Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004): 237–48

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The Light of Tabor:
Christian Personalism and Adoptive Sonship
ROMANUS C ESSARIO, OP
St. John’s Seminary
Brighton, Massachusetts

C OMMENTATORS HAVE OBSERVED on the significance of
the date that the Holy Father chose to sign the encyclical.1 The August
Feast of the Transfiguration illuminates the themes contained in Veritatis
Splendor, especially the divine reality in man that Catholic moral theology guided by the Magisterium seeks to explicate and promote. It is
axiomatic that all the mysteries of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection
sanctify those who are members of his Body.“Every act and suffering of
Christ,” Aquinas assures us, “acts instrumentally in virtue of his divinity
for man’s salvation.”2 The mystery of Christ’s Transfiguration points in a
special way to the theme that occupies many theologians of the period:
pre-ethical anthropology and its relationship to a Christian anthropology
of sonship. The Transfiguration assures us that a rational nature can
participate through grace and charity in the divine glory and majesty.3
We are left to consider the question: How does God accomplish this

1 See for example, J. A. Di Noia, OP,“Veritatis Splendor: Moral Life as Transfigured

Life,” in Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology, ed. J. A. Di Noia, OP
and Romanus Cessario, OP (Chicago, IL: Midwest Theological Forum, 1999),
1–10.This volume was published to commemorate the encyclical’s fifth anniversary in 1998.
2 Summa theologiae III, q. 48, a. 6: “omnes actiones et passiones Christi instrumentaliter operantur in virtute divinitatis ad salutem humanum,” cited in Jean-Pierre
Torrell, OP, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal
(Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 135.
3 See ST III, q. 23, a. 3.

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transformation in those members of the human race whom he has
predestined for glory?4
I
We find in the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/25–74)
certain considerations essential to a proper theological understanding of
a Christian anthropology of sonship. One line of inquiry is found in
Aquinas’s discussion of the mystery of Christ’s life that governs the
central message of Veritatis Splendor. When he treats the Transfiguration
in tertia pars question 45, Aquinas includes in article 4 what at first
glance appears to be a throw-away question:“Whether the testimony of
the Father’s voice, saying, This is my beloved Son, was fittingly heard.”5 In
fact, this article contains an important distinction. Aquinas’s express
inquiry is about the “convenience”—the fittingness or suitableness—of
the text that is recorded variously in each of the Synoptic accounts (Mt
17:5; Mk 9:7; Lk 9:35): “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well
pleased; listen to him” (Mt 17:5).6 The authority of the canonical
Gospels supplies an in contrarium. Since Aquinas accepts the sacred texts
themselves as sufficient warrant for the fittingness of the testimony, the
article contains no sed contra. God spoke these words, so there is no
reason for theological discussion about their coherence with the economy of salvation. Still, the testimony of the Father’s voice at the Transfiguration points to the question of sonship, both of Christ’s own and,
according to the principle of instrumentality, of that possible for the
rational creature.
The reply to question 45, article 4 sets forth, as I have indicated, a first
and crucial distinction for a Christian anthropology of sonship: “Men
become adopted sons of God by a certain conformity of image to the
natural Son of God. Now this is accomplished in two ways. First of all,
by the grace of the wayfarer, which is an imperfect conformity; secondly,
by glory, which is a perfect conformity.”7 Aquinas includes in this article
4 Aquinas holds that the splendor which Christ assumed at his Transfiguration was

that of a glorified body “as to essence, but not as to mode of being” (ST III, q.
45, a. 2).
5 ST III, q. 45, a. 4:“utrum convenienter auditum fuerit testimonium paternae vocis
in transfiguratione.”
6 Scripture references are taken from the Revised Standard Version, Catholic edition
(1965).
7 ST III, q. 45, a. 4:“Dicendum quod adoptio filiorum Dei est per quamdam conformitatem imaginis ad Filium Dei naturalem. Quod quidem fit dupliciter: primo
quidem fit per gratiam viae, quae est conformitas imperfecta; secundo, per gloriam
patriae, quae erit conformitas perfecta. . . .”Translations from the Summa theologiae,

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the text of 1 John 3:2: “Beloved, we are God’s children (in the Vulgate
Latin, “filii Dei”) now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we
know that when he appears we shall be like (“similes”) him, for we shall
see him as he is.” A first thing to consider, therefore, about a Christian
anthropology of sonship is that it exists for now in a twofold state or
degree of likeness or similitude, one here below that is imperfect,
another, above on high that is perfect. A second thing to consider is that
this likeness or similitude is impressed on the human being after the fashion of an inhering form, which according to the adage forma dat esse
becomes the principle of the Christian’s image-activity.The final perfection of this activity is called beatific vision.
To distinguish a twofold state of sonship gives theologians a way to
talk about the eschatological expectations that Christians cherish in
accord with what St. Paul writes in Romans,“and if children (‘filii’), then
heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ . . .” (8: 17). It also affords
a way to understand growth in holiness; for as Veritatis Splendor observes,
there is a close connection “between eternal life and obedience to God’s
commandments.”8 The dynamic relationship between what here below
remains imperfect and what at the same time tends toward being perfect
is lived out by each believer in what the encyclical calls the “Christian
moral life.”9 “Dynamic” is not, in this context, a superfluous modifier.
The term serves to signify any movement that proceeds both from the
inner dimension of the reality itself and according to some kind of necessity, as an acorn contains imperfectly the perfect oak tree that (barring
external impediments) will develop from it.
The necessity that attaches to natural dynamic movements is not
absolute. Aquinas usefully points out in his commentary on Aristotle’s
Physics that movement in nature proceeds according to a necessity that is
suppositional, ex suppositione finis.10 At the beginning of the tertia pars,
without diminishing the excellence of the grace of union, he also applies
this mode of necessity, that is, when something is required for a better and
more expeditious attainment of an end, to the Incarnation itself.11 Some
sometimes slightly modified, are taken from the sixty-one-volume Blackfriars
edition published in London by Eyre & Spottiswoode between 1964–1980.
8 See Veritatis Splendor, no. 12.
9 For example,“The Spirit of Jesus, received by the humble and docile heart of the
believer, brings about the flourishing of Christian moral life and the witness of
holiness amid the great variety of vocations, gifts, responsibilities, conditions and
life situations” (no. 108).
10 Physics II, ch. 9 (200a14). For further discussion, see William A.Wallace, The Modeling of Nature (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America, 1996), 20ff.
11 See ST III, q. 1, a. 2.

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acorns will be eaten by squirrels, just as some wayfarers, though they may
receive initially the grace of adoptive sonship, will sin and fall away. In the
orders of nature and grace, ex suppositione finis works to illustrate how the
God-given dynamism that belongs to a particular created form interacts
with other natural or voluntary agents in the course of moving toward
the perfective end proper to the form.12 Our transformation into sons
proceeds in accord with this kind of necessity.
II
It is important to remember that Aquinas builds his anthropology of
sonship around the notion of the image: “per quamdam conformitatem
imaginis ad Filium Dei naturalem.” It is equally important to recall that
Aquinas does not hold that adoptive sonship is to be thought of as a
participation in the natural sonship that is Christ’s. Just as the human
image is related to the Trinity as its model, adoptive sonship is
contracted in respect to the whole Trinity. Although some New Testament texts, such as Galatians 4:4, “God sent forth his Son . . . so that we
might receive adoption as sons,” may appropriate adoption to the natural Son within the Trinity, the bestowal of the grace of adoption, including the eschatological promises that this grace brings, results from the
work of the whole Trinity.13 In accordance with a way of speaking
about God, which is in fact what appropriation is, adoption is attributed
“to the Father as its author, to the Son as its model, to the Spirit as the
Person who imparts to us the likeness of this model.”14 As part of the
divine economy, adoptive sonship itself is the common work of the
three divine Persons.
In order to grasp what Aquinas means when he says that “adoptive
sonship . . . is similar to natural sonship,” it is necessary to return to his
discussion of the Blessed Trinity; in particular, to recall his absolute
consideration of each divine Person found in prima pars questions
33–38.15 After a single question devoted to the First Person, Aquinas
turns “to study the Person of the Son.The names given him are three,”
says Aquinas, “‘Son,’ ‘Word’ and Image.’ We know,” he continues, “the
meaning of the term ‘Son’ from that of the ‘Father’; there remain to be
12 The difference between providence and predestination is understood.
13 See Catechism of the Catholic Church:“The whole divine economy is the common

work of the three divine persons” (no. 258).
14 ST III, q. 23, a. 2, ad 3. See Blackfriars, vol. 50, ed., Colman E. O’Neill, OP (1965),

appendix 6, esp. 254–56.
15 ST III, q. 23, a. 3.

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examined, then, the names ‘Word’ and ‘Image,’ ”16 The examination
continues in questions 34 and 35 of the prima pars where we learn that
the Christian tradition agrees that the names “Word” and “Image” are
both personal names in God and names proper (proprium) to the Second
Person of the Blessed Trinity. It is not possible to develop a theologically accurate Christian anthropology of sonship without including
proper reference to the other personal names of the Son, “Word,” and
“Image.”This is the case because of the nature of the Trinitarian processions.The Christian tradition, following the lead of St. Augustine, holds
that the Second Person is considered first as Word and only then, in
terms of intellectual procession, as Son.17 As Aquinas expresses it, “the
procession of the Word corresponds to the action of the intellect
(“actionem intelligibilem).”18
Two considerations follow: First, about the Word. As the biblical
accounts of creation suggest, the divine “Word” bears a special relationship to creatures. In his commentary on John’s Gospel, Aquinas observes
that Logos was not, as it could have been, translated as ratio because the
Prologue expresses the effective power of the Word,“all things were made
through him” ( Jn 1:3), whereas ratio expresses only the cognitive character of the concept or mental word.19 The name “Word” connotes, then,
a reference to creatures inasmuch as, though God’s knowledge of Himself
is cognitive, his knowledge of everything that is outside of himself is both
cognitive and causative ( factiva).“Logos” nonetheless connotes pattern or
model, an “actionem intelligibilem.”20 It is interesting to observe that
when Lumen Gentium comments on the text of Colossians 1: 15, “He is
the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him
all things were created,” the conciliar text carefully expresses itself:
“[Christus] est imago Dei invisibilis, in eoque condita sunt universa.”21 In
Christ, all things receive their foundation. In this foundation, living things
find their ends: “[C]reatures are said to do God’s word inasmuch as they
16 Prologue at ST I, q. 34:“Deinde considerandum est de persona Filii. Attribuun-

tur autem tria nomina Filio, scilicet Filius,Verbum et Imago. Sed ratio Filii ex
ratione Patris consideratur; unde restat considerandum de Verbo et Imagine.”
17 See ST I, q. 27, a. 2: “Unde processio verbi in divinis dicitur generatio et ipsum
verbum procedens dicitur Filius.”
18 ST I, q. 27, a. 3:“Processio autem verbi attenditur secundum actionem intelligibilem.”
19 Lectura super Ioannem 1, lect. 1. For further information, see Blackfriars edition of
the Summa theologiae, vol. 7, ed.T. C. O’Brien (1976), 38, n“c.”
20 See above note 18 and ST I, q. 27, a. 3.
21 Lumen Gentium, no. 7.

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carry out some effect toward which they are directed through the begotten Word of divine wisdom.”22
The causal relationship that exists between God and creatures remains
a central element of Aquinas’s Christian anthropology.When it is said that
all things are created in the Word, this means that everything that God
creates enjoys the special causal relation of creation. Anti-Arian caution
excludes this relation being affirmed with reference to the Second
Person, who is Son “origine non adoptione; veritate non nuncupatione;
nativitate non creatione.”23 Human beings, on the other hand, bear a
likeness to the intelligible Word of divine wisdom because they have been
created in Him. Pre-ethical anthropology concerns what is proper to this
kind of creature, who since he is endowed with mind and will, is also said
to bear the natural image of the Trinity.24 The encyclical refers to “man’s
proper and primordial nature, the ‘nature of the human person’ (Gaudium
et Spes, no. 51), which is the person himself in the unity of soul and body,
in the unity of his spiritual and biological inclinations and of all the other
specific characteristics necessary for the pursuit of his end.”25
Second, about the Image”The Son is properly said to be the image of
God because he is the Word of God: “[T]he Son proceeds in the manner
of a word, whose meaning it is to be alike in kind (“similitudo speciei”) to
the source from which it proceeds.”26 However, adopted sons in the Son
do not possess this “similitudo speciei,” and so we find ourselves compelled
to recognize some form of analogical agreement. In order to ensure that
the work of adoptive sonship, of making us like the natural Son, is seen as
a work of the whole Trinity, recourse to analogy of proper proportionality
is required: The natural Son is to the Father as the adoptive son is to the
whole Trinity. God’s adoptive sons are in the fullest sense of the word, his
creation, and thus they cry out,“Abba! Father!” (Rom 8: 15).
Now we can interpret what Aquinas means when he says that “men
become adopted sons of God by a certain conformity of image to the
natural Son of God.”27 Because image also requires analogical predication when said of the Son and of the human creature, it is necessary to
identify what is similar and different in the analogy: “The image of one
22 ST I, q. 34, a. 1, ad 4: “creaturae dicuntur facere verbum Dei inquantum exse-

quuntur effectum aliquem, ad quem ordinantur ex verbo concepto divinae sapientiae.”
23 Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate Bk 3, 11 (PL 10:82).
24 See ST I, q. 45, a. 7, where Aquinas takes up the distinction between the image
and the trace (“vestigium”) of the Trinity in creation.
25 Veritatis Splendor, no. 50.
26 ST I, q. 35, a. 2.
27 See above, note 7.

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thing is present in another in one of two ways.The first, as in a being of
the same specific nature, e.g., the king’s image in his son; the second, as
in a being of a different nature, e.g., the king’s image on a coin.The Son
is the Image of the Father in the first manner; man is the image of God
in the second.”28 When it is said that man is created after the image of
God, this means that there exists within a specifically different nature
from that of God an analogical likeness to God that is able to undergo
transfiguration.29 The existence of a natural likeness that is apt for receiving a new form that grace or glory confers remains a central notion of
St. Thomas’s theological anthropology and, I would argue, the supposition of the encyclical Veritatis Splendor.
To minimize the distinction between what is created by God through
the Word and what is brought forth through the redemptive action of the
incarnate Son in the Church risks confusing the orders of nature and
grace, with the result that it would be difficult to treat rightly a Christian anthropology of sonship.To cite one example from the encyclical, it
is sufficient to recall what it says about a sometimes fashionable exaggerated personalism: “This heightened sense of the dignity of the human
person and of his or her uniqueness, and of the respect due to the journey of conscience, certainly represents one of the positive achievements
of modern culture.This perception, authentic as it is, has been expressed
in a number of more or less adequate ways, some of which however
diverge from the truth about man as a creature and the image of God,
and thus need to be corrected and purified in the light of faith.”30
To take full account of “the truth about man as a creature and the image
of God” it is necessary to insist upon a threefold distinction that governs
the relationship between pre-ethical anthropology and a Christian anthropology of sonship. (1) God may be called “Father” with respect to intelligent creatures on account of the likeness of the natural image, but not with
the priority of a personal name, and therefore by way of metaphor not by
proper analogy. In order for the analogical deployment of Father to be
valid, there must be a relation of one person to another.This personal analogy applies, as has been observed already, (2) to adoptive sons on earth who
28 ST I, q. 35, a. 2, ad 3:“. . . imago alicujus dupliciter in aliquo invenitur: uno modo

in re ejusdem 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.”
29 Also see ST I, q. 33, a. 3:“The quality of being God’s son is present in a creature
not in the full sense, but on the basis of a limited likeness, and one that becomes
fuller the nearer it approaches the absolute expression of this sonship.”
30 Veritatis Splendor, no. 31.

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enjoy likeness to the divine by grace and (3) to full-blown saints in heaven
who enjoy the likeness of glory, in accord with what St. Paul says in
Romans 8:17,“and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him
in order that we may also be glorified with him.”31 One may speak of the
dynamism of discipleship. In fact, adoptive sonship includes a missionary
aspect, as the Holy Father so clearly indicated in his Apostolic Letter Novo
Millennio Ineunte:“Did we not celebrate the Jubilee Year in order to refresh
our contact with this living source of our hope? Now, the Christ whom
we have contemplated and loved bids us to set out once more on our journey:‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Mt 28:19).The
missionary mandate accompanies us into the Third Millennium and urges
us to share the enthusiasm of the very first Christians: we can count on the
power of the same Spirit who was poured out at Pentecost and who impels
us still today to start out anew, sustained by the hope ‘which does not disappoint’ (Rom 5:5).”32 Only God can effectuate this movement.
III
What is apparent to those persons who, over the past decade, have
welcomed the encyclical? The limitations of space allow me to comment
only on certain themes that had been suggested by those who organized
the Roman symposium at which this essay was first read.33 First are questions of the present moment.Three areas of concern that have emerged
in the past several years include: stem cell research, which makes it difficult to work in the area of bioethics; the state approval of same-sex
unions, which makes it more difficult to both instruct about chastity and
promote the full truth about marriage; and lack of agreement on just war
criteria, which relates to the general theme of political prudence. When
one addresses these questions, following the method of Veritatis Splendor
makes it possible to avoid giving the impression that the Church
promotes sectarian or private moral views. What is at stake is man’s
participation in the divine goodness: “Each creature is stretched out
toward the attainment of its own perfection, which is a likeness of the
divine perfection and goodness.”34 As the important teaching found in
31 The material is set forth in ST I, q. 33, a. 3:“Utrum hoc nomen Pater dicatur in

divinis per prius secundum quod personaliter sumitur.”
32 Novo Millennio Ineunte, no. 58.
33 The symposium composed of international scholars was held during the month

of September 2003.
34 ST I, q. 44, a. 4: “Et unaquaeque creatura intendit consequi suam perfectionem,

quae est similitudo perfectionis et bonitatis divinae.”

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chapter one of the encyclical reminds us, “Only God can answer the
question about what is good, because he is the Good itself.”35 The
themes of adoptive sonship and the image of God find their completion
in Beatitude, or in the beatific vision. But these themes also are to be
understood within the context of the fundamental participation in the
divine goodness that informs everything that exists.The basic teleological dynamism of creation emerges against the background of the divine
will from which all striving after perfection springs.36 The challenge for
the Christian evangelist and theologian is to persuade people to consider
this truth of creation when they engage in ethical issues.
Second is the question of conscience. The formation of the moral
conscience requires adherence to the truth about the good.As the encyclical points out,“in the practical judgment of conscience, which imposes on
the person the obligation to perform a given act, the link between freedom and truth is made manifest. Precisely for this reason conscience
expresses itself in acts of ‘judgment’ that reflect the truth about the good,
and not in arbitrary ‘decisions.’ ”37 It is impossible for anyone to make a
judgment of conscience that conforms to the truth about the good without possessing the virtue of prudence. In my view, there is more reason
today than there has been in the past to employ the distinction between
infused and acquired prudence. This distinction helps one to explain the
Gospel and its requirements to people who possess some appreciation of
what moral goodness imposes on every human being.
Prudence perfects the practical intellect. A moral anthropology that
purports to serve Veritatis Splendor must take account of all the capacities in
the human creature that require development and perfection. Sin in the
broad sense occurs when these capacities do not produce an action that
achieves the perfective ends that together comprise the good of man.To cite
Aquinas, a person sins when he performs an action deprived of its proper
ordering to the end, actus debito ordine privatus. Both moral conscience and
sin are properly explained within the larger context of the goods that perfect
man as an individual (particularly the virtues of personal discipline, temperance, and courage) and as a social being (the virtue of justice and its parts).
None of these virtues can operate outside of the directive function that is
unique to prudence and that ensures the harmony of right reason and right
appetite. Every sin therefore involves some departure from prudence.
It seems to me that most of the commentary, at least in English, that
the encyclical has received centers on the rich instruction, found in
35 Veritatis Splendor, no. 9.
36 See O’Neill, 252.
37 Veritatis Splendor, no. 61.

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section 4 of chapter 2, on the nature of the moral act. Competent moral
theologians have sought to expound especially on the meaning of the
phrase “in the perspective of the acting person” as this applies to the specification of the moral act.38 It would not be useful to rehearse even briefly
these discussions and exchanges. I would however like to conclude by
remarking on what many consider to be an important connection between
moral action and perfective end.The suggestion comes from a point that
is well-known by those who study Aristotle’s Ethics:As a person is according to his appetites, so he views the end.39 We discover in the ethical
wisdom of the classical philosophers, who were deprived of all knowledge of adoptive sonship, a clue to understanding the full meaning of a
Christian anthropology of sonship.To follow the way of the Lord Jesus a
person must first of all be conformed to the Lord Jesus.This conformity
is fully personal insofar as it extends to every properly human capacity
that man enjoys: all the powers of the soul, including, and perhaps especially so, the powers of sense.The man who is conformed to Christ is the
one who will love like Christ. In order to account for this new capacity
to love completely, the theological tradition that follows Aquinas speaks
about the infusion at baptism of both theological and moral virtues.
My pastoral experience persuades me that unless we bring people to
love moral truth, especially in those situations where adhering to moral
truth entails what is thought to be great sacrifice, for example, the care
of pregnant rape victims and the refusal to resort to artificial forms of
fertilization (IVH), we will never persuade them to act in accord with the
truth. It is my impression that even some good Catholic moral theologians are too influenced by modern moral theories and so rest content to
develop moral arguments. A Christian anthropology of sonship requires
much more than minute attention to formal argument. Aquinas suggests
what this “more” entails when he explains that the person in whom the
influence of the virtues and the gifts is strong enters into a “semi-experiential” awareness of the divine indwelling Persons: “The Son in turn is
the Word; not, however, just any word, but the Word breathing Love. . . .
So Augustine says pointedly, ‘The Son is being sent whenever someone
has knowledge or perception of him,’ for ‘perception’ points to a kind of
38 Many of the articles to which I refer have appeared in The Thomist. For exam-

ple, Steven A. Long, “A Brief Disquisition Regarding the Nature of the Object
of the Moral Act According to St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 67 (2003):
45–71.
39 For a discussion of this adage and its place in the virtue theory of Aquinas, see
my Introduction to Moral Theology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2001).

