 95–110. Examples of the first tendency are Anthony Kenny, “Practical Inference,” Analysis 26(1965–66): 65–75; and David Charles, Aristotle’s Philosophy of Action (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984), 84–96. Examples of the second tendency are G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000 [1957] ), 57–66; G. E. M. Anscombe, “Thought and Action in Aristotle” [1965] in Aristotle’s Ethics: Issues and Interpretations, eds. James J. Walsh and Henry L. Shapiro (Belmon, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1967), 56–69; William F. R. Hardie, Aristotle’s Ethical Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968); John M. Cooper, Reason and Human Good in Aristotle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975); and again Kenny,“Practical Inference.” Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues 25 now. The way in which the concepts of “universal” and “particular” should be used in natural law theory needs to be revisited. I think this reexamination should be made through Aristotle’s concepts of sullogismos tôn praktôn (practical syllogism) and proairesis (ethical, deliberated choice). My opinion is that Aristotle’s theory of practical syllogism is one of the two main paradigms of Aquinas’s natural law theory, the other being the Stoics’ concept of God’s law as developed by Christian philosophy and theology. To have a practical syllogism, the agent has to find and formulate the two premises from which the conclusion flows. Practical syllogism is the last step of what we call moral, or practical, reasoning.There are two levels of this reasoning interacting with each other.The major premise depends on a scientific reasoning that starts with the first intellectual apprehension of the universal good(s). The minor premise depends on a prudential reasoning that starts with the apprehension of a particular good. In each case, reasoning is practical due to the inclination to, or attraction by, the good to be achieved in action.This means that reasoning is practical due to the work of the appetite toward a particular action, and that moral choice happens when the two interacting reasoning processes match (only) one specific course of action. “Practical” relates to action; practical reason, consequently, is more “practical” the closer it is to the (particular) action. The same applies to “natural law”: The more it is “practical,” the more it is the effective source of moral action. In what follows, I will show that Aristotle’s proairesis (moral choice) depends, first, on a scientific level of moral reasoning that corresponds to Aquinas’s concepts of “first notion and first principle of practical reason,” “first and secondary precepts of natural law,” and “synderesis”; and, second, on a prudential level of practical reasoning that corresponds to Aquinas’s concept of prudence. This means that prudence depends on what we would call ethical scientific knowledge. Furthermore, I will show that Aristotle’s concept of practical syllogism depends, from the beginning to the end, on the interplay between intellect (nous) and appetite or inclination (orexis), and is supposed to effectively reach and cause the particular action. Surprisingly, as we will see, this corresponds very well to Aquinas’s definition of natural law. More particularly, the first section is meant to correctly frame the theory of practical syllogism in the context of Aristotle’s physics.“Practical syllogism” is supposed to explain how physical movements happen— specifically, those movements (ours) of which thought is a cause. But since thought alone does not move anything, practical syllogism cannot be reduced to a pure theoretical object; it must be a unity of thought 26 Fulvio Di Blasi and appetite. In a sense, from this point on, the whole article intends to explain exactly what thought and what appetite compose the practical syllogism. Section two (What Thought? What Appetite?) locates them by using the distinction of the parts of the soul that Aristotle gives in the Nicomachean Ethics. The most relevant conclusion here is that the thought involved in the practical syllogism cannot be primarily the thought of phronêsis but a higher thought that relates to the concept of nous. Section three (Why Nous?) aims at carefully explaining this point. Section four (Orexis and the Virtues) addresses directly the union between thought and appetite.This union originates the knowledge of the good as such, and explains Aristotle’s key concept of “desiring nous.” At this point we will be able to reach a clear account of the concepts of practical syllogism and proairesis. This section will also clarify why moral dispositions affect correct practical reasoning, or, in other words, why evil people, for both Aristotle and Aquinas, do not understand ethics. Finally, the fifth section (Debitum Actum et Finem) summarizes and specifies better the connection between Aristotle’s theory of the practical syllogism and Aquinas’s concept of natural law. An Inquiry on Physis14 The key point for a correct understanding of Aristotle’s concept of practical syllogism is that it does not relate to an inquiry on logos but on physis. That is to say, Aristotle approaches the practical syllogism in an effort to figure out how movements happen (or are generated) in material reality, and more particularly, in those animals which move by using their reason: human beings. This means, in turn, that the practical syllogism is supposed to be precisely: (a) what directly causes the action (or what concludes in acting); and (b) what causes the action as the conclusion of a real deductive rational process (proper syllogism).What Aristotle wonders is “how thought can push us to act or not to act, to move or, according to the circumstances, not to move.”15 But how is it that thought is sometimes followed by action, sometimes not; sometimes by movement, sometimes not? What happens seems parallel to the case of thinking and inferring about the immovable objects.There the end is truth seen [theôrêma] (for, when one thinks the 14 The argument of this section follows the line taken by Nicolaci, “Può l’Azione Concludere un Sillogismo?”This is the best article I have read so far on Aristotle’s ethics and the concept of practical reason; let me refer to it for a deeper understanding of the subject. I am also indebted to Nicolaci for the clarifying and insightful discussions I had with him while working on this article. 15 Nicolaci, “Può l’Azione Concludere un Sillogismo?,” 95. Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues 27 two propositions, one thinks and puts together the conclusion), but here the two propositions result in a conclusion which is an action.16 A syllogism “is a discourse in which, certain things being stated, something other than what is stated follows of necessity from their being so.”17 As Carlo Natali has recently pointed out, it is clear that Aristotle “tries to demonstrate that all deductions made according to” this definition “must take the form of one of the three types of syllogism”18 described in the Prior Analytics, and practical deduction is one of them.That Aristotle thinks this way about the practical syllogism is evident in a key passage of book VII of the Nicomachean Ethics: The one opinion is universal, the other is concerned with the particular facts, and here we come to something within the sphere of perception; when a single opinion results from the two, the soul must in one type of case affirm the conclusion, while in the case of opinions concerned with production it must immediately act (e.g., if everything sweet ought to be tasted, and this is sweet, in the sense of being one of the particular sweet things, the man who can act and is not restrained must at the same time actually act accordingly).19 It would be misleading to try to formalize this example in order to understand the practical syllogism, for the simple reason that, at least for Aristotle, a practical syllogism could not even be thought or expressed by 16 Aristotle, Movement of Animals (hereafter, MA) 7.701a8–12. See ibid., line 20: “And the conclusion ‘I must make a coat’ is an action.” The translations from Aristotle are from The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 17 Aristotle, Prior Analytics 1.24b19–20. 18 Carlo Natali, The Wisdom of Aristotle, trans. G. Parks (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 64–65. 19 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (hereafter, NE) 7.1147a25–31. For the other famous examples of walking, making a house, and making a coat, see Aristotle, MA 7.701a12–24. Charles (Aristotle’s Philosophy of Action, 91–92) cites NE 7.1147a25–31, and other similar passages, as evidences that, in Aristotle, “the conclusion of the syllogism is a proposition and not an action.” His argument rests on the possibility, admitted by Aristotle, of being “restrained” from acting. In this case, Charles says, “the action will not follow, although the conclusion may be drawn. Hence the conclusion is not the action.” I think Charles confused the agent’s point of view (or internal point of view, from which the practical syllogism must be examined) with an external (third person) point of view. Charles’s argument is the same as saying that the action of ‘weighing down the accelerator’ does not cause the movement of the car because, for instance, there is a wall preventing it from going forward. Fulvio Di Blasi 28 words.20 The attempts, for instance by Anthony Kenny and Elizabeth Anscombe, to prove either logically right or logically wrong the examples given by Aristotle are already, as attempts, a misinterpretation of Aristotle’s concept of the practical syllogism. I hope this point will be a bit clearer later in the article.What is important in the above passage is rather that it makes clear that Aristotle was thinking of a real deduction, in which a conclusion follows from the connection of a major with a minor premise. And this fact raises again, and more strongly, the key question: “How can thought push us to act or not to act?” The reason why this question is so embarrassing is that, according to Aristotle,“intellect [dianoia] itself . . . moves nothing.”21 The faculty of the soul that moves is, rather, orexis (appetite).22 This means in turn that, for the practical syllogism to exist, it should be an intrinsic unity of thought (nous/dianoia) and appetite (orexis).And this is what “practical” is supposed to mean when it joins the generic “syllogism” to indicate the existence of a particular specific nature. A practical syllogism is a syllogism in which, from the beginning (major premise) to the end (conclusion), nous and orexis work together as an intrinsic unity. This unity may look like a kind of “monster”:23 a reasoning which requires desire for its logical steps and which does not conclude with an object theoretically identifiable. How can thought and appetite be joined together? And what does this mean exactly? The term “monster” fits well. Indeed, I hope the practical syllogism will look more and more monstrous as I go on—otherwise we might miss the point, failing to focus on what is simultaneously rational and appetitive. However, this monster does not look to me bigger or more threatening than the union of body and spirit (or mind) that we experience daily in the strange creature called human being. Descartes saw this monster clearly, but when he tried to join res extensa and res cogitans he unhappily failed. Maybe the attempt itself was his mistake. 20 On this point, see again Nicolaci, “Può l’Azione Concludere un Sillogismo?,” 106–7. 21 Aristotle, NE 6.1139a35–36. The use of dianoia is important because it refers generically to the whole intellectual part of the soul. This means, for example, that not even phronêsis in itself can cause the movement. See Aristotle, On the Soul (hereafter “OS”) 3.10.432b26–27, where it is specified that neither the calculative part of the soul nor nous can be the cause of movement.The reason given is remarkable, and we must keep it in mind during the present discussion:“mind as speculative [theoretikos] never thinks [theorei] what is practicable [prakton].” That is, theoretikon cannot theorei the action. 22 Aristotle, OS 3.10.433a10–29. 23 See Harold H. Joachim, Aristotle:The Nicomachean Ethics,A Commentary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955). Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues 29 Spirit and body do exist together:This is the only reasonable starting point in order to understand human life.And thought and desire exist together in the acting human being:This is, I think,Aristotle’s reasonable starting point. What Thought? What Appetite? Let us take for granted that, according to Aristotle, moral action is the outcome of a real deductive (syllogistic) reasoning characterized by an intrinsic unity of thought and appetite. The question now is: “What thought and what appetite are required exactly?” I am going to answer this question by using the distinction of the parts of the soul which Aristotle outlines in the first and sixth books of the Nicomachean Ethics.This distinction is made specifically for ethical purposes and does not perfectly correspond to the distinction between vegetative, sentient, and rational soul of the De Anima.24 At the end of the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics (1102a5– 1103a10), Aristotle introduces the study of the ethical virtues by distinguishing three parts of the soul. He says first (1102a27–28) that there are two parts of the soul, one with logos (logon echon) and one without logos (alogon). This is usually translated as “rational” part and “irrational” part, and this is more or less accurate. However, I need to stress here what the real Greek term is because logos, by itself, is not the best term to indicate what we would call rational part of the soul.We usually refer “rational” to the whole intellectual activity, and we usually include will (the rational desire) in it. Now, logos, of course, does not refer to the will—which, as I am going to explain below, belongs to the part of the soul without logos—but it does not even refer here to the whole intellectual sphere— which includes also nous and epistêmê, and for which the most appropriate generic term would probably be dianoia (which still would not include the will). Logos is the word (verbum) of the intellectual part of the soul: It is thought speaking, and, in so doing, is either true or false. Rule would be a better translation because Aristotle is focusing here not on the intellectual part of the human being as such but on the orthos logos, the right rule of the moral action. This is what his ethics is all about, and, accordingly, he draws his first distinction inside the soul: that is, the part with the rule and the part without it. Immediately after, he further distinguishes in two parts the part of the soul without logos: that is, (a) the vegetative part, common to all living beings (1102a32–1102b12); and (b) a part without logos but which shares 24 On this point, see Sarah Broadie, Ethics with Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 61, 118. Broadie refers, in turn, to William W. Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1975). 30 Fulvio Di Blasi somehow in the logos (1102b13–35). This is the appetitive part of the soul: the epithumêtikon, and in general the orektikon (b30).The stress here is on epithumêtikon because epithumia is the specific kind of orexis (desire) having pleasure as its object.25 This desire is what can divert man from the virtuous action—the action in conformity with the orthos logos— since “it is on account of pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of pain that we abstain from noble ones.”26 The action in conformity with orthos logos is the action in which the desire for the good as pleasure (epithumia) does not prevail over the desire for the good as noble, or morally beautiful (boulêsis). The moral virtues, which Aristotle examines in the books II, III, IV, and V, are precisely the perfections of the appetitive part of the soul making human beings able to live in harmony with their desires—in confomity with orthos logos—and to achieve not only the best moral good but also the highest pleasure. It is very important not to make the mistake of thinking that moral virtues affect just a sort of animal part of the soul.The appetitive part includes all the three kinds of orexis: epithumia, boulêsis (the will), and thumos (the sanguine desire for the good, we would say). And the moral virtues are supposed to perfect all these tendencies making them share in the (orthos) logos.27 In the lines 1103a1–3 Aristotle adds another distinction. He says that also the part with logos “will be twofold, one subdivision having it in the strict sense and in itself, and the other having a tendency to obey as one does one’s father.” It is obvious that we do not have here a real fourth part because the second one of this last distinction corresponds to the appetitive part. Aristotle is stressing now the fact that this part is not totally without logos because it is supposed to desire in conformity with it.When this happens, the logos somehow is also in the appetite. So far, therefore, 25 See Aristotle, OS 3.3.414b5–6. 26 Aristotle, NE 2.3.1104b10–11. 27 Even if Aristotle says explicitly that also the other animals possess epithumia, I think there is no reason to restrict the concept of epithumia—when applied to human beings—to the animal/sentient pleasures only. Epithumia is the desire/attraction for the good as pleasurable. In this sense, every sentient being possesses it. But in the human being what is pleasurable comes also from the rational activities.The extremes of the vices are always caused by focusing only, or too much, on epithumia:This point is clear in Aristotle, and it is true of every ethical virtue.To imagine, for instance, that the moral desire causing injustice is just a kind of epithumia we share with other not-rational animals would make unintelligible all the human pleasures connected with power, money, pride, envy, etc. For Aquinas is clear that “intelligible delight is through the will, as sensible delight is through the appetite of concupiscence” (Contra Gentiles, trans. by A.C. Pegis [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975], book 1, ch. 72). Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues 31 we have three parts of the soul: the vegetative (without logos), the appetitive (sharing in the logos), and the one with the logos in itself. Let us go now to the beginning of the sixth book, where Aristotle begins his discussion of the intellectual virtues (aretai dianoêtikai). To this purpose he needs an additional distinction, this time making the total four. He says (1139a3–15) that there are two parts of the soul which possesses logos, “one by which we contemplate the kind of things whose principles cannot be otherwise, and one by which we contemplate variable things.”These parts are, respectively, the epistêmonikon (scientific) and the logistikon (calculative). “We must, then, learn what is the best state [hexis] of each of these two parts; for this is the excellence [aretê] of each” (a15–17). These aretai are dianoêtikai because they are “the best state” of dianoia (thought). So, beginning with line 1139b15, Aristotle begins his examination of the five “states by virtue of which the soul possesses truth by way of affirmation or denial:” that is, technê (art); epistêmê (scientific, or demonstrative, knowledge); phronêsis (practical wisdom, or prudence); sophia (wisdom); and nous (intellect in the strict sense: the intellectual act by which we grasp the first principles of knowledge).28 It is not perfectly clear if Aristotle thinks of all these five states in terms of dianoetical virtues29 (let me use this unambiguous Aristotelian term—as we do in Italy—instead of “intellectual virtues”). I believe he did, and for two main reasons.The first is Aristotle’s constant use of hexis, which is the technical term indicating the genus of the virtues.30 The second is that all those five states seem to admit a better or a worse condition according to their correct exercise, and this is what the term “virtue” basically refers to. So, we have three dianoetical virtues for the epistêmonikon— sophia, nous, and epistêmê—and two for the logistikon—phronêsis and teknê. And we have four parts of the soul with respect to logos: the vegetative (without logos), the orektikon (appetitive: sharing in logos), the epistêmonikon (scientific), and the logistikon (calculative). Now, whatever the opinion about the exact number of the dianoetical virtues, there is no doubt that phronêsis is the virtue of the logistikon 28 As it will appear later in the article, this first description of nous is only a partial description. 29 Marcello Zanatta, recovering an old interpretation advanced by Plutarch, Aspasio, and Alexander of Aphrodisia, argues that the dianoetical virtues, for Aristotle, are indeed two—sophía and phrónesis—and that Aristotle’s intention in the sixth book is rather to discuss dialectically the traditional five-virtue platonic opinion. See Zanatta’s critical edition of the Nicomachean Ethics (Milan: Rizzoli, 1986), 902–3. 30 See Aristotle, NE 2.4.1105b19–1106a13. See ibid. 1.13.1103a4–6, in which Aristotle lists three examples of dianoetical virtues: sophia, sunesis (which refers to the nous-knowledge), and epistêmê. Fulvio Di Blasi 32 with respect to praxis, moral action. If there is another virtue of the logistikon, it cannot be other than technê, which deals with poiêsis, production. There is also no doubt that ethical virtues are the excellence of the orektikon, the appetitive part. What is striking about all this is that we have got a clear account, or location in the soul, of both phronêsis and the moral virtues, but it is not clear at all how we can get either proairesis (deliberated choice, the efficient cause of moral action) or the practical syllogism. Or better, it is perfectly clear that we cannot get either of them by focusing only on phronêsis and on the moral virtues. It is true that in Nicomachean Ethics 1139a31–33 Aristotle says that the two principles of proairesis, as the efficient cause of the moral action, are orexis (desire) and logos (“reasoning with a view to an end”). And that is why, in order to have a good (moral) choice, we need a true logos—a true calculation of the means—and a right desire—orexin orthen (1139a23–24). We need, in other words, both phronêsis, making true the calculation of the means, and the moral virtues, making right the desire. However, Aristotle says also that proairesis is not the principle of the moral action in terms of final cause (1139a31–32). And he adds that proairesis cannot exist without (a) nous, (b) dianoia, and (c) the ethical virtues (1139a33–34). Now, it is obvious that nous cannot be located in the logistikon part of the soul.This reference, consequently, takes proairesis, much beyond phronêsis, to the scientific part of the soul. But it is also curious that Aristotle, immediately after mentioning logos and orexis as the principles of proairesis, uses the generic term dianoia, as if he wanted again to take proairesis to the scientific part of the soul, but with a connotation not already implicit in the term nous. In other words, the lines 1139a33–34 add to the logos-orexis lines (1139a31–33) both (1) nous and dianoia as different references to the scientific part of the soul, and (2) ethical virtues as the excellence of orexis. No word is chosen by chance here but, for my present purposes, I do not need to focus more on the exegesis of these passages. I need, rather, to recall that, both in the Nicomachean Ethics (1139a17–19) and in the De Anima (433a9–27), when Aristotle starts wondering how it can be that thought causes our actions, he always uses nous—a term that, again, does not fit the logistikon part of the soul.31 Moreover, and most importantly, in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle defines proairesis, not only as orexis bouleutikê (1139a23)32 —a term that certainly 31 See Aristotle, Metaphysics (hereafter MP) E.1.1025b22. 32 See Aristotle, NE 3.1113a10–11, where the discussion is focused on boulêsis and the process of deliberation. Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues 33 fits the calculative part of the soul—but also as orektikos nous (1139b4)— which does not refer at all to the calculative—and as orexis dianoêtikê (1139b5)—which refers above all to the scientific part of the soul.This is certainly a good puzzle. But we can already be sure that the solution, whatever it is, does not lie primarily either in phronêsis or in the logistikon. Why Nous? The crucial question now is: “Why does Aristotle focus on nous and not on logos?” The first answer is certainly that for the practical syllogism to start it needs (as all demonstrations do) universal principles/knowledge, which are not known by way of demonstration. Nous, under this respect, is the origin of every human reasoning and, in a sense, of thought itself. If thought has a role to play in our movements as humans, it should be first of all at the level where its possibility to be, and to be true, is generated, and where all reasoning start. But nous is even more. It is the beginning and the end of our intellectual activity. It is the eye of the mind, and its seeing, whether the first principles of demonstration or each simple apprehension, “can never be in error.”33 Nous is to thought what aisthêsis (perception) is to senseknowledge, its object being not the perceptible thing (to aisthêton) but the intelligible thing (to noeton). Nous, in other words, is the direct, immediate, constant, intuitive intellectual knowledge we have of reality while our mind is wandering around by using its logos (that is, by reasoning). In this sense, nous is different from, and constantly grounds and originates, dianoia in its more specific meaning(s) of scientific (epistêmonikos) and calculating (logistikos) reason. And always in this sense, logos, whether epistêmonikos or logistikos, works always in order to achieve a better intellectual sight (nous) of reality.34 At the level of our universal knowledge of reality nous speaks becoming scientific dianoia, and, in so doing, it can be (not in itself but because of the logos) either true or false.That is why, if thought has part in our movements, it must be—at the highest level, where the major premise is generated—both nous of the first notions and principles, and scientific dianoia of the ethical reality. Phronêsis is not yet in the picture, since it belongs to the logistikon, and, consequently, it cannot be epistêmê (science).35 But epistêmê is exactly what we need at this first level of practical activity, and that is why Aristotle, when he distinguishes our knowledge into the theoretical, 33 Aristotle, OS 3.6.430b26–30. 34 This is also present in Plato’s subordination of diánoia (mathematical knowledge) to the intuitive knowledge (noêsis) which takes man to the world of ideas. 35 Aristotle, NE 6.5.1140b1–2. Fulvio Di Blasi 34 the practical, and the productive, talks about dianoia praktike and epistêmê praktike.36 As Enrico Berti has forcefully pointed out, the first meaning of “practical reason” in Aristotle belongs to science and not to prudence.And this is what the Nicomachean Ethics is supposed to be: a reflexive, scientific treatment of ethical reality able to help the choices of people who want to be good.37 The reason Aristotle wants to ground proairesis on nous (and dianoia), rather than on the logistikon, should now be a little clearer, but there is much more to say. Nous grounds intellectual practical activity also at the second level—where the minor premise is generated—when, looking for its completion in the action, it becomes calculative dianoia.“The one opinion is universal, the other is concerned with the particular facts, and here we come to something within the sphere of perception [aisthêsis]” (NE 7, 1147a25–31). Let us try to get deeper into Aristotle’s mind’s eye. On the one hand, reasoning about particulars requires the universal nous/dianoia knowledge which generates the major premise (e.g., “everything sweet ought to be tasted”). But on the other hand it requires “the eye of the intellect” grasping, through aisthêsis, the nature of the particular thing which is going to be the object of the process of deliberation, and will produce the minor premise (e.g., “this is sweet, in the sense of being one of the particular sweet things”).38 And this explains the famous as well as difficult passage of Nicomachean Ethics VI, 11, 1143a35–1143b6: And comprehension [nous] is concerned with the ultimates in both directions; for both the primary definitions and the ultimates are objects of comprehension [nous] and not of argument [logos], and in demonstrations comprehension [nous] grasps the unchangeable and primary definitions, while in practical reasoning [en tais praktikais] it grasps the last and contingent fact, i.e., the second proposition [protaseôs: premise]. For 36 Aristotle, MP 6.1.1025a25; 2.1026b4–5; Aristotle, Topics 6.6.145a15–16; 8.1.157a10–11. Politiké epistéme is “science,” according to Aristotle, because there is demonstrative science, not only of what is necessary, but also of what is “for the most part” (hos epi to polu): this is an epistemological trait that ethics shares also with physics. See Enrico Berti,“Ragione Pratica e Normatività in Aristotele” (hereafter “Ragione Pratica”) in Ragione Pratica, Libertà, Normatività, ed. M. S. Sorondo (Roma: Herder–Università Lateranense, 1991), 28. 37 Berti, “Ragione Pratica,” 27–43. 38 An important specification:All this is supposed to be a real rational process; that is, a process that spontaneously happens in ordinary people’s minds. Precisely because we are spontaneously rational this way, we can also reflexively focus on our intellectual activity (e.g., writing the Nicomachean Ethics) and try to make our rational processes more consistent. In other words, scientific dianoia, before being a (reflexive) science, is one of the ways our mind constantly, and spontaneously, works. Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues 35 these are the starting-points of that for the sake of which, since the universals are reached from the particulars; of these therefore we must have perception [aisthêsin], and this is comprehension [nous]. Epistemologically, the nous grasping the (intelligible) particulars through aisthêsis comes (through induction) before all our universal knowledge, but this is not my focus now.What is important to see is, rather, that practical reasoning is the gathering together, in an aisthêsis-experience, of a universal nous/dianoia and of a particular nous/dianoia, each of them trying to focus clearly on their respective objects: the major premise for the former and the minor for the latter. These premises are the conclusions of two different dianoiai: the scientific and the calculative, respectively. They are both grounded on nous.They can both be true or false (a) because nous is the objective ground of the truth, and (b) because dianoia (logos) can make mistakes. They both look for their own completion in the same aisthêsisexperience and in the context of a dialectical interplay, back and forth from scientific to calculative. But “when a single opinion [doxa] results from the two, the soul must in one type of case affirm the conclusion, while in the case of opinions concerned with production it must immediately act.” If the agent does still have a doubt on one of the two premises, or on their becoming one, if he does still have time to reflect on them, the practical syllogism (either true or false) is not concluded.39 Now, all this, although very interesting, cannot be enough. For the practical syllogism to start it needs the presence, at its very origin, of the proper principle of movement: orexis. If nous does not desire, it will not develop into dianoia, it will not descend to the second premise, and it will never become action. For practical reasoning, from its very beginning, is nothing more than a search for the good to be achieved here and now: a search for the action. Orexis and the Virtues This is the last crucial passage of my discussion. If it is true that Aristotle focuses on nous as the source and the leader of the syllogism’s steps, it is also true that, for him, nous is still not the cause of our movements. We need therefore another source and another leader. And this is orexis. Without orexis, nous could not start its dianoetical movement at the level of the major premise—since “everything sweet ought to be tasted” is not just a theoretical knowledge. But it could not even say “this is sweet” at 39 This does not mean necessarily that the agent will not act. It means simply that the agent does not always act on the basis of a practical syllogism: that is, on the basis of a perfect harmony between his thought and his appetite. 36 Fulvio Di Blasi the level of the minor premise. Here we are really meeting the monster because, for practical reasoning to exist, we need a desiring nous at the level of our universal knowledge, and a desiring nous at the level of our particular (calculative) knowledge, and a desiring nous as the conclusion. I think Aquinas understood very well the concept of desiring nous when, while explaining his natural law theory, he wrote that the first notion of practical reason is not ens but bonum:40 a term which signifies the relationship between the ens known and the will tending toward it. Bonum is a primitive concept, but still a complex one which depends, is grounded, on knowledge of the ens.41 For Aquinas, the first principle of practical reason is bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, malum vitandum.42 That is, for the nous to originate movements it must know reality—at the very first level in which it is infallibly true—as attractive, as good; and it can do so only if it is informed by, or intrinsically joined to, orexis. Building on Aristotle, Aquinas will say that “all those things to which man has a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit.”Aquinas calls these kind of first intellectual apprehensions first principles of practical reason or first precepts of natural law; interestingly enough, they are for him exactly the level of natural law that “cannot be changed” and “cannot be abolished from the heart of man.”43 In other words, for Aquinas practical reasoning could not even start without a habit of intellectual, immediate, knowledge of notions and principles (which includes the seeds of the virtues); he called this habit synderesis. But as soon as nous becomes scientific dianoia, getting to know moral rules and more specific principles of action, natural law (its secondary precepts) can either change or be “blotted out from men’s hearts.”44 But let me go back to the main question I want to address here:“What is the impact of orexis on nous in practical knowledge?” Orexis “arises through perception [aisthêsis] or through imagination [phantasia] and thought”45 but, of course, it always relates and tends to particulars.The object of orexis is not a “truth seen [theôrêma]” and, consequently, properly speaking it cannot be thought or expressed by words. “Mind as speculative [theoretikos] never thinks [theorei] what is practicable [praktov].”46 Theoretikon cannot theorei orexis.This is why Aristotle, in the 40 Thomas Aquinas, ST, I–II, q. 94, a. 2. 41 Thomas Aquinas, DV, q. 1, a. 1. 42 Aquinas, ST, I–II, q. 94, a. 2. 43 Aquinas, ST, I–II, q. 94, aa. 5–6. 44 Ibid. 45 Aristotle, MA 7.701a35–36. 46 Aristotle, OS 3.10.432b26–27. Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues 37 Metaphysics, opposes “truth” to “action” when he writes that “philosophy should be called knowledge [epistêmê] of the truth. For the end of theoretical knowledge is truth, while that of practical knowledge is action.”47 Orexis (and not phronêsis, which in itself belongs to dianoia and to theoria) makes the particular present to, and active in, the nous. In so doing it makes nous practical. But the union between orexis and nous as such is not any more thinkable. Even if this union contains “truth” it is not, properly speaking, just “truth” because it is not just “thought.” When we try to write either the major premise, or the minor premise, or the conclusion of a practical syllogism we abstractly isolate their theoretical aspects, missing at the same time their real nature.This is also the reason why Aristotle’s ethics is intrinsically dialectical: because the ethical dialogue requires a common starting point at the practical level of orexis (moral desire, or values, for those who prefer this terminology). The dialogue, in other words, starts as soon as the interlocutors discover to share at least one love, or value. Nous is always right but orexis is always right only at the very first level of nous-knowledge; then, orexis, as well as logos, can be either right or wrong. Orexis depends on dianoia, but a mere mistake in the dianoetical process would not make orexis intrinsically wrong: For Aristotle, such a mistake would rather make the action involuntary. The reason why orexis can be either right or wrong is that orexis is intrinsically complex (epithumia, boulêsis, thumos).48 In order to work correctly orexis requires (the perfection of) the moral virtues. Commenting on Aristotle concerning this point, Aquinas writes that “the rectitude of the appetitive faculty in regard to the end [determined for man by nature: that is, known by nous] is the measure of truth for practical reason.”49 Now, if we focus on the nature of orexis as the engine of practical reason—that is, as what leads (practical) thought toward its (particular) object—this fact acquires a tremendous importance. It means basically that, developing into dianoia, both at the level of the first premise and at the level of the second premise, nous depends on the moral dispositions of the agent. Scientific and calculative reasoning follow the directions and the paths given by the desire. When nous does not desire the right way, its (practical) knowledge will be distorted, misdirected; above all, the epistêmonikos logos will not focus on the right things and will not 47 Aristotle, MP 2.1.993b20–21. 48 In Thomistic philosophy the reason is more complex. I have sketched a more complete account of it in the third chapter of my God and the Natural Law. 49 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C. I. Litzinger, OP (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1998), 6, lect. 2, 1131. 38 Fulvio Di Blasi formulate, or develop, the right moral rules and principles. As a consequence, also the logistikos logos will be misdirected, and the action will be immoral. A wrong moral desire impedes a correct universal knowledge of what is good.This is the reason why Aristotle says that neither “the ignorance in proairesis”—which causes vice—nor “the ignorance of the universal”—that is a cause for blame—make the action involuntary.50 This ignorance is a bad work of dianoia—both in formulating the major premise and in calculating the moral choice—that is due to an evil moral desire. The thought is in itself incorrect because of the bad moral disposition, but it is nevertheless correctly following that disposition. So, as far as orexis and the moral intention are concerned, the action is voluntary and the person evil/vicious. Aristotle had strong epistemological reasons to say that ethics is studied in order to be good, and that evil people cannot understand ethical science. Our “proairesis and practical syllogism” puzzle should by now have been solved. Proairesis is the conclusion of the practical syllogism; as such, it is a mixture of nous and orexis. It is, at the same time, the perfection of the practical nous—which searches for its good in the action—and the efficient cause of the movement—that is, what directly and effectively causes it. This perfection is attained both through the scientific dianoia and through the calculative dianoia. Proairesis is, consequently, also the perfection of practical dianoia. Proairesis is, therefore, orektikos nous and orexis dianoêtikê; and, in the more specific sense of dianoia related to the second premise, it is also orexis bouleutikê. Phronêsis is concerned only with this last sense, while the ethical virtues affect the whole process of the practical syllogism as the excellence of orexis. Let me summarize now the discussion of practical syllogism as related specifically, not to Aristotle’s ethics, but to Aristotle’s physics. Practical syllogism does not exist if not in the acting rational agent; it is his firstperson knowledge of his action as action. This is Aristotle’s conclusion about the physics of rational action: that it happens due to a combined work of thought and appetite and according to a kind of syllogism. In other words, the rational action happens (1) when the agent, for whatever reason, reaches right now the value-conclusion that he should act upon the maxim “everything sweet ought to be tasted” (or that “I need a covering,” or “I should go to the store,” or “I should exercise”)—that is, when this maxim is right now what is chiefly moving his rational desire or appetite—and (2) when he reaches the conclusion that “this is sweet” (or 50 Aristotle, NE 3.1.1110b31–35. Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues 39 that “this cloak is a covering,” or “the car downstairs is the best way to go to the store,” or “soccer right now is for me the best way to exercise”). When the actual appetite-premise matches the identified (best) means, no other conceptual element is required for the action to happen. If the action does not happen (besides the case of material impediments), it means that the agent is still doubtful, reasoning about either the right maxim/desire or the best means or both.The examples of practical syllogisms given by Aristotle appear as perfect examples as soon as we consider (1) that real examples, for him, cannot be written down, and (2) that every example is supposed to be a way of looking, from the agent’s perspective, at the action he actually did. In this sense, we might account for John’s action by saying that he tasted the apple pie on the assumption that it was a moral obligation for him to taste everything sweet and that that apple pie was the sweet thing he saw as available to him at the time he tasted it.That both assumptions might have been wrong, unreasonable, or grounded on other complex reasoning does not change the fact that in the end John acted upon a kind of syllogism. If we want to help John—that is, if we shift our focus from physics to ethics—we do not have to try to formulate a different syllogism for him to use, but to form better both his scientific moral knowledge and his moral desire. That is to say, we have (1) to teach him how to focus on better moral concepts, principles, and maxims, and (2) to give him a better education in virtue.This is precisely the point of Aristotle’s ethics, and this is why he did not think of giving a special place in it to the practical syllogism as such.51 Good practical syllogisms will just follow good moral education and good scientific study of ethical reality. Some contemporary interpreters, like Kenny and Anscombe, try to reach a sort of theoretically complete (multiple-step) account of the reasoning behind what I have now identified as the real practical syllogism; they miss the point that the complete syllogism is a conclusion of the agent’s discursive reasoning, not the reasoning itself. Moreover, they wonder how the syllogism, whatever its formulation, can actually compel the agent to act, missing the point that no third-person formulation of the syllogism can lead anyone to act. We should add that a contingent action cannot be reduced to any abstract description; except for God, Who has perfect 51 Even when we can formulate a deductive (syllogistic) argument that is directly applicable to action—for example, (a) abortion is always wrong, (b) this particular medical procedure is an abortion, (c) this particular medical procedure cannot be done—it will be a practical syllogism only for those who will act upon it; and it will be a better syllogism for those who have a better moral apprehension of its premises. 40 Fulvio Di Blasi knowledge of every singular, there is no way to know for sure what the real apprehension of the premises was for the agent. Most of the time, the agent himself has difficulty in reaching an adequate knowledge of why exactly he did what he did. To have a perfect knowledge of a practical syllogism means no more and no less than to have perfect knowledge, with respect to one particular action, of someone’s moral conscience— indeed, of the person’s complete state of mind. Debitum Actum et Finem The reason focusing too much on phronêsis is misleading in order to understand practical reasoning should by now be evident. Practical syllogism is grounded first of all on nous. And nous, in Aristotle, refers to an intellectual objective knowledge acquired by induction.This knowledge grounds the work of logos both at the level of the major premise and at the level of the minor premise. But both the practical character and the correct working of the nous-dianoia knowledge depend on (the excellence of ) the appetite—orexis—and always refers to, and finds its completion or perfection in, the concrete action which concludes the syllogism. Practical knowledge is, first of all, the lived moral knowledge of the rationally acting agent; only remotely it is knowledge—either reflexive or not—of first values or practical principles (major-premise level) and knowledge of suitable means (minor-premise level). Practical knowledge, properly speaking, cannot be separated from the (particular and concrete) action.A universal knowledge of the good is practical only secundum quid, as far as it is directed to the action. Otherwise it would be theoretical knowledge, no longer searching, but contemplating the good.This is a very important point: For Aquinas the intellectual (nous) knowledge of the good is not practical knowledge, because “practical” is only what relates to the action—and action relates to the means. If you are already enjoying the end, or the good, your intellectual knowledge of it is theoretical.52 What now about natural law? I already mentioned some connections between the first two levels of the practical syllogism and some of the main concepts involved in Aquinas’s natural law theory: that is, the first notion and the first principle of practical reason, the first and the secondary precepts of natural law, and the habit of synderesis. If I am right, this connection is already a remarkable thing because it shows that this natural-law knowledge depends not only on (the intellectual virtue of) prudence—as some 52 In ST, I–II q. 3, a. 5,Aquinas explains explicitly that happiness or beatitude is not an activity of the practical intellect, because practical intellect relates to the means, not to the end alone. Practical Syllogism, Proairesis, and the Virtues 41 contemporary scholars are trying to stress—but also and primarily on a scientific ethical knowledge and on the ethical virtues. But if I am really right, Aquinas should have defined natural law also at the practical level of proairesis, that is, with reference to the effective cause of the concrete action to be performed here and now. Did he do that? Actually, in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 91, a. 2, the first article devoted to the natural law and in which Aquinas addresses the question “Whether there is in us a natural law,” we find exactly the following definition: it is evident that all things partake somewhat of the eternal law, in so far as, namely, from its being imprinted on them, they derive their respective inclinations to their proper acts and ends. Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to Divine providence in the most excellent way, in so far as it partakes of a share of providence, by being provident both for itself and for others.Wherefore it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end [naturalem inclinationem ad debitum actum et finem]: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law. This is certainly Aquinas’s most precise and technical definition of natural law. Here there is no doubt that this “natural inclination” is a kind of intellectual and rational orexis, but what should surprise us is that the definition is all but simple. In fact, it refers both to the inclination to the proper end and to the inclination to the proper (or due) act.These two inclinations are not the same thing.The first one refers to the intellectual (theoretical) knowledge of the end as good; the second one refers to the inclination to the concrete action to be performed here and now.53 This inclination depends on the work of practical reason, which identifies the right action to do (recta ratio).The knowledge of the right action as such is a practical knowledge, and it matches very well Aristotle’s concept of proairesis. So, it seems very much that Aquinas, on the line of Aristotle’s theory of action, conceived of his natural law also as practical, namely, as an effective guide of moral action. Such an approach to natural law theory has extraordinary N&V consequences. But this is a topic for another article. 53 I explained the logical meaning of “law” and “natural law” in Aquinas (also with respect to the concept of “inclination”) in my “Natural Law as Inclination to God,” forthcoming. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004): 43–60 43 The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist in St. Thomas Aquinas* G ILLES E MERY, OP University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY has generally sought, in ecclesiology as well as in sacramental theology, to highlight the relationship between the Church and the Eucharist.The work of Henri de Lubac is well-known for its important achievements in this rediscovery, especially with respect to the now-famous formula: “The Church makes the Eucharist, but the Eucharist also makes the Church.”1 This organic relationship between the Eucharist and the Church, whose unity flows from the Eucharist itself, is at the heart of St. Thomas Aquinas’s theology of the Eucharist. Thomist authors generally have not failed to recognize this fact.2 Thus it was with St.Thomas that Cardinal Journet showed that the grace or effect produced by the Eucharist is “the secret unity of the Church.”3 The ecclesial fruitfulness of the Eucharist, a theme present in the teaching of the Council of * Translation by Therese C. Scarpelli, of “Le fruit ecclésial de l’Eucharistie chez S. Thomas d’Aquin,” Nova et Vetera 72 (1997): 25–40. 1 Henri de Lubac, Méditation sur l’Église (Paris:Aubier, 1953), 113; cf. 129:“Au sens le plus strict, l’Eucharistie fait l’Église.”A critical study of this double relationship in the writings of Henri de Lubac is found in Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 1993), 1–120. 2 Aloysius M. Ciappi, “Eucharistia: Sacramentum unitatis Ecclesiae apud D. Thomam et posteriores theologos OP” in La Eucaristía y la Paz. XXXV Congreso eucarístico internacional 1952: Sesiones de estudio, Vol. 1 (Barcelona: Planas, 1953), 282–86. 3 Charles Journet, L’Église du Verbe Incarné, vol. 2 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1951), 671; see “Le mystère de la sacramentalité,” Nova et Vetera 49 (1974): 161–214, especially 203–4. 44 Gilles Emery, OP Trent,4 was especially highlighted in the Second Vatican Council: The sacrament of the Eucharist represents and effects the unity of the faithful who form one single body or one single people in Christ.5 The Church celebrates the Eucharist and the Eucharist effects the Church’s unity. These two statements are not at exactly the same level. Even though the first possesses a priority of exercise, the second expresses the mystery of the Church and reveals its very soul. This article will sketch the teaching of St.Thomas regarding this second statement. The Ecclesial Dimension in All Aspects of the Sacrament The ecclesial dimension first appears in all aspects of St.Thomas’s analysis of the sacrament, whose symbolism and efficacy require, in a dynamic way, the adoption of a three-level structure: first, the sign itself; then the intermediary reality which is at once the sign and first effect of the sacrament; and finally the reality of grace effected and signified by the sacrament.The great scholastics (for example, St.Albert and St. Bonaventure) agree in the general application of this structure and acknowledge the mystical Body as the fruit of the grace of the Eucharist.6 Thus the principal elements of the doctrine which Thomas inherits are already in place, but the unfolding of this doctrine in his own theology deserves special examination. The sensible sign of the Eucharist (sacramentum tantum) On the level of sign, Thomas likes to recall an image from the Didache, developed in the West by Cyprian and then by Augustine, from whom Thomas derives it: Our Lord has proffered his Body and his Blood in those things which, from a multitude, are reduced to unity, since the bread is one single 4 This fact is rarely emphasized in studies, but the reader will be easily convinced by examining several documents, notably the Decree on the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist (Session XIII, October 11, 1551) in the Preamble, ch. 2 and ch. 8, as well as the Teaching on the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (Session XXII, September 17, 1562) in ch. 7; cf. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Vol. 2, ed. Norman P. Tanner (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press), 693–97 and 735. 5 Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, nos. 3, 11, and 26; Christus Dominus, nos. 11 and 15; Unitatis Redintegratio, nos. 2 and 15. Among the numerous works devoted to this topic, one can refer to the study of the texts and their sources (Fathers, liturgy, Magisterium) by Bruno Forte, La Chiesa nell’Eucaristia: Per un’ecclesiologia eucaristica alla luce del Vaticano II (Naples: M. D’Auria, 1988). 6 Albert the Great, IV Sent. dist. 8, a. 11–13; Bonaventure, IV Sent. dist. 8, pars 2, a. 2, q. 1. The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist 45 reality made of many grains; while the wine is one single [drink] made of many grapes.7 Here, Thomas echoes Augustine’s commentary on John: “O mystery of goodness, O sign of unity, O bond of charity!”8 The bread and wine, which constitute the matter of this sacrament, are here seen as the sign of that which the Eucharist effects: From a multitude, the Eucharist brings forth a single reality (ex multis unum). This first aspect of the Eucharist—which Thomas frequently recalls9— is not inconsequential, since the sacrament effects that which is represented or signified, that is, the true Body of Christ and the unity of the mystical Body. Thus in Thomas, this ecclesial signification serves to show that the sacrament effectively produces such a grace.10 Other liturgical acts are mentioned in this context: for example, the commingling of water in the wine, which signifies the mystical Body, “the uniting of the members to their Head” or “the uniting of the Christian people to Christ.”11 Similarly, the breaking of the bread signifies the distribution of graces in the Church and the various states of the mystical Body (glorious, militant, and awaiting the resurrection).12 The ecclesial symbolism associated with food will be 7 Augustine, In Iohannis Evangelium 6:56, tract. 26,17 (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 36, 268); Sermo 227; 272 (PL 38, 1100; 1247–48). Cf. Didache IX,4 (Sources Chrétiennes 248,177); Cyprian, Epist. 63,13; 69,5 (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 3C, 408–409 and 476–77). See Marie-François Berrouard,“Le symbolisme du pain et du vin,” in Oeuvres de Saint Augustin, Vol. 72 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1972), 822–23. For the history of this eucharistic symbol, see Adalbert G. Hamman, Études patristiques (Paris: Beauchesne, 1991), 93–100. 8 Thomas Aquinas, ST, III q. 79, a. 1; cf. Augustine, In Iohannis Evangelium 6:50–52, tract 26,13 (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 36, 266); cf. tract. 26,17 (ibid., 268). 9 Thomas Aquinas, IV Sent. dist. 8, q. 1, a. 1, qla 1, arg. 2; dist. 11, q. 1, a. 1, qla 1, arg. 2; dist. 11, q. 2, a. 1, qla 2; dist. 11, q. 2, a. 2, qla 1, arg. 4; ST, III, q. 74, a. 1; q. 75, a. 2, arg. 3; q. 79, a. 1; q. 79, a. 2; Catena in Matth. 26, lect. 7 (Marietti ed., 1953, 384); In Ioan. 6:52 (Marietti ed., #960); Report. ined. Leon. in I Cor. 11:23; In I Cor. 11:24 (Marietti ed., #654), see below, footnotes 79 and 81. 10 ST, III, q. 79, a. 1.This argument is only made after three other reasons, but this does not necessarily mean that we must interpret it as a marginal or extrinsic motif as Bruno Forte argues in “Contributo ad uno studio del rapporto fra l’Eucaristia e la Chiesa in S.Tommaso d’Aquino,” in Tommaso d’Aquino nel suo settimo centenario, Vol. 4 (Naples: M. D’Auria, 1974), 409–20, here 410–13. Moreover, this symbolism is present everywhere in the works of Thomas, right into the office of Corpus Christi. 11 IV Sent. dist. 11, q. 2, a. 4, qla 1; ST, III, q. 74, aa. 6–7. 12 IV Sent. dist. 12, q. 1, a. 3, qla 3, c. et ad 1; ST, III, q. 83, a. 5, ad 7–9 (on the corpus triforme of Amalarius). 46 Gilles Emery, OP further developed with respect to the res of the Eucharist, since through communion the faithful are transformed into that which they eat: the Body of Christ. St. Thomas therefore holds firmly to the representing of the ecclesial reality (the unity of the mystical Body) by the eucharistic species which, as the sacramental matter, contribute to signifying and producing the grace of the Eucharist. The Sacramental Body of Christ (res et sacramentum) Thomas next emphasizes the ecclesial dimension in relation to the first effect of the sacrament, which is the corpus verum, the eucharistic Body of Christ (and his Blood). At the heart of the sacramental organism, the Eucharist substantially comprises all the treasure, the spiritual good of the whole Church; it comprises the whole mystery of our salvation.13 Thus in his commentary on the Sentences,Thomas invokes the ecclesial efficacy of the Eucharist to demonstrate that Christ is truly present there: It is fitting that there be a sacrament in which Christ is contained not only by participation, but by his essence, in order that thus the union of the Head to his members may be perfect (ut sit perfecta coniunctio capitis ad membra).14 The perfection of the sacraments of the New Law demands that there be a sacrament in which Christ is joined and united to us in reality (in quo Christus nobis realiter coniungatur et uniatur), and not merely through participation in his virtue, as in the other sacraments.15 Thomas invokes the same argument to show the fittingness of the institution of the Eucharist. The Eucharist, considered under the aspect of the verum corpus, is “the sacrament which, really containing the Head conformed to his members, unites the mystical Body to its Head.”16 The perfection of the body requires that the members be united to their head; but by this sacrament the members of the Church are united to their Head (membra Ecclesiae suo capiti coniunguntur) . . . ; it was therefore necessary that this sacrament be instituted.17 13 ST, III, q. 65, a. 3, ad 1; q. 83, a. 4; cf. IV Sent. dist. 49, q. 4, a. 3, ad 4. 14 IV Sent. dist. 10, q. 1, a. 1 (texts are indicated following the edition of Maria F. Moos [Paris: Lethielleux, 1947]).Thomas receives this approach from Albert the Great (IV Sent. dist. 10, a. 1, sed contra 2; ed. Auguste Borgnet,Vol. 29, 244). In the Summa theologiae, this specifically ecclesiological argument will be replaced by a theme drawn from the perfection of the sacrifice of the New Covenant (ST, III, q. 75, a. 1). 15 IV Sent. dist. 9, q. un., a. 1, qla 1. Cf. ibid., sed contra 2; ST, III, q. 65, a. 3. 16 IV Sent. dist. 8, q. 1, a. 3, qla 2, ad 1. 17 IV Sent. dist. 8, q. 1, a. 3, qla 1, sed contra 1. The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist 47 Insisting on the truth of Christ contained in the Eucharist, Thomas constantly reminds us that the true Body of Christ is also the sign, the representation, the likeness, the exemplar, and the figure of his mystical Body, which is the Church; in other words, it is the sign and the cause of that which the Eucharist procures.18 He never fails to attribute to the corpus verum the fundamental structure of the res et sacramentum:The true Body of Christ is at once signum and res. As sign, the Body of Christ denotes unity, the gathering of a multitude of members in unity. Ecclesial realism appears deeply rooted in eucharistic realism. Thus, showing the fittingness of the institution of this sacrament, Thomas closely links the substantial conversion of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ (transubstantiation) and our own conversion in Christ who is the end [ finis] of this conversion:19 “It was fitting that this sacrament, in which the incarnate Word is contained in order to unite us to himself, be proposed to us under the figure of food, not so that he may be converted into us by his union with us, but rather so that, by our union with him, we may be converted into him (nos in ipsum convertens).”20 Here we reach the third level, that of the sacramental grace proper to the Eucharist. The Fruit of the Eucharist (res tantum) Thomas formulates the proper effect of the sacrament in terms of nutrition or food (cibus). Here, however, the food is not transformed into the one who eats it, but rather the one eating is changed (convertitur) into the food which he eats.This understanding is clearly a development of Augustine’s thought.21 The effect proper to the Eucharist, as Thomas expresses it, is the transformation (transformatio) of man into Christ by love, the transmutation (transmutatio) of the one who eats into the food which is eaten, our conversio into Christ, a union or adunatio of man to Christ: in other words, incorporation into Christ.22 Such is the meaning of the communio or synaxis, which characterizes the Eucharist:“We enter into communion 18 All these phrases are Thomas’s own: III Sent. dist. 12, q. 3, a. 1, qla 1, arg. 1; dist. 13, q. 2, a. 2, qla 2, arg. 2 and ad 2; IV Sent. dist. 12, q. 1, a. 3, qla 3, ad 1; dist. 13, expositio textus; ST, III, q. 82, a. 9, obj. 2; In Ad Eph. 4:13 (Marietti ed., #217). 19 This is not an exaggerated term: the use of the faithful is the end (finis) of this sacrament (ST, III, q. 74, a. 2); cf. ST, III, q. 74, a. 2, ad 2: finis effectus. 20 IV Sent. dist. 8, q. 1, a. 3, qla 1; cf. dist. 9, q. un., a. 2, qla 4. 21 Augustine, Confessions VII,X,16, quoted for instance in IV Sent. dist. 8, q. 1, a. 3, qla 1; ST, III, q. 73, a. 3, ad 2; In Ioan. 6:55 (Marietti ed., #972). 22 IV Sent. dist. 8, q. 1, a. 3, qla 1, ad 3 (transmutari); dist. 9, q. un., a. 2, qla 4 (Christo incorporari); dist. 12, q. 2, a. 1, qla 1 (conversio); dist. 12, q. 2, a. 2, qla 1 (transformatio); ibid., qla 3 (unio); De art. fid. et ecclesiae sacram. II (Leon. ed., vol. 42, 255: adunatio; homo Christo incorporatur); etc. 48 Gilles Emery, OP with Christ through the Eucharist; we share in his Flesh and in his Godhead; we enter into communion and are mutually united by it.”23 With St. John Damascene,Thomas likewise speaks in this context of an “assuming of the divinity of Christ” effected by the Eucharist.24 In Thomas, the ecclesial dimension of eucharistic grace is present to a remarkable degree, as is shown by other expressions which can be collected from the Summa theologiae. The breadth of Thomas’s vocabulary is worth noting. He refers to the effect which the Eucharist brings about (the res signified and not contained) as the mystical Body of Christ (Corpus Christi mysticum), or the unity of this mystical Body (unitas corporis mystici); the society of the Body [of Christ] and of his members (societas corporis et membrorum suorum), the union of the members with the Head, or the mutual union of the members of Christ with one another; the Church of the saints and the faithful, the society of the saints (societas sanctorum), or the Church constituted of diverse faithful (Ecclesia ex diversis fidelibus); very often: the unity of the Church (unitas ecclesiastica); the unity signified by the bread and the wine, or simply unity itself; the spiritual nourishment received through union with Christ and his members; peace and unity (pax et unitas); union with Christ or with God; transformation into Christ; the unity of the many in Christ (multi unum in Christo); the incorporation of people into Christ; the union (unio) or the reunion (adunatio) of the Christian People with Christ; communion (communicatio) with Christ and mutual communion of the faithful among each other.25 For this reason, the Eucharist is called “sacrament of unity (of the Church)” (sacramentum unitatis [ecclesiasticae]), or “sacrament of unity and of peace” (sacramentum unitatis et pacis), peace being understood as the union of wills which charity brings about.26 The Eucharist thus produces the same effect as did the coming of the Son into our world; it bestows on man all 23 ST, III, q. 73, a. 4; quote from John Damascene, De fide Orthodoxa, c. 86,15 [IV,13] (Burgundio version, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert [New York: Franciscan Institute St. Bonaventure, 1955], 317). Cf. IV Sent. dist. 8, q. 1, a. 1, qla 3 (with a text from Dionysius). 24 Ibid.; “the assuming” (metalepsis) is indeed a name for the Eucharist itself. 25 All these expressions, a complete list of which would be extremely long, are collected from the treatise on the Eucharist (ST, III, q. 73–83). On this topic, see Godefridus Geenen, “L’adage Eucharistia est sacramentum ecclesiasticae unionis dans les oeuvres et la doctrine de S. Thomas d’Aquin,” in La Eucaristía y la Paz, 275–81; Felicísimo Martínez, “La Eucaristía y la unidad de la Iglesia en Santo Tomás de Aquino,” Studium 9 (1969): 377–404. 26 ST, III, q. 67, a. 2; q. 73, a. 2, sed contra; q. 73, a. 4; q. 80, a. 5, ad 2; q. 82, a. 2, arg. 3 and ad 3; q. 83, a. 4, corpus and ad 3. Cf. Adolph Hoffmann, “Eucharistia ut sacramentum pacis secundum S.Thomam,” in La Eucaristía y la Paz, 163–67. The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist 49 the goods which Christ gave to the world through his passion; it applies the work of our redemption. In short, it confers the whole mystery of our salvation.27 In the same way, Thomas also reserves for the Eucharist the name “sacrament of charity” (sacramentum caritatis), because it represents charity and procures a growth in charity, a strengthening of life in the Spirit, and a most sweet and delectable spiritual refreshment.28 The charity procured by the Eucharist is not limited to the habitus, but extends even to “charity in its act (quantum ad actum) which is stimulated by this sacrament.”29 But we are not speaking here of a reality different from the preceding one. It is not as though there were an ecclesial effect of the sacrament on the one hand, and a personal and individual effect on the other hand, added to or juxtaposed with the first. In fact, the same reality of grace, that is, the incorporation of the person into Christ, is at once both the food of personal spiritual refreshment and, by its very nature, the building up of the Church, whose unity, founded in faith (Baptism), is strengthened and completed by charity. The close connection between the personal and ecclesial dimensions of the Eucharist, founded in incorporation into Christ, has been particularly well expressed by Cajetan: When we hear that the fruit (res tantum) of the sacrament is grace, and that that which is to be received is the unity of the Church or the mystical Body of Christ, we do not see two separate realities there, since it is all nothing more than the grace of God in his faithful.30 The Eucharist thus strengthens the unity of the mystical Body by intensifying man’s union with Christ and the mutual union of the members. We are now at the heart of Thomas’s vision of the Church. Baptism, the sacrament of faith, builds up the Church by incorporating the baptized into Christ and building them into one unified Church. It effects the initial incorporation into the Church which the Eucharist nourishes and completes.31 And in Baptism, the unifying power of the 27 ST, III, q. 79, a. 1; q. 83, a. 1 and 4. 28 ST, III, q. 73, a. 3, ad 3; q. 74, a. 4, arg. 3; q. 78, a. 3, arg. 6 and ad 6; q. 79, a. 4, ad 3; q. 80, a. 5, ad 2 (sacrament of charity); cf. q. 78, a. 3, ad 6: “Hoc autem est sacramentum caritatis quasi figurativum et effectivum;” ST, III, q. 79, a. 1, ad 1; q. 81, a. 1, ad 3 (increase of habitual grace); ST, III, q. 79, a. 1, corpus and ad 2; q. 81, a. 1, ad 3 (delectation and sweetness); etc. 29 ST, III, q. 79, a. 4.This is the reason for the Eucharist’s effacement of venial sins. 30 Cajetan, In Tertiam Partem Summa theologiae, q. 73, a. 1 (Leon. ed.,Vol. 12, 139). 31 ST, III, q. 39, a. 6, ad 4; q. 73, a. 3. See Martin Morard,“L’Eucharistie, clé de voûte de l’organisme sacramentel chez saint Thomas,” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 217–50. 50 Gilles Emery, OP Eucharist is already at work. In fact, of its very nature Baptism contains the desire or the objective hunger for the Eucharist—not necessarily proceeding from the psychological conscience—the desire to spiritually ingest (manducare) Christ, the desire for the transformation into Christ given in the act of faith completed in charity.32 The Eucharist is therefore dynamically included in all the other sacraments to such an extent that without this “objective hunger” for the Eucharist, no effect of grace can be obtained. To put it another way, the hunger for the Eucharist belongs organically to salvation.33 A profound reason for this truth is supplied by the res of the Eucharist: “The effect of this sacrament is the unity of the mystical Body without which salvation cannot exist.”34 At this deep level, the fullness of the fruit of the Eucharist is identical with the Church.Thomas can therefore explain: Since in spiritually eating the Flesh of Christ and in spiritually drinking his Blood we become participators in the Church’s unity which is caused by charity [. . .], he who does not eat thus is outside the Church and consequently outside charity, and therefore does not have life in himself.35 In Thomas, this close connection between Church and Eucharist is supported by two major theological motifs. The first pertains to the sacraments. Thomas sees the efficacy of the sacraments and the grace given through them as a function of incorporation into Christ: It is by incorporating man into Christ (and thus building up the Church) that the sacraments and the Eucharist produce the life of grace. The second motif pertains to Thomas’s understanding of the Church as essentially subsisting in the life of Christ’s grace given by the Holy Spirit; that is, faith operating through charity.36 It is therefore in terms of faith and charity that Thomas illumines what it means to belong to the Church and explains its unity, just as it is in terms of faith and charity that he explains the fruit of the grace of the Eucharist. Both the Church and the 32 ST, III, q. 73, a. 3. Texts and analyses on this topic are found in Jean-Marie R. Tillard, “Le votum Eucharistiae: l’Eucharistie dans la rencontre des chrétiens,” in Miscellanea Liturgica in onore di S. E. il Cardinale Giacomo Lercaro, Vol. 2 (RomeParis: Desclée, 1967), 143–94. 