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experiential awareness and this precisely is what wisdom is, a knowing that,
as it were, is tasted.”40 To this wisdom, which comprises more than the
recognition of moral norms, the encyclical summons us.The whole world
should be grateful for the invitation. It supplies their title to transformation.

40 See ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2.

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Shame, Lust, and the Human Body
after the Fall: A Comparison of
St. Augustine and Pope John Paul II
M EGHAN K. C OKELEY

A LTHOUGH they are writing from different philosophical frameworks, the theological anthropologies of John Paul II and that of St.
Augustine of Hippo share remarkable continuities in the area of human
sexuality. In this article, I will draw out these theological continuities on
the topics of shame, lust, and the human body. I intend to demonstrate
that the Holy Father, specifically in his teachings in The Theology of the
Body, offers an important development in thinking on these topics.At the
same time, it will also become obvious that these developments do not
stand isolated in the Tradition of the Church, but have their roots
precisely in the theological anthropology of St. Augustine.
In his City of God, St.Augustine treats the state of man before and after
the fall in great detail. He describes an order within the original human
person that was the reason for man’s blissful enjoyment of Paradise. The
human person, he explains, was created according to a specific order in
which God himself was the source of life for the soul and the soul, in
turn, was the source of life for the body.1 As long as the soul remained in
union with God, life flowed directly from God to the soul and from the
soul to the body. In this order, every operation of the body was in full
submission to the will and the human will was, in turn, in full submission to the divine will. Through his continued obedience to God, man
existed in a material and spiritual paradise that was made possible by the
rightly ordered state of his own person.2 In this paradise, the entire
1 St. Augustine, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 1972):

13.2.
2 Ibid., 14.11.

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human person was covered with a “garment of grace” through which
their bodies “did not know how to rebel against their will.”3 This
garment of grace kept the human person in perfect order. This perfect
order resulted in the blissful experience of the first human beings in
which “true joy flowed perpetually from God, and toward God there was
a blaze of ‘love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a faith that was
no pretence’ . . . there was harmony and a liveliness of mind and body,
and an effortless observance of the commandment. Man was at leisure,
and tiredness never wearied him.”4 This harmony of body and mind that
characterized the state of Paradise is important for Augustine’s anthropology of lust and shame. It is through the Fall that the harmony between
the body and mind is ruptured and man experiences for the first time his
body as no longer in submission to his will. This is the entrance of lust
into the human experience.
The lack of submission of the body to the will was not the first failure of the human being. Augustine instead describes the lack of submission of the body as a secondary result of man’s initial lack of submission
to God that constitutes the original sin. Given the ordering of the human
person as body dependent upon soul and soul dependent on God, it is
clear how man’s first disobedience to God through his will would result
in a secondary disobedience of the body to man’s will. A rupture in one
aspect of the organic continuity that the man experienced between his
constituent parts resulted in a rupture throughout the entire man.Augustine explains, “The soul, in fact, rejoiced in its own freedom to act
perversely and disdained to be God’s servant; and so it was deprived of
the obedient service which its body had at first rendered.”5 Upon the
break of the will with God came the break of the body with the soul.
In a brilliant move, Augustine then goes on to explain that the disobedience of the flesh now serves as a visible sign of man’s disobedience to
God. The sexual body parts are those body parts to which Augustine
explicitly refers when speaking of the disobedience of the body.They are
the parts of the body that are moved by lust alone, completely apart from
man’s will.6 These sexual body parts, insofar as they move independently of
man’s will, give witness to man’s movement independently of God’s will.
This is the reason that shame is attached to the sexual parts of the body.
Augustine explains,“For after their disobedience to God’s instructions, the
first human beings were deprived of God’s favor; and immediately they
3 Ibid., 14.17.
4 Ibid., 14.26
5 13.15 [?AU?ED: footnotes 5, 6, 7: Not Ibid.? Unclear]
6 14.16

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were embarrassed by the nakedness of their bodies. They even used fig
leaves . . . to cover their pudenda, the ‘organs of shame.’These organs were
the same as they were before, but previously there was not shame attached
to them.Thus they felt a novel disturbance in their disobedient flesh, as a
punishment which answered to their own disobedience.”7 Notable in this
passage is Augustine’s insistence that the sexual body parts, the pudenda, or
parts of shame, were originally not shameful but are only called so now
precisely because they are a witness to the soul’s shameful disobedience to
God. This explains the embarrassment of the original pair upon realizing
their nakedness.With the garment of grace removed, their bodies became
disobedient to their wills and in so doing served as a witness to their own
disobedience before God.
Shame, then, for Augustine is a secondary reaction, a reaction to sin in
man’s heart. In the case of sexuality, shame is a reaction to the lust that
arose in man’s heart because of sin. Especially in reference to the sexual
body parts, shame is attached to them because they move in obedience
to lust, disobedient to the rightly ordered will.8 The entrance of lust into
the human experience was a direct result of the Fall.The rupture in the
unity between body and soul as a result of man’s break with God allowed
for the disordering of man’s desires. In this disorder, emotional and physical desires created a deep disturbance within the interior man because
they were no longer submissive to man’s will. Sexual lust is one of the
strongest of these disturbances. Augustine explains that sexual lust
“disturbs the whole man, when the mental emotion combines and
mingles with the physical craving . . . there is an almost total extinction
of mental alertness.”9 This lust in man’s interior self is the force that motivates the movement of his sexual organs. For this reason, the sexual body
parts become visible signs of man’s interior lust.
The experience of shame in reference to sexuality lies precisely in this
fact that physical sexuality now gives witness to the lust that taints the
whole experience of man. Shame, then, is a rightful part of the human
experience of sexuality in that it is a reaction against the lust that is present in these experiences. “It is right, therefore, to be ashamed of this lust,
and it is right that the members which it moves or fails to move by its own
right . . . should be called ‘parts of shame,’ which they were not called before
man’s sin.”10 In this passage, a certain positive function of shame can be
identified.While on the negative side, shame arises from the experience of
7 13.13
8 Ibid., 14.19.
9 Ibid., 14.16.
10 Ibid., 14.17.

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lust and professes that man was not made to experience it, it can also be
said that shame, precisely as a reaction against lust, positively bears witness
to the fact that man knows he was originally created with a wholly integrated order within himself, free from lust. For Augustine, shame declares
that the human body was originally obedient to the human will, which in
turn was obedient to God. The body, then, and in particular the sexual
organs in the beginning bore witness to man’s faithful obedience to God
by their own faithful obedience to the human will.The reality of shame as
a reaction to lust professes precisely this truth about the human person. In
a sense, the experience of shame in reaction to lust is a proclamation from
man’s heart in which he declares with Christ “in the beginning, it was not
so,” in the beginning, man did not have this experience of lust.
This same positive function of shame is found in John Paul II’s reflections upon the human person after the Fall. Like Augustine, John Paul II
identifies shame as a secondary experience that results from the experience of lust. More precisely, shame “reveals the moment of lust.”11 In
revealing the moment of lust, shame in a sense bears witness against it.
From this negative meaning, a positive value also emerges. The Holy
Father explains, “If [shame] reveals the moment of lust, at the same time
it can protect from the consequences of the three forms of lust. It can
even be said that man and woman, through shame, almost remain in a
state of original innocence.”12 By this statement, John Paul II radically
deepens the Augustinian positive value of shame: Shame in some sense
makes possible the upholding of the original grace-filled dignity of the
original man who was free from sin. While shame does not keep man
from lust, it protects him from its demoralizing effects: “From shame
springs respect for one’s own body.”13 It does so as a reaction that identifies lust as a “threat” to man’s original intrinsic value and precisely by
doing so “preserves” the original and irrevocable dignity of man.14 In
other words, the Holy Father wants to say that the experience of shame
is actually a witness to man’s intrinsic dignity, which while constantly
offended through sin, is nevertheless a truth about man that was not lost
in the Fall. Shame is man’s way of preserving the dignity bestowed upon
him from the beginning.
From the beginning man was created with an interior order, according
to the Holy Father. He follows in the Augustinian tradition of affirming
11 Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston:

Pauline Books and Media, 1997: General audience of 6/25/80.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., audience of 2/4/81.
14 Ibid., audience of 5/28/80.

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the rightful submission of the body to the soul as proper to the order and
dignity given to man. Like St. Augustine, therefore, he describes an original psychosomatic unity within the human person in which the body
gave full visible witness to the reality of the entire person.15 This unity
between body and soul was a direct result of man’s unity with his Creator.
Through the disobedience of the first man and woman, man’s unity with
God was ruptured. In choosing not to obey the command of God, the
original man “casts God out of his heart.” In doing so, he “detaches his
heart and almost cuts it off from what ‘is of the Father.’ ”16 Through this
rupture with God, a rupture takes place also within the man. John Paul II
calls it a “rupture of man’s original spiritual and somatic unity.”17 The
Holy Father explains that this rupture gave rise to the entrance of lust into
the human experience.Without the rightful submission of the body to the
soul and the soul to God, human desires became disordered. In casting
God out of his heart, “there remains in him what ‘is of the world.’ ”18
Concupiscence, or lust, is the result: “Flaring up in man, [lust] invades his
senses, excites his body, involves his feelings and in a certain sense take
possession of his heart. . . . [lust] suffocates in his heart the most profound
voice of conscience, the sense of responsibility before God.”19 Therefore,
lust is that experience in which man’s disordered desires overturn the
rightful authority of the intellect and will and become themselves the
authors of man’s actions.
John Paul II defines sexual lust as above all the desire to appropriate
another person for the satisfaction of one’s own desires, in this case, sexual
desires. In the beginning, all sexual desires were ordered toward fulfilling
the nuptial meaning of human existence, that call to make a disinterested
gift of oneself in love to another human being.20 With the disordering of
those desires originally intended to call man to communion came the
disordering of the purpose of those desires. The reality of lust in the
human heart causes the communion of persons, which is based on mutual
self-giving in love, to give way to a “relationship of possession of the other
as the object of one’s own desire.”21 In the context of the nuptial meaning of human existence and the communion of persons, lust takes on a
whole new dimension. Not only does lust cause the breakdown of the
15 Ibid., audience of 11/14/79.
16 Ibid., audience of 4/30/80.
17 Ibid., audience of 5/28/80.
18 Ibid., audience of 4/30/80.
19 Ibid., audience of 9/10/80; cf City of God 14.16.
20 Cf. ibid., audience of 1/16/80.
21 Ibid., audience of 6/25/80.

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unity and harmony within the individual human person, but also it represents the breakdown in the unity and harmony between persons. For this
reason, lust becomes not just destructive on a personal level, but on a social
level as well.
One finds here a development on St. Augustine’s formulation that the
dominance of carnal desire lies at the foundations of the city of man, that
human society which exists counter to the harmony and righteousness
of the City of God. Augustine identifies the beginnings of this earthly
city with Cain who, “overcome by envy,” slew his brother Abel.22 The
notion of being “overcome” by disordered desire marks the roots of the
city of man. From this point on in human history, the disorder in man’s
own heart, that disorder whereby carnal desire supercedes the authority
of the will, creates conflict and division in human society. Augustine
describes this breakdown as a battle between spiritual and carnal desire, a
battle that he also insists occurs not just within the individual, but between
individuals: “And in the individual it is true that ‘the flesh has desires
which resist the spirit, and the spirit has desires which resist the flesh.’
Accordingly, spiritual desire can fight against the carnal desire of another
person, or carnal desire against another’s spiritual desire, just as the good
and the wicked fight against one another.”23 So it is clear that for Augustine (and here we find the roots of John Paul II’s thought) the reality of
carnal desire, or concupiscence, in man is the source and cause of the
breakdown of the communion of persons in human society.
Although for Augustine and John Paul II lust has destroyed the original unity that existed within the person and between persons, the break
is not complete and definitive. While for the Holy Father original sin
represents an irrevocable loss of the original bliss and harmony of paradise, there remains in the human person the call to self-giving love even
after the Fall.24 Concupiscence has not completely dominated the heart
of man. Furthermore, through the death and resurrection of Christ,
redemptive grace is made available for overcoming lust and the restoration of the communion of persons.The Holy Father explains,“The fruit
of redemption is the Holy Spirit, who dwells in man and in his body as
a temple.”25 Insofar as the Holy Spirit dwells in man through his faithfulness to the grace of redemption, man is said to live a life “according to
the Spirit.” that affords him the gradual regaining of his original dignity,
the transformation of his desires, and the harmonization of his body and
22 St. Augustine, City of God, 15.5.
23 Ibid.
24 John Paul II, Theology of the Body, audience of 2/13/80.
25 Ibid., 2/11/81.

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soul.This healing and reordering of man’s desires renders him free to give
himself away in love. This makes man capable of experiencing human
sexuality as it was originally intended, as an incarnation and expression
of the nuptial meaning of his existence. Human sexuality becomes,
through a life lived according to the Holy Spirit, no longer a source of
shame but the sign and sacrament of self-giving love.
The Holy Father contrasts this “life in the Holy Spirit” with a life lived
“according to the flesh” in which lust overcomes and gradually takes over
the interior life of the man. Instead of experiencing freedom, the continued indulgence or passive compliance with lust leads to slavery in the
heart of man.26 Human sexuality becomes a source of slavery and as a
consequence also a source of shame. Man knows deep in his heart that
he was created for freedom and self-giving love.The man of lust recognizes the disorders of his heart and is ashamed of them, even if he is not
yet willing to open himself to the redemption of these disorders.
It is important here to note that in the distinction between “life in the
Spirit” and “life in the flesh,” one does not understand “flesh” to represent the body, as if the body were the source of all that is contrary to the
work of the Holy Spirit. This point is also made by St. Augustine. Both
refer to the Pauline text that lists the “works of the flesh” (Gal 5:20–21)
and remark that many of the “works” listed have their source in the mind.
Augustine states, “For among the ‘works of the flesh’ which [Paul] said
were obvious, and which he listed and condemned, we find not only
those concerned with sensual pleasures . . . but also those which show
faults of the mind.”27 John Paul II echoes this argument:“It is significant
that Paul mentions not only ‘fornication, impurity, licentiousness . . .
drunkenness, carousing.’ He names other sins too . . . ‘idolatry, sorcery,
envy. . . .’ According to our anthropological categories, we would rather
be inclined to call all the works listed here sins of the spirit.”28 In other
words, both theologians want to argue that the Pauline distinction
between flesh and Spirit is not so much about the body as contrary to
the spirit as it is about sin in contrast to the Holy Spirit. This is important for maintaining the dignity and inherent goodness of the body that
both Augustine and John Paul II affirm in their reflections.
For both Augustine and John Paul II, the human body has inestimable
worth and value. Augustine, however, stops short of articulating the full
beauty of those parts of the body that express human sexuality.Whereas
26 Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), Love and Responsibility, trans. H.T. Willets (New

York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981), 159–66.
27 St. Augustine, City of God, 14.2.
28 John Paul II, Theology of the Body, audience of 1/7/81.

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he recognizes the original dignity of the human sexual body parts, he
maintains that they are rightfully named pudenda, or ‘parts of shame,’ in
the historical, post-lapsarian reality of man’s lust-tainted existence. They
are ‘parts of shame’ because they irrevocably bear witness to man’s
disobedience in the Fall and are thus the “private property of lust.”29 Man
rightfully blushes at this reality and treats human sexuality with a sense
of modesty and protective shame.
John Paul II echoes this stance when he says that “man is ashamed of
his body.”30 However, the Pope also opens up for us a new perspective in
his theology of the body: the “absorption of shame by love.”31 Applying
an Augustinian theology of grace to human sexuality, John Paul concludes
that the shame that is rightfully a part of the human sexual experience
can give way to an experience of love as the grace of redemption transforms the heart. As man’s heart is continually healed and redeemed, he
experiences the victory of love over lust. Shame, defined as man’s reaction to lust, has no foothold where love prevails. In this way, Augustine’s
“parts of shame” begin to speak a theology of nuptial love. They no
longer incarnate man’s shame, but with the absorption of shame by love,
they incarnate for man the entire meaning of his being and existing in
the world: namely, to give himself away in love.
This is an astonishing and life-changing stimulus to hope. For as sure
as are the promises of Christ, so is the truth that a life lived in the Spirit
will offer the gradual redemption of human sexuality. The possibility of
experiencing in this life human sexuality not as a source of lust and
shame, but as a sign and sacrament of self-giving love stirs the human
heart to its depths and brings forth a hope for joy hitherto untapped in
the hearts of men and women. While Augustine has provided the seeds
for this anthropology, John Paul II’s Theology of the Body thus moves theological anthropology forward in a profound, and as yet insufficiently
noticed, manner.

29 St. Augustine, City of God, 14.19.
30 John Paul II, Theology of the Body, audience of 5/28/80.
31 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 181.

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257

The Purification of Memory1
G EORGES C ARDINAL C OTTIER , OP
Theologian of the Pontifical Household
Vatican City

W E ARE INVITED by the Holy Father to start the procedure of
purifying the memory. Immediately, however, questions arise:What is the
meaning of the purification of memory? Is such an endeavor possible?
What kind of memory are we speaking about? Let us begin by answering that we are dealing with the memory of history (mémoire historique).
Then we have to ask: What kind of relation is there between personal
memory and the memory of history?
“To purify the memory” includes a verb that implies an action; it
presupposes that we have taken hold of our memory, that we are the
masters of it. At first, we may be tempted to say that the whole endeavor
is an illusion: isn’t it rather our memory that masters us?
I. Forms of Memory
In spite of the criticisms it faces, psychoanalytical doctrine has directed our
attention to the phenomenon of unconscious repression.The unconscious
is a fact of memory:The recollection of painful and tormenting periods, that
the conscious mind cannot stand, are thrown into a state of being forgotten.
They are repressed because the state to which they are relegated—which
one wishes would lead to their abolition, their destruction—immerses them
in a zone of our psyche that is outside the conscious realm.Their existence
surfaces through troubles they introduce in our conscious mind.They have
an appearance that remains indirect:They do not show up uncovered.They
are disguised, camouflaged, to the point of passing unnoticed.Artifices must
be used in order to bring them to the surface of the conscious mind.
1 Translation by Joseph Alobaidi, OP, of “Purification de la mémoire,” Nova et Vetera

75 (2000): 33–42.

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Such repressed memories are of wounds suffered, generally belonging to
the first stage of childhood; the individual does not have the strength to
face them. Thus, repression represents a kind of spontaneous self-defense
mechanism of someone finding himself powerless. This is why he never
fully reaches his goal; the troubles arising from this failure bear witness to
the repression. Here, we have not yet reached the realm of ethics.
Referring to the process of repression in the subconscious makes it
easy to show the points that enlighten our reflection. Automatism reflex,
for example, is typical of certain memory phenomena.We will also maintain the fact that what we forget is not eliminated—Bergson used to say
that we forget nothing—but remains in a state of dormancy, with the
possibility of being awakened either suddenly or by suggestion.
What has been said does not pertain to all kinds of memories.We have
in mind the pages of Confessions (X, 6–28) where Augustine describes the
vastness of memory in order to illustrate the mystery of the spirit. From
the memory of things perceived to the universe of images, then to the
universe of ideas, the spirit continues its surprising exploration, which is
at the same time the itinerary toward the depth of the human inner self.
Hence, the journey of the spirit in the vast expanses of the memory leads
to self discovery and, furthermore, to the encounter with God: et intravi
ad ipsius animi mei sedem, quae illi est in memoria mea, quoniam sui quoque
meminit animus, nec ibi tu eras . . . ita nec ipse animus es, quia dominus deus
animi tu es, et conmuntantur haec omnia, tu autem inconmutabilis manes super
omnia et dignatus es habitare in memoria mea, ex quo te didici . . . habitas certe
in ea, quoniam tui memimi, ex quo te didici, et in ea te invenio, cum recordor te
(XXV, 36).
While progressing in the investigation of these regions of the memory,
the spirit grasps itself as an object of its own investigation.This grasping
of self does not shut off the spirit, since it remains open to transcendence:
Memoria sui, memoria Dei. During all this, the soul stays active. It draws
forth memories from oblivion by its willed attention. Its creative imagination may freely use images already stored. Finally, and this too is a
reason for being amazed, our spirit, helped by memory, masters time to
some degree, since it is able to connect in the present what was experienced in the past with what will happen in the future.
Speaking about the first layers of the memory, Augustine notices that
animals too have this kind of memory, to which one cannot reduce all
the other kinds.The attention, the creation of new images and even the
spirit’s dynamic are witnesses of freedom’s ascendancy over the memory.

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II. Forgiveness
This particularity becomes obvious when we enter the field of ethics,
which deals precisely with actions that depend on our responsibility.This
field also extends to our past actions, which means that we have ascendancy over our memories.
Let us think about remorse and forgiveness. Remorse supposes that I
judge differently today an action that I accomplished and judged otherwise
yesterday.This remains possible, still, because it is in my power to reconsider
the same action according to the requirements of the moral law, present in
my conscious. I can confer to it its true moral value.Thus, the same act is
present to my conscious with a new qualification, to the point that I wish
that I had never committed it. The remorse presumes that the error is
recognized as such, with no possibility to suppress it. On the contrary,
remorse makes the presence of the error more incisive, more painful.
Remorse, however, may lead to a petition for forgiveness. If by mistake
I hurt others, I can make up for the hurt by reparation or another form
of compensation.When others assent to my petition for forgiveness, the
weight of the guilt-memory becomes lighter.
But the mistake—we are speaking about sin—first of all offends God.
That is why it is toward God that the sinner must turn. Here we meet
the mighty pardon of God. We know the episode of the Gospel where
the paralytic man was healed: “[W]ho but God alone can forgive sins?”
(Mk 2:7).The scribes are right.Their mistake is to fail to ask themselves
by what right Jesus, who reveals here something of his identity, accords
to himself this prerogative.
The forgiveness of sins by God is precisely the highest and most
eminent form of the purification of memory. This is because the divine
forgiveness really erases and destroys the sin, so that its weight does not
burden the conscience anymore. It remains true that the aspect of the
sinful act as such that is destroyed is that very aspect that made it sinful,
even if the psychological memory of it remains. Therefore, the moral
evaluation by which an individual sees his past actions is no longer the
same: The sin’s stigma that leads him to suffer does not exist. The individual is freed from it.
There is a great difference between divine and human forgiveness.The
man who forgives, imitating his heavenly Father, refrains from considering the offense he received. God, instead, really eradicates the sin.
Thus, in the divine forgiveness, the malice—the moral disorder—that
provides the sinful aspect of an act is destroyed, even though the fact, in
its materiality, leaves records in the psychological memory. However, and

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in the deepest meaning, which is the moral meaning, the memory is truly
purified.“Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mk 2:5):The healing that restores
the paralytic’s ability to move freely is the sign of a deeper liberation;
liberation from spiritual paralysis, from the death that sin represents.
III. Memory of History
The previous considerations deal with the memory of a particular
person. Our subject is the memory of history, which is a collective
memory. Nevertheless, an understanding of personal memory, provided
that the right transposition takes place, can still be useful for the understanding of questions pertaining to the memory of history.This notion of
the memory of history is collective: It applies to peoples, nations, and
groups. In each case, the nature of the subject defines the nature of the
memory. I am not going to expand on this point here. However, we
should keep it in mind.2
Our reflection has to deal with a specific subject, a subject of the
supernatural order: the Church of Christ. What do we mean when we
speak about the memory of the Church?
We have to look with faith at the Church and at her memory. It is the
words of Jesus himself, in the Gospel according to John, that reveal to us
the principle of this memory that is supernatural: “I have much more to
tell you, but you cannot bear it now. But when he comes, the Spirit of
truth, he will guide you to all truth. He will speak on his own, but he will
speak what he hears, and will declare to you the things that are coming.
He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it
to you. Everything that the Father has is mine; for this reason I told you
that he will take from what is mine and declare it to you” ( Jn 16:12–15).
We may notice that the verb “to bear” pertains to the understanding
and to the participation in the death and glorification of Jesus.The Holy
Spirit is at the very beginning of the living Tradition by which the Word
of God, which makes known to us the mystery of salvation and opens
our mind, is faithfully kept, explained, and scrutinized in its boundless
riches.The same Spirit who inspires the sacred scribes assists the Magisterium of the Church and brings forth the sensus fidei.
The living presence of the past, and therefore, of the memory, of the
mystery of salvation, takes many forms because of its riches and its fecundity, as it is recalled by the beautiful text of the Council, the Constitution
on the Sacred Liturgy: Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 7.
2 There is perhaps something similar to the repression of memory in the amnesia

regarding the enormity of the crimes committed by the communist regimes.
However, other explanations for such behavior are not to be excluded.

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Scripture, received in the Tradition, becomes, consequently, the source
of an ever-surging light. Sacraments become a source of life. In them,
under the action of the Spirit, Christ himself acts and, in so doing,
remains present to his Church, in pilgrimage toward the end of time and
the fullness of eternal life. It is remarkable that the sacrament in which
resides the highest level of Christ’s presence is called a memorial.
What is the purpose of this remembering? The memory of the
Church, a gift from the Holy Spirit, forcefully calls attention to the
dimension of presence, which is typical of memory. Memory does not
leave us in the past; it makes the past present and immediate.
IV. The Presence of the Sin
It is to be noticed that in the Gospel according to John that we quoted,
the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of truth ( Jn 16:13) that leads the disciples to the fullness of the truth. Here we have the principle of the purification of memory.
The sources of living waters that are the word of God and the sacraments do not need to be purified. In order to understand the necessity
for purification we have to introduce a new consideration, already
expressed in Tertio Millennio Adveniente, which refers to the Constitution
Lumen Gentium: “The Church, although holy by its incorporation to
Christ, never ceases to make penance: It always acknowledges sinners,
before God and before men, as its own” (no. 33). In this sense, the constitution Lumen Gentium says: “The Church, that has sinners in its midst, at
once holy and always in need of purification, advances by way of penance
and renewal” (no. 8).
The word of God entrusted to the Church and Christ’s gestures that
are the sacraments yield fruits of holiness. This is what should normally
happen. The Church is holy; her members, however, are sinners. By sin,
we remove ourselves from this living stream. The motherly love of the
Church makes her do whatever is in her power in order to snatch her
sons away from sin and to look after them when they fall. She considers
them hers, always, and for them she makes penance. Horrified by sin, she
still loves the sinner.
The relation between the Church that is holy and her members that
are not, poses a central theological question, which I will mention only
briefly at this point. It is a decisive question for understanding the petition for forgiveness and the purification of memory.
It is necessary here to bring up two clarifications.The first deals with
the petition for forgiveness. We have to distinguish, foremost, between
two aspects of sin. The first is the guilt of the individual who commits

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the sinful act. Everyone is accountable before God for his actions. Such a
process is strictly personal. It remains possible, of course, in the communion of saints, to pray for the conversion of the sinner.We can pray also in
order that “the temporal punishment,” the consequence of the sin, of the
contrite and already forgiven sinner may be blotted out.
The guilt, which is the proper responsibility of the sinner because of his
sin, remains strictly personal. However, beyond the guilt, which remains
always personal, we may consider the sin under another aspect: the nature
of the sinful act, which is the opposition to the moral law. Some acts in
themselves and in what constitutes them (which presupposes the responsibility of the individual that we spoke about) are against the moral law—such
as murder, adultery, and theft. It is at the level of the objective characteristics of the act that the petition for forgiveness and the purification of the
memory reside. Furthermore, regardless of the individual responsibility of
the perpetrators, who may have been blinded by invincible ignorance, some
of these acts are serious obstacles to the testimony and the mission of the
Church. Tertio Millennio Adveniente speaks of the sins of Christians who
offered to the world “not the testimony of a life inspired by the values of
faith, but ways of thinking and behaving that truly were forms of countertestimony and scandal” (no. 33).
The Church has the mission of proclaiming the Gospel. Testimony is
the basis for such proclamation. The behavior of some Christians acts
directly against this.
The second clarification pertains to the Church as subject that spans
the centuries, unchanged and stronger than the erosion of time: The
Church has the promise of life everlasting. Here, a first distinction
becomes evident: Not every action accomplished by a Christian may be
attributed to the Church as subject. This is the case when the Christian
behaves as part of the temporal city. One must be aware of how various
actions accomplished by Christians may or may not be attributed to the
Church. Each action should be analyzed according to its own situation.
There is another problem, though, that I want to emphasize. Lumen
Gentium, no. 8, indicates that the Church is an elaborate reality, made of
double elements: human and divine.Thus, in the light of a remarkable (non
mediocris) analogy, she could be paralleled to the mystery of the incarnate
Verb who uses, like an instrument, the human nature that he incorporated.“In the same way, the society as a whole that constitutes the Church
is at the service of the Holy Spirit of Christ who gives her life for the
growth of the body.”There is indeed an analogy: By virtue of the hypostatic union, the humanity of Jesus is totally and flawlessly holy. In the
Church, however, that which is human remains subject to frailty and

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weaknesses. Until now, we envisaged the paradox of the Church’s holiness,
received from God, and her members who are sinners.We must somehow
continue our analysis.
The Church, existing within history, receives from human society
goods that are true cultural acquisitions.3 It also happens that she receives
institutions modeled on those of human civil society, with procedures that
conceal in various ways the evangelical aspect of her mission. Apart from
the shortcomings themselves, one must consider the imperfections and
solutions in history, which are marked by an “all-too-human” burden.
It is in this perspective that the Council decree regarding ecumenism,
Unitatis Redintegratio, mentions the call for perpetual reform (perennis
reformatio) pushed by this renewal, which is nothing less than the Church’s
being more faithful to her vocation, a great momentum that pushes the
Church toward the fullness of the Kingdom, which will be given to her
in eternity (no. 6).That is why it has been said in Dei Verbum that “while
the centuries pass, the Church constantly advances toward the fullness of
the divine truth, until the words of God are accomplished in her” (no. 8).
It is in such a vision of the Church that the purification of memory
could be understood. The Augustinian expression memoria sui, memoria
Dei applies to the Church as a subject, who receives her living unity from
the Holy Spirit. However, the words’ order is reversed: It is the memoria
Dei that enlightens the memoria sui, whose meaning is close to the old
meaning of “become what you are,” become always more faithfully, more
perfectly conformed to the One who is your Head, whose Body you are.
Dealing with the treasure that is entrusted to her, the word of God and
the sacraments, it remains in her. Its presence is intact and always new:
Memoria Dei. In other words: Memoria Christi. Sure of her indefectible
faithfulness, which is a gift from God, the Church, in the act of memoria
sui, looks truthfully at her own history, where human aspects intrude with
their imperfection, along with the sins of her children.When it comes to
examining these aspects, the Spirit of truth, who leads the Church to
scrutinize more and more intensely the mystery in the depth of her
being, allows her at the same time to have a critical judgment about her
past, a critical judgment that becomes more and more refined in conformity with her own essence. The knowledge of herself as the Body of
Christ, the Bride of Christ, gives her the points of reference and the
criteria that allow her to appreciate the institutions, the practices and the
actions that marked her progression in history. This remains true,
evidently, of her past as well as of her present.
3 Cf. Gaudium et Spes, no. 44.

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Here, we are thinking about an institution like the inquisition. The
first objective, which is to defend the integrity of the faith of God’s
people against harmful errors, is something inscribed in the pastoral
vocation of the Church. It is the implementation of this very objective
that, from two points of view, poses a problem. First, we must take note
of the context: Christendom, that is, a political society whose citizens are
Christians and that, in itself, is concerned with the unity of the faith.
Second—it is at this level that a critical judgment must be exercised—the
Church’s institutions set up a series of procedures that belong to civil
tribunals. The death penalty was a common practice. Its form, being
burned at the stake, horrifies us.There was no hesitation at using torture
in order to obtain confessions of guilt. Some time later, the Protestant
Reformation did not change matters. Soon after that, the Treaty of Westphalia made things worse in opening the way to the truth of the State.
Thus the purification of memory pertains to judgment. It is the fruit
of the critical reading that she makes of her own history, enlightened by
the Gospel, whose riches, specificity, and demands she ponders continually.This judgment, a consequence of her quest for the truth, leads her to
ask God for forgiveness, in the name of his children, who are either
sinners or are so lethargic that they cannot read the signs of times. At the
same time, she asks forgiveness from men, too. Not because, while facing
them, she is as if sitting before a tribunal; rather, the memory of errors
and imperfections erect in their way a barrier that keeps them from
reaching the word of salvation to which they are entitled.
It should go without saying that by “critical judgment” I intend the
original meaning of the expression “discernment,” without any connotation of the intention of denial or suspicion. “Krisis,” from which come
“critic” and “criterion,” means, first of all, “judgment.” Thus, “critical
judgment” means judgment exercised in light of the criteria of the truth
of the Gospel.
Before concluding I want briefly to raise an objection that is often
made to the idea of the purification of memory. It is an objection issued
in various ways by certain circles and schools of thought, generally independently of one another, that all have in common the concept of what
we may call “mentality.”This objection would say that an invitation to the
purification of memory becomes a gross anachronism. It is a fact that we
partake in our own age’s mentality. No one, the strongest personalities
included, totally escapes this fact. That is why it is right to examine the
concept of mentality. Let us say that “mentality” is the sum of ideas
received in a passive and unchecked manner, in a certain time by a society or by a particular group. These ideas are not investigated by reason,

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because they seem obvious, as if they are self-evident.They encounter no
objection or particular difficulty. They are indisputable because they are
believed to be so. Hence, a certain number of unquestioned judgments
are passed to us through education, others by social mimesis, still others
by force of public opinion.
The question remains whether everything that individuals think in a
determined time and a specific society is enclosed in the mentality. It is
also true that a mentality is not so strong that it eliminates critical revision, and that there are universal values that transcend epochs and particular societies.This is the case especially for ethical values, in spite of their
tendency toward commands and particular forbiddances.
They were called prejudices at the time of Enlightenment. They
presumably belonged to the past; the light of reason would disperse them
forever. Today, however, it seems that we are deep in the opposite
tendency: All is prejudice, because everything is radically determined by
the time and place. In ethics, this leads to relativism.
If we have to examine this dimension of social life, its mentality, it is
because it forms the basis for many objections to the idea of asking
forgiveness and the purification of memory.
The first objection results from methodic scruple. It is provoked by
historians who aim at the restitution of the past by referring facts, behaviors, and events to the ideological context of the epoch, and refraining
from any value judgment. My answer to this is that the study of the
history of facts constitutes an indispensable step that preserves us from
anachronism. Being conscious of the complexity of situations is an
advantage that we have because of the discipline of history. However, the
latter, because of its methodological presuppositions, is probably incapable of providing the last word about history. For our subject, the
philosopher’s and the theologian’s opinion of history are necessary.
Objections by historians—rather, by some historians—should be examined from the epistemological point of view. It is more difficult to understand clearly the objections that themselves proceed from a relativist
mentality, inspiring, without discernment, surveys, and opinion polls.
Those who find in their changing features the marks of the Spirit will
ultimately be able to justify anything: “to each, his own truth.”
Finally there are the theoretical justifications of relativism that do not
necessarily negate moral values, but attribute them to no moral, psychological, or social origin. A good example can be seen in the (now old)
book by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Ethics and Moral Science (La morale et la science
des moeurs).According to this disciple of Durkheim, moral imperatives do
not refer to a transcendental source; they are the individual expression of

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“social pressure.” Hence, speaking of the science of behaviors, one
confirms the immanence of moral values in the society, together with the
fact that they prevail over individuals. Clearly in this perspective, the idea
of the purification of memory bears no meaning. History offers a spectrum of many moralities. One morality follows on the other just as
epochs and societies do.
We say that the science of behavior or sociology cannot replace philosophy
or moral theology. It can be a precious addition that allows the moral
theologian to be aware of the function of social pressures and of the existence of prejudices, which are still at a pre-moral level but can strongly
induce moral choices. He will become aware, as well, of the venues of the
transmission of moral values, like imitation or the influence of role models.
I want, however, to highlight two decisive factors pertaining to our
problem that underline the relation between morality and history. The
first is the slow maturation in time before being conscious of the implications and the aftereffects of the demands of the moral life. I express the
second factor by the term “constellation.” In a more or less explicit way,
certain fundamental values of morality are recognized in different epochs.
What changes is their articulation, with this or that value being given
priority over another. I cannot expand further on this point here, but it
is nevertheless important.Thus, what was essential for the generations of
Christendom was defending the truth, which was a concern both of the
civil society and of the Church.The question of the means employed for
this defense was put aside.
Should we say that our time is marked by the eclipse of the sense of
the truth? Relativism is certainly widespread. However, a deeper analysis
leads one to think that in the present constellation of values, what occupies the first place is the appropriation of the truth by an act that attests
to both the transcendence and the freedom of the person. The truth is
fully honored when it imposes itself on a freedom that finds its fulfillment in its vital acceptance, decisive for its destiny. It seems to me that
this is the message of Dignitatis Humanae.This is what gives the purification of memory its highest rationale.
Many men and women have been victimized by brutal methods that
constituted an insult to the causes they were intended to serve. These
men and women have the right to our respect and pietas.4

4 For further discussion, see Georges Cottier, OP, Mémoire et repentance: pourquoi

l’Eglise demande pardon, preface by Cardinal Roger Etchegaray (Parole et Silence:
Paris, 1998).

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Imago Dei–Imago Christi:
The Theological Foundations
of Christian Humanism1
J. AUGUSTINE D I N OIA , OP
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Vatican City

I T HAS BEEN widely recognized that the documents of the Second
Vatican Council represent a notable reaffirmation of the theology of the
imago Dei.2 For a variety of reasons, in some traditions of Catholic theology after the Reformation and Enlightenment periods, this element of
classical theological anthropology had not received the attention it properly deserved. But in the first half of the twentieth century, both in neoThomistic and ressourcement circles, the theology of the imago Dei enjoyed
a significant revival. Inspired in part by this retrieval of classical theological anthropology, the Council Fathers sought to recover the Christological and eschatological contexts that had been essential in the theology of
the imago Dei of the best patristic and scholastic authors. Among the
conciliar documents, none was more complete in its articulation of the
theology of the imago Dei than Gaudium et Spes.3
The importance of the connection between anthropology and Christology both for a correct interpretation of Gaudium et Spes and for an
authentic Christian humanism was noted early on. Over thirty years ago,
1 Presented to the International Congress of the Pontifical Academy of St.Thomas

Aquinas, Rome, 21–25 September 2003.
2 See Luis Ladaria, SJ, “Humanity in the Light of Christ in the Second Vatican

Council,” in René Latourelle, ed., Vatican II: Assessment and Perspectives, Vol. II
(New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 386–401.
3 See the comprehensive treatment in George Karakunnel, The Christian Vision of
Man:A Study of the Theological Anthropology in “Gaudium et Spes” of Vatican II (Bangalore: Asian Trading Association, 1984).

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in one of the first theological commentaries on Gaudium et Spes, the now
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger argued that it is essential to take into account
the intrinsic linking of anthropology with Christology (and thus with
eschatology) that unfolds across the entire text and that in his view
constitutes its crucial insight. Any properly comprehensive interpretation
of the theology of the imago Dei in Gaudium et Spes would need to
balance passages that speak of man as created in the image of God (such
as no. 12) with those that speak of Christ as key to the mystery of man
(such as no. 22).The perfect image of God is the incarnate Word who is
both the exemplar of the created of God in man and the pattern for its
graced transformation.4 The concrete human person who is created in
the image of God is always in via, always being drawn to the Father, but
partly impeded by sin; he is redeemed by Christ, yet still undergoing a
lifelong transformation in the power of the Holy Spirit, with a view to
the final consummation of a life of communion with the Blessed Trinity
and the saints.The image of God is always, as it were, a work in progress.
From the moment of creation, the perfection of the image of God—
more simply, holiness—is already intimated as the end of human life. A
Christian theology of creation “is only intelligible in eschatology; the
Alpha is only truly to be understood in the Omega.”5 Thus, according to
Cardinal Ratzinger’s early essay, Gaudium et Spes presents “Christ as the
eschatological Adam to whom the first Adam already pointed; as the true
image of God that transforms man once more into likeness to God.”6
Subsequently, as is well-known, Pope John Paul II made this cluster of
themes the hallmark of his pontificate.The dominant interest in anthropology, which had characterized his entire career as a philosopher and
theologian, now in his papal Magisterium blossomed prodigiously into
the full-blown reaffirmation of an authentic Christian humanism.7 A
distinctive element in Pope John Paul’s teaching about the imago Dei has
4 Joseph Ratzinger,“The Dignity of the Human Person,” in Herbert Vorgrimler et

al., eds., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, Vol.V (New York: Herder and
Herder, 1969), 115–63.
5 Ibid., 121.
6 Ibid., 159. See the discussion of these issues in Walter Kasper, “The Theological
Anthropology of Gaudium et Spes,” and David L. Schindler,“Christology and the
imago Dei: Interpreting Gaudium et Spes,” Communio 23 (1996), 129–41 and
156–84.
7 See Kenneth Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama:The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), and Jaroslav Kupczak, OP, Destined for Liberty: The
Human Person in the Philosophy of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 2000).