33 ST, III, q. 80, a. 11: “Et ideo sine voto percipiendi hoc sacramentum, non potest homini esse salus.” 34 ST, III, q. 73, a. 3:“Res sacramenti est unitas corporis mystici, sine qua non potest esse salus.” 35 In Ioan. 6:54 (Marietti ed., no. 969). 36 Yves Congar, “L’idée de l’Église chez saint Thomas d’Aquin,” in Idem, Esquisses du Mystère de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1941), 59–91. The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist 51 Eucharist are seen under the aspect of incorporation into Christ. Thus, commenting on John 6:57,Thomas designates the fruit of the Eucharist (the res signata tantum) as “incorporation into the mystical Body by the union of faith and charity.”37 Likewise, in his homilies on the Credo, for example, Thomas explains the unity of the Church by means of faith, hope, and charity, the three theological virtues on which this unity is founded, and through which it is procured.38 Here we find a profound “osmosis” between the interior dimension of the mystery and its accomplishment through the rite, achieved by an inclusion of the sacramental world and the nature of the Church with respect to the theological virtues. Christology and Pneumatology The power of the Eucharist, Thomas explains, derives primarily and principally from the fact that it contains the Word made flesh,39 into whom the one who communicates spiritually is “converted.” As we have seen, this personal and ecclesial effect has as its sign and cause the double level of the sacramentum tantum (the eucharistic species with the words of consecration) and the res et sacramentum (the true Body of Christ), these two elements coming together in the unity of the sacrament itself (the first only concurring in producing grace by virtue of the second).40 More precisely—leaving aside here the universal value of the Eucharist as sacrifice offered, which deserves to be considered on its own—it is the spiritual ingestion of the Body and the Blood of Christ which produces this spiritual effect: “The unity of the mystical Body is the fruit of the true Body of Christ which was received.”41 Thomas bases his teaching on numerous scriptural passages, notably John 6:57 [6:56] (“He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him”) and I Cor 10:17 (“Since there is one single bread, we are one single Body, all we who have part in this single bread”).42 He also highlights the theme of the Church’s birth from the side of the 37 In Ioan. 6:57 (Marietti ed., no. 976); cf. In Ioan. 6:64 (Marietti ed., no. 993). 38 In Symbolum Apostolorum Expositio, art. 9 (Marietti ed., no. 973–975); cf. ST, III, q. 8, a. 3. 39 ST, III, q. 79, a. 1:“Effectus huius sacramenti debet considerari, primo quidem et principaliter, ex eo quod in hoc sacramento continetur, quod est Christus”; cf. In Ioan. 6:55 (Marietti ed., no. 973). 40 IV Sent. dist. 8, q. 1, a. 1, qla 1, ad 2. 41 ST, III, q. 82, a. 9, ad 2: “Unitas corporis mystici est fructus corporis veri percepti.” 42 See for instance IV Sent. dist. 8, q. 1, a. 3, qla 1, sed contra; ST, III, q. 73, a. 2, sed contra; q. 74, a. 1; q. 75, a. 1; In Ioan., c. 6, lect. 7. 52 Gilles Emery, OP crucified Christ, from which flow water and blood ( John 19:34),43 representing the sacraments by which the Church is built (fabricata), instituted (instituta), consecrated (consecrata), or saved (salvata).44 The effect of the Eucharist is that of Jesus’ passion, whence the sacraments acquire their efficacy and to whose fruits they give access.45 Church and sacrament are here inextricably tied by their source:“Christ has suffered his passion, out of charity, in order to unite himself to the Church as a spouse.”46 In order to illuminate the transforming and unifying power of the Eucharist,Thomas also draws on the explanation of Cyril of Alexandria which defends the incarnation of the Word with respect to the passion of Jesus: The life-giving Word of God, uniting himself to his own Flesh, makes it life-giving as well. It was thus fitting that he should unite himself in a certain way to our bodies by his holy Flesh and by his precious Blood which we receive as a living benediction in the bread and wine.47 The Eucharist derives its power from the life-giving power of the Flesh of the incarnate Word. In the Eucharist, the life-giving Flesh of the Logos comes to unite itself to our own, to confer on it immortal life. Having sanctified his own Flesh, the Word sanctifies the believer who, through spiritual and sacramental communion, unites himself to this divinized Flesh of Christ.This fundamental reference to the Word appears 43 We have found eight occurrences of this theme in the treatise on the Eucharist in the Tertia pars: q. 74, a. 6; q. 74, a. 7, arg. 2, c., ad 2 and ad 3; q. 74, a. 8, arg. 1 and corpus; q. 79, a. 1. 44 All these expressions are Thomas’s own: IV Sent. dist. 1, q. 1, a. 4, qla 3, sed contra 1; dist. 18, q. 1, a. 1, qla 1; ST, I, q. 92, a. 3; ST, III, q. 62, a. 5, sed contra; q. 64, a. 2, ad 3; q. 66, a. 3, arg. 3 and ad 3; q. 66, a. 4, arg. 3 and ad 3; In Ioan. 19:34 (Marietti ed., no. 2458). For the many patristic sources of this theme (which Thomas develops especially with reference to Augustine and Chrysostom), see Sebastian Tromp, “De nativitate Ecclesiae ex corde Iesu in Cruce,” Gregorianum 13 (1932): 489–527;Alban A. Maguire, Blood and Water:The Wounded Side of Christ in Early Christian Literature (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1958). 45 ST, III, q. 62, a. 5; cf. IV Sent. dist. 8, q. 1, a. 1, qla 3; ST, III, q. 79, a. 1: “Et ideo effectum quem passio Christi fecit in mundo, hoc sacramentum facit in homine.” 46 IV Sent. dist. 26, q. 2, a. 1, ad 3:“. . . caritatem, per quam pro Ecclesia sibi in sponsam coniungenda passus est” (about marriage;Vivès ed.,Vol. 11, 72). 47 ST, III, q. 79, a. 1.Thomas quotes this passage more at length in Catena in Lucam 22:19 (Marietti ed., 1953, 286); cf. Cyril, In Lucam 22:19 (PG 72, 907–912). On this topic, see Jean-Marie R. Tillard, L’Eucharistie Pâque de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1964), 60–83. The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist 53 in the explanation of the efficacy of the words of consecration: They retain their power from the fact that they are, properly speaking, the words of the incarnate Word. It is through the words of the incarnate Word, pronounced by the priest acting in the Person of Christ, that the substantial change takes place: “The sacrament is accomplished by the words of Christ.”48 Does this fundamentally Christological understanding obscure the action of the Holy Spirit? This question, over and above the problem of the epiclesis, directly concerns the relationship between the Eucharist and the Church. Thomas’s attention to the pneumatological dimension of the sacrament must be clearly acknowledged:“The Body is in this sacrament . . . in a spiritual manner (spiritualiter); i.e., in an invisible manner and by the power of the Holy Spirit.”49 The words pronounced by the priest are the instrument through which passes the power of the Holy Spirit.50 From a Trinitarian point of view,Thomas explains the unity of the action of Christ and of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist, by means of the theme of the Son’s operating through the Holy Spirit (understood in close connection with the Filioque): Christ the Priest accomplishes the eucharistic conversion by the Holy Spirit. It is in this manner that Thomas appropriates transubstantiation to Christ who operates and at the same time to the Holy Spirit through whom Christ acts.51 As for the grace of configuration and of incorporation into Christ, that is, the personal and ecclesial fruit of the Eucharist, Thomas attributes it to the Holy Spirit by full right.52 Commenting on John 6 in the context of the Eucharist,Thomas explains: “He who eats and drinks spiritually becomes a participator in the Holy Spirit, by whom we are united to Christ in the union of faith and charity, and through whom we become members of the Church.”53 Thomas first underlines the presence of the Holy Spirit, who works this spiritual communion, in the Flesh of the incarnate Word himself. The following passage of his commentary on John is worth examining for the very evocative illumination it provides on the pneumatology of Thomas’s eucharistic doctrine: 48 ST, III, q. 78, a. 1, sed contra; q. 75, a. 7, arg. 3; q. 78, a. 2, arg. 2; q. 78, a. 4, sed contra. St. Ambrose, De sacramentis IV,IV,14s (Sources Chrétiennes 25 bis, 108–13). Cf. Pierre-Marie Gy, La liturgie dans l’histoire (Paris: Cerf, 1990), 211–21. 49 ST, III, q. 75, a. 1, ad 1. 50 ST, III, q. 78, a. 4, ad 1. 51 IV Sent., dist. 10, expositio textus: “Appropriatur [transsubstantiatio] Filio sicut operanti, quia ipse est sacerdos et hostia; Spiritui autem Sancto sicut quo operatur, quia ipse est virtus de illo exiens ad sanandum (Luke 6:19).” 52 ST, III, q. 63, a. 3, ad 1; In Ioan. 6:57 (Marietti ed., no. 976). 53 In Ioan. 6:55 (Marietti ed., no. 973; cf. no. 972). 54 Gilles Emery, OP The Flesh of Christ is capable of accomplishing many things in many ways insofar as it is united to the Word and to the Spirit (ut coniuncta Verbo et Spiritui). . . . If we abstract divinity and the Holy Spirit, this Flesh is no more powerful than any other flesh; but if the Spirit and divinity are present, this Flesh is capable of accomplishing many things because it makes those who take it live in Christ: in fact, it is through the Spirit of charity that man lives in God. . . . If you attribute this effect of the Flesh to the Spirit, and to the divinity united to the Flesh, then it procures eternal life, as we see in Gal 5:25: “If we live in the Spirit, let us walk also in the Spirit.” And this is why Christ adds:“The words which I have spoken to you are Spirit and life” ( Jn 6:64 [6:63]). We must therefore refer them to the Spirit united to the Flesh; and understood thus, they are life, which is to say, the life of the soul. For in the same way as the body lives by a bodily life through a bodily spirit, so the soul lives by a spiritual life through the Holy Spirit: “Send forth your Spirit and they will be created.” (Ps 103:30)54 These texts, to which many others could be added,55 show us that Thomas’s eucharistic theology, far from being reduced to a “christomonism,” upholds the presence of the Spirit at all levels: in the Flesh of the Lord, in his eucharistic Body and in his ecclesial Body for which the Spirit procures, through faith and charity, that unity which constitutes the fruit of the Eucharist. The Eucharist nourishes and strengthens the communion of the faithful with the Lord and with one another, by the communicatio of the Body and Blood of Christ. It is indeed by the power of the Holy Spirit that this communication of the incarnate Word strengthening the members of his Body in unity is accomplished.56 The Eucharist and Forgiveness At the heart of the deepening of ecclesial unity which it effects, the Eucharist contains a purifying power as well as a demand for reconciliation, to which Thomas draws attention. In the Summa theologiae, after 54 In Ioan. 6:64 (Marietti ed., no. 993). The source of this exegesis is found in Augustine, Tractatus 27, 5–6 On the Gospel of John (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 36), 271–72. 55 See notably Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 2: Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 175–99: “The Heart of the Church.” 56 In II Ad Cor. 13:13 (Marietti ed., no. 544): “Communicatio vero divinorum fit per Spiritum Sanctum. . . Et ideo Spiritui Sancto attribuit communicationem.” On this topic see Jean-Marie R. Tillard, “La marque de Thomas d’Aquin sur le dialogue oecuménique,” in Ordo sapientiae et amoris, Hommage au Prof. J.-P.Torrell OP, ed. Carlos-Josaphat Pinto de Oliveira (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1993), 625–54, especially 643–53. The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist 55 having discussed the grace of the Eucharist and its eschatological implications,Thomas devotes to this theme the majority of the articles in the question dealing with the effects of the Eucharist (IIIa, q. 79).At the root of the sacramental symbolism of food, belonging to Christ by grace appears as an indispensable precondition for the fruitful reception of the sacrament: The Eucharist is a spiritual food for the growth of the living (that is, those who live by grace). Nevertheless, the Eucharist contains within itself a reconciliating power which can be described as total:“This sacrament possesses of itself (secundum se) the virtue of remitting all sins by the passion of Christ who is the source and cause of remission of sins.”57 Therefore no obstacles to the vivifying power of the Eucharist can exist on the part of the sacrament, but only on the part of the recipient, who can be incapable of perceiving its fruit. Grace does not constrain man, but each must enter into it freely.58 Furthermore—and we want to emphasize this aspect—Thomas understands the relationship between the Eucharist and sin in terms of the fruit of ingesting the Eucharist: That is, in terms of union with Christ (with the Father) and of the mutual communion among the faithful.“Whoever takes this sacrament signifies by that very act that he is united to Christ and incorporated into his members, which occurs through faith informed [by charity], and this is incompatible with mortal sin.”59 Thomas discusses the incompatibility between the state of mortal sin and the fruitful reception of the Eucharist explicitly in the light of “the mystical Body of Christ which is the society of the saints.”60 The Eucharist, the sacrament of consummation, nourishes and deepens the communion of the Church, in its two dimensions of relation to the Head and fraternal unity of the members. The Eucharist presupposes in its members an already constituted ecclesial communion, of which it is the sacrament. The absence of this communion, if it exists, impairs the signification of the sacrament and the reality of its effect. In pneumatological terms,Thomas elsewhere explains that “the Spirit is only given to those who are in Christ Jesus . . . ; the Holy Spirit does not come to the man who is not united to Christ the Head.”61 The sacrament of Penance is ordered 57 ST, III, q. 79, a. 3. 58 Nevertheless,Thomas adds that this sacrament can remit mortal sin, either by the “hunger” or “longing” (votum) for the Eucharist, or, if the sinner neither attached to nor conscious of his sin, by the fervor of charity which the Eucharist confers (ST, III, q. 79, a. 3). 59 ST, III, q. 80, a. 4. 60 Ibid. 61 In Ad Rom. 8:2 (Marietti ed. no. 605). 56 Gilles Emery, OP precisely to true and full participation in the Eucharist, in the totality of its ecclesial nature. Similarly, at the depth of this fundamental theological perception we can grasp the forgiveness of “light” sins, which the Eucharist achieves. In effecting fervent charity, it purifies the members of the Church by uniting them more closely to Christ and to one another. In other words, it is by intensifying their union with Christ and their fraternal charity that the Eucharist purifies the members of the Church of their venial sins. And again, it is by effecting union with Christ that the Eucharist fortifies the spiritual vitality of the Church’s members in protecting or preserving them from future sins.62 Indeed, Thomas brings the ecclesial dimension of forgiveness into special prominence, in the light of the Eucharist and of the incorporation into Christ which this sacrament effects. The Eschatological-Ecclesial Implications of the Eucharist Finally, the ecclesial effect appears in the eschatological dimension of the Eucharist. It is the sacrament of our pilgrimage toward the Fatherland, the sacrament of hope.63 This eschatological dimension is written into the structure of all the sacraments. For Thomas, the sacraments are at once commemorative signs (Passion of Christ), demonstrative signs (present gift of grace), and announcing signs (future glory).They bear the historical event of the Passion of Jesus, whence they procure the fruit of grace in the present moment, while announcing the fulfillment whose seed they possess. For Thomas, this eschatological signification is not reduced to a secondary aspect or a mere periphery to the sacrament, but rather belongs to it formally and expressly.64 This eschatological effect, which the Eucharist prefigures in the manner of an anticipatory (praefigurativum) sign, constitutes its ultimate effect (ultimus effectus),65 which the sacrament “does not produce immediately but which it signifies:” the spiritual ingestion of God in the faceto-face vision and perfect charity found in eternal life.66 Thomas 62 ST, III, q. 79, a. 4 and 6. 63 ST, III, q. 75, a. 1; q. 79, a. 2. 64 ST, III, q. 60, a. 3. See Jean-Marie R.Tillard,“La triple dimension du signe sacra- mentel (À propos de Sum.Theol., III, 60,3),” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 83 (1961): 225–54; Pierre-Marie Gy,“Avancées du traité de l’Eucharistie de S.Thomas dans la Somme par rapport aux Sentences,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 77 (1993): 219–28, cf. 225. 65 ST, III, q. 74, a. 6. 66 IV Sent. dist. 9, expositio textus.The theme of spiritual ingestion (spiritualis manducatio) through blessed vision and charity, evoked in this passage, is developed with regard to the angels in ST, III, q. 80, a. 2. The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist 57 develops it notably in regard to the name “viaticum” which designates the Eucharist,67 but references to it are found throughout the treatise on the Eucharist. He explains it thus: The Eucharist delivers us from whatever hinders our entry into glory; it prepares the obtaining of glory, the blessed enjoyment of God in the Fatherland, the eternal inheritance, the entrance into the Kingdom of heaven and into eternal life, the glory of the soul and the resurrection of the body.68 Here the ecclesial implications of the sacrament are even more clearly outlined: The Eucharist signifies the union of Christians, through Christ, with the Father and with the Church triumphant; it announces the “transfer” into the Church triumphant.69 Following Augustine, Thomas here links the patristic theme of the “medicine of immortality” with the theme of the Church in glory: My Flesh is truly food ( John 6:56) [and my Blood drink]. Since men expect that food and drink will cause them to be no longer hungry or thirsty, this result is truly achieved only by this food and this drink which makes those who take it immortal and incorruptible, in the companionship of the saints where total and perfect unity and peace will reign.70 The connection between the enjoyment of God and the unity of the society of the saints expresses, from the aspect of hope, the double dimension of the ecclesial communion recalled earlier with regard to the res tantum of the sacrament. “In the glory of heaven, two things will most delight good men: the enjoyment of the Godhead and the common society of the saints; for there is no joyful possession without society.”71 As for the resurrection, it too appears as a fruit of the life-giving power of the Eucharist. Following the Ambrosiaster,Thomas explains that the life of the soul flows into the body for salvation in this present life, and for incorruptibility in the life of glory.72 At a deeper level, the eschatological implications of the Eucharist are founded on the incarnate and resurrected Word who is contained therein: true God and true man, the Word-made-flesh 67 ST, III, q. 73, a. 4. 68 These are the phrases which Thomas uses in ST, III, q. 73, a. 4; q. 73, a. 6, arg. 3; q. 74, a. 6; q. 78, a. 3, c. and ad 3; q. 79, a. 1, ad 3; q. 79, a. 2; q. 80, a. 2, ad 1; q. 83, a. 5, ad 9. 69 ST, III, q. 83, a. 4, ad 9; cf. IV Sent. dist. 13, expositio textus. 70 ST, III, q. 79, a. 2; cf. Augustine, Tractatus 26, 17 On the Gospel of John (Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 36, 268). 71 In Ad Hebr. 12:22 (Marietti ed., no. 706). Cf. Ia–IIae, q. 4, a. 8. 72 ST, III, q. 79, a. 1, ad 3; cf. q. 74, a. 1; Ambrosiaster, In I Cor 11:26 (PL 17,243). 58 Gilles Emery, OP resurrects and vivifies both souls and bodies through his risen flesh.73 Once again, at the heart of the ecclesial gift of the Eucharist, we discover the action of the Holy Spirit. Commenting on John 6,Thomas explains:“The Holy Spirit makes the unity of the Church: ‘One single Spirit and one single Body’ (Eph 4:4)—he who is the ‘pledge of our eternal inheritance’ (Eph 1:14).Wonderful, then, are the benefits of this food which gives eternal life to the soul; but they are wonderful also because they likewise give life to the body. . . .The Spirit makes us merit the resurrection.”74 Theology, Preaching, and Liturgy Thomas carried these themes of “academic” or scholarly theology into his liturgical writings and preaching activity. Among other examples, we may take as witnesses the sermon Homo quidam fecit cenam magnam (sermon of the second Sunday after Trinity Sunday), of which a good edition exists,75 as well as the liturgy of Corpus Christi, whose attribution to Thomas seems well established.76 The sermon Homo quidam fecit cenam magnam is devoted to the theme of spiritual refreshment. Here Thomas clearly emphasizes the ecclesial effect of the Eucharist, that is, the unity of the mystical Body, in relation to the faith and charity by which God dwells in the hearts of the faithful. In particular, this sermon confirms that the theme of refreshment and delectation is understood properly in direct reference to the Church. Eucharistic symbolism is likewise presented here in its anamnetic dimension (Passion of Christ), in its present reality and in the hope of its future fulfillment (the beatitude of eternal life): The present effect [of the Eucharist], signified and not contained, i.e., the unity of the Church, is delectable. What is there indeed which causes more joy than this unity? How good and pleasant it is for brothers, etc. (Ps 132:1).This Supper produces the greatest delectation, whether one looks to the past, to the present, or to the future. . . . It unites us to God and makes us dwell in God. This is why it is said in John 6:57 73 In Ioan. 6:55 [6:54] (Marietti ed., no. 973); cf. ST, III, q. 56, a. 1–2. 74 In Ioan. 6:55 [6:54] (Marietti ed., no. 972–973). 75 Louis J. Bataillon, “Le sermon inédit de saint Thomas Homo quidam fecit cenam magnam. Introduction et édition,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 67 (1983): 353–69. 76 Pierre-Marie Gy,“L’Office du Corpus Christi et S.Thomas d’Aquin. Etat d’une recherche,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 64 (1980): 491–507; idem.,“L’Office du Corpus Christi, oeuvre de S.Thomas d’Aquin,” in La Liturgie dans l’histoire (Paris: Cerf, 1990), 223–45; Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1: The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 129–36. The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist 59 [6:56]: He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood . . . remains in me, that is to say, by faith and charity, and I in him, by grace and the sacrament.77 We cannot look here in detail at the various elements of the liturgy of Corpus Christi.A brief outline of several examples allows us nevertheless to discern a remarkable continuity between Thomas’s teaching labors and his liturgical works. In the office Sacerdos, we can immediately note the signification of the Church’s unity by the multiple grains and grapes from which are confected the single bread and wine of the Eucharist; we can likewise observe there the eschatological signification of the Eucharist, that is, the immortality and incorruptibility of eternal life, for which we hope as the perfect societas sanctorum where peace and unity will reign fully (Augustine on John 6:55).78 We also find there the theme of the divinization of the faithful accomplished by the only Son, as well as the theme of purification from sins. And Thomas takes care to link the Eucharist to the action of the Holy Spirit: It is to the Spirit that the Acts of the Apostles attributes the fidelity of the first Church breaking bread in the grace of Pentecost.79 The ecclesial signification of the gifts is manifested in the Secret of the Mass Cibavit: “Grant, Lord, to your Church, the gifts of unity and peace which are signified as a mystery by these offerings.”80 As for the eschatological-ecclesial dimension, it is present throughout Thomas’s liturgical works, but appears notably at the end of the sequence Lauda Sion.81 Fr. Gy, 77 Latin text in the edition given by Fr. Bataillon, “Le sermon inédit,” 362. Note that the eschatological signification is presented, as in the Summa theologiae and in the Office of Corpus Christ, in reference to the food eaten by Elias for his journey to Horeb (I Kgs 19:8; ibid., 363). 78 Lesson from Matins (a homily of Augustine;Vivès ed.,Vol. 29, 339; Marietti ed., Opuscula theologica, Vol. 2, 1954, 278). Cf. Pierre-Marie Gy, “L’Office du Corpus Christi,” 233–34, footnote 28. Also see the texts quoted from the ms. Paris B.N. lat 1143, copied at the beginning of the study of each section of the office in Ronald J. Zawilla, The Historiae Corporis Christi attributed to Thomas Aquinas: A Theological Study of Their Biblical Sources (Diss. University of Toronto, 1985). 79 Legenda Immensa divinae largitatis from Matins (Vivès ed., vol. 29, 336–37; Marietti ed., 276–77); see the text in Pierre-Marie Gy, “L’Office du Corpus Christi,” 244–45 (cf. 233, note 28). The Holy Spirit appears in many other parts of the office, starting with the antiphon of the Magnificat in the first Vespers for the feast: “O quam suauis est, domine, spiritus tuus . . .” (in Zawilla, The Historiae, 216). 80 “Ecclesie tue, quesumus Domine, unitatis et pacis propicius dona concede, que sub oblatis muneribus mistice designantur. Per Dominum nostrum” (in Zawilla, The Historiae, 319; cf.Vivès ed.,Vol. 29, 342; Marietti ed., 281). 81 “. . .Tu nos bona fac videre/In terra viventium./Tu qui cuncta scis et vales/Qui nos pascis his mortales/Tuos ibi commensales/Coheredes et sodales/Fac sanctorum civium.—Amen” (Vivès ed.,Vol. 29, 342; Marietti ed., 281). 60 Gilles Emery, OP emphasizing this movement to eschatology, surmises that “one would hardly find the like in any contemporary theologians.”82 The attention paid to this eschatological dimension is fully consistent with the deep movement of St. Thomas’s theology toward the vision of God, toward the plenary revelation of the mysteries in the fulfillment of the Church:This is exactly what Thomas put at the heart of his doctrine of the Eucharist.This too brief liturgical and homiletic sketch certainly deserves a more thorough study. But it confirms the theological, spiritual, and pastoral importance that Thomas accorded, in every field in which he was active, to the theme of the unity of the Church that the Eucharist effects. The theology of St. Thomas bears witness to a profound connection between the Eucharist and the Church, which his theology takes into consideration at every level on which he analyzes this sacrament, under the aspects of both its signification and its efficacy. His doctrine of the Church’s unity as the res of the Eucharist draws deeply from the Fathers, and from Augustine in particular. This “osmosis” between eucharistic realism and the realism of the Church involves the major themes of his eucharistic doctrine, especially his understanding of the efficacy of the sacrament through incorporation and conversion in Christ, as well as his grasp of the mystery of the Church according to this same theme of incorporation by means of faith and charity, in its double dimension of union with Christ and of fraternal unity among the members by the action of the Holy Spirit. In St.Thomas the Eucharist appears in its fullN&V ness (Tantum ergo sacramentum!) as the very soul of ecclesial life. 82 Pierre-Marie Gy, La liturgie dans l’histoire, 277. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004): 61–90 61 Golden Straw: St. Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology P ETER A. KWASNIEWSKI International Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family Gaming, Austria I N THIS ARTICLE I shall pursue a double thesis. First, I will give reasons for my conviction that we can only fully understand what is written in St.Thomas if we look to what is not written, and to the unwritable experience that occurred to him on the Feast of St. Nicholas in the year 1273.1 Second, and in close connection with this point, my essay will plead for “theology on the knees,” arguing that we must treasure above all the contemplative leisure of sacra doctrina, which has no other object than the First Truth in its dazzling splendor, no other motivation than love of this gracious, glorious Truth that sets us free and makes us divine.2 The desire to share the fruits of contemplation with others, like the desire to help the poor, the suffering, the oppressed, must come from a prior thirst and hunger for the living and life-giving God, if what we seek to pass on is real knowledge and real mercy. 1 The earliest sources tell us that Thomas’s mystical experience took place “around the time of the feast of blessed Nicholas,” a festo beati Nicolai circa. In a future article I shall make an argumentum ex convenientia for accepting the precise date of December 6, as the biographical tradition has instinctively done. On matters of dating and other details, I follow the research of Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas:The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996) [hereafter Thomas Aquinas]. 2 In this essay “theology” will be shorthand for sacra doctrina, granting the qualifications that ought to be made. See James A.Weisheipl, OP,“The Meaning of sacra doctrina in Summa theologiae I, q. 1,” The Thomist 38 (1974): 49–80. 62 Peter A. Kwasniewski The Experience of December 6, 1273 During his final period in Naples (mid-1272–early 1274), where he served as director of the Dominican studium, St.Thomas’s favorite place of prayer seems to have been a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas in the church of San Domenico Maggiore, where he could invariably be found twice a day, first for morning Mass, and again for prayer at night, prior to Matins. “Thomas adhered to a strict regimen. He arose early every morning to confess his sins to Reginald and celebrated Mass in the chapel of St. Nicholas, served by Reginald,” who then said his own Mass, which Thomas served as a way of making his thanksgiving.3 To this general background may be added the famous incident that Thomas’s earliest biographers derived from the eyewitness report of “an old lay-brother, a man of holy life and scrupulous conscience, Dominic of Caserta.” This brother, who was the sacristan, had noticed that Thomas would often leave his cell quietly before Matins and go down to the church to pray alone; and one night, happening to observe more attentively than usual, the brother saw Thomas, praying in the chapel of St. Nicholas, raised off the ground about two feet. For a long while brother Dominic remained watching in wonder; then suddenly, from the crucifix at which Thomas was gazing, he heard a clear voice say these words: “You have written well of me, Thomas; what do you desire as a reward for your labours?” And Thomas replied: “Lord, only yourself.” It should be noted that this occurred at the time when the last part of the Summa theologiae was being composed, which treats of the Incarnation, birth, suffering, and resurrection of Christ; and with that mention of “reward” Thomas was no doubt given to understand that the end of his labours was near at hand; and indeed he wrote little after this.4 3 James A. Weisheipl, OP, Friar Thomas d’Aquino: His Life,Thought, and Works, with corrigenda and addenda (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1983), 320. For a detailed description of the Cappella di S. Nicola di Bari, see Raffaele Maria Valle and Benedetto Minichini, Descrizione storica, artistica, letteraria della chiesa, del conveto e de’ religiosi illustri di s. Domenico Maggiore di Napoli dal 1216 al 1854 (Naples:Vaglio, 1854), 400–14. 4 From the Vita composed by Bernard Gui, trans. Kenelm Foster, OP, The Life of Saint Thomas Aquinas: Biographical Documents (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1959). Gui’s recounting of the mystical conversation with the Crucified is on pp. 42–43. Tocco is more specific: he says Thomas was writing on the passion and resurrection of Christ. On this incident, see Weisheipl, Friar Thomas, 315–16; Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 285.The Sienese painter Sassetta has given us a moving depiction of the scene, St.Thomas in Prayer Before the Cross (1423), in the Vatican Pinacoteca. For discussion of the earliest biographers of Thomas (William of Tocco, St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 63 This cannot have occurred much before the end of Thomas’s life, since he was to die less than two years after arriving in Naples.5 “It is my conviction,” writes Robert Barron, “that this mystical conversation between servant and Master is a sort of interpretive key to the whole of Aquinas’s life and thought: he wanted nothing more than Christ, nothing other than Christ, nothing less than Christ.”6 Thomas says exactly this in his comments on Colossians 2:3, speaking of Jesus “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” After quoting 1 Corinthians 2:2, “I did not judge myself to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified,” the saint writes:“just as if one were to have a book in which all knowledge could be found, he would not seek to know anything else except that single book, so, too, there is no need for us to seek anything beyond Christ.”7 I will now turn to the testimony of Bartholomew of Capua for the event which took place in December of 1273. It is certainly among the most celebrated of Thomas’s life. While brother Thomas was saying his Mass one morning, in the chapel of St. Nicholas at Naples, something happened which profoundly affected and altered him. After Mass he refused to write or dictate; indeed he put away his writing materials. He was in the third part of the Summa, at the questions on Penance. And brother Reginald, seeing that he was not writing, said to him: “Father, are you going to give up this great work, undertaken for the glory of God and the enlightenment of the world?” But Thomas replied: “Reginald, I cannot go on” [Raynalde, non possum]. Then Reginald, who began to fear that much study might have affected his master’s brain [timens ne propter multum studium aliquam incurisset amentiam], urged and insisted that he should continue his writing; but Thomas only answered in the same way: Bernard Gui, Peter Calo) and the depositions collected for the canonization process, one can do no better than Torrell, who annotates and assesses the documentary evidence: Thomas Aquinas, passim, especially 267–75. 5 As Thomas arrived in Italy between Pentecost and September of 1272, and had to begin the journey to Lyons at the end of January or the beginning of February 1274, the longest he could have resided in Naples is about 18 months (Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 247).Tocco and Gui recount a similar story from Parisian circles: Jesus appeared to Thomas to commend him for his treatment of the mystery of the Real Presence, in particular how accidents can exist in this sacrament without their subject. See Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 284–85; Foster, Life of Aquinas, 43–44. 6 Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 13–14. 7 Super ad Colossenses 2, lec. 1, no. 82:“sicut qui haberet librum ubi esset tota scientia, non quaereret nisi ut sciret illum librum, sic et nos non oportet amplius quaerere nisi Christum” (Super Epistolas S. Pauli lectura, ed. Cai, 2 vols. [Turin/ Rome: Marietti, 1953], 2:142). 64 Peter A. Kwasniewski “Reginald, I cannot—because all that I have written seems to me so much straw.”8 From this time onward, everything was different. The normally robust friar who got up before dawn and slept little had to take to his bed. Soon he was sent to his sister Theodora’s house in San Severino to recuperate. Hastening there with much difficulty, when he arrived and the countess came out to meet him, he could scarcely speak.The countess, very much alarmed, said to Reginald: “What has happened to my brother Thomas? He seems quite dazed and hardly spoke to me!” And Reginald answered: “He has been like this since about the feast of St. Nicholas—since when he has written nothing at all.” Then again brother Reginald began to beseech Thomas to tell him why he refused to write and why he was so stupefied; and after much of this urgent questioning and insisting,Thomas at last said to Reginald:“Promise me, by the living God almighty and by your loyalty to our Order and by the love you bear to me, that you will never reveal, as long as I live, what I shall tell you.” Then he added: “All that I have written seems to me straw compared with what has now been revealed to me.”9 At the castle Thomas was oblivious to his surroundings for three days straight;Theodora understandably grew worried.“The master is frequently borne away in spirit when he is contemplating something. But never has he been out of his senses for as long as I have seen him now,” said Reginald to the countess,10 and gave a strong tug at his master’s cloak to break the trance. To the well-known words already quoted, Thomas evidently added: “The only thing I want now is that as God has put an end to my writing, He may quickly end my life also.”11 8 Foster, Life of Aquinas, 109–10. The Latin is taken from Fontes Vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis notis historicis et criticis illustrati, ed. D. Prümmer and M.-H. Laurent (Toulouse, n.d.; originally published in the Revue Thomiste from 1911 to 1937), 376–78. 9 Foster, Life of Aquinas, 109–10, translation slightly modified. 10 Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 289. 11 Foster, Life of Aquinas, 46. Gui then comments: “Thus it was with him as with Moses and Paul, to whom God revealed things that surpass human understanding, to the one as the mediator of the Law to the Jews, to the other as the preacher of Grace to the Gentiles. For it was fitting that to this holy teacher Thomas, who from the Throne on high received the book of both Laws and expounded it in the presence of the whole Church, should be shown things beyond the reach of natural reason, as pledges of a still greater vision to come. O happy teacher, enlightened in the present and seeing far into the future! Who from those things you were found worthy to write of rose to a vision of yet greater things!” St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 65 I take it as a given that the experience of December 6 was principally if not exclusively a mystical one, whatever additional psychic or physiological factors might have been involved (a stroke, breakdown caused by overwork, brain damage through haemorrhage, etc.).12 A Preacher Falls Silent The statement Omnia que scripsi videntur michi palee respectu eorum que vidi et revelata sunt michi13 has elicited the most diverse reactions.What was it that compelled St. Thomas to pass so severe a judgment, as it may seem, on that vast body of doctrine which the Church’s Magisterium, from John XXII in 1318 to John Paul II in recent years, has declared the standard of philosophical and theological formation?14 And a further question arises: What significance should this event and the judgment to which it drove St. Thomas have for us who study his works or, more broadly, for whomever enters the world of sacra doctrina under his guidance? To understand Thomas’s state of soul, Jean-Pierre Torrell suggests we turn to the confession of faith in Jesus, truly present in the Eucharist, that Thomas made four days before his death when the Viaticum was brought to his bedside: I receive you, price of my soul’s redemption, I receive you, viaticum of my pilgrimage, for love of whom I have studied, watched, labored; I have preached you, I have taught you; never have I said anything against 12 This, in contrast to the “scientific” explanation proposed by Weisheipl (Friar Thomas, 322–23) and by Edmund Colledge, OSA, “The Legend of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in St. Thomas Aquinas, 1274 –1974, Commemorative Studies (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 26. 13 Prümmer, Fontes Vitae S.Thomae Aquinatis, 378. 14 On papal commendations up to the mid-century, see Santiago Ramírez, OP, “The Authority of St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 15 (1952): 1–109; Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas, Angel of the Schools, trans. J. F. Scanlan (London: Sheed & Ward, 1942), 184–240; Anthony D. Lee, OP, “Thomism and the Council,” in Vatican II, The Theological Dimension, ed. idem (n.p.: The Thomist Press, 1963), 451–92. A review of the relevant documents shows the unique status of St.Thomas: never has any other theologian been recognized by the Magisterium as possessing such universal and preeminent authority in the handing down of sacred doctrine. A singular status continues to be granted St. Thomas in the decrees of Vatican II and in postconciliar documents, among the more important of which are Optatam Totius (1965), nos. 15–16, and Gravissimum Educationis (1965), no. 10; the Ratio Fundamentalis Institutionis Sacerdotalis of the Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education (1970); Paul VI’s Apostolic Letter Lumen Ecclesiae (1974); John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution Sapientia Christiana (1979), no. 71, no. 79, and no. 80; the Codex Iuris Canonici (1983), canon 252.3; and John Paul II’s Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio (1998), nos. 43–44 and nos. 57–61. 66 Peter A. Kwasniewski you, and if I have done so it is through ignorance and I do not grow stubborn in my error; if I have taught ill on this sacrament or the others, I submit it to the judgment of the Holy Roman Church, in obedience to which I leave now this life.15 “It is entirely permissible to refer to this declaration for a more positive—and therefore more exact—appreciation of Thomas’s expression,” remarks Torrell. Straw is a stock expression used to distinguish, by giving it proper weight, the grain of reality within the chaff of the words; the words are not the reality, but they designate it and they lead to it. Having arrived at reality itself,Thomas had a certain right to feel himself detached with respect to the words, but this does not at all signify that he considers his work as without value. Simply put, he had gone beyond it.16 The secret lies in Thomas’s greatness. Only a saintly genius can begin to appreciate the discrepancy between the human mind and the divine Mind, the muddy shallows of creaturely knowledge and the fathomless depths of uncreated Wisdom. Josef Pieper writes: The last word of St.Thomas is not communication but silence. And it is not death which takes the pen out of his hand. His tongue is stilled by the superabundance of life in the mystery of God. He is silent, not because he has nothing further to say; he is silent because he has been allowed a glimpse into the inexpressible depth of that mystery which is not reached by any human thought or speech.17 Pieper’s statement echoes Thomas’s commentary on John 21:25: “But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written.” An infinite number of human words could not attain to the one Word of God. For from the beginning of the Church things have always been 15 Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 293; cf. Foster, Life of Aquinas, 55–56. 16 Thomas Aquinas, 293. For similar interpretations, see Simon Tugwell, OP, Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 266–67; Fergus Kerr, OP, After Aquinas:Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 1. 17 The Silence of St.Thomas, trans. John Murray and Daniel O’Connor (New York: Pantheon Books, 1957), 45; cf. the closing remarks of A. B. Sharpe,“The Ascetical and Mystical Teaching of St. Thomas,” in St.Thomas Aquinas: Papers from the Summer School of Catholic Studies Held at Cambridge, August 1924, ed. C. Lattey, SJ (Cambridge: Heffer, 1925), 223. St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 67 written about Christ, but nevertheless not sufficiently; indeed, if the world were to endure for a hundred thousand years, none of the books that could be written about Christ would perfectly express His deeds and sayings down to the last detail.“Of making books there is no end” (Eccles. 12:12); “I have declared and I have spoken: they are multiplied above number” (Ps. 39:6).18 John Saward draws attention to the paradox of a preacher falling silent, a man dedicated to wrapping truth in the swaddling clothes of words who must, in the end, relinquish human speech, that he may worship in total simplicity the naked truth, the newborn Babe, the one truth which makes all else true, the Word beyond all words. “In St. Thomas, a Dominican vowed to communicate to others the fruits of his contemplation, we see language consummated in adoring silence, the best of intellectual wisdom fulfilled in holy stupefaction and folly.”19 Iconographic Incompleteness It is a common enough observation that the incompleteness of the Summa theologiae, not to mention the fragmentary condition in which Thomas left many other works, underlines the inadequacy of human words to capture the reality of God, or even to sound the depths of a creation that reflects His unknowability.20 The Summa was abandoned, every project was abandoned, and no further writing was to come by Thomas’s own initiative; the brief letter to the Abbot of Monte Cassino on divine foreknowledge no less than the unrecorded comments on the Song of Songs were extracted from a silent man who, throughout his life, did not have it in him to refuse an appeal to his charity. 18 Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura ch. 21, lec. 6, no. 2660: “Infinita enim verba hominum non possunt attingere unum Dei Verbum. A principio enim ecclesiae semper scripta sunt de Christo, nec tamen sufficienter; immo si duraret mundus per centum millia annorum, possent libri fieri de Christo, nec ad perfectionem per singula, facta et dicta sua enuclearentur. Eccles. ult.: faciendi plures libros nullus est finis; Ps. 39: annuntiavi, et locutus sum: multiplicati sunt super numerum” (ed. Cai [Turin/Rome: Marietti, 1952], 488). 19 Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 82–83. 20 See Pieper, Silence of St.Thomas, 57–67; idem, The Truth of All Things, trans. Lothar Kraut, in Living the Truth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 57–59; Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Thomas, 5th ed., trans. Laurence K. Shook, CSB (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 357–78;W. Norris Clarke, SJ, The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 294–96. The works left unfinished make a sizable catalogue unto themselves. Following the sequence 68 Peter A. Kwasniewski Thomas’s initial words to Reginald, “I cannot go on,” are ambiguous. Was he speaking of a voluntary renunciation,“I cannot go on [because I have lost my desire for work],” or a sort of inescapable paralysis,“I cannot go on [because what happened to me takes away all power of carrying on]”? For Simon Tugwell, it was the latter.The experience precipitated a “sudden helpless inability to go on with his work. He did not disown his work, he would have completed it if he could, and he deliberately alluded to it on his deathbed in quite positive terms. It was simply that he could not go on with it. As far as he was concerned, he was finished.”21 If this is right, Thomas was burdened with a cross to which he had to resign himself in humility and faith. If, on the other hand, he might have continued but had lost the desire to do so—“I cannot go on” meaning “I cannot bear to go on”—one could then emphasize the significance of an active renunciation of the Summa and the other projects.This seems to be Pieper’s view: “Thomas declared that writing had become repugnant to him.”22 In any case, we are not in a position to know, and it does not much matter in the bigger picture; the telling fact is that “he abided by this decision” not to continue.“This means that the fragmentary character of the Summa theologica is an inherent part of its statement.”23 Within Pieper’s perspective,Thomas’s relinquishment could be compared to the gesture of humility made by anonymous Celtic scribes who, in the midst of executing with flawless technique the elaborate “carpet pages” of manuscripts like the Lindisfarne Gospels, left here a loop undrawn, there an area unfilled or a color missing—surprising “lapses” that some art and dating of Gilles Emery’s catalogue in Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 330 ff., we can list the Sententia super Meteora (before 1270), the Expositio Libri Peryermenias (1270–71), the Sententia Libri Politicorum (1269–72), the Sententia super librum De caelo et mundo (1272–73), the Sententia super libros De generatione et corruptione (1272–73), the Super Boetium De Trinitate (1257–59), the Compendium theologiae (1265–67), the De regno ad regem Cypri (1267), the De substantiis separatis (after 1271).Thus, while mental and physical exhaustion in the face of too many projects going at once is reason enough for Thomas’s abandonment of the post-1270 works, particularly the commentaries on Aristotle, this may not be the deepest reason. If weather phenomena as ordinary as the snow and rain can provoke a speechless wonder, more wonderful and mysterious still are the generation and corruption of beings and the ungenerable, incorruptible angels. 21 Albert and Thom’as, 267. 22 Guide to Thomas Aquinas, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 158. 23 Pieper, Guide, 158.“That act of falling silent . . . was only the most superficial existential embodiment of an attitude which Thomas had already expounded . . . For he explicitly says that all our knowledge, including the knowledge of theologians, is fragmentary in character” (ibid.). St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 69 historians have taken to be symbols of self-denial, ritual negations of the pride of human skill.24 Thomas no doubt made a virtue of necessity by embracing the suspension God had imposed, and, leaving the Summa’s eschatology unwritten, gave himself over to the judgment and bliss that awaited him. Now, although the putting aside of literary labor is itself a provocative statement, the sign of an ever-heightening awareness of the discrepancy between human thought and divine mystery, we cannot countenance the extreme opinion of Philipp Rosemann who, exaggerating the apophatic and dialectical elements in Thomas, interprets his reaction to the experience of December 6 as a “denial of the ultimate validity of human knowledge.”25 A careful reading shows how the words spoken to Reginald, so compressed and mysterious in their allusion, tell a fuller story than might have been perceived at first glance. Omnia que scripsi Thomas targets his writings, which are not the same as the unutterable communications of a saintly soul with the indwelling Trinity. The problem is always what can be formulated, not what can begin to be experienced. St. John of the Cross deserves our trust when he writes, apropos the “touching” of soul and God, substance-to-substance, with its “inexpressible delicateness of delight”: I would desire not to speak of it so as to avoid giving the impression that it is no more than what I describe.There is no way to catch in words the sublime things of God that take place in these souls. The appropriate language for the persons receiving these favors is that they understand them, experience them within themselves, enjoy them, and be silent.26 24 That scribes left details unfinished as an act of monastic humility is proposed by, among others, Janet Backhouse, The Lindisfarne Gospels: A Masterpiece of Book Painting (Oxford: Phaidon, 1993). 25 “A Change of Paradigm in the Study of Medieval Philosophy: From Rationalism to Postmodernism,” The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1998): 73. 26 The Living Flame of Love, Stanza 2, no. 21, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, rev. ed. (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1991), 665. The conclusion of this work repeats the same truth:“I do not desire to speak of this spiration, filled for the soul with good and glory and delicate love of God, for I am aware of being incapable of doing so; and were I to try, it might seem less than it is. . . . [T]he Holy Spirit, through this breathing, filled the soul with good and glory in which he enkindled it in love of himself, indescribably and incomprehensibly, in the depths of God” (Stanza 4, no. 17, p. 715). 70 Peter A. Kwasniewski The cognitio affectiva of the lover of God, the cognitio veritatis per ardorem caritatis27 is not propositional—it is hardly even describable, as witness the arduous efforts of mystics who, prompted by a superior’s command or an interior exigency, must find ways to say something28—but it is no less knowledge for all that; on the contrary, it is human knowing in its highest assimilation to God short of the beatific vision, partaking therefore of his “inaccessible light” (1 Tim. 6:16).29 One should also consider that there are three distinct stages of human communication: the initial conception in the heart (verbum cordis), the words formed into speech (verbum vocis), and lastly, words written down (quod habet imaginem vocis).30 Thomas alludes to these three stages while commenting on Psalm 45 [44]:2.“The word ‘tongue’ can also be taken to refer to something else, namely, that the Psalmist wanted not only to write [his song], but first he turned it over in his heart, then spoke it with his mouth, and finally wrote it down—as if to say,‘This song is meant to profit not only those who are present, who hear it, but also those who are to come.’ ”31 As Plato well understood, each step in turn runs the risk of being less ample, less immediate, than the preceding.32 A serious thinker cannot 27 See note 88 on cognitio affectiva. Speaking of John the Baptist, Thomas writes: “nam sicut lucerna lucere non potest nisi igne accendatur, ita lucerna spiritualis non lucet nisi prius ardeat et inflammetur igne caritatis. Et ideo ardor praemittitur illustrationi, quia per ardorem caritatis datur cognitio veritatis” (Super Ioan. 5, lec. 6, no. 812). 28 See James A. Wiseman, OSB, “ ‘To Be God with God’: The Autotheistic Sayings of the Mystics,” Theological Studies 51 (1990): 230–51; cf.Walter H. Principe, CSB, “Mysticism: Its Meaning and Varieties,” in Mystics and Scholars:The Calgary Conference on Mysticism 1976, ed. Harold Coward and Terence Penelhum (Calgary: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1976), 1–15. 29 Among the many discussions of knowledge in a superhuman manner, one could single out that of Jacques Maritain, which has the advantage of uniting brevity and depth: The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Bernard Wall (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1937), 305–27. 30 See In Sent. I, 27.2.1: “in nobis . . . invenitur triplex verbum: scilicet cordis, et vocis, et quod habet imaginem vocis” (Mandonnet, 654). Citations of the In Sent. commentary are from the Mandonnet-Moos edition in four volumes (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929–47). 31 “Potest autem lingua ad aliud referri, quia, scilicet non solum voluit dicere, sed corde primo cogitavit, secundo dixit ore, et tertio scripsit; quasi dicat: non solum profuit praesentibus qui audiunt, sed etiam futuris.” Citations from the Postilla super Psalmos are taken from the Opera Omnia cum hypertextibus in CD-ROM, ed. Roberto Busa, SJ (Milan: Editoria Elettronica Editel, 1992). 32 See Letter VII, 341b-345a, in The Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 1588–91; compare Letter II. I do not suggest that St. Thomas could have given unqualified assent to St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 71 but be dissatisfied, to a greater or lesser extent, with what he has written down; it nearly always seems inadequate to the original content of thought, particularly when it is a question of synthetic insight into many great truths, a vision of the whole.Thomas comes at the most detailed issues with a cosmic, all-encompassing view in mind and takes his bearings again and again in reference to it; he has better grounds than most authors do for finding the written results a poor reflection of that sublime totality which inspires him and makes him hurry to get his ideas down on paper. Plato’s emphasis on the necessity of a living, personal dialogue for learning and discovery33 is multiplied a thousandfold in the education of a Christian: If he really wants to know Christ, he must love Him; if he would understand, he has to follow.Wisdom comes through discipleship.34 The questions and replies contained in a written text, dead as it is, have to be re-lived, made one’s own through an interior resurrection. If we do not enter by way of the text into the meditations that gave it birth and past them into the receptivity of the longing soul impregnated by the divine Word, we are not even reading the text, since the created word is always a sign of something else, a summons to the uncreated Word. Thomas’s Omnia que scripsi is the cry of a man who sees how weak an image, how much akin to lifeless matter, are human words in comparison with that uncreated Word, the inexhaustible fountain of Life. Yet precisely because there is a reflection, however faint, a participated likeness, however distant, there is a way to get from lowly straw to sovereign Lord. It is the path of the quinque viae, of Romans 1, of Wisdom 13. It is the path trodden by the Word made flesh, the teaching of Letter VII; on the contrary, he would have registered at least one fundamental disagreement, for God, the unreachable, imparticipable Good of the Platonists, has condescended, in the “folly” of His love, to embody Himself first in the inerrant words of Scripture, and then, definitively, in the human nature assumed by the eternal Word. Verbum caro factum est: this publication of mercy destroys all secret teachings even as it initiates its adherents into the supreme secret of divinity. However, what Thomas and Plato share in common is reverence for the mysterious reality that infinitely transcends all thought and expression. See Anton Pegis, “Penitus Manet Ignotum,” Mediaeval Studies 27 (1965): 212–26; Joseph Owens, CSSR, “Aquinas—‘Darkness of Ignorance’ in the Most Refined Notion of God,” in Bonaventure and Aquinas: Enduring Philosophers, ed. R.W. Shahan and Francis J. Kovach (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 1976), 69–86. 33 Letter VII, 341d: “Acquaintance with it [true philosophy] must come rather after a long period of attendance on instruction in the subject itself and of close companionship, when, suddenly, like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark, it is generated in the soul and at once becomes self-sustaining” (Hamilton/Cairns ed., 1589). 34 See Marcus R. Berquist, “Learning and Discipleship,” The Aquinas Review 6 (1999): 1–51. 72 Peter A. Kwasniewski whose manifestation began in the poor straw of the manger and reached its visible end in a glorious Ascension. Videntur michi palee Thomas confesses that the writings appear or seem like straw—an implicit metaphor whose meaning has to be searched out. Was not the Christ-child placed upon a bed of straw, which He dignified by His divine presence? Moreover, we should not be too proud to admit an obvious, though humbling, truth:What looks like straw to the enraptured saint is gold to everyone else, or rather, to every lover of God who is moving toward, but has not yet received, the same experience of shattering glory and mighty consolation.35 Respectu eorum que vidi et revelata sunt michi The very repetition of michi, each occurrence conspicuous by its placement—the first one underlining the videntur, itself doubled by the vidi, and the second channeling the revelata to a singular recipient—serves to emphasize the subjectivity of the entire event.We have here neither new doctrine nor the repudiation of old, but an immediate, incommunicable experience of the reality of God, a seeing, touching, and tasting which can only make the public world of classroom and pulpit seem distant and unreal.The writings are straw in comparison to something else, a revelation whose content we shall never know. We can be certain than any finite human effort must appear trivial in the light of a divinely authored vision. Having glimpsed the divine Beauty itself,Thomas saw, as few others could see, the fragility and feebleness of theology in via.This is pure Thomism: The tiniest drop of divine truth is a liquor more precious, more intoxicating than the distilled wisdom of a thousand human generations. It is a note struck time and again by the friar preacher, as in these words from one of the Lenten sermons of 1273, just a few months before he stopped writing altogether: 35 Hilary Carpenter, OP, beautifully expresses this paradox of “golden straw”: “We cannot know what vision of God had been vouchsafed him, but we can understand how pitiable and useless is a dim candlelight reflection to one who faces the blaze of the midday sun with the eye of an eagle. He had seen some vision of God Himself. Is it a thing of wonder that his former glimpses of the divine splendour, reflected so dimly and inadequately in the mirror of created things and seen by the poor candlelight of human reason, seemed to him so worthless in comparison? But to those many of us ‘who sit in darkness,’ to whom the vision is as yet denied, the Angelic Doctor is as a light that has discovered for us in things made the invisible things of God, through the mediumship of reason, servant of God and handmaid of faith and of divine revelation” (“The Philosophical Approach to God in Thomism,” The Thomist 1 [1939]: 61). St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 73 This truth, that Christ died for us, is so tremendous that our intellect can scarcely grasp it; for in no way does it fall within reach of our understanding. And this is just what the Apostle says: “I work in your days a work which you will not believe, if any man shall tell it to you” (Acts 13:41), and Habakkuk: “A work has been done in your days that nobody will believe when it is told of ” (Hab. 1:5). For so great is the grace of God, so great His love for us, that He has done more for us than we can possibly understand.36 As Tugwell suggests,Thomas’s ever-deeper experience of the love of God prepared him to undergo that raptus of which he had given such an authoritative account: He had, as a theologian, argued that rapture is the highest level of contemplation, and one of the ways in which it can come about is that “one’s desire is so violently drawn to something that one becomes estranged from everything else.” Did not something like this happen to Thomas? This curiously calm, seemingly dispassionate man suddenly found that his lifelong love of Christ became too much for him.All his life he had been studying, writing, preaching and teaching for love of Christ; now that same love became momentarily so intense that it crippled him, leaving him a stranger in the world.There was indeed nothing left for him to do except to die and to enjoy forever the friendship of God.37 36 In symbolum apostolorum, art. 4: “Hoc autem, scilicet quod Christus pro nobis est mortuus, ita est arduum quod vix potest intellectus noster capere; immo nullo modo cadit in intellectu nostro. Et hoc est quod dicit Apostolus,Act. 13:41,“Opus operor ego in diebus vestris, opus quod non credetis, si quis enarraverit vobis”; et Habac. 1:5,“Opus factum est in diebus vestris quod nemo credet cum narrabitur.” Tanta est enim gratia Dei et amor ad nos, quod plus ipse fecit nobis quam possumus intelligere” (Opuscula theologica, 2 vols., ed.Verardo, Spiazzi, and Calcaterra [Turin/Rome: Marietti, 1953], 2:202). Cf. Summa contra Gentiles IV, ch. 54, no. 3922: “Si quis autem diligenter et pie incarnationis mysteria consideret, inveniet tantam sapientiae profunditatem quod humanam cognitionem excedat. . . . Unde fit ut pie consideranti semper magis ac magis admirabiles rationes huius mysterii manifestantur” (ed. Pera, Marc, and Caramello [Turin/Rome: Marietti, 1961], 348). 37 Tugwell, Albert and Thomas, 267.That Thomas was graced with the gift of raptus is taken for an evident fact by the early biographers; Tugwell’s gentle question echoes Bernard Gui’s bold comparison of “this holy teacher” to Moses and Paul (see note 11).The three major treatments of raptus in Thomas are the commentary on 2 Corinthians 12:1–4, DV q. 13, and ST, II–II, q. 175. For commentary on the last, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Thomas und die Charismatik: Besondere Gnadengaben und die zwei Wege menschlichen Lebens [translation of and commentary on II–II, qq. 171–182] (Freiburg i. Br.: Johannes, 1996). 74 Peter A. Kwasniewski The words to Reginald bear witness to that heavenly and perfect life, one taste of which makes all sweet things here below turn sour.38 The “virtues of the purified soul” of Summa theologiae I–II, q. 61, a. 5, thus come to have an autobiographical resonance: the unearthly unknowing and “perpetual covenant with the Divine Mind” described at the end of the response tell us something about his own condition in the final weeks.39 Compared to God, everything is straw. As Tugwell points out, “straw” was a conventional medieval image for the literal meaning of Scripture, which the devout monastic reader was meant to go beyond as he penetrated layer after layer to reach the innermost truth,40 like one who strips off garments to lay bare the body, or pushes away the veil to see the face.This truth, this flesh, this face, is the very Author of the text:We are led in lectio divina from letter to spirit, from page to person. Must we not say that even Scripture is straw compared with its almighty Author? The words fall infinitely short of the Word. In heaven there are neither Bibles to be read nor churches for ceremony. “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Rev. 21:22–23). As Thomas states, in beatitude three things coincide: “seeing, which is perfect knowledge 38 “The 6 December experience, in accentuating still further his desire for the true homeland, only exacerbated to the point of taedium uitae his detachment from the things of this world, including what he held closest to his heart” (Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 294–95). 39 “Ita scilicet quod quaedam sunt virtutes transeuntium et in divinam similitudinem tendentium: et hae vocantur virtutes purgatoriae. Ita scilicet quod prudentia omnia mundana divinorum contemplatione despiciat, omnemque animae cogitationem in divina sola dirigat; temperantia vero relinquat, inquantum natura patitur, quae corporis usus requirit; fortitudinis autem est ut anima non terreatur propter excessum a corpore, et accessum ad superna; iustitia vero est ut tota anima consentiat ad huius propositi viam. Quaedam vero sunt virtutes iam assequentium divinam similitudinem: quae vocantur virtutes iam purgati animi. Ita scilicet quod prudentia sola divina intueatur; temperantia terrenas cupiditates nesciat; fortitudo passiones ignoret; iustitia cum divina mente perpetuo foedere societur, eam scilicet imitando. Quas quidem virtutes dicimus esse beatorum, vel aliquorum in hac vita perfectissimorum.” The same Neoplatonic doctrine is alluded to in the De commendatione et partitione Sacrae Scripturae of 1256, where Thomas sees Proverbs expounding precepts of wisdom concerning social virtue, Ecclesiastes those concerning purifying virtue, and the Song of Songs those concerning the perfect virtue of the purified soul. See note 89. 40 Albert and Thomas, 266 and note 636, citing a text from Hugh of St. Cher, a confrere whom Thomas knew in Orvieto and consulted in writing De emptione et uenditione (Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 122–23). St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 75 of the intelligible end; embracing, which means the presence of that end; and delighting or enjoying, which means the resting of the lover in the beloved.”41 In no way, therefore, can the remarks to Reginald be construed as a repudiation of objective, determinate meaning, valid demonstration, timeless truth accessible to the wayfarer’s mind and capable of being written down—though capable, even more, of being transcended and left behind. Indeed, one has far better reason to see in the event of December 6 a supernatural confirmation and, in a way, a continuation extra muros of Thomas’s activity as a theologian, a further and more exalted mode of teaching. It might seem that by calling his writings “straw,” he was renouncing his labors as worthless. This is far from the case. His contemplation of Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life” united him more and more perfectly to Christ, until at the end of his life he entered so fully into contemplation that he could write no longer. God inspired him to teach us in a final way: after teaching through his extraordinary writings, in the end he taught also what the true goal of these writings is, namely, union with God.This goal hardly negates the study and teaching that have gone before, but rather is their wondrous fulfillment.42 Thomas, in company with all the Doctors of the Church, insists on the primacy of experience and prayer over book-learning and the classroom, yet with customary realism recognizes the human need for human books and teachers as rungs on the ladder, stepping stones across the river. One must journey through the desert to reach the fertile fields; before passing into the cloud one must climb the mountain.This explains the dual face of Thomas’s life: an assiduous lecturer constantly thinking about the needs of students, fully at the disposal of all who called upon him for help;43 a devoted contemplative choosing solitude and silence over company and 41 ST, I–II, q. 4, a. 3:“Et ideo necesse est ad beatitudinem ista tria concurrere: scil- icet visionem, quae est cognitio perfecta intelligibilis finis; comprehensionem, quae importat praesentiam finis; delectationem, vel fruitionem, quae importat quietationem rei amantis in amato.” 42 Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, Knowing the Love of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of St.Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 4. Pieper implies the same when he judges “the greatness of St. Thomas as a philosophical and theological thinker” to lie in “his attitude of veneration toward everything that is—which veneration is revealed above all in his falling silent before the ineffability and incomprehensibility of Being” (Guide, 159). 