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been his stress on the relational character of the image: Creation in the
image of God is the basis for and is realized precisely in the communion
of persons. In addition, the Holy Father has made his own the distinctive
blend of anthropology and Christology, which is the mark of conciliar
teaching. Pope John Paul II frequently invokes the words of Gaudium et
Spes no. 22, which state that “it is only in the mystery of the Word made
flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.” Beginning with his
programmatic first encyclical, anthropology and Christology are always
to be found interwoven in the relational theology of the imago Dei
expounded by the Holy Father.
The juxtaposition of imago Dei and imago Christi in the title of my essay
is meant to capsulize the Christocentric anthropology that is characteristic
of patristic and scholastic theology of the image of God and that has been
expressed anew by the Second Vatican Council, by Pope John Paul II, and
by Cardinal Ratzinger and other theologians. It can truly be said that,
according to this vision, the human person is created in the image of God
(imago Dei) in order to grow into the image of Christ (imago Christi).This
Christocentric vision of the human person is the foundation of authentic
Christian humanism.What is more, Gaudium et Spes and the Magisterium
of Pope John Paul II testify to the immense relevance of this vision for the
new evangelization and for theology today as the Church confronts a wide
range of challenges in her proclamation of the truth about man.
The challenges to authentic Christian humanism today are of at least
two kinds, though the first arises from within the Christian theological
tradition itself and is represented by the lingering influence of nominalist patterns of thought in moral theology and in the anthropology that it
implies. A second kind of challenge has sources largely external to the
Christian tradition, and is represented by the variety of secular humanisms and anti-humanisms that advance alternative accounts of the meaning (or lack of it) in human existence. Another important kind of
challenge arises from the distinctive religious visions of the human
espoused by Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, but I shall not be considering it here. The two kinds of challenge I do want to consider can be
seen to be convergent in their final outcomes, and I want to suggest that
the theology of the imago Dei of St.Thomas Aquinas can be of particular
assistance in facing them.
We have seen that the Christocentric anthropology of Pope John II
and the Second Vatican Council highlights the intrinsic link between
what human beings are as such and what they can hope to become.
Implicit in this anthropology is the conviction that human fulfillment
and religious consummation are themselves intimately connected. The

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holiness (or religious consummation) that is Christ’s gift in the Holy Spirit
constitutes the perfection of the image of God (integral human fulfillment). Created in the image of God, human persons are meant to grow
into the image of Christ. As they become increasingly conformed to the
perfect man, Jesus Christ, the fullness of their humanity is realized.There
is thus a finality built into human nature as such and, although its realization is possible only with the assistance of divine grace, this realization
is in a real sense continuous with the tendencies and even aspirations
essential to human nature as such.The cultivation and fulfillment of the
human person through seeking the good in a graced moral life enables
one to enjoy the Good that is beyond life.
It is precisely this identification of human fulfillment with religious
perfection that is, in different ways, severed or negated by the lingering
nominalism of some Catholic moral theology and by the competing secular humanisms and anti-humanisms of Western modernity. The result in
both cases is a spiritual crisis in which the goods of human life are disengaged from the desire for transcendence. Nominalism divorces human
moral fulfillment from the possibility of the enjoyment of a transcendent
good, while secular humanisms and anti-humanisms declare the desire for
this transcendence to be itself irrelevant and even injurious to integral
human fulfillment. Let us consider these challenges in turn.
The features of nominalist thought that are crucial to my argument here
will be familiar to students of the history of late medieval philosophy and
theology.8 Nominalist thinkers famously sought to preserve the divine
freedom by stressing the unlimited possibilities available to the absolute
power of God (the potentia absoluta) that cannot be regarded as in any way
constrained by the existing order of things in creation and redemption
established by the divine potentia ordinata.To a certain extent under the influence of Scotus, who had already made Aquinas the target of his criticism,9
nominalists explicitly denied that which Aquinas had affirmed, namely, the
8 For details, see Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 3 (New York:

Doubleday, 1963), 43–122, and Paul Vincent Spade, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ockham (Cambridge: Cambrige University Press, 1999), especially the essays
by Peter King, Marilyn McCord Adams, A. S. McGrade, and Alfred J. Freddoso.
9 See Thomas Williams, “How Scotus Separates Morality from Happiness,” American Philosophical Quarterly 69 (1995), 425–45. See Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 2, 476–551, and Thomas Williams, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Scotus
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially the essays by James Ross
and Todd Bates,William E. Mann, Hans Möhle,Thomas Miller and Bonnie Kent.
For the contrast between Scotus and Aquinas, and the links between nominalism
and Scotus on these issues, see especially Anthony Levi, Renaissance and Reformation:
The Intellectual Genesis (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2002), 30–67.

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existence of a rationally ordered universe reflecting the divine wisdom and
accessible to human experience and knowledge.Whereas for Aquinas there
is a congruence between the knowable divine law inscribed in human
nature (natural law) and human aspirations for fulfillment, on the one hand,
and the enjoyment of supernatural beatitude, on the other, for nominalism
God is completely unconstrained in enjoining moral laws. The moral law
imposes obligations that reflect neither the rational character of God’s activity nor the inbuilt finalities of human nature. Moreover, since absolutely
free, God’s decision to save or damn particular individuals could not be in
any way dependent on their fulfillment, or lack of it, of these obligations.
Rather than being the intrinsic principle of the moral life, as in Aquinas,
beatitude becomes an external reward whose enjoyment may or may not
reflect the moral character of a particular human life. Since moral law is the
expression of the divine will and thus ceases to depend upon the ontological constitution of human nature, moral theology is detached from theological anthropology and from any exemplary Christology.Yielding its place in
theological anthropology and moral theology, Christocentrism in the form
of intense devotion to Christ became a persistent feature of the spirituality
of the devotio moderna, which was itself a religious strategy designed to bypass
the troublesome philosophical and theological perplexities of nominalist via
moderna. In an important recent book,Anthony Levi has argued that nominalist theology gave rise to an “intolerable spiritual tension, deriving from
the separation of moral achievement from religious fulfillment,” principally
because individuals “could not know what unalterable fate God had decreed
for them without reference to the exercise of autonomously self-determining powers during life.”10 With the divorce of moral achievement from religious perfection, religious practices and observances served to allay this
tension independently of the moral state of the individual.
Father Servais Pinckaers has convincingly demonstrated that certain
fundamental presuppositions of nominalist theology are embedded in the
casusitic moral theology of the manuals in use from the seventeenth
century to the eve of the Second Vatican Council.11 Among these, perhaps
the most important for our theme are the centrality accorded to obligation in the moral life and the eclipse of beatitude as an intrinsic principle
10 Levi, 64.
11 Servais Pinckaers, OP, “La nature de la moralité: morale casuistique at morale

thomiste,” in Somme theologique: Les actes humains, vol. 2, trans. S. Pinckaers (Paris:
Desclée & Cie, 1966), 215–76. See his The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington,
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 327–53. For a helpful summary
of Pinckaers’s argument, see Romanus Cessario, OP, Introduction to Moral Theology
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 229–42.

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of moral action. In this tradition of moral theology, the categories of the
obliged and the forbidden are prior to the categories of good and evil in
actions.Actions are bad or wrong because they are forbidden, rather than
vice versa. Actions that are bad or wrong merit punishment, while those
that are good or right merit reward. But there is no intrinsic connection
between these actions as such and the punishment or reward they merit.
Since nominalist philosophical theology does not survive in the casuist
worldview, the predestinating deity has vanished. God is now understood
to confer reward or punishment in view of an individual’s success or failure in meeting moral obligations. Under the influence of nominalism,
casuist moral theology has no need for an account of how moral agents
become good by seeking the good. It is significant, as Father Pinckaers
has pointed out, that the treatise on beatitude disappeared from manualist moral theology while the treatise on the virtues was consigned to the
realm of spiritual theology.
Although I cannot pursue the point here, the prevalence of this kind
of moral theology gave rise to the intolerable tensions experienced by
many Catholics in the face of the moral teaching of Humanae Vitae—and
eventually the entirety of Christian teaching about human sexuality—
which seemed to impose an outdated moral obligation whose connection with the human good was either denied or dismissed or, more
commonly, simply not apparent.The proportionalist and consequentialist
moral theories devised with a view to allaying these tensions failed to
question, and indeed often presupposed, the very edifice of casuistic
moral theology that had made these tensions almost inevitable.
The fundamental difficulty here—echoing Levi, one might speak of
an “intolerable spiritual tension”—is that many people can no longer
discern an intrinsic link between the moral law and their good, and,
furthermore, no longer view religious achievement (the reward of happiness) as intrinsically connected with moral or human fulfillment. Religious practices—often in the form of eclectic spiritualities—are now
often seen as unconnected from moral obligations, whose specific
content is in any case exiguous. Morality, even when faithfully observed,
is viewed as disengaged from, and indeed is often regarded as in conflict
with, basic human aspirations for a good and happy life. In addition, a
good and happy life here is not seen as continuous with the life of beatitude as such. Heaven is inevitable in any case, while hell is unthinkable
and purgatory unintelligible.
In accounting for the revolution that came with modernity and saw the
emergence of secular humanism and, more recently, of neo-Nietzschean
anti-humanisms, one can certainly point to the spiritual mentality fostered

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by casuist moral theology as among the likely contributing factors.
Certainly, Charles Taylor is right in seeing affective and spiritual factors as
crucial in fostering this revolution and maintaining the West in what he
terms a “post-revolutionary” climate.12 It is not simply the loss of belief
in God and in other central Christian dogmas that contributed to this
revolution, but possibly, in the terms of the argument of this essay, the
long-term insupportability of the edifice of casuist moral theology with
its divorce of human and moral fulfillment from religious perfection. Be
that as it may, according to Taylor, secular humanisms and postmodern
anti-humanisms agree in affirming a good to human life without the
need to invoke any good beyond life.What distinguishes them is the antihumanist insistence that a comprehensive affirmation of human life must
embrace (and even celebrate) suffering and death. But both secular
humanism and postmodern anti-humanism simply deny that religious
aspirations have any relevance for human and moral fulfillment. The
desire for transcendence is a kind of human and moral dead end.
“Immortal longings,” to use Fergus Kerr’s felicitous phrase, may not be
good for one’s moral health nor, indeed, for one’s humanity.13 For Taylor,
the “horizon of assumptions” that “shapes the pervasive outlook toward
religion in our culture” includes the view that for us “life, flourishing,
driving back the frontiers of death and suffering, are of supreme value”
and that what prevented people from seeing this sooner and more widely
was “precisely a sense, inculcated by religion, that there were higher
goals,” a good beyond life. In the post-revolutionary climate,“to speak of
aiming beyond life is to appear to undermine the supreme concern with
life in our humanitarian, ‘civilized,’ world.”14
One can readily see, in the terms of Taylor’s persuasive analysis of the
rejection or marginalization of religion in Western modernity, that in
order to seek the good of human life, one must give up pursuing a good
beyond life or, at least, one must define the good beyond life in non-religious terms. Religious perfection is seen not only as irrelevant to human
fulfillment but as an actual obstacle to it. We can also readily see, if we
recall the fundamental features of the Christocentric anthropology of
Pope John Paul II and the Second Vatican Council, how radical a challenge is posed both by moral theology in the nominalist-casuist vein and
12 Charles Taylor, “Iris Murdoch and Moral Philosophy,” in Maria Antonaccio and

Michael Schweiker, eds., Iris Murdoch and the Search for Human Goodness (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1996), 3–28.
13 Fergus Kerr, OP, Immortal Longings (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1997).
14 Taylor, 23.

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in its current variants, and by the secular humanisms and anti-humanisms
of Western modernity.
According to the Christocentric anthropology sketched earlier, there is
an intrinsic link between what human beings are as such and what they can
hope to become.There is a link, not a contradiction, between human fulfillment and religious consummation. Holiness (religious consummation) is
the perfection of the created image of God (human fulfillment).The legacy
of nominalism in casuistry and in the moral theories that sought to correct
it is such as to make it very difficult to grasp the terms of an authentic
Christian humanism even when they are forcefully presented. (Consider, in
this connection, the cool reception still accorded to Veritatis Splendor in
some quarters.) Without a moral theology that is thoroughly integrated
with anthropology and Christology, it will be difficult to withstand the variety of secular humanisms and anti-humanisms of Western modernity.
Indeed, in the climate of contemporary culture, there is a powerful temptation for some religious people, including Catholics, tacitly to accept the
“horizon of assumptions” of Western modernity and to promote precisely
(and sometimes chiefly) those aspects of their faith that can be seen as
contributing to the good of human life.The documents of the Second Vatican Council have themselves sometimes been subjected to readings
employing this strategy with an eye to well-meaning programs of renewal
that, without denying the good beyond life, do not always leave much room
for it in practice. It may well be that the divorce between human/moral
fulfillment and religious perfection, embedded in prevailing forms of
Catholic moral reflection, makes it difficult for Catholics influenced by
them to respond to the challenges posed by non-religious or anti-religious
humanisms for which the presumption of this divorce is axiomatic.
I am convinced that a recovery of Aquinas’s theology of the imago Dei
can and has already begun to make a significant contribution to the
Catholic response to these challenges. Here I can only sketch briefly the
possibilities as I see them.That Aquinas’s theology affords such resources
may not be obvious to everyone. Certainly, many will readily admit that,
in linking anthropology, Christology, and eschatology in its theology of
the imago Dei, Gaudium et Spes had recovered important strands in the
patristic doctrine of the imago Dei. Perhaps less widely known is how
thoroughly Christological and eschatological is the theology of the imago
Dei advanced in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. One of the more
refreshing aspects of recent scholarship on Aquinas is the emergence of a
broad appreciation of this central element of his theology.15
15 For an orientation to the literature on this topic, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, St.

Thomas Aquinas:Vol. II: Spiritual Master, translated by Robert Royal (Washington,

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A crucial feature of this more comprehensive appraisal of Aquinas’s
theology of the imago Dei has involved the recognition that his explicit
consideration of the matter as part of the theology of creation in question 93 of the prima pars cannot be treated in isolation but must be
located within the broader context of the overall argument of the Summa
theologiae.16 It is well-known that the structure of this argument is framed
in terms of Aquinas’s distinctive appropriation of the exitus-reditus
scheme. This structure has immense significance for his theology of the
imago Dei:The human being created in the image of God is by the very
fact of his human nature and from the very first moment of his existence
directed toward God as his ultimate end.17 Contrary to a widespread
DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003). See: Emile Bailleux,“A l’image
du Fils premier-né,” Revue Thomiste 76 (1976): 181–207; Romanus Cessario, OP,
Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 1996), 38–48; Michael A. Dauphinais,“Loving the Lord Your God:
The imago Dei in St.Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 63 (1999): 241–67; Ignatius
Eschamnn, OP, “St.Thomas Aquinas, the Summary of Theology I–II:The Ethics
of the Image of God,” in Edward A. Synan, ed., The Ethics of St.Thomas Aquinas:
Two Courses (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medeival Studies, 1997), 159–231; L.B. Gillon, OP, Cristo e la Teologia Morale (Roma: Edizioni Romane Mame, 1961);
Thomas Hibbs,“Imitatio Christi and the Foundation of Aquinas’s Ethics,” Communio 18 (1991): 556–73, and Virtue’s Splendor:Wisdom, Prudence and the Human Good
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2001); Fergus Kerr, OP, After Aquinas:
Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); Matthew Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002),
83–107; D. Juvenal Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity: A Study in the Development
of Aquinas’s Teaching (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990); LucThomas Somme, Fils adoptifs di Dieu par Jésus Christ (Paris:Vrins, 1997); Batista
Mondin, “Il bene morale come perfezione della persona,” in Pontifical Academy
of St.Thomas, Atti della III Plenaria 2002, 127–37.
16 See G. Lafont, Structures et méthode dans le Somme théologique de saint Thomas d’Aquin
(Paris: 1961), and, more recently, Servais Pinckaers, “Le thème de l’image de Dieu
en l’homme et l’anthropologie,” in P. Bühler, ed., Humain à l’image de Dieu (Geneva:
1989), 147–63. See Thomas S. Hibbs, “The Hierarchy of Moral Discourses in
Aquinas,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64 (1990): 199–214; and A. N.
Williams, “Mystical Theology Redux: The Pattern of Aquinas’ Summa theologiae,”
Modern Theology 13 (1997): 53–74, and “Deification in the Summa theologiae:A Structural Interpretation of the Prima Pars,” The Thomist 61 (1997): 219–55.
17 In this essay, I have not dealt with the controversy that has surrounded the “nature
and grace” of theological anthropology which originated in the work of Henri
de Lubac and has been sharpened lately in the writings of David Schindler and
others in the “communio” school. It will be evident to the careful reader that,
with Aquinas and many other Thomists, I both hold for the description of a natural end for human nature and deny a double order of nature and grace extrinsically related to one another. A teleological understanding of human nature is
crucial to maintaining the link between religious perfection and integral human

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misrepresentation of his thought (which while losing much its currency
remains entrenched in certain quarters), for Aquinas the theology of the
imago Dei constitutes not a static and thus ahistorical conception of
human nature, but rather a fundamentally dynamic and active one.18
This is already explicit in question 93. The dynamism is that of the
exitus-reditus, a movement rooted in the divine purposes in creation and
redemption, and inscribed in the created order by the very finalities of
human nature. In addition, Aquinas’s account of the imago Dei explicitly
asserts that it is primarily in acts of knowing and loving God through
faith, hope, and charity that the imaging of God is realized.19 According
to Father Romanus Cessario,“Aquinas contends that we should look for
the image of God, not primarily in the intellectual capacities of the soul,
but in the very acts of those operative capacities or habits.”20
Looking beyond question 93, to the secunda and tertia pars, we can see
that the theology of the imago Dei within the overall argument of the
Summa theologiae secures the intrinsic link between moral theology,
anthropology, and Christology, and thus the connection between
human/moral fulfillment and religious perfection, or beatitude. For one
thing, we find that the entirety of the secunda pars—Aquinas’s expansive
treatise on the moral life—unfolds as an explication of what it means for
man to made in the image of God. Here the dynamic character of the
imago Dei is clear: Human beings must be active in the grace-enabled
actualization of the image of God within them. Coming from God, they
are active participants in the movement of their return to him. What
draws them is their pursuit of the good of human life that is continually
fulfillment. For a perspective on this controversy touching on the issues raised in
this essay, see Romanus Cessario, OP, “On Bad Actions, Good Intentions and
Loving God: Three Much Misunderstood Issues about the Happy Life that St.
Thomas Aquinas Clarifies for Us,” Logos 1 (1997): 100–22. On the broader issues,
see the comprehensive treatment of Schindler’s position in Tracey Rowland,
Culture and the Thomist Tradition (London: Routledge, 2003). For a splendid survey
of the twentieth-century controversy, see Lawrence Feingold, The Natural Desire
to See God (Rome: Appolinare Studi, 2000). See: Benedict Ashley, OP, “What is
the End of the Human Person? The Vision of God and Integral Human Fulfillment,” in Luke Gormally, ed., Moral Truth and Moral Tradition (Dublin: Four
Courts Press, 1994), 68–96; Steven A. Long, “On the Possibility of a Purely
Natural End for Man,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 211–37; Peter A. Pagan-Aguilar,
“St. Thomas Aquinas and Human Finality: Paradox or Mysterium Fidei?” The
Thomist 64 (2000): 374–99.
18 See Ian A. McFarland, “When Time Is of the Essence: Aquinas and the Imago
Dei,” New Blackfriars 82 (2001): 208–23.
19 Summa theologiae, I, q. 93, a. 4.
20 Cessario, Christian Faith and the Theological Life, 43.

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revealed as the Good beyond life. No one demonstrates better than
Aquinas the continuity between the inbuilt desire for the good and the
enjoyment of the Good beyond all limited goods, which is beatitude.
Hence the capital importance of the meditation on the nature of beatitude, which begins Aquinas’s treatise on moral theology: Only the supernatural beatitude of communion actualizes the movement of the human
person toward his or her fulfillment.
In the tertia pars, Aquinas arrives at the culmination of the theology of
the imago Dei when he shows how Christ, the perfect image of the
Father, is the principle and pattern of the restoration and the perfection
of the image of God in us.21 All the mysteries of Christ’s life, but especially his passion, death, and resurrection, bring about the work of transformation in us by which the image of God, damaged by original sin and
by our own personal sins, can be restored and perfected. Configured and
transigured in the imago Christi by the power of the Holy Spirit, we
return to the Father, and come to enjoy to the communion of Trinitarian life that is the essence of beatitude.
In the terms of the argument of this essay, and contrary to both nominalist moral theology and to the secular humanisms and anti-humanisms
of Western modernity,Aquinas can be construed as advancing a theology
of the imago Dei that shows how in the gracious plan of divine providence religious perfection is central to human and moral fulfillment.The
human person is created in the image of God in order to grow into the
image of Christ.This truth about man is the foundation of the authentic
Christian humanism central to the teaching of Vatican Council II and
John Paul II. A critical task of Christian anthropology in every age is
precisely to supply an adequate basis for moral theology.Among the most
significant of Pope John Paul’s encyclicals, Veritatis Splendor corrects the
unfortunate legacy of casuist moral theology and its contemporary progeny and, more important, presses upon us the profound links between
anthropology and Christology that establish the basis of an authentic
Christian humanism.

21 In

addition to the works by Torrell, Gillon, Hibbs, Levering, Somme, and
Williams cited in footnote 14 above, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP,“Le Christ dans
la ‘spiritualité’ de saint Thomas,” in Kent Emery and Joseph P. Wawrykow, eds.,
Christ among the Medieval Dominicans (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University
Press, 1998), 197–219, and J. A. Di Noia, OP, “Veritatis Splendor: Moral Life as
Transfigured Life,” in J. A. Di Noia, OP and Romanus Cessario, OP, eds., Veritatis
Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology (Princeton, NJ: Scepter, 1999), 1–10.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004): 279–304

279

Capital Punishment and the Catholic Tradition:
Contradiction, Circumstantial Application,
or Development of Doctrine?
C HRISTOPHER K ACZOR
Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, CA

I N V ERITATIS S PLENDOR , John Paul II is usually interpreted
as having affirmed tradition; but in Evangelium Vitae, he is seen as breaking with it, at least in terms of his discussion of the death penalty. By way
of context, I would like first to briefly state the traditional Catholic
teaching, followed by current teaching as articulated by Pope John Paul
II.Then I will explore various understandings of this teaching. Some see
contemporary teaching as a radical rejection of previous tradition. Others
highlight tradition, downplaying the significance, importance, and
novelty of the contemporary teaching.They argue that nothing has really
changed and that the contemporary view of capital punishment is merely
a circumstantial application of the traditional teaching.The first tendency
emphasizes change to the detriment of continuity; the second emphasizes
tradition without sufficiently taking note of what is new. I believe both
views are mistaken and that rather a development of doctrine has taken
place—a development that does not contradict what was taught in the
past but also a development that significantly moves beyond what was
taught in the past.The final section of the essay will explore the ramifications of this view of capital punishment for building a culture of life.
I. Justification for the Death Penalty
in the Catholic Tradition
Drawing on Thomistic resources,Thomas Higgins defines punishment as
the act of a legitimate authority depriving an offender of a good of which

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280

the offender is no longer worthy.1 The Catholic tradition has accepted
the use of the death penalty as fulfilling the four proposes of punishment:
retribution, defense of society, deterrence, and rehabilitation of the criminal. Although there is some debate among scripture scholars about the
interpretation of these texts, numerous scriptural passages have been cited
to justify the death penalty as fulfilling one or more of these purposes of
punishment. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood
be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Gen 9:6). God is sometimes portrayed as putting evildoers to death (Num 16). Perhaps the most
common passage used to justify capital punishment as retribution is:“He
who kills a man shall be put to death. . . . as he has done it shall be done
to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” (Lev 24:17). In
the Old Testament, murder, adultery, idolatry, incest, rape, kidnapping,
pederasty, witchcraft, blasphemy, bestiality, and other forms of wrongdoing were punishable by death.
In the New Testament as well, there are passages that seem to affirm the
right of the state to administer the death penalty. Governmental authority
“does not bear the sword in vain; for he is the servant of God to execute his
wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom 13:4). As Cardinal Avery Dulles notes:
“Jesus commends the good thief on the cross next to him, who has admitted that he and his fellow thief are receiving the due reward for their deeds”2
(cf. Lk 23:41). Again, according to Cardinal Dulles,“In the New Testament
the right of the State to put criminals to death seems taken for granted.”3
This view is certainly taken for granted in the patristic tradition and
later in the work of medieval theologians.Although a sermon by St. John
Chrysostom on the wheat and the weeds argues against the death
penalty,4 the patristic tradition is fairly united in support of it. Offering
what would become the standard understanding in the West, St. Augustine argued that the fifth commandment does not forbid the taking of
any human life, but only the taking of innocent human life. By understanding the commandment in this way, Augustine made room for both
a theory of just war as well as legitimate use of capital punishment.
1 Thomas J. Higgins, SJ, Man as Man,The Science and Art of Ethics (Rockford, IL:

Tan Books and Publishers, 1992).
2 Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ,“Catholicism and Capital Punishment,” First Things 112

(April 2001): 30–35, at 30.
3 Ibid.
4 John Chrysostom, Homily 46 on Matthew 13:24–30, in Nicene and Post-Nicene

Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
1975 [reprint]), vol. 10: 288f. Throughout the historical section of this work, I
am particularly indebted to James J. Megivern’s massive work The Death Penalty:
An Historical and Theological Survey (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997).

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St.Thomas Aquinas followed Augustine on this matter and argued that
the death penalty can satisfy the four purposes of punishment. Finally, he
understood the retributive aspect of punishment as demanding that only
the unjust, and never the innocent, may be executed.5 Thomas compared
state execution to individual self-defense arguing that the body politic,
like an individual, has the right to protect itself against criminals.6 He also
compared capital punishment to amputation of a diseased limb in that
someone protects the common good of the body by removing the
private good of the limb.7 Thomas argued that capital punishment deters
others from sinning by making them fear doing evil.8 The death penalty
even serves the purpose of rehabilitation by ensuring that the sinner
cannot commit further sins and by confronting the wrongdoer with
immanent death, which can efficaciously stir a person to repent.9 As
Samuel Johnson noted (in a letter asking for clemency for someone on
death row), “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it
concentrates his mind wonderfully.”10
Approved manuals of moral theology, the consensus of theologians, and
the writings of pontiffs well into the twentieth century do not differ
substantially from the position articulated by Thomas. Among the most
germane of papal teaching on this matter comes from Pope Innocent III,
who in 1210 demanded that the Waldensians (a splinter group who had
rejected capital punishment) affirm the following proposition in order to
be restored to communion with the Church:“the secular power can, without mortal sin, exercise judgment of blood, provided that it punishes with
justice, not out of hatred, with prudence, not precipitation” (Denz 257).11
II. Contemporary Teachings on the Death Penalty
The most significant papal statement on the death penalty in recent times
comes from John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae. It apparently marks
5 Summa contra Gentiles III, 146.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 SCG III, 144.
9 SCG III, 146.
10 James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), entry of 19 September 1777.
11 Germain Grisez argues that Innocent III’s required profession of faith is not

addressing the objective morality of the act of execution, but the question of
culpability. E. Christian Brugger, Capital Punishment and the Roman Catholic Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003) offers a fascinating treatment of the death penalty in the Catholic tradition, and in chapter seven,
agrees with Grisez that at no time did the Magisterium ever propose that the
death penalty was morally permissible.

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a change in the traditional teaching: “It is clear that, for these purposes
[retribution, defense against the criminal, deterrence, rehabilitation] to be
achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and [the state] ought not go to the extreme of
executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other
words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society.Today,
however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the
penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent”
(Evangelium Vitae 56, emphasis in the original). This doctrine is echoed
also in the revised edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
Many questions have arisen about the relationship between these statements and the statements cited earlier from tradition. Do we have in
Evangelium Vitae a rejection of previous teaching? Are the remarks in
Evangelium Vitae merely a prudential application of traditional teachings
in new circumstances?
1. A Contradiction within Church Teaching?
Needless to say, scholars have debated a great deal about the above quoted
passage taken from Evangelium Vitae, as well as other statements drawn
from official sources that echo the teaching. In this reflection, some have
claimed that this teaching represents a radical departure, reversal, and
rejection of previous teaching. Justice Antonin Scalia sees a tension
between retribution and Evangelium Vitae’s insistence that the use of the
death penalty is rarely if ever appropriate in contemporary society.“If just
retribution is a legitimate purpose (indeed, the principal legitimate
purpose) of capital punishment, can one possibly say with a straight face
that nowadays death would ‘rarely if ever’ be appropriate? So I take the
encyclical and the latest, hot–off–the–presses version of the catechism (a
supposed encapsulation of the ‘deposit’ of faith and the Church’s teaching regarding a moral order that does not change) to mean that retribution is not a valid purpose of capital punishment.”12 On this view, the
teaching of Evangelium Vitae represents a radical departure from previous
teaching because it replaces retribution with defense of society as the
valid purpose of capital punishment.
Scalia presupposes a disjunctive understanding of the purposes of
punishment: It must be either for retribution or to protect society.Although
the standard interpretation of the phrase “when it would not be possible
otherwise to defend society” emphasizes a movement away from the death
penalty, it is seldom noticed that the statement also implies that the death
12 Antonin Scalia, “God’s Justice and Ours,” First Things 123 (May 2002): 17–21.

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283

penalty is justified when needed to defend society. But surely defending
society alone does not justify judicial execution. Imagine a pathologically
insane person who continually escapes mental hospital confinement and
harms others. His mental pathology renders him innocent and guiltless
despite the harmful effects he causes. Since such a person is innocent, it
would always be wrong to intentionally kill him according to Catholic
teaching (CCC 2268, Evangelium Vitae 57), although it would be permissible to stop him with lethal force when he is in the process of attack
(CCC 2263, Evangelium Vitae 55). Since the death penalty intentionally
kills an incapacitated person, capital punishment for the insane, but
innocent, is impermissible. However, imagine a different person, not
insane but just very wicked, who continually escapes confinement and
harms others. It would not be contrary to the teaching of Evangelium
Vitae to execute such a person since capital punishment would be
needed in such a situation to defend society and the person executed
would be guilty and, therefore, a fit object for retribution.These “exceptions” may be in fact fairly numerous if one takes into account those
who escape from prison and kill, those who order “hits” or coordinate
terrorist activities from within the prison walls, as well as those who kill
other inmates or guards without escaping. However, these examples
considered together indicate that “defense of society” has not supplanted
“retribution” (since defense of society alone does not justify the death
penalty). Therefore, these purposes of punishment should not be read
disjunctively (capital punishment is either for defense or for retribution)
but rather conjunctively (capital punishment is both for retribution and
for the defense of society).
In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II is suggesting an answer to a question
never before formally dealt with by the Magisterium: What is the relationship of the various purposes of punishment in the case of the death
penalty? or What are the necessary or sufficient conditions for exercising
capital punishment? The answer seems to be that both defense of society
and retribution are necessary for the legitimate exercise of capital punishment, and neither alone suffices. Arguably, this is a development of
doctrine.The teaching of Evangelium Vitae on the death penalty does not
reject or reverse any previous Church teaching, since no previous Church
teaching had addressed the question of the relationship among the various purposes of punishment in the case of the death penalty.
Indeed, applying Scalia’s own theory of judicial interpretation to this
controversy would suggest that reading a contradiction between prior and
current teaching on the death penalty is unwarranted. In his book A
Matter of Interpretation, Justice Scalia proposes the following hermeneutic

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in interpreting ambiguous legal texts:“Another accepted rule of construction is that ambiguities in a newly enacted statute are to be resolved in
such a fashion as to make the statute, not only internally consistent but
also compatible with previously enacted laws.”13 If we apply this rule of
construction to the current ambiguity about how to understand Evangelium Vitae’s teaching on the death penalty, then we should favor readings
that make Evangelium Vitae internally consistent and consistent with previous magisterial teachings. On Scalia’s interpretation, Evangelium Vitae
would be rendered internally inconsistent for it would be explicitly asserting
that the primary purpose of punishment is retribution and then within
the very same paragraph also implicitly rejecting the notion that the
primary purpose of punishment is retribution. Evangelium Vitae would also
be incompatible with previously enacted Church teaching, as Scalia notes.
So the very hermeneutic suggested by Scalia in interpreting ambiguous
texts leads one to believe that Scalia’s understanding of Evangelium Vitae
that should not be accepted.
Indeed, John Paul II puts his own consideration of the death penalty
squarely within the context of the traditionally recognized purposes of
punishment. Admitting that punishment is for retribution, defense of
society, rehabilitation of the criminal, and deterrence, he nevertheless
concludes that there is no necessity in imposing the death penalty. To
properly understand the teaching on capital punishment one must again
consider these purposes.
Of the four purposes of punishment mentioned, the most commonly
misunderstood is retribution, which is too often characterized as simple
vengeance.Vengeance arises from feelings of anger or hatred and typically
punishes until that emotion is satisfied. On the other hand, retributive
justice has to do with the expiation of guilt and the recognition of a moral
order that may or may not be tied to any emotional state. In fact, the
Church teaches that retributive justice is punishment’s primary purpose.As
the Catechism of the Catholic Church says:“Punishment has the primary aim
of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly
accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation” (CCC 2266).
What is meant by “primary aim”? As Aristotle noted in the Categories
(12), one thing can be primary to another in time, in existence, in some
particular order or in importance. What is meant by primary in this
context is probably not a primacy of importance as the most important
purpose of punishment, in John Paul II’s thought at least, is arguably the
13 Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University

Press, 1998), 16.

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defense of society. Securing the common good is the most important
function of the state, and discharging punishment, like any other activity
of the state, is only legitimately done in light of promoting the common
good. Indeed, it would be contrary to the duties undertaken by legitimate
authority to punish someone if to do so would destroy the common
good—say putting to death a brilliant scientist who was desperately
needed to develop a cure for a disease ravaging society. So, of the various
aims of punishment, retribution is not the most important, at least in the
sense of being the overriding consideration.14 Primary might also mean
first in the order of time, since before deterrence or defense of society
from the criminal can take place, retribution is inflicted on the guilty party.
However, it is probably best to understand the notion that the
“primary aim” of punishment is retribution to mean that retribution is a
necessary condition for the existence of any just punishment. In other
words, what is going on is not really just punishment unless there is a guilty
party whose good is deprived by legitimate authority on account of his
or her wrongdoing.The state can justly punish only those who are guilty
of a crime.Were such a restriction not in place, the state could imprison
innocent people if such an act would serve the goals of deterring crime
(such as punishing an innocent person who the public at large believed
to be guilty), or detaining people for what they are likely to do in the
future but which they have not in fact done (defense against likely criminals). Punishment of any kind may be justly administered only upon the
guilty and never upon the innocent.
Critics of capital punishment sometimes believe retributive justice dehumanizes the criminal even if the criminal’s guilt is established. Thurgood
Marshall argued that capital punishment “has as its very basis the total
denial of the wrongdoer’s dignity and worth.”15 Put another way, a person
might oppose capital punishment primarily because they hold retribution
in itself to be inhumane or contrary to human dignity. Or if they see a value
in retribution, they might oppose capital punishment as a denial of the
dignity or goodness of the life of the criminal, though they might see other
punishments as not opposed to that dignity. In the words of Rudolf Gerber:
Politicians regularly defend the death penalty on the ground that
human life is so sacred that to snuff it out demands the highest penalty
possible. Only by using the highest penalty, they argue, can we deter the
14 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 43, a. 7, ad 1.
15 Thurgood Marshall, “The Death Penalty is a Denial of Human Dignity,” in Life

and Death: A Reader in Moral Problems, ed. Louis P. Pojman (Belmont:Wadsworth
Publishing, 2000), 373.

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taking of life and spread the message that life, above all other values, is
never to be taken.The death penalty directly contradicts this message.
If human life is so sacred that it is never to be taken, the argument also
applies by the same logic to governmental killing of a criminal. The
death penalty exemplifies that killing is permissible, even desirable, by a
powerful entity responding to provocation.16

On this view, there would be a contradiction in Church teaching between
upholding the value of every human life and admitting that capital
punishment may be used.17
Some see this contradiction within the teaching of John Paul II
himself. For Christian Brugger, there is an important natural law argument against any use of the death penalty, which arises from the goodness of life. In his book Capital Punishment and the Roman Catholic
Tradition, Brugger argues that John Paul II’s teaching in Veritatis Splendor
provides all the premises needed for an absolute prohibition of capital
punishment. Natural law, on this view, excludes the death penalty in an
exceptionless way, just as it excludes abortion or “direct” euthanasia.
Brugger writes:
In summary, the logic of Veritatis Splendor’s account of the foundations
of morality is as follows: “human dignity,” appealed to as a moral principle, is shorthand for the intrinsic goodness proper to human persons
as such; human persons are a unified body-soul reality; human bodily
life, because inseparably and irreducibly part of the body-soul reality
which is the human person, is invested with the full value (goodness)
of human personhood; and deliberate acts that do not have “absolute
respect” for human life are wrong, that is, human life is to be absolutely
respected. The encyclical’s formulation of the relevant exceptionless
norm is traditional: “it is always morally illicit to kill an innocent
human being.” It says nowhere that killing the guilty is morally licit,
nor, in light of its own moral logic, does it account for why the norm
is formulated as it is.18

Indeed, for Brugger, the logic of Veritatis Splendor leads one to the
conclusion that all intentional taking of human life, guilty or innocent, is
morally wrong.
16 Rudolph J. Gerber, “Death Is Not Worth It,” Litigation 24 (1998): 351–52
17 Bernard

Nathanson, Aborting America (Fort Collins, CO: Life Cycle Books,
1979), 241; David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003), 55.
18 E. Christian Brugger, Capital Punishment and the Roman Catholic Tradition (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 30.

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In fact, application of retributive justice actually recognizes and reaffirms the humanity of the one being punished; it does not involve a
denial of the goodness of human life. Although the ancients put inanimate objects on trial and punished them, we do not. We only try and
punish human beings because only human beings enjoy freedom in such
a way that they may be held responsible for their actions.The dignity of
the person gives rise to freedom, and freedom gives rise to responsibility.
If we were to let criminals like elderly mafia dons or Nazi concentration
camp officers “off the hook” with no punishment whatsoever since they
no longer posed a threat to society, we would be acting on the same principle that they did: Some human beings should be treated as less than
human.We would be failing to take their human responsibility seriously,
and we in fact would be responding to them as we might respond to a
tree or a fire that had caused human misery.
In reply to the second concern—that capital punishment, uniquely
among punishments, denies the dignity and goodness of the criminal’s
life—it may be helpful to return to the previously mentioned definition:
Punishment deprives an offender of a good of which the offender is no
longer worthy. If wealth were not a good, then a fine would not be a
punishment. If liberty were not a good, then imprisonment would not be
a punishment. If the criminal’s life were not a good, then the death
penalty would not be a punishment. Rather than denying the goodness
of the life of the one put to death, capital punishment presupposes that
goodness, as a fine presupposes the goodness of wealth or imprisonment
presupposes the goodness of liberty. Since judicially imposed fines or
imprisonment do not “send a message” that private theft or kidnapping
is permissible, capital punishment need not be understood as a tacit
approval of taking innocent human life.
The thought of John Paul II supports the idea that capital punishment
does not of itself violate the natural law in part because freedom, like
bodily life, is an intrinsically good aspect of a human being. In this passage
from Veritatis Splendor, the Pope criticizes views of freedom that pit freedom against the biological nature of humankind.According to John Paul
II, these theories hold that:
human nature and the body appear as “presuppositions or preambles,”
materially “necessary” for freedom to make its choice, yet extrinsic to
the person, the subject and the human act. Their functions would not
be able to constitute reference points for moral decisions, because the
finalities of these inclinations would be merely “physical” goods, called
by some “pre-moral.”To refer to them, in order to find in them rational
indications with regard to the order of morality, would be to expose

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oneself to the accusation of physicalism or biologism. In this way of
thinking, the tension between freedom and a nature conceived of in a
reductive way is resolved by a division within man himself.
This moral theory does not correspond to the truth about man and
his freedom. It contradicts the “Church’s teachings on the unity of the
human person,” whose rational soul is “per se et essentialiter” the form
of his body.The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of
the human being, whereby it exists as a whole—“corpore et anima
unus”—as a person.These definitions not only point out that the body,
which has been promised the resurrection, will also share in glory.They
also remind us that reason and free will are linked with all the bodily
and sense faculties. (Veritatis Splendor 48).

In other words, freedom, linked to our bodily capacities, is an intrinsic
aspect of the human person properly understood, just as is the good of
life. Elsewhere, private property is also spoken of as a proper good of the
person (Veritatis Splendor 13). But given that both freedom and private
property are proper goods of persons, it does not follow that fines or
imprisonment imposed by legitimate authorities in punishment for
crime contradicts the just relationship between states and individuals.
Thus, Brugger’s argument from John Paul II proves too much because for
the Pope not only is life a proper good of the person, so is freedom and
property. Obviously, freedom and property can be curtailed through the
just punishment of wrongdoers. So too, the good of life can be justly
taken away without denying that life is a good or denying that life is an
intrinsic aspect of the person.
Retribution is also sometimes misunderstood by advocates of capital
punishment. Retribution demands that there must be a proportion
between crime and punishment. Everyone agrees that one may not legitimately exceed proportionality in retribution. Thus, it is unjust to
sentence a man who stole a loaf of bread to life in imprisonment, even if
this will greatly deter others from stealing bread. However, from these
considerations it would seem to follow that the worst crime, such as first
degree murder, deserves the worst punishment, the death penalty. So a failure to execute a murderer is a failure to do what justice requires.
Although justice does demand a proportionality between crime and
punishment, there is no duty to impose capital punishment because retribution is not a matter of geometrical precision. Although crime and
punishment must be proportionate, they can never be perfectly proportionate, save perhaps in financial matters. Obviously, we could not put
Timothy McVeigh to death 168 times. We cannot sexually abuse the
adult child molester in his youth. Even death for death for someone who

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has taken a single human life is not exactly proportionate, since all the
details of the original killing could never be perfectly reproduced. The
truth of the biblical adage, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” rests
in its affirmation of the need for retributive justice, but not for a justice
understood as a geometrical correspondence. Indeed, an “eye for an eye”
is best understood as a principle limiting violence and, therefore, as an
alternative to the more severe punishment prompted by vengeance.
Nor should the more exact retribution of capital punishment in the
case of murder be understood as a necessary divine imperative.19 As St.
Ambrose noted about Cain’s fratricide of Abel: “God who preferred the
correction rather than the death of the sinner, did not desire that a homicide be punished by the exaction of another act of homicide.”20 Unlike
Kant, the Catholic tradition never maintained that a state must impose the
death penalty, rather it allowed that in some cases the state may impose
it.The state has a right to execute, but it does not follow that from a right
to execute the state must execute or should execute. The natural law
tradition recognizes the right of the state to execute, but it never claimed
that capital punishment must be discharged.
Indeed, understanding retribution as implying that the worst crime (first
degree murder) deserves the worst punishment (the death penalty)21 is difficult to reconcile with the biblical and Christian tradition. Scripture
approves of punishing lesser crimes, such as adultery, with the death penalty
(Lev 20:10), and in Christian societies many lesser crimes were punished
by capital punishment, including theft. It is clear then that the tradition
does not understand retributive justice in terms of an obligation to inflict
the worst punishment for the worst crime, since it was accepted that death
may be inflicted for lesser crimes. Retributive justice punishes serious
crime with a serious punishment, but it does not require and, indeed in
most cases, cannot respond with a mathematically understood retribution.
For Thomas, the natural law requires that wrongdoers be punished, but
exactly how they should be punished is a determination of the natural law,
which human beings often must determine by means of prudential consideration of concrete circumstances (ST II–II, q. 85, a. 1, ad 1).
There is, therefore, no need to administer capital punishment in the
name of retributive justice. Lifelong imprisonment is an extremely serious punishment that is proportionate to an extremely serious crime.
19 J. Budziszewski, “Categorical Pardon: On the Argument for Abolishing Capital

Punishment,” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy 16 (2002): 43–56.
20 De Cain et Abel, II, 10, 38: CSEL 32, 408.
21 David

S. Oderberg, Applied Ethics: A Non-Consequentialist Approach (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2000), 159.

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Consider the punishment of the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski in a new
“super-maximum” security prison:
Those in the special segregated population will be confined individually 23 hours a day in a 7-by-12 foot cell.The narrow slat for a window
will have smoked glass so the prisoner cannot see outside the cell.The
prisoner will have an exercise period of one hour a day, pacing by
himself in a narrow concrete yard surrounded by a 12-foot high
concrete wall and topped by barbed wire. These segregated prisoners
will have no group activities and no educational or vocational
programs. The worst criminals will have no reading materials. When
visitors are admitted, no physical contact will be allowed.22

Some consider this punishment worse than death, even cruel and unusual.
Undoubtedly, such punishment is extremely severe, fitting extremely serious crimes, and it is due to this fittingness that it fulfills the purpose of
punishment as retribution.
Let us move now to the second purpose of punishment: defense of
society.Although the death penalty absolutely excludes the chance of the
criminal harming society again, imprisonment in contemporary Western
society can usually serve to defend others against the aggression of the
criminal. In Aquinas’s justification of self-defense (ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7),
the violence of the means used in defense cannot exceed that which is
necessary to save innocent life. So too in St. Thomas’s justification of
amputation—amputation would not be justified if a less radical remedy
can accomplish the same goal of protecting the rest of the body. In his
treatment of the death penalty, Thomas compares the death penalty to
private self-defense and amputation.
Now every part is directed to the whole, as imperfect to perfect, wherefore every part is naturally for the sake of the whole. For this reason we
observe that if the health of the whole body demands the excision of a
member, through its being decayed or infectious to the other members,
it will be both praiseworthy and advantageous to have it cut away. Now
every individual person is compared to the whole community, as part to
whole.Therefore, if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he
be killed in order to safeguard the common good, since “a little leaven
corrupteth the whole lump” (1 Cor. 5:6) (ST II–II, 64, 2).