43 See Christopher Rengers, OFM, Cap., The Thirty-Three Doctors of the Church (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 2000), 376–79.Torrell’s “preliminary portrait” discloses the same qualities (Thomas Aquinas, 278–89). Peter A. Kwasniewski 76 conversation. We see in Thomas’s final months not a repudiation of his life’s labors, but the breakthrough into a new level of awareness that was discontinuous, even incompatible, with these labors: a new pain of longing, a new intensity of experiencing that same divine reality for love of whom he had labored in the academic vineyards.44 Troubadour of the Transcendentals Reflection on Thomas’s personality, the style of his works, and his attitude toward theology as a science and a way of life brings out still more clearly why the ecstasy of December 6 should be regarded as the symbol, summit, and completion of his life’s work. That Thomas treats the most profound topics in the tone of a dispassionate chronicler concerned to be thorough, accurate, and pithy is a notable trait of his intellectual physiognomy. He employs a style “which permits the truth to be seen in all its profundity, as a man sees the fish on the bottom of a placid sea, or sees the stars shine through a clear sky”45— a manifestation of “pure, forceful thought and the drive of a clear mind relentlessly pursuing truth.”46 It is often said that Thomas the man remains unknown and inaccessible owing to his austere, impersonal style. Should we not rather say his personality is greatly revealed in its being so well hidden? To be an unseen bearer of unseen Wisdom by means of the audible, legible instruments of teaching was the whole quest of his life. The “impeccable clarity” of his writing “shows him to be someone wanting us to see what he is talking about rather than wanting us to see him talking about it.”47 We see the constant subordination of servant to master, receptacle to content, created mind to uncreated Truth; we see a lover so enamored that he welcomes radical poverty of spirit and flesh in order to receive and hold nothing but the beloved. The purity of his service of the truth shines out from the fact that he scrupulously refrained from intruding himself into what he had decided to serve, from adding to or subtracting from the truth he served. In this service he was pure by aiming to become, as far as possible, a pure instrument. . . . In his Summa alone, he wrote more than 3,000 articles, and in none of them, except here and there when he 44 See Charles Journet, Connaissance et inconnaissance de Dieu (Saint-Maurice: Éditions Saint-Augustin, 1996), 128. 45 Martin Grabmann, The Interior Life of St.Thomas Aquinas, trans. Nicholas Ashenbrenner, OP (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1951), 34. 46 Rengers, The Thirty-Three Doctors, 379. 47 Brian Davies, OP, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 15. St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 77 wished to retract some statement, does he speak of himself; there is not one of them that is not like a monstrance behind which the theologian hides in order to exhibit his God.48 In the same vein, Etienne Gilson writes of the Summa: “Such mastery of expression and of the organization of philosophical ideas cannot be achieved without a full surrender of oneself.” Sympathetic reading makes it ever more clear that “this tremendous work is but the outward glow of an invisible fire, and that there is to be found behind the order of its ideas that powerful impulse which gathered them together.”49 Referring to the image of Thomas painted by Fra Angelico as part of the Crucifixion group at San Marco, Kenelm Foster observes: What the conventional portraits lack, but this one does suggest, is the burning intensity that glows through the early biographical records and the eucharistic hymns and even, for him who reads it aright, through the severe pages of the Summa. Even to turn from that conventionally impassive countenance to the handwriting of Aquinas—surviving in such abundance—may surprise one by the contrast: “tranquil” is hardly the word for this furiously rapid script. Nor is tranquillity the thing most evident in that Crucifixion portrait at S. Marco.The broad face is almost fiercely thoughtful; the eyes express an intense attention and deep longing. It is not hard to imagine that St. Thomas really looked like this, in prayer before the crucifix. Let us not think of him as placidly sagacious; nor, even, as some oracular master of all the answers. If he is a prodigious master, it is because he himself was mastered—held by a vision of God’s presence in the world’s being (esse) and fascinated by the mystery of God incarnate and crucified. It is hardly possible, surely, to exaggerate either the clarity of this man’s awareness of the divine presence in all existence—esse . . . proprius effectus Dei—or, on the other hand, his sense of the complete “otherness,” the utter transcendence of the divine nature with respect to things created: to name only one, from a thousand instances, we could consider how St. Thomas lingers and ponders, in the Contra Gentiles [IV.1], over those words from Job [26:14]: “Lo, these things are said in part of His ways; and seeing we have heard scarce a drop of His word, who shall be able to behold the thunder of His greatness?”50 48 Yves Congar, OP, “St. Thomas: Servant of the Truth,” in Faith and Spiritual Life, trans. A. Manson and L. C. Sheppard (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 77. Congar pronounces the near-invisibility of the ego in Thomas’s writings “an unprecedented example of purity, of priestly detachment and virginity”;“he is a priest, he exhibits his God and conceals himself ” (ibid.). 49 Gilson, Christian Philosophy of Thomas, 376. 50 Life of Aquinas, 22. Comparable in intensity of expression to the San Marco portrait is Sassetta’s depiction of Thomas Inspired by the Dove of the Holy Spirit (1423), in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. 78 Peter A. Kwasniewski Surprising though it may be to readers of Aquinas who only come into contact with the “finished product” of his mind—for most of us, a professionally printed edition many times removed from the first scribblings or rapid-fire dictations—beneath the calm, impersonal prose smoldered a volcano of tumbling thought and fiery feeling. “The imperturbable Buddha-like serenity attributed to him in the standard iconography is belied by the surviving manuscripts in his own hand: physical evidence of raw intellectual energy and passion.”51 Piet Gils’s close analysis of autograph texts discloses an author who is at times flustered from moving too fast, striking through and starting over, frequently misspelling, inverting, substituting the wrong words.52 “He clashes with himself over the demands of writing. He is constantly experiencing distractions, which oblige him to interrupt himself and to return later. He struggles with putting his thoughts in order and with the means of expressing them. He is simultaneously meticulous, and careless of the inconsistencies that his irresistible forward movement causes him to commit.”53 The treatises in defense of mendicant life are among the works which best display “the passionate character of Thomas’s temperament,” not only in their “vigor and firmness” of tone, but particularly in the flashes of surprise, impatience, indignation, even sarcastic irony.54 “What we may glimpse here also is a simmering sensibility that is obliged to contain itself in order not to surface too often in discussion, where passion must not obscure clarity of the argument.”55 If he was able to express himself with such vehemence, we may suspect he struggled to achieve the virtuous self-mastery that was required for the birth of more austere works (where signs of humor practically never show themselves). Beyond the impatience that these linguistic remnants reveal, they eloquently witness that the spontaneity-in-moderation, which the whole world recognizes in Thomas’s genius, was the fruit of a conquest.56 51 Kerr, After Aquinas, 2–3; cp.Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 92. 52 Gils’s study is published in vol. 50 of the Leonine edition, Expositio libri Boetii De ebdomadibus (Rome: Commissio Leonina, 1992), 175–209; for a summary, see Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 93–94. 53 Gils, quoted by Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 94. 54 I am following here Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 91–92.The same observations hold true of the writings contra Averroistas, particularly the De unitate intellectus. 55 Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 93. 56 Ibid., 95. Conrad Pepler, OP, puts it this way, in words applicable to Thomas’s life no less than his doctrine: “The passions are not denied, drawn out like rotten teeth, but they are cured by the desert, by catharsis, of their insubordinate tendencies and so drawn into the integrity of the man who loves God. He loves him with passion as well as with the high-point of the will—this seems to be St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 79 With perceptive remarks like this,Torrell’s biography successfully depicts the complex (and hitherto largely ignored) psychology of Thomas the man, even as it brings into clearer focus his evangelical spirituality.57 The Theologian’s Hallmark: Eucharistic Ecstasy58 As there can be method to madness, there can be passion in peacefulness. One should not turn a blind eye to Thomas’s warm emotional life, particularly the shedding of tears mentioned so often by those who knew him. Perhaps in modern times we have grown so accustomed to dissociating lofty intellectual activity from emotional dynamism and bodily involvement that we find it hard to conceive of a life in which each is present to the fullest and all are subsumed in a spiritual surrender at once tranquil and ardent. But this is what Thomas held to be ideal, as can be gathered from his teaching on the overflowing of the affections of the soul into the body, a theme prominent in his treatments of the resurrected body’s sharing in the beatitude of the soul.59 Consider his account of love’s “burning”: The burning of charity can be taken two ways: properly and metaphorically. Metaphorically, according to which we call charity hot and the intensity of the act of charity burning, and this is the sense in which Dionysius identifies angelic love as “fiery.” . . . In another way, burning is said insofar as it is found in the sensitive part; for since the lower powers follow the motion of the higher, if that motion be intense, as we see that a man’s whole body is inflamed and moved when he looks upon a woman loved; so too when the higher affection is moved to God, a certain impression follows even in the sensitive powers, according to which they are aroused to divine love.60 clear in the whole teaching of St Thomas on the nature of love” (“The Basis of the Mysticism of St.Thomas,” Aquinas Paper 21 [London: Blackfriars, 1953], 18). 57 On the spirituality of St. Thomas, Torrell is, of course, the expert; see his Saint Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003); the entry “Thomas d’Aquin” in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité 15 (1991): 718–73; and “Le Christ dans la ‘spiritualité’ de saint Thomas” in Christ Among the Medieval Dominicans, ed. Kent Emery, Jr. and Joseph P.Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 197–219. 58 Here I use the term “ecstasy” as St.Thomas uses it: to designate that effect of love by which the lover is placed outside himself, to dwell in the beloved (ST, I–II, q. 28, a. 3). For examples of how Thomas employs the notion, see my “St. Thomas, Extasis, and Union with the Beloved,” The Thomist 61 (1997): 587–603. 59 For examples of each point: ST, I–II, q. 30, a. 1, ad 1; ST, III, q. 14, a. 1, ad 2. 60 In Sent. I,17.2.1: “Fervor caritatis dupliciter accipitur: proprie et metaphorice. Metaphorice, secundum quod dicimus caritatem esse calorem, et intensionem actus caritatis metaphorice dicimus fervorem, secundum quod Dionysius,VII De 80 Peter A. Kwasniewski What most impressed Thomas’s contemporaries and confreres was his burning uncontainable love for Christ that spilled over into tears and vigils, and above all, his devotion to the Eucharist, which inspired a liturgical office of exceptional beauty, graced with some of the loftiest hymns of the thirteenth century. In the Scriptum super libros Sententiarum,Thomas portrays the Eucharist as a “sacrament of ecstasy” because it is proper to charity to transform the lover into the beloved, and this is what the sacrament, worthily taken, accomplishes.61 Scholar though he was by native bent, preacher by profession, controversialist by circumstance, his life and work make plain the identity underlying them: that of a contemplative seeking the face of God, a mystic in love with the poor Christ.62 St. Jerome’s striking phrase nudum Christum nudus sequi,“following naked the naked Christ,” is a leitmotif in Thomas’s portrayal of the sequela Christi.63 According to witnesses,Thomas stated that he learned more from prayer before the crucifix than by all efforts of study, and when he encountered any difficulty he hastened to bring it to the Lord of the Altar.64 Hence it is with manifest plausibility that Tugwell judges the experience of December 6 and its momentous outcome to have been specifically occasioned by, and intimately linked with, the offering of the Holy Sacrifice. “It looks as if Thomas had at last simply been overwhelmed by the Mass, to which he had so long been devoted and in which he had been so cael. hier., ponit fervidum in amore angelorum. . . .Alio modo dicitur fervor prout est in parte sensitiva; cum enim vires inferiores sequantur motum superiorum, si sit intensior, sicut videmus quod ad apprehensionem mulieris dilectae totum corpus exardescit et movetur; ita etiam quando affectus superior movetur in Deum, consequitur quaedam impressio etiam in virtutibus sensitivis, secundum quam ad obediendum divino amori” (Mandonnet, 411). 61 In Sent. IV.12.2.1.1 ad 3: “Caritatis proprium est transformare amantem in amatum, quia ipsa est quae extasim facit, ut Dionysius dicit. Et quia augmentum virtutum in hoc sacramento fit per conversionem manducantis in spiritualem cibum, ideo magis attribuitur huic sacramento caritatis augmentum quam aliarum virtutum” (Moos, 525); see the texts cited below in note 86. 62 See Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 89, and the works mentioned in note 57; Kerr, After Aquinas, 167; Grabmann, Interior Life, 73–78; Congar, “Servant of the Truth,” passim. 63 The phrase from Jerome is cited three times: Contra retrahentes ch. 15, Contra impugnantes ch. 6 (in the numbering of the Leonine edition), and ST, II–II, q. 186, a. 3, ad 3. See Ulrich Horst, OP,“Christ, Exemplar Ordinis Fratrum Praedicantium, According to Saint Thomas Aquinas,” in Christ Among the Medieval Dominicans, 256–70. 64 See Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 286–88; “when he is presented in prayer or in levitation, it is before the image of the crucified one or in front of the altar, liturgical symbol of Christ” (287). St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 81 easily and deeply absorbed.”65 Even more suggestively, Saward writes of the Summa: St.Thomas’s “cathedral” has a grand plan, and yet he left it unfinished. Compared with the grace of vision he received on the feast of St. Nicholas 1273, it seemed to him like straw. For us, though, whom God has not thus gifted, the “infants in Christ” for whom St.Thomas wrote this beginner’s guide, there is a strange completeness in the incompleteness of the Summa. Its last finished treatise is devoted to the Holy Eucharist, and the last question of that last treatise is on the rite of the Sacrament, that is, on the significance of the place and time in which it is celebrated, of the words uttered and the actions performed. The final act of St.Thomas was, as it were, to offer Holy Mass on the altar of this basilica of the intellect.You might say that, having begun with the cosmic liturgy, the universe created by God for His glory, he ends with the way of the Lamb, through whose sacrifice God is most perfectly glorified.66 “It was particularly during the celebration of the Mass that Thomas had the prolonged ecstasies of his last months: the one that occurred on Passion Sunday (26 March 1273) and the one on the feast of St. Nicholas eight months later (6 December 1273).”67 The story of the former is related in several early sources. Bernard Gui writes:“While he was saying Mass on Passion Sunday, he was observed by many people present to become so deeply absorbed in the mystery that it was as if he had been admitted to a share in the sufferings of Christ. For a long while he remained as in a trance, his face bathed in tears.”68 With an historian’s sensitivity to detail, Torrell notes that the composition of the treatise on the Eucharist in the Tertia Pars must have taken place “approximately between these two dates”69—making it a sturdy bridge of thought suspended between ecstasies of love—and hears the distinct echo of 65 Albert and Thomas, 266. “Thomas’ deep devotion to the Mass emerges clearly from all our sources. Sometimes he evidently became deeply absorbed in it and was profoundly moved by it.Toward the end of his life he sometimes became so absorbed that he just stopped and had to be roused by the brethren to continue with the celebration” (264). 66 “The Cosmic Liturgy and the Way of the Lamb,” Faith & Culture Bulletin 8 (n.d.), 20; a fuller version of the article appears under the same title in Antiphon 7.1 (2002): 18–28.Tugwell’s judgment coincides:“Thomas had already reached what was for him the high point of the Summa. He had reached Christ; he had reached the Mass” (Albert and Thomas, 266). 67 Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 287. 68 Foster, Life of Aquinas, 45–46. 69 Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 287. 82 Peter A. Kwasniewski personal experience in the saint’s description of the effects of taking the sacrament:“the soul . . . is inebriated by the sweetness of the divine goodness, according to the Canticle:‘Eat, my friends, and drink, and be drunk, my well-beloved.’ ”70 This last completed treatise sprang up in the soil of liturgy, from the seed of faith—a tree watered by tears, crowned with the Spirit’s fruits, savoring of the intimate, ineffable presence of God. That depth of insight into the supreme mystery of the Eucharist which so impressed the Fathers of Trent was not, and could not have been, the achievement of study alone. It had its birth upon the altar of sacrifice; it found its goal in the wedding feast of communion. For all the great masters of the Catholic tradition, theology is a science conceived in the night of faith, a fire kindled by contact with God’s word, a life nourished by eating and drinking the sacred mysteries. “St. Thomas was not first and foremost an Aristotelian philosopher; he was primarily an expounder of the Scriptures, he studied over them, prayed over them, lived them in the Church and in her liturgy, and thence he expounded the Word of God in the schools.”71 In such a life there is an ongoing fresh discovery of reason as openness to mystery, the natural world as icon of divinity.72 A life woven of liturgical prayer, lectio divina, and active love of neighbor is taken for granted by Thomas and his contemporaries as the only context in which the study of sacra doctrina 70 ST, III, q. 79, a. 1, ad 2, quoting Song 5:1. 71 Pepler, “Mysticism of St. Thomas,” 10; cf. Walter H. Principe, CSB, Thomas Aquinas’ Spirituality (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1984); Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, Christian Perfection and Contemplation According to St.Thomas Aquinas and St. John of the Cross, trans. M. Timothea Doyle, OP (St. Louis: Herder, 1949), 48ff. Congar describes what captivated Thomas in the Dominican ideal: It was “a way of serving God through that work of charity which consists in contemplating truth and communicating it,” “a life that stemmed from the truth and for the truth, from the Word of God and for it, in which intellectual activity, applied to God himself, became the reality which was sanctified and offered to God as an act of worship” (“Servant of Truth,” 72). 72 For example, ST, II–II, q. 180, a. 4, especially ad 1 and ad 3, presents keen study and appreciation of created things as rungs on the ladder of contemplation, and ST, III, q. 60, a. 2, ad 1 draws a distinction that implies a prior common symbolism: “creaturae sensibiles significant aliquid sacrum, scilicet sapientiam et bonitatem divinam, inquantum sunt in seipsis sacra, non autem inquantum nos per ea sanctificamur.”A comment on Ps. 45 [44]:2 sees the signature of the Word on all creatures: “Sicut enim respiciens librum cognoscit sapientiam scribentis, ita cum nos videmus creaturas, cognoscimus sapientiam Dei. Calamus igitur est Verbum Dei.” On the contemplative stance toward the world, see Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (South Bend, IN: St.Augustine’s Press, 1998), 76–88; Barron, Spiritual Master, 136. St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 83 can be fruitfully undertaken, so as to resonate within the heart.73 That theological reflection sustained by living faith is intrinsically sacred and sanctifying—that the Summa is best approached as a systematic arrangement of spiritual exercises through which the graced intellect, exerting itself to the utmost, responds with generosity to God’s revelation of Himself in the book of Scripture and the book of Nature—would strike many people as odd only because modern man has grown comfortable with an habitual divorce between thought and life, faith and practice, speculative study of God and silent vigils in His presence. Consider the doctrine of the Divine Essence unfolded in questions 2 through 26 of the Prima Pars—a treatise many continue to misread as if it were philosophical theology more geometrico, with no more “relevance” to the spiritual life than the definitions and axioms of Newton’s Principia. Barron explains the deep-seated spiritual aims this treatise has in store for responsive students, the call to conversion of mind and heart it issues: Thomas is decidedly not trying to capture or define the divine; on the contrary, he is attempting to show us precisely how to avoid the temptation of such definition. He is demonstrating how the soul can be liberated in the act of surrendering to the God who reveals himself as an unsurpassable and ecstatic power in Jesus Christ.Thus, the simple God is the God who cannot be understood or controlled; the good God is the one who captivates us and draws us out of ourselves; the God who is present to the world is the divine power that will not leave us alone, that insinuates itself into our blood and bones; the eternal God is the one who invites us into the ecstasy of being beyond time; the immutable God is the rock upon which we can build our lives; the God of knowledge and love is the spirit who searches us and knows us, who seeks us and who will never abandon us. It is this all-embracing, all-captivating, all-entrancing, all-surrounding power that Thomas Aquinas seeks to celebrate.74 More broadly, for Dauphinais and Levering the Summa theologiae traces out an arc that sweeps from one open-ended mystery, God in His unfathomable happiness, to another, our heavenly share in the same divine bliss, “which no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived” (cf. 1 Cor. 2:9).75 To understand the thought of Thomas or that of any Father or Doctor, let alone the revealed word of God which is its source, requires an earnest 73 See Kerr, After Aquinas, 166–67; cf. Edward D. O’Connor, CSC, Appendix 2 in vol. 24 [I–II, qq. 68–70] of the Blackfriars Summa theologiae (New York: McGrawHill, 1964), 96. 74 Spiritual Master, 108. 75 Knowing the Love of Christ, 4. 84 Peter A. Kwasniewski effort to lead the life he and all the saints led. St.Athanasius concludes his treatise On the Incarnation with those now-classic words that stand forever as a monument to the unity of faith and life, study and holiness: For the searching and right understanding of the Scriptures there is need of a good life and a pure soul, and for Christian virtue to guide the mind to grasp, so far as human nature can, the truth concerning God the Word. One cannot possibly understand the teaching of the saints unless one has a pure mind and is trying to imitate their life. . . . [A]nyone who wishes to understand the mind of the theologians must first cleanse his own life, and approach the saints by imitating their deeds. Thus united to them in fellowship of life, he will both understand the things revealed to them by God and, thenceforth escaping the peril that threatens sinners in the judgment, will receive that which is laid up for the saints in the kingdom of heaven.76 If one does not enter upon this way of imitation and immersion, one remains aloof from the humble cradle theology is born into, the bloodstained cross it hangs upon, the silent tomb it rises from, the heavenly heights it scales. One abandons, in short, the reality whose love makes theology alive: the triune God, living and true. A person is not in fact doing theology at all unless he unconditionally submits his whole being to God, the First Truth, accepting first principles from Him, striving to live the charity which faith demands.77 Although theology treats the highest truths with unwavering certitude, it is also, humanly speaking, 76 Translation by a Religious of C.S.M.V. (Crestwood, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), 96.The same point is made by Plato about the study of philosophy, e.g., LetterVII, 340d–341a (Hamilton/Cairns ed., 1588); but in spite of the similarity, the difference is greater: “The belief that interior holiness is essential for wisdom is not exclusively Christian. It is shared, for instance, by Plato, and is exemplified in the life of Plotinus. But whereas Plotinus sought for self-emancipation in a One beyond all being, St. Thomas looked—where Augustine and Anselm and Francis of Assisi had looked—to a Wisdom which is personal, to a Logos which is incarnate, and it is this ideal which colours all his thought and conduct” (Martin C. D’Arcy, SJ, Thomas Aquinas [Westminster, MD: Newman, 1944], 52). 77 On faith as the condition of theology, see Torrell, Thomas Aquinas, 158, and “The Necessity of Faith” by a Monk of Most Holy Trinity Monastery, The Aquinas Review 6 (1999): 53–76. As we read in the Proemium of the Compendium theologiae: “Primo igitur necessaria est fides, per quam veritatem cognoscas; secundo spes, per quam in debito fine tua intentio collocetur; tertio necessaria est caritas, per quam tuus affectus totaliter ordinetur” (Opuscula theologica, Marietti 1:13). John Paul II reminds us of this connection in Pastores Dabo Vobis, no. 53: “divus Thomas apertissime asserit fidem esse veluti theologiae habitum, id est permanens operandi principium, et theologiam totam ad fidem nutriendam ordinari.” St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 85 “the poorest and most destitute of sciences,” since it is cradled within an act of primordial, all-encompassing faith. The theologian, like a child learning the alphabet or arithmetic, depends wholly on the word of another; he has not the means of verification in his own hands, he remains empty-handed and must give the glory to God.78 “In the house which he is building he is not the master, but the servant; he is constantly referring to this fact and referring himself to it, for he is only enriched with the wealth of God’s wisdom if he accepts the conditions of being himself poor and, in his actual scientific labours, becoming the man and servant of another.”79 We accept the condition of mental poverty above all when we kneel before the Eucharist and worship the God-Man veiled under the humble appearances of bread and wine. There is nothing here for natural reason to seek or prove; there is only faith, sola fides sufficit. It is the mysterium fidei.80 Absolute Self-Donation Without the vows of spiritual poverty, chastity, and obedience, academic theology, like Christianity that has faded into a mere cultural background, is lifeless matter, a body without a soul.This is the challenge and the glory of theology: Like no other discipline, it demands everything from man, body and soul, every power of sense and spirit, all our thoughts and affections.81 Nothing is left untouched, for the Word became flesh in order to touch and sanctify the whole of man. In his commentary on The Divine Names, Thomas expands a few phrases of Dionysius into an arresting portrayal of our universal calling: to be transformed into Christ by love. It is because love does not allow the lover to belong to himself, but makes him belong to the beloved, that the great Paul, being established in the divine love as in a certain constraining power that makes him go completely out of himself, says (as though speaking by the divine 78 Congar, “Servant of the Truth,” 70. 79 Ibid., 71. 80 See Charles De Koninck,“This is a Hard Saying,” and Thomas A. McGovern, SJ, “The Most Blessed of Sacraments,” both in The Aquinas Review 1 (1994): 105–11; 97–104.“There is no mystery of faith where the otherness of the properly divine ways is more radiantly manifest than in that of the Holy Eucharist” (De Koninck, 107).“Transubstantiation is precisely an absolutely invisible miracle. . . .We adhere to it, in fact, by divine faith alone” (109).“It is in the faith in this sacrament that God demands of us the most complete abnegation of that which is the most profoundly human—I mean the loss of our proper judgment upon the substance of the object most proportioned to our intelligence” (110). 81 See Grabmann, Interior Life, 29. 86 Peter A. Kwasniewski voice):“I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me”—and why? Because the whole self going out from itself stretches out into God, not seeking what is its own, but what is God’s, as the true lover who has suffered ecstasy by the living God, and no longer lives his own life, but the life of Christ the beloved, which life was intensely lovable to him.82 The “unadulterated service” demanded by the Lord is “such an absolute donation, uncontaminated with self, that in fact the other’s life becomes one’s own, more real than the self itself. Only love can do this, for only love produces ecstasy, the exodus from self, only love can allow a master, the mastery of one’s soul.”83 “Knowledge of the Trinity in Unity is the fruit and purpose of our entire life,” declared Thomas as a young man commenting on the Sentences of Peter Lombard.84 This startling assertion both exalts and humbles the human mind. It says forcefully: There is one activity right for man’s eternity, one sovereign goal, one definitive happiness.Yet such knowledge of God in His inner life is infinitely beyond our powers, a goal we cannot attain by our own strength, a treasure we cannot demand but only beg for, as a mendicant begs for bread.Theology is not a science that can be “mastered” and carried in one’s mental pocket; it is a way of obedience through which the human mind is mastered by the one Teacher, Christ the Lord, the light who enlightens every man coming into the world (Mt. 23:10; Jn. 1:9). It is a discipline that originates and culminates not in conquest but in abandonment, not in seizing but in handing oneself over. “Sacra doctrina, or knowledge revealed by God, is necessary because the final goal of human life is not to grasp but to be grasped, not to rise up but to be raised up, not to ascend but to be drawn.”85 So far from gripping the subject with our hands and modeling it after our image, we are taken and held by Him, changed 82 In librum Beati Dionysii De divinis nominibus [=DDN] 4, lec. 10, n. 436: “Deinde, cum dicit: Propter quod . . . ostendit idem per auctoritatem; et dicit quod propter hoc quod amor non permittit amatorem esse sui ipsius, sed amati, magnus Paulus constitutus in divino amore sicut in quodam continente et virtute divini amoris faciente ipsum totaliter extra se exire, quasi divino ore loquens dicit, Galat. 2:20:“Vivo ego, iam non ego, vivit autem in me Christus» scilicet quia a se exiens totum se in Deum proiecerat, non quaerens quod sui est, sed quod Dei, sicut verus amator et passus extasim, Deo vivens et non vivens vita sui ipsius, sed vita Christi ut amati, quae vita erat sibi valde diligibilis” (Marietti 143, the words of Dionysius italicized). 83 Congar, “Servant of the Truth,” 81–82. 84 In Sent. I.2, expositio textus: “Cognitio enim Trinitatis in unitate est fructus et finis totius vitae nostrae” (Mandonnet, 77). 85 Barron, Spiritual Master, 34. St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 87 into Him in proportion to our surrender in love.86 Theology in this life is the intellectual appropriation, through Eucharistic friendship, of the reality first given in the mystery of baptism: conformity to the crucified and risen Lord, the power to think with His mind, to love with His heart. We are carried in the womb of the Virgin, carried on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd, nailed to His cross, resurrected by His power. The perfect theologian is, in the words of Dionysius, the one who “not merely learns, but suffers divine realities,” on which Thomas comments: “He does not merely gather up knowledge of divine things in his intellect, but by loving them is united to them in his heart.”87 This is the basic truth out of which Thomas’s rich mystical theology pours like a torrent, interweaving charity and all the virtues it nurses, the gifts and fruits of the Spirit, and that “affective knowledge” whereby the presence of the indwelling God is felt and savored.88 86 See ST, III, q. 73, a. 3, ad 2:“haec est differentia inter alimentum corporale et spir- ituale, quod alimentum corporale convertitur in substantiam eius qui nutritur, et ideo non potest homini valere ad vitae conservationem alimentum corporale nisi realiter sumatur. Sed alimentum spirituale convertit hominem in seipsum, secundum illud quod Augustinus dicit, in libro Confess., quod quasi audivit vocem Christi dicentis,‘nec tu me mutabis in te, sicut cibum carnis tuae, sed tu mutaberis in me.’ ” In Sent. IV.12.2.1.1:“Et ideo cum materiale in hoc sacramento sit cibus, oportet quod effectus proprius hujus sacramenti accipiatur secundum similitudinem ad effectum cibi. Cibus autem corporalis primo in cibatum convertitur, et ex tali conversione, deperdita restaurat, et quantitatem auget; sed spiritualis cibus non convertitur in manducantem, sed eum ad se convertit. Unde proprius effectus hujus sacramenti est conversio hominis in Christum, ut dicat cum Apostolo, Galat. II:Vivo ego, jam non ego; vivit vero in me Christus” (Moos, 524). 87 ST, II–II, q. 45, a. 2: “Hierotheus est perfectus in divinis ‘non solum discens, sed et patiens divina’ ”; DDN 2, lec. 4, n. 191:“idest non solum divinorum scientiam in intellectu accipiens, sed etiam diligendo, eis unitus est per affectum” (Marietti 59). Cf. ST, I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 3; I–II, q. 22, a. 3, obj. 1; DV q. 26, a. 3, obj. 18. On the Dionysian axiom, see Vivian Boland, OP, “Non solum discens sed et patiens divina. The Wanderings of an Aristotelian Fragment,” in Roma, magistra mundi. Itineraria culturae medievalis. Mélanges offerts au Père L. E. Boyle à l’occasion de son 75e anniversaire, ed. J. Hamesse, 3 vols. (Louvain-la-Neuve: Féderation Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 1998), I:55–69. 88 A detailed summary of Thomas’s ascetical-mystical theology is found in Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, The Three Ages of the Spiritual Life, trans. M. Timothea Doyle, OP, 2 vols. (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1989); a more recent overview is that of Heather McAdam Erb, “ ‘Pati Divina’: Mystical Union in Aquinas,” in Faith, Scholarship, and Culture in the 21st Century, ed. Alice Ramos and Marie I. George (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 73–96. Of the many studies on knowledge by connaturality, the following deserve special mention: M. D. Roland-Gosselin, OP,“De la connaissance affective,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 27 (1938): 5–26; Michael J. Faraon, OP, The 88 Peter A. Kwasniewski In 1256,Thomas, then about 32 years old, delivered two lectures upon incepting as Regent Master of the Sacred Page at Paris. In the second lecture, he furnishes a divisio textus of the books of Scripture that identifies the Song of Songs and the Apocalypse of John as the highpoints of the Old and New Testaments, because each treats in a special way the ultimate end of human life, the perfect union of God and man, compared in these two books to the union of lover and beloved, bridegroom and bride.89 It is beautifully fitting that the same teacher should have spent some of his final hours on earth speaking to a community of Cistercians about that incomparable poem of divine love, the Song of Songs, devoting his failing strength to the monks gathered around him and giving one last demonstration of the charity in his soul.90 Bernard Gui tells of Thomas’s last days: Now with every day that passed his body grew weaker; yet still from his spirit flowed the stream of doctrine. For, being asked by some of the monks to leave them some memorial of his stay with them, he gave a brief exposition of the Canticle of Solomon. And it was indeed appropriate that the great worker in the school of the Church should terminate his teaching on that song of eternal glory; that such a master in Metaphysical and Psychological Principles of Love (Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown, 1952), 70–83; Walter H. Principe, CSB, “Affectivity and the Heart in Thomas Aquinas’s Spirituality,” in Spiritualities of the Heart, ed.Annice Callahan (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 45–63; Thomas Gilby, OP, “The Dialectic of Love in the Summa,” in vol. 1 of the Blackfriars Summa theologiae (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 124–32. On the origin, evolution, and importance of Thomas’s doctrine of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, see the appendices to O’Connor’s translation of ST, I–II, qq. 68–70, vol. 24 of the Blackfriars Summa theologiae, 80–152. 89 The two Principia are printed in the Opuscula theologica, Marietti 2:435–43; see nn. 1203–8 for the divisio textus of Scripture. The importance of this claim of Thomas’s is discussed by Michael Waldstein,“On Scripture in the Summa theologiae,” Aquinas Review 1 (1994): 85–86, and idem,“John Paul II and St.Thomas on Love and the Trinity,” Anthropotes 18 (2002): 119–20.The former article includes a schematic diagram of the partitio sacrae Scripturae.An English translation of both Principia can be found in Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings, ed. and trans. Ralph McInerny (London: Penguin Books, 1998), 5–17. In regarding the Song as exegetically central,Thomas stood within a larger monastic tradition. See Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 83–123. 90 I find helpful Benedict Ashley’s suggestion that we take Thomas’s commentary on Psalm 45 [44] as an indication of how he might have approached the greater wedding song (see Thomas Aquinas: The Gifts of the Spirit, trans. Matthew Rzeczkowski, OP, ed. Benedict Ashley, OP [Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1995], 103–33). St.Thomas and the Ecstatic Practice of Theology 89 that school, when about to pass from the prison of the body to the heavenly wedding-feast, should discourse on the bridal union of the Church with Christ her Spouse.91 He who began his teaching career insinuating that the ecstatic union of lovers is the key to understanding Scripture ended it some eighteen years later as a pupil who had learned from the inner Teacher how to live what he had understood.According to legend,Thomas fainted when the monk reading the Canticle recited the verse:“Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields” (7:12).92 Soon afterward, the great doctor peacefully died, his soul going forth to enjoy forever the vision of glory. May we make our own the prayer that closes one of his hymns:“Lead us along Your paths to the goal we are striving for, the light wherein You dwell.”93 N&V 91 Foster, Life of Aquinas, 55. 92 See Blaise Arminjon, SJ, The Cantata of Love: A Verse-by-Verse Reading of the Song of Songs, trans. Nelly Marans (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 321. 93 “Per tuas semitas duc nos quo tendimus/Ad lucem quam inhabitas.” Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004): 91–114 91 The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae G ILLES M ONGEAU, SJ Regis College Toronto, Canada THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE was developed as a direct result of Thomas’s teaching at Santa Sabina: after trying to teach from the Sentences for a year, he abandoned this enterprise and began his own summary of theology, with its own proper order. It is possible that the material of the prima pars from question 45 onward represents classroom material. Jean-Pierre Torrell points out that only in the light of this historical context can the pedagogical concerns of the Summa theologiae be properly understood.1 “Propositum nostrae intentionis in hoc opere est,” writes Aquinas in the prologue to the Summa, “ea quae ad Christianam religionem pertinent, eo modo tradere, secundum quod congruit ad eruditionem incipientum.”2 The key phrase in this passage is eo modo tradere. The original Blackfriars translation rendered tradere as “to treat of,” which suggests the production of a treatise. But the more obvious translation is “to hand over, to pass on, to transmit,” which aligns the phrase with the theological understanding of “tradition.”3 This makes a huge difference: Our intention in this work, writes Aquinas, is to transmit whatever belongs to the Christian religion in a way suited to the education of beginners. Sacra Doctrina: Quid est? A growing body of scholars has been reexamining the meaning and role of the phrase sacra doctrina in Aquinas’s theology.4 Sacra doctrina emerges 1 Jean-Pierre Torrell, Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Cerf, 1993), 211–12. 2 Thomas Aquinas, ST, I, prologue. 3 Roy Deferrari, A Latin-English Dictionary of St.Thomas Aquinas (Boston: St. Paul, 1986), 1046. 4 Marc Johnson provides an excellent bibliography of these studies in an early footnote to his article “God’s Knowledge in our Frail Minds: the Thomistic 92 Gilles Mongeau, SJ from these studies as a complex reality that holds together an objective dimension, namely the content that is taught, and an active dimension, namely the various practices and tasks of the teacher who transmits the teaching.5 Johnson’s recent studies on sacra doctrina as wisdom have profoundly developed our understanding of the objective dimension of sacra doctrina as “God’s knowledge in our frail minds.” I propose here to explore the complementary aspect of sacra doctrina in its active dimension, as the pedagogical praxis of the wise teacher transmitting what he or she has received from God.This entails being attentive to the rhetorical clues embedded in the text of the Summa. The Methods of sacra doctrina God uses a variety of methods to teach humanity, and because of this, so will sacra doctrina. In question 1 of the prima pars, Aquinas notes two key methods, argumentation and metaphor, both of which have scriptural warrant.6 These two basic methods account for a range of concrete methods used by God in scriptures, all of which represent God’s manuductio of human beings in Revelation. Medieval pedagogy recognized five kinds of manuductio: sensible examples, less universal propositions which students could judge from what they already knew, similitudes, opposites, trust in a teacher’s authority.7 All of these are present in the scriptures, and all, therefore, can be used in the enterprise of sacra doctrina. Thus, in article 8, Aquinas shows how argumentation is used to proceed from a more basic proposition (Christ’s resurrection) to a more remote one (our bodily resurrection); the response to objection two in the same article is careful to sort out the kinds of authority and their pedagogical status; articles 9 and 10 outline the usefulness of metaphor in providing similitudes and opposites.Aquinas points out that God can also use things to signify other things, the supreme kind of sensible example, which finds its ultimate expression in the Incarnate meaning of Christ’s conception, birth, life, ministry, passion, death, resurrection, and exaltation at God’s right hand. Model of Theology,” Angelicum 76 (1999): 28. To his list I would add Eugene Rogers, Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Knowledge of God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), of interest for its understanding of the scriptural and Christological character of sacra doctrina, and JeanMarc Laporte’s recent article “Christ in Aquinas’ Summa theologiae: Peripheral or Pervasive?,” The Thomist 67 (April 2003): 221–48. 5 Cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas d’Aquin, maître spirituel (Paris : Cerf, 1996), 2–11. 6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 8 and a. 9. 7 Marie I. George, “Mind-Forming and Manuductio in Aquinas,” The Thomist 57 (1993): 205 ff. The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 93 Thus we can expect to find in the Summa theologiae not just causal explanations, but also examples, comparisons, oppositions, images, proportional relationships, analogies, and more. Many of these are signaled in the text by some form of the term convenientia, fittingness or appropriateness. Gilbert Narcisse’s masterful study has shown that these arguments from fittingness are not merely descriptive, but are ways of expressing the aesthetic-dramatic intelligibility of the relations between certain mysteries.8 They express the rationes Dei embodied in historical events, or incarnate meanings (especially in Christ). As Aquinas points out in articles 9 and 10, while such forms of “argumentation” may be weak when they are rooted in human wisdom, as part of God’s manuductio in divine revelation they are supremely effective.They correspond to the concrete intelligibility whereby things, in God’s wisdom, explain other things. In his work on the Summa contra Gentiles,Thomas Hibbs has shown that the pedagogy of that work is determined by the interplay between dialectic and narrative, and that certain progressions in the text, while logically incomprehensible, make perfect sense as narrative progressions or dramatic reversals borrowed from the Scriptures:“What makes the notion of narrative legitimate, indeed inescapable, is not a diminished appreciation or deconstruction of the metaphysics of the Contra Gentiles, but a proper understanding of it. Thomas’s peculiar appropriation of the neo-Platonic motif of the exitus-reditus highlights the contingency of creation, in its origin and its endurance . . . as an unfolding of divine providence, creation is a sort of narration . . . a setting forth, an exposition, a telling or relating. . . . [Scripture, in addition,] is a narrative that divides and organizes the whole of time in relation to its transcendental beginning and end.”9 Thus the overall logic of the Summa contra Gentiles is narrative in the strong sense, not abandoning logic or causal explanation, but combining it within the “divine comedic” framework of the biblical narrative as a whole.10 Because of this,“progress in the reading of the text . . . is possible only on the condition of docility to its pedagogy. . . . [Without] the active participation of the reader ‘all that is before us is indeed nothing but a book.’ ”11 This is highlighted, for the Summa theologiae, by Ofilada who sees that the exitus-reditus scheme is “a pedagogical manner of comprehending the 8 Gilbert Narcisse, Les raisons de Dieu: arguments de convenance et esthétique théologique selon saint Thomas d’Aquin et Hans Urs von Balthasar (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1997). 9 Thomas S. Hibbs, Dialectic and Narrative in Aquinas:An Interpretation of the Summa contra Gentiles (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 7. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 4. 94 Gilles Mongeau, SJ Christian life. . . . The very pattern or structure of his theology, and the way he comprehends it, is for St.Thomas the same pattern or path of the Christian life,”12 which is to participate in the patterns of salvation history. Thus, the text of the Summa theologiae is not only materially a spiritual theology (as shown by Torrell).13 It is also a spiritual theology in its form, as a spiritual pedagogy, or a series of “spiritual exercises” designed to engage the student and lead him or her to an encounter with divine truth in Christ.14 The Structure and Dynamic of the Summa: A Rhetorical Approach To speak of pedagogy is to evoke a discourse that seeks to have an effect on those it addresses; it is also to evoke techniques of ordering and presenting materials that are intended to make the material not only intelligible, but also easier to appropriate. We have already seen, under the umbrella of manuductio, five such techniques.The medieval pedagogue had other such tools, which he found in such sources as Aristotle’s On Memory and Remembering and Cicero’s On the Orator. The various techniques for inventio (finding the most appropriate argument), dispositio (how to order the arguments according to a plan), and elocutio (the set of literary and stylistic techniques related to the writing of a discourse) all contributed to the composition of a meaningful text.The art of rhetoric which governed the use of these techniques by the teacher also structured the reception of material by the student: to the techniques for teaching, there corresponded techniques for remembering and training the memory, as Mary Carruthers has recently shown.15 All of these techniques were understood 12 Mina Ofilada, “The Role of the Teacher as a Condescending Mediator,” Angelicum 77 (2000): 383. 13 The term “spiritual theology,” which I will continue to use throughout this article, is an anachronism, since for St.Thomas all theology is a spiritual enterprise. Nevertheless, our contemporary situation is such that we need to be reminded of this fact, since for us, theology is often distinguished according to the pair dogmatic-spiritual, a distinction that continues despite the renewal of theology in the ressourcement and after Vatican II. 14 At least three authors use the term “exercise” to describe Thomas’ pedagogy: see Gilles Emery, “Le traité de saint Thomas sur la Trinité dans la Somme contre les gentils,” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 5–40, and David Burrell, Exercises in Religious Understanding (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974); to these two published works we add the soon to be published work of Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming). 15 The work of Mary Carruthers is of great assistance for understanding the role of rhetoric in medieval thinking and writing. Cf. especially The Book of Memory. The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 95 by medieval thinkers within the context of moral psychology and epistemology: Aquinas’s treatment of the parts of prudence in the secunda secundae of the Summa theologiae makes this amply clear.16 To grasp the pedagogy of the Summa as spiritual, we must be attentive precisely to these rhetorical elements, and remember that they seek to affect memory, understanding, and judgment as activities of the person. The two most elementary forms used by Aquinas are the prologue and the article (which is in reality a quaestio disputata). The prologue signals the divisio textus of what is to follow.The divisio, as Carruthers has shown, is given so that the student can create the memory structures within which the res will be remembered; as it announces the plan of what is to follow, it also suggests links to be made between the elements of the divisio. Each question of the Summa has its prologue. Generally, these few lines of introductory text simply enumerate the list of articles. On rare occasions, however, they express the logical sequence between one or two particular articles in the series:“Des exemples de ce genre invitent le lecteur à s’efforcer de repérer par lui-même la logique de la série entière des articles et, éventuellement, l’importance respective de ces articles.”17 Other prologues look back on what has already been studied in order to announce what lies ahead. From the various levels of prologue, then, we can discern not only the structure of what is to come, but also the effect Aquinas wants to achieve in the student. The prologues also govern the grouping of interpretive units: they delimit the beginning and end of sets of questions and order questions to each other; they set doctrines and notions in relation to each other, thereby affecting the meaning of these very doctrines and notions. By being attentive to these prologues, we interpret the text more faithfully, and we overcome groupings and structures imposed by later editors and commentators. The article has many stylized features which commentators have studied closely.18 At this point, it is important to notice one particular feature which editors and translators often camouflage in their rendering of the text of the Summa, namely the title of the article.This is the short phrase which usually begins videtur quod and proposes a position opposite to that 16 ST, I–II, q. 49, a. 1 17 Albert Patfoort, La Somme de saint Thomas et la logique du dessein de Dieu (Saint- Maur: Parole et Silence, 1998), 18. 18 Consult, for example, the classic study of F. Blanche, “Le vocabulaire de l’argu- mentation et la structure de l’article dans les ouvrages de saint Thomas,” Revue de Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 14 (1925): 167–87. Also, Marie-Joseph Nicolas: Introduction to Thomas Aquinas, Somme Théologique, 58–60 and MarieDominique Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, trans. A. M. Landry and D. Hughes (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964). Gilles Mongeau, SJ 96 announced in the prologue of the question, where as we have seen the list of articles is given.There is sometimes an important shift between the way an article is first announced in the prologue and then introduced in its title. Fr. Patfoort proposes a number of examples, of which we need retain only one: the prologue to question 103 of the prima pars announces that article 2 of the question will ask “quis sit finis gubernationis mundus.”The title of article 2, however, states “Videtur quod finis gubernationis mundi non sit aliquid extra mundum existens.”19 This strategy signals an important shift in perspective that leads the reader forward from an initial stance.The shift may be the result of new insights reached in the articles that have gone before within the same question, or it may introduce a perspective relevant to the appropriate solution of the problem at hand. In any case, the title of the article is often an important rhetorical indicator of Aquinas’s pedagogical objective. Another important pedagogical feature of the article, one that is often missed when one is not aware of the importance of memory in medieval pedagogy, is the sed contra. It has often been noted that the sed contra signals the basis for Thomas’s respondeo in any given article, even on those rare occasions where he limits or corrects the position outlined in the sed contra. But the sed contra, properly understood, does much more: it is a metonymic device, where the “part” that is cited calls the student to retrieve from trained memory the “whole” of the res, whether the source be Augustine, Aristotle, the Scriptures, or some other authority.The res that is retrieved from memory functions as an enriching interpretive context for the respondeo, as Eugene Rogers has shown in his Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God; the act of retrieving also structures previously known material into the framework of sacra doctrina promoted by the Summa, thereby transforming the student’s knowledge of and orientation to the res. What was previously known according to the order of a catena or florilegium is now possessed according to the ordo doctrinae. The importance, for Thomas, of refuting error translates into two pedagogical strategies.The first is the choice of the disputed question form as a basic literary unit.The second, and more significant, is the consideration of historical errors and heresies as a means of illuminating orthodox teaching.20 What is at stake here is not the mere refutation of error, “mais plus 19 Patfoort, La Somme, 20. 20 A profound study of the importance Aquinas attached to the refutation of error in the work of the theologian can be found in the third and fourth chapters of René-Antoine Gauthier,Thomas d’Aquin, Somme contre les Gentils,“Introduction” (Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1993). Gilles Emery, starting from Gauthier’s The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 97 profondément la tentative d’en saisir le motif, le mouvement et les arguments internes, afin de pouvoir la comprendre et l’affronter sur son terrain, et par suite mieux manifester la vérité de la foi catholique.”21 Thus, the refutation of error forms the basis of a pedagogical exercise which corresponds to Thomas’s insight that historical heresies and errors remain live spiritual options for believing Christians.22 The truth is better possessed when it includes the knowledge of where those who are in error go awry. A great example of this technique is found in article one of question 27 of the prima pars: the respondeo begins the explanation of the notion of processions in God by first listing the errors of Arius and Sabellius; it then analyzes their positions according to the fundamental error of understanding they both commit—both understand procession on the analogy of an external act—before explaining the proper analogy, which is from an act that terminates within the agent. The tertia pars, with its concern for the Incarnation, is another important locus of this pedagogical strategy, which is particularly useful when core doctrines are at stake. Aquinas also makes use of two kinds of textual references, the analepsis and the prolepsis.An analepsis is an appeal to what has already been said, a “backward look” in order to create a link, either narrative or causal, with the material at hand. A prolepsis appeals to something which will be explained later, but which is necessary in some way to the understanding of the material being considered. Both of these techniques depend on the memory structures created by the student; Aquinas is signaling the student that particular elements in the structure must be retrieved, and that a link must be created between the present material and the elements pointed to. An example of prolepsis can be found in the first question of the prima pars, where the text appeals to the relation between grace and nature, which relation is only explained at the end of the prima secundae. The prolepsis is more than a shortcut: it often will call to the reader’s mind the lived reality—Christ encountered in the scriptures or the sacraments, the rhythm of daily worship and prayer, a key image from the liturgy or the spiritual tradition—that forms the basis of an orthodox response to insights, has recently produced a series of excellent articles studying Aquinas’s use of heresies and errors in his Trinitarian theology. See Gilles Emery, “Le photinisme et ses précurseurs chez saint Thomas,” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 371–98 and Gilles Emery, “Saint Thomas d’Aquin et l’Orient chrétien,” Nova et Vetera 74 (1999): 19–36 but especially Emery,“Le Traité de saint Thomas sur la Trinité dans la somme contre les Gentils,” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 5–40. 21 Emery, “Le Traité de saint Thomas,” 17. 22 I am very grateful to Gilles Emery, OP, for his help in clarifying this point, which was confirmed in a conversation with him at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. 98 Gilles Mongeau, SJ the problem at hand, but which will be explained fully in its proper place in the ordo disciplinae.23 A classic example of analepsis can be found in the tertia pars, at article 7 of question 2:Aquinas sends the student to question 13 of the prima pars, where the basic solution to the relation between God and the creature was first outlined; this solution becomes the template according to which the student grasps the intelligibility of the relation between the Word and his human nature in the Incarnation. Such textual crossovers, both backward and forward, indicate an interpretive strategy to be followed by the student. Closely related to this technique of textual crossover is that of repetition. Aquinas repeats key terms or ideas in different sections of the text. There are both continuities and discontinuities in the repetition, such that the full meaning of the term or idea only emerges at the very end, once the student has successfully “navigated” the process by which the meaning emerges.The notion of “verbum” is developed in this way in the text of the Summa.There can also be repetition of key analytical tools, for example the use of the pair knowledge-will: it first serves as a major distinction within God’s operations; it then becomes the basis of the analogy by which processions can be understood to occur in God; it then serves to sort out the various operations involved in human choice; then, it serves as the principle of distinction between the theological virtues and, immediately after, the cardinal virtues; it distinguishes the two major sets of perfections in the incarnate Christ; finally, it serves as the basis for sorting the fruits of the various sacraments. Along the way, it has helped define the nature of beatitude. Each repetition slightly modifies the use that is made of the pair, such that its full analytical capacity is known only at the end of the Summa. At least on two explicit occasions, Aquinas presents his material in a strictly narrative fashion, following the order of a particular biblical account. The first such occasion is found in the presentation of the doctrine of creation, in the questions concerning the six days of creation. The second is in the second part of the Christology in the tertia pars. In the first case, that of the doctrine of creation, Aquinas distinguishes between three works of God, namely creatio properly speaking, the work of distinctio, and the work of ornatio.These three works are related to each other narratively, according to the biblical account of the six days of creation.The causal links between them are thus dramatic and temporal, as opposed to strictly logical. At these points, Aquinas is bringing to light the concrete intelligibility of the Scriptures.We must therefore be atten23 Patfoort, La Somme, 16. The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 99 tive to the narrative elements in the text, not only in these two explicit cases, but in cases where, as we shall see, the narrative element is more structural than material. The last major rhetorical element we must discuss is connected to the use of arguments from convenientia. Lonergan has written that it is crucial for theologians to have a good grasp of the notion of convenientia, because “appropriateness [convenientia] implies intelligibility in the proper sense and yet an intelligibility that is in no way necessary”; by means of arguments from convenientia, “a theologian can both inquire into the appropriate reasons for things and understand them without in any way infringing upon God’s sovereign freedom and the gratuitousness of the supernatural order.”24 Narcisse has shown the epistemological, metaphysical, and theological import of these aesthetic-dramatic arguments. By their very nature, these arguments are also rhetorical strategies. Emery25 has shown the link between these arguments and what, in the Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas calls the use of credible and probable reasons to console the faithful and develop their faith.26 They appeal to religious sensibility, to memory and feeling, and make use of these mechanisms to trigger understanding. We can see this at work in question 1 of the tertia pars, where Aquinas probes the fittingness of the Incarnation.The second article of this question takes up a particular aspect of the fittingness of the Incarnation, namely its suitability for redeeming us. Rooting his response in the third chapter of the Gospel of John, Aquinas states in the sed contra that whatever saves us is de facto necessary for our salvation. But this necessity, he goes on to show in the respondeo, is of a particular kind.The Incarnation is not necessary for our restoration in an absolute sense, since God could have chosen any of a myriad of ways to save us. It is necessary “quod melius et convenientius pervenitur ad finem.” Aquinas then offers ten reasons for this, five from the perspective of our progress in the good and five from the perspective of our withdrawal from evil.Without going into the particulars of these reasons, what emerges is that in each case, the Incarnation is more suited to our restoration; it is more appropriate, or bears greater fruit. In some cases, the reasons bring forward material from earlier in the Summa. The series of reasons from the perspective of our progress in the good follows an interesting sequence: certainty of faith, greater hope, 24 Bernard Lonergan, “The Purpose of the Incarnation,” trans. Michael Shields (Toronto: Lonergan Research Institute, 1997), 20. 25 Emery, “Le Traité,” 7. 26 St. Thomas Aquinas, God, vol. 1 of Summa contra Gentiles, trans. Anton C. Pegis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), ch. 9, no. 54. 100 Gilles Mongeau, SJ deeper love, Christ as model to imitate, Incarnation as the greatest participation of humanity in divinity.This is the sequence of treatises from the beginning of the secunda secundae to the present treatise on the Incarnation. Each reason of fittingness appeals to the fulfillment of material previously considered, and gathers it up in the “climax” of the Incarnation, thereby transforming it and bringing it to its fullness of meaning. Let us proceed now to show how some of these rhetorical and narrative strategies are at work in one section of the Summa, and how attentiveness to them can lead to important theological insights into the meaning of the text. A Test Case: God in the prima pars Until recently, the typical understanding of what constitutes the treatment of God in the Summa proposed that there are two treatises, de Deo uno and de Deo trino. These two treatises were thought to stand on their own, to be self-sufficient; they were understood to roughly correspond to what can be known about God by human reason unaided, and what is known about God from revelation. Generations of students of Aquinas (myself included, as recently as 1986) studied the treatise de Deo uno in philosophy and de Deo trino in theology. In addition, the consideration of God properly speaking was thought to end at question 43, since question 44 begins the questions on creation. Scholars interested in a more theologically responsible interpretation of Aquinas, however, have proposed that there is only one continuous treatment of God that incorporates both the traditional de Deo uno and de Deo trino.Various reasons are proffered to support this stance. Could a careful look at the rhetorical clues in the text shed any light on this debate? An initial reading of the various prologues in the prima pars allows us to disengage the general construction of the argument.The structure can be presented as in the following table: consideratio Dei tripartita erit (Ia) [secundum quod in se est (QQ2–43)] “quae ad essentiam divinam pertinent” (QQ2–26) an Deus sit (Q2) quomodo sit, vel potius quomodo non sit (QQ3–13) quomodo non sit (QQ3–11) de simplicitate ipsius (Q3) de perfectione ipsius (QQ4–6) de infinitate ejus (QQ7–8) de immutabilitate (QQ9–10) de unitate (Q11) The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 101 quomodo a nobis cognoscatur (Q12) quomodo nominetur (Q13) quae ad operationem ipsius pertinent (QQ14–26) quae manet in operante (QQ14–24) de scientia Dei (QQ14–18) de voluntas Dei (QQ19–21) simul intellectum et voluntatem (QQ22–24) quae procedit in exteriorem effectum: de divina potentia (Q25) de divina Beatitudine (Q26) quae pertinent ad distinctione Personarum (QQ27–43) de processione divinarum Personarum (Q27) de relationibus originis (Q28) de Personis divinis (QQ29–43) in communi (Q29–32) de singulis Personis (QQ33–38) de Persona Patris (Q33) de Persona Filii (QQ34–35) de Verbo (Q34) de Imagine (Q35) de Persona Spiritus Sancti (QQ36–38) dicitur Sanctus (Q36) dicitur Amor (Q37) dicitur Donum Dei (Q38) de Personis in comparatione ad. . . . . (QQ39–43) . . . . essentiam (Q39) . . . . proprietates (Q40) . . . . actus notionales (Q41) . . . . invicem (QQ42–43) [secundum quod est principium rerum et finis earum: de processione creaturam a Deo (QQ44–119)] de productione creaturam (QQ44–46) de distinctione creaturam (QQ47–102) de distinctione rerum in communi (Q47) de distinctione boni et mali (QQ48–49) de distinctione spiritualis et corporalis creaturae (QQ50–102) de creatura pure spirituali, angelus nominatur (QQ50–64) de creatura pure corporali (QQ65–74) de creature composita ex corporali et spirituali, quae est homo (QQ75–102) de conservatione et gubernatione creaturam (QQ103–119) The chart above shows clearly how the various prologues organize the material into units. A number of general observations can be made from this picture of the rhetorical structure of the prima pars. Gilles Mongeau, SJ 102 We begin with the prologue to question 2, which provides many of the basic indications for the structure of the prima pars. Remember that the prologue signals the divisio textus which the student is expected to perform, and that this divisio creates an ordered structure in memory whereby elements are distinguished and related.The initial distinction the prologue to question 2 makes is between “Dei cognitionem, quod in se est” and “quod est principium rerum et finis earum.”27 This is the basic division that governs the whole Summa even as it signals its unity: like the patristic authors before him,Aquinas is concerned with God, whether his consideration centers on God in God’s very self, or on God revealed in the magnalia Dei. There is a sense in which the whole Summa is one consideration of God, and the threefold division of the whole—of God, of human beings in their movement toward God, and of Christ as the concrete way into God—is inscribed within this more fundamental unity. We shall see more of the pedagogical implications of this later in this essay. The prima pars, still according to the prologue, is one long consideration of God, articulated in three moments:“consideratio autem de Deo tripartita erit.”What are these three moments? They are “ea quae ad essentiam divinam pertinent”; “ea quae pertinent ad distinctionem Personarum”; and finally “ea quae pertinent ad processum creaturarum ab ipso.”28 Once again, the distinction is inscribed in a more fundamental unity. The pedagogical continuity between these three moments is supplied by the prologues that correspond to the beginning of each moment. If we finish our study of the prologue to question 2, we see that the matter to be treated between questions 2 and 26 falls under the notion of God’s essence: God’s existence, God’s manner of existence and God’s operations are all considerations falling within this category. This is important, because, of course, God’s essence, or nature, is one part of the conciliar definition of the Trinity: Nature is what there is one of in God and two of in the Incarnate Word. We have already begun the consideration of God as defined by Nicaea.This consideration, as both Pieper and Burrell have shown, is mainly “therapeutic,” that is, it seeks to correct, by means of the via negativa, mistaken notions of God’s existence, God’s unity, and God’s operations, as well as establish the basis for Aquinas’s use of analogy as a form of theological understanding.29 Thus, question 2 itself does not begin with “whether God exists,” but rather with “whether the statement 27 I, q. 2, prologue. 