If the punishment of criminals is understood as analogous to amputation
or individual self-defense, then capital punishment is only permissible if
22 William Saunders,“Capital Punishment and Church Teaching (Part Two)” Catholic

Herald, 5/31/01. (www.catholicherald.com/saunders/01ws/ws010531.htm)

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it is the only means available for the defense of the physical well-being
of society.
Christian Brugger argues that the focus on the importance of the defense
of the society indicates a rather radical shift in the Church’s understanding.
On this view, the death penalty is now under the “model” of private selfdefense.23 He points out that the word “aggressor” rather than “criminal” is
used in formulations treating the death penalty (CCC 2267). He notes
further regarding the language used in the Catechism: “‘Rendering aggressors incapable of doing further harm’ is classical terminology used to refer
to the lawful killing of aggressors by private citizens in self-defense.”24
However, this approach is not without its difficulties. Cardinal Dulles
points out that double-effect reasoning, which justifies violent selfdefense, excludes intending the evil effect of death, but in capital punishment the death of the criminal is intended.25 In addition, the treatment
of the death penalty is itself within Evangelium Vitae and the Catechism
explicitly put in the context of punishment, not within the treatment of
killing in self-defense. Furthermore, in private self-defense, one may not
kill an attacker who has been, at least for the moment, incapacitated. If
someone attacks me and I knock him out and then tie him up, I would
not be justified in going a step further and killing him. But virtually all
forms of capital punishment (hanging, electric chair, guillotine, lethal
injection) presuppose that the “aggressor” is not, at least for the time
being, an aggressor. Thus, if capital punishment were simply a form of
community self-defense governed by the same norms as private defense,
then justified capital punishment should not be described in Evangelium
Vitae as “rare, if not practically non-existent” but rather as entirely nonexistent.26 Lethal private self-defense is not justified in cases where the
aggressor is incapable of inflicting harm, but that is precisely the circumstance in which capital punishment is exercised.
The shifts noted by Brugger are significant in that they highlight the
development of communal defense as a necessary condition for justly
23 Christian Brugger, “Avery Cardinal Dulles and His Critics: An Exchange on

Capital Punishment,” First Things 115 (August/September 2001): 7–8.
24 Ibid., 8.
25 Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, “Avery Cardinal Dulles and His Critics: An Exchange

on Capital Punishment,” First Things 115 (August/September 2001), 14.
26 This was pointed out also by Steven Long, “For if we interpret Evangelium Vitae

as assimilating the ratio of public justice to the ratio of wholly private self-defense,
then Evangelium Vitae will appear to miscontextualize the teaching of Thomas
while suggesting grave difficulties for the Catholic tradition’s distinction between
private and public authority.” Steven Long,“Evangelium Vitae, St.Thomas Aquinas,
and the Death Penality,” The Thomist 63 (1999): 511–52, at 516.

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administering capital punishment. The shifts do not, however, indicate a
rejection of the traditional fourfold purpose of punishment, the context
within which John Paul II treats the death penalty, nor do they indicate
the assimilation of capital punishment to the norms governing private
self-defense.
It would also be mistaken to hold that the defense of society includes
retribution. As Scalia writes: “The text [of Evangelium Vitae] limits the
permissibility of the sanction to one situation:‘when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society.’ No reasonable speaker, much less careful
draftsman of an encyclical, would use that language to describe or include
the goal of retribution.”27 It is quite easy to see how the physical defense of
society is facilitated by contemporary prisons, the “steady improvements in
the organization of the penal system,” that lessen the likelihood of escape.
It is hard to see how such penal improvements would make any difference
whatsoever in manifesting the transcendent order of justice.28
The third purpose of punishment, deterrence, is also subject to discussion. In itself, the practical abolition of capital punishment does not
impede the traditional purpose of punishment as a deterrent. Study of the
issue has not determined, to the best of my knowledge, a definitive
answer to the question of whether capital punishment is a better deterrent than other forms of punishment. Some suggest capital punishment
does deter, if well publicized nationally.29 Others argue strongly that no
27 Antonin Scalia,“Antonin Scalia and His Critics:The Church, the Courts, and the

Death Penalty,” First Things 126 (October 2002): 8–18, emphasis in the original.
28 Long rightly points out this misreading,“The primary purpose of punishment is

stated as being ‘to redress the disorder caused by the offence,’ yet the reductionist reading has interpreted the ‘rehabilitative’ goal highlighted in the following
sentence as the complete and sufficient meaning of ‘redressing the disorder.’ ”
Long, “Evangelium Vitae, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Death Penality” 516.
However, Long, I believe, overemphasizes that the defense of the physical order
of society did not play a role in Catholic considerations of the death penalty
prior to Evangelium Vitae. In the first edition of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church (that is, pre-Evangelium Vitae), it reads: “If bloodless means are sufficient
to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the
safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they
better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more
in conformity to the dignity of the human person” (no. 2267, emphasis added).
A proper interpretation of Evangelium Vitae must take into account that for John
Paul II, the physical protection and the criminal not only guilty but an “aggressor” does play a role in the interpretation and development of the tradition in
the encyclical.
29 Steven Stack,“Publicized Executions and Homicide,” American Sociological Review
52 (1987): 532–39.

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discernable deterrent is provided by capital punishment.30 Still others
hold that homicide increases immediately before and after the use of the
death penalty!31 At best the jury is out, and in cases of doubt, one should
err on the side of not taking human life.
Although Aquinas is correct that the death penalty keeps the sinner
from committing more sins, and although imminent death may prompt
conversion (it seems better to foresee and prepare for death than to be
surprised and unable to prepare as happened with Jeffrey Dahmer), capital punishment completely excludes rehabilitation in any ordinary sense.
Even if there is an end of life conversion, the death penalty does not allow
conversion to bear fruit. Many grave sinners, even murderers, have later led
exemplary lives and done great good. In the Old Testament, Moses killed
a man but then gave the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel.
David committed adultery and ordered the death of the innocent
husband, but in the Psalms later composed some of the most beautiful and
influential of all passages in Scripture. In the New Testament, St. Paul
persecuted and colluded in the death of Christians but later went on
mission to the Gentiles and offered his own life rather than hurt that Body
of Christ he once persecuted. In our own time, Dr. Bernard Nathanson
performed or oversaw some 75,000 abortions, including killing his own
child. He co-founded the National Abortion Rights Action League
(NARAL). However, he experienced a profound conversion, as detailed
in his book The Hand of God, and has spent more than twenty years in
exemplary service to human beings in the womb through lectures, books,
and movies such as The Silent Scream and Eclipse of Reason.Admittedly, not
all killers experience this metanoia, but our world is a better one because
some have. In sum, the contemporary teaching is in continuity with
received doctrine regarding the purposes of punishment and is not in
contradiction with other teachings of the Church past or present.
2. Change in Circumstances or Development of Doctrine?
Some scholars, however, have viewed contemporary teaching on the
death penalty as only a restatement of past teaching applied in a new situation. In other words, they see John Paul II’s statements about the death
penalty as refinement of Catholic teaching in the sense of an application
of the traditional doctrine to new circumstances. New circumstances can
certainly render a new application of a traditional teaching. Just as shifts
30 Gerber, “Death Is Not Worth It.”
31 William J. Bowers et al., Legal Homicide: Death as Punishment in America, 1864–1982

(Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1984).

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in economic models brought a change in the understanding of usury, so
too perhaps shifting contemporary circumstances have made a difference
in the application of the death penalty.
Since capital punishment is compared by Aquinas and others in the
tradition to communal self-defense (though as noted it is not simply a
form of self-defense), and since it is generally agreed that the use of
protective force in self-defense must never exceed that which is necessary for defense (it would be wrong to kill, if injuring provides defense;
wrong to injure, if one can simply detain the attacker), it follows that if
bloodless means can secure communal defense, such means should be
used. Perhaps our contemporary circumstances of the modern penal
system have brought a change in the application of teaching.
A difficulty can be raised with this argument in that the physical
protection of society from criminals could be secured long before the
twentieth century. Ancient Greek and Romans could enslave entire
peoples for life. In the middle ages, the oubliette left prisoners to languish
until the end of their lives. The Tower of London likewise contained
many prisoners without parole. So, the ability of society to imprison for
life does not seem to be a radical new development.
Secondly, even with contemporary technology, it is not clear that
capital punishment would only rarely contribute to the defense of society. The Department of Justice recorded 83 murders in prison during
1993 alone, and untold numbers of convicted murderers have escaped
and killed again or have killed guards or fellow inmates within the prison
walls. Unfortunately, the modern criminal justice system has many times
failed to render the incarcerated harmless. Even when not killing
personally, mafia bosses in jail have ordered hits executed by subordinates
on the outside.The circumstances are, therefore, not really new, for societies have for centuries had the technological capacity to imprison criminals for life, and even with contemporary technology, many such
prisoners have continued to harm society.Thus, the notion that there is
simply an application of a traditional teaching in contemporary circumstances is unfounded.
Perhaps contemporary society may itself be viewed as a change in
circumstance with respect to the application of the death penalty. Experience of the horrid abuse of human life at the hands of the state in the
twentieth century has led to an increasing awareness that justice is sometimes not well-served by the “justice” system, and that perhaps the state
should not have jurisdiction over life and death. Not only are the innocent sometimes put to death, but sadly sometimes the holiest of saints.
Robert Royal’s Catholic Martyrs of the 20th Century details the way state

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power exercising capital punishment has been particularly abusive to religious believers in various totalitarian regimes.32 The Thomistic understanding of the parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matt 13.24–30)
allowed that if the good cannot be distinguished from the bad, then it is
better to spare both than to lose both. To the extent that the criminal
justice system does a poor job in the discernment of innocent from
guilty, then to that extent the death penalty ought not be administered.
Although the abuse of capital punishment has been regular during the
twentieth century, it is not clear that this abuse is a new circumstance
unique to contemporary experience. From the very beginning, innocent
people have been unjustly killed or imprisoned.The death penalty took
the lives of Socrates, St. Peter, St. Paul, Boethius—and of course Jesus—
to cite just a handful of examples. What may be new is an increasing
unwillingness to risk harming innocents. That innocents have been
harmed by capital punishment has clearly been a consideration from the
earliest stages of the discussion and applies also to lesser punishments such
as imprisonment or exile.
A third circumstance that would seem to differentiate current administration of the death penalty from its theoretical justification in the past
is the contemporary understanding of the state. In medieval times,
theologians justified capital punishment by saying that the state does not
act on its own authority but on God’s. But as Cardinal Dulles notes:
Retribution by the State can only be a symbolic anticipation of God’s
perfect justice. For the symbolism to be authentic, the society must
believe in the existence of a transcendental order of justice, which the
State has an obligation to protect.This has been true in the past, but in
our day the State is generally viewed as simply an instrument of the will
of the governed. In this modern perspective, the death penalty expresses
not the divine judgment on objective evil but rather the collective
anger of the group.33

The traditional justification of the death penalty rested on the idea of a
natural law or transcendental moral order reflected by laws of state that the
state has an obligation to protect.This transcendental moral order presupposed by traditional defense is completely absent in the administration of
justice in the United States, based as it is on an explicit rejection (in most
legal quarters) of a transcendent moral order and an explicit acceptance of
a positivistic understanding of law.
32 Robert Royal, Catholic Martyrs of the 20th Century (New York: Crossroad, 2000).
33 Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ,“Catholicism and Capital Punishment,” First Things 112

(April 2001): 30–35, at 33.

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One way of construing this argument is that the corruption of
modern states renders them unjustified in the administration of the death
penalty. Contemporary states have so abused their authority that even
though, in principle, a state might have the right to administer the death
penalty, contemporary states may no longer exercise this right, just as
parents who abuse their children have their parental rights terminated.As
Ralph McInerny notes:“The traditional justification for the death penalty
sees the state as the instrument of the common good. But modern states,
most notably in the matter of abortion, have farmed out to some
members of society the right to take innocent life. Is the Holy Father
suggesting that such states no longer meet the conditions of the traditional justification for the death penalty?”34 In the words of Cardinal
Dulles:“The classical vision of the state has fallen on hard times, perhaps
because of the outrageous abuses of governmental power by the Nazis,
Stalinists, and Maoists of the past century. For better or for worse, the
state in our secular democratic societies is seen as a creature and instrument of the people, bound to carry out the will of the majority. In a society so governed, it becomes difficult to see the death sentence as
representing the divine order of justice. Rather, it is seen as implementing the sovereign will of the people, whose appetite for vengeance grows
with what it feeds on.”35
However, this way of construing the argument fails to establish a true
change in circumstance, for the argument could equally well apply to
many states throughout history that were arguably even more corrupt
than contemporary governments.Yet these prior states administered capital punishment without ecclesiastical condemnation. Many ancient states
not only condoned abortion, but also infanticide, murder of foreigners,
slavery, and blood sports. They had not merely a malignant indifference
to religion but actively imposed, at least in Christian judgment, idolatrous
practices on citizens. It is certainly true that states are viewed differently
by contemporary society than they were viewed during the height of
Christendom, but again this does not seem entirely new.As Mary Kochan
observers: “There is no reason to think that, at the time that St. Paul
wrote the Romans, belief in a ‘transcendent order of justice’ generally
informed the civil authority.This authority, which permitted infanticide,
slavery, and blood sports, was according to the Apostle, ‘the servant of
God to execute his wrath,’ not because of what society believed but
34 Ralph McInerny,“Avery Cardinal Dulles and His Critics:An Exchange on Capi-

tal Punishment,” First Things 115 (August/September 2001): 10.
35 Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, “Avery Cardinal Dulles and His Critics: An Exchange

on Capital Punishment,” First Things 115 (August/September 2001): 15.

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because God had instituted this authority.”36 Contemporary Catholic
teaching as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church echoes the
idea that the contemporary state, whether consciously or not, whether
acknowledged by society at large or not, still shares in the administration
of God’s authority (CCC 2238). Corrupt states, like corrupt religious
superiors, may still exercise authority (though obviously within limits)
over their subjects.
Nor is the emergence of democracy a circumstance that necessarily
gives rise to a change in Church teaching on the death penalty. U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, for example, sees in the teaching
of Evangelium Vitae an excessive deference to democracy:
The death penalty is undoubtedly wrong unless one accords to the state
a scope of moral action that goes beyond what is permitted to the individual. In my view, the major impetus behind modern aversion to the
death penalty is the equation of private morality with governmental
morality. This is a predictable (though I believe erroneous and regrettable) reaction to modern, democratic self–government. . . . These
passages from Romans [affirming the morality of the death penalty]
represent the consensus of Western thought until very recent times. Not
just of Christian or religious thought, but of secular thought regarding
the powers of the state. That consensus has been upset, I think, by the
emergence of democracy. It is easy to see the hand of the Almighty
behind rulers whose forebears, in the dim mists of history, were supposedly anointed by God, or who at least obtained their thrones in awful
and unpredictable battles whose outcome was determined by the Lord
of Hosts, that is, the Lord of Armies. It is much more difficult to see the
hand of God—or any higher moral authority—behind the fools and
rogues (as the losers would have it) whom we ourselves elect to do our
own will. How can their power to avenge—to vindicate the “public
order”—be any greater than our own?37

Clearly, it is more difficult to envision a higher moral authority operating in the rough and tumble world of celebrity politicians and hanging
chads than it was in a society that believed in the divine right of kings.
However, even in democracies, a distinction between individual rights and
state rights, between private morality and governmental morality, is clearly
rational and overwhelming recognized. If one follows Kant in arguing that
rights arise from responsibilities, and then notice further that governments
in democratic societies have many responsibilities that individuals qua
36 Mary Kochan,“Avery Cardinal Dulles and His Critics: An Exchange on Capital

Punishment,” First Things 15 (August/September 2001): 10–11.
37 Antonin Scalia, “God’s Justice and Ours,” First Things 123 (May 2002): 17–21.

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individuals do not have (such as securing public order and building public
works), then it would follow that there are many rights enjoyed by the state
but not by private citizens, even if the powers of the state come directly or
indirectly from these private citizens.This truth is widely recognized.After
all the government as government, and no private individual as private
individual, may tax, throw criminals in prison, and fine wrongdoers. None
of these prerogatives are licitly discharged by a private individual who
cannot tax but only steal, cannot imprison but only kidnap, and cannot fine
but only rob. So there is no problem in itself with a state discharging the
death penalty in a democratic society based on the presumption that the
state enjoys no more power than the individual since everyone recognizes,
in a number of other cases, that the state does enjoy greater rights than
private individuals. Democracies both modern (U.S.) and ancient (Athenian) used the death penalty without such problems arising, and there is no
theoretical contradiction in so doing. In sum, the allegedly ”new” circumstances are not really new and so it does not seem plausible to say, therefore, that contemporary Catholic teaching on the death penalty is merely
an application of traditional doctrine to new circumstances.
If the allegedly new circumstances are not actually new, then it would
appear that a development of doctrine has taken place rather than just an
application of the traditional teaching in new circumstances.What then has
been developed? I believe there has been development in two ways, the
first of which has been addressed at some length already, namely the newly
considered relationship among the purposes of punishment, and the second
of which relates to a major theme in Evangelium Vitae—the culture of life.
In contemporary teaching on the death penalty, there is a new emphasis on the primacy—in the sense of importance—of defending the community.Although the four purposes of punishment are retained, there is for
the first time an ordering among them, at least in the case of capital punishment. The Pope does not say explicitly that he is establishing a hierarchy
among the various purposes of punishment (Evangelium Vitae takes up the
question only briefly), but his emphasis on the defense of the common
good seems to highlight this goal of punishment as the most significant,
indeed, along with retribution, a necessary condition for its justified use. If
bloodless means secure the protection of society, capital punishment should
not be used even if the death penalty would secure other goals of punishment. Although retribution remains a necessary condition of any just
punishment (and so remains in this sense “the primary purpose of punishment”), the pope seems to be clarifying that the most important aim of
punishment is to protect public order and the safety of persons. It is not
that contemporary circumstances are so remarkably different from the past

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that has elicited the change, but rather that there is a greater refinement in
our understanding of the purposes of punishment.
III. Development of Doctrine
Since the teaching of Evangelium Vitae cannot be explained as simply the
application of the traditional understanding in new circumstances, and
since the teaching of Evangelium Vitae also does not contradict previous
teaching, it seems most reasonable to understand the teaching as a development of doctrine.As a study of the history of theology makes clear, the
understanding of revealed truth deepens in the course of time.This is true
of all areas of theology. Scripture speaks of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, but a more precise understanding of God as a Trinity of three
Divine Persons sharing one divine nature arose in the post-apostolic
Church. Likewise, an understanding of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully
human, with two complete natures, one human and another divine, arises
from the New Testament but is not explicitly contained therein. The
Catholic understanding and appreciation of the role of Mary, her Immaculate Conception, and her Assumption body and soul into heaven likewise
took time to develop. Nor is development restricted to matters of dogma
alone, for developments may also be seen in the Church’s moral teaching,
for example, in the issues of slavery and religious liberty. Why is there
development of doctrine? What distinguishes true developments from
corruptions? Great minds, including John Paul II and most especially John
Henry Cardinal Newman, have wrestled with these questions.
For Aquinas, the first principles of theology are the articles of the creed
and the creed in turn summarizes what is found in Scripture. Like other
medieval theologians, the Angelic doctor recognized many senses of scripture. Aquinas rooted his account of theology in the literal sense of Scripture, and what the author intends to communicate constitutes the literal
sense.38 Since God is the author of Scripture, Aquinas, following Augustine, holds that there may be multiplicity of true meanings intended by
God in the literal sense of Scripture.39 Divine authorship of Scripture
leads the text to have a profound depth of meaning unlike any other.
When combined with other Thomistic theses, namely God’s perfect
simplicity and the inability of any human being to comprehend God’s
essence, it follows that a complete understanding of the many true meanings of the literal sense is and will always remain elusive. God’s incomprehensible essence is one with God’s understanding, will, and intention. As
38 ST I, q. 1, a. 10; De potentia, q. 4, a. 1.
39 ST I, q. 1, a. 10.

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God is beyond comprehension, so the Word of God is beyond comprehension. Scripture therefore must always remain mysterious in a way no
other text is. Thus, even brief phrases of Scripture are filled with deep
meaning. For example, in commenting on the passage factus ex mulier in
his commentary on Galatians (c.4, lesson 2),Thomas unpacks deep Christological meaning out of this one phrase arguing that it excludes both
Nestorianism and Valentinianism as well as showing that Mary is the
Mother of God.40 Examples could be multiplied indicating Thomas’s
confidence in the pregnant meaning of the literal sense. In the words of
Aquinas: “[S]ince the prophet’s mind is a defective instrument, as stated
above, even true prophets know not all that the Holy Ghost means by the
things they see, or speak, or even do.”41 Aquinas’s high account of Scripture’s authorship ensures that we could never have a definitive understanding of the text, for a human being could never fully comprehend the
divine intention, which is nothing else than the divine essence.
In addition, there is always need for an explanation of Scripture.“The
purpose of Scripture,” writes Aquinas, “is the instruction of people;
however, this instruction of the people by the Scriptures cannot take
place save through the exposition of the saints.”42 There is no new public
revelation, but there will always be a need for an explanation of revelation situated in a given time and place and tailored for a given audience.
This needed explanation (interpretatio sermonum) by the saints is a gift of
the Holy Spirit.43 Aquinas notes elsewhere in terms of understanding this
revelation,“the faith is able to be better explained in this respect each day
and was made more explicit through the study of the saints.”44 Given the
ever changing audience, the telos of Scripture cannot be reached without
an ever adapting interpretation or development. Therefore, it is not just
that the nature and the purpose of Scripture for Aquinas allow for doctrinal developments, but that the nature and purpose of Scripture invite
such development.45 We should not be at all surprised therefore that
there is doctrinal development in matters of both faith and morals.
40 Throughout this section I am much indebted to the work of Leo Elders and his

article,“St.Thomas Aquinas and Holy Scripture” forthcoming in a volume about
Aquinas and his sources edited by Timothy Smith.
41 ST II–II, q. 173, a. 4, English Dominican Province translation.
42 Quodlibet XII, q. 16, a. unicus [27].
43 Quodlibet XII, q.16, a. unicus [27]; SCG, III, 154; In 1 Cor. 12, lect. 2.
44 In Sent. III, d. 25, 2, 2, 1, ad 5.
45 See Christopher Kaczor, “Thomas Aquinas on the Development of Doctrine,”
Theological Studies 62 (2001): 283–302, and E. Christian Brugger, Capital Punishment and the Roman Catholic Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2003), chapter seven.

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However, to consider the question of development at length in relation
to capital punishment falls outside the scope of the present discussion.46
However, suffice it to say that from what has been said earlier in this essay
(section 3), this development should not be characterized as simply a
filtering of the true propositions from a previous mixture of true and false
propositions taught by the Magisterium. Nothing formally taught previously by the Magisterium is formally “revoked” by Evangelium Vitae.
Neither should this development be characterized as development of
specification whereby imprecise language becomes more precise. Rather,
the development should be considered as an answer to a question never
formally proposed before: What is the relationship among the purposes
of punishment in the case of the death penalty?
IV. Capital Punishment and a Culture of Life
Contemporary moral theology has developed a deeper understanding of
the dignity of all persons, an intrinsic dignity that cannot be lost. For
some in the tradition, such as Aquinas, it seems that the criminal loses
human worth: “[A]lthough it be evil in itself to kill a man so long as he
preserve his dignity, yet it may be good to kill a man who has sinned, even
as it is to kill a beast. For a bad man is worse than a beast, and is more
harmful, as the Philosopher states (Polit. i, 1 and Ethic. vii, 6)” (ST II–II,
q. 64, a. 2, ad 3). Rejecting this element of the tradition, John Paul II, on
the other hand, repeatedly affirms, “Not even a murderer loses his
personal dignity, and God himself pledges to guarantee this” and that
“great care must be taken to respect every life, even that of criminals and
unjust aggressors” (EV 9, 57). In this he may not be entirely rejecting
Aquinas after all, for Thomas states that even those in hell do not
completely lose the goodness of their nature (ST I–II, q. 85, a. 2, ad 3).
Every human person is made in God’s image, even if each individual does
not always live up to that dignity.
This development in moral teaching is sometimes called the “consistent
life ethic,” which holds that all human beings have intrinsic dignity and
value regardless of condition, size, health, beliefs, past, present, or future—
period. One might speak of a growing understanding of a “bias” or “preferential option” for life—the dignity of the person must always be
respected, and respecting this dignity involves the respecting of the goods
of the person, fundamental among them is the good of life, the foundation of all other goods. In the face of an increasingly lethal culture of
46 For a discussion of the question of capital punishment and development of

doctrine, see E. Christian Brugger, Capital Punishment and the Roman Catholic Moral
Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), chapter seven.

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death, the Church’s consciousness of the value of each human life and its
unwillingness to allow for the taking of life, except perhaps to save the life
of another, leads naturally to a careful reconsideration of the death penalty.
Two objections might be raised at this point. First, is not contemporary culture after all just another “circumstance” marking not so much a
change in teaching but a change in application? Furthermore, didn’t
ancient cultures clearly disrespect human life, perhaps even more than
contemporary culture? Yes, but theoretically the response to these abuses
did not lead to the theorizing about what all the abuses had in common,
namely a disrespect for the human person. Hence, even were all contemporary abuses of human life to end, the “consistent life ethic” would still
theoretically make sense in those new circumstances.
Secondly, it is not clear that those working for a culture of life should
also oppose the use of the death penalty because in failing to punish those
who take innocent human life as severely as we could, in fact punishing
cold-blooded murder with the same punishment in some cases as
repeated robbery or drug dealing, the law indicates a societal disrespect
for life. In response, it might be said that whatever is received is received
in the manner of the receiver. Although theoretically punishing murderers more severely might underscore a lesson about the value of human
life, contemporary society does not as a whole seem to understand that
as the lesson.The law certainly teaches, but Cardinal Dulles’s argument in
part seems to be that the lesson society takes is not the correct one.
Rather, there is a moral danger that the use of capital punishment in fact
reinforces the belief of many people in contemporary society that some
human beings are expendable and may be killed for the good of others.
Some have argued that the consistent life ethic neglects important
distinctions between the aggressors and the innocent, and in its most
popularized form this is true. However, even among prominent advocates
of the consistent life ethic, not all “life” issues are held to be of the same
importance. The person who first brought the “consistent life ethic” or
“seamless garment of life” to prominence, Joseph Cardinal Bernadin, said:
I made it very clear that by the consistent life ethic I was articulating I
was not saying that all the problems or issues were the same. . . .but that
they were all related in some way. Some of the people who didn’t like
the consistent ethic accused me of down-playing abortion, just making
it one issue among many, but . . . they [the life issues] are not all the same
or equally important, but they are all important and all related, and to
be truly “pro-life,” you have to take all of those issues into account.47
47 James J. Megivern, The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey, 378.

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Underscoring this idea and formulating more completely the relationship
among life issues, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote:
Adopting a consistent ethic of life, the Catholic Church promotes a
broad spectrum of issues seeking to protect human life and promote
human dignity from the inception of life to its final moment. Opposition to abortion and euthanasia does not excuse indifference to those
who suffer from poverty, violence and injustice. Any politics of human
life must work to resist the violence of war and the scandal of capital
punishment.Any politics of human dignity must seriously address issues
of racism, poverty, hunger, employment, education, housing, and health
care. Therefore, Catholics should eagerly involve themselves as advocates for the weak and marginalized in all these areas. Catholic public
officials are obliged to address each of these issues as they seek to build
consistent policies which promote respect for the human person at all
stages of life. But being “right” in such matters can never excuse a wrong choice
regarding direct attacks on innocent human life. Indeed, the failure to protect
and defend life in its most vulnerable stages renders suspect any claims
to the “rightness” of positions in other matters affecting the poorest and
least powerful of the human community. If we understand the human
person as the “temple of the Holy Spirit”—the living house of God—
then these latter issues [such as racism, poverty, hunger, employment,
education, housing, and health care] fall logically into place as the crossbeams and walls of that house. All direct attacks on innocent human life, such
as abortion and euthanasia, strike at the house’s foundation. These directly
and immediately violate the human person’s most fundamental right—
the right to life. Neglect of these issues is the equivalent of building our
house on sand.48

For the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the preeminent human
dignity issues are abortion and euthanasia.Abortion and euthanasia undermine the very foundation of the house, the temple of the human person
in whom dwells the Spirit. Concerns about education, poverty, hunger, and
unemployment are moot for the dead. Furthermore, although the state
retains the right, in principle, to administer capital punishment even
though in practice it may not legitimately do so, according to Catholic
teaching, no state or person ever has the right to take innocent life. The
very magnitude of the killing involved (some 1.25 to 1.5 million deaths
each year from abortion versus around 100 a year from capital punishment)
suggests urgency to the abortion issue vis-à-vis other life issues.Therefore,
the U.S. bishops have written: “Because victims of abortion are the most
vulnerable and defenseless members of the human family, it is imperative
48 NCCB, Living the Gospel of Life, no. 23, emphasis in the original.

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that we, as Christians called to serve the least among us, give urgent attention and priority to this issue of justice. . . .This focus and the Church’s firm
commitment to a consistent ethic of life complement each other.A consistent life ethic, far from diminishing concern for abortion or equating all life
issues touching on the dignity of human life, recognizes the distinctive
character of each issue while giving each its proper role within a coherent
moral vision.”49 Without ever acting as if all life issues were of equal importance, those committed to reducing the number of abortions should also
be committed to a critical examination of the death penalty as used in the
United States. Commitment to the value of all human life makes witness
to the value of innocent life even more powerful.
Returning to John Paul II, it is interesting to note that although he is
a philosopher, Evangelium Vitae’s treatment of capital punishment, indeed
all life issues, emphasizes salvation history rather than philosophy. Christ
was only once directly asked about capital punishment. A woman was
caught in adultery and was about to be stoned by an angry mob. “The
law of Moses says she has merited death. What do you say?” “Let him
without sin cast the first stone.” For John Paul II, the Gospel of Jesus is
the Gospel of Life.And so the people of this Gospel message stand on the
side of life, even when it is unpopular, difficult, and trying. Debbi Morris,
who was raped by Robert Willie, the subject of Dead Man Walking, once
noted: “We don’t sing ‘Amazing Justice’. We sing ‘Amazing Grace.’ ” We
give witness to life and grace even, no especially, in the face of death and
sin. For John Paul II this means opposition to the death penalty, even for
the most horrid criminals, save in those cases where execution is needed
to save innocent lives.

49 U.S. Bishops, Pastoral Plan for Pro-life Activities: A Reaffirmation, 1985, 3–4.

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305

Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body”
and the Significance of Sexual Shame
in Light of the Body’s “Nuptial Meaning”:
Some Implications for Bioethics and Sexual Ethics*
M ARK S. L ATKOVIC
Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Detroit, Michigan

P OPE J OHN PAUL II’ S theology of marriage and sex is not only
profound in its own right, but it has wide-ranging implications for every
branch of theology, including moral theology.1 Indeed, theologian and
papal biographer George Weigel has called the Pope’s 130 general audience addresses on the “theology of the body,”2 “a kind of theological time
bomb set to go off, with dramatic consequences, sometime in the third
millennium of the Church.”3 Studying this time bomb is, he says, the “best
* I would like to thank Bishop Allen Vigneron and Professors Mary Shivanandan,
Donald Keefe, SJ, Janet Smith, and William E. May for reading an earlier draft of
the essay. I am grateful to the latter scholar and Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete for
first exposing me to the Holy Father’s “theology of the body” back in the mid1980’s. I would also like to thank the anonymous reader who made many helpful suggestions. A small portion of this essay was published in The National
Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 3 (2003): 45–51.
1 See, for example, Stratford Caldecott, “The Heart’s Language:Toward a Liturgical Anthropology,” Antiphon 6 (2001): 27–34, who insightfully applies insights
from the Pope’s theological anthropology, not to marriage, but to the liturgy!
2 These addresses, sometimes referred to as the “Wednesday Catechesis on Human
Love,” were originally published in four separate volumes. They are now available in one volume: John Paul II, The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the
Divine Plan (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1997), with a “Foreword” by John S.
Grabowski.
3 George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (New York:
HarperCollins, 1999), 343. When this time bomb goes off, Weigel adds, “the

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way to come to terms with the Catholic sexual ethic today.”4 However,
for this reason and because of the density of the Pope’s thought, Weigel
observes that there is a great need for “secondary literature” that both
accurately interprets this teaching and makes it accessible to men and
women of today.5 The need to understand and communicate this teaching is, to my mind, one of our most urgent pastoral tasks in the Catholic
Church of the twenty-first century, especially given the ever-growing
threat posed by the “culture of death,” the recent clergy sexual abuse scandal, and the failure to appropriate the Church’s moral teaching on the part
of many of the Christian lay faithful themselves. Positively speaking, the
pope’s teaching is also a crucial component of the Church’s mission to
preach the message of the “new evangelization” in a sex-saturated society.
In many ways, John Paul II’s “theology of the body” was given its
theoretical foundation in fundamental moral theology in his masterful
1993 encyclical, Veritatis Splendor,6 whose tenth anniversary provides a
good occasion for reflecting on the Pope’s contribution to bioethics and
sexual ethics. However, many authors went so far as to say at the time of
the encyclical’s promulgation that its major or underlying theme is sex.7
Although I strongly disagree with those who would find sex lurking in
every nook and cranny of this document, the encyclical, as moral theoloTheology of the Body may well be seen as a critical moment not only in Catholic
theology, but in the history of modern thought. . . . By insisting that the human
subject is always an embodied subject whose embodiedness is critical to his or her
self understanding and relationship to the world, John Paul took modernity’s
‘anthropological turn’ with utmost seriousness. By demonstrating that the dignity
of the human person can be ‘read’ from that embodiedness, he helped enrich the
modern understanding of freedom, of sexual love, and of the relationship between
them” (ibid.).
4 George Weigel, The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored (New York:
HarperCollins, 2001), 99.Weigel calls John Paul II’s Theology of the Body “the
most powerful contemporary statement of the foundations of the Catholic sexual
ethic” (103).
5 Weigel, Witness to Hope, 343. Some, in addition to Weigel (see ibid., 333–43),
have already begun to contribute to this secondary literature. The notes of the
present article will refer to some of these authors.
6 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (1993).A good introduction to the encyclical is the
volume edited by J. A. Di Noia, OP and Romanus Cessario, OP, Veritatis Splendor
and the Renewal of Moral Theology: Studies by Ten Outstanding Scholars (Chicago:
Midwest Theological Forum, 1999).
7 See, for example, Nicholas Lash, who writes:“And it is not war or poverty, atheism or the dead hand of the ‘commodity form’ which most preoccupies the
Pope, but sex” (Lash, “Teaching in Crisis,” in John Wilkins, ed., Considering Veritatis Splendor [Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1994], 27–34, at 29).

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gian James P. Hanigan has observed, is “not without great significance for
moral theology in the area of human sexuality.”8 One way that the pope
grounds sexual ethics in fundamental moral theology is by showing how
the language of the body “is subject to the demands of moral truth, that
is, to objective moral norms.”9
This essay aims to provide a modest and by no means comprehensive
overview of the “theology of the body,” which “translates,” as Weigel says,
its message to our contemporaries. I hope to present the Pope’s thought
as clearly and faithfully as possible, so that this overview might serve as a
foundation for comprehending his teaching on specific issues in bioethics
and sexual ethics.
To accomplish this goal, I will focus on two fundamental themes that
are indispensable, in my view, for understanding John Paul II’s “theology
of the body.” First, I will analyze the meaning of what John Paul calls the
“nuptial meaning of the body.” However, before doing that, it will be
necessary to treat the Pope’s thought on the human body-person (which
will include a comparison of his anthropology with that of Aquinas in
order to show both its originality and continuity vis-à-vis the Catholic
tradition), and then relate this thought both to his view of the nature of
love and to the “personalistic norm.” I will also spell out here the implications of this personalistic understanding of love for bioethics and sexual
ethics. Second, I will deal with the theme of sexual shame and how the
Pope relates this (often neglected) phenomenon to the experiences of
original nakedness, original sin and the Fall, and lust.Third, I will offer a
brief reflection on what this understanding of shame means in light of
our study of the “nuptial meaning of the body.” Fourth, I will briefly
discuss what implications the Pope’s “theology of the body” has for
understanding the Church’s moral teaching, as articulated by John Paul
II, especially on marriage, the family, and sexual ethics, in a secular culture
often aggressively opposed to that moral teaching. Thus, while I will in
no way neglect the insights of John Paul II’s fundamental moral theology
(especially as found in Veritatis Splendor; see, e.g., part one) and their relevance for specific issues in bioethics and sexual ethics, my primary focus
is to set forth the general contours of his “theology of the body.”
Throughout the essay I will make use of numerous (but by no means
all) philosophical and theological works by John Paul II that were written
8 James P. Hanigan,“Veritatis Splendor and Sexual Ethics,” in Michael E. Allsop and

John J. O’Keefe, eds., Veritatis Splendor: American Responses (Kansas City: Sheed
and Ward, 1995), 208–23, at 209–10.
9 John Paul II,“The Church’s Position on the Transmission of Life,” in Theology of
the Body, 398.

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both before (as Karol Wojtyla) and after his election to the papacy in October 1978 in order to provide a more complete picture of his “theology of
the body.” Although the Pope’s thinking is both original and modern (in
the best sense of the term), as illustrated in his use of phenomenology,10 it
is also true that he has remained faithful to the constant teaching of the
Church, while building on its tradition in a coherent and creative way.11
I. The Human Person, Love, and “Nuptiality”:
The Human Person as a Bodily Being
According to John Paul II, the human body is an icon, the expression or
revelation of the person. “Man is a subject,” the Pope says, “not only
because of his self-awareness and self-determination, but also on the basis
of his own body. The structure of this body is such as to permit him to
be the author of a truly human activity. In this activity the body expresses
the person.”12 This body is “human,” for unlike non-human creatures, it
consists of both matter and spirit; the “human body is the body of a
person because it forms a unity of substance with the human spirit.”13
Thus, to sever the bodily aspect of the human person from the spiritual
(or personal) aspect, is to separate the person from something that is
“constitutive of the being” of that person—his or her body.14 For as sexual
10 Robert Sokolowski has defined phenomenology as “the study of human expe-

rience and of the ways things present themselves to us in and through such experience” (See Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000], 2).
11 The Pope’s thoughts on the “theology of the body” have not been unopposed.
There are critics on both the “left’ and the “right” in the Church. For an example of the former, which is more common, see Luke Timothy Johnson, “A
Disembodied ‘Theology of the Body’: John Paul II on Love, Sex & Pleasure,”
Commonweal ( January 26, 2001): 11–17. For a balanced and sympathetic assessment of the Pope’s philosophical project, which creatively blends (although not
without tensions) phenomenology with Thomism, see, for example, Kenneth
Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama:The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol
Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America
Press, 1993), 30–41. See Ronald Lawler, The Christian Personalism of John Paul II
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982), and Peter Simpson, On Karol Wojtyla
(Belmont, CA:Wadsworth, 2001).
12 John Paul II,“The Alternative between Death and Immortality Enters the Definition of Man,” in Theology of the Body, 40–41. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa
theologiae, I, q. 91, a. 3, ad 3, where we find a precedent for the Pope’s thoughts on
this point.
13 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux,
1981), 54–55.
14 William E. May, Sex, Marriage and Chastity: Reflections of a Catholic Layman, Spouse
and Parent (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1981), 9.

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beings, human persons exist only as bodily beings. It is in and through our
human bodies that the spiritual or interior acts of knowing and willing
find their outward expression.15
Thus, any form of anthropological dualism that separates the person from
his or her body or treats the body only as an instrument to be used by the
person, ultimately denies a fundamental truth of human existence: I am my
body and my body is me.16 Indeed, the Pope says, in a characteristically
Thomistic fashion,17 that one’s body “belongs to the structure of the personal
subject more deeply than the fact” that someone in his or her physical makeup exists as either male or female.18 The body is not, then,“baggage” that I
“own” or carry around, nor is it a “shell,” that conceals the true person. It
is, rather, something intrinsically personal that shares in the dignity of the
person, thus revealing his or her nature. As a “sign” or “sacrament” of the
person, the body,“and it alone,” says John Paul II,“is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine.”19 Many serious errors in
contemporary bioethics, for example, abortion, euthanasia, assisted-suicide,
and cloning among others, are committed, however, because the anthropological perspective of the author is wedded to an untenable dualism.20
Recognizing this problem, the Pope argues that human nature and the
body are not simply “materially necessary for freedom to make its choice,
yet extrinsic to the person, the subject and the human act.”Thus, to refer
to human goods, especially in the area of sexuality, is not mere “physicalism”
15 Richard M. Hogan and John LeVoir, Covenant of Love: Pope John Paul II on Sexual-

ity, Marriage, and Family in the Modern World (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1985), 10.
16 Germain Grisez notes that persons are more than their bodies in their ability to

think, make free choices, and put things to use. “But persons can be more than
their bodies without being realities other than their bodies, since a whole can be
more than one of its parts without being a reality other than that part” (Grisez,
The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 2: Living a Christian Life [Quincy, IL: Franciscan
Press, 1993], 491).
17 Against dualism, for example, Plato’s spiritualism, as one author put it, Aquinas
“emphasizes the intrinsic union and the mutual coordination of both principles,”
that is, the spiritual soul and matter, in man. As Aquinas states: “It is clear that
man is not a soul only, but something composed of soul and body” (Summa
theologiae, I, q. 75, a. 4) (see Jean Lauand, “Basic Concepts of Aquinas’s Anthropology,” available at: www.hottopos.com/mp2/aquinaspsy.htm).
18 John Paul II,“The Original Unity of Man and Woman,” in Theology of the Body, 43.
19 John Paul II,“Man Enters the World as a Subject of Truth and Love,” in Theology
of the Body, 76.
20 See, for example, the writings of Princeton University philosopher and bioethicist
Peter Singer, among them, Rethinking Life and Death:The Collapse of Our Traditional
Ethics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994). See John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, nos.
46–50, on the proper place of the body and human nature in moral theology.