28 Ibid. 29 The reader will find an excellent discussion of these matters in David Burrell, Exercises in Religious Understanding. We will revisit the pedagogy of the via negativa later in this essay. The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 103 ‘God exists’ is self-evident.” This is the properly biblical starting point: “The fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God.’ ” The prologue to question 27, at first glance, does not seem to give us much help. Notice, however, that the very first sentence juxtaposes again the unity of essence and the Trinity of Persons: Nature is what there is one of in God (and two of in Christ); Person is what there are three of in God (and one of in Christ).The text of the first article depends on the theology of the names of God first discussed in question 13; Aquinas’s respondeo makes no sense unless the student already possesses a properly analogical understanding of knowing and willing in God. The prologue to question 14 has already introduced the two crucial distinctions Aquinas uses here. First, that between two kinds of operations, “quae manet in operante” and “quae procedit in exteriorem effectum.” Second, within those operations that remain in the operator, there is a further distinction between intellect and will.30 Intellect and will are first discussed within the questions on the divine operations, which form part of the consideration of the divine essence, beginning at question 14 (on the intellect alone), then at question 19 (on the will alone), and finally at question 22 (on the intellect and will taken together).The pair now reappears in question 27, within the consideration on the divine Persons, specifically as part of the psychological analogy for understanding how there can be processions in God.The material on intellect and will does not enter directly into the analogy (or at least most of it does not), but it is the necessary background information for understanding the analogy precisely as an analogy, that is, for grasping that talk of intellect and will in God is different from talk of intellect and will in us. There is thus an important continuity in difference between the first and second moments of the tripartite consideration of God. The prologue to question 14 also introduces the distinction between operations that remain in God, and operations that terminate in effects outside of God. It further specifies this distinction as one between God’s intellect and will, on the one hand, and God’s power, on the other. The divisio here creates a structure by which the student distinguishes and relates two elements under the one heading of operations.The consideration of Persons in God depends on and enriches the discussion of operations that terminate in God; it climaxes at question 43 with a consideration of the missions of the Son and Spirit, which reintroduces the question of operations that terminate outside of God. The prologue to question 44 reintroduces the notion of procession, this time applying it to creatures: 30 ST, I, q. 14, prologue. 104 Gilles Mongeau, SJ “Post considerationem divinarum Personarum, considerandum restat de processione creaturarum a Deo.” The relation between the consideration of Persons in God and the consideration of the procession of creatures out of God is mapped onto the relation between God’s intellect and will on the one hand, and God’s power on the other. The consideration of the procession of creatures, then, depends on and enriches the consideration of God’s power in the first moment of the tripartite consideration of God. This link has already been prepared by Aquinas’s discussion of the name Verbum as it is applied to the Second Person. Article three of question 34 asks whether the name Verbum implies a relation to creatures.The answer is that since God’s Word is expressive of God’s unrestricted act of understanding, by which the Father understands both himself and all things in himself, then that one Word is expressive, not only of the Father, but of all creatures; and since God’s knowledge is both cognitive and operative with respect to creatures, as Aquinas has already shown in question 14, article 8, then the Word is both expressive and operative of creatures.The Word is thus at the centre of a continuous movement from the consideration of God’s nature through the consideration of the Persons to the consideration of creatures. We have, then, not three treatises, but one consideration of God that takes up the entire prima pars.What more can we learn about this consideration? The treatment of God in question 2 culminates in the third article, “utrum Deus sit.” Much has been written on the five proofs, and whether they are an attempt to really prove God’s existence, or whether they are an attempt to find rationes to understand what it means to say God. We shall not enter into this debate, but rather concentrate on the sed contra. Thomas quotes the book of Exodus, chapter 3, verse 13: God says “Ego sum qui sum.”31 It has been brought out very often recently that Thomas’s choice of biblical authorities is never accidental.32 What is the import of this quotation? In the past, scholars suggested that Thomas understood it according to a Greek metaphysical framework, as a philosophical proclamation of God as the source of Being, as Being itself. But this argument is to be found only in the third of the five proofs in the respondeo. Some interpreters, conscious of this difference, explain that the five proofs are reducible to the third, but is this enough? Such a reading imposes one meaning to the scriptural phrase, reducing it to “Ego sum:‘qui sum’,” reading article 3 of question 2 from the perspective of question 13, article 11, “utrum hoc nomen Qui est sit maxime nomen Dei proprium.” 31 ST, I, q. 2, a. 3, sed contra. 32 See, for example,Torrell, St.Thomas Aquinas; also Rogers, Sacra Doctrina. The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 105 Let us first place this article in the context of its question. The first article asks whether God’s existence is evident. The answer is no, since fools can deny it. While the proposition “God exists” is self-evident in itself, it is not evident to us.What have we learned by the end of article 1? That the question is not whether God exists, since this proposition is self-evident; rather the question is how to come to understand God’s existence. And this is a question of moving from foolishness to wisdom. The second article establishes what kinds of arguments might move us from foolishness to wisdom in this case: Because we cannot know God’s essence, we can only know God from God’s effects, that is, creation, grace and revelation. It is this strategy which is implemented in the third article. But why repeat the exercise five times, especially when later in question 13, only one of the five will be commented on? It is precisely this rhetorical use of repetition which gives us the clue: the five ways repeat the same pattern of thought, the same intellectual progression from dependent realities to an independent reality.33 Aquinas is proposing that we understand God’s existence, in light of God’s revelation to Moses, as that of One who is absolutely not dependent on created things or values, as one who is free in this sense.This is, in fact, a rather sophisticated grasp of the text of Exodus, where God’s Name is a kind of reflexive word play: “I am who I am”; “I will be who I will be”; I cause to be what I cause to be” are all possible translations. But what of the eleventh article of question 13? If question 2, article 3, does not restrict the meaning of the scriptural phrase to a single (Greek) metaphysical interpretation, why should this later article do just that? We must notice first that question 13, article 11 comes after the metaphysical enterprise that begins with question 3; the understanding of the reader has been changed by then, and new considerations have been brought in, specifically question 8, “de existentia Dei in rebus.” God’s proper existence in things has not yet been determined in question 2. Further, a close reading of question 13, article 11 reveals an interesting nuance in the reply to the first objection. The objection states that God’s name is incommunicable, but that Qui est is communicable and thus inappropriate. In the reply, Aquinas takes up the metaphysical interpretation whereby Qui est signifies Being itself. But then, he suggests that the Tetragrammaton is the most appropriate name for God,“quod est impositum ad significandam ipsam Dei substantiam incommunicabilem, et, ut sic liceat loqui, singularem.” The Tetragrammaton, of 33 One is reminded of the technique of giving points for meditation in the Spiri- tual Exercises of Hildegard or of St. Ignatius Loyola. The points enter into the same matter from different perspectives, inviting the person who is praying to repeat the same journey by different paths. 106 Gilles Mongeau, SJ which the biblical phrase “Ego sum qui sum” is a rendering which emphasizes precisely God’s incommunicability and singularity, God’s independence or ungraspableness, is offered here as more appropriate than the metaphysical Qui est, thus preserving a wider perspective.The third article of question 2, then, must not be interpreted in a restricted sense, but as a kind of prelude to the strategy of the next eight questions, where Aquinas will systematically cut any links by which reason might “bind” God to created beings. Indeed, beginning with question 3, Aquinas’s exercise of the negative way keeps intensifying, but with an interesting variation in pattern. The pattern of movement from general to particular leads back to a consideration of creatures at the end of each question: In each case,Aquinas seeks to establish what is the proper understanding of God’s relation to creatures relative to the particular aspect examined in the question.Thus, the last article of question 3 establishes, against three key errors regarding God’s simplicity, how God can be the being of things.The last article of question, on God’s perfection, establishes how precisely creatures can be said to resemble God. The last article of question 6, on God’s goodness, establishes how things are good in relation to the divine goodness. Question 8 in its entirety examines, in light of the infinity of God established in question 7, how an infinite God can relate to finite creatures. Question 10 establishes the proper relations between God’s eternity, the angelic aevum, and created time. Question 11 finishes on the consideration of how God’s unity relates to the unity of created things.We see here that even within what is ostensibly a consideration of God in himself, Aquinas has not abandoned the consideration of creatures. The basic notions which will serve to explicitate the doctrine of creation in the third moment of the consideration of God are introduced in the first moment.There is here another kind of continuity in difference: Aquinas establishes the proper basic relations between God and creatures here, and will bring them to explicit fruition in the third moment of the prima pars. Even this rapid survey of structural and rhetorical elements has given a whole new perspective on the question of what constitutes the consideration of God in the prima pars, exposing continuities that lead to an undoing of the perspective that there are two treatises on God and a separate treatise on creation. In addition, we have seen a more developmental relationship between the various elements and teachings of the prima pars, such that earlier notions are not to be understood only in themselves, but as preparatory to later developments. We have not exhausted the possibilities of the text, certainly, but perhaps we have shown some of the usefulness of a perspective that takes into account the rhetorical clues The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 107 in the text. Most importantly, we have highlighted the careful manuductio by which Aquinas seeks to move students from foolishness to wisdom through a structured series of exercises. The Structure and Dynamic of the Summa Let us turn now to the question of the structure and dynamic of the Summa as a whole. Are there rhetorical clues in the text that can further our knowledge of its spiritual pedagogy? We begin, again, by disengaging the basic rhetorical structure of the “argument” from the relevant prologues. sacra doctrina: an sit; quid sit; quomodo sit (IaQ1) ad huius doctrinae expositionem intendentes (IaQQ2–119; IIa; IIa) de Deo (IaQQ2–119) quod in se est (QQ2–43) ea quae ad essentiam divinam pertinent (QQ2–26) ea quae pertinent ad distinctionem Personarum (QQ27–43) ea quae pertinent ad processum creaturarum a Deo (QQ44–119) de motu rationalis creaturae in Deum (IIa) de ultimo fine humanae vitae (IaIIae, QQ1–5) de humanis actibus considerare (IaIIae, QQ6–114; IIaIIae) in universali (IaIIae, QQ6–114) in particulari (IIaIIae) de Christo, qui, secundum quod homo, via est nobis tendendi in Deum (IIIa) de ipso Salvatore (IIIaQQ1–59) de Incarnationis mysterio (QQ1–26) de his quae per ipsum Salvatorem nostrum sunt acta et passa (QQ27–59) de sacramentis eius, quibus salutem consequimur de fine immortalis vitae, ad quem per ipsum resurgendo pervenimus The structure clearly brings out the tripartite division of the Summa, as we would expect. It also sets out clearly some other interesting factors. As Jean-Marc Laporte has recently shown, the structure has two poles determined by the two basic data of Christian revelation according to the Letter to the Hebrews and the Gospel of John: God and Christ.34 But God is the first principle and most universal datum of revelation, while Christ is the most particular and concrete. The whole Summa, in this light, is one long progression to understanding Christ. Everything that goes before the IIIa pars is at the service of the understanding of this one 34 Jean-Marc Laporte, “Christ in Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae: Peripheral or Perva- sive?,” The Thomist 67 (2003): 221–48. 108 Gilles Mongeau, SJ particular contingent fact, that God became human, and that this has particular consequences for our salvation. Even more, within this progression from universal to particular, Thomas has managed to preserve a certain historical order of revelation: first God, then creation, then governance of creatures, then the Law, then grace. A careful reading of the prelude to question 2 leads to a further insight: The ad huius doctrinae expositionem intendentes, which sets out the tripartite division, is preceded by the statement “principalis intentio huius sacrae doctrinae est Dei cognitionem tradere, et non solum secundum quod in se est, sed etiam secundum quod est principium rerum et finis earum, et specialiter rationalis creaturae. . . .” This suggests a slightly different tripartite division, more like this: de Deo (the whole Summa from IaQ2 onward) in se (IaQ2–43) quod est principium rerum (IaQ44–119) quod est finis earum (IIa and IIIa) de motu rationalis creaturae in Deum (IIa) de Christo, qui, secundum quod homo, via est nobis tendendi in Deum (IIIa) In this scheme, the whole Summa treats only of God, and under three aspects: in se, as principium rerum, and as finis earum; this final consideration is twofold, in general and in particular, that is, in Christ.The point here is not to deny the obvious, but rather to highlight an important connection between the text of the Summa and other medieval texts of theological and spiritual formation. It was a medieval commonplace to think of progress in the knowledge of God as occurring in three moments of contemplation of God’s resemblance: first, in the consideration of the vestigiae Dei in creatures; then in the imago Dei (or imago ad imaginem) in human beings, that is in their spiritual nature; then in the Imago, that is, in Christ. Some authors also added a fourth moment, the consideration of God in God’s self.35 This three- or fourfold consideration of God was taken from the writings of Augustine, particularly the de Trinitate.Augustine also distinguishes between the image of God in us from our spiritual nature, and the image of God in us as reformed by grace. St. Anselm in the Monologion uses this doctrine of image and resemblance to develop his doctrine of the Word as Archetype of created beings and their unity in Being. Hugh of St. Victor, betraying a more Dionysian influence, structures the degrees of resemblance of creatures to God in a hierarchy of progress into God.This 35 “Image et ressemblance,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité. The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 109 journey back to God is, for him, a manuductio that leads to our own growing in resemblance to God, our deification. It is St. Bonaventure, however, in his Itinerarum mentis in Deum, who proposes the most systematic account of the progress into God via the consideration of creatures. There, he proposes a sixfold process: first, the consideration of the vestiges of God in the distinction and ordered multiplicity of beings; second, the consideration of the vestiges of God in the origin, development and end of beings; third, the consideration of the image of God in the spiritual nature of the human soul; fourth, the consideration of the image of God in the soul reformed by grace; fifth, the consideration of the unity of God through God’s primary name, which is Being; finally, sixth, the consideration of God as Triune through God’s name of Good. These six steps of the itinerarium mentis lead to a mystical encounter with Christ, God and human, who has been the way but is now the resting place.This account, as a narrative of progress in the Christian spiritual life, is one possible systematization of the elements inherited from St. Augustine and preserved by medieval theologians. Is it possible that Aquinas’s use of these same elements is also a narrative of progress into God? Aquinas himself makes some explicit comments about this tradition in the Summa contra Gentiles, at the beginning of book two, in the first four chapters, where he introduces the consideration of creatures. In the first chapter,Thomas establishes that meditating on the things God has made leads us to a deeper knowledge of God, since consideration of the effect can help us understand the nature of the cause.Then, in the second chapter, “That the consideration of creatures is useful to the edification of faith,” he offers four reasons in support of this enterprise.The first three continue the argument of chapter one: We grow in admiration for the divine wisdom, since the work produced by the maker’s art resembles that art itself; we grow in awe of the divine power, which awakens reverence for God in our hearts; and, our hearts are inflamed with love of God’s goodness.The fourth reason is different: the consideration of creatures establishes us in a certain resemblance of the divine perfection. Specifically, the result of this consideration, in the light of divine revelation, is a certain resemblance in us to the divine wisdom.36 We can see, then, in the Summa contra Gentiles, that Thomas knows the tradition of the consideration of creatures as a way into God, both by knowing God in creatures and by growing in resemblance to God. 36 St. Thomas Aquinas, Creation, vol. 2 of Summa contra Gentiles, trans. James F. Anderson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), ch. 2. 110 Gilles Mongeau, SJ But what about the Summa theologiae? Let us take a closer look at the major prologues.The prologue to the secunda pars offers some important clues:“Quia, sicut Damascenus dicit, homo factus ad imaginem Dei dicitur, secundum quod per imaginem significatur intellectuale et arbitrio liberum et per se potestativum; postquam praedictum est de exemplari, scilicet de Deo, et de his quae processerunt ex divinae potestate secundum eius voluntatem; restat ut consideremus de eius imagine, idest de homine. . . .” The prologue understands the two particular terms “God— human beings” as a function of the pair of general terms “exemplar— image,” where God is to the human being as exemplar is to image. The term “image” is particularly important here, as can be gathered from its triple repetition.This notion is relational, in the sense that an image necessarily implies an exemplar. This means that although we are no longer considering the exemplar itself, nevertheless, insofar as we are considering human beings under the formality of “image,” we continue to enrich our grasp of the exemplar.We are seeing the exemplar in the image. We should also note Aquinas’s use of ad imaginem: Human beings are made “to the image” of God. The prologue here is summarizing the content of question 93 of the prima pars, whose title reads: “Deinde considerandum est de fine sive termino productionis hominis, prout dicitur factus ad imaginem et similitudinem Dei.” It is here that Aquinas first introduces the distinctions and terms that will become important with the reditus that begins in the secunda pars.There is an image of God in us, but it is not a perfect image, since the likeness between God and ourselves is not one of equality. Only the First-Born possesses such equality, and can be properly termed Imago Dei. We are imago ad imaginem, which signifies our approaching to God’s likeness as from a distance.The image is found in every one insofar as we all possess a natural aptitude for understanding and loving God; it is in some in a more developed way insofar as they habitually know and love God, which is the conformity of grace; finally, it is in the blessed in heaven, who know and love God perfectly by the likeness of glory. The image, which is according to the Persons of the Trinity—this is what makes the psychological analogy possible—is thus best differentiated into image and similitude. The imago is in us according to nature; the similitudo is the expression and perfection of the image in grace and glory. Similitudo, writes Aquinas, belongs in a particular way to love of virtue, for there is no virtue without love of virtue. Similitudo in this particular sense is thus linked to habit and virtue, which are considered in their concrete particulars in the secunda secundae, under the conformity of grace established by the theological virtues. We thus have a progression, from the prima The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 111 pars to the secunda secundae, from exemplar, to imago ad imaginem, to similitudo under grace. The notion of exemplar goes back to question 44, article 3, where Thomas had already established that God is the primary exemplary cause of all things. In the corpus of this article, he makes explicit reference to the way in which the work of art reveals the nature of the artisan. God is then the exemplar in two ways: first, as exemplary cause of all creatures; second, as the one whom human knowing and choosing imitate. This means, if we reverse the order, that creation reveals God in two ways: first, in the showing forth of the divine wisdom in all things; second, in human beings in particular, as knowing and choosing creatures. Our sequence, then, is now God as exemplar, God considered in the vestiges, God considered in the imago ad imaginem, and God considered in the similitudo which is brought about by the gift of grace. What about the third element of the medieval pedagogy, the consideration of God in the Imago Dei, that is, in Christ Incarnate? Can we deem Aquinas’s Christology in the tertia pars a consideration of the Imago Dei in the explicit sense? The first item of importance, as we proceed to answer this question, is found not in the tertia pars, but in the prima pars, at question 35. Aquinas is considering the Second Person of the Trinity in se, and has just finished the consideration of the Second Person as Verbum of the Father. He now turns to the Second Person as . . . Imago Patri! He establishes that to be the image of the Father is proper to the Son, and then proceeds to distinguish, in the response to the third objection, between two ways of being in God’s image:“Uno modo, in re eiusdem naturae secundum speciem: ut imago regis invenitur in filio suo.Alio modo, in re alterius naturae: sicut imago regis invenitur in denario. Primo autem modo, Filius est imago Patris: secundo autem modo dicitur homo imago Dei. Et ideo ad designandam in homine imperfectionem imaginis, homo non dicitur solum imago, sed ad imaginem. . . . “ This important text contrasts the Son and human beings according to the more general pair of terms imago and imago ad imaginem. This would seem to lead us toward the same kind of relationship between the second and third elements that we saw in the more general tradition. If we turn now to the beginning of the tertia pars, we come to the question of the fittingness of the Incarnation.The sed contra to the first article sets the tone: It was most fitting that God should become incarnate, since as John Damascene says, it is by the mystery of the Incarnation that God’s goodness, wisdom, justice, and power are most completely revealed. Aquinas picks up this theme in the corpus, showing that the Incarnation is the highest communication of God’s goodness to a creature, and 112 Gilles Mongeau, SJ therefore a most fitting expression of God’s nature.37 This is, of course, exactly the language we saw in the Summa contra Gentiles. The Incarnation, compared to the other expressions of God’s nature, is the most fitting and most complete. The link between the imago and the imago ad imaginem is made even more explicit by the prologue to the tertia pars and its analepsis to the secunda pars. Aquinas recalls what has gone before, namely the consideration of beatitude and the vices and virtues. But this consideration had a very specific culmination, namely the particular states of life within which we can live the vices and virtues.And the highest and most perfect of these states of life was given to be the mixed life of contemplation and action, where by preaching and ministering to the faithful, one shares with others what one has received, thus participating in the communication of the good by following Christ and imitating him.38 The practice of the virtues in via finds its most perfect expression in the imitation of Christ; it is then reasonable to continue the consideration of theology in the tertia pars by considering the exemplar we are seeking to follow, Christ Incarnate. We have, then, a threefold progression of elements: God is known in all creatures (vestigiae Dei); God is known in human beings (imago ad imaginem and similitudo); God is known in Christ (Imago and Incarnate). Aquinas’s use of the tradition is, of course, marked by his realism. He abandons the Augustinianism of his predecessors, who saw creatures as mere symbols of God, in favor of the affirmation of the autonomous existence of creatures in relation to God.This leads to a reversal of the order of progression as we see it, for example, in the Itinerarium Mentis of Bonaventure.As Gilles Emery has noted with respect to the Summa contra Gentiles, the doctrine of the image and of resemblance is not, as in the tradition, a point of departure, but rather a point of arrival.39 Rather than proceeding from creatures and, by moving away from them reaching God, Aquinas begins with God and moves toward the various ways in which creatures resemble God: as vestigiae Dei, as imago ad imaginem, as similitudo, and in the Incarnation of the Imago, Jesus the Christ. Since our knowing, as embodied creatures, is bound to experience, our consideration of God is enriched by this consideration of creatures.We know God most concretely and fully—and are therefore most in God’s image— when we have traveled the whole path of the Summa.This is the import of the prologue to question 2 of the Ia pars, where the consideration of 37 ST, III, q. 1, a. 1. 38 See, for example, II–II, q. 187, a. 3, ad l; II–II, q. 188, a. 7. 39 Emery, “Le Traité,” 22. The Spiritual Pedagogy of the Summa theologiae 113 creatures is understood as the consideration of God as first principle of things and as final end especially of rational creatures. We have, then, a narrative structure whose climax is the consideration of Christ whom we seek to imitate and who is our most perfect way into God. But in order to know Christ (and therefore have our most intimate encounter with God), we must first have knowledge of how human beings reach God in general (and therefore encounter God as final end). And in order to properly know God as final end, we must first know him as first principle through a consideration of the production of creatures. Finally, in order to know him as first principle, we must have some knowledge of him in himself.40 We participate most in divine wisdom when we have traveled the entire path of the Summa, such that we know God in se, then as first principle, then as final end, then in Christ.Thus, the consideration of Christ is seen to be the climax of a narrative of progress into God whereby the student of theology is transformed by divine wisdom and is thus enabled to preach and hear confessions as one of the wise who participate in sacra doctrina. Conclusion: Reading the Summa as a Spiritual Pedagogy Aquinas’s decision to abandon the teaching of the Sentences in the context of the experimental studium at Santa Sabina, along with the related decision to begin reorganizing the material of theology in a Summa theologiae, points to a clear commitment to pedagogy.This is confirmed by the overall prologue of the Summa itself, which states clearly that the purpose of the work is to “unrude beginners,” to bring them into the horizon of Catholic culture and learning. Reading the Summa means being actively engaged by the manuductio of sacra doctrina, participating actively in the pedagogical process by which God leads us to salvation. A study of the practice of sacra doctrina in the text of the Summa has confirmed this notion and has deepened our understanding of the 40 Henk Schoot has noted this same narrative structure, and has shown its relation to the Word quite clearly: “. . . all human naming of divinity is tied to the Word Incarnate in that both consist of a union between God and humanity. These unions are ordered hierarchically. In fact, these unions that are analyzed as mixed relations are capable of providing us with an elucidating overall structure of Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. Aquinas adduces the model of a mixed relation in discussing the names of God, in discussing the Trinitarian missions, in discussing creation, in discussing grace, in discussing the hypostatic union and in discussing the sacrament of the Eucharist.” Schoot unfortunately focuses only on the activity of naming God, which is, for our own purposes, a mechanism within the pedagogy. See Henk J. M. Schoot, Christ the “Name” of God: Thomas Aquinas on Naming Christ (Leuven:Thomas Instituut; Peeters, 1993), 197. 114 Gilles Mongeau, SJ pedagogical dimension of the text. Sacra doctrina is the human participation—in all its facets of preaching, teaching, forming others through the sacraments and pastoral care—in God’s revealing activity, which revealing activity is ordered to our salvation.Without God’s doctrina, we could not learn the end to which we are ordered; without knowledge of that end, we could not achieve it. This sacra doctrina is anchored in the person of the Word, God’s Wisdom Incarnate. The Word is not merely the content of sacra doctrina but also its structuring principle. There is a need, in light of this, to understand better the dynamic nature of the structure, and to capture the way in which the structure “works” on the student, that is, the way in which the structure promotes a process of learning and transformation. In order to bring out this pedagogical dimension of the text, such that we can overcome our modern tendency to think of a work of theology as a content divorced from its form or purpose, we have explained some of the rhetorical devices that were available to masters of theology in the thirteenth century and which are at work in the Summa. The pedagogy is embodied in this rhetorical dimension of the text, by which the content is structured into a dynamic series of “spiritual exercises.”This approach to reading the text was used for a “test case,” the doctrine of God in the prima pars.The “test reading” showed the rich possibilities of bringing to light the pedagogy of the text for the understanding of Aquinas’s theology. Finally, a preliminary reading of the various major prologues of the Summa has shown the links between its pedagogy and the common narrative of personal spiritual development which Aquinas shared with his contemporaries. It has also shown Aquinas’s freedom in restructuring that narrative according to his own theological and spiritual commitments. One of these key commitments is to the humanity of Christ, which leads Aquinas to place Christology at the climax of the spiritual pedagogy. N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004): 115–28 115 The Trinity and the Unity of the Church* C HARLES M OREROD, OP The Angelicum Rome, Italy T HE UNITY of the Church is commonly placed in the communion related to the Trinity.There is a clear example of this in the Second Vatican Council:“This is the sacred mystery of the unity of the Church, in Christ and through Christ, with the Holy Spirit energizing its various functions. The highest exemplar and source of this mystery is the unity, in the Trinity of Persons, of one God, the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.”1 Pope John Paul II continues the theme in the same context: “This is the hope of Christian unity, which has its divine source in the Trinitarian unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”2 He likewise has recourse to it when treating of love, and in particular of conjugal love: “God is love and in Himself He lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in His own image and continually keeping it in being. God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capability and responsibility, of love and communion. Love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being.”3 How should we understand these texts? The comparison between the unity of the Trinity and the unity of the Church may be approached from both ends of the comparison. If we approach it from the Church’s end, we run the risk (although this is not the aim of texts such as we have just quoted) of promoting an unconscious tritheism; having in mind the * Translation by Robert E.Williams, SSI, of “Trinité et unité de l’Eglise,” Nova et Vetera 78 (2002): 5–17. 1 The Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio, no. 2. 2 John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, May 25, 1995, no. 8. 3 John Paul II,Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, November 22, 1981, no. 11. 116 Charles Morerod, OP unity of different human persons, we imagine the divine life as a dialogue between three individuals separated from each other like human individuals, yet constituting an ideal unity among themselves. St. Augustine was already well aware of the danger: “They do not seem to me to advance a probable opinion who lay it down that a trinity of the image of God in three Persons, so far as regards human nature, can so be discovered as to be completed in the marriage of male and female and in their offspring. . . . ”4 He explains the reason for a possible error:“Let him accustom himself so to find in corporeal things the traces of things spiritual, that when he begins to ascend upward from thence, under the guidance of reason, in order to attain to the unchangeable truth itself through which these things were made, he may not draw with himself to things above what he despises in things below.”5 Given the risk involved in the approach that speaks of God starting with this world, we should like to see how the unity of the Church may be broached starting with the Trinity. This approach does not exclude the one that proceeds from the Church to the Trinity, but it aims at avoiding a false understanding. We shall do so with the help of St.Thomas Aquinas.The following is the text that sums up the question and inspires our whole study, and which we will try to explain throughout the article:“With the same love, which is the Holy Spirit, the Father loves both the Son and the Holy Spirit and all creatures; just as with the same word, which is the Son, He speaks Himself and both the Son and Holy Spirit and all creatures.”6 Man Is in the Image of God; Not God in the Image of Man As a matter of fact, starting with God in order to understand the Church is the surest approach. However, it does not immediately match our way of knowing, for the first thing we know is created reality; indeed, created sensible reality comes first. Hence, we risk stopping at the first stage and constructing a God in our image, in accord with the expression attributed to Voltaire and developed by Feuerbach, which suggests that He might be the mirror of our desires. 4 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, Book XII, Chap.V, Par. 5, translated in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 156. 5 De Trinitate. Book XII, Chap.V, Par. 5, 157;Also see De Trinitate, Book XII, Chap. VII, Par. 9, 158: “We ought not therefore so to understand that man is made in the image of the supreme Trinity, that is, in the image of God, as that the same image should be understood to be in three human beings.” 6 “[E]odem amore, qui est spiritus sanctus, pater diligit et filium et spiritum sanctum, et totam creaturam; sicut eodem verbo, quod est filius, dicit se et filium et spiritum sanctum, et totam creaturam” (De Potentia, q. 9, ad 13). The Trinity and the Unity of the Church 117 Such a risk is not inevitable.To explain the gist of our approach, which will start with God to arrive at man, certain clarifications are in order. Human language about God may be metaphorical (improperly analogical) or analogical (properly analogical). Metaphor speaks of God in the likeness of a created reality.“The Lord is my rock and my stronghold” (2 Sam 22:2) does not mean that God is a boulder, but that man can find in Him a security like that which he gets from a rock or in a stronghold.Therefore, in a metaphor we apply to God a name that primarily befits a creature:“Thus, all names applied metaphorically to God are applied to creatures primarily rather than to God, because when said of God they mean only similitudes to such creatures. For as smiling applied to a field means only that the field in the beauty of its flowering is like to the beauty of the human smile by proportionate likeness, so the name of lion applied to God means only that God manifests strength in His works, as a lion does in his.Thus it is clear that applied to God the signification of names can be defined only from what is said of creatures.”7 However, not every human expression used about God is metaphorical.When we say that God is, or that He is one, or that He is true, these terms are used according to a proper analogy, which tells us that the same perfection is realized under two different modes: “Our knowledge of God is derived from the perfections which flow from Him to creatures, which perfections are in God in a more eminent way than in creatures. Now our intellect apprehends them as they are in creatures, and as it apprehends them it signifies them by names. Therefore as to the names applied to God, there are two things to be considered—viz., the perfections which they signify, such as goodness, life, and the like, and their mode of signification. As regards what is signified by these names, they belong properly to God, and more properly than they belong to creatures, and are applied primarily to Him. But as regards their mode of signification, they do not properly and strictly apply to God; for their mode of signification applies to creatures.”8 In this case—that of proper analogy—we do not say that God’s existence resembles that of creatures, or that His truth is like the world’s truth.We would then have a god really and truly in our image.We apply these terms to God not metaphorically but analogically. The perfection indicated does not belong to us—creatures—first of all, then to God, but 7 ST, I, q. 13, a. 6. (All English translations of the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas are taken from the translation done by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, published by Benziger Brothers, Inc., NY, 1947.) 8 ST, I, q. 13, a. 3. 118 Charles Morerod, OP to God first of all, then to us:“But [as] to other names not applied to God in a metaphorical sense . . . [they] are applied to God not as the cause only, but also essentially. For the words, God is good, or wise, signify not only that he is the cause of wisdom or goodness, but that these exist in Him in a more excellent way. Hence as regards what the name signifies, these names are applied primarily to God rather than to creatures, because these perfections flow from God to creatures.”9 God is good in Himself, and His work—creation—is good as a consequence of God’s initial goodness. If the source of these terms is not the creature but God, the first stage of our own knowing is at the level of the creature:“But as regards the imposition of the names, they are primarily applied by us to creatures which we know first.”10 Nevertheless, the order of our knowing is not the order of reality itself. Is “Communion” an Analogical or Metaphorical Term? Distinctions in vocabulary are crucial since they keep our necessarily human language from reducing God to our dimension. Analogy allows us to speak of God without falling into anthropomorphism. If we speak of the Trinity as communion, is our language metaphorical or analogical? We believe that we are speaking of communion in a properly analogical sense, that is, that God is truly a communion of Persons and that the communion He brings about among men, and first of all between Himself and men, is a communion in the image of the Trinitarian communion, and not the reverse.The term “communion,” like the terms “father” or “son” for example, could not be applied to God without the revelation of the Trinity. But given the fact of revelation, we may speak of communion as a reality first of all divine, then human—in the image of God. It would be a mistake to understand the relationship between communion–Trinity and communion–Church by starting with the Church.We would first of all expose ourselves to a misunderstanding in regard to God: anthropomorphism and tritheism. For in the case of human persons, the unity of love takes place between persons of the same nature but who are different substances. This is not the case with God where the Persons subsist in a unique substance; failure to see this would result in tritheism. We would also expose ourselves to a misunderstanding as regards the Church herself by taking a human reality as our starting point, which could lead to bringing the Church down, in theory or practice, to the human level. St.Thomas unites these two aspects in a text 9 ST, I, q. 13, a. 6. 10 Ibid. The Trinity and the Unity of the Church 119 that shows the difference between divine unity and the unity of human persons, on the one hand, and the participated nature of charity in men, on the other: “Now there is a twofold unity in the divinity: to wit, [the unity] of nature, ‘The Father and I are one’ ( Jn 10:30), and the unity of love in the Father and the Son, which is the unity of the Spirit.And both of these are in us, not indeed in the self-same way but through a certain resemblance; for the Father and the Son are numerically of the same nature, while we are one in nature according to species. Likewise, they are one through a love that does not participate in someone else’s gift, but which proceeds from themselves; for the Father and the Son love each other through the Holy Spirit, but we love one another with a love that participates in a higher love.”11 God’s Knowledge of Creatures Unlike human knowledge, God’s knowledge is simple.What man has to learn by a series of successive acts that wind up with an imperfect knowledge, God knows in one perfect act, which is Himself. Since He is the cause of other beings, God knows them in Himself: “So we say that God sees Himself in Himself, because He sees Himself through His essence; and He sees other things not in themselves, but in Himself.”12 And this knowledge has no need to go from one term to the following term, but “as God sees His effects in Himself as in their cause, His knowledge is not discursive.”13 This knowledge is all at once since God is eternal, outside time. How does God know Himself? First of all, we cannot deny that God knows Himself without making Him less perfect than ourselves, which would be absurd. Revelation teaches us that the Father has a Word, a Logos (cf. Jn 1). St. Thomas, interpreting this revealed given, which remains always mysterious but on which we can shed some light, says that the Father knows Himself in His Word, and that this simple knowledge also includes creatures:“But because God by one act understands Himself 11 “Est autem duplex unitas in divinis: scilicet naturae, supra X, 30: ego et pater unum sumus, et unitas amoris in patre et filio, quae est unitas spiritus. Et utraque est in nobis, non quidem per aequiparationem, sed per similitudinem quamdam: pater enim et filius sunt eiusdem naturae numero, nos autem sumus unum in natura secundum speciem. Item ipsi sunt unum per amorem non participatum ex dono alicuius, sed ab eis procedentem: nam pater et filius diligunt se spiritu sancto; nos autem per amorem participatum ex aliquo superiori” (Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, Chap. 10, Marietti Ed., no. 2214). 12 ST, I, q. 14, a. 5. 13 ST, I, q. 14, a. 7. 120 Charles Morerod, OP and all things, His one only Word is expressive not only of the Father, but of all creatures.”14 In a bit more developed format: “It is thus necessary, therefore, that the whole of whatever is contained in the Father’s knowledge is expressed through His one Word. . . . Now through His knowledge, the Father knows Himself, and by knowing Himself He knows all other things, whence also His Word expresses the Father Himself principally and as a consequence all the other things that the Father knows in knowing Himself. And thus the Son expresses every creature by the very fact that He is the Word that perfectly expresses the Father.”15 The Father, seeing His Word who has the perfection of a Person, loves Him and in turn is loved by Him. Since this love is simple, it also encompasses God’s love for His creatures: “The Father loves not only the Son, but also Himself and us, by the Holy Ghost.”16 Thus creatures are known and loved “in” the Trinity: “With the same love, which is the Holy Spirit, the Father loves both the Son and the Holy Spirit and all creation; just as with the same word, which is the Son, He speaks Himself and both the Son and the Holy Spirit and all creation.”17 Creation is certainly not necessary. Creatures are not known and loved eternally in the same way that God knows and loves Himself. But if God freely decides to create and, in addition, to include beings in His image among His creatures, this does not, in God, happen in time. Everything in God is eternal, that is, outside time. Hence, everything that He knows and loves will be known and loved outside time, eternally, in His very essence, which is unique and common to the three Persons. God knows us in His essence; He knows us therefore in His Word, His Son who is the divine essence since there is only one God. God loves us in His essence in which He knows (in order to love it is necessary to know); He loves us therefore in His Spirit who is His essence since there is only one God. On the level of God’s knowledge and love the unity is perfect since it is the very oneness of the divine essence, the unity of relations because the Father communicates Himself to the Son without any change, the 14 ST, I, q. 34, a. 3. 15 “Sic igitur oportet quod quidquid in scientia patris continetur, totum hoc per unum ipsius verbum exprimatur . . . . Per scientiam autem suam pater scit se, et cognoscendo se omnia alia cognoscit, unde et verbum ipsius exprimit ipsum patrem principaliter, et consequenter omnia alia quae cognoscit pater cognoscendo seipsum. Et sic filius ex hoc ipso quod est verbum perfecte exprimens patrem, exprimit omnem creaturam” (De veritate, q. 4, a. 4). 16 ST, I, q. 37, a. 2, ad 3. 17 De Potentia, q. 9, a. 9, ad 13.We have already quoted the Latin text in our introduction. The Trinity and the Unity of the Church 121 unity of origin because, while proceeding, the Persons remain in each other (perichoresis). We should point out that for St. Thomas Trinitarian unity exists on the three planes of essence, relation, and origin,18 otherwise we leave ourselves open to the charge that Thomas’s Trinitarian theology is essentialist and not personalist. It is such suspicions that have led certain people to reject Thomism and fashion what is in their eyes a more personalist conception of the trinity and of man.19 Man’s Knowledge of God in the Beatific Vision In our present state, it is only by a certain participation in the divine knowledge that comes to us from revelation received in faith that we know creatures in God.20 Yet we are talking about a state that is only temporary and imperfect. Full knowledge is not the knowledge of faith, which, although true and certain, is not thereby perfectly clear. True knowledge, by divine gift, is that of the Beatific Vision. Can we see God? In Himself, says St.Thomas, God is supremely knowable; only His brightness is too great to allow us to see Him, although we 18 Cf. ST, I, q. 42, a. 5:“There are three points of consideration as regards the Father and the Son; the essence, the relation, and the origin; and according to each the Son and the Father are in each other. The Father is in the Son by His essence, forasmuch as the father is His own essence, and communicates his essence to the Son not by any change on His part. Hence it follows that as the Father’s essence is in the Son, the father Himself is in the Son; likewise, since the Son is His own essence, it follows that He Himself is in the Father in Whom is His essence.This is expressed by Hilary (De Trin.V),The unchangeable God, so to speak, follows His own nature in begetting an unchangeable subsisting God. So we understand the nature of God to subsist in Him, for He is God in God. It is also manifest that as regards the relations, each of two relative opposites is in the concept of the other. Regarding origin also, it is clear that the procession of the intelligible word is not outside the intellect, inasmuch as it remains in the utterer of the word.What also is uttered by the word is therein contained. And the same applies to the Holy Ghost.” 19 Since we are more interested in showing the relationship between the Trinity and the Church than we are in developing Trinitarian theology, we content ourselves with a referral to the original study that revived the question: Gilles Emery, OP, “Essentialism or Personalism in the Treatise on God in Saint Thomas Aquinas?” The Thomist 64 (2000): 521–63. Also published in Gilles Emery, OP, Trinity in Aquinas. (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003), 165–208.We take the opportunity of this reference to thank Fr. Emery for advice that proved helpful for this article. 20 Cf. ST, I, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2:“Objects which are the subject matter of different philosophical sciences can yet be treated of by this one single sacred science under one aspect precisely so far as they can be included in revelation. So that in this way sacred doctrine bears, as it were, the stamp of the divine science, which is one and simple, yet extends to everything.” 122 Charles Morerod, OP desire Him as the end of our nature.21 In order to be able to see God and bring to full completion what we are—images of God—we need His help:“It belongs to man’s mode and dignity that he be uplifted to divine things, from the very fact that he is made to God’s image. And since a divine good infinitely surpasses the faculty of man in order to attain that good, he needs the divine assistance which is bestowed on him in every gift of grace.”22 How can we see a thing? In our normal way of knowing we need a sensitive faculty, in this case sight. Then, from the action of the sense of sight, our intellect forms an immaterial representation of the object within itself: “Two things are required both for sensible and for intellectual vision—viz., power of sight, and union of the thing seen with the sight. For vision is made actual only when the thing seen is in a certain way in the seer. Now in corporeal things it is clear that the thing seen cannot be by its essence in the seer, but only by its likeness; as the similitude of a stone is in the eye, whereby the vision is made actual; whereas the substance of the stone is not there.”23 It does not happen exactly the same way in the case of God. We can produce no concept of Him, for He is beyond our natural capacity to know:“Therefore, in order to see God, there must be some similitude of God on the part of the visual faculty, whereby the intellect is made capable of seeing God. But on the part of the object seen, which must necessarily be united to the seer, the essence of God cannot be seen by any 21 Cf. ST, I, q. 12, a. 1: Since everything is knowable according as it is actual, God, Who is pure act without any admixture of potentiality, is in Himself supremely knowable. But what is supremely knowable in itself, may not be knowable to a particular intellect, on account of the excess of the intelligible object above the intellect; as, for example, the sun, which is supremely visible, cannot be seen by the bat by reason of its excess of light.Therefore some who considered this, held that no created intellect can see the essence of God.This opinion, however, is not tenable. For as the ultimate beatitude of man consists in the use of his highest function, which is the operation of the intellect; if we suppose that the created intellect could never see God, it would either never attain to beatitude, or its beatitude would consist in something else beside God; which is opposed to faith. For the ultimate perfection of the rational creature is to be found in that which is the principle of its being; since a thing is perfect so far as it attains to its principle. Further the same opinion is also against reason. For there resides in every man a natural desire to know the cause of any effect which he sees; and thence arises wonder in men. But if the intellect of the rational creature could not reach so far as to the first cause of things, the natural desire would remain void. Hence it must be absolutely granted that the blessed see the essence of God.” 22 ST, II–II, q. 175, a. 1, ad 2. 23 ST, I, q. 12, a. 2. The Trinity and the Unity of the Church 123 created similitude.”24 Moreover, if we only saw a likeness of God, we would not really see God (contrary to the promise of Scripture):“Hence to say that God is seen by some similitude, is to say that the divine essence is not seen at all; which is false.”25 Our knowledge does not only require a certain union with the thing known, as we have just said, but also a faculty of knowing, such as sight.As regards this point, God gives us a light that Thomas calls the light of glory, which raises us above ourselves: “Therefore it must be said that to see the essence of God there is required some similitude in the visual faculty, namely the light of glory strengthening the intellect to see God, which is spoken of in the Psalm (36:10),‘In Thy light we shall see light.’ ”26 The only way truly to see God, and not simply a likeness that would not be God, is for the human spirit to be raised above itself and united to the very essence of God: “But when any created intellect sees the essence of God, the essence of God itself becomes the intelligible form of the intellect. Hence it is necessary that some supernatural disposition should be added to the intellect in order that it may be raised up to such a great and sublime height. Now since the natural power of the created intellect does not avail to enable it to see the essence of God, as was shown in the preceding article, it is necessary that the power of understanding should be aided by divine grace. Now this increase of the intellectual powers is called the illumination of the intellect, as we also call the intelligible object itself by the name light of illumination. And this is the light spoken of in the Apocalypse (21:23). ‘The glory of God hath enlightened it’—viz., the society of the blessed who see God. By this light the blessed are made deiform—that is, like to God, according to the saying: ‘When He shall appear we shall be like to Him, and we shall see Him as He is’ (1 Jn 2:2).”27 Any solution less than this would in fact deny that we see God, either by denying the union of our intellect with what is known, or by saying that what is known is not really God. What we have just presented here as a theological position, Pope Benedict XII defined in 1336: “By this Constitution which is to remain in force forever, we, with apostolic authority, define the following: according to the general disposition of God, the souls of all the saints who departed from this world before the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and also of the holy apostles, martyrs, confessors.Virgins, and other faithful who died after 24 ST, I, q. 12, a. 2. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 ST, I, q. 12, a. 5. Charles Morerod, OP 124 receiving the holy baptism of Christ—provided they were not in need of any purification when they died, or will not be in need of any when they die in the future, or else, if they then needed or will need some purification, after they have been purified after death . . . since the passion and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, these souls have seen and see the divine essence with an intuitive vision and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature by way of object of vision; rather the divine essence immediately manifests itself to them, plainly, clearly and openly.”28 Man’s Knowledge of Creatures in the Beatific Vision The blessed, in the vision that makes them so, see God. Do they also see creatures or do they only see God? Often when someone dies we hear the question, “Will I meet my husband again in heaven?” Simply to answer that in heaven we see God would seem to many—strangely—insufficient. That is because we underestimate the knowledge of beings that we have in God, which is by far the best knowledge that we could have. In God we see perfectly every perfection.And just as He knows within Himself all things in His essence, so too the blessed see all things in the divine essence: “Those who see the divine essence see what they see in God not by any likeness, but by the divine essence itself united to their intellect. . . . Hence, according to the knowledge whereby things are known by those who see the essence of God, they are seen in God Himself not by any other similitudes but by the divine essence alone present to the intellect; by which God Himself is seen.”29 Men’s knowledge of creatures in this Vision is the most perfect. By reason of what we said above, it is the same with love of creatures. God knows everything in His Word and loves everything through His Spirit. Likewise, the blessed know everything in the Word and through the Holy Spirit love everything that is (to the extent that it is, hence to the extent that it is loveable). When the Church is fully completed, that is, when the blessed are indefectibly united to God in Heaven, we see what communion really is. It is communion with the Trinitarian life where the Father sees in the Word and loves in the Spirit, and in contemplating the Trinity it shares in Its beatitude: “In that celestial vision it will be granted to the eyes of the human mind, strengthened by the light of glory, to contemplate the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in an utterly ineffable manner, to assist throughout eternity at the processions of the Divine Persons, and to 28 Benedict XII, Constitution Benedictus Deus, January 1336, Denz. no. 1000, The Christian Faith no. 2305. 29 ST, I, q. 12, a. 9. The Trinity and the Unity of the Church 125 rejoice with a happiness like to that with which the holy and undivided Trinity is happy.”30 The Eternal Trinitarian Processions and the Missions in this World When Latin theology explains the Church’s faith in the Filioque, that is, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son, it presupposes a continuity between the eternal Processions in the Trinity and the missions of the Divine Persons in this world, or more precisely, an identity since the mission is the eternal Procession of the Divine Person, which does not change but which has a relation of reason with the creature.31 The Son (by His Incarnation), then the Spirit (notably at Pentecost) are sent into this world. When Jesus says that He will send the Spirit,32 the Latin theologians see it as a probable fact that He who is sent by the Incarnate Son also proceeds from Him eternally (without this amounting to a denial that the Spirit proceeds from the Father since He proceeds from the Father and the Son as from a single terminus a quo).33 We can see a certain coherence in the fact that the order of missions in the world corresponds to the timeless processions in the Trinity. We shall not linger on this question, which was only touched on in order to raise another: What does the Father see when he sees the blessed? Yet it is worthwhile to ponder the connection that both sides in the debates on the Filioque have perceived as linked to ecclesiology.34 The Father Sees the Church in the Son and Loves Her in the Spirit For St.Thomas, the blessed are the Church in her finished constitution. The Church is the community of those who receive Salvation. She is the community of those of whom Christ is the Head, which includes 30 Pius XII, Mystici Corporis (29 June, 1943), Denz. no. 3815. 31 Cf. ST, I, q. 43, aa. 1–3. 32 Cf. John 16:7; 20:22. 33 Cf. ST, I, q. 36, a. 4, ad 1. 34 As for St.Thomas, cf. Contra Errores Graecorum, Part II, Prologue:“For when they say that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, they lessen His dignity whereby He, together with the Father, is the Breather of the Holy Spirit. Just so, when they deny that there is one head of the Church, namely the Holy Roman Church, they clearly dissolve the unity of the Mystical Body.” (“Dum enim dicunt spiritum sanctum a filio non procedere, eius dignitatem minuunt, qua simul cum patre est spiritus sancti spirator. Dum vero unum caput ecclesiae esse negant, sanctam scilicet Romanam ecclesiam, manifeste unitatem corporis mystici dissolvunt.”) 126 Charles Morerod, OP provisional members in this world and finally only the blessed:“Christ is the Head of all men, but diversely. For first and principally, He is the Head of such as are united to Him by glory; secondly, of those who are actually united to Him by charity; thirdly, of those who are actually united to Him by faith; fourthly, of those who are united to Him merely in potentiality, which is not yet reduced to act, yet will be reduced to act according to divine predestination; fifthly, of those who are united to Him in potentiality, which will never be reduced to act; such are the men existing in the world, who are not predestined, who, however, on their departure from this world, wholly cease to be members of Christ, as being no longer in potentiality to be united to Christ.”35 Therefore, when the Father sees this definitive community, this Church wholly completed, what does He see? He sees the Body of Christ, completely ruled by its Head and united to Him.Thus we can say that when the Father sees the completed Church, He sees the Word made flesh with His Body, the whole Christ. Now this Body is united “through the operation of the Holy Ghost, who unites the Church together, and communicates the goods of one member to another.”36 When we say that the communion of the Church is a communion of charity, we are saying that the Church is united by the very love that unites the Father and the Son: “Therefore charity can be in us neither naturally, nor through acquisition by the natural powers, but by the infusion of the Holy Ghost,Who is the love of the Father and the Son, and the participation of Whom in us is created charity.”37 How can we not see continuity between the life of the Trinity and God’s action in the Church? The Father knows Himself in the Word. He knows the blessed in the Body of this same Word, Incarnate. The Father and the Son love each other and love all things through the Spirit. The human (and angelic) members of the Church love God and love one another through this same Spirit. It is at this level that we perceive that the Church’s communion is the Trinitarian communion. Conclusion There are many ways by which we can understand the communion of the Church, but the deepest understanding is rooted in God from whom the Church comes and to whom she returns. And this Church has no other end but to reflect, to make radiant the glory of God. 35 ST, III, q. 8, a. 3. 36 ST, III, q. 68, a. 9, ad 2. 37 ST, II–II, q. 24, a. 2. The Trinity and the Unity of the Church 127 We can “understand” the communion of the Church starting with the Trinitarian communion, or the Trinitarian communion starting with the Church’s communion. The two approaches are complementary, but the most fundamental consists in approaching the Church by starting with God.This fits the order of priorities in theological knowledge, and avoids making for ourselves an anthropomorphic representation of God, a God in the image of man, or falling into formulations with a tritheist tendency that make the Christian faith ridiculous in the eyes of attentive non-Christians. The Father knows Himself and knows all things in the Word. The Father and the Son love each other and all things in the Spirit. In the Beatific Vision, where the Church is realized in her full and definitive state, the blessed see and love God and all things in the divine essence— simple and Trinitarian. In salvation history, God knows the elect in the Body of His Son, unites them to Himself and among themselves through His Spirit.Thus the divine action in the world corresponds to the order of the Trinitarian life. The whole life of the Church, and therefore fundamentally the whole destiny of creation, flows from and corresponds to the Trinitarian life. How could it be otherwise? Let us end with one of the biblical texts most commonly quoted concerning the unity of the Church. It shows that the unity of the Church flows from the unity of the Trinity: We may know the Church first but she does nothing other than manifest the unity of the Son who is sent and of the Father who sends (we may add the Spirit’s mission, which is not mentioned in this text). The sending of the Son thus precedes the unity of the Church—even if this is not the order in which we know: “The glory which thou gavest me I have given to them, that they may be one, as we are one; I in them and thou in me, may they be perfectly one. Then the world will learn that thou didst send me, that N&V thou didst love them as thou didst me.”38 38 John 17:22–3. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004): 129–46 129 Work: The Corruption or Perfection of the Human Being? R ICHARD S CHENK , OP Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology Berkeley, California It is precisely the glorification of work which troubles me. —Paul Ricoeur The Question T HE QUESTION MARK placed behind the topic discussed here, Work:The Corruption or Perfection of the Human Being?, raises the possibility of alternatives to viewing labor as either the ultimate corruption or the ultimate perfection of the human being. Is labor too mundane and secular an activity to be either?1 Or can it at different times be both, depending on the varying conditions of human justice and divine grace? Have 1 The following essay presents the slightly revised version of the original text previously published only in Spanish translation: “¿El trabajo es la corrupción o la perfección del ser humano?,” in Juan Jesús Borobia, Miguel Lluch, José Ignacio Murillo, and Eduardo Terrasa, eds., Idea cristiana del hombre (Pamplona: EUNSA, 2002), 267–83. Cf. John R. Meyer, “Striving for Personal Sanctity through Work,” The Thomist 61 (1997): 85–106, for his equally critical references to two opposing extremes.The article refers on the one hand, e.g., p. 86, n. 4, to the denial of the self-transcendence of the worker by M.Volf, Work in the Spirit. Toward a Theology of Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), especially pp. 195–201. On the other hand, in note 5 on the same page, Meyer points out the excessive sacralization of work in E. S. Dale, Bringing Heaven down to Earth:A Practical Spirituality of Work (New York: Peter Lang, 1991). For Thomistically inspired literature between 1924 and 1971 on the theme of work cf. Meyer, 85, n. 3, with references to J. de Finance, H. Rondet, P. Delhaye, J. Janssen, B. Montagnes, G. Todoli, E. D. Almeida, and K.V. Truhlar; cf. Sylvester Michael Killeen, The Philosophy of Labor According to Saint Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1939). 130 Richard Schenk, OP romantic expectations of the perfective potential of our work (Marxist, National Socialist, or capitalist), has the “pathos” of the authenticity of our works (existentialist), led to an exaggerated disappointment in the reality of work?2 Were utopian exaggerations of work’s perfective potential always better suited to underline a dissatisfaction with that corruptive reality of work which many, if not most, workers experience, at least now and again, as their own? Does a utopian view of work foster or undermine a sense of work’s dignity?3 Does the ecologically cautious “principle of responsibility” (H. Jonas)4 need to wait to express itself until the technologically adventurous “principle of hope” (E. Bloch)5 renders it all too obvious? Is leisure ( J. Pieper)6 or is work (Y. Simon)7 the “basis of culture”; or does culture proceed from both work and its interruption?8 Is the divine paradigm of the human artisan the creator working on six days or the creator resting on the seventh?9 Do we need to accept that striking consensus between the harshest critics (including C. Boff)10 and 2 Cf.—despite its polemical excess—Theodor W. Adorno, Jargon der Eigentlichkeit. Zur deutschen Ideologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1964/1980). 3 Cf. Robert Spaemann, Zur Kritik der politischen Utopie (Stuttgart: Klett, 1977); and R. Schenk, “The Ethics of Robert Spaemann in the Context of Recent Philosophy,” in Brian J. Shanley, ed., One Hundred Years of Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 156–68. 4 Cf. Robert Spaemann, “Laudatio,” Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 1987. Hans Jonas (Frankfurt a. M.: Boersenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, 1987). 5 Though with more direct reference to political praxis than to technological poiesis cf. Richard Schaeffler, Was duerfen wir hoffen? Die katholische Theologie der Hoffnung zwischen Blochs utopischem Denken und der reformatorischen Rechtfertigungslehre (Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1979). 6 Cf. Josef Pieper, Musse und Kult (Munich: Koesel, 1948; seventh edition, Munich: Koesel, 1965), translated into English as Leisure:The Basis of Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1963). 7 Cf. Yves Simon, Work, Society, and Culture (ed. Vukan Kuic, New York: Fordham University Press, 1971; against J. Pieper, cf. 185 ff.); idem, Trois leçons sur le travail (Paris: Pierre Téqui, 1938; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 1990). 8 John A. Gueguen,“Parallels on Work,Theory, and Practice in Yves R. Simon and John Paul II,” in Michael D.Torre, ed., Freedom in the Modern World: Jacques Maritain,Yves R. Simon, Mortimer J.Adler (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 1990), 153–61; for Simon’s arguments against J. Pieper, cf. 159. 9 On Robert Spaemann’s arguments for continuing to cultivate Sunday as a day of rest cf. Christian Nuernberger, Die Machtwirtschaft. Ist die Marktwirtschaft noch zu retten? (Munich: Dt.Taschenbuch Verlag, 1999), 208–10; cf. Juergen Moltmann’s arguments for viewing the sabbath as the crown of creation, Gott der Schoepfung. Oekologische Schoepfungslehre (third edition, Munich: Kaiser, 1987), e.g., p. 45. 10 Cf. Clodovis M. Boff, OSM, “La Iglesia militante de Juan Pablo II y la Capitalismo triunfante. Relectura de la encíclica ‘Centesimus Annus’ desde el Tercer Mundo,” (trans. Ana Guarnerio) Revista Electrónica Latinoamericana de Teologia Work:The Corruption or Perfection of the Human Being? 131 the most enthusiastic reviewers (such as M. Novak)11 of Centesimus Annus that the entrepreneureal creation of laboring possibilities can be encouraged only by forgetting those dangers to the laborer once enunciated by Laborem exercens and by that landmark encyclical of 1891, which the two later encyclicals cited had been written to commemorate?12 Have recent papal concerns about the lack of opportunities for work replaced or merely complemented the papal concerns prior to 1989 about overworking the homo faber and his environment? More widely, does the recovery of a genuinely Christian sense of secular vocation (St. Josemaría Escrivá13 or, less programmatically, Eberhard Jüngel)14 or even of the possible sanctification of work need to contradict the monastic primacy of contemplation over action or to abandon the significance attached to the Augustinian distinction between ultimate and penultimate goods (the (1992); or S. Prakash Sethi and Paul Steidlmeier,“Religion’s Moral Compass and a Just Economic Order: Reflections on Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Centesimus Annus,” in Journal of Business Ethics 12 (1993): 901–17.The author of these present reflections wishes to thank to his confrater, Michael Sherwin, OP, for his help on several aspects of the current discussion, including the character and controversial reception of Centesimus Annus. 11 Cf. Stephen M. Krason, “Centesimus Annus: Maintaining the Continuity of Catholic Social Teaching—a Response to Professor Michael Novak,” Faith & Reason 17 (1991): 371–87. 12 Cf. R. H. Preston,“Centesimus Annus:An Appraisal,” Theology 95 (1992): 405–16; and Stanley Hauerwas, “In praise of Centesimus Annus,” Theology 95 (1992): 416–32; for an excessively harsh critique of the former’s doubts about the merits of communitarianism cf. Michal S. Northcott,“Preston and Hauerwas on Centesimus Annus. Reflections on the Incommensurability of the Liberal and PostLiberal Mind,” Theology 96 (1993): 27–35. For nonlibertarian yet antitotalitarian motivations for seeking as little state as possible (even if as much as necessary) in the regulation of labor, cf. Russell Hittinger, “The Pope and the Liberal State,” in First Things (1992): 33–41; and Ernest L. Fortin, “From Rerum Novarum to Centesimus Annus: Continuity or Discontinuity?” Faith & Reason (1991): 399–412. For the direction of papal teaching prior to John Paul II cf. Edwin G. Kaiser, Theology of Work (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1966); for John Paul II’s sources cf. S.Wyszynski, Work (Chicago: Scepter, 1960). 13 Cf. the many references in John R. Meyer, “Striving for Personal Sancity Through Work,” especially in notes 2, 6, 16, 17, 24, 41, 68, 71, 77, and 87. 14 Eberhard Jüngel,“Gewinn im Himmel und auf Erden.Theologische Bemerkungen zum Streben nach Gewinn,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 94 (1997): 532–52, cited here from E. Jüngel, Indikative der Gnade—Imperative der Freiheit. Theologische Eroerterungen IV (Tuebingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001): 231–51. On Luther and Calvin’s antimonastic re-evaluation of secular professions as divinely inspired vocations, cf. 233–35, and Karl-Heinz zur Muehlen,“Arbeit.VI. Reformation und (lutherische) Orthodoxie,” in Theologische Realenzyklopaedie III (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1978): 635–39, with literature. Richard Schenk, OP 132 frui/uti discretion)? Does the link between the commandments to love God and also neighbor constitute the kind of unity in which the categorical love of neighbor becomes the modus of charity preferred to the otherwise vague, “merely transcendental” love of God?15 Is that conclusion valid which has been drawn by some writers of the post-Vatican II era (arguably, not the more literal readers of K. Rahner): that we should largely replace divine worship with social work? Even in this initial and merely aporetic form, these questions of recent years point toward an ambivalence about work, developing and yet taxing both humans beings and their environment, a blessing and a curse for all, leading to the exaltation and the excoriation of the homo faber.This fundamental ambivalence about human workers and their works is by no means new.The same ambivalence echoed down the centuries from the famous chorus early in Sophocle’s Antigone, which wonders at the uncanny and the all too efficiently violent character of the human being in the midst of a nature far less uncanny and violent. Numberless wonders, terrible wonders, walk the world, but none the match for man. . . . And the oldest of the gods he wears away—the Earth, the immortal, the inexhaustible—as his plows go back and forth, year in, year out, with the breed of stallions turning up the furrows. . . . Man the master, ingenious past all measure; past all dreams: the skills within his grasp. He forges on, now to destruction, now again to greatness.16 A similar tone of wonder at the violent efficiency of the human being at work, “now to destruction, now again to greatness,” sounds for us in the Genesis passages about the dominium terrae, the vocation of the human, stated three times (Gen 1:26, 28; and 9:1 ff.), to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth” (Gen 1: 26).While human work is shown to be “supralapsarian” and not merely the result of sin, it is the “infralapsarian” version of the vocation to the dominium terrae which reveals its most violent potential.The aitiological explanation of the origins of meat-eating expresses the writer’s wonder at the end of supralapsarian peace: 15 Cf. Karl Rahner, “Ueber die Einheit von Naechsten–und Gottesliebe,” in Schriften zur Theologie VI (Einsiedeln: 1965/1968): 277–98, in Geist und Leben 38 (1965): 168–85. 16 Sophocles, The Three Theban Plays, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin, 1984): 76 f., l. 375–76, 382–85, 406–8. Work:The Corruption or Perfection of the Human Being? 133 And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them,“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green plants, now I give you everything. . . . And you, be fruitful and multiply, bring forth abundantly on the earth and multiply in it.” (9:1–3, 7) The mission to dominium terrae will occupy us again shortly. But the authors of Genesis show their fascination by another feature of postlapsarian work, no less uncanny than the dominium terrae, but in a sense contrary to the all too efficient character of the violent dominator: the futility of much else about his work.The account of the creation, mission, and fall of the first parents does not aim at portraying work in itself or even in its infralapsarian condition as something that should not be at all. In his commentary on Genesis, Claus Westermann puts much weight on the juridical character of the punishment imposed on the first parents; unlike the serpent or the fields, they are not cursed but sentenced:17 Something Westermann sees as the final, redactional softening of an intermediate text, which had already expanded the simple expulsion from the garden into discrete curses. To this exemption from curse, an indirect sign of the dignity that God retains for the first parents after the fall (underlined by that right to juridical self-defense accorded them here by God), there corresponds the good retained even in those core human activities now made more laborious.This is true of the burdens placed on the woman as wife and mother (Gen 3:16). “Precisely there, where the woman found the fulfillment of her life, her honor and her joy, in her relation to her husband and as mother of her children, precisely here she finds not unclouded bliss, but pain, burden, submission, and subordination.”18 The texts nevertheless portray these activities as blessings (e.g., as opposed to childlessness). The aitiological character of the text presupposes this: It is being asked here why these most blessed of activities should have anything burdensome about them, something as strange as that an animal should have to slither and crawl rather than walk. The sentence on the man is similar (Gen 3:17 ff.); indeed, Marie-Dominique Chenu draws attention to the common use in French and English for expressions like “to be in 17 Claus Westermann, Genesis (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1974) 348–51: “Only a human being is capable of being punished in the sense of a juridical process (the penal code of the covenant knows of no ‘punishment’ for animals); human beings alone are legal persons here” (351, translation mine). 18 Westermann, 358. 134 Richard Schenk, OP labor” (or “en travail”).19 The text of Genesis 3 presupposes amazement that the activities of work should have anything burdensome about them at all.The curse upon the field is the means to execute on Adam this dual sentence of toil (“In the sweat of your face. . . .”) and partial futility (“Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you. . . .”); but even this curse leaves labor its dignity and reward (“. . . you will eat bread”).What is left is the ambivalent blessing of work after the fall. It can be admitted that, partly due to the fragmented vocabulary for the many scattered activities grouped by us under the generic title of 19 Marie-Dominique Chenu,“Arbeit,” in Heinrich Fries, ed., Handbuch theologischer Grundbegriffe I (Munich: Koesel, 1962), 75–86, here 76; bibliography on page 86. Cf. M.-D. Chenu, Pour une Théologie du Travail (Paris: Seuil, 1955), translated as The Theology of Work: An Exploration (Chicago: Regnery, 1966), which, however, attempts a theological reflection of work, but of work especially in its twentieth century development as progress perfective of the natural order. In this early work, Chenu emphasized the technological and human progress of current times to the point where he failed to trace those experiences of work’s defects for contemporary workers and their world which recent developments had accentuated and which make more urgent and pressing than ever before the hope for a grace upon work and its effects not yet included in work itself. Judged from a later perspective, this early essay with its glorification of recent tendencies in work appears socially abstract (“gesellschaftsabstrakte”) in its sociological analysis and too easily instrumentalized as ideology in its theological interpretation (so Werner Kraemer, “Arbeit/Freizeit,” the first article of Peter Eicher, ed., Neues Handbuch theologischer Grundbegriffe, Vol. 1 (Munich: Koesel, 1984): 11–25, with literature, here 23). Differentiating more finely than in his monograph of 1955, Chenu himself shows a growing sense of the “ambivalence of work” (308) even when reworking the later essay cited above; cf. M.-D. Chenu, revising slightly his article on “Arbeit,” from the Handbuch Theologischer Grundbegriffe for the article on “Arbeit,” in Karl Rahner and Adolf Darlap, eds., Sacramentum Mundi I (Freiburg: Herder, 1967): 306–18 (with literature), e.g., 309:“Die Arbeit, die eine spontan und freudig vollzogene Taetigkeit sein sollte, ist in Wirklichkeit mit Beschwerde und Ueberwindung verbunden und traegt den Charakter der Strafe. Die Natur gehorcht dem Menschen nicht; die Beziehungen, die urspruenglich zu ihr bestanden, sind gebrochen. Die Erde ist nicht mehr jener wundervolle Garten, dessen Pflege Glueck vermittelt. Die spaetere Theologie der Erbsuende greift auf diese Erfahrungen zurueck” (cf. Handbuch Theologischer Grundbegriffe, “Arbeit,” 78); and 110: The incarnation implies not only the elevation and increased value (“Aufwertung”) of work, but also and at the same time its relativization or devaluation (“Abwertung”): “Eine Abwertung ergibt sich jedoch aus der Tatsache, dass das endgueltige Heil sich jenseits der Geschichte vollendet und das Reich Gottes einer anderen Ordnung zugehoert als die schoepferische Ausgestaltung der irdischen Wirklichkeit.”Without stressing the point or tracing its specific consequences for today’s worker or today’s environment, the Chenu of the 1960s no longer seems to exempt the work of our technological age from a share in this relativity. Work:The Corruption or Perfection of the Human Being? 135 work, labor in general is “not an especially important theme” of the Old Testament. The corresponding warning against systematising these scattered references into a “biblical theology of work” is also well taken.20 Nevertheless, the text of Genesis 1–3 was so prominent, that it must be legitimate to look for theological developments of the ambivalent character of work suggested there. Marie-Dominique Chenu was among the first to attempt a genuinely theological reflection on labor, addressing more than the many ethical and political questions involved to include work as the central part of a broader reflection on the Christian idea of the human being. Part of this effort involved drawing attention to the impact of human labor not just on human or social subjectivity, but also on the world into which human beings are placed and which their work affects: Work is thus the perfecting of the one who works. But no less radically, indeed, in the very objective reality of that world which work constructs, labor is also the transformation of things, a perfectio operis. This is an essential duality that theology loses sight of as soon as she begins to focus completely on the perfectio operantis and unconciously neutralize the objective content of work.21 The distinction of human labor in its direct impact on human subjectivity and in its indirect impact on humanity via the impact that labor has on the nonhuman world is well-founded; it was employed as a structural device especially in paragraphs 4–6 of Laborem exercens.The distinction recalls St. Thomas’s analysis of human acts into immanent and transitive acts, itself an appropriation of the Aristotelian division of human acts into praxis on the one hand and poiesis (more often as techne) on the other. The distinction, however, does not imply that the perfection sought intentionally in both areas is ever achieved in either. Attention to this distinction, moreover, does not demand indifference to the distinction of nature from that grace which would be necessary to perfect it. Hope presupposes here the insight into the imperfections of both the worker and his work without salvation from without. In his earlier work, Chenu passes over this dimension of the problem too quickly in order to proceed to an ecumenically polemical question: “Why have modern theologians, acquiesing in the Lutheran distinction between nature and grace, almost entirely given up this view 20 Cf. Horst Dieter Preuss, “Arbeit. I. Altes Testament,” in Theologische Realenzyk- lopaedie III (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978): 613–18, here 613; cf., however, also Paul Lamarche, “Travail. I. Écriture sainte,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité XV (Paris: 1991): 1186–190. 21 M. D. Chenu, “Arbeit,” Handbuch Theologischer Grundbegriffe, 81. Richard Schenk, OP 136 of the world as a natural frame and spiritual sphere of action for man in his work?”22 The following reflections will take up the more ambivalent view of work suggested by Chenu’s later and more nuanced reflections on contemporary labor and ask about the limits and experienced defects of both the perfectio operis and the perfectio operantis. Human Work: Perfecting or Corrupting the World? After asserting that work is the key to the social question, no less in our day than in the nineteenth century, the encyclical Laborem exercens begins its own presentation of “Work and the Human Being” (Section II) with a detailed analysis (in §4) of the dominium terrae passages of Genesis 1, 26–28. While not grappling with the problematizing development of the idea by Genesis 9:2, the encyclical cites the texts of Genesis 1 on dominium terrae no fewer than sixteen times, far more than any other biblical or patristic text.“The expression ‘subdue the earth’ has an immense range,” a tremendous significance.23 If work is the key to the social question, the encyclical seems to say, then dominium terrae is the key to work. That is a surprising fact, given the widespread view, however poorly founded, that precisely this text with its view of the right and call to subdue the earth is somehow the cause of today’s environmental crisis. Sir Frank Fraser-Darling is representative of this common sentiment: In taking on the Judeo-Christian religion, the human beings of the West have not only excluded from community with God and with themselves all the other living beings which do not belong to their species, but they have also developed the comfortable conviction that God has created all other living things for the use and enjoyment of human beings.24 The dominium of Genesis 1 is assumed to be tyrranical, exercised solely for the sake of humanity’s advantage in placing itself in the middle of the world and at the pinnacle of creation as creation’s shining crown.Anachronistically, the environmental effects of today’s technology are projected back onto the state of ancient technology when assessing the historical 22 Chenu, The Theology of Work, 20. 23 LE 4. 24 Frank Fraser-Darling, “Die Verantwortung des Menschen fuer seine Umwelt,” in D. Birnbacher, ed., Oekologie und Ethik (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1983): 9–19, here 12 (translation mine); cf. Lynn Townsend White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962); idem, Medieval Religion and Technology. Collected Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978); idem, Machina ex deo. Essays in the Dynamism of Western Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968). Work:The Corruption or Perfection of the Human Being? 137 intent and influence of the biblical call to dominium terrae. Historical forgetfulness misses the fact and significance that the most extremely exploitative interpretations of these biblical texts occurred at a time when thinkers had already begun to diminish the authority previously attributed to Scripture. Only since the 18th century has the commission for human beings to represent the lordship of God in creation been transformed into a claim to the unrestricted power of control by humans over nature. This occurred at a time when the self-understanding of modern humanity was separating itself from its ties to the biblical God of creation.25 Descartes references the text of Genesis in his call to assume a possessive dominion over nature; Francis Bacon calls for the “enslavement” of nature. For both, nature is passive and plastic to human reconstruction.26 Even many theologians and environmentally conscious philosophers, rightly concerned about the effects of our technological world and fearing the worst about its Judeo-Christian origins,27 have been ready to jettison the view of the human as that crown of creation with the vocation to dominium terrae. Juergen Moltmann, arguably the driving force in the World Council of Churches behind its movement for peace, justice, and the conservation of the environment, traces back what he sees as the anthropocentric misinterpretation of dominium terrae not to the Scriptures themselves but to their traditional reading: The anthropocentric world-view, according to which heaven and earth were created for the sake of human beings and for which the human being is the crown of creation, is said by its proponents to be a biblical tradition. In fact, the view goes against the bible. For biblical, indeed, for both Jewish and Christian traditions, God has created the world for the sake of his own glory, and the crown of creation is not the human being, but the Sabbath.28 25 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropologie in theologischer Perspektive (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983): 75 (translation mine). 26 Cf. Richard Schenk, “Der Mensch—die Dornenkrone der Schoepfung? Umweltzerstoerung aus theologischer Sicht,” in Vittorio Hoesle, et al., eds., Nachhaltigkeit in der Oekologie. Wege in eine zukunftsfaehige Welt (Munich: Beck, 2001): 151–74, especially, 161. 27 Cf. Carl Amery, Das Ende der Vorsehung. Die gnadenlosen Folgen des Christentums (Reinbek: Rowholt, 1972); John B. Cobb, Jr., Is it too late? A Theology of Ecology (Denton,TX: University of North Texas Press, 1999); and Klaus Michael MeyerAbich, Revolution for Nature: From the Environment to the Connatural World (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1993). 28 J. Moltmann, Gott der Schoepfung, 45 (translation mine). 138 Richard Schenk, OP It would go beyond the scope of these reflections to trace the rise, scope, and critique of anthropocentric notions of creation in scholastic theology.29 With his stress on the “homo in medio” served by both angels and nature, Peter Lombard (†1160) was clearly inspired by the dominium terrae texts:“homo tamquam dominus et possessor; qui et omnibus praeferendus erat.”30 A hundred years later, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas (both †1274) will take pains to qualify Peter Lombard’s anthropocentric emphasis. Bonaventure sees God’s glory served not only by human beatitude but by the wider “glorificatio creaturae.” In a reference to Genesis 1, the human “domination” (“dominari”) is meant to lead other creatures toward their own glorification; in this, it is a liberating moment for nonhuman creatures and humans alike that human fulfillment will come more from God than from these creatures. Some of the services offered by creatures include the night sky causing wonder in the human or the venomous snake or spider punishing him for sin: services which rarely diminish the pursuit of their own proper goals. Thomas, too, takes pains to stress the ordering of each creature to its own fulfillment; its goal here is chiefly God and only secondarily human advantage. The nontyrannical sense of power is anticipated already in the description of the angels, who exist here “for the sake of humans” only as the king is said to exist for the sake of the peasants and their peace.31 But it is the fulfillment of the whole differentiated universe, the fulfillment of the many species, explicitly said to go beyond the human species alone, which God names not just good, but “valde bonum” (Gen 1: 31).32 In large degree, Bonaventure and Thomas succeeded in weaving together theocentric, anthropocentric, and cosmocentric motifs. With the success of medieval theology in escaping the anthropocentric narrowness which might have doomed our dominium terrae to contribute more to the destruction than to the glory of the world, the limits of any human contribution in leading creatures to their fulfillment also becomes clear. Despite biotechnological phantasies of late, the human contribution to the valde bonum of the universe seems to consist more in conserving species than in reducing, combining, or altering them. Human involvement in the destruction of this earth is also easier to imagine than any contribution to the creation of a new heaven and a new earth; apocalyptic hope was ever a hope for the world coming vertically down from God. And yet, while the destructive potential of human 29 Cf. the sketch in R. Schenk,“Der Mensch—die Dornenkrone der Schoepfung?” 30 Petrus Lombardus, Sententiae, II, 1, 5 (ed. Grottaferrata, 1971. 31 Thomas Aquinas, In II Sent., 1, 2, 3 ad 3. 32 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, III, ch. 64. Work:The Corruption or Perfection of the Human Being? 139 labor might be more dramatic than its creative potential, a limited contribution to the perfectio operis cannot be denied; indeed, this symbiosis seems to have numbered among the goods aimed at by creation. Its success will be measured by its capacity to continue weaving together theocentric, anthropocentric, and cosmocentric motifs. Human Work: Perfecting or Corrupting Human Beings? At least since Aristotle, the distinction has been drawn, on the one hand, between actions of a praxis remaining within the actor or, as in much of political action, within the actors; and, on the other hand, the kind of productive or transitive action proper to the main paradigms of physical labor and industrial technology. Despite the unquestioned validity of this generic distinction between doing and making, between praxis and poiesis, it should not be forgotten that even productive efforts begin as immanent operations and share in all the features of properly human acts. Whether one works at the ballet or the steel mill, at the courthouse or on the farm, at the university, the loading dock, or the cathedral, whatever our particular blend of otium and negotium might be, our intentional works are actus humani. They are moral acts, good or evil; well or badly, they aim at happiness. As such, they also share the unavoidable and insatiable sense of discontent and restlessness stemming from that lack of complete correspondence between ultimate aim and at best penultimate achievement, which in different ways has been thematized by M. Blondel’s L’Action,33 H. Arendt’s The Human Condition,34 and Theodore Haecker’s Vergil, Vater des Abendlandes.35 This necessary discrimen between ultimate aim and proximate accomplishment holds true for the remote accomplishment mediated by our works, the perfective goal symbolically behind the proximate goal of every action, immanent or transitive. The answer to why we want what we want, the ultimate perfectio operantis, is at best partially obtained by our actions and works. All that a genuinely Catholic theology has to say about things that cannot be merited in any way by the actus humanus,36 taken together with all that such a theology says about the ways in which other human actions by God’s grace can 33 M. Blondel, L’Action (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1893/1950). 34 H. Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958/ 1989), with the central distinction between the toil of “labor” and the politically situated plans of “work” and “action.” 35 Theodor Haecker, Vergil, Vater des Abendlandes (sixth edition, Munich: Koesel, 1948) especially chapter 3, 59–65. 36 Cf. Joseph Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human Action: “Merit” in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1995). 140 Richard Schenk, OP co-merit that eternal salvation, where grace crowns the gifts of an earlier grace, all this holds true for the relatively perfective dynamic of labor. What is usually discussed under the title of “work” and what is usually discussed under the title of “good works” must at some point converge; for both, their lasting and perfective merits are real but relative.37 This holds true as well, where it is not the individual actor but a group, a part of the society, and finally the state which is acting or being impacted upon by the issues of work.As Josef Pieper once pointed out to an agreeable Arnold Gehlen,38 the dynamics of compensation that Gehlen had diagnosed for that “Maengelwesen,” the human being, had been addressed already by such writers as Avicenna, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas; for example, it is the opening theme of the Thomas’s De regno. Our innate lack of sure instincts about how to act or work in our given environment demands society, the opportunity to learn from the care, teaching, and shared experience of others; among other things, we learn from them how and why to work. Making virtue of necessity, this needy basis of sociability serves as the occasion for developing strengths that outweigh the weaknesses compensated for; not the least of these new strengths is language. Among the pioneers of “philosophical anthropology,” in the narrower sense of the term as a distinct school, Helmuth Plessner (with the key notion of eccentricity) and Adolf Portmann (portraying the first year of human life as an extra-uterine premature year) did much to complete the social dimension of this picture. Even the ways in which our individual labors fail at their immediate and proximate goals can (by new forces) be transformed into occasions for our perfection: It is here that, in the context of human and divine friendship answering and transcending our needs, we learn the significance that Thomas attached to Aristotle’s dictum: What we do through others we somehow do through ourselves. In 1999, Alisdair MacIntyre picked up this thread again in Dependent Rational Animals, in part a Thomistic corrective to the all too ethereal 37 Cf. the far-reaching claims about the Roman Catholic sense of the insufficiency of works and their corresponding need of a grace not immanent in them, in Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, eds., The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990). One of the still outstanding ecumenical tasks is to compare Roman Catholic theology developed outside the explicitly ecumenical context with the claims made about it in declarations of ecumenical convergence.The theology of work would provide an exemplary starting point. 38 Cf the “Einfuehrung” (no. 3) to the second edition of Arnold Gehlen, Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt, here in the 13th edition (Wiesbaden: 1986): 35. Work:The Corruption or Perfection of the Human Being? 141 read of virtue as a free narrative art form in his widely discussed work After Virtue, of 1981. Now less dismissive of Aristotle’s “metaphysical biology,” Dependent Rational Animals seeks to develop “virtues of acknowledged dependence,” which answer to past and possibly future times of our own vulnerability and need by practicing solidarity with others who are actually or potentially vulnerable. Like H. Arendt, MacIntyre sees the need for the state to protect the rights of solidarity that grow from the social context of work, not leaving the initiative entirely to the whims of private, societal forces. Unlike Arendt, MacIntyre stresses the reasons that urge us to respond to the claims of solidarity on the most personal level, with as much subsidiarity as possible. MacIntyre is less trusting of the state than Arendt, who distrusts private enterprise and merely social forces to a greater degree. MacIntyre’s book could serve as a warning to those who see an outright contradiction between the encyclicals of 1981 and 1991 cited at the outset: The need for legislation and political direction (say, to safeguard the rights of labor) need not exclude entrepreneurial initiative (say, to imagine and develop opportunities for labor). This experience of the need for and the ties to the human other in the face of otherwise unaccomplishable tasks has its parallel in the context of the “sanctification of work.” The need for grace underlined by the discrimen of what is sought in work for the perfection of the worker and what is found there, between what Blondel termed the willing will (volonté voulante) and the willed will (volonté voulue), not only reveals the being of deficiency (Gehlen’s “Maengelwesen”) to itself, but it provides a new basis for friendship between human beings and their God.Work is sanctified not by exaggerating its strengths, but by seeking to compensate its weaknesses, by dedication to its symbolic but unattainable goals. That lack of easy accomplishment in work, suggested by Th. Haecker’s interpretation of Vergil’s notion of “labor improbus,” or unrequited toil, with the lack of control and efficacy in reshaping the other, provides the same kind of “witness” to the possibility of a qualified self that Paul Ricoeur recently identified in the “scattered witnesses” to personal dignity to be found in the conscience, my body, and other persons.39 In each case, it is the acknowledged lack of plasticity or docile cooperation with my subjective plans for the transformation of the other which offers not just a hindrance, but a chance for perfecting the self, a self which becomes more profound the more it relates to what it cannot 39 P. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (Chicago: 1992); cf. Bernhard Waldenfels, Sinnessch- wellen. Studien zur Phaenomenologie des Fremden 3 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999), especially 86–101: “Spielraeume von Kunst und Technik.” 142 Richard Schenk, OP simply remake and revise; the commitment to nonrevisionist history would be another witness to this kind of qualified selfhood, one which would not seek to repress its earlier history.40 What seemed to be a case of corrupting my hopes becomes here the occasion of their perfection.41 Should we not see work, precisely in its lack of plasticity to form others and be formed itself according to our subjective desires, as still another such witness to and opportunity for the possibility of a qualified self? Gracing the Ambivalence of Workers and Their Works It was perhaps this sense of work as both corruption and perfection which in 1953 was already behind P. Ricoeur’s reflections in his essay on “Work and the Word.” “The discovery or rediscovery of man as worker is one of the great events of contemporary thought. . . . From this standpoint, work designates the entire human condition of man.”42 However, Ricoeur sees in this expansion of the notion of work not only the inflation of a concept, but “ a sort of overzealousness.”43 “It is precisely this glorification of work which troubles me.”44 Ricoeur remains closer to Marx’s analysis of the self-alienation imposed by work in the industrial age than to the enthusiasm of the earlier Chenu; he shares with the later works of Chenu a hightened sense of the limits imposed on workers and their world by labor, especially in the fragmenting dynamic of its contemporary reality. To show the limits and the possibilities of work, Ricoeur analyses its close association with the spoken word, which, as different from work and more expressive of its needs and goals, both “justifies and challenges the glory of work.”45 As more comprehensive, the word can critique the ever-unfinished business of work;46 but, articulating work’s imperfection, the word can also ask for the grace to attain 40 A work on the significance of the “passé,” of that history which cannot be retrieved into a positive intention, translated into German as Paul Ricœur, Das Rätsel der Vergangenheit. Erinnern–Vergessen–Verzeihen (Göttingen:Wallstein, 1998). 41 Cf. Thomas Sterns Eliot, “East Coker,” from: “The Four Quartets,” in: The Complete Poems and Plays 1909–1950 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1952) 127: “Our only help is the disease/If we obey the dying nurse/Whose constant care is not to please/ But to remind of our, and Adam’s curse,/And that, to be restored our sickness must grow worse.” 42 P. Ricoeur, “Work and the Word,” in History and Truth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 198. 43 Ibid., 199 (emphasis mine). 44 Ibid., 198. 45 Ibid., 200. 46 Ibid., 202: “The word which is closest to work, the imperative word, is in its nascent state already a critique of work in the double sense of a judgement about and an imposition of limits.” Work:The Corruption or Perfection of the Human Being? 143 its perfective intent. In the “dubitative,” or self-doubting, appeal to the Other,47 and especially in the optative invocation of the divine,48 the word renders to work that service of communication necessary for any genuine hope of perfection.49 The much-needed search for the “civilization of work” will have to seek ways to inscribe the realities of today’s isolating and alienating, wage-based and all too specialized work back into genuinely human communication, including the optative and invocative uses of a language directed to what is beyond what work itself can accomplish, even communally.“A first service of the word within the realm of work may be looked upon as a corrective of the division of work. . . . The second service of the word is to compensate by leisure for the division of work,” while saving leisure from the same trivialization and fragmentation which work itself has suffered.50 In this effort of the word’s service to the world of work, two serious “mystifications” are to be avoided. The first consists in making the whole of culture the celebration of the technological enterprise and, to speak plainly, a factor of industrialization . . . ; this new fetish which is offered for our admiration under the lofty label of civilization of work must be challenged. The second mystification consists of confusing a culture inspired by work and nourished by workers with a culture directed by ideology.This danger is the extreme form of the preceding one. . . . 51 The fragmentation of ancient crafts into partial and repetitious tasks which demand less and less professional qualification raises a disturbing problem. The philosopher’s and theologian’s eulogy of work must not lose itself in the clouds, not at the very moment when an ever-increasing mass of workers tends to consider its work as a mere social sacrifice which no longer has meaning and joy in itself, but outside of itself: in the enjoyment of the consumer and the pleasures of leisure time won through the shortening of the workday.52 It is language which first enables the worker to articulate which perfections aimed at in work have eluded us and where work’s “failure and suffering plunge man into reflection and questioning. . . . Language anticipates, signifies, and assays all transformations within the imagination, within this inventive void opened by failure and the interrogation of 47 Ibid., 205 ff. 48 Ibid., 208 ff. 49 Ibid., 216 ff. 50 Ibid., 216 ff. 51 Ibid., 215. 52 Ibid., 211 ff. 144 Richard Schenk, OP failure.”53 Dubitative language can suspend the immediate pursuit of a practical concern, but “it returns to this concern on the level of signs.”54 To inscribe the world of work into the world of words is to develop in manifold ways the symbolic dynamic always implicit in work.55 The necessary location of work within the political sphere, stressed from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to such contrary thinkers as A. Gehlen and H. Arendt, is urged and made possible by this encompassing context of language addressing the unfulfilled hopes of work; work becomes political as the result of human need. A genuinely Christian idea of the human being will seek an understanding of work alternative to the extremes of that existentialism, which would place all the value of work on an individually subjective authenticity asserted desparately amidst enterprises that are thought to be objectively and communally futile, and of the ideologies implied by the extreme forms of capitalism and collectivism with their parallel narratives of perfection by the self-made man and the self-made world.The Christian alternative must be sought in the symbolic value of work, contributing toward a perfection which it experiences as necessarily elusive to its own dynamic, but possible as a gift which allows it to be a partially effective sign of the perfection it seeks: in the tension between being merely a symbol and yet truly a symbol.Taken as an exclusively human activity, discourse itself cannot long escape the experience of its own limits and its many mistaken directions; indeed, the world of the word can be helped in part by the world of work to escape some of its own delusions, dead-ends, and vanities.56 But at some point it must inscribe even these strengths and limits of verbal symbols in a higher symbolic task, the 53 Ibid., 201. 54 Ibid., 203; cf.Wilhelm Schapp, In Geschichten verstrickt. Zum Sein von Mensch und Ding (Wiesbaden: B. Heymann, 1976; here Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1985), developing what Heidegger in Sein und Zeit (1927) had said about the referential character of tools. 55 Cf. Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944, 1972); and Enno Rudolf, “Symbol und Geschichte. Cassirers Kritik der Geschichtsphilosophie.” in Wolfgang Voegele, ed., “Die Gegensätze schließen einander nicht aus, sondern verweisen aufeinander.” Ernst Cassirers Symboltheorie und die Frage nach Pluralismus und Differenz (Loccum: Evangelische Akademie, 1999): 9–23. 56 Besides Heidegger’s constant references in Sein und Zeit to the manifold primacy of praxis over theory, as well as Max Scheler’s reflections in Erkenntnis und Arbeit (Frankfurt am Main:V. Klostermann, 1977); and Gesammelte Schriften (Bern/Munich: Francke, 1976), vol. 8, pg. 191–82), cf. P. Ricoeur,“Work and the Word,” 215:“A civilization of work therefore also involves the correction of the miseries of the word by means of the virtues of work.” Work:The Corruption or Perfection of the Human Being? 145 symbol of hope implied in having tried to use symbols well. Less than the immanent fulfillment suggested by the idea of a Realsymbol, we experience through the reflections of language that the contributions of our words and works lag behind the perfections they seek.The experience of this gap between intent and realization can itself be a grace, transforming it into a more “inventive void.” Is it possible that a theology of the word coincides in the end with a theology of work? Perhaps. But this means primarily that in human finitude we have need both of work and of the word in order to situate ourselves in the direction of a creative word which we are not.57 As Theodor Haecker summed up his reflections on the ancient notion of labor improbus, reformulated in 1931 into a challenge to the rising ideology of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party: “The victory of genuine work turns out to be the victory of grace.”58 N&V 57 Ricoeur, “Work and the Word,” 219. 58 Haecker, Vergil,Vater des Abendlandes, 65. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004): 147–68 147 The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church* DAVID S. Y EAGO Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary Columbia, South Carolina ~ I N THIS PAPER , I want to defend two theses which I believe myself to have learned from Pope John Paul II’s remarkable encyclical on the Virgin Mary, Redemptoris Mater.1 In that encyclical, the Holy Father has, I believe, brought the ecumenical discussion of Mary to a new level of theological seriousness, articulating with unusual clarity the deep assumptions of what might be called the long tradition of “Marian consciousness” in the Church, the awareness of Mary as a singular presence within the mystery of salvation. Moreover, and significantly for Protestants, he has done so primarily by way of meditative exposition of the Bible. Thus the Pope confronts Protestants in a new way with this oldChristian “Marian consciousness” from which we have become alienated, getting behind standard disputes about particular Marian doctrines and practices to engage us on the ground of Holy Scripture. Such an approach calls for new thinking, new reflection, from the heirs of the Reformation, not simply repetition of old dismissals and recourse to old defenses. * From Mary, Mother of God, edited by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, forthcoming Fall 2004 from Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI / www.eerdmans.com. Used by permission. 1 Citations are from Mary: God’s Yes to Man: John Paul’s Encyclical Redemptoris Mater, introduction by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, commentary by Hans Urs von Balthasar (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988). References will be given in parentheses in the text and will refer only to the paragraph numbers of the encyclical, which are common to all editions. 148 David S.Yeago My goal in this paper is to respond to the Pope’s encyclical, not to expound it, so I shall summarize his rich teaching on Mary’s “motherhood” of the Church and of the believer rather baldly and formally in two theses: 1. Mary is irreducibly present within the redemptive relationship of the Church and of the believer to Christ, not merely as a symbolic figure but as a particular person; there is no redemptive relationship to Jesus Christ that does not contain within itself a relationship to Mary, though not, of course, the same relationship; 2. Mary is present to the Church and to the believer both as the prototype and model of the Church and the believer, and also as an active agent of the formation of the Church and the believer. I want to argue that these two theses are in fact well-grounded in Scripture and conform to the analogy of the faith, and should be accepted as such by Protestants. Whether the interpretation of Mary’s motherhood that I will present in the course of making that case would be acceptable to Roman Catholic (or Orthodox) Christians more generally is beyond the scope of this paper—and it is not, in any case, my question to answer. Furthermore, I shall deliberately exclude any discussion of the implications of Mary’s motherhood thus described for the disputed doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, though the Pope does make connections between Mary’s motherhood and those doctrines. One of the conditions under which our wayfaring theology must proceed in this present age is that unlike God, we mortals cannot utter in a single word all that needs to be said.Therefore there are always important matters that must be deferred to another occasion, or perhaps to the Kingdom. ~ Is it true, as the Pope suggests, that Mary is irreducibly present within the redemptive relationship of the Church and of the believer to Christ? I believe that this claim is true, and that its truth can be seen more clearly if we make the thesis slightly more precise: Mary is irreducibly present in the relationship of the Church and of the believer to the Christ who is attested in Holy Scripture, the one whom I will call the “scriptural Christ.”2 2 I adapt the phrase from John Behr’s invaluable The Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), though I am using it with reference to the Christian canon of Scripture as a whole while he uses it with a primary reference to the Old Testament.This bending of the terminology does not indicate any disagreement at all with the material point Behr is making by his use of the term. My debt to Behr’s discussion of the relationship between Christ and Scripture in the early Fathers is significant throughout this section. The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church 149 Since, moreover, it is the scriptural Christ—and he alone—who is the Savior, it is precisely within the redemptive relationship to Christ that Mary is irreducibly present.To clarify this claim, some discussion is necessary of what is meant by “the scriptural Christ.” In what is probably the very oldest extant Christian text, Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, we are confronted rather abruptly with the claim that what the apostles preach is “not a human word” but “the word of God” (2:13). This claim locates the apostolic preaching in a very specific way within the narrative of the ways of the God of Israel with his people and his creation. This God, the Holy One of Israel, is the One who creates by speaking and then speaks to what he has created. His word is thus a mighty word, inseparable from his deeds: His words act and his deeds speak. But the same time, this God knows how to make his very own mighty word audible to creatures within the space and time which they inhabit. He speaks His very own word in the particular human words of his messengers, so that their words, once spoken, do not die away into silence, but as Paul suggests, continue indefinitely to be “at work” mightily among those who receive them in faith.Therefore the testimonies of the God of Israel give life to the soul and make wise the simple, they give joy to the heart and light to the eyes. In these last days, moreover, this God has at once acted and spoken by a man who is his word, his very own co-essential Word, uttered in flesh, in a particular human life.This man, in the singular course of life which he pursues and in the singular fate which he encounters, in his living, dying, and rising again, is God’s conclusive, unsurpassable word of power and wisdom in which revelation and redemption, truth and life, are given as one in inexhaustible plenitude (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:23–24). This man Jesus, God’s word uttered conclusively in flesh, has been raised up from death and sits at God’s right hand as Lord and Messiah. He is not a dead Person, one who cannot speak for himself, one of the silent who can only be the passive object of our historical research; he lives and shares in God’s own boundless freedom.As the risen and exalted Word, he is competent to provide for his own utterance, when and as he pleases.As a living and free Person, he has taken the initiative to make himself known, by commissioning messengers, apostles, and pouring out upon them the Holy Spirit, so that they may proclaim him throughout the world until the end of the age.The apostolic witness is therefore the word of the exalted Word, the testimony through which Jesus Christ, who is himself the conclusive and unsurpassable utterance of God’s own powerful Word, presents himself to the nations as their Savior and Judge. 150 David S.Yeago The present age having outlasted the earthly lives of the apostles, the communities they gathered must carry on the apostolic mission, living under the rule of the apostolic testimony and bringing that testimony before the nations until the consummation of all things. It is thus part of the Spirit’s provision for the apostolic mission that the Church has received a body of New Testament scripture, a manifold documentation of the apostolic witness. This apostolic scripture is configured with the scriptures of Israel around the Word made flesh in a kind of two-syllable utterance of “the one word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death: Jesus Christ as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture”3—the scriptural Christ. It is in the context of such assumptions as these that the Christian tradition, from 1 Thessalonians onward, has never allowed for any space, so to speak, between the “real” Christ and the scriptural witness, as though the Scriptures might be only obscure hints and clues to the identity of someone who stands apart from the Scriptures, perhaps even in opposition to them.4 That possibility, indeed, confronted the Church already in the second century in the complex phenomenon we call “Gnosticism,” and its rejection was constitutive for that network of Christian communities which were then beginning to call themselves collectively “the universal assembly,” the “Catholic Church.” The Savior to whom the Catholic Church cries out and bears witness is the scriptural Christ, the Word made flesh whom the Spirit presents to us clothed in the words of the prophets and apostles. And this gives a peculiar quality to the relationship of the Catholic Church to God in Christ; as John Behr has said, “If God acts through his Word, then that Word needs to be heard, to be read, to be understood—the relationship to God is, in a broad sense, literary.”5 3 The Theological Declaration of Barmen, Article I. 4 Western mainline Christians today are tempted to be overly impressed by the statis- tically insignificant dissent from this consensus on the part of a small number of culturally elite European and North American Christians during the past two and a half centuries—a valid if one-sided description of what those of us to belong to such elites call “modern theology” and tend in our culture- and class-centeredness to regard as normative for the present and determinative for the future. Without denying the importance and insights of “modern theology,” as far as this dissent is concerned we may legitimately recall Augustine’s riposte to the Donatists: Securus judicat orbis terrarum (“The judgment of the whole Christian world stands firm”). 5 Behr, The Way to Nicaea, 15. For an account of this “literariness” as the sacramental medium of the Spirit’s witness to Christ in the church, see my essay, “The Spirit, the Scriptures, and the Church: Biblical Inspiration and Interpretation Revisited,” in James J. Buckley and David S.Yeago, eds., Knowing the Triune God:The Work of the Spirit in the Practices of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 49–93. The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church 151 I have spent some time on this point because it is fundamental to the baseline question of Mariology:“Is Mary in any sense a ‘presence’ within the redemptive relationship of the Church and of the believer to Christ?” If we are clear in our minds that Christ the Savior is the scriptural Christ, that the redemptive relationship of the Church and of the believer to this Christ is therefore “in a broad sense, literary,” then the answer to this question is obviously “Yes.” Mary is present within the redemptive relationship of the Church and of the believer to Christ by virtue of her presence in the scriptural testimony to Christ. The scriptural Christ,“Jesus Christ as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture,” is set forth to us, especially in the four gospels, as one who is surrounded, despite his singularity and in a certain sense his loneliness, by a constellation of others: disciples, onlookers, and enemies. Among these “others” is inescapably his Mother, whose narrated relationship to him does not quite fit into any broader category but has its own unique contours.A Christ who did not stand in this singular relationship to Mary would not be the scriptural Christ; when we approach the scriptural Christ we also find with him, in her own place and in her own role, Mary his Mother. This would be true in a certain sense even if the scriptural testimony never spoke explicitly of Mary, never named her or brought her, so to speak, on stage.The scriptural witness presents Jesus Christ to us as a true human being, one like us in all points except sin.Therefore, even if Mary were never mentioned in Holy Scripture, it would nonetheless be an article of the Christian faith that there was indeed a Theotokos, a woman who gave human birth to God the co-essential Son of God, a woman rightly called dei genetrix, “Mother of God.” But of course this is not where Scripture leaves it.The Mother of Jesus is not simply present in the scriptural witness by implication, as a Christological postulate; she is named and presented to us directly as a character in the Christological narrative of salvation. Especially in the gospels according to Luke and John, moreover, she is sketched in two very different ways not only as a person in the story, but, so to speak, as a personage, a figure with a singular role to play, a character whose appearance on the stage is a matter of significant moment. About the nature of her role and her presence we will speak in a moment, but it is important first simply to register the fact of her presence as a theologically significant personage. It is here, I believe, that we touch the root of what I have called the ancient “Marian consciousness” of the Church, the awareness of Mary as a singular presence within the mystery of salvation. The Church’s awareness of Mary as a presence in the mystery of salvation arises from the Church’s confession 152 David S.Yeago that the real and only Savior is the scriptural Christ, “Jesus Christ as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture.” A Christ without Mary, a Christ in whose presence Mary is not also present, would be some other Christ than the scriptural Christ, the construct of some variety of “gnosis falsely so-called.”6 This line of reflection suggests rather alarming conclusions about the meaning of Protestant estrangement from the “Marian consciousness” of the ancient Church, and these conclusions need to be faced. I believe that we should take seriously the criticism that the exclusion of Mary from the Protestant consciousness is indeed the symptom of a Christological disease, an alienation from the literary particularity of the scriptural Christ. The deep root of this alienation lies, I believe, in the dynamics of Christian division. Among Protestants I believe that one outworking of the dynamics of disunity can be seen in a long-standing tension between the scriptural piety which Protestantism sought to inculcate and a persistent worry that the Bible might lead its readers across the boundaries which separate “us” as the true Church from “them,” the Catholic counterfeit. The scriptural Christ, encountered without rigorous doctrinalhermeneutical filters, might, after all, turn out to be a lawgiver (as in the Sermon on the Mount), or a promoter of celibacy; and of course, he might also turn out to have a Mother who is more than a postulate of Christological orthodoxy. Has Jesus Christ not indeed tended, in the history of Protestantism, to become at various times and in various ways a rather abstract figure? Even in the older Protestant orthodoxy, was he not at times reduced to a central moving part in a soteriological mechanism, defined by his competence to merit our salvation rather than by the complex detail of the multiple gospel narratives read in the context of the canon as a whole? Protestant modernism in some of its moods protested against this theoretically overdetermined doctrinal Christ in the name of the Jesus of the synoptic gospels, but modernism was likewise unable to grasp the saving particularity of the scriptural Christ. Even more than in Protestant Orthodoxy, the Jesus of Protestant modernism is a Savior on a short leash. He must be firmly taken in hand, functionalized within a theory of religion and of our religious need, construed as a signifier transparent to the universal humanistic values which he signifies and therefore under their strict control. Otherwise he might lead his followers along strange paths of penitence and apocalyptic expecation, and thereby reduce their economic and moral productivity as citizens of the secular city; he might 6 A phrase used in one of the titles given to St. Irenaeus’s great work, more commonly known as “Against Heresies.” The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church 153 cruelly demand with all seriousness the death of the sovereign modern self; he might even turn out to be a Jew.7 The breakdown of denominational identities in the contemporary churches, along with the widespread sense that modernity’s rules of the game are losing their obviousness in the culture at large, gives us an opportunity, but no guarantees.We may indeed proceed implicitly or explicitly on the “postmodern” premise that every interpretation is a way of seeking power, and therefore harness the figure of Christ ever more arbitrarily and variously to our infinitely diverse felt needs and practical projects; but we may also take the occasion to relearn ancient arts of interpretation which enable an ordered but not finally “scripted” engagement with the redemptive particularity of the scriptural Christ.8 In this latter project, should we choose to undertake it, Mariology has an irreducible place; for the Mother of Jesus is irreducibly and distinctively present within the scriptural testimony to the saving particularity of her son.9 ~ About the nature of that presence, our second thesis makes two claims. Mary is present to the Church and to the believer both as the prototype and model of the Church and the believer, and also as an active agent of the formation of the Church and the believer. The first claim, that Mary is presented in Scripture as prototype and model of faith and of the 7 The close connection between anti-Catholicism and anti-Judaism in NeoProtestantism, and its effect on Neo-Protestant construals of New Testament history and theology, is a phenomenon of crucial significance whose history is yet to be written. 8 For an attempt at an orientation to these arts, see my aforementioned essay,“The Spirit, the Scriptures, and the Church.” 9 This is not to say that Mariology is “necessary to salvation” in the strict sense; the absence of any explicit Mariology from the letters of St. Paul is enough to establish that. But the goal of faith and theology is not to see how little of Scripture we can take seriously and still be saved; the goal is the maximum of integrity in taking seriously and holding together in our understanding the whole canon of testimony with which the Church has been provided by the Spirit. After all, the New Testament canon itself is superfluous to what is “necessary to salvation,” since the foundational apostolic preaching went on without it. The question of “necessity for salvation” arises when faith and mission have lost their way; it calls us, not to a reductionist purism, but rather to make distinctions within the totality of the biblical witness, in order to identify the chief point at which Scripture aims and to trace the ways in which its various aspects hang together to make that point. Since the Spirit’s gifts are not given for no reason, we may assume that faith and mission are best served precisely by such disciplined attention to the whole of Scripture, not by a strategy of reduction. 154 David S.Yeago Church, is less controversial, and is widely granted today among the small number of Protestants who have considered the matter at all. Indeed, the easiest form of Mariological agreement among contemporary Protestants and Catholics is undoubtedly to be found in a shared reading of St. Luke’s presentation of Mary as “she who believed” (1:45), the paradigm New Covenant believer who trusts the promise of God and ponders His surprising ways in her heart.Three observations may serve to clarify the implications of this Lucan Mariology.10 1. In Luke’s presentation, Mary’s bodily motherhood, her pregnancy and birth-giving, are introduced in the context of the angel’s greeting which calls forth her faith. Mary is not simply a biophysical vessel, an unwitting conduit through which the Son of God descends from heaven, picking up mortal flesh along the way. Her miraculous pregnancy is embedded in a drama, a narrative in which she is not only object but also subject, playing a part which engages her whole person. She is addressed by the messenger of God, promised that the child to which she shall give birth will be the Son of the Most High. Mary therefore does not figure in the story of salvation only through the bare fact of her pregnancy; her pregnancy is located within a context of covenant and communion, of God’s election and promise, and the faith which these evoke. Her role is therefore defined also by the distinctive way in which she consents to God’s redemptive design, and to her vocation within that design. As Pope John Paul II has written, “The words ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord’ express the fact that from the outset she accepted and understood her own motherhood as a total gift of self, a gift of her person to the service of the saving plans of the Most High” (par. 39). Her bodily “motherhood” is constituted in the covenant-exchange of divine word and answering faith, a faith which indeed involves “a total gift of self,” and therefore, in Pauline terms, the presentation also of her body as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1). This sense that Mary’s role of giving human birth to the Son of God is embedded in a drama of vocation in which her faith plays a significant part is another of the most elementary perceptions of the Mariological tradition, expressed concisely in the saying of St.Augustine that Mary conceived Christ in her mind by faith before she conceived him bodily in her womb. But the same point was also fully 10 I regret that limitations of space preclude any account of the two closely connected scenes in which the Mother of Jesus is presented to us in the Gospel of John. Such an account would, I believe, support the main conclusions of this paper. The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church 155 acknowledged by no less than Martin Luther: Because Mary the Virgin conceived and gave birth to Christ, therefore Christ was a real, bodily visible human being, and not only a spiritual reality—yet she conceived him and bore him spiritually. How so? Thus: she believed the word of the angel, that she was to become pregnant and give birth.With that very faith in the angel’s word, she conceived and gave birth to Christ in her heart spiritually, at the same time that she conceived and gave birth to him in a bodily way. For if she had not conceived Christ spiritually in her heart, she would never have conceived him bodily. . . . Now what did she receive into her heart? Nothing but the word of the angel, that she was to become pregnant with the Son of God. Because she embraced the word and became pregnant with it in her heart, therefore she also became pregnant bodily with that which the word promised her in her heart.11 This intertwining of Mary’s bodily pregnancy with issues of election, promise, and faith precludes the possibility of viewing Mary as merely the logically necessary presupposition of the Word’s true enfleshment. While the Lucan portrayal of Mary is undoubtedly Christocentric, she is not reduced to a function in a Christological scheme. Mary is presented as a character with her own profile, one who is confronted with the advent of the Messiah in a singular way and responds to it with words and actions distinctive to her. And the Gospel is interested in that profile, in those words and actions—not, to be sure, in competition with its interest in her Son, or simply parallel to it, but precisely as Mary through her distinctive words and actions stands in a specific relationship to her Son. Even after the birth of Jesus, moreover, in the story of his presentation in Temple, Mary is mysteriously acknowledged in the Lucan account as having a continuing role in the story of salvation.According to Simeon’s prophetic testimony, the coming of Messiah will cause division in Israel and provoke enmity; and it is somehow Mary’s part to endure this division and enmity as a sword piercing her own being (Luke 2:34–35).There is surely a suggestion here that Mary’s role in the story has not ended with parturition; she continues to be linked to her son’s coming into the world and to its outcome. 11 WA 23:185. Translations of Luther are my own from D. Martin Luther’s Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar, 1883ff.), cited as WA. This and the other statements of Luther concerning Mary cited in this paper are handily collected in Walter Tappolet, ed., Das Marienlob der Reformatoren (Tübingen: Katzmann-Verlag, 1962). 156 David S.Yeago 2. As the one addressed in this singular way by the election and promise of God, Mary is not simply a private person but a public one; she is called by the angel’s proclamation to an office, a public role within the communion of God’s people and the history of God’s salvation. Though the office of the woman who gave birth to God is necessarily unique, it is not without analogy to other roles and offices encountered in the narrative of salvation. The Lucan story of the Annunciation is notoriously constructed out of intricately interwoven reminiscences of and allusions to the Scriptures of Israel; like early Christians generally, the Evangelist turns to the Old Testament as the prophetic and typological explication of the new thing which the God of Israel has done in these last days. Without attempting to untangle all the strands in Luke’s web, it can surely be said that one analogy is crucial to the portrayal of Mary’s role: the analogy to prophecy. While the Annunciation narrative is clearly reminiscent of the several Old Testament stories in which a child is promised to a woman who could not, in the ordinary course of things, bear children,12 the Evangelist has also woven into his account elements which belong more characteristically to the call-narratives of the prophets. It is striking, for example, that neither Sarah nor the mother of Samson nor Hannah nor Elizabeth is addressed as Mary is addressed. The three men as whom the Lord appeared at the oaks of Mamre announce the promise only to Abraham, while Sarah overhears, just as Gabriel speaks to Zechariah and not to Elizabeth; the angel does speak to the wife of Manoah, but only in the most abrupt and business-like fashion, without greeting or title; Hannah hears Eli’s blessing—”The God of Israel grant the petition you have made to him”—but no direct “word of the Lord.” But direct address is characteristic of the calling of prophets: Moses and Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and Jonah, are all spoken to directly, summoned to God’s service.13 Like Mary, moreover, Moses and Jeremiah are bewildered, unable to see how their task can be carried out; to them as to Mary the Lord or His messenger responds with assurance that God’s own power will trump the weakness or the incapacity of His servant. 12 Cf. Genesis 18:1–15 (Sarah); Genesis 13:2–24 (the unnamed wife of Manoah, mother of Samson); 1 Samuel 1:1–2:11 (Hannah). To these must of course be added Mary’s kinswoman Elizabeth (Luke 1:5–24). 13 Cf. Exodus 3:1–4:17; Jeremiah 1:4–10; Ezekiel 2:1–3:11; Amos 7:14–16; Jonah 1:1–3, 3:1–2. The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church 157 Furthermore, while the angel’s reassurance that “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37) directly recalls the Lord’s response to Sarah’s laughter in Genesis 18:14, neither Sarah nor the wife of Manoah nor Hannah nor Elizabeth is promised the Spirit. However, the Spirit is associated with prophecy, as we have just been reminded in the announcement of John’s birth: “even before his birth, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit,” and like Elijah, he will speak and act under the impulsion of the Spirit (Luke 1:15–17).There is a parallel here between John and Mary, between the child promised in the first scene and the one to whom a child is promised in the second; if the Spirit marks John as a prophetic figure, then the promise of the Spirit to Mary associates her with prophecy also. The connection between Mary and prophecy is further strengthened by the context: The opening chapters of Luke depict what Robert W. Jenson has called a “positive epidemic” of prophecy,14 all configured around Mary and her child. As Jenson puts it: “Mary . . . appears in these chapters as the central figure of a sudden resurgence of Spirit-inflicted prophecy: the prophetic Spirit comes upon Mary and by virtue of the result of this visitation also upon others.”15 Thus when Mary visits her relatives in the hill country, Elizabeth is filled with the Spirit and speaks blessing upon her kinswoman and her child; even the unborn prophet is moved to inarticulate testimony. The Evangelist is at pains, moreover, to associate the prophesying of Elizabeth and the unborn John specifically with Mary’s word, repeating the point twice; it is “when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting” (v. 41) that the Spirit fills her and it is “at the sound of her greeting” (v. 44) that the child leaps in Elizabeth’s womb. This is, to be sure, no glorification of Mary in abstraction from her Son; it is as “the Mother of my Lord” that Elizabeth greets her. But she is greeted also as the one who accepted this vocation by faith in the divine promise:“Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” (vv. 43, 45). Mary provokes prophecy as the one who brings the Messiah, but here as in the Annunciation narrative, her bodily “bearing” of Christ is inseparable from her faith.To bring the Messiah to the world is for 14 Cf. Robert W. Jenson, “An Attempt to Think about Mary,” dialog 31 (1992): 259–64. I am deeply indebted to this article especially in this section, but also in other ways. It pursues the Christological and Trinitarian implications of the Lucan account much further than I can do here. 15 Jenson, 261. David S.Yeago 158 her an office, a role bestowed on her by God’s election and promise and accepted by faith. Yet the blessings pronounced on Mary in the story of the Visitation also remind us that her office cannot simply be identified with that of a prophet.Though the Annunciation narrative is reminiscent of the call-narratives of the prophets, the angel’s greeting to Mary is more akin to the eschatological proclamation to Israel—”Rejoice, Daughter Zion!” (Cf. Isaiah 54:1, Zephaniah 3:14, and Zechariah 9:9)—than to anything in the prophetic call stories. Mary’s vocation is related to prophecy, but in a way that is distinctively “blessed.” Jenson has identified the point of distinction thus:“[B]y the Spirit’s coming upon Mary she does not like other prophets before or around her bring forth a speech; she brings forth a child.”16 Actually, Mary according to Luke does bring forth a speech, or rather a song, whose significance we have yet to consider, but Jenson’s point is well-taken: the office laid on Mary by the angel, to which she consents in faith, is not centrally to speak words but rather to bear a particular child. The analogy thus described seems to cry out for explication in the terms provided by the prologue to John, which is also concerned with the relationship of prophecy to the coming of Christ: [T]his child is personally and identically that Word of the Father communicated by every prophet—the same point is, of course, made by the whole rest of Luke. Mary is the prophet who utters forth the eternal Word himself and as such. It is because the Word is personally and completely spoken by Mary’s willing gestation and parturition, that suddenly there are again Spirit-driven prophets. We may say: Mary is the archprophet, the paradigm and possibility of prophecy.17 That is to say, Mary’s faithful bearing of the Word incarnate is the Spirit-wrought antitype of which all prophesying in the Old and New Covenants is either the anticipation or the recollection. All prophecy is the secondary and dependent utterance in “many and various ways” (Hebrews 1:1) of that same Word which Mary conceived and bore in his own Person, at once in her heart and in her body. All other prophecy is therefore possible only by virtue of this “archprophecy”; what Mary brings forth from her womb is the truth of all prophecy and her willing bodily utterance of the Word in person is the form and measure of every other act of prophesying. 16 Ibid. 17 Jenson, 261–62. The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church 159 3. Prophecy in the biblical witness is not only an individual but also a communal vocation; this association of Mary with prophecy as its antitype therefore imply a relationship of Mary to Israel and the Church. It is surely no accident that both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles begin with the coming of the Holy Spirit, in the Gospel to Mary and in the Acts to the disciples, in each case provoking an immediate outbreak of prophecy. Indeed, Luke depicts the events of Pentecost as the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy that in the last days Israel will be transformed by the Spirit into a community in which all are prophets, young and old, slave and free, male and female. The Church, for Luke, is that renewed Israel, to which the Gentiles must now be called, an Israel re-formed by the coming of the Messiah albeit amidst conflict and schism which the twofold testimony of Luke leaves unresolved.18 How is Mary related to this renewal? Mary does not fulfill her office from outside the community of God’s people but from the inside. Mary is an Israelite woman, whose life is depicted by the Evangelist as “deeply enmeshed in the traditions of Israel.”19 She and her husband obediently bring their newborn Son to Jerusalem to do what was commanded in the Torah; they piously make an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the celebration of Passover. Her canticle is saturated with Scripture; like the virtuous woman in Proverbs, she opens her mouth with wisdom, and on her lips is the teaching of chesed (Proverbs 31:26),20 the covenant-devotion which responds to the chesed of God, the never-ending “mercy” toward Abraham and his descendants which God has “remembered” in the sending of the Messiah. At the same time, Mary also belongs to the community of Jesus’ disciples. If Mary is “she who believed” par excellence, then she is the paradigm of those who receive the reign of God drawing near in the Messiah Jesus, for faith is the fundamental mode in which human beings acknowledge and pay homage to God’s reign and God’s Anointed. Luke is careful moreover to clarify that Mary persists through 18 This is not to say that the Church is “all Israel”; the Church is the messianically renewed part of Israel, which awaits reconciliation with “Israel after the flesh” in the consummation of all things. I do not, that is, intend to suggest a supersessionist replacement of Israel by the Church, but rather a schism within Israel, to which the Church is one party. 19 Johnson, 56. 20 This reading assumes that something more is meant by Proverbs 31:26 than “she teaches her children to be kind,” which most commentators seem to prefer. Even in wisdom literature, I have difficulty accepting that “Torah” and “chesed” in such close conjunction could have so blandly moralistic a connotation. David S.Yeago 160 time in this obedience of faith; confronted with the shepherds’ report of angelic testimony to her Son, with Simeon’s dark words about the sword which will pierce her heart, and with the intimation given in his twelfth year of the all-consuming vocation that will take her Son away to death,21 she does not turn aside in frustration or fear but holds in memory what she does not understand and ponders it in her heart. The Second Vatican Council was right therefore to speak of Mary’s pilgrimage of faith;22 the Holy Father’s description of this pilgrimage is, I believe, true to the Lucan presentation: To believe means “to abandon oneself ” to the truth of the word of the living God, knowing and humbly recognizing “how unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways” (Rom 11:33). Mary, who by the eternal will of the Most High stands, one may say, at the very center of those “inscrutable ways” and “unsearchable judgments” of God, conforms herself to them in the dim light of faith, accepting fully and with a ready heart everything decreed in the divine plan (par 14). In this posture, Mary stands at the intersection of the Old Covenant and the New. In her, by God’s election and grace, the drama of Old Covenant Israel reaches its turning-point, and the vocation of the renewed Israel, the Messianic assembly, the Christian Church, is prototypically embodied. She is “Daughter Zion” (Zephaniah 3:14 and Zechariah 9:9), Israel called to receive with joy the advent of the Lord her King, the childless woman to whom is promised a vast multitude of children (Isaiah 54:1ff). Precisely as one who persists in her consent to God’s proclamation and promise through the course of a temporal pilgrimage, she is also the archbeliever and the archprophet of the New Covenant, the one who paradigmatically receives the reign of God by faith and renders it present in power to the world, all the while walking “in the dim light of faith.” She thus articulates in her own being the constant form of the existence of the people of God at every point in the story of salvation: expectant and receptive faith issuing in prophecy, barren incapacity transmuted by God’s Spirit into fruitful virginity, lowliness unexpectedly exalted. It is, of course, in the dying and rising of Jesus Christ that this form is redemptively constituted; it is to his image, not Mary’s, that we are to be conformed for our salvation. Mary’s paradigmatic role 21 Johnson, 61–62, notes the parallels between this story and the resurrection narra- tives. 22 Cf. Lumen Gentium, par 58. The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church 161 is different in kind from that of her Son: she is not the Redeemer but the prototype of the redeemed; she is not the one in whom we participate but the paradigm of that participation. Jesus the Messiah in his dying and rising is alone the forma formans, the form-giving form, the one in whom all things hang together (Colossians 1:17) and around whose crucified and risen Person the whole creation is to be blessedly configured. Mary by contrast is the forma formata, the form which has received formation, the prototype precisely of those who are not the Savior, but cling to him by faith, and on the way of faith’s pilgrimage endure the protracted inscription of his image on their being.23 As the paradigm of the existence-in-faith of the people of God, Mary is likewise the archprophet and Christ-bearer in whom the office of the Church as a prophetic community takes prototypical form.The Gospel of Luke begins with promise that the Holy Spirit will come upon Mary and that “the power of the Most High” will overshadow her (Luke 1:35); it ends with the risen Christ promising the disciples the Holy Spirit (“what my Father promised”) and enjoining them to wait in the city until they are clothed with “power from on high” (Luke 24:49).The point is reiterated at the beginning of Acts, in a close verbal parallel to the promise made to Mary:“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses . . . “ (Acts 1:8). As the Spirit came upon Mary so that she bore the Word incarnate, likewise the Spirit comes upon the Church so that it brings forth prophetic words of witness; as Mary by the power of the Most High gave birth to the great King whose royal dominion will never cease, likewise the Church, clothed in power from on high, is sent forth to proclaim the reign of this King “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). We should not, however, move so rapidly to the analogy of mission that we ignore Christ’s command to the disciples to “wait in the city” (Luke 24:49) It is just in this “waiting”—so antithetical to 23 This suggests that it is not an adequate account of Christ’s redemptive work to view him as a sort of productive prototype of our own authentic existence in faith, as many modernist theologies have done. An adequate doctrine of atonement requires recognition that Christ has acted and suffered in our place in such a way that he does and endures pro nobis what we could not do or endure for ourselves. Cf. my essay,“Crucified Also for Us under Pontius Pilate: Six Propositions on the Preaching of the Cross,” in Christopher R. Seitz, ed., Nicene Christianity:The Future for a New Christianity (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2001), 87–105. David S.Yeago 162 our contemporary can-do evangelism-ideologies—that the Church identifies most fundamentally with Mary the Virgin Mother, acknowledging its sheer incapacity to be what it is called to be. Like Mary, the Church cannot bring Christ into the world by any strength or ingenuity of its own; no more than a virgin can give birth to a child can we who are “fools, and slow of heart to believe” (Luke 24:25) be Christ’s witnesses to the ends of the earth. The Church’s assumption of prophetic office begins therefore not with a “Grow Your Church” seminar, but with the persistent and expectant prayer of the community of disciples in the “upper room” (Acts 1:13), surely an allusion to the “upstairs room” (Luke 22:12) in which the Eucharist was instituted.24 In the midst of this waiting and praying community, St. Luke is careful to tell us (Acts 1:14), stands Mary the Mother of Jesus, in whom both the poverty and the dignity of the Church are prototypically embodied.25 ~ We are left with one final and thorny matter. Mary, according to our second thesis, is present in the Church not only as “the prototype and model of the Church and the believer,” but also as “an active agent of the formation of the Church and the believer.”This is, of course, the point at which awful specters arise unbidden in every Protestant mind, not in every respect without reason. Protestants have been discouraged from any serious consideration of the idea of Mary’s active “motherhood” in the Church by Roman Catholic elaboration of that idea with what heirs of 24 Cf. Johnson, 333. 25 Several times in the discussion following the lecture on which this paper is based, the question arose: “Why Mary? Why should she be regarded as the prototype rather than, say Paul?”The answer, I think, has two parts. First, it is Mary’s distinctive placement in the gospel narrative that leads to the conclusion that she is the prototype for Paul’s faith, not he for hers. It is she for whom the calling to faith and witness was inseparably joined to the task of giving bodily birth to the Son of God. When Paul tells the Galatians that he is “in the pain of childbirth until Christ is born in you” (4:19), it is a bit difficult to regard him as the prototype of that stance. Second, the question may betray a need to derive Mary from the gospel-message by a chain of necessary inferences, which is of course impossible. Mary is a contingent phenomenon. But if the gospel is true, then nothing in the economy of salvation, indeed, nothing in creation or creation itself, is “necessary” in that sense. If the gospel is true, God’s love and freedom are prior to all necessity; all that is, and especially the mystery of salvation, is a meaningful concatenation of contingencies rooted in God’s free election. Mary, like Israel, like the form of the sacraments, like the make-up of the biblical canon, is simply one more such contingency. The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church 163 the Reformation must regard, even on the most charitable reading, as truly ill-advised terms such as “co-redemption” and “co-mediation.” Such language seems to violate clear biblical rules of speech26 and in any case must surely be a standing invitation to theological and devotional disaster. Nevertheless, I believe that it is possible and necessary to affirm the active agency of Mary in the Church without in any way intruding her into the role which is Christ’s alone. We might begin by asking about the relationship of Mary’s mode of presence in the Church to the possibility of her agency. If Mary is present to the Church by way of the scriptural testimony to Jesus Christ, if her presence is therefore “in a broad sense, literary,” what sort of present agency is conceivable for her? The answer seems clear: as a literary presence, even a literary presence uniquely presented to us in “God-breathed” words (2 Timothy 3:16), she can be an agent toward us only if she speaks to us, only if we are addressed by her word. Mary’s Son, indeed, is God’s very own co-essential word made flesh; his whole life is in every aspect of its concrete particularity a word addressed to us. As a character in the narrative testimony to the Word made flesh, Mary is so to speak taken up into this “one word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death,” and is set before us by God as the prototype of our formation by faith in the incarnate Word. It is only the presence of Mary in the scriptural testimony to the one word which God addresses to us in the concrete particularity of the human career of Jesus Christ that grants her any recognizable presence at all within the redemptive relationship of the Church and of the believer to Christ. But that presence will be an active presence, will encompass a continuing agency of Mary toward the Church and the faithful, only if Mary is presented not only as speaking and acting in relation to God, her Son, and others around her in ways that are exemplary for us, but likewise as speaking with authority to us. Only if she is not only, as it were, spoken to us in the word, but also speaks a word to us within the word, will it be possible for her to be recognized as an active presence in the continuing life of the Church and of the faithful. 26 E.g.,”There is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Jesus Christ, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5–6); putting the “one mediator” alongside the “one God” surely implies exclusivity (“only one God,”“only one mediator’) in both cases. Likewise:“[God] is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, in order that, as it is written,‘Let whoever boasts, boast in the Lord.’ ” Here too the context requires that the “wisdom” which Jesus Christ has become for us is our only wisdom; this exclusivity must then also attach to the “redemption” grouped here with wisdom. 164 David S.Yeago As matters actually stand, there is a word which Mary speaks to us in the scriptural testimony to Christ: she speaks to us in her song, her Magnificat.27 Though spoken in the context of her meeting with Elizabeth, the Magnificat clearly transcends the specificity of that situation and proclaims the great deeds of God to “all generations.” While Mary’s archprophecy consists chiefly in willingly bearing and bringing into the world the Word made flesh, here the archprophet herself utters prophecy, explicating for all the world the “great things” which the Mighty God has done for her.This song, which is simultaneously thanksgiving and proclamation, is Mary’s word spoken to us within the word. Here she is most certainly presented not simply as a model or example but also as a speaker to whom we should pay heed; that is, she is presented as exercising agency toward us. If the Magnificat is the specific scriptural locus of Mary’s active agency in the Church, what follows concerning the character of that agency? Perhaps surprisingly, it is at this point that Martin Luther has a neglected contribution to make to an evangelical Mariology. Not only did Luther affirm Mary’s motherhood of the Church and every Christian,28 but in his sermons, especially those for the Feast of the Visitation, he persistently speaks of Mary as a present agent in the Church, precisely as the singer of the Magnificat, in terms that do not seem casual even though they are not developed very fully. Luther’s description of Mary’s agency has two related dimensions. To begin with, she is the Church’s teacher of praise and thanksgiving. “She leads the choir, and we should follow her with singing.”29 But this is not simply an exemplary role; Mary not only models thanksgiving but teaches it:“Learn from this professor (Meisterin), if you want to give thanks.”30 Her Magnificat is not only a model thanksgiving, but a liturgical text sung daily in the Church, and, Luther says, “it would be good if it were sung 27 The claim that the Magnificat is, in truth, the word which the Mother of God addresses to the Church is not, it should be noted, touched directly by historicalcritical discussions of historicity, authorship, and sources of the text. Only if we had positive knowledge from other sources that Mary’s attitude was quite otherwise, would the former claim be threatened directly by historical-critical questioning; short of that, the question “What is Mary’s continuing witness to all generations?” is not simply reducible to the question,“What are the facts behind the Visitation narrative?” 28 “Therefore Mary is Christ’s Mother, and the Mother of us all, although he alone lies on her lap. . . . If he is ours, then we are to be in his place; where he is, there we also are to be, and everything he has is ours, and therefore his Mother is also our Mother.” WA 29: 655–56. 29 WA 27:241. 30 WA 29:452. The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church 165 twice.”31 Its authority can only be compared with that of the Lord’s Prayer: “If you want to pray for all on earth, take the Our Father. Here [in the Magnificat] you have the general thanksgiving for all things, also for your own affairs.”32 But in the nature of the case, thanksgiving and praise are necessarily theological undertakings; or rather, thanksgiving and praise are the root of Christian theology.To thank and praise God is necessarily to proclaim His great deeds and in so doing to interpret them. Thus Luther also names Mary “our dear professor and teacher” (unsere liebe Meisterin und Lehrerin), who teaches us to understand the Old Testament scriptures as witness to her Son. “This little maid has seen more acutely into the scriptures than all the Jews, and she has connected with all the prophecies and examples which are to be found anywhere in Scripture.”33 Therefore her canticle is the most concentrated and adequate articulation of the very heart of the Christian faith: The dear Virgin is occupied with no insignificant thoughts; they come from the first commandment,“You should fear and love God,” and she sums up the way God rules in one short text, a joyful song for all the lowly. She is a good painter and singer; she sketches God well and sings of him better than anyone, for she names God the one who helps the lowly and crushes all that is great and proud. This song lacks nothing; it is well sung, and needs only people who can say yes to it and wait. But such people are few.34 Understood in these terms, Mary’s “motherhood” of the Church consists in the speaking of a word for the Church and all the faithful to hear. Mary’s word in the Magnificat opens the chorus of Christian praise, and provides the Church and all the faithful with the essential words for praise. At the same time, her words of praise are necessarily also words of instruction: She teaches us to see in the coming of her Son the mercy and might of the God of Israel. Just as a mother teaches her children by precept and example the ways of the family, and prepares them to live well in the surrounding human community, so Mary teaches the Church and all the faithful the ways of God’s household and forms them so that they may live well in the environment of His inbreaking reign in Jesus Christ. It is moreover chiefly through her word to us, through the Magnificat, that Mary’s prototypical embodiment of faith and prophecy become 31 WA 34/I:566. 32 WA 29:452. 33 WA 29:451–52. 34 WA 34/I:566. 166 David S.Yeago graciously formative for us.Through the Magnificat, her paradigmatic faith becomes not so much an example of impossible purity by which we are measured, as an available form of life into which we are invited to enter. To be formed by Mary our Mother means in the first place to stammer and lisp along with her in her song; in so doing we take our stand with her in faith and join with her in prophecy and praise, and it is chiefly in this way that she shapes us as worshipers and servants of the great King whom she has brought forth into the world. ~ Let me close with a few words of counsel in response to a question which is bound to arise: How might contemporary Protestants begin to recover an appropriate awareness of Mary’s presence in the mystery of the Church? In the spirit of walking before one tries to run, I have only three simple-minded suggestions. First, celebrate those feasts of Christ in which Mary appears as a significant personage in the story of salvation: in addition to Christmas, the Annunciation, the Visitation, and the Presentation of our Lord in the temple. If these feasts are suppressed, and their gospel lessons passed over in the liturgical cycle, then Mary’s literary presence in the Church is effaced and the figure of the scriptural Christ is truncated. So keep the feasts: Celebrate them even when they occur on weekdays and “not enough people will come” (that terrible phrase which perhaps more than anything else discloses our practical godlessness). Pastors, when you preach on these texts do not be afraid to take Mary as seriously as Scripture takes her. Laypeople, celebrate these feasts with prayer and thanksgiving and the reading of Scripture even if your pastor has more important things to do.The Mother of God cannot, to be sure, replace your pastor; but compared with her your pastor is, after all, only a pastor.35 Second, sing the Magnificat. Sing it at home, and sing it at Evening Prayer in the congregation. Of course, this advice requires that Evening Prayer actually be observed in the congregation. It would not be a bad way to rediscover the Magnificat for the pastor simply to turn up at the Church every evening at a stated time to pray and sing Mary’s song with anyone who comes, or alone if necessary. On the other hand, the presence of a pastor is not required for Evening Prayer; if the pastor is not interested, no one can rightly stop the people of God from praying and singing together nonetheless. 35 Cf. Charles Williams, “A Dialogue on Hierarchy,” in The Image of the City and Other Essays, ed. Anne Ridler (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 129: “The Mother of God was not an apostle, yet the apostles were—only apostles.” The Presence of Mary in the Mystery of the Church 167 Third, when you sing the Magnificat, do not de-gender it as contemporary liturgical versions often do. In liturgical use it is chiefly the use of a feminine form for dokg that reminds the congregation of the particularity of the canticle as Mary's song.To translate "servant" rather than "slavewoman" suggests that the Magnificat cannot become the Church's song without ceasing to be the song of the particular woman Mary. If anything in this paper is true, this suggestion should be vigorously resisted. The Magnificat is the Church's song because it is the song of the specific Jewish woman Mary, whom God's election and promise have set in the midst of the Church as the prototype of the Church's faith and prophecy and therefore as the archsinger of the praise of God's mercy in Christ.When we sing the Magnificat, all of us, male and female together, take our stand with Daughter Zion, the Lord's slave-woman, identifying with her, and joining in her song, the primal, and in this life unsurpassN&V able, articulation of the joy of the kingdom. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004): 169–210 169 Book Symposium Introduction to Moral Theology by Romanus Cessario, OP (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2001) Virtue and Moral Realism J OHN R. B OWLIN University of Tulsa Tulsa, Oklahoma ROMANUS C ESSARIO begins his Introduction to Moral Theology with a collection of assertions.1 “The best introduction to a theological understanding of the moral life proclaimed in the name of Christ by the Catholic Church is one rooted in the moral realism developed, among others, by St. Thomas Aquinas.” This Thomistic moral realism distinguishes the ethical writings of Pope John Paul II, above all Veritatis Splendor, and it is this realism, once restored, that can save contemporary moral theology from many confusions and much vacuity (1). Of course, it is the phrase “moral realism” that stands out here. What does it mean? With these claims and promises made on its behalf one expects a definition, but all we get on page one is a warning in a footnote. Don’t think that the epistemologically obsessed and metaphysically skittish talk of moral realism among contemporary philosophers translates easily into Thomistic terms. As the pages go by the substance of this warning becomes obvious and the content of the concept emerges, but not in a definition. Instead, “moral realism” appears in Fr. Cessario’s treatment of every significant matter in moral theology—action, law, virtue, grace, freedom, incarnation, and happiness, among others—and every significant matter is treated either as an inference from its conceptual content or a commitment that comes packaged with the concept. That is, we come to understand the concept only as Fr. Cessario draws certain mate1 Romanus Cessario, Introduction of Moral Theology (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2001). Pages numbers that refer to this work will be given in the body of the text that follows. 170 Book Symposium rial inferences from it about other matters, only as he makes explicit the commitments that govern those inferences, only as he locates those commitments and inferential relations in theological context and defends them against objections.2 In what follows, I trace Fr. Cessario’s practice. I consider some of the inferences and commitments that give his version of “moral realism” its substance and then ask whether he is entitled to all of them, and if so, under what conditions. My hunch is that, in a couple of instances, entitlement follows virtue, if it follows at all. Fr. Cessario resists this conclusion, and yet I think it comes packaged with the moral realism he so ably explicates and defends. Objects Moral realism is, above all, a metaphysical thesis about the moral content of being. Against Hume and all those who find the naturalistic fallacy compelling, moral realists insist that one cannot say what there is, one cannot get the facts right, without resorting to morally loaded descriptions (23, 46).3 In Aquinas’s shorthand, the truth about being and the truth about goodness are really the same. They differ only secundum rationem (ST, I, q. 5, a. 1). It is a controversial thesis, of course, long in dispute and one might expect Fr. Cessario to weigh in, perhaps by spelling out Aquinas’s argument from the prima pars, perhaps with a backward glance to Augustine’s treatment of these matters or a forward look to Wittgenstein’s updated version of the same.4 But wisely he does not march into this philosophical bog. Moral theologians, he insists, are not obliged to resolve this “disputatio inter doctores over metaphysics and ethics” (47), at least not directly. Distractions of this kind are best avoided and the confidence afforded by revealed truth should be 2 Robert Brandom’s inferentialist account of conceptual content stands behind this description of Fr. Cessario’s efforts. See his Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representation, and Discursive Commitment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 85–116. 3 Fr. Cessario is both forceful and generous as he discusses the influential views of the new natural lawyers, John Finnis, Germain Grisez, and Joseph Boyle (45–48, esp. 46, n. 17). Still, once moral realism is assumed, and once the fact/value distinction is softened up with arguments borrowed from Aquinas, it is no longer clear what fundamental problems remain for their innovations to solve. 4 Augustine’s famous account of evil as privation turns on his prior commitment to the morally charged character of being. See Confessions. VII.x.16–xii.18. Wittgenstein’s famous account of language-games is designed to show how concepts are embedded in activities and how descriptions entail judgments about the good. See Philosophical Investigations, part I, passim. Book Symposium 171 enjoyed. God made all things, distinguished each from each, and called them good (23–24). God made human kinds of things in the divine image and our reflection of that image becomes ever more precise through the right exercise of the internal sources of action, intellect and will.Through the love of some thing, some object whose goodness right reason discovers and describes, we exhibit our natural commitment to this realism at the very instant that we “incarnate a moment of divine love in the world” (47). If Fr. Cessario has a philosophical argument in defense of this thesis, it lies here, embedded in his discussion of the objects that specify actions (153–74). If being, truth, and goodness are convertible, then not only do all things fall under a moral description, but human actions—what morality regards (ST, I–II, q. 1, a. 3)—have a kind of substance and fall into different species, just as things do. Bishop Butler’s dictum—everything is what it is and not some other thing—applies to actions, not just apples and oak trees.5 Of course, actions have no matter from which they are made. They are not things in this sense, but they do have a matter about which each regards, a materia circa quam (ST, I–II, q. 18, a. 2, ad 2). This is the object of the action, which, in each instance, comes loaded with moral content that specifies the action as this and not that and which gives it a certain incorrigible reality. Following Aquinas’s lead (ST, I–II, q. 18), Fr. Cessario contends that the object of an action “designates a specific reality which shapes the moral life and provides an identifiable description of a moral situation” (168–69). It is our task to get those descriptions right, to recognize those fixed moral realities, and to distinguish each from each by taking note of the matter about which each regards. Consider an example from Michael Walzer’s discussion of the moral reality of war. “Here are soldiers lining up the inhabitants of a peasant village, men, women, and children, and shooting them down: we call this a massacre.”6 Walzer’s point here is roughly Cessario’s. Moral content must be included in the description of the action in order to get the facts right, in order to say what the soldiers have done, and once we get the facts right we cannot ignore or redescribe the moral content of the action without distorting those facts. Killing the innocent on a mass scale is the activity that occupies these soldiers, not “target practice,” not 5 A number of distinctions and qualifications need to be made at this point, mostly regarding those actions indifferent in their species (ST, I–II, q. 18, a. 9) and those things human beings do that are not, strictly speaking, human actions (ST, I–II, q. 1, a. 1and ad 3). 6 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 14. 172 Book Symposium “resettling villagers,” not “special handling.” This is the object of their action, not some other.We call the action a massacre, a term that carries its own moral weight, precisely because no other term gets the facts right. No other concept specifies what was done. It follows that we can no more say whatever we please about the matter than we can about apples and oak tress. We cannot “postulate private worlds of moral reasoning or act upon arbitrary norms for personal conduct” (164–65). “Moral talk is coercive; one thing leads to another.”7 One cannot call this action a massacre without calling it unjust. And if there are certain actions that are unjust in their species, then we must conclude that some actions “always possess a deformed moral character no matter what circumstances or intentions lie wrapped up in them” (174). But, as I said, Fr. Cessario’s view is only roughly equivalent to Walzer’s and the difference lies in the inferences they draw from the moral realism they share. From the fact that certain actions, properly defined by their objects, are intrinsically unjust, Fr. Cessario thinks we can conclude that those same actions are absolutely prohibited, without exception. Any of us, all of us, can make this inference, and we do so as we recognize that intrinsically unjust actions deny us the happiness we all desire.These actions deny us the perfection that comes from acting in accord with our nature and all of us can see that they do once we note the injustice in their species (98, 116, 164, 171). How this inference from injustice to absolute prohibition is made and whether it is made well will occupy us below. For now it is enough to note that Walzer does not make it. Rather, he thinks that an action unjust in its species can, nevertheless, be done in certain circumstances. Massacring the innocent, while obviously unjust, can be imagined in wartime when our enemy poses an imminent and “ultimate threat to everything decent in our lives” and when no other means can prevent the reign of “evil objectified in the world.”8 Most Americans agree. Strike up a conversation about the obliteration bombing of German cities during the Second World War and you will find that most concede it was a massacre justified by the threat that Nazi aggression posed. Most see the injustice in the object of the action but resist the inference to a prohibition. At this point, it is hard to know what to think about these competing moral realisms, largely because we have not yet filled out Fr. Cessario’s version. For that we will have to consider some of the other inferences he makes about a couple of other matters, inferences from the moral content of being. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., 253. Book Symposium 173 Teleology If the truth about some thing cannot be known without noting how it participates in the good, then it is the truth about a thing’s agency that we will have to know in order to specify the kind and character of the thing. A Thomistic moral realism operates within the framework of this “highly refined teleology” (44). Everything is what it is and not some other thing because of the distinctive nature of its agency, because of the ends it pursues and the manner in which it pursues them. A swallow, for example, is the creature that it is, not an eagle, fish, or slug, precisely because its actions and passions are directed toward certain ends, such as nest building, by certain means, with mud and grass, not sticks and twine. And a swallow is a good swallow, a perfect instance of the sort of thing that it is, when it acts as swallows do and achieves the ends appropriate to its kind. By contrast, a swallow that did not act as swallows do would not be a very good swallow. It would hardly be a swallow at all. Nor would a swallow that acted for the sake of the ends characteristic of its kind but with little success. And of course, in each of these instances, the imperfect swallow would be cut off from the ends that satisfy it, cut off from the goods that alone bring it whatever happiness swallows are able to muster. Human beings and human agency are similar. We act for the sake of certain ends but not others, and this particular collection ends—knowledge, friendship, the rearing of children, self-preservation, and so on—is one of the things that distinguishes our agency, our species (90, cf. ST, I–II, q. 10, a. 1; I–II, q. 94, a. 2).The other is the knowledge with which we act (ST, I–II, q. 10, a. 2). Acting with knowledge entails knowing the ends characteristic of our kind as a prelude to deliberation over the means that might achieve those ends (ST, I–II, q. 6, aa. 1–2). And since the ability to deliberate, to compare one course of action with another, entails a certain indeterminacy in agency, we are not bound to intend any one of the ends characteristic of our kind or choose any particular course as a means to any particular end we come to intend (ST, I–II, q. 10, a. 1; I–II, q. 14, a. 1). Indeed, it is precisely because knowledge mediates our relation to the human good, transforming it into the “the good-as-meant” (32), that we are able to act voluntarily and in all sorts of particular ways, while swallows have a small repertoire of actions that they must perform insofar as they are swallows (104–8).9 Our ability to act knowingly also 9 Fr. Cessario assumes an intellectualist account of the voluntary at every turn and resists all voluntarist accounts of the will’s independent causality (32, 60, 76–78, 229–42). 174 Book Symposium explains why we are rational creatures and they are not (ST, I–II, q. 6, aa. 1–2; I–II, q. 91, a. 6). For when pressed we can provide reasons in defense of our intentions and choices, reasons that refer to ends and means that are known to be good and pursued because of that knowledge. Human goodness and happiness follow suit. In fact, for Fr. Cessario, this is “the basic conviction of moral realism, namely, that the good we seek and embrace in love inescapably affects our personal being and goodness” (45). We become a good human being, a perfect instance of the kind of thing that we are, as we act for the sake of certain specific instances of those ends characteristic of our kind. When we act in this way with the consistency of habit and achieve those ends that alone can satisfy, happiness is ours (50). So far so good. But notice how the manner in which we act for the sake of these ends makes all the difference. Because our relation to the human good is mediated through our knowledge of it, and because this knowledge generates a certain indeterminacy in our agency, perfection in human action is not achieved simply by acting as human beings do. A swallow that acts as swallows do, and does so consistently, is a perfect instance of the kind of thing that it is. Not so for human beings. We can, and often do, act knowingly for the sake of some human good, and yet without knowing the specific instance of the good that can, in that circumstance, draw us closer to the living God.We can, in other words, act without knowledge of the “true good” (48–51). At other times, we know which specific instance of some human good is true, and yet we are unable to act according to that knowledge.We pursue some other good instead. The point is that sinful action remains human action despite its deformity (97–99). Thus, the question becomes, how do human beings come to know and love and act for the sake of the true good? How do we come to perform those actions that perfect our nature? Natural Law At this point, one might expect Fr. Cessario to follow the lead of so many others and address this question through appeal to the natural law’s precepts, but he doesn’t. Indeed, he explicitly resists every rationalist-deductive account of the natural law, every attempt to think that its precepts can, by themselves, direct us to the true good (91). By the same token, he thinks it is a mistake to suppose that Aquinas offers his remarks on the natural law in order to generate precepts of this kind, precepts that can supply the ultimate determination of every specific moral issue. He doubts that Aquinas’s efforts are designed to yield “a complete moral theory” of this sort (77). And he regards this common misconception about the natural law’s precepts and this misinterpreta- Book Symposium 175 tion of Aquinas’s remarks as symptoms of moral realism’s diminished standing in modern moral theology (229–42).10 What is needed then, and what Fr. Cessario supplies, is an account of the natural law and an interpretation of Thomas’s texts that begin with the realism they both assume. Here, I can only trace the barest outlines of Fr. Cessario’s careful exegesis and rich argument.What matters are his aims and what he takes the natural law to be. Following Aquinas’s lead, his remarks on the natural law are designed to situate his moral realism in theological context, in the doctrines of creation, providence, and salvation, and thus ultimately in what the Church confesses about the Trinity (52–68).This is the proper context precisely because the natural law is, as Aquinas puts it, “nothing other than the rational creatures participation in the eternal law” (ST, I–II, q. 91, a. 2.), and the eternal law is, as Fr. Cessario puts it, nothing other than “how God knows the world to be” (60). If everything is what it is and not some other thing because of the character of its agency, and if God creates and governs all things, then it is God’s wisdom that distinguishes each from each as it directs all things to their proper ends (54–58). As a law is a dictate of practical wisdom (ST, I–II, q. 90, a. 1), a summary of a ruler’s judgment about the ends his subjects must pursue, we can say that God creates and governs all things by framing laws (ST, I–II, q. 91, a.1).We can say that the eternal law is an analogical expression of God’s creative and ruling wisdom (59). And we can say that rational creatures fall under the eternal law’s jurisdiction as they share in that wisdom, as they know what the eternal law demands. Aquinas calls this habitual participation in God’s practical wisdom synderesis (ST, I–II, q. 94, a. 1, ad 2). Naturally, and thus necessarily, we share God’s judgment about our good and we are inclined to that good because of that judgment (ST, I–II, q. 91, a. 2). The natural law is nothing but this sharing in God’s judgment about our proper ends, nothing but this participation in “the divine government of our own actions,” the actions characteristic of our kind (64). Thus to say that human beings act in accord with the natural law is to say something about human agency as such, created by God and governed by providence. It is to say, on the one hand, that it is knowledge of the ends to which we are naturally inclined that moves us to act in ways that are characteristically human. On the other, it is to say that human actions 10 After the Second Vatican Council and in the wake of the moral encyclicals of John Paul II, Fr. Cessario thinks that the ecclesiastical climate may once again be favorable for doing moral theology under the tutelage of Aquinas’s moral realism (241). At the same time he concedes that theologians will have to strike out on their own, as most philosophers remain hostile to Thomistic moral realism (74, n. 57). 176 Book Symposium are rational precisely because of this knowledge, this judgment we share in common with God about our good. It follows that every human action, whether good or evil, participates in the eternal law and accords with the natural law in some minimal sense (ST, I–II, q. 91, a. 2, ad 1). Every human action is done knowingly and for the sake of a specific instance of one of the ends to which we are inclined naturally, one of the goods that we will simply and absolutely (62, 89). It might also be done to avoid the loss of one of these goods, but no matter. In all that we do the first principle of the natural law is fulfilled, the most basic requirement of rationality in human action is satisfied (86). Some human good is pursued or some evil is avoided (ST, I–II, q. 94, a. 2). Thus, in the first precepts of the natural law, we have the starting points for “a moral life lived under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit” (67), we have the beginning of human conduct, the “foundation for right reason to operate” (76).The intellect perceives the goods characteristic of our kind, and does so per se nota. The will inclines to those goods naturally and necessarily (91), and together these “structural tendencies inherent in . . . (our) nature” (82) generate actions that are fully our own and yet fully under God’s jurisdiction. Virtue What does this account of the natural law say about our ability to know and love the true good? On the one hand, quite a lot, on the other, not nearly enough. It tells us there is a “God-given created order of reality, how God knows the world to be, [that] stands underneath the order that shapes moral reason” (184). It tells us that moral reason measures the rational good in the things God has created (184), and that “authentic moral value” is fully realized only as we act for the sake of that good, only as our “action fully participates” in that order, in that eternal law (155). It also tells us that full participation in the eternal law is not given with our nature. The “natural law quickens both the human cognitive and conative powers,” but it does not perfect them (100). For this, the virtues are needed, for it is only through the exercise of the virtues that our natural inclinations, captured in the first precepts of the natural law, are “rendered efficacious for the moral life. . . . In other words, the general precepts of the natural law are only the cognitive foundation for the morally significant knowledge achieved connaturally in a virtuous life, a life that perfects these precepts as it perfects the inclinations they govern” (91).We have, then, a kind of division of labor. Divine wisdom creates and governs the human intellect and will, the natural law’s general precepts describe how these internal sources of action fall under God’s rule, and Book Symposium 177 the virtues perfect those sources and that action. Intellect and will are ordered by divine wisdom to the human good, but only in general.The natural law’s first precepts are but abridgments of God’s judgment about that good. The virtues are needed to fill out those abridgments, specify “the moral truth in a particular situation” (94), and love the good that has been so specified. Add to this the fact that we have a natural obediential potency toward certain acts of intellect and will that can be achieved only through the active agency of God (29),11 only through the gifts and the theological virtues, and we must conclude that “a full expression of natural law principles” occurs “only in a completely virtuous life” (95). Of course,Aquinas admits that a small collection of secondary precepts can be derived immediately and with very little reflection from the natural law’s most general principles (ST, I–II, q. 95, a. 2; I–II, q. 100, a.1). From this one might conclude that he imagines no precise division of moral labor between first and second nature.Virtue perfects nature, but nature appears to provide some moral wisdom on its own, without the assistance of the virtues. But this appearance deceives, and the fact that it does can be seen in Fr. Cessario’s account of moral diversity, in this treatment of the various lists of secondary precepts one finds in various times and places. In some instances, the right principles are derived but habitually unruly passions make acting according to those principles unworkable (97). In other instances, failure to know certain “morally significant truths” makes it impossible to derive the right principles (98). In each case, the absence of virtue explains the deficiency of natural moral wisdom. The proper conclusion seems to be that we cannot regard human nature as an independent source of moral knowledge.12 The secondary precepts that follow from the first principles of our nature, immediately and with little reflection, are derived with the assistance of the virtues or not at all. If most human beings manage to make the right derivations, then we must conclude that most have some measure of virtue. Those that have full measures not only make the right derivation of secondary precepts, but they are able “to discern well about the whole of the good life” (133). In each circumstance of choice, they are disposed to know and love and act for the sake of the true good.And of course, actions of this kind, performed 11 Put another way, our nature does not dispose us to supernatural ends, and yet it does put us in passive potency to be so disposed. For an excellent treatment of these matters, see Steven A. Long,“Obediential Potency, Human Knowledge, and the Natural Desire for God,” International Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1997): 45–63. 12 Indeed, once we assume, as Aquinas does, that the natural law is a rational creature’s participation in the eternal law, we must also regard independent human nature as an impossibility, as a fiction of moral theory. 178 Book Symposium regularly and consistently over the course of a lifetime, make them perfect instances of the kind of thing that we are. This primacy of virtue, above all the primacy of prudence (128–44, 163, 172), is the most significant inference that Fr. Cessario draws from his Thomistic moral realism. The virtuous alone have knowledge of the relationship between our nature and the actions that perfect us. They know what virtue involves for creatures like us.They know what distinguishes true perfections from virtue’s semblances, and they know what justice, courage, and the other virtues demand. They know what measures of goodness genuine virtues instantiate both as perfections in the soul and as actions in the world, and they know how these measures of goodness stack up against other measures, other goods. And, with their passions set in right order by habit, they act in accord with this knowledge and with the expectation of success, at least for the most part. But notice how Fr. Cessario’s conclusion here complicates his own account of moral diversity. By his lights, when the inhabitants of other times and places derive lists of secondary precepts that depart in some way from the list defended in the authoritative teachings of the Magisterium, it is the absence of virtue that accounts for the difference. But we might as well say that it is competing accounts of specific virtues that does. Consider justice. Surely the inhabitants of other times and places will know, more or less, what justice is, and presumably their conception of justice will be enough like our own for mutual understanding of words and deeds.At the same time, their account of what the virtue involves, what it demands, and how it is distinguished from its semblances will be somewhat different from ours, for it is this difference that accounts for their somewhat different list of secondary precepts. But here’s the rub. If we say their departure from our list is explained by their misunderstanding of what justice involves, they are very likely to say the same thing about us, and with good reason. To his credit, Fr. Cessario sees the problem, and he appeals to the relationship between true virtue, precept, and genuine flourishing—or, rather, between real vice and genuine decay—in order to address it. Still, I am not convinced his solution succeeds, largely because he overstates what judgment untutored by virtue can conclude about action and happiness. The argument goes like this. Just as genuine virtues generate real flourishing, vice “yields its own punishment” (98). Its “self-implosive” character appears most plainly in lives governed by secondary precepts derived by a people whose judgments have been corrupted by the absence of true virtue (98). Because the natural law’s secondary precepts “regulate areas of human life that are indispensable to the preservation and development of the individual and of the species” (94), all of Book Symposium 179 us, any of us, should be able to see the dire effects of a life lived according to a collection of false precepts. This, in turn, should enable us to distinguish true virtue from its semblances. A time and place that regulates its conduct according to life-threatening precepts cannot be inhabited by a people whose passions and judgments have been tutored by right reason. Real virtues cannot yield precepts of this kind. And as all can see this relationship between habit, precept, and flourishing quite apart from right reason’s tutelage, vicious actions and precepts must be considered irrational, if not unintelligible. Consider, for example, those who act contrary to the secondary precept that forbids the choice of a sexual partner outside “the permanent and exclusive commitment between husband and wife” (98). Either they concede the authority of the precept even as their passions get the best of them, or they fail to derive the precept in the first place, largely because they have a different understanding of what proper sexual relations involve, presumably a vicious one. Either way,“broken relationships and hearts” are the consequence that all can see (98).And, it is precisely because all can see this fallout, no matter how they are positioned in time and place, no matter what habits inform their souls, that there is a kind of irrationality in what they do. Fr. Cessario invokes Newman to make the point. “Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a silk of thread” and nature will display your madness in full color (98). Pursue sexual relations outside of monogamous marriage and the human nature you share with the rest of us will offer the same lesson. It will judge your actions irrational, unintelligible,“the moral equivalent . . . of a barking man” (164). But this conclusion overreaches. Nature untutored by virtue does not speak in these clear tones, or, if it does, its message is other than Fr. Cessario supposes. In fact, it is not at all easy to see how adulterous actions of the vicious are equivalent the barking ravings of the mad. Indeed, most of us deny the equivalence. And while many count broken relationships and hearts among the ordinary consequences of sexual activities that take place outside the norms of Christian marriage, others do not, and even those that do are often willing to break hearts for the sake of other genuine human goods, other sources of human happiness. Both sorts of dissent may well be mistaken, but it is not untutored nature that displays the error. In fact, the very existence of this dissent is proof that nature does not speak so clearly, that it does not pick out virtue’s precepts from among the rest. And, if untutored nature cannot do this work, then nor can it help us distinguish true virtue from its semblances. Of course, it might turn out that judgment perfected by true virtue will indeed confirm Fr. Cessario’s conclusion about the irrationality of actions that transgress Aquinas’s list of secondary 180 Book Symposium precepts. Perhaps genuine wisdom will see more bestial madness in these transgressions than rational humanity. But this doesn’t save the argument. Fr. Cessario is trying to locate true virtue from among its semblances and this conclusion makes use of true virtue before it is found. Fr. Cessario’s disagreement with Michael Walzer about that status of actions unjust in their species follows a similar course. Fr. Cessario maintains that judgment untutored by virtue can recognize that the person who pursues a genuine human good by means of an action unjust in its species “has begun to walk down a path that leads to frustration, not perfection.” Why? Because all can see that human beings cannot “incorporate such activity into a reasonable pattern of human living” (171). Our nature denies that possibility. This in turn enables us to separate wheat and chaff, true virtue from its semblances.Those like Walzer who say they know what justice is, who insist that killing the innocent on a mass scale is a course of action grossly unjust in it species and who nevertheless contend that injustice of this sort can be pursued in certain supreme emergencies, are deceived. They pose as persons of tragic but praiseworthy self-sacrifice, as men and women willing to ignore virtue’s demands for the sake of the common good. But the fact that they are willing to forsake justice for some other good betrays the imperfect, if not counterfeit, character of their virtue. If all of us, any of us, can recognize that actions unjust in their species are incompatible with our rational humanity, with the happiness we desire according to our kind, then it cannot be judgment perfected by true virtue that generates Walzer’s conclusion. He says he knows what justice is, what it involves, what it demands, but his conclusion betrays his virtue, if not his rationality. But once again, this puts the cart before the horse.The fact that Walzer concludes as he does, and the fact that so many share his conclusion, indicates that human nature fails to provide unequivocal moral guidance about this matter. And of course, if nature’s message is ambiguous, then it cannot be used to decide the matter. It cannot tell us whether the just include those who, on occasion, forsake justice for other human goods, or not. Theory and Theology What can decide the matter? Modern moral theorists imagined that they could through self-sufficient appeal to something that transcends the contingencies of time and place.This was their great hope. I use the past tense deliberately for, as everyone knows, this hope has been dashed by the critics of theory: MacIntyre, Baier,Williams, and the rest. Natural law theorists in the modern period thought that they could offer a Catholic Book Symposium 181 version of this hope, but again, I think the past tense is appropriate here, not because hope has died in every quarter, but because its critics have made this hope difficult to sustain. Among these critics are those like Fr. Cessario who encourage us to return our account of the natural law to its proper theological context.13 Once that is done, once that account is situated in the doctrines of creation, providence, and salvation, it is no longer clear how the natural law can bear the burdens of moral theory. Once we describe the natural law as how God knows human beings to be, it becomes difficult to regard the natural law’s precepts and principles as sources of concrete moral guidance.This, in turn, makes it difficult to think that unperfected nature can stand in judgment over particular virtues and concrete choices. But in an age of moral pluralism, the comfort natural law theory promises to provide and the authority it hopes to bestow on our favorite moral judgments are benefits not easy to forgo. They tempt even the critics of theory. Notice how Fr. Cessario introduces his efforts. The Catholic moral tradition finds itself in an “alien cultural environment” (xii), where talk of exceptionless precepts is difficult to sustain.“Because of this situation, the need for sound instruction in each branch of moral theology acquires a new urgency” (xiii). Relativism’s specter haunts every precinct (or so it seems) and can drive even the foes of natural law theory into its arms. And why not? Without the benefits of theory, how can we locate and justify the list of secondary precepts that tracks the truth? How can we pick out true virtues from among the imposters? How can we know what true justice demands? And how can we resolve our disagreements with those who doubt its demands are absolutely binding? Still, I think these fears are best resisted, not because I think we can leave these questions unanswered and rest easy in a breezy false tolerance, but rather because the relativism that haunts us is not as fearful as many think. It is all bark and no bite. Fr. Cessario agrees, and yet he comes to this conclusion by resorting to styles of reasoning borrowed from the natural law theorists.The questions I have posed here are designed to cast doubt on this resort. If my worries are sound, then it appears that this borrowing is incompatible with the rest of his moral realism, with the primacy he gives to the virtues, and with his determined and laudable 13 For another recent attempt to resist the temptations of theory and return the discussion of natural law to its proper theological context, see Russell Hittinger, First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World (Wilmington, DE: ISI Press, 2002). 182 Book Symposium effort to situate every remark about the natural law in theological context. Indeed, the proper inference from his moral realism seems to be that human judgment perfected by the virtues will know what true virtue involves and demands, what precepts follow from our nature, and whether justice can be forsaken, or not.14 It is an inference that gives little comfort for it implies that nothing can resolve our disagreements about the character of a specific virtue or about the truthfulness of a secondary precept except more virtue.And even then, it is likely that our disagreements will remain until we return to our beginning and join the blessed in heaven (3–8). In the meantime, we pray for God’s assistance, for the moral gifts that grace brings, and for the confidence that true virtue provides in the midst of these disagreements. This is what John O’Callaghan calls the liturgical character of the virtuous life in via, which “starts on our knees with the acknowledgment” of our dependence upon an agency that exceeds nature’s reach.15 It is, I think, an inference that follows from the Thomistic moral realism that Fr. Cessario so ably sets before us. N&V A Return to Casuistry? E DWARD T. OAKES, SJ Mundelein Seminary Mundelein, Illinois A GOOD SADDLE . A good heart. A good horse. A good general. A good person. These examples, all drawn from Aristotle, point to something obvious: the use of the word “good” in all these examples is eminently adjudicable.These items deserve the appellation “good” because (but only 14 My own hunch is that Aquinas stands in a tradition that runs back to Plato and forward to Hume, a tradition that locates knowledge of what the virtues involve in the virtuous themselves. They are not the standard that measures and judges that knowledge, but rather the place where that standard, that knowledge, is incarnate in via. Their virtue comes packaged with conceptual mastery of specific virtues and the inferences they make from the concepts they know are often quite different from our own. One such inference is that virtue’s goodness trumps all others. It cannot be forsaken for other goods. And it is precisely because they make this inference that the virtuous find they cannot act contrary to the demands of virtue. Contra-Walzer, it follows that one cannot have perfect knowledge of what “justice” is without knowing that justice cannot be abandoned for other goods. For a defense of Hume’s place in this tradition see John Bowlin, “Sieges, Shipwrecks, and Sensible Knaves: Justice and Utility in Butler and Hume,” Journal of Religious Ethics 28 (2000): 253–80. 15 John O’Callaghan, “Creation, Human Dignity, and the Virtues,” Nova et Vetera 1 (2003): 140. Book Symposium 183 insofar as) they function as they are meant to. Admittedly, because of Darwinism (or rather of Darwinism as too often popularly conceived), this frankly teleological understanding of good has become controversial. There is no “meant to,” it is claimed, in the process of natural selection, and therefore the application of the word “good” can mean little more than the emotional approbation on the part of the speaker of the word: “good” refers to the speaker’s emotions (“values”), not to anything intrinsic in the things being called “good.” A moment’s reflection, however, will demonstrate the absurdity of this point of view. Of course, a jockey (“emotionally”) prefers a good to a bad saddle, and so when he calls it “good” he certainly is indicating something about his state of mind, that is, his “values.” But that is not why he calls the saddle good. He does so because it functions the way it is supposed to. But because the heart, the horse, the human being, have all evolved by the impersonal forces of the allegedly blind processes of natural selection, we are now compelled to expunge teleological categories from our understanding, or so the elites tell us from their secular pulpits. In fact, however, in some ways the theory of natural selection gives new purchase to the teleological mode of understanding. Even Charles Darwin himself (at least in his better moments) knew as much.Try as he sometimes might (in his weaker moments) to expunge teleology from biological thought, he knew it couldn’t be done; so he ended up with a rather muddled ambivalence: The term “natural selection” is in some respects a bad [!] one, as it seems to imply conscious choice; but this will be disregarded after a little familiarity. No one objects to chemists speaking of “elective affinity”; and certainly an acid has no more choice in combining with a base, than the conditions of life have in determining whether or not a new form be selected or preserved.1 Well, a saddle has no choice either, nor does a heart or a horse. Ever met a human being who chose to be born? Choice and preference are not, despite what is too often presumed, the relevant categories in teleology. True, a saddle-maker presumably chooses to make a good saddle, but that hardly is what constitutes the goodness of the saddle; otherwise skill, talent and luck would have no role, and good products would emerge just by the mere intention to make them good.2 Most generals, 1 Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (London: John Murray, 1868),Volume I, 6. 2 The novelist Saul Bellow got that same point across in a more amusing way in one of his novels when he named a highway-construction firm the Good Intentions Paving Company. 184 Book Symposium one presumes, want to be called “good” (like most coaches). But that hardly is the governing issue, otherwise every miles gloriosus would be brave beyond all telling. Even a good a general will be called “good” for reasons exceeding his skill; for often victories in battle depend on a bizarre concatenation of events beyond his control; but no one calls a good general “bad” because he had such a string of good luck, like Dwight Eisenhower on D-Day, when the weather cooperated and the Germans mistook his intentions and sent their Panzer Divisions far from Normandy. Richard III was indeed a bad king, morally speaking, but he might have been called a good general but for lack of a horse. These distinctions might seem oversubtle, but we make them all the time; for they are implied in our everyday use of ordinary language (among his other virtues, Aristotle is still the best ordinary-language philosopher around). And so we may conclude with all normal speakers of normal language that the use of the word “good” in the five examples given above pertains to the things (or persons) good in and of themselves, not (or not primarily) good in their intentions.3 We may also conclude that the application of the word “good” is, except in boundary cases, noncontroversial: saddles that keep slipping off their horses, hearts that give out in aerobics classes, horses that never make it to the finish line, generals who can’t fight their way out of a paper bag, people who make the lives of those around them miserable— none ever gets called “good,” even by spaced-out New Age gurus or speakers high on Prozac. But saddles that keep jockeys atop a horse, hearts that keep ticking in the marathon, horses that win their owners buckets of money in the Kentucky Derby, generals who win the Civil War, and persons who leave the planet a better place than they found it—all get called “good,” and no one ever claims to be puzzled at what is meant (outside of the philosophy seminar room, anyway). These observations provide a useful setting for assessing the import of Father Romanus Cessario’s learned and lucidly written book Introduction to Moral Theology. For in our contemporary setting, the author must address two issues: One, he must address the continued confusion over the very role of teleology in coming to moral judgment; and two, once that is addressed, he must take up the crucial difference between Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas (or of Catholic moral theology generally) on the true ends of man. In his seminal book After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre 3 The fifth example, a good person, will need nuancing, for intention is crucial in making some acts moral or immoral. But popular wisdom has always recognized that mere intention is insufficient for a person to be called “good” in the moral sense, otherwise the road to hell would not have such classy asphalt. Book Symposium 185 famously claimed that all ethical debate in contemporary society can be siphoned off into the alternative between Aristotle or Nietzsche. In that sense, Father Cessario is very much an Aristotelian—but, crucially, a Thomistic one. Now the difference between a “pure” Aristotelian and a Thomistic one can be neatly summarized by the title of one of Cessario’s chapters: “Human Flourishing or Beatitudo,” or more abstractly, between a teleological ethic in which man’s ends are conceived in purely naturalistic terms and one in which man’s final end is the vision of God at the end of time. In other words, Cessario is an Aristotelian in general terms, but a Thomistic Aristotelian specifically. As to the first part of his position, the author does not engage Nietzsche per se (the man is never mentioned in the book); rather, he sees that Nietzsche’s brand of “biological emotivism” has its sap-giving roots in the subjectivism of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Now it must be said here that Cessario does not spend a lot of time or ink taking on the whole tradition of secular morality stemming from these two dominating thinkers, nor in my opinion does he need to, as MacIntyre has already performed that service. In a way, that whole school of moral thinking can be dispatched in the same way the Austrian-English philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once neatly dispatched solipsism in his short work On Certainty: Solipsism, he said, can be refuted by the simple expedient of getting up from one’s armchair, as sitting in an armchair is the only posture in which such a bizarre thesis can be entertained and maintained. Similarly, all forms of nonteleological, emotivist moralism can be refuted by careful attention to the way the word “good” is applied in ordinary language, including by professors outside the oxygen-deprived altitudes of the seminar room. Much more important to his project—the gravamen of the book, actually—is the author’s insistence that moral theology must be teleological in the full theological sense: Moral theology deals with how Christians get to God by following “the way of the Lord Jesus.” Here the author refers the reader to a passage in Thomas (without, however, quoting it): “Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence” (ST, I–II, q. 3, a. 8). This is what makes Christian ethics thoroughly teleological.Admittedly, the word “teleology” itself was first coined, it seems, in the eighteenth century by Christian Wolff, Kant’s immediate predecessor, whose concern in coining the word was not to specify the position of Aristotle or Aquinas. For that reason and others, the term “teleology” is often confused with consequentialism (where the end in view is merely the consequences of the action, not the ultimate end of the doer). But as Cessario points out, the word is still useful 186 Book Symposium enough despite its provenance, and he ably demonstrates how a true teleology is incompatible with consequentialism. Note how in the five examples that opened this review, one can easily adjudicate whether a saddle, heart, horse, or general is good by performance. Similarly, with the last example: To call a person “good” is not to claim access to his inner soul, to the purity of his intentions, to what he thinks the consequences of his actions might be, and so forth, but to the consistency of his character and behavior. Even the inculcation of virtuous habits, which is so important to Thomistic ethics, indicates this as well. For the whole point of developing a habit is to make it “second nature,” that is, to make the behavior flow freely without having constantly to force the will to command a recalcitrant body into a painfully attained “rightness.” All well and good. But for the same reason that one rarely writes a letter to the editor of some periodical merely to praise (disagreement usually being a more compelling provocation to sit down and write than simple agreement!), I presume the editors of Nova et Vetera did not invite me to join in this symposium merely to praise. For there is, if not a flaw, certainly a lacuna, in Father Cessario’s book. In fact, his failure in this regard is one that pervades the whole project of Catholic moral theology ever since Vatican II, and one that affects Fr. Cessario’s book as well: Until Vatican II Catholic moral theology was always geared toward the confessional, but now it is geared to the academy (from manual to discipline, so to speak). Admittedly, this was a trend long a-building, and began with Blaise Pascal’s scathing critique of Jesuit casuistry, which was so effective that it had the (perhaps unintended) effect of obliterating all forms of casuistry from moral reasoning. Note, for example, how Pascal, the Jesuits, and casuistry get so little treatment in MacIntyre’s After Virtue or Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry. In fact, most bizarrely, MacIntyre never so much as mentions Pascal, the Jesuits, or casuistry even once in his famous Short History of Ethics.4 4 MacIntyre famously began After Virtue with a scathing portrayal of contemporary ethical debate: Mention abortion, capital punishment, or income-redistribution, he says, and suddenly the conversation heats up and people begin to hurl moral absolutes at one another. MacIntyre rightly puts the blame for this on the developments in ethical thought that have drained the word “good” of its teleological context. But he could also have mentioned another factor: the complete absence of casuistical reasoning in contemporary debate about ethical issues.The fact that not even his history of ethics so much as mentions casuistry makes the reflective reader wonder if casuistry has not become the pudendum of moral vocabulary now. Lately ethicians have begun using the term “quandary ethics,” but the term refers to exactly the subject matter of casuistry, so nothing has changed in that regard. But if the change in terminology can bring respectability back to this form of discourse, so much the better. Book Symposium 187 Now Cessario himself does take up casuistry, but only in the Appendix and only to criticize it, and that mostly by caricaturing it. Here is his indictment: (1) casuistry atomizes moral actions; (2) it eschews teleology; (3) it ignores questions of character and virtue; (4) it valorizes will and intention over deeds and behavior; (5) it takes an extrinsicist view of law and liberty; (6) it is legalistic, juridical and easily descends into pettifoggery; (7) it is individualistic; and, finally, (8) it is minimalistic. Little wonder, then, that the author concludes his privately promulgated syllabus errorum with this judgment: “After the Second Vatican Council, casuistry suffered a serious reverse. This eclipse of the casuist model is one of the most remarkable signs of renewal effected by [Vatican II]” (241). I do not wish to dispute the justice of this “dark side” of casuistry so scathingly depicted with the Cessario pen; anyone familiar with the history of moral theology since the Baroque scholastics will admit that this portrait bears an uncomfortable connection with reality. But to recognize the decadence of casuistry is not thereby to resolve the ethical dilemmas it was invented to address. Problems don’t just vanish “into air, thin air,” just because the history of the attempted answers to those problems has proved embarrassing. Dilemmas are not resolved by pointing out how everyone so far has failed to resolve them. And since casuistry was born from the recognition of certain (and really quite frequent) moral dilemmas, it must always form a part of any moral theologian’s reasoning, the decadence of its past history notwithstanding. In fact, Cessario’s book proves as much, for despite its consistent polemic against casuistry, the author cannot help but point to those factors that gave rise to such a science of moral reasoning in the first place, as in this indicative passage: The wellspring of human activity is found in the voluntary, which, when impeded by opposing factors, inhibits the human person from acting in a fully moral way. Roman Catholic moral theology acknowledges that certain factors can inhibit the movement of authentic freedom in a human person and so result in a diminishment of culpability. Because they impede the full realization of human moral action, these factors are called the “enemies” of the voluntary. An account of these factors is indispensable to a full analysis of concrete human action, which must observe the obvious circumstances of everyday life, especially when persons do things that are difficult to reconcile with the choices of deliberate freedom. At the same time, realist moral theology does not make a judgment of culpability the final moment in its evaluation of a human action.Virtue perfects not only an action but also the character of the actor who performs the action. [xxi; emphasis added] 188 Book Symposium Father Cessario is quite correct that moral theology cannot terminate its analysis by mitigating its judgments simply because of the servility of the will, for as we saw, any true teleological understanding of moral action is deed-focused and not (or at least not primarily) intentionfocused. But intention, culpability, circumstances of everyday life, personality, weakness of will—these are all certainly the main focus of attention for the confessor. One should always be suspicious of Catholics who claim to be traditional, for usually the tradition they are being so traditional about goes back only a few decades. Now obviously Father Cessario is not a traditionalist in the oddball sense, like the devotees of Our Lady of Bayside and the like. But in his defense of Veritatis splendor against liberal Catholic moralists, he certainly will be taken that way by some sectors in the Church. (Dollars to donuts says that some reviewer will call the book a defense of “heteronomous” ethics.) Here I hasten to add that in all that pertains to Cessario’s critique of the liberal Catholic’s fondness for proportionalism, probabilism, utilitarian consequentialism, and so forth, I am in agreement. I only wish to point out here how utterly untraditional is his book when set against the history of moral theology: Only since Vatican II has the reading public been offered so much moral theology with so little to say to the confessor or penitent, and in that regard Introduction to Moral Theology is hip with the hippies.5 No doubt, the history of casuistry proves the difficulty of reconciling the two points of view: On the one hand, the moral theologian must render true judgments about the good; on the other hand, he must help the confessor (and maybe judges, legislators, psychologists, social workers, and just plain ordinary folk seeking wisdom) render true judgments about moral failure. Liberal Christians often take the line from the Sermon on the Mount, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” as a license for laxity (“Don’t lay your value trips on me, man,” to quote the old hippie line of the sixties). But what Jesus is referring to there is not the flexibility of the law (“not one jot or tittle” of which will be removed— so much for Jesus’s support for liberal laxity!) but precisely the inadmissibility of claiming knowledge about the state of another person’s 5 For an account of moral theology’s transition from the confessional to the semi- nar room, see John Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology:A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). That the book mostly celebrates what in many ways could just as easily be deplored does nothing to undermine the fascinating tale told in this fascinating book. For a similar view, one that sees only good and no bad resulting from this transformation, see Richard A. McCormick, SJ, “Moral Theology in the Year 2000: Tradition in Transition,” America (18 April 1992): 312–18. Book Symposium 189 soul. In his book The Concept of Sin, Josef Pieper gets the distinction down exactly: St.Thomas says “mortal” sin pertains to “the eternal” in man, in suo eterno [Commentary on the Sentences 2d, 42, 1, 5]. . . .This is why we can never know who has and who has not committed a mortal sin. Because human guilt in the full and strict sense takes place only in the most secret and silent cell of the deciding person, in suo eterno, for that reason “mortal” sin is a process hidden from nature. Nor does it matter how public the sin be: even if the sin is a blatantly public violation of lawful order, or a violation against the nature of things or the dignity of man, even if it goes against reason, perhaps even against a divine commandment;—none of this bears on the accessibility of mortal sin to human eyes. It stands in no man’s power to judge whether such violations entail a deliberate turning away from God Himself—sin, therefore, in the strict, unabbreviated sense. Maybe not even the sinner himself knows!6 Casuistry, however, is not merely a matter for the confessional. It first arose, in the West anyway, among pagan philosophers alert to certain inherent moral dilemmas that arise in everyday life. Cicero’s example has since become one of the most famous cases for the casuist: tyrannicide. Everyone admits, Cicero concedes, that it would be a terrible wrong to kill one’s friend, but if that friend proves to be a tyrant, then killing him is no crime but “the most splendid of noble actions.”7 Cicero also makes clear that what we now cover by the name of casuistry was the invention of the Stoics, but Aristotle was the first to bring ethics to the brink of casuistry in this crucial passage in the Nicomachean Ethics: A law is always a general statement, yet there are cases which it is not possible to cover in a general statement. . . . This does not make it [the general statement] a wrong law: the error is not in the law, nor in the legislator, but in the nature of the case, the stuff of practical conduct being essentially variable.When the law lays down a general rule, and a later case arises that is an exception to the rule, it is then appropriate, where the lawgiver’s pronouncement was too unqualified and general, to decide as the legislator himself would decide if he were present on this occasion. . . . The essential nature of “equity” is thus to correct the law in situations where it is defective on account of its generality. Like the measuring rod made of lead used by the 6 Josef Pieper, The Concept of Sin, trans. Edward T. Oakes, SJ (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), 71. 7 Cicero, De officiis [On Duties], III, 18. One cannot help but think in this context of Cicero’s approval of the assassination of Julius Caesar by, among others, Caesar’s friend Brutus. Cicero had no part in the assassination itself, but approved of it after the fact. 190 Book Symposium builders on Lesbos, which is not rigid but can be bent to the shape of the stone [while keeping its accuracy, like a modern tape measure], a ruling is thus made to fit the circumstances of the particular case.8 This notion of “equity” entered Christian thought early, and indeed, given the lack of knowledge of Aristotle in late Antiquity in the Christian West, without Aristotle’s influence (another testimony to the inevitability of this form of moral analysis). For example, Pope Gregory I (540–604), in his Commentary on the Book of Job at Job 40:17 (“the sinews of Behemoth’s testicles are tightly entwined”), notes that the word “entwined” (perplexi) shows that the Devil (Behemoth) often tempts by causing “perplexity” to good people by making it appear that whatever a person does to resolve a moral conundrum will itself be immoral. In each case, Gregory advises choosing the lesser evil.9 As the philosophers Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin point out in their highly useful history of casuistry, the “advice is, in itself, less interesting than the appearance in these cases of the ‘perplexed person,’ who cannot help doing wrong, whatever course is followed: [in Gregory’s wake] the subject of the perplexed conscience was to become a common topic in later casuistry.”10 8 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,V, x, 3–7 (1137b); emphasis added.Aristotle is react- ing here to Plato’s rejoinder to the Sophists (whose moral relativism horrified him).To counteract the Sophists, Plato posited a univocal meaning to the word “good” applicable in all situations, once it is discovered. 9 Gregory the Great, Moralium Libri XXXII, chapters 16–20, 28–40. The cases Pope Gregory adduces are three: (1) Two men promise to be completely honest with one another, but to tell no one else what they share with each other; then one finds out the other is planning to murder someone: Does he break his promise or become an accessory to murder? (2) A man enters a monastery to avoid the temptations of secular life, but the abbot appoints him the monks’ negotiator with tradesmen: Does he disobey the order or, by obeying, expose himself to the temptations of secular life? (3) A priest gets a parish assignment through bribery but then repents of his sin: Should he give up his “ill-gotten gains” or keep the parish lest his parishioners go without spiritual care? These quandaries seem pretty mild in today’s age of nuclear weapons! 10 Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 95. But Gregory I was hardly the first authority in Christian antiquity to apply moral absolutes to hard cases by mitigating them. Despite the impression left by this otherwise fine book, the “wake” was really caused by St. Paul, not Pope Gregory. For we find the same casuistical reasoning in his letters, where he must deal with the married status of converts (1 Corinthians 7: 10–16):When both husband and wife convert, the preChristian vows are indissoluble (“this ruling is not mine but the Lord’s,” verse 10), but in the case where only one spouse converts and the other spouse leaves the marriage because of the conversion, separation is permitted (“these instructions Book Symposium 191 Thus Thomas Aquinas, building on centuries of reflection on this issue born in the confessional, will openly aver: “A thing taken in its primary consideration [absoluté] may be good or bad; yet when additional considerations are taken into account it may be changed to the contrary” (Thomas Aquinas, ST, I, q. 19, a. 6, ad 1).11 It must be frankly said that Thomas’s assertion in no way influences either the structure or the positions of Father Cessario’s book. In fact, recapitulating his earlier review of the Jonsen and Toulmin book,12 he has only this to say:“Foremost among [the] undesirable marks of casuistry are the appeal to conscience as a way to escape observance of the moral law and the tendency to evaluate moral acts only with reference to their immediate are my own, not the Lord’s,” verse 12). Similarly in the next chapter Paul must deal with the thorny issue of food sacrificed to idols: Since temples at the time not only had their own butcher shops but had a virtual monopoly on the selling of meat (temples serving as a kind of ritualized slaughterhouse, as it were), Christians wondered if the purchase of meat there constituted collusion in temple worship. No, said Paul, but that general principle had to be mitigated in the case of delicate consciences, in which case even the “appearance of impropriety” (to borrow a contemporary tag-line) had to be avoided (1 Corinthians 8:1–13). Paul’s permission to let a converted spouse separate from a still non-Christian husband or wife, by the way, became the famous “Pauline privilege” in canon law, which allows for the annulment of a marriage on similar grounds, when one spouse converts and the other sues for divorce in civil court because of the conversion. When Europe was mostly Christian, the occasion for invoking the privilege rarely arose; but one imagines in a post-Christian and largely pagan society, where even nonchurchgoing Christians rarely bother to have their children baptized anymore (even for purely anthropological reasons, like keeping up appearances in society), the need to invoke the Pauline privilege will become more frequent. 11 Emphasis added. Again, Jonsen and Toulmin provide a most lucid exegesis of Thomas’s use of the word absoluté:“The wrong of homicide or theft, for example, is a point of principle in one sense: It is a type of action whose presumable wrongness is not generally in doubt—malum abstracte accipiendo, in se malum, simpliciter malum. But it is not a universal and invariable axiom: Because of their special circumstances, a few particular acts of homicide or theft became pardonable, justifiable, or (at the very least) excusable. Medieval scholars, in fact, used the Latin words absolutus and absoluté much as we use the phrases “all other things being equal,” “in itself,” or even (in our modern “dog” Latin) prima facie.To say that theft (say) is wrong absoluté thus meant to them,‘In the absence of exceptional extenuating circumstances, theft is wrong.’ In other words, ‘You should presume that any act of theft is wrong, unless and until those exceptional extenuating considerations come to your attention’ ” (ibid., 109).Thomas’s own example here in this article is capital punishment as an example of God’s consequent will: God antecedently wills all men to be saved but consequently condemns some to hell; so too a judge antecedently wills all men to live but condemns a murderer to death:“to kill him is a good, that he live is an evil” (ST, I, q. 19, a. 7 ad 1). 12 Review of The Abuse of Casuistry in The Thomist 54 (1990): 151–54. 192 Book Symposium context” (241). Well, again I agree that is the danger in casuistry, but it can hardly represent its essence; otherwise one must abandon St. Thomas, for all the lip-service that might still be given him. As a matter of historical opinion, Cessario might well be right that “in the documents of [Vatican II and Veritatis splendor] we cannot find any warrant for new forms of casuistry” (xv). But that such a lacuna might represent a problem, not just for his own theology but for these documents, never comes up, even for debate.13 13 I hope the reader will excuse an excursus on dissent here, because I need to distinguish my critique of Fr. Cessario from the garden-variety dissent from magisterial teachings that followed in the wake of Humanae vitae in 1968. This detour of mine on what has become an institutionally embedded dissent has become especially exigent in the wake of an editorial in the National Catholic Reporter, which, in a typical bit of rhetorical vulgarity, accused such neoconservative luminaries like Father Richard John Neuhaus, George Weigel, and Michael Novak of “dissenting” from papal “teaching” on Gulf War II. First, it must be stressed that the raising of casuistical issues is not dissent, but merely the pointing out of certain quandaries that arise at times when certain general principles conflict. Secondly, a sure indication of a lurking problem in moral theology would be the presence of general principles that in themselves seem inconsistent (a bit later we will take up certain foreign-policy positions adopted by the Vatican that seem to operate out of conflicting principles). But this certainly does not hold true of Catholic teaching on sexual ethics, which, while certainly challenging and difficult to obey, is not inconsistent; in fact, it is the only form of Christian sexual ethics that both conforms to the New Testament and maintains consistency across the board, something that cannot be said of any form of Protestant sexual ethic, Karl Barth and a few other lonely voices excepted. Thirdly, real dissenters dissent from the teaching that something is or is not objectively moral or immoral. Casuists, however (at least the nondecadent ones) merely point to those circumstances that either mitigate guilt or (as in just war) that transform what would be immoral if undertaken privately but become a positive good when undertaking by public authority for the common good, as will be shown in the next few pages.This is why behavior in re venerea is taken more seriously, and more readily assumed to be grave sin, in Catholic moral theology than the behavior of statesmen (behavior that on the surface might seem much more “immoral” than the “loving” behavior of, say, two adulterers). But according to Pauline (and recent papal!) teaching, one is never more oneself than when one is expressing oneself sexually.That is why Paul insists that illicit sexual behavior is a kind of translation of one’s body from the Body of Christ to the domain of sin:“Count yourselves as dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. So do not let sin reign in your flesh so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the members of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and offer the members of your body [which in Pauline diction includes the sexual organs] to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6:11–14).This is what makes Book Symposium 193 To see just how untraditional Father Cessario is in his moral theology, let us consider this passage from St.Thomas: It would seem that theologians should not take note of the circumstances of human acts. Because theologians do not consider human acts otherwise than according to their quality of good or evil. But it seems that circumstances cannot give quality to human acts; for a thing is never qualified, formally speaking, by that which is outside it, but by that which is in it. Therefore, theologians should not take note of the circumstances of acts. . . . On the contrary, I answer that the theologian considers human acts according as they are found to be good or evil, better or worse; and this diversity depends on circumstances. [ST, I/II q. 7 a.1 obj. 1 et respondeo; emphasis added] Similarly: It would seem that an action is not good or evil from a circumstance. For circumstances “stand around” [circumstant] an action, as being outside it. But good and evil are in things themselves, as stated by the Philosopher in Metaphysics vi 4.Therefore an action does not derive goodness or malice from circumstances. . . . On the contrary I answer that . . . human actions are good or evil according to circumstances. [For] not every accident is present in its subject accidentally, for some are “proper accidents” [meaning both paradoxically extraneous and essential, like the hue of a Monet sunset]; and of these every art takes notice.And thus it is that the circumstances of actions are considered in the doctrine of morals. [ST, I–II, q. 18, a. 3, obj. 1, respondeo, and ad 2; emphasis added] Aquinas is clearly building here on Aristotle’s notion of phronesis (prudence). In his famous reaction against Plato’s moral theory, Aristotle realized that episteme (apodictic knowledge) could not be the source of our knowledge of the good, at least as it applies to particular situations. No, prudence (a more error-prone form of knowledge) was essential. In other words, the combination of conscience and prudence shows that although completely general first principles of morality (“do good, avoid evil”) might be universally and ineradicably known, deliberation about the merits of particular actions moves on a much more obscurely lighted stage. Or as Jonsen and Toulmin put it in their exegesis of this passage: dissent from what liberal Catholics like to call, in their sneering way, the “pelvic issues” so lethal to the holiness of the Church: Such dissent lures the unsuspecting faithful from the domain of grace to that of the flesh—and death.This is also what makes this rhetorical ploy of liberal Catholics in calling neoconservative demurral of Vatican foreign policy not just vulgar, but also mendacious. 194 Book Symposium Circumstances, though extrinsic to the substance of an act, touch it (attingit) in important ways. From this metaphysical starting point Aquinas proceeds to design an elaborate scheme showing how the seven Ciceronian or eight Aristotelian circumstances “touch” the substance of acts. Circumstances enter into the evaluation of an act in two ways. Usually they affect the degree of seriousness attributed to the action and attenuate or augment the blame attached to it.The circumstances may also, however, change the very nature of the moral act: because reason determines the particular time and place of action, it may happen that these particular circumstances involve something so contrary to reason that they become an essential feature of the act.14 Take the issue of just war, a case for casuistry if there ever was one, involving, as it does, something, in the words of Jonsen and Toulmin, “so contrary to reason.” Given the horrors of war, in many quarters in the Church, representing what the journalistic world would represent as “right” (Germain Grisez) and “left” ( James Keenan, Paul Griffiths), one can spot a default pacifism. But precisely because Aristotelian prudence and the Thomistic distinction between formal and material knowledge of moral norms have largely disappeared from the writings of contemporary moralists (lip-service doesn’t count), just-war theory must now resort to, bizarrely, the principle of double effect. Leaving aside the delicate irony that moral theology (and philosophy) is never more casuistical than when 14 Jonsen and Toulmin, 134. Nor will it do to claim that the doctrine of the Church from the time of St.Thomas until now has “developed” in such a way as to undermine these principles. On the contrary, they have been ringingly endorsed by the highest possible instance of the Catholic Church, an ecumenical Council, indeed the most recent one, the Second Vatican Council. In Gaudium et spes, the Church solemnly declares “Often enough, the Christian view of things will itself suggest some specific solution in certain circumstances.Yet it happens rather frequently, and legitimately so, that with equal sincerity some of the faithful will disagree with others on a given matter” (no. 43; emphasis added). And to the specifics of application of general moral norms, one notes echoes of St. Thomas here: “The Church, as guardian of the deposit of God’s word, draws religious and moral principles from it, but does not always have a ready answer to particular questions, wishing to combine the light of revelation with universal experiences so that illumination can be forthcoming on the direction which humanty has recently begun to take” (no. 33; emphasis added). And finally—almost as if in anticipation of those liberal Catholics who regard Gaudium et spes as the most crucial of the documents of Vatican II and as the touchstone of its right interpretation—the document itself, in an important footnote specifying its own authority says “Interpreters must bear in mind—especially in Part II [where special urgent moral problems are treated, like war, atomic weapons and socio-economic life]—the changeable circumstances which the subject matter, by its very nature, involves” (official footnote 1 to the name of the document, a “Pastoral Constitution”). Book Symposium 195 invoking the principle of double effect (and I do not mean that observation pejoratively), this principle, when applied to war (except in narrow circumstances) makes a utter mash of determining what makes a particular war just or not. Certainly, St.Thomas does not approach moral analysis of war that way! In what is perhaps the most shocking of his statements, at least to liberal ears so attuned to humanitarianism,Aquinas forthrightly asserts: “The dangers of death that occur in battle come to man directly on account of some good, because he is defending the common good by just war.” [ST, II–II, q. 123, a. 5; emphasis added]15 No talk of double effect here! Our current confusions become especially obvious when one compares what Aquinas says about jus ad bellum (justification for initiating hostilities) to what so many contemporary theorists have to say.With precious few exceptions, such as Paul Ramsey and James Turner Johnson, most just-war theorists nowadays hold that only defensive wars are justified, never offensive ones (hence the strictures 15 “Sed pericula mortis, quae sunt in bellis, directe imminent homini propter aliquod bonum, inquantum videlicet defendit bonum commune per justum bellum.” In this context Thomas is speaking here of military service from the viewpoint of the virtue of valor or courage (fortitudo).Thomas’s point is that courage is virtuous only when a man risks death in the pursuit of a worthy good, for virtue must always tend toward what it good, never toward what is evil. He answers that, yes, courage pertains to valor in battle. But the crucial issue is the logic of his answer: Since protecting the common good in just war is unambiguously good, moral virtue is found in combat, which is why the martyrs can be called courageous above all, for they too died in a battle on the side of good, indeed the summum bonum, God himself. For that reason, they are the most courageous of all. But for precisely that same reason, soldiers too who die in a just cause are virtuous because of their pursuit of the good: “Martyrs face the fight that is waged against their own person, and this for the sake of the sovereign good which is God; wherefore their valor is praised above all. Nor is it outside the genus of courage to apply this virtue to wars and the life of the military” (ST, II–II, q. 123, a. 5, ad 1:“Nec est extra genus fortitudinis quae est circa bellica”). A moment’s reflection will show that Thomas could hardly come to any other conclusion without becoming a proportionalist or consequentialist: Normally, the way just-war debate is framed, one must weigh the evils of going to war against the evils war is meant to prevent or correct. But once the decision is made that proportionally the evils of war are outweighed by the cost of doing nothing, and provided that decision is correct (insofar as that is given to mortal man to know), then war itself can hardly be an evil in itself (per se malum). For if it were, Thomas would be a proportionalist, obviously an absurdity. Thus what a soldier does, provided he is on the just side and provided his behavior conforms to the norms of jus in bello, must be in itself good, and not an evil tolerated under the principle of double effect.That is why Thomas can claim the same virtue of courage for both martyr and soldier (in a just cause): Both are fighting for a good cause, and both are sacrificing themselves for it. 196 Book Symposium against “preemptive” attacks, which by the nature of things must initiate an offensive war). Not for Aquinas. In fact for him wars to defend against aggression are never wrong and thus don’t even need a theory, any more than raising one’s arm to deflect a body-blow requires a theory: something so instinctively physiological will happen willy-nilly, no matter what the lucubrations of moralists might deliver in the way of judgment.Thus, the only question that a theologian, philosopher, statesman, general, or citizen need consider is whether offensive wars can be justified; and by Thomas’s norms, some are, some are not. Crucial again for Aquinas is that only an offensive war must be waged by legitimate authority (ST, II–II, q. 40, a. 1). But no special appeal to legitimate authority is necessary when one is using force to ward off an unjust attack, for this is an option open even to private individuals (ST, II–II, q. 64, a. 7). For example, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, defense of the Polish nation was automatically “permitted” even without a formal declaration of war by its parliament.16 Moreover, Polish defense against the invasion was even “permitted” despite the fact that classical justwar theory requires the likelihood of success, something quite impossible for Poland under Hitler’s blitzkrieg, inasmuch as Poland’s army collapsed in the first weeks of the war. Thus the norms for waging a just war come into force only in offensive wars. In other words, to cite the words of one very lucid Thomist on this issue, Gregory Reichberg, “Only when initiative is taken to use lethal force for the repression of wrongdoing—especially where there is a direct intent to cause serious harm or even to kill—does legitimate authority become a necessary (although not a sufficient) condition for a morally justified employment of armed force.”17 For the repression of wrongdoing: Here is the key to understanding St. Thomas’s treatment of war, especially that kind of proactive war called offensive, not defensive, war. Now because war obviously entails the disruption, even destruction, of concord, and since concord is the fruit of charity, Aquinas treats war under the rubric of all those evils that disrupt concord: Not just war, but acts like schism, strife, and sedition, all break the comity that should reign among nations and neighbors. But tellingly, schism, strife, and sedition are judged by Aquinas to be wholly impermissible and evil in themselves. As Reichberg explains, “Each of these three terms unequivocally names a sin; thus a negative moral appraisal is implied 16 I put the word “permitted” in scare quotes, because it is St.Thomas’s point that no one requires permission in the case of self-defense, any more than one requires “permission” to breathe, blink, or flinch from danger. 17 Gregory M. Reichberg, “Is There a ‘Presumption Against War’ in Aquinas’s Ethics?,” The Thomist 66 (2002): 337–67; here 341. Book Symposium 197 in their very meaning. . . . Hence, in contradistinction to the proper denotation of the term war, it would be oxymoronic to speak of a just schism, a just sedition, or a just strife.”18 But not so when it is a question of waging war. Here the morality of initiating hostilities depends not just on legitimate authority but above all on the existence or nonexistence of prior wrongdoing committed by another political entity, or on the provocation of a prior injustice requiring armed intervention. But what then of the injustice to which sedition and domestic strife are intended as responses? Aquinas will allow tyrannicide (albeit rarely), but only because for him in that instance the tyrant is the one committing sedition (“It is the tyrant, rather, who is guilty of sedition, since he encourages discord and sedition among his subjects, that he may lord over them more securely,” ST, II–II, q. 42, a. 2, ad 3). Similarly, domestic strife is a “kind of private war” (II–II, q. 41, a. 1), which, since legitimate authority is lacking, is always sinful. But the defensive response to such domestic strife is not itself a species of strife (as just war is a species of war), but is called “self-defense,” not “strife,” and that is always permitted, even in the absence of validation from legitimate authority, for reasons explained above. But Aquinas does not make such a terminological distinction with the term “war,” for example, by calling unjust war simply “war” (always evil in itself) and just war something else (like, as so often happens today, “legitimate self-defense”). No, the very act of going to war can be good, all depending on the circumstances, of course. As Reichberg, summarizing his argument, explains so well: Thus, unlike sedition and strife, in the manner of its signification “waging war” (bellare) is not inherently evil. What determines its specific morality is the existence or nonexistence of prior wrongdoing committed by another polity. War is evil in species when undertaken without a just warrant. In this respect the term unjust war functions in very much the same way as sedition or strife. Inversely, war is said to be good in species when it is undertaken with due cause as a response to manifest injustice. . . . Thus, if “presumption against” is taken to mean the recognition that an act is inherently wrongful in kind (i.e., it represents the violation of an exceptionless moral norm), then for Thomas there is no presumption against war, as there is a presumption against schism, strife, and sedition.19 And that Thomas has in mind here offensive, not defensive wars becomes clear when he says that it is always wrong to disturb true peace 18 Ibid., 355. 19 Ibid., 357. 198 Book Symposium but that it is sometimes licit to disturb “false” peace:“Those who wage war justly aim at peace; thus they are not opposed to peace, except to an evil peace” (ST, II–II, q. 40, a. 1, ad 3). Readers will no doubt be reminded here of Jeremiah’s cry against the false prophets for placing their hopes for Israel in just such a false peace: From prophet to priest, every one deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying “Peace, peace” when there is no peace.Were they ashamed of this? No! They were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush.Therefore, they shall fall among the fallen; when I punish them, they shall be overthrown. ( Jeremiah 6:13–15) In times of false peace, not going to war is just as much of a morally ominous decision as going to war, and both decisions entail a toleration of injustice: Not going to war involves a passive toleration of injustice, while going to war will entail an active toleration of injustice—active, because all wars inevitably inflict injustice, even when waged justly; for wars inevitably bring undeserved suffering in their wake, to both soldier and civilian.The question then becomes solely which injustices to inflict, and which to endure—precisely the kind of question casuistry was invented to answer! And the endurance of injustice can sometimes be sinful, especially when the injustice is done to the neighbor and not to oneself. In that context, Aquinas quotes the famous remark of St. Ambrose:“Whoever does not ward off a blow being visited upon a fellow man, when he can, is at much at fault as the striker” (ST, II–II, q. 60, a. 6, ad 2, quoting Ambrose, De officiis I, 36). One cannot help but suspect that the complete absence of any discussion of casuistry in Veritatis splendor has influenced Vatican foreign policy, but only to make it incoherent. In the debate leading up to Gulf War II the Vatican Secretary of State, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, said that nowadays only wars mandated by the United Nations could be considered legitimate.Yet the Pope opposed Gulf War I, which had such a mandate. But then, when the United Nations could not intervene in Bosnia in the first Clinton administration (because Russia supported Serbia and would have vetoed any authorization to send in U.N. troops to Yugoslavia), the Pope insisted that humanitarian intervention was a moral requirement. Lurking behind this incoherence, I hold, is precisely the same airbrushing away of the whole tradition on casuistical reasoning that marks Father Cessario’s book (and Alasdair MacIntyre’s history and genealogy of ethics in his books, too). Not many commentators of the Pope have noticed this, but when they do, the criticism they level can be quite hard to answer. For example, in a mostly appreciative (and entirely brilliant) analysis of the Book Symposium 199 social teaching of this pontiff, Damon Linker makes the following points, which are both subtle and acute enough to bear quoting in full: That the pope refuses to entertain the possibility that the individual as well as collective good can sometimes be brought about by means that, viewed in isolation, appear to be morally suspect is a sign of a larger problem in his political thought. Let’s call it a lack of appreciation for the role of moral ambivalence in politics.Although the impulse to avoid Machiavellianism—the view that the end justifies the means—is a decent one, it is easy to take this aversion too far, to blind oneself to the fact that Machiavellian considerations aren’t always altogether evil. When, for example, they alert us to the harsh fact that being a force for good in the world occasionally requires a willingness to transgress the bounds of ordinary decency, Machiavellian insights can actually contribute to realizing that good. The ends don’t always justify the means, but they sometimes do. Nowhere are the problematic consequences of John Paul’s refusal to accept this fact more apparent than in his comments on foreign affairs. Embracing a view that comes perilously close to pacifism, he condemns virtually all uses of military force, including the “tragic war in the Persian Gulf.” Going further, he also denounces the “insane arms race” that was precipitated by the Cold War, thereby refusing to acknowledge the role it played in bringing down the Soviet Union. And as for those nations that have “an unacceptably exaggerated concern for security,” the pope has nothing but contempt, since, in his view, they are the primary obstacle to bringing about a situation in which all the nations of the world are “united [in] cooperation . . . for the common good of the human race.” The problem with these views is not that they are based on a faulty assessment of the character of warfare. After all, who among us would deny that war is an evil—that, especially in the modern age, it “destroys the lives of innocent people, teaches how to kill, throws into upheaval even the lives of those who do the killing and leaves behind a trail of resentment and hatred”? But, at the same time, we are also entitled to ask if it is really true that warfare always “makes it more difficult to find a just solution of the very problems which provoked the war [in the first place].” History—and above all the bloody history of the twentieth century—proves otherwise. It is a sad fact—but a fact nevertheless—that from time to time war is necessary, and that it can even further the cause of justice every once in a while, despite the orphans and widows it leaves in its wake. In proposing a political theory that fails to take account of this aspect of political life, the pope ends up in the same moral quandary as Kofi Annan, who advocates “humanitarian intervention” in the atrocities of the world while lacking the resources and the resolve to take brutal and decisive action—the only things that could make a real difference. 200 Book Symposium John Paul’s view can hardly be said to lack foundation. Here, however, his philosophy and his religious faith collide, and where other religious thinkers have sought to distinguish between just and unjust wars, John Paul chooses to defer to the straightforward meaning of Jesus’s words. As a statement of absolute moral purity, for instance, the Sermon on the Mount is unrivaled; it thus justly commands our respect and admiration. But as a proposal for political practice, it is a recipe for disaster. We might very well be moved by hearing that we ought to “love our enemies,” but what if our enemy is Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao, or the Khmer Rouge, or machete-wielding thugs in Somalia or Sierra Leone? What if “turning the other cheek” means allowing evil to triumph in the world and the cause of human decency to be vanquished? What if acting as submissively as the “lilies of the field” leads to the victory of intolerant ideologies that would brutally stamp out freedom, as it surely would have if the West had laid down its arms in 1939, 1945, 1962, or 1981? The craving for consistency might lead us to think that “no man can serve two masters”—both “God and mammon”—but is it not our fate in this life to have to do just that? In following Christ’s most stringent teachings to the letter, John Paul ends up espousing a view that apparently would require him, as well as all truly righteous Christians, to resist some future tyrant seeking to wipe Christianity from the face of the Earth with no more than prayer and passive resistance. One wonders if this would be sufficient. The historical record suggests it would not. None of these concerns should be taken as reason to call into question the overall depth and profundity of John Paul’s intellectual contribution to our times. Like all genuine philosophers, his arguments and ideas are worth more as catalysts for independent thinking than as frozen and flawless creeds that must be swallowed whole or not at all. But John Paul’s work is important for more than just the views he articulates on this or that subject. In an age when original, comprehensive reflection on the human condition and the political situation of mankind has all but died out, the pope’s voluminous writings are also a reminder of the greatness of which the human mind is capable when it sets itself to the task of understanding. For this as well as the considerable wisdom contained in those writings, Pope John Paul II deserves to be judged among the most remarkable minds of the twentieth century.20 Nor is just war the only case where casuistry is required by the situation.21 There can be no doubt that liberal moralism frequently appeals to the 20 Damon Linker, “John Paul II, Intellectual,” Policy Review 103 (October 2000), available online at: www.policyreview.org/oct00/Linker.html. Only the most meretricious would call this brilliant analysis “dissent.” 21 I will leave aside the question of capital punishment here, since the laws pertaining to the death penalty vary in the countries of the world too widely to justify Book Symposium 201 (alleged) purity of someone’s intentions to mitigate, if not entirely absolve, a person from the wrong deed he or she has committed, as when appeal is made to economic hardship to “justify” or at least “explain away” abortion. Father Cessario quotes effectively from Pascal’s Provincial Letters attacking the position of some Jesuit moralists of his day who held that to be culpable a person had to be informed completely of the sinful nature of the acts and advert to that wrongness in the acting of doing the deed. A position easy to satirize, to be sure, and we are not surprised that Pascal rises to the challenge brilliantly: Blessings on your head, Father, for justifying people in this way! Others teach how to cure souls by painful austerities, but you show that the souls which one would have believed to be the most desperately ill are in the best of health.What an excellent path to happiness in this world and the next! I had always thought that the less one thought of God, the more sinful one was. But, from what I can see, once one has managed to stop thinking of Him altogether, the purity of one’s future conduct becomes assured. Let us have none of these half-sinners, with some love of virtue; they will all be damned. But as for these avowed sinners, hardened comment in this review. But one should note that in Evangelium vitae the Pope did not say, as he did of slavery and torture, that the death penalty was per se malum, only that social circumstances have evolved to the point where capital punishment is no longer necessary. In other words, practical not principled reasons dictate the reason for advocating abolition of the death penalty—a position which must reintroduce, willy-nilly, casuistical norms. Moreover, the Holy Father’s position brings with it a whole series of questions not at all addressed in the encyclical, such as: What are these circumstances that have now rendered capital punishment moot? Do these conditions prevail only in Europe, or everywhere? Can the situation ever change so that capital punishment once again becomes necessary? If so, what would those changes be? And who decides: a government, its people, the pope of the time? And assuming a country does reinstate the deathpenalty, would the Vatican have to approve of that step before it could be judged, once again, moral? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly leaves the decision to go to war up to civil authorities (the position of the Vatican against Gulf War I and II to the contrary notwithstanding). Will this also hold true of capital punishment? Nor, come to think of it, is the situation of torture as self-evident as it seems. Surely, torture, when defined as the deliberate infliction of intolerable pain, either to punish or to elicit information, is inherently wrong. But what counts as torture in that sense? And does the definition of “intolerable” vary with the information being sought? If one can ward off a terrorist attack by getting timely information, how much pain can be inflicted to force out the information? Sleep deprivation? Threats of pain? Recorded screams next door? None of the questions can be answered using self-evident principles, precisely because they conflict. See Mark Bowden,“The Dark Art of Interrogation,” The Atlantic Monthly 292 (October 2003): 51–76, for a nuanced examination of this difficult question. 202 Book Symposium sinners, unadulterated, complete and absolute sinners, hell cannot hold them; they have cheated the devil by surrendering to him.22 Very clever, that; but as with all of the Provincial Letters, too clever by half. What? Is intention to count for nothing? Consider the following cases:A man otherwise in good health (or so he thinks) has a heart attack or stroke behind the wheel, falls unconscious and slams his car into a mother crossing the street with her baby in a stroller, killing both mother and child; two underage teenagers get drunk and drive home around midnight at 80 miles an hour and plow into a car occupied by four college students, killing two and permanently injuring the other two; a hit-man is hired by the Mafia to kill a man, which he does by running him down with his automobile, along with some hapless bystanders. All three events result in multiple vehicular deaths; all are equally tragic to the loved ones left behind; and all are equally catastrophic to the victims. But the law makes a distinction in all three cases, for the same reason that moral reasoning instinctively does: because each event must be evaluated according to the intentions of the respective drivers. Just as the law regularly distinguishes between vehicular manslaughter, vehicular homicide, second-degree murder, and first-degree murder, all according to the intention and state of mind of the perpetrator, so too must the moral philosopher and theologian distinguish deeds, at least in part, by the intentionality of the perpetrator of those deeds, just as a judge does come sentencing time.23 But to say that circumstances alter moral evaluation on a case-by-case basis sounds like situation ethics, where, in its most extreme versions, only intention counts: provided one merely is a “loving person” at the time, the deed is by that fact alone moral. Such a position is almost laughably absurd, and can be easily enough refuted. A guard at a concentration camp can hardly be absolved because he loves his family and “needs the job.”24 But 22 Blaise Pascal, Provincial Letters (Letter IV), trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Book, 1967), 65; cited in Cessario at 186. 23 One notes here that the Council of Trent described the role of the confessor as judge in Session 14 (25 November 1551), Chapter 6:“. . . sed ad instar actus judicalis, quo ab ipso velut a judice sententia pronunciatur” (DS 1685). Father Cessario quotes the line (239), but he clearly doesn’t like it: “the metaphor by itself risks a distorted image of the purpose of the sacrament in the Christian moral life” (239–40). 24 Make no mistake about it—the dilemma inherent in casuistry is real, as its history so embarrassingly shows. In other words, “quandary ethics” finds itself in a quandary of it own: On the one hand, moral norms are real (saddles that slip off when the jockey mounts the horse are objectively bad, no matter what the postmodernists might say); but when these absolute norms are applied to concrete Book Symposium 203 even there, situations do affect moral guilt. I am thinking here of Bernhard Schlenk’s minor masterpiece of a best-selling novel The Reader, about a teenage girl in Nazi Germany who signs up for guard-duty at a concentration camp and whose prisoners are engulfed in flames at the end of the war because the guards locked them inside a church, which is then set afire. In the seventies, the crime comes to light, and she and the other guards are put on trial. About midway through the process, the woman in question adopts a defense strategy that allows the others to be acquitted, but she is convicted—for reasons utterly unrelated to her behavior and even though the others were the ones responsible. In prison she then begins to read (hence the title of the novel) everything she can on the Holocaust and in that way comes to see how the collective guilt of her nation has become, in a way legitimately, her own.The narrator of the novel happened to be a law student during her trial and is assigned by one of his professors to attend the proceedings. But because, by a coincidence, he had known her when he was growing up in the sixties in Berlin, only he knows what really drove her to take the job during the war, and what drove her to her selfdefeating defense at the trial (to give the reason here would be to give away the plot, which bears certain formal resemblances to a police procedural). My point here is simply this: that the insight a novelist working at the height of his powers can provide of a situation often far exceeds even the best of moral theologians. In that regard, I must say that reading moral theology and philosophy is often irksome to me. On both right and left (to use the conventional and tediously shopworn terms), one gets the feeling one is reading moral analysis done by a Turing Machine. Don’t these people ever read novels, I frequently ask? Take Somerset Maugham’s aptly titled novel Of Human Bondage (a phrase taken from Spinoza’s Ethics), about a medical student with a clubfoot, a wound that crippled not only his leg but his psyche, a wound that caused havoc on his life and quite vitiated all attempts to love others, especially women. Or Sophocles’s tragedy Philoctetes, about the attempt of Odysseus to get Neoptolemus to lie to Philoctetes, the owner of a sacred bow that infallibly hits its every target, which the Greeks need in the closing year of the Trojan War as their situations (perhaps the squire didn’t fasten the saddle on the horse properly), the absoluteness of the norms seems to get bleached away of its absoluteness, which introduces moral relativism, leading to the contemporary chaos we know so well: suicide bombers, “holy war” waged with Islamic atomic weaponry, reluctance to call even the most bizarre behavior wrong (“don’t lay your value trips on me, man”), contemporary drug culture, Columbia guerillas lobbing rockets into a church killing 117 people, rampant pornography, sleaze everywhere. A quandary of its own, one might say. 204 Book Symposium “secret weapon” that would alone guarantee victory.25 Or E. M. Forster’s Howards End, about the damage that can be wreaked on lives precisely by the efforts of others to do good: Two young women of wealthy parents decide to “adopt” a working-class man in London and give him the aesthetic education he always lacked; but their efforts come crashing down on them and him (literally) when he dies by accidentally tipping over a bookcase upon himself. The last case brings up the final dilemma one rarely finds treated in most works of moral theology or philosophy: the realization that life is tragic and that best efforts to be moral often backfire. Odd how so many of our best moral theologians continue to skirt around Nietzsche, for whatever the massive incoherence of his own moral prescriptions, he at least foresaw the central dilemma of the twentieth century—that the more humanitarian our values, the more monstrous world politics would become: “Then the concept of politics will be completely dissolved in a war between spirits, all authority structures of the old society will be blown into the air—one and all, they rest upon a lie; there will be wars the likes of which have never been before on earth. From my time onward earth will see Great Politics.”26 Sophocles, William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoevsky, George Eliot, Somerset Maugham:They all know that human life is constituted in its warp and woof by an endless series of dilemmas. Since human history has done nothing else but verify their art, it is long past time for moral theologians N&V and philosophers to learn—and teach—the same lesson as well.27 25 When Philoctetes finally realizes what has happened to him, duped for the second time (the first time was when Odysseus abandoned him on the island of Lemnos— a way-station on the way to the Trojan War—after a serpent bit him in the foot, causing in incurable fester), he bitterly accuses Neoptolemus of betraying him to which the latter replies,“I cannot [give back the bow].There’s a cause, a plan, big moves. And I am a part of them. I’m under orders.” Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes (New York:The Noonday Press, 1991), 53. But far from “excusing” Philoctetes, the playwright makes clear the cost of his perfidy when Neoptolemus accuses Odysseus in these terms: “This boy. He’s your accomplice but he was my friend.With you he does what he is told, with me he did what his nature told him. I made him free, you only fouled him up. Look at him there, he can’t look me in the eye, he knows he’s contaminated. My body may be corrupting, but with him it is the mind” (56). The casuistry involved in lying during wartime has never received better treatment than here. 26 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, in Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Studentenausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzimo Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988), 6:365. 27 Small portions of this review-essay appeared in The Bridge (Spring 2003), used by permission. Book Symposium 205 An “Introduction” O LIVER O’D ONOVAN Oxford University Oxford, England W HAT KIND of help is promised by an “introduction”? It may be an induction, which will steer us step by step into the practice of Christian deliberation about what we are to do, exploring the goods that are open to pursue—ecological, domestic, political, and so on—and directing us to the authoritative guidance that has been given us.Alternatively, it may be a systematizing reflection on this deliberative practice, an introduction in the sense of a conceptual survey, marshalling and explaining its recurrent categories and the forms of its practical logic. And there is a third possibility, which is that the “introduction” is less an Einführung than a Grundlegung. That will take reflection right back behind the practice to its presuppositions, to the truths about God, mankind and salvation that make it conceivable. Romanus Cessario, though with significant gestures toward the second of these paths, has largely followed the third. His introduction presents a sophisticated set of claims (which one would be wise not to try out on beginners!) about how moral deliberation is grounded in theological truths. A prominent concern is the unity of sacra doctrina, on which he advances the strong thesis (echoing, in Protestant ears, Barth’s “Ethics is dogmatics, dogmatics ethics”) that “only the purposes of academic organization or pedagogy require drawing a distinction between moral and dogmatic theology” (17).This is what Cessario means by championing “realism,” for “Christian theology is synonymous with Christian realism” (6). It is a legitimate emphasis—one, indeed, on which I have tried to insist myself. It requires some care, however, over the precise shape of the foundation that is to support the building. For Cessario this shape is given in the Thomist dynamic of nature and grace, which provides the outline of a teleological moral psychology.The active human mind, made in the image of God, pursues its own beatitude with the assistance of the Holy Spirit.The role of the Spirit is patent of an extensive Trinitarian elaboration, and Cessario will actually say that “the regulative pattern for all human conduct ultimately lies within the divine Trinity” (56). In this way he makes good a double boast, to stay closely within the Thomist paradigm, on the one hand, and to be associated with the evangelical renewal of moral theology, on the other. For me, however, the question is raised whether nature and grace, even when scripted in this Trinitarian way, form too narrow a dogmatic 206 Book Symposium platform to support Christian moral deliberation. A Trinity without an economy will not yield much in the way of a Christology.Though regularly referred to as “the Incarnate Christ,” it is not clear to me why the Second Person of the Trinity needs to be incarnate to do any of the work Cessario has in mind for him, which is largely to be present as revealer to the contemporary believer. The historical incarnation, which is, after all, the only incarnation worth talking about, is largely absent from moral theology as Cessario conceives it. He has little time, for example, for the suggestion that “the incarnate Son offers an example of good behaviour for his followers to imitate” (57). And there is not much greater interest in his role as moral teacher. And where is the creation, apart from the human personality of the agent? The Lutheran theologian Oswald Bayer once commented on the transcendentalist turn in postconciliar Roman Catholic moral theology that “the gospel, as a gift, and God who comes to us in the giving word are reduced to being conditions for the possibility of human freedom.”1 A similar tendency is evidenced in the rather different approach of Cessario. “Freedom,” to be sure, he rightly understands as more than a negative notion: not only the nonviolation of the human by the divine helper, but the fulfilment of the human in its perfection.Yet consider such a statement as the following: “[T]he realist moral theologian prefers to interpret natural law precepts as inclinations” (91). Here the whole order of creation seems to fold up into the created impulses of the “human voluntary.”The “human voluntary,” so called to escape certain voluntarist psychological simplifications, is something of a hero in Cessario’s narrative. And he does not shy away from the modern habit of referring to its exercise as “choices.” And so the determined defense of teleology, which is such a welcome feature in the work, remains one-legged, never advancing beyond the anthropological. “The Church still asks that moral theologians still take full account of the design and ends of human nature” (69), we are told, in reproof of “the Protestant Reform”; but does the Church, both Cessario’s and mine (Anglican), not ask us also to take account of the design and ends of the created world? A world that existed essentially as a vehicle for the pursuit of human perfection would be a world that demanded no particular attention or respect on our part. But if it is a destined world that we act into, a world with its own perfection promised by God and not merely the crown of our voluntariety, then we shall require a moral realism of a tougher stamp. Let us turn the sentence about 1 Freiheit als Antwort (Tübingen: Mohr, 1993), 232. Book Symposium 207 natural law and inclinations inside out, as follows:“Because of the essential dependence of virtue upon created order, the realist moral theologian insists on interpreting inclinations as the indicators of natural law precepts.” That would be to find the test of our inclinations in a real world, in forms of created order that afforded external conditions and terms for our actions. Such a realism would supply what is most startlingly absent from this introduction, which is a serious account of moral laws, in all their complexity, specificity and difficulty. (Here we remember that Cessario first came before the public as a virtue-theorist.) Laws may indeed be manifestations of created teleology, as he tells us; but theirs is the teleology of the other created being, a rational order in which we do not directly participate through our own being, but only as we learn to recognize and obey what God has decreed apart from us. I find little appreciation here of how our actions must be worked at, in obedience to moral laws that reveal the grain of things—not our own grain, that is, but the grain of what God has set before us in the world, human and nonhuman. Cessario’s virtuous agent could seem to float serenely down the stream of human destiny, dipping the paddle of his choice into the waters of the Spirit from time to time with calm and easy regularity. But moral laws direct us to the resistance we constantly encounter—not only the resistance in ourselves, from sin, which is another matter, on which Cessario has helpful things to say, but the resistance presented by the created world, by what we were not expecting to meet there, by all those God-destined beings with which our actions have somehow to come to terms, forging from the encounter a toughly wrought artifact of praise. To find in recent Roman Catholic moral theology some of the things I do not find in Cessario’s Introduction, I have only to turn to the document for which Cessario and I share an equal admiration, Pope John Paul’s Veritatis Splendor. Out of it Cessario has drawn much, but there is much he has passed over. In particular, perhaps, John Paul conceives that moral theology must begin from the existential question by which every human being is beset: “Master, what good must I do . . . ?” It is perhaps significant that Cessario comes to this memorable opening motif of the N&V Encyclical on his closing pages! 208 Book Symposium Response ROMANUS C ESSARIO, OP St. John’s Seminary Brighton, Massachusetts I T HONORS ME that the editors of Nova et Vetera (English) have invited distinguished scholars from the United States and England to comment on my Introduction to Moral Theology. Each of the three commentators has pointed out different lines of theological inquiry that he judges would complement what I have written in Introduction. I am deeply grateful, then, to Professors O’Donovan, Bowlin, and Father Oakes for taking the time to provide this useful service.Their discussions will help those who take up Introduction to comprehend better the elements that I consider necessary to introduce the moral theology of the New Evangelization. It is not my intention to reply exhaustively to each of the interventions printed in this issue of the review. I would, however, like to propose some resources that may prove beneficial to those who may be tempted to think,“Oh yes, why didn’t Father Cessario talk about that. . . .” Professor Oliver O’Donovan questions why I do not dwell more on the imitatio Christi. In fact, as O’Donovan points out, I rather suggest that relying on moral exemplarism of the Christological kind carries with it certain risks. The history of theology instructs that not every example that has been read off the pages of the New Testament faithfully transmits the full truth that Christ himself reveals about godly loving. Still, Professor O’Donovan’s question is well taken. My reply is simple. Roman Catholic practice trusts that saints better than theologians communicate the lessons of the infant, suffering, and glorious Christ.With this in mind, I wrote Perpetual Angelus. As the Saints Pray the Rosary, which comments on some of the important lessons, including moral instruction, that one can learn from the “historical incarnation.” Secondly, Father Edward Oakes of the Society of Jesus wonders why my book appears to contain so little that, to his mind, would be helpful to confessors and penitents. Although he does not say as much, I suspect that Father Oakes would like to ask me, “Where are the opinions about concrete cases . . . ?” To give a fully reasoned account of why I remain skittish about casuistry risks drawing me into discussions that have fueled exchanges, at times heated, between Jesuits and Dominicans since the former came into existence in the sixteenth century.The short response to Father Oakes’s complaint, including how he exemplifies it in a long excursus on just-war theory, resides in the moral and theological virtues. I consider the specifics of these virtues in my Virtues, or the Examined Life. Book Symposium 209 The “Introduction” to this book, which forms part of the AMATECA series of theological textbooks, was written by a New England Jesuit, who reports that St. Ignatius himself learned his moral theology by studying the virtues treated in the secunda pars. It may further console Father Oakes to learn that Dominicans consider that even the perplexus may find direction and perfection by having recourse to the virtuous life, as I explain in my “Epieikeia and the Accomplishment of the Just” in Aquinas and Empowerment: Classical Ethics for Ordinary Lives, ed. G. Simon Harak (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996), pp. 170–205. Thirdly, Professor John Bowlin rightly reminds me that I supply no definition for moral realism. The reason that I do not is the same reason that Aquinas does not define God at the beginning of the Summa theologiae. Recall that the question at I, q. 2, a. 1 asks “An Deus sit,” not “Quid est Deus?” Moral theology concerns what exists, both what God has created and what God has elevated. Christian virtue shapes man to conform to the exigencies both of human nature and divine sonship. Does the Christian life exist? Visit any Church on Sunday. Of course, Professor Bowlin may want to reply,“Sure enough, but among Sunday churchgoers there may be a sinner or two who remain unpersuaded of the preacher’s message.” Further, Professor Bowlin thinks that logic fails me when I try “to locate true virtue from among its semblances” since, he suggests,“this conclusion makes use of true virtue before it is found.”Although I would rather address him in one of the elegant Tulsa sports’ bars to which John Bowlin in the past kindly has invited me, for now I must rest content to speak in this forum: “The Gospel makes one thing evident: God owns it all, reality, grace, and human freedom.” Human nature is ordered toward perfective ends. These ends and their hierarchy are knowable, and such knowledge of the normative hierarchy of ends is the root of right appetite: It is in relation to this natural ordering of ends and appetites that virtue and practical wisdom are identifiable. While such knowledge is natural, this does not render human freedom indefectible. Nonetheless it is God Who orders human persons both naturally and through grace, and this ordering is not vain. Nature does speak clearly, and enables the development of true virtue even in the man whose appetites may here and now persuade him that another course of action would make him happy. I have pointed out this important feature of Aquinas’s moral realism in The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, especially pp. 136–38, where I discuss how God has arranged that man not find himself caught in the putative vicious circle of prudence: “non est necesse in infinitum procedere in virtutibus, quia mensura et regula intellectualis virtutis non est aliquod aliud genus virtutis, sed ipsa res” (ST, I–II, q. 64, 3, ad 2, emphasis added). In other 210 Book Symposium words, res—all that exists—efficaciously points toward the discovery of the full truth about good human conduct. Of course I fully agree with Professor Bowlin that many people continue to make mistakes about what will bring them happiness.That is why Christian moral realism welcomes the Magisterium.To receive infallible instruction about what constitutes good human conduct means that more people will learn moral truth sooner rather than later, and that they will be spared enduring a painful period of trial and error in discovering the res. Let me conclude on this note. I think that the moral realist who cherishes fidelity to the Magisterium will authentically imitate Christ, discover the answers even to the most difficult and potentially perplexing moral questions, and above all, learn at the heart of the Church, as Thérèse of Lisieux so beautifully teaches, everything that a human being needs to know about virtuous loving.The best news is that this approach to discovering what comprises moral realism remains available to even N&V the littlest souls among us (see Mk 10:13–16). Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 1 (2004): 211–36 211 Book Reviews Saint Thomas Aquinas, Volume 2: Spiritual Master by Jean-Pierre Torrell OP, translated by Robert Royal (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), xiv + 422 pp. E VEN THE GREATEST of authors are read through the lenses which we receive from education and cultural background. Once modern theology separated academic reflection from spiritual research, this separation has often been applied to a reading of St. Thomas Aquinas. Recent generations of thinkers have underscored the philosophical, metaphysical, or logical value of St. Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine, but readers who know how to find spiritual nourishment therein have been much more rare, to the point that the words “scholastic” or “Thomist” have sometimes been used to refer to purely formal thought lacking in spiritual impact. Yet such a dichotomy spells the ruin of theology, and deprives spirituality of its essential foundation. Among their many other qualities, the important publications of Fr. Jean-Pierre Torrell have the great merit of helping us to rediscover the unity of the project of Christian wisdom which St. Thomas Aquinas developed. Unless this integral aim is recognized, the reading of the works of St.Thomas is severed from the profound purpose which animates them.This integral conception of wisdom is indispensable to the vocation of the Christian theologian. In the first volume of his introduction to St. Thomas (Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Person and His Works), whose English translation was published in 1996, Jean-Pierre Torrell presented the historical, intellectual, and spiritual portrait of the man who was Friar Thomas.This historical portrait, which has quickly become a classic reference work, was nevertheless only the first leaf of a diptych. In the second volume, Fr. Torrell not only offers a remarkable exposition of the riches of Thomistic spirituality, but also shows the way to an authentic renewal of Thomistic theology and perhaps even to the renewal of theology itself. Here the word “spirituality” should not be understood as referring to a teaching which focuses directly on the rules of concrete human action 212 Book Reviews in all its particular conditions, since, although he wrote extensively on human action and the Christian life, St. Thomas did not compose any treatises on spirituality in the (modern) sense in which the term is most often understood today.The “spirituality” which we find in his writings consists in a knowledge which, while directing action, remains speculative on account of its end and of the generality of the foundations which it establishes: This knowledge is “speculatively practical” (20). On this basis, Fr. Torrell attractively and convincingly reveals the spiritual doctrine contained in the theological works of St.Thomas: in his theological syntheses and his scriptural commentaries, as well as in his other commentaries and his various occasional writings. It is at the heart of Thomas’s theological enterprise that his spiritual teaching is discovered. Of course, such a reading presupposes that theology itself be understood as a theologal school of life on the road leading to the beatific vision (ch. 1). The reading which Fr. Torrell proposes consists in extracting and recognizing the value of the spirituality “implicit” in the theological works of Thomas. This book constitutes a veritable initiation, an invitation to read St. Thomas: In each section, the reader can sample numerous texts which are quoted abundantly and introduced with precision but simplicity, avoiding superfluous technicality (the notes, which refer the reader to abundant research sources, make it easy to pursue the ideas further).This book introduces us to numerous and often little-known passages drawn from St. Thomas’s commentaries on Holy Scripture, renewing our approach to Thomistic theology. The major themes of his spiritual doctrine, divided up into fifteen chapters, are grouped into two principal sections: “A Trinitarian Spirituality” (Part I), and “Man in the World and Before God” (Part II). It is hardly possible to summarize such a rich work, but, as an incentive to reading it, we should mention the deeply Trinitarian vein in Thomas’s spirituality, which Fr. Torrell highlights beautifully in the chapters consecrated to the central place of the Son (ch. V and VI: “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” “The Image of the First-Born Son”) and of the Holy Spirit (ch.VII–IX: “To Speak of the Holy Spirit,” “The Heart of the Church,” “The Master of the Interior Life”) in the life of believers. It is a commonplace today to say that the medieval West had forgotten the Holy Spirit and neglected Trinitarian faith: yet exactly the contrary must be affirmed about St. Thomas. The book also highlights the important place in Thomas’s thought occupied by a theme dear to the Eastern Fathers: the “divinization” of man, that is, his conformation to God, to the image of the Son, through the grace of the Holy Spirit. In following the path proposed by Fr.Torrell, one can Book Reviews 213 therefore perceive that, for Thomas, the realism of an “objective” spirituality completely centered on the Triune God is inseparable from a deeply positive outlook on the substance of the created world, on the dignity of secular activities, and on the dignity of the human person (ch. XIII: “The Most Noble Thing in the World”), leading to an authentic spirituality of communion. This is no ordinary book; it is not merely one more work of theology or spirituality among others. Rather, Fr. Torrell successfully proposes a profound rediscovery: St. Thomas “is not only a thinker and a master of thinking, but a master of living” (21).The consequences of this rediscovery are of the highest importance, as much for theology as for spirituality. It must be emphasized that we are not dealing here with a spiritual doctrine developed alongside theological research, but with a profound spirituality which we discover at the very heart of St. Thomas’s theology. This theology truly embodies a spiritual or mystical dimension. It is not called spiritual or mystical because it rationalistically separates theology from spirituality, as was done at the end of the middle ages and in the course of modern times. Rather, St.Thomas’s theology is mystical because it is grounded in a properly speculative (that is, contemplative) approach to the mystery of the Trinity and of the Incarnate Word of God. N&V Gilles Emery, OP University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland Knowing the Love of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas by Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 146 pp. I N MOST LIBRARIES the works of Thomas Aquinas are classified with the philosophy books. This classification strikes me as a mistake because St. Thomas would undoubtedly have considered himself to be above all else a theologian. The philosophers seem to have captured the literature on St. Thomas, perhaps because Leo XIII in his encyclical Aeterni Patris directed that philosophy be taught in Catholic institutions according to the spirit and method of Thomas Aquinas. At any event, it is a fortunate development of our day that theologians are beginning to reclaim the greatest representative of their discipline. Several recent studies of the Angelic Doctor have concentrated on his theology. In accordance with this trend it is fitting to have a brief new introduction designed to initiate students into the sacred doctrine of the Doctor communis. 214 Book Reviews Knowing the Love of Christ is a compact summary, following in its main lines the order of the Summa theologiae. Beginning with the triune God, it passes through creation, salvation history, and the supreme gift of the Incarnation, which sets mankind on its course of return, via the Church and the sacraments, to the eternal vision of the triune God.This overview has the great advantages of emphasizing the mystery of the triune God as the beginning and end of all reality, and of exhibiting Christ as the center of the “economy” whereby God acts in history. The present survey can be useful not only to beginners but to scholars already familiar with St. Thomas. Many of us concentrate so much on individual questions that we fail to see the woods for the trees. St. Thomas had his own methodological reasons for the order he adopted in the Summa, but his preferred order has some disadvantages. Postponing Christ and the Church to the third and last part of the work, he fails to accent the rootedness of grace and of the Christian life in Christ, the Church, and the sacraments.The present abridgement in some respects alleviates this difficulty. Departing from the exact order of the Summa, the authors combine the natural and supernatural virtues in a single chapter. After treating the cardinal virtues, they pass immediately to the infused and theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Another departure from the order of St.Thomas in this book is the inclusion of some Christological doctrine in the chapter dealing with the New Law and grace. Gratifyingly also, the book concludes with heaven rather than, as the Supplementum does, with hell and purgatory. The present study, while it concentrates on the systematic teaching of the Angelic Doctor, gives considerable attention to his arguments from Holy Scripture. This, likewise, is a distinct merit of the book. Modern readers, thinking of St.Thomas primarily as a philosopher, fail to reckon sufficiently with his reverence for the word of God. Like other mediaeval theologians, he considered that sacred doctrine could draw apodictic arguments only from the word of God in the canonical Scriptures, interpreted according to the literal sense (ST, I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2; I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 1). Helpful explanations are provided in this book for technical terms such as efficient, final, and exemplary cause. In some cases the authors substitute less technical terms that will be more accessible to the average reader. To avoid excessive dryness, they introduce literary references to Dante, Kierkegaard,Walker Percy, and others. The authors have undertaken a difficult task. In presenting the Summa as a whole (together with the Supplementum), they have tried to omit as little as possible. As a result, the text is densely packed and requires close Book Reviews 215 and unremitting attention. It does not lend itself to casual reading. Even so, the book often fails to indicate in sufficient detail the argumentation by which St.Thomas reaches his conclusions. In this respect it is less satisfactory than somewhat longer books, for example, the concise translation of the Summa theologiae edited by Timothy McDermott, or even St. Thomas’s own Compendium theologiae. But for readers looking for a readable digest hardly exceeding a hundred pages, and using less forbidding terminology, this may well be the best book to use. An outline of this sort has genuine value. It can serve as a preview for beginners, lest they get lost in the details and fail to see the major lines of the Thomistic synthesis. It can help veterans to reflect on the rationale that underlies the structure of the Summa theologiae. It can help the philosopher to situate the metaphysics of the Angelic Doctor within the larger framework of his sacred doctrine. For two reasons, I would recommend that this book, useful though it be, should not be used as the sole introduction. In the first place, this summary gives no indication of the historical context in which St. Thomas wrote. For an adequate appreciation of his work, one would benefit from some awareness of the situation of the papacy in the middle of the thirteenth century, the evangelical revival led by the mendicant orders, and the problems raised by the popularity of Aristotle—and Averroistic interpretations of Aristotle—in the universities.The student might profitably be introduced to the variety of literary forms used by St. Thomas—not only his Summas, but also his quaestiones disputatae, his commentaries on Aristotle, Holy Scripture, and other classic texts. The doctrinal questions of the Summa theologiae take on new life when one reads his great eucharistic hymns and learns of his ardent devotion to the Cross. A work such as Marie-Dominique Chenu’s Toward Understanding Saint Thomas would be a suitable supplement to the book under review. Secondly, I would regret it if the student were given only the paraphrases in the present work without reading the original, at least in translation. Exposure to the very words of the Angelic Doctor communicates a living sense of his mind and spirit. His technical terms, arid and forbidding as they may be, have a precision that no paraphrase can match.The almost incredible accuracy and synthetic power of St. Thomas, in my opinion, sometimes shine forth in his answers to objections. A brief sentence in an ad tertium can transmit a world of wisdom.The professor using this survey would do well to assign selected texts to illustrate how St.Thomas handles particular questions. Neither of these two suggestions is intended as a negative criticism of the work under review. I mean only to indicate ways in which, I believe, 216 Book Reviews this valuable introduction could be best serve the purposes for which it N&V is evidently intended. Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ Fordham University Bronx, New York Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists by John F. X. Knasas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), xxvi + 340 p. I NSPIRED BY THE encyclical Fides et Ratio in which John Paul II, as in previous writings, emphasizes the value of a metaphysics based on the act of being (actus essendi), John F. X. Knasas intends to “defend the continued vitality of the way of thinking called Existential Thomism found in the writings of Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson and Joseph Owens” (xvii). Nevertheless, this study is not a mere repetition of their insights, but offers his own synthesis based on a series of previously published articles. At the same time it can be regarded as a sequel to his Preface to Thomistic Metaphysics. Chapter 1 (“Whither the Neo-Thomist Revival?”) divides Thomism after Aeterni Patris (1879) into two major currents: Neo-Thomism as the main pre-Vatican II current and Transcendental Thomism, the “dark horse candidate of the larger Thomistic Revival” (18).The chapter serves as an historical introduction as well as a framework or background for the following discussions. “Aristotelian Thomism” (Weisheipl,Wallace, et al.) and “Existential Thomism,” the two schools of interpretation within Neo-Thomism, share characteristics such as a posteriori reasoning, abstraction of commonalities, analogical concepts, the transcendentals, and the existence (de jure) of a single fundamental science of the real as the foundation for theology. Aristotelian Thomism regards the formal act of changeable hylomorphic substance as the most fundamental understanding of being, while Existential Thomism stresses the importance of the existential act as a deeper level of understanding how a substance is existing.Transcendental Thomism, initiated by J. Maréchal and based on an a apriori intellectual dynamism, attracted post-Vatican II philosophers and theologians, who faulted Neo-Thomism for a naive realism, an ahistorical and abstract metaphysics distanced from the God of Christian belief, and, as a consequence, a separation of nature and grace.The author defends Neo-Thomism against the charge of alleged weaknesses. In Chapter 2 (“Sensation as the Source of Science”) Knasas insists that metaphysics cannot start with the recognition that being is something separate from matter and motion.The subject of metaphysics is rather the Book Reviews 217 product of abstraction (abstraction totius, according to his reading of chapters 2 and 3 of De Ente et Essentia). He therefore opposes Transcendental Thomism, which argues for an a priori dynamism of the human intellect that reveals God as the condition for our consciousness of things. Since this a posteriori approach has been criticized since Descartes’ dream possibility, Chapter 3 (“Sensation: The Invasion of the Real”) defends Aquinas’s immediate realism by arguing that his understanding of knowledge as a formal reception of form (against the Cartesian notion of two-sided ideas) reveals a level of awareness in which the object is simply something real. At a further level of reflection one needs to validate the objectivity of one’s concepts, especially the vague meaning of being as “something real.” Again, the background of Chapter 4 (“The Objectivity of the Notion of Being”) is provided by Transcendental Thomists like Maréchal and Rahner who argue that Aquinas validates the objectivity of concepts using the method of retorsion. On the basis of an examination of the texts of Aquinas being used to substantiate this claim, Knasas critiques both the position of Transcendental Thomism and Maritain’s critical realism. The following chapter (“The Richness of the Ratio Entis”) suggests that analogy, understood as “sameness-within-difference,” is the best tool to deal intellectually with reality. Knasas here argues against Ralph McInerny’s view that analogy is only a logical doctrine. Rather, for Knasas analogical predication has a metaphysical basis. Knasas then turns to the view, articulated by J.-M. Le Blond and numerous others, that human concepts remain asymptotic to reality. He argues that this view fails to distinguish between “precisive” and “nonprecisive” abstraction as developed in Chapter 2. Chapter 6 (“Actus Essendi”) engages the actus essendi of a thing, relying on Joseph Owens’s method of distinguishing between the second operation of the intellect that grasps the esse of a thing and the activity of forming propositions. In the view of this reviewer, however, Knasas insufficiently distinguishes between esse as actual existence and esse as the intrinsic act of being (actus essendi). In Chapter 7 (“Esse Subsistens”), drawing upon his Preface to Metaphysics, Knasas develops an argument for God’s existence based on the fourth chapter of De Ente et Essentia. Against Gilson’s apparent rejection of the cogency of the argument because of its theological suppositions, Knasas argues with Owens that this rejection does not in principle imply that for Gilson the actus essendi is philosophically unknowable or that a metaphysical proof of God would be impossible. He therefore disagrees also with Armand Maurer who has argued that Chapter 4 only contains 218 Book Reviews a dialectical argumentation. Knasas holds that further knowledge of Esse subsistens is attained by negation from esse commune, that is, by removing “its capacity for addition in individual esses” (244.). For Knasas, only at this stage does the negative judgment of separation play a role, in contrast with the majority of Thomistic scholars who argue that the start of metaphysics presupposes prior knowledge of an immaterial being or at least knowledge of something “negatively immaterial,” that is, something which need not to be found in matter (cf. John F. Wippel). Chapter 8 applies these insights to philosophical anthropology and ethics, in critical dialogue with the work of Germain Grisez. Knasas asks how the idea of obligation arises from the ratio boni expressed in the first principle of practical reasoning (ST, I–II, q. 94, a. 2). He argues that there exists an order between the ratio entis and the ratio boni. In his words:“The ratio boni is the ratio entis in the wake of the realization that as a transcendental, the ratio entis contains anything that one might desire. (257). Because human being is not only the “willer” of the good but also the “intellector” of the good, he is a special instance of that good and therefore calls for respect. In other words, the subject of the first principle of practical reasoning is not the idea of the good in itself but the particular human instance. In Knasas’s metaphysical interpretation therefore the natural inclinations do not mark an initial consideration of human nature but rather are “further confrontations of practical reason with humans as willers of the ratio boni” (264). “In other words, the inclinations form in the wake of the apprehension of goods, the apprehension of goods does not form in the wake of the natural inclinations” (idem). I find it difficult, however, to reconcile this assertion with Aquinas’s statement in the same article that “omnia illa ad quae homo habet naturalem inclinationem, ratio naturaliter apprehendit ut bona, et per consequens ut opere prosequenda,” which clearly manifests the anthropological foundation for the apprehension of the goods, as well as the order between inclinations, goods, and obligation. Finally, in Chapter 9 (“A Philosophical Estimate of the TwentiethCentury Thomist Revival”), he compares the insights of chapter 2 through 7 with the alleged deficiencies of Neo-Thomism mentioned in Chapter 1, each time reaching the conclusion that Neo-Thomism refutes these accusations. My remark on the thesis of chapter 8 refers us back to the fundamental and controversial problem regarding the relationship between philosophy of nature and Knasas’s metaphysics and more in particular to the question how it is able to reconcile Thomas’s understanding of nature as essence ordered towards operation with its preeminence of existence or Book Reviews 219 —as some would say—with the reduction of existence to a flux. These objections would have to be considered by way of a historical presentation of Aquinas’s metaphysics like the recent book by John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, to which Knasas only once in a footnote on page 68 refers. Although on several occasions Knasas refers to his interpretation as a historical presentation, corroborated by Aquinas’s texts (see for example his statement that the “use of separation to produce the subject of science of metaphysics is speculatively Thomistic,” 38), many critics of the GilsonOwens line are not included in his discussions. The question remains therefore how Existential Thomism can reconcile its preeminence of existence or—as some would say—its reduction of existence to a flux with Aquinas’s understanding of nature as essence ordered towards operation. More attention to such philosophers would have strengthened his main thesis that a historically accurate and philosophically sound Neo-Thomism can address the accusations made by Transcendental Thomism. Nonetheless, Knasas’s book offers the definitive refutation of the claim that the epistemological and ontological foundations of Transcendental Thomism have a textual support in Aquinas, and simultaneously provides powerful N&V philosophical arguments in defense of Thomistic realism. Jörgen Vijgen Major Seminary Willibrordhuis Vogelenzang,The Netherlands The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism by David I. Kertzer (New York: Knopf, 2001), 368 pp. OVER THE PAST few years, Catholic-Jewish relations and the role of the popes in European anti-Semitism have been the subject of what seems like innumerable books. Most of these anti-papal diatribes—by John Cornwall, Garry Wills, and others—have focused their attacks on the alleged silence during the Holocaust of Pius XII, who has been vilified as “Hitler’s Pope.” In The Popes Against the Jews, however, the Brown University historian David Kertzer skips over Pius XII to attack the entire modern papacy from 1814 to 1939. That some popes, both medieval and modern, were anti-Jewish is a matter of historical fact.The most notorious papal action in modern times was the 1858 kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, a six-year-old Jewish boy in the papal state of Bologna, about which Kertzer, a specialist in nineteenth-century Italian history, wrote a book in 1997. On the instructions 220 Book Reviews of Pope Pius IX, Edgardo was forcibly removed from his parents’ home after one of the Mortaras’ Catholic servants told authorities about secretly baptizing the boy. As it happens, no papal action in modern times precipitated as widespread and outraged a public reaction, even among Catholics, as did the Mortara kidnapping, a point which Kertzer himself documented in his earlier book. But what is more to the point—and contrary to the underlying thesis of Kertzer’s new volume—Pius IX’s action in the Mortara case was tragically unique, rather than historically representative of the papacy. Beginning during the fourteenth century, a tradition of papal support for the Jews of Europe began to emerge. Kertzer and other recent papal critics have largely missed this “philo-Semitic” tradition. By portraying Catholic-Jewish relations as a history of the popes against the Jews, alleging that the papacy has played a disproportionate role in the rise of modern anti-Semitism, Kertzer ignores the fact that during periods of intensified anti-Semitic persecutions several popes served as protectors of Jewry—especially of the Jews of Rome—upholding their Jewish right to worship freely in their synagogues and publicly defending Jews against a host of anti-Semitic allegations. Thus, for example, Kertzer devotes three chapters to the horrifying allegation that, during the Passover holiday, Jews engaged in the ritual murder of Christian children, to use their blood in the baking of the unleavened bread eaten at the Passover meal.Yet he makes little mention of the relevant fact that a succession of popes since the twelfth century (when the accusation of Jewish ritual murder was first made) were vocal in their condemnation of this libel. In 1247 Pope Innocent IV promulgated the first of several papal bulls devoted to refuting the ritual-murder libel. Innocent’s bull set an important precedent that subsequent popes would follow over the centuries. As the historian Marc Saperstein has pointed out, whenever “charges of ritual murder were brought to the attention of popes, they regularly condemned them as baseless and inconsistent with Jewish religious teaching.” In 1758, in response to an appeal from the Jewish community of Poland, Pope Benedict XIV appointed Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli (who would later become Pope Clement XIV) to investigate the ritual-murder accusation. After investigating for more than a year, Cardinal Ganganelli produced a report that exonerated the Jews—a document Cecil Roth, a preeminent scholar of Italian Jewish history, has called “one of the most remarkable, broadminded, and humane documents in the history of the Catholic Church.” This historic report was later cited by Pope Pius X, who repudiated the “infamous fanaticism” of the ritual-murder charge. Indeed, despite Book Reviews 221 Kertzer’s suggestions, the charge of ritual murder was not supported by Pope Pius X, who publicly denounced the accusation in the most famous ritual-murder case of modern times, the 1913 trial of the Russian Jew Mendel Beilis. While Kertzer is correct in arguing that some Catholic priests and newspapers lent their support to the libel, the papacy persistently opposed it. It is this kind of selective use of evidence that is the most annoying feature of The Popes Against the Jews.Time and time again, Kertzer fails to cite or discuss statements and actions that reveal a pope’s public opposition to anti-Semitism or defense of the Jewish people.Thus, for example, he never mentions that Leo XIII spoke out in defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the French Jewish officer accused of treason in 1894, and publicly condemned the anti-Semitic campaign against him—a fact noted by the British historian Owen Chadwick in his definitive A History of the Popes, 1830 –1914 (a volume never quoted by Kertzer).And while Kertzer does acknowledge that in 1892—two years before the Dreyfus Affair began—Leo XIII strongly defended Jews in a widely circulated newspaper interview, he buries it in a footnote and tries to minimize its significance. Kertzer similarly indulges a one-sided and incomplete discussion of Benedict XV, who was more favorably disposed to the Jews than many of his nineteenth-century predecessors. Far from sanctioning anti-Semitism, Benedict XV powerfully condemned it in a 1916 statement issued in response to a petition from the American Jewish Committee that asked the pope to protest the persecution of Polish Jews during World War I. Kertzer’s indictment of Pius XI is equally compromised by his selective citations of the available evidence, as well as by serious errors of fact. Monsignor Achille Ratti, the future Pius XI, enjoyed warm relations with Italian Jewish leaders throughout the early years of his priesthood. And during his tenure as papal nuncio after World War I in Poland, amid Europe’s largest Jewish population, he confronted for the first time the persecution experienced by Europe’s Jews. This firsthand encounter led the future pope—contrary to what Kertzer asserts—to denounce Polish anti-Semitism. Ratti’s disgust with Polish anti-Semitism is amply documented in Sir William Clonmore’s biography, Pope Pius XI and World Peace (yet another volume Kertzer never cites). “Ratti made it quite clear,” notes Clonmore, “that any antiSemitic outbursts would be severely condemned by the Holy See.” Ratti helped the Jewish victims of Polish anti-Semitism in a more tangible way as well: Instructed by Pope Benedict to direct the distribution of Catholic relief in postwar Poland, he gave considerable funds not only to Catholics 222 Book Reviews but also to impoverished Jews who had lost their homes and businesses in the pogroms. From this bad beginning, Kertzer moves to a worse conclusion as he turns to Ratti’s reign as Pius XI. Unmentioned is the fact that as early as November 1931, the chief rabbi of Milan, on a personal visit to the Vatican, thanked the pope for his appeals against anti-Semitism and his continuing support for Italy’s Jews. The Popes Against the Jews devotes astonishingly little attention to Pius XI’s famous anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (“With Burning Anxiety”), issued in March 1937, which produced an angry response from the Nazi leaders in Berlin, who viewed it (correctly) as a pro-Jewish document. Kertzer’s nearly monomaniacal effort to turn everything against the popes will prove at last unbearable even for readers who have little sympathy for the Catholic Church. That there were anti-Semitic Catholics in Europe between 1814 to 1939 no one denies. That their anti-Semitism provided one of the channels through which the evil of the Nazis would find its way—this too is undeniable, a horrifying fact that the current pope, John Paul II, and the modern Catholic Church have begun at last to try to understand. But what, exactly, is gained by Kertzer’s attempts to twist history to his own absolute anti-papalism? What new understanding do we achieve by denouncing as anti-Semites some of the least anti-Semitic people of their time? Benedict XV and Pius XI were known by their contemporaries as opponents of anti-Semitism and friends to the Jews. So, for instance, on September 6, 1938, Pius XI remarked to a group of Belgian pilgrims that anti-Semitism “is a hateful movement, a movement that we cannot, as Christians, take any part in.” And, with tears in his eyes as he thought about the plight of the Jews, he famously concluded: “Anti-Semitism is inadmissible; spiritually, we are all Semites.” This wasn’t said in 1998, when it would be of little moment. It was said in 1938, when the most powerful nation in Europe had an officially anti-Semitic government and was poised only a few hundred miles to the north of Rome.Who could miss what this meant at the time? Pius XI’s contemporaries didn’t miss it. After the publication of Mit brennender Sorge the Nazis launched a vitriolic counterattack on the “JewGod and His deputy in Rome”—while the February 1939 issue of B’nai B’rith’s National Jewish Monthly featured the pope on its cover. “Regardless of their personal religious beliefs,” wrote the editors, “men and women everywhere who believe in democracy and the rights of man have hailed the firm and uncompromising stand of Pope Pius XI against Book Reviews 223 Fascist brutality, paganism, and racial theories. In his annual Christmas message to the College of Cardinals, the great Pontiff vigorously denounced Fascism of both the Italian and German varieties . . . and described the Nazi swastika as a ‘cross hostile to the cross of Christ’ . . . The first international voice in the world to be raised in stern condemnation of the ghastly injustice perpetrated upon the Jewish people by brutal tyrannies was Pope Pius XI.” In his effort to vilify the modern papacy—and to hold each and every pontiff responsible for all anti-Semitism from Napoleon to Hitler—Kertzer must dismiss or ignore the many instances of papal support for the Jews and the legacies of those modern popes who were known for their decidedly philo-Semitic policies and pronouncements. Worse, he must dismiss or ignore the testimony of those who were actually there at the time. Kertzer’s The Popes Against the Jews is both false and unpersuasive.1 N&V David G. Dalin Ave Maria College Ypsilanti, Michigan The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in the PostChristian World by Russell Hittinger (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003), xlvi + 334. C AN HUMAN BEINGS recognize the precepts of the natural law without adverting to the question of God? The first two chapters of this important book answer no, and the remaining chapters drive the point home by means of detailed discussion of the legal, political, and cultural crises now facing the United States and the Western world in general. Hittinger emphasizes that modern debate over moral issues lacks an ability to account for “the first grace,” creation and providence, without which Christian morality will not make sense. Creation bears the imprint of the divine mind who created it. This imprint is God’s wise order of creaturely flourishing, the order of justice. God’s wise order, expressing the commands of his providence or practical reason, has the nature of law (cf. 45, 61–62). Natural law is our rational sharing in this eternal law or divine providence of God. It follows that natural law, and the political and legal arguments that depend upon it, cannot be understood adequately outside “theology” (natural and/or revealed). Reserving a prominent place for natural theology in sustaining the discourse of providence, Hittinger points out that the modern effort to 1 This review previously appeared in The Weekly Standard (November 5, 2001): 36–38. 224 Book Reviews understand “natural law” without “theology” represents a break from the development of natural law doctrine from the 2nd century A.D., a legal tradition from which the Protestant Reformers did not dissent.The break occurs with the Enlightenment thinkers: Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant (cf. xvii, 13).Against the modern attempt to describe the natural law outside of a notion of divine providence, Hittinger argues that avoiding the question of God makes it impossible to define natural law. From his study of Aquinas, he notes that natural law is located in three “foci”: the human mind, nature, and the mind of God.The former two depend upon the latter. As law, the natural law is in the mind of God. In a participated way, the natural law is in human minds (as first principles) and in nature (the providential order). Thus without recognizing the relation of the created order to the Creator, it is impossible to develop an adequate account of “natural law.” In the classical theological tradition, Hittinger remarks, “Natural law is never (and I must emphasize never) defined in terms of what is first in the (human) mind or first in nature” (9). Once God is bracketed out, “we have either nature or the human mind as the cause of the law—not the cause of knowing or discovering, but the cause of the law itself ” (9). On the former view, nature is the cause of “natural law” and so the natural law is opposed, in Cartesian fashion, to human (rational) freedom. On the latter view, the human mind is the cause of “natural law” and so the natural law is a human construct enforced by the power of ideology rather than inscribed in reality. Not only secular positive law, but also the laws promulgated by the Church’s Magisterium, then appear as ideological assertions that restrict the potential flourishing of the individual human person. As Hittinger states, “When the starting points are made autonomous, the human mind declares independence not only from the deeper order of divine tutoring but also from the tutoring afforded by human culture, including human law” (14).Without God, the natural law is turned into its opposite.Whereas in fact the natural law is “participated theonomy,” as Martin Rhonheimer has argued and as Pope John Paul II has affirmed in Veritatis Splendor (xxvi), for many modern natural-law theorists “God” is an enemy of the autonomous authority of the “natural law” (9; cf. 26), and religious claims about morality in the political and legal spheres become suspect. As an example, Hittinger repeatedly turns to the moral theology of Josef Fuchs. Despite Fuchs’s Catholic credentials, Fuchs’s theory of natural law rests upon this positing of human autonomy over against God (47–50). In affinity with Veritatis Splendor, Hittinger thus shows that the key difficulty for moral theology today is not so much particular moral questions, no matter how pressing, but Book Reviews 225 rather is the principle that the universe, as created, manifests an eternal law that provides for creaturely flourishing. How can one recognize and describe these requirements (the precepts of natural law) upon which true human positive law is based? Hittinger argues that turning away from God distorts the human ability to make judgments about the precepts of the natural law: As a law, natural law is not “in” nature or the human mind, but is rather in the mind of God. The immutability of natural law, he insists, is due to the “immutability and perfection of the divine reason that institutes it.” Insofar as natural law can be said to be “in” things or nature, it is an order of inclinations of reason and will by which men are moved to a common good. While the created order continues to move men, the effect of that law (in the creature) is bent by sin—not so bent that God fails to move the finite mind, for the fallen man is still a spiritual creature, possessed of the God-given light of moral understanding, but bent enough that this movement requires the remediation of divine positive law and a new law of grace.” (11) Hittinger goes on to remark that whereas Aquinas does not envision resolving ethical problems solely from the perspective of the natural law abstracted from theology (natural or revealed), modern theorists of the natural law have sought to do so, with results that evidence the necessity of the “remediation of divine positive law and a new law of grace” (11). Indeed, Hittinger suggests that the modern practice of appealing to a “natural law” cut off from “theology” (that is, cut off from a Creator God) has so distorted the concept that employing it in public discourse is often counterproductive. He writes, “It seems to me that the expression ‘natural law’ ought to be avoided whenever possible in the Christian address to the world about worldly things” (34–35). Instead, in order to express the meaning of “natural law,” he suggests using the phrase “higher law,” which has been used in important ways in American political and moral discourse from Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. (36). Hittinger also proposes that philosophers and theologians should pay deeper attention to two of Pope John Paul II’s recent encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor and Evangelium Vitae. Regarding the latter encyclical, he notes that “the Pope vigorously supports the modern experiment in constitutional democracy and human rights. But once he discerned that the rhetoric of natural rights was being used to justify killing the unborn and infirm, he took his readers in Evangelium Vitae back to the book of Genesis.” The first chapters of Genesis display how human rationality and morality are inscribed within the order of divine providence. In Hittinger’s 226 Book Reviews reading, Evangelium Vitae aims at renewing political and legal discourse about creation and providence. Veritatis Splendor focuses upon the Church’s theological discourse, in order to reintegrate “natural law into the dogmatic theology of revelation and Christology” (37). In light of these foundational arguments in the first two chapters, the next six chapters (3 through 8) of The First Grace focus upon the role of the judiciary vis-à-vis natural law. Although a collection of essays, therefore, the book achieves a valuable argumentative flow. Hittinger argues throughout that discerning and encoding the natural law in positive law is a task that belongs to legislators (chapters three and four). In the twentieth century this legislative task has been usurped in the United States by an activist judiciary, particularly the Supreme Court. As Hittinger shows, the Supreme Court after World War II has consistently identified the natural law with rights that originate in the individual, understood as radically autonomous from social bonds (chapters five and six). Not surprisingly, then, the Supreme Court has also consistently presented religion as a divisive, coercive, irrational, and idiosyncratic reality (chapter seven) that “is contrary to the institutions of democracy” (169). Having given a detailed account of the situation, he turns in chapter eight to the question of whether the Supreme Court has gone so far as to threaten its own legitimacy. This question is settled for him by the Supreme Court itself, which in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) explicitly argued that its own legitimacy is at stake in the debate over the validity of the Courtordered “right” to abortion (183). He remarks that “while the Court is free to change its case law at will, and thus to make the Constitution a mere by-product of its shifting opinions, the other branches and departments must submit to the case law as though it were the Constitution” (212). Having made clear that the Supreme Court has usurped legislative authority in many areas, he argues that a reversal of this situation will depend upon the development of public awareness of the constitutional crisis that presently exists. Just as the Dred Scott case galvanized (thanks in large part to the rhetorical power of Abraham Lincoln) the public, so might a future case awaken the public to the contemporary Supreme Court’s usurpation of power (see 205ff.). The final three chapters of the book explore the institutional and cultural ramifications of the modern understanding of “natural law” as undergirding radical autonomy. Chapters nine and eleven address the issue in terms of the relationship of Church and state, while chapter ten explores the development of liberalism itself. Chapter nine shows that the radical autonomy of individuals is not ratified by Dignitatis Humanae, as some theologians, overreading the docu- Book Reviews 227 ment, have argued. Hittinger argues that Dignitatis Humanae defends religious freedom without taking up the broader topic of Church-state relations:“It may prove surprising, if not frustrating, that DH puts to one side theoretical treatment of the issues that directly touch, in American terms, upon establishment of religion. . . . For the Second Vatican Council, it was quite enough to tackle the problem of the religious civil liberties of individuals, communities, and the Church herself ” (224, 225). His knowledge of the history of papal statements enables him to argue persuasively that the Council fathers were making the point that “the Church does not rest its case for liberty on the confessing state. It would be a mistake to make Dignitatis Humanae say anything more, or less” (227). He points out that Dignitatis Humanae does, however, insist theologically both upon the eternal law as the basis for religious freedom and upon the origin of the Church’s “sacred liberty” in Christ’s direct command (233). Chapter ten explores the roots of the contemporary situation in liberal romanticism’s ideal of the individual genius, including the individual religious genius, as the engine of cultural development. Following Christopher Dawson, Hittinger suggests that the radically autonomous individual marks the triumph of consumerist techne over against the Victorian Enlightenment’s valuation of familial, economic, and political bonds. A radical autonomy fostered by technology represents a vulgarization, in Dawson’s view, of the Victorian liberal ideal of the role of the autonomous genius as the formative mediator of culture and of religious experience. Finally, chapter eleven argues in agreement with Jacques Maritain that the answer is not to return to sacral conceptions of the state, in which the state embodies the temporal common good, in union with the Church as the embodiment of the supernatural common good. For Maritain, along with Popes Pius XII and John Paul II, the “body politic” is not reducible to the state. Instead, the state instrumentally serves the common good by fostering the various societies that compose the body politic. The danger of this view of the state, exemplified by the work of Ernest Gellner, is that once one conceives the state in instrumentalist terms, it becomes difficult to conceive of any society, or societies, ordered to a higher, noninstrumental end. In Aquinas’s defense of the mendicant orders, Hittinger finds a way of defending the existence of various societies, ordered to the common good, within the body politic. Hittinger’s insights into the importance of the concept of providence and his investigation of the ramifications in the legal order of the loss of this framework represent in themselves a magnificent achievement. His insights should inspire further work in the area of Church-state relations, as illumined by the doctrine of providence.When he ventures into this terrain, Book Reviews 228 filled as it is with historical, political, and theological landmines, he proceeds cautiously but articulates the problems too well to enable the reader to be fully satisfied with the solutions currently on the table. For example, he writes, “While liberals valued civil society principally for instrumental reasons, Catholic social thought emphasized the intrinsic value of social forms like the family, the private school, churches, and labor unions. And, Catholic social thought has always been suspicious of the market models of social pluralism . . . ” (283). He knows, however, that market models of the common good have arisen almost necessarily out of the liberal state. Unlike less insightful commentators on the right and the left, he sees both the problems with the sacral model of the state and the problems that arise when the instrumental state can no longer sustain cultural awareness of the reality of the common good, above all beatitude. Similarly, he writes of how Christian faith should be manifested in and by civil society: In a certain respect, this theological reflection has just begun. One can see why, in 1965, it would have been precipitous to force DH to attempt to resolve the issue of how religious liberty and confession of religious truth on the part of civil society might be synthesized in a distinctly contemporary mode—one in which democratic institutions prevail, where civil liberties of all are duly honored, and where christianization or rechristianization has progressed to the point that the essence of the Gospel has worked its way into a fully public manifestation. DH does not rule it out, but by the same token it does not bring it into view as a pressing problem. (226) His eight earlier chapters on the culture of death that arises when the state cannot account (theologically) for God’s providence, however, have already made clear to the reader that it is perhaps the “pressing problem.” Hittinger thus recalls us to the task of articulating, inside and outside the Church, the doctrine of divine providence, a doctrine that can only be fully comprehended after sin in the light of the New Law of grace. He has illumined Pope John Paul II’s contribution to this articulation, and he has modeled a Thomistic approach to reclaiming this understanding of human creatureliness in the legal, political, and cultural spheres.We N&V are deeply in his debt. Matthew Levering Ave Maria College Ypsilanti, Michigan Book Reviews 229 The Two Wings of Catholic Thought: Essays on Fides et Ratio, edited by David Ruel Foster and Joseph W. Koterski, SJ (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), xi + 249 pp. TRUTH IS SYMPHONIC. The editors of this collection use Balthasar’s theme to explain their approach to the 1998 encyclical, Fides et Ratio.This is not a systematic analysis of the document—the closest it comes is a twelvepage summary outline and an appended index. Rather, the collection’s essays bring out various themes present in the encyclical.We hear strands of wisdom literature, medieval and modern philosophy, and modern encyclicals, distant hints of the new evangelization and Catholic universities, and the classic themes of Christian philosophy, metaphysics, the person, and the Seat of Wisdom. A bibliography of related works suggests further strains that may be present. Foster and Koterski’s symphonic approach to the encyclical brings out the Holy Father’s own sapiential understanding of truth: not a neat, syllogistic progression, but a circular movement from faith to reason and back, perceiving in the interweaving of every human strand the presence of the great composer, Eternal Wisdom. The collection begins with essays on the encyclical’s approach to four classic doctrinal questions. Avery Cardinal Dulles opens this section by appraising the state of the question, “Can philosophy be Christian?” in light of Fides et Ratio. Having sketched the history of the question in the early twentieth century, Dulles details three relations of philosophy to faith in the encyclical. Prior to faith, philosophy may “attain conclusions that are true and certain,” but ultimately “an autonomous philosophy cannot be self-sufficient. . . . Understanding seeks faith” (10–11). Aided by faith, philosophy is cured of pride, encouraged for difficult questions, and given access to “certain truths that are in principle accessible to reason but might never be found in fact without revelation” (15).Within faith, philosophy defends “strict mysteries, but . . . not conundrums” against objections, shows analogies to the order of nature, and demonstrates the “internal coherence of the whole supernatural order” (16–17). In its appraisal of the interpenetration of faith and reason, writes Dulles, the encyclical brings the question of Christian philosophy to a new level in which, like Mary, inviolate nature becomes truly fruitful in offering itself to the Word of God. Virgil, “the very symbol of reason” (22), led Dante through the dark wood of the lion’s pride, the leopard’s lust, and the she-wolf ’s avarice. Fr. Koterski finds here a helpful image for “The Challenge to Metaphysics in Fides et Ratio.” The modern state is threatened by the she-wolf of undifferentiated power, which rules not according to the truth of the 230 Book Reviews human person, but according to “the vote of the parliamentary majority” (no. 83).“Deprived of reason,” quotes Fr. Koterski,“faith has stressed feeling and experience” (no. 48); thus the Church is threatened by the leopard of “spiritual good feeling” (30). Finally, the college is threatened by a rationalist pride that would rather judge the contents of faith than learn from them. Like Beatrice calling Virgil, the pope calls “a philosophy of genuinely metaphysical range” (no. 83) to lead the faithful through the perils of this dark wood. In her essay on “Person and Complementarity,” Sr. Prudence Allen discusses the “creatively synergistic” relations of persons.These relations, she writes, are better represented by the formula “1 + 1 ≥ 3” than “1 + 1 = 2” (67). In a “pilgrimage-like journey” (57), Sr. Allen works through the personal acts of reason and faith, the educational structures of philosophy and theology, and the relations of actual philosophers and theologians. In each, she finds a relationship that is more fruitful the more each partner is fully him- or herself. The doctrinal section concludes with Jesuit scholastic David Vincent Meconi’s reflections on Philosophari in Maria. “The human search for meaning does have a face,” writes Meconi,“. . . the face of a mother” (87). As model of receptive wonder, self-offering, and contemplation, Mary is the philosopher par excellence. Drawing from throughout the encyclical, Meconi shows that “Mary’s inclusion at the end of Fides et ratio . . . is anything but some spurious or pious addendum.” Rather, shows Meconi, it is “a recapitulation of the project as a whole” (86). The second section of the collection explores “implications” of the encyclical. In a provocative essay, Bishop Allen Vigneron considers philosophy’s leading role in the evangelization of culture. Christian thought, he maintains, must purify and become incarnate in the genuine insights of human culture. The first Pentecost began the Gospel’s incarnation in a “culture of creation.” Beginning with the “New Pentecost” of Vatican II, however, the Gospel must now bring forth from modernity’s turn to the subject a “culture of communion” (103).Vigneron describes the philosophical virtues needed by the leaders of this new evangelization: “the habits which make fruitful dialogue possible” (106). Collection co-editor David Ruel Foster discusses how “Fides et Ratio provides the principles for a robust affirmation of academic freedom,” in contrast to Ex Corde Ecclesiae’s “weak affirmation” (111, cf.115). At the heart of academic freedom is the defense of objective truth: both as the basis for dialogue and as the object of the Church’s continual search. Foster also gives an interesting argument for “second-level academic freedom”: the rights of institutions as well as individuals to pursue their proper Book Reviews 231 line of inquiry.The essay may focus excessively, however, on the question of “rights.” Christian faith is treated only as a deficient knowledge, while the Church is exhorted to respect the “maturity” of the scholarly community. An essay titled, “The Implications of Fides et Ratio for Catholic Universities” might be expected to present a more positive contribution of the Church to the academy. Notably, Foster’s is one of the few essays with no reference to the Incarnation or the “Christian distinction.” The collection’s final section examines the encyclical’s relation to various historical periods. Fr. Koterski returns with an essay on biblical Wisdom literature. The encyclical, he writes, treats this literature as a model of faith seeking understanding. We find the believer, like a pagan philosopher, reading “the book of nature” as “a first stage on the path that leads to knowledge of God” (135).Yet, especially at the Cross, this quest for knowledge must always reach beyond merely natural methods. Having examined the encyclical, Fr. Koterski moves on to his own survey of faith and reason in the Wisdom literature. He concludes that this literature provides a model for philosophy, not in “the generally prevailing sense of the word,” but in its fully “sapiential dimension,” which “may well be one of John Paul II’s most cherished projects in Fides et Ratio” (160). Michael Sweeney and Timothy Sean Quinn, colleagues at Xavier University, offer a compelling pair of essays on the medievals and the moderns. Sweeney finds a twofold use of medieval thought to establish the coherence of faith and reason. The Pope draws heavily from Augustine and Anselm to establish reason’s implicit desire for the truths of faith. But he relies on St. Thomas to establish the possibility of fulfillment. Specifically, Thomas is important for establishing “some account of nature whereby there is an internal necessity to created things” (170) (without which there could be no natural reason) and the possibility of metaphysical and objective ethical knowledge (without which there could be no overlap between faith and reason). In the encyclical, however,Thomas is only one model of “a general or abstract philosophy”: any philosophy fulfilling these basic criteria would also be compatible with Christian faith. But Sweeney notes a problem.The moderns deny both the need and the means for this compatibility; it seems the Pope is merely imposing medieval standards on modern philosophy. In his essay “Infides et Unratio,” Quinn responds to this problem with a devastating critique of modern philosophy. “From its inception,” writes Quinn, “the ‘modern’ philosophy understood itself less as a quest for wisdom than as a project of emancipation from any authority” (178). Indeed, even ancient philosophy had to be rejected as unable to “militate against takeover by revealed religion” (181). Thus, Sweeney proposes, the various aspects of modern 232 Book Reviews philosophy that the Pope finds contrary to faith are not properly philosophical conclusions but derive from the dogmatic assumption that faith is contrary to reason. The collection closes with a meditation by Cardinal Dulles on the differences between the First Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Catholic Faith Dei Filius and Fides et Ratio. The two, he proposes, “are speaking to radically diverse situations” (195). While Vatican I battled against “self-assured rationalists” and “skeptical fideists” (193), these parties had almost dispersed by the time of Vatican II, and in the day of John Paul II “the rationalist mentality hardly survives” (196).Thus where “Vatican I adopted a two-stage schematism,” John Paul finds “a harmonious fusion of philosophy and theology” (200–201). In this light, the Church of John Paul II approaches the world primarily in a mode of positive dialogue. The Two Wings of Catholic Thought provides a fine overview of doctrinal and historical perspectives of Fides et Ratio and two provocative essays on implications that may be drawn from it. The collection attunes our ears to the symphonic nature of truth, and exhibits the continued faithfulness of many within the Society of Jesus—seven out of ten essays come either from Jesuits or from Xavier University—to that symphony of Eternal Wisdom. N&V Eric M. Johnston The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism by Fergus Kerr, OP (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 256 pp. FERGUS KERR’S new book is the culmination of a lifetime’s study of the work of St.Thomas Aquinas. Few are better prepared than Kerr to accomplish one of the book’s primary objectives—to “destabilize” the “standard conception of Thomas’s thought” (vi). Dominant at many Protestant and secular institutions, and not exactly absent from Catholic universities, this conception is essentially reductionist. It shrinks Aquinas’s thinking about God to the five proofs at the beginning of the Summa theologiae (reading its prima pars poorly). It caricatures his ethics as a system of morals based exclusively on natural law (reading its secunda pars superficially). It ignores what he says about salvation and Christology (reading its tertia pars not at all). Against the standard conception, Kerr attempts to expand our comprehension of Aquinas’s thought in chapters with such provocative titles as “Overcoming Epistemology,” “Stories of Being,” “Theological Ethics,” “Quarrels about Grace,” and “Deified Creaturehood.” Book Reviews 233 Refusal to affirm the importance of Aristotle for St.Thomas would be unreasonable, even perverse. As Kerr notices, however, such affirmation does not imply that St.Thomas ought to be classified as an “Aristotelian” (9). Here Kerr joins a growing chorus of interpreters who want to call attention to the importance of other authorities for St.Thomas (not only the Platonic authors, but also Augustine and the other Fathers). Awareness of Aquinas’s historical context would suggest that his intention is not to replace Christian doctrine with Aristotelianism (as some critics still charge), but “to transpose and integrate key Aristotelian terms into traditional Christianity” (14). Kerr acknowledges that such observations do little to reconcile rival interpretations of Aquinas. Not unsympathetically, he cites Serge-Thomas Bonino’s recent aspiration to find a “truly Thomist approach” that would integrate a multiplicity of diverse readings. However, Kerr seems ultimately pessimistic about the possibility of resolving such hermeneutic conflicts. His own approach is to judge some readings as “deeply misguided,” and yet to take them seriously by asking what in Aquinas’s texts prompts these misreadings, and what makes them “attractive, and almost unavoidable” (16). One such misreading that Kerr interrogates is “epistemology.” Building upon the work of others, Kerr notes the anachronistic tendencies of modern attempts to read St. Thomas as “therapy for Cartesianism” (18). After recalling the origins of such approaches in Kleutgen’s Suarezian appropriation of St. Thomas, Kerr proceeds to examine more recent manifestations of the syndrome. Here he mentions R. P. Phillips’s ostensibly Thomist textbook (once used frequently in the education of seminarians), which locates “epistemology” as “the first part of metaphysics” (20). As one might expect, Kerr is considerably more sympathetic with what he calls “Wittgenstenian Thomism.” Drawing upon his own experience, Kerr judges Wittgenstein’s “exposure of the absurdities of assuming that the interior life is radically private” to be a useful propaedeutic for understanding Aquinas’s “pre-Cartesian account of the human mind and will” (21). Nonetheless, he criticizes this approach to the extent that it appeals to St.Thomas “as a source of good philosophy,” without bothering to read his theology. For Kerr’s version of Aquinas, “epistemology is not separable from theology” (33). One can invoke Aquinas as an alternative to modern epistemology, but not by forgetting that St.Thomas “is interested in the activity of the human mind only in order to elucidate the way in which human beings imitate God” (33). Kerr brings this perspective to bear in his examination of Barthian rejections of Thomist natural theology. He reminds us of Barth’s virulent denunciation of analogia entis as “the invention of anti-Christ” (35). In a 234 Book Reviews chapter titled “Prolegomena to Natural Theology,” Kerr acknowledges that if Catholic theology actually subordinated Christian doctrine to naturalistic metaphysics, Barth’s attack would be perfectly justified. But, as Kerr argues, a contextually sensitive reading of the relevant documents would show that “far from encouraging foundationalist rationalism in natural theology, Vatican I was explicitly suspicious of anything of the kind” (38) According to Kerr, a more authentic understanding of the concepts of cause and substance than one finds in the handbooks (here he draws helpfully upon the work of Norris Clarke) would suggest that authentically Thomist (if not Thomistic) natural theology bears little similarity to Enlightenment natural religion. Rather, it is “embedded in a theology of God as creative and self-diffusive good” (51). Another common misreading of Aquinas stems from an exaggeration of the role of natural law in his approach to ethics and politics. Kerr advances two main contentions in his chapters “Natural Law: Incommensurable Readings” and “Theological Ethics.” First, to say that Aquinas is primarily a natural-law theorist is to say very little until one specifies what natural law means for St. Thomas, a task which turns out to be surprisingly difficult. Second, natural law is not the only or the most important moral concept in Aquinas. It is not that Kerr disparages the concept of natural law. He sides with those who find it a sane middle ground between moral constructivism (“it’s right because we judge it so”) and divinecommand theory (“it’s right because God tells me so”). But he resists the temptation to make the concept simpler than it is. By juxtaposing rival and incompatible accounts of Thomist natural law, he leads the reader to appreciate the complexity of the concept, while providing a useful (but not remotely comprehensive) summary of some recent interpretations. In his chapter titled “Theological Ethics,” Kerr concurs with several rejections of the notion that St. Thomas would affirm an autonomous, “philosophical” morality. Here Kerr stresses the importance of the secunda pars of the Summa, and particularly its secunda secundae. Not by accident did Thomas insert his “practical theology” intended for future Dominican pastors between “the two mysteries of faith: the triune Godhead and the mystery of the Incarnation” (118). Kerr notes the presence of a progressive element in Aquinas’s pedagogy. Against approaches to ethics that he found inadequate, theoretically and practically, “Thomas tried to deconstruct the sin-dominated moral theology in the pastors’ handbooks of his day, by dispersing the standard list of virtues and vices throughout a systematic consideration of the human being as moral agent, with goals, capacities, emotions, dispositions, and so on, which have to be integrated, with the help of law and grace, for them to attain the beatitude which is Book Reviews 235 their ultimate end” (118). Here Kerr is not merely writing a long sentence. He provides an elegant summary of the architecture of the prima secundae. A deeper understanding of the structure of the Summa promises to illuminate the way in which other important concepts bear on St. Thomas’s ethics. Kerr not only cites beatitude, the virtues, the gifts of the spirit, and the image of God, but also brings “deified creaturehood” into the picture. Here he draws upon the recent work of Anna Williams, whose reading he characterizes as “simple and brilliant” (160). As a map of the thorny terrain of Thomistic studies, After Aquinas is valuable. One complaint—in a book of this genre, which encourages (and requires) frequent reference to its citations, it is exceptionally frustrating to be forced to flip constantly from the narrative to the notes and back again. It is not that Kerr’s book is useful simply for its expositions of other authors. After Aquinas not only provides commentary; it also furnishes context of a sort needed by both beginning students of Aquinas and advanced scholars. Even when his judgments are debatable, they merit careful consideration, proceeding as they do from a passionate longN&V ing to understand the legacy of St.Thomas. Robert Miner Baylor University Waco,Texas