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or “biologism,” as some critics of the Church’s understanding of the natural law assert.21 Rather, it is a reminder of “the unity of the human person,
whose rational soul is per se et essentialiter the form of his body.”22 The
person, the Pope concludes,
discovers in the body the anticipatory signs, the expression and the
promise of the gift of self, in conformity with the wise plan of the
Creator. It is in the light of the dignity of the human person—a dignity
which must be affirmed for its own sake—that reason grasps the
specific moral value of certain goods toward which the person is naturally inclined.And since the human person cannot be reduced to a freedom which is self-designing, but entails a particular spiritual and bodily
structure, the primordial moral requirement of loving and respecting
the person as an end and never as a mere means also implies, by its very
nature, respect for certain fundamental goods, without which one
would fall into relativism and arbitrariness.23

Central also to John Paul II’s thought on the person—as well as for the
entire Catholic tradition—is the belief that every human person, male and
female, is an “image of God” (see Gn 1:27).24 As beings created by God in
his image and likeness (see Gn 1:26), John Paul II observes that persons are
characterized by both freedom and transcendence. Our freedom enables us to
be self-determining beings, beings that shape their moral character (and ultimate destiny) through freely chosen acts.25 Our transcendence enables us to
21 Prominent among the critics who have made this accusation, are the “revision-

ist” Catholic moral theologians Charles E. Curran and Joseph Selling.There are,
however, numerous published refutations of this argument against the Church’s
moral teaching.
22 See Veritatis Splendor, no. 48. The Pope refers to the Ecumenical Council of
Vienne, Constitution Fidei Catholicae, DS 902 and Fifth Lateran Ecumenical
Council, Bull Apostolici Regiminis, DS 1440. In speaking this way about the soul
as the substantial “form” of the body, the Pope is only following Aristotle and St.
Thomas Aquinas (see St.Thomas Aquinas, De anima, II, 1, 412, a. 27, b. 5; see De
anima, II, 2, 414, a. 12). See Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 365.
23 Ibid. In Veritatis Splendor no. 49 John Paul II notes, “A doctrine which dissociates the
moral act from the bodily dimensions of its exercise is contrary to the teaching of Scripture
and Tradition.” See on this theme,William E. May, “Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Veritatis Splendor and Bioethics,” in Christopher Olafsen, ed., Pope John Paul
II and Bioethics, a volume in the “Philosophy and Medicine” Series (Dordrecht/
Holland; Boston/USA: Kluwer Academic Pub.), forthcoming.
24 On this theme, see John Paul II,“By the Communion of Persons Man Becomes
the Image of God,” in Theology of the Body, 45–48.
25 Hence, self-determination means not only that I am the cause of my acts, but
that “through them I am also in some sense the ‘creator of myself.’ . . . [Self-determination] explains the reality that by my actions I become ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ and

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be open to God’s truth in all of its fullness and “to reach beyond ourselves
and reflect God more perfectly.”26 Authors Richard Hogan and John LeVoir
eloquently sum up these two interrelated concepts:“A human person is an
image of God because he/she possesses a mind and a will. Through the
awareness (consciousness) of his/her freely chosen (efficacious) acts of
knowing and willing, a human person knows himself/herself.” Continuing,
they note that transcendence is “the effect of our acquiring the truth . . . and
our choices made in accordance with the truth.These interior spiritual realities reflect God and when they are expressed through the body, it becomes
a physical image of God in the world.”27
1. Aquinas and Wojtyla on Anthropology
At this point, it will be useful to provide a brief examination of how John
Paul II/Karol Wojtyla’s view of the human person compares with that of
St. Thomas Aquinas, whose own thought on the essential unity of body
and soul in man expresses the fundamental conviction of a sound
Catholic anthropology. It is important to do so in order to show that the
Pope’s anthropology, while different from Aquinas on some matters, as we
will see, is an expression of traditional Christian anthropology as embodied in the Common Doctor, and not some drastic change in the way
Catholicism understands the person.
As Janet Smith has well noted,Wojtyla, in his essay “Thomistic Personalism,”28 “accepts Aquinas’ definition of the person, but integrates this definition into his ethics in a way significantly different from Aquinas.”29
Aquinas’s definition is that taken from Boethius (a “person is an individual
that then I am also ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as a human being—as St.Thomas so eminently
perceived” (Wojtyla,“The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” in Wojtyla,
Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok, OSM [New York:
Peter Lang, 1993], 187–95, at 191). See also Veritatis Splendor, nos. 65–68; Karol
Wojtyla, The Acting Person (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1979), 151;
Jaroslaw Kupczak, OP, Destined for Liberty:The Human Person in the Philosophy of
Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 113–25.
26 Hogan and LeVoir, Covenant of Love, 11. See Mary Durkin, Feast of Love: Pope
John Paul II on Human Intimacy (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1983), chapter
6 for further discussion of these themes.
27 Ibid.
28 This essay can be found in Wojtyla, Person and Community, 165–75.
29 Janet Smith, “Natural Law and Personalism in Veritatis Splendor,” in Michael E.
Allsopp and John J. O’Keefe, eds., Veritatis Splendor: American Responses (Kansas
City: Sheed and Ward, 1995), 194–207, at 198. In Person and Community,Wojtyla
also compares his own anthropology with a modern philosopher such as
Descartes (see “Thomistic Personalism,” 169–70).

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substance of a rational nature”) and hence philosophical. Wojtyla, Smith
observes, restates the definition: “The person . . . is always a rational and
free concrete being, capable of all those activities that reason and freedom
alone make possible.”30 Wojtyla notes, says Smith, “that whereas Aquinas
makes much use of the term ‘person’ in his theological treatises, in his treatise on the human being, he adopts a hylomorphic view that sees man as
composite of form and matter.” However, this definition, Smith points out,
“does not, of course, conflict with the definition of man as a person, for
man’s form is a spiritual soul which is characterized by its rationality and
freedom,”31 and serves as the ground of the person’s dignity. In brief, Smith
rightly claims that while Wojtyla “accepts Aquinas’ view of the person, he
supplements it,”32 and does so in a number of ways.
One way Wojtyla supplements Aquinas is found in the following
passage:“St.Thomas gives us an excellent view of the objective existence
and activity of the person, but it would be difficult to speak in his view of
the lived experiences of the person,” that is, consciousness and selfconsciousness.33 On this point, argues Smith,Wojtyla “moves beyond” St.
Thomas. He does so by sharing the “modern interest in consciousness and
self-consciousness,” while at the same time rejecting, as Smith puts it,“the
modern view that the person is consciousness.” Rather, as she shows, “in
[Wojtyla’s philosophical treatise] the Acting Person he uses an analysis of
consciousness to unfold his notion of man as being free and self-determining. For it is his consciousness of himself as one who is an efficient
cause of his own action and of his self-actualization that allows the human
being to have a sense of responsibility for his actions and his character.”34
“Ultimately,” we can conclude with Smith, Wojtyla “draws upon a
Thomistic metaphysics, for Wojtyla finds Aquinas’ appropriation of the
Aristotelian concepts ‘potentiality’ and ‘actuality’ (metaphysical terms) to
30 Ibid. Smith is quoting from “Thomistic Personalism,” 167.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid., 199.
33 Wojtyla,“Thomistic Personalism,” 171. Here,Wojtyla favorably contrasts Aquinas

with Descartes, since for the latter “the person is not a substance, an objective
being with its own proper subsistence—subsistence in a rational nature,” but
rather “consciousness and self-consciousness,” these wrongly constituting the
“essence of the person” (170).
34 Smith, “Natural Law and Personalism in Veritatis Splendor,” 199. For Wojtyla,
Smith adds, “the dignity of the human person . . . lies in this self-determination
of the self through the free choice of what is good” (199).This in turn presupposes that the person first has “an authentic grasp of values or goods and must
work to determine himself in accord with objective goods; only thus is his true
freedom realized” (ibid.).

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be essential to a proper description of man’s power to determine himself; man’s
life is a process of bringing into actualization various potencies that he
has.” But, she continues, “the fact remains that Aquinas aims at a metaphysical description (one ultimately rooted in experience, but one that
seeks to arrive at ultimate principles, described in universal categories),
whereas Wojtyla aims at a phenomenological one, one that remains as
closely linked as possible to the lived experience of the concrete human
being of his own consciousness of himself as a self-determining person.”35
Although there is much more that could be said by way of comparison
and contrast between the respective anthropologies of Aquinas and
Wojtyla, these comments should suffice to show that, despite their different emphases, there is great harmony between them.
2.The Nature of Love and the “Personalistic Norm”
Crucial too for grasping our author’s “theology of the body,” indeed his
basic theory of Christian ethics is his in-depth account of human love. In
Love and Responsibility,Wojtyla begins his general analysis of love with the
fact that “love is always a mutual relationship between persons.”36 Here,
however, we are concerned with the special form this love takes in the
relationship between man and woman, particularly in marriage. In the
Pope’s analysis, love between man and woman, like other kinds of love,
has numerous distinguishing characteristics (“basic elements”) and exists
on many different levels (i.e., the metaphysical, the psychological, and the
ethical).37 First, I will take up Wojtyla’s general treatment of love in the
metaphysical sense, which includes his examination of “betrothed love.”
Second, I will briefly examine his ethical analysis of love, which is closely
35 Ibid., 200, emphasis added. See Smith’s brief discussion (200–201) with respect

to Wojtyla’s portrait of man as a “self-giver,” and how this feature of the human
person found in Vatican Council II, especially Gaudium et Spes, no. 24 (as well as
in Wojtya’s pre- and post-Vatican II work) is fully “in accord with the [Catholic]
tradition and with Thomism, but in a way moves beyond them both” (200).
36 Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 73. Wojtyla adds: “This relationship in turn is
based on particular attitudes to the good adopted by each of them individually
and by both jointly” (ibid.). Here I will rely on the synthesis Wojtyla offers in
Love and Responsibility. For an insightful commentary on this book, see Rocco
Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla:The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), trans. Paolo Guietti and Francesca Murphy,
especially 83–116. See also Simpson, On Karol Wojtyla, chapter 4.
37 See ibid., 73–140.A good discussion of the person and these various dimensions
of love can be found in Joseph De Lestapis, SJ, “A Summary of Karol Wojtyla’s
Love and Responsibility,” in Raymond Dennehy, ed., Christian Married Love (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981), 108–14.

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linked with his metaphysical and psychological analysis of love.38 Third,
as noted earlier, I will show how Wojtyla/John Paul II brings this understanding of love to bear on bioethics and sexual ethics.
For Wojtyla, love can be analyzed (in a positive way) not only as attraction and as desire but also as goodwill.39 Love as goodwill, amor benevolentiae, is love “in a more unconditional sense than love as desire.”40 It is
indeed love in its purest form.“Such love,” says Wojtyla,“does more than
any other to perfect the person who experiences it, brings both the
subject and the object of that love the greatest fulfillment.”41 However,
genuine love as goodwill and love as desire (or even desire itself) are not
it must be said contradictory loves—they can “keep company” with each
other, especially in marriage—“provided that desire does not overwhelm
all else in the love of man and woman, does not become its entire content
and meaning.”42 Attraction and desire, although they are the “matter” or
basic “building blocks” of love,43 we might say, must be, therefore, shaped
by goodwill if they are to attain their true end: union with the beloved.
Here it is appropriate to quote Wojtyla on the meaning of genuine
love as opposed to false love.A genuine love, he observes, is one in which
“the true essence of love is realized—a love which is directed toward a
genuine good (not merely an apparent) in the true way, or . . . the way
appropriate to the nature of that good . . . A false love is one that is
directed toward a specious good, or . . . to a way which does not correspond to but is contrary to its nature. . . . A false love is an evil love.”44
Love can also be approached from the standpoint of the problem of
reciprocity between persons. Here Wojtyla considers love as something that
exists between the man and the woman, that is, the love that is “common
to them and unique.”45 A reciprocal or bilateral love “creates the most
immediate basis on which a single ‘we’ can arise from two ‘I’s. It is in this
38 I skip over a formal overview of Wojtyla’s interesting psychological analysis of love,

where he treats sensuality, sentiment, and love, and the problem of integrating
love (see 101–18).
39 On love as attraction and as desire in Wojtyla, see Love and Responsibility, 74–82.
For a good commentary, see Hogan and LeVoir, Covenant of Love, 16–18.
40 Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 83.
41 Ibid., 84.
42 Ibid.
43 In ibid,Wojtyla will later observe that sensuality is “a sort of raw material for true,
conjugal love.” For this reason, it “must then be open to the other, nobler
elements of love” (108).
44 Ibid., 82–83.
45 Ibid., 84.

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that its natural dynamism exits.”46 It is reciprocity,Wojtyla argues,“which
determines whether that ‘we’ comes into existence in love.” Hence, reciprocity is the evidence that “love has matured, that it has become something ‘between’ persons, has created a community of feeling and that its
full nature has thereby been realized.”47 However, true reciprocity,
Wojtyla reminds us, cannot exist between persons if pleasure or self-gratification is the sole or principal characteristic of what the relationship is
based on. Genuine reciprocity, therefore, “cannot arise from two
egoisms.”48 As Wojtyla notes, the “structure of Love is that of an interpersonal communion.”49
Betrothed love, however,“is something different from and more than all
the forms of love so far considered. . . .When betrothed love enters into
this interpersonal relationship something more than friendship results:
two people give themselves each to the other.”50 The concept of betrothed
love is especially valid when applied to marriage. Indeed, it is the kind of
love that we can definitely call “conjugal.” This conjugal or spousal love
leads in marriage to the “mutual dedication” of husband and wife to each
other, to their common good or welfare.“From the point of view of each
individual person this is a clear surrender of each individual person, while
in the interpersonal relationship it is surrender of each to the other.”51
Only in this way can marriage satisfy what Wojtyla calls the “personalistic norm.”52 It is this personalistic perspective that leads Wojtyla to argue
that the “gift of self ” should not be interpreted in “a purely sexual, or
sexual and psychological, sense.”53
Wojtyla begins his ethical analysis of love, which is closely tied to the
preceding metaphysical analysis of love, by noting, “there is no possibility of
46 Ibid., 85.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid., 88.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid., 96. As Aquinas argues, “. . . well-wishing [i.e., good will, does not] suffice

for friendship, for a certain mutual love is required, since friendship is between
friend and friend: and this well-wishing is founded on some kind of communication [i.e., common good] (Summa theologiae II–II, q. 23, a. 1).
51 Ibid., 98.
52 Ibid., 41: “This norm, in its negative aspect, states that the person is the kind of
good which does not admit of use and as such the means to an end. In its positive form the personalistic norm confirms this: the person is a good toward
which the only proper and adequate attitude is love.” See Paul F. de Ladurantaye,
“ ‘Irreconcilable Concepts of the Human Person’ and the Moral Issue of
Contraception: An Examination of the Personalism of Louis Janssens and the
Personalism of Pope John Paul II,” Anthropotes 13 (1997): 433–55.
53 Ibid., 99.

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psychological completeness in love unless ethical completeness is attained.”54
Expressed another way, “love as experience should be subordinated to love as
virtue.” This requires first of all, an “affirmation of the value of the
person,”55 and the need to subordinate sensual and emotional attraction
to the sexual values of the person, to the realization that, like oneself,“the
human being concerned is a person.”56
Love must also be, Wojtyla argues, directed “not toward ‘the body’
alone, nor yet toward ‘a human being of the other sex,’ but precisely
toward a person.What is more, it is only when it [freely] directs itself to
the person that love is love.”57 This leads to love in its “objective aspect”
as “an interpersonal fact, [as] reciprocity, and friendship based on a shared
good—it is, then, always the unification of two persons, with the result
that they belong to each other.”58 This is the “self-giving” character of
the love that Wojtyla, as we saw, calls “betrothed love.”Thus, for example,
sexual relations can be morally good, that is, in accord with the “personalistic norm,” only when they involve persons who have irrevocably
committed themselves to this kind of singular love (i.e., in marriage).59
Thus understood, this love requires an affirmation of the objective value
of the person, for the person is, as Wojtyla expresses it, “a good toward
which the only proper and adequate attitude is love.”60 Since the person is
a being with fundamental worth and inestimable dignity, created in God’s
image, he or she must never be treated in a mere utilitarian fashion—either
as an object of use or as a means to an end.61 Here, again, in a nutshell, is
the “personalistic norm” that Karol Wojtyla uses to ground his ethics of
marriage and sexuality, indeed, his entire ethical system.62 Wojtyla argues,
in fact, that this particular norm provides a justification for the New Testa54 Ibid., 120.
55 Ibid., 121.
56 Ibid., 122–23.
57 Ibid., 123.
58 Ibid., 127.
59 See ibid., 130–39. Further insight into Wojtyla’s ideas on love and friendship can

be found in his many poems and plays, for example, The Jeweler’s Shop, in Karol
Wojtyla, The Collected Plays and Writings on Theatre, trans. Boleslaw Taborski
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 278–322.
See Scott Fitzgibbon, “Wojtylian Insight into Love and Friendship: Shared
Consciousness and the Breakdown of Solidarity,” in Luke Gormally, ed., Culture
of Life—Culture of Death (London: Linacre Centre, 2002), 279–98.
60 Ibid., 41.
61 Ibid.
62 Kupczak, Destined for Liberty, notes,“This norm presupposes a personalist anthropology that describes the human person as possessing a unique dignity as well as
enjoying personal freedom and the possibility of knowing the truth” (89–90).

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ment commandment to “love persons.” This commandment is even the
same as the “personalistic norm,” if the commandment is taken together
with this justification.63 “For if Jesus Christ commanded us to love those
beings who are persons, then love,” according to Wojtyla, “is the proper
form of relating to persons: it is the form of behavior for which we should
strive when our behavior has a person as its object, since this form is
demanded by that person’s essence, or nature.”64
3. Christian Love, Bioethics, and Sexual Ethics
There are clear implications here of the centrality of love in Karol
Wojtyla/John Paul II for bioethics and sexual ethics, among other areas
of human life, since both disciplines have the “person as [their] object.”65
For example, as John Paul II teaches in Veritatis Splendor no. 13, the
commandments of the “second tablet,” concerning treatment of other
human persons, have their summary and foundation in the commandment
of love of neighbor (see Mt 22:37–40 and par.). Indeed, this commandment
expresses the singular dignity of the human person.“The different commandments of the Decalogue,” John Paul II teaches, “are really only so many
reflections of the one commandment about the good of the person, at
the level of the many different goods which characterize his identity as a
spiritual and bodily being in relationship with God, with his neighbor
and with the material world.”66
Hence, in the Gospel story of the rich young man (see Mt 19:16–30),
Jesus calls his attention to the commandments that “are meant to safeguard
the good of the person, the image of God, by protecting his goods.”67
63 Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 41. See on Wojtyla’s concept of love, Andrzej

Szostek,“Karol Wojtyla’s View of the Human Person in the Light of the Experience of Morality,” in Existential Personalism: Proceedings of the American Catholic
Philosophical Association, Vol. 60 (Washington, DC: 1987), 58–62; Kupczak,
Destined for Liberty, 44–46.
64 Wojtyla,“The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics: Reflections and Postulates,” in
Wojtyla, Person and Community, 279–99, at 289. See especially 286–91.
65 See Mary F. Rousseau, “Deriving Bioethical Norms from the Theology of the
Body,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 3 (Spring 2003): 59–67, who
writes, the “theology of the body is . . . a necessary source of moral norms for
Catholic Bioethics” (59).
66 Veritatis Splendor, no. 13.
67 See the rich analysis of this theme in Livio Melina, Sharing in the Virtues of Christ:
For a Renewal of Moral Theology in Light of Veritatis Splendor, trans. William E. May
(Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 72–86.“In . . .
Veritatis splendor a personalistic interpretation of the classical doctrine of natural law
has been proposed, based on the distinction between the ‘good of the person’ and
‘goods for the person’ (see Veritatis splendor, nos. 13, 48–50)” (ibid., 72).

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Continuing, the Pope argues that these “negative precepts express with
particular force the ever urgent need to protect human life, the communion of persons in marriage, private property, truthfulness and people’s
good name”—essential goods all in such areas as bioethics and sexuality.
Therefore, the commandments of which Jesus speaks,“represent the basic
condition for love of neighbor; at the same time they are proof of that
love.They are the first necessary step on the journey toward freedom, its starting
point.”68 In other words, one does not, indeed cannot, even if for a noble
reason, love one’s neighbor by directly depriving him or her of a fundamental good, say, human life, by aborting our neighbor or by euthanizing
our neighbor.69 The latter acts of intentional killing are “intrinsically evil
acts,”70 prohibited by absolute moral norms that safeguard the inviolable
and sacred dignity of the human person.71
4. “Nuptiality”:The Human Body Expresses Love
Our previous discussion has provided us with a foundation for relating the
Pope’s ideas about the human person and love to the “nuptial meaning of
the body.” In order to accurately understand this concept, so central to John
Paul II’s thought, we turn to his exegesis of Genesis 1–3, where he describes
the “original unity” of Adam and Eve before the first sin. One author has
remarked that the Pope’s reflections are not so much a biblical commentary
(although they are that!) as they are a philosophical meditation on marriage
and sexuality.72 Because these chapters of Genesis speak of “foundational
human experiences” that are at the core of every human experience, they
speak therefore in a manner that is trans-temporal and universal. Christ
68 Veritatis Splendor, no. 13.
69 With respect to sexual ethics and the communion of persons in marriage, we can say

that one does not love one’s neighbor by committing adultery with one’s neighbor. See Derek Jeffreys, “Euthanasia and John Paul II’s ‘Silent Language of
Profound Sharing of Affection:’ Why Christians Should Care About Peter
Singer,” Christian Bioethics 7 (2001): 359–78.
70 On the concept of “intrinsic evil,” see Veritatis Splendor nos. 78–83.
71 On the moral norms prohibiting intentional killing of the innocent, abortion,
and euthanasia, see John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, nos. 57, 62, and 65, respectively.
On the understanding of moral absolutes in Veritatis Splendor, see William E. May,
An Introduction to Moral Theology, revised edition (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday
Visitor Press, 1994), 145–53; John Finnis and Germain Grisez, “Negative Moral
Precepts Protect the Dignity of the Human Person,” L’Osservatore Romano 8
(1994): 6–7. See further on the important subject of moral absolutes, John Finnis,
Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1991).
72 Sergius Wroblewski, “John Paul II and Humanae Vitae,” Homiletic & Pastoral
Review (October 1984): 26.

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himself authoritatively referred to these chapters when he spoke the words
“From the beginning” (Mt 19:3ff), in affirming the indissolubility of
marriage as part of God’s original intention for spouses. In referring to the
“beginning” in this way, John Paul II argues that Christ has thereby divinely
accorded normative status on these original human experiences.73
John Paul II states that in the Garden of Eden there were three “original human experiences”: solitude, unity, and nakedness.74 Here I will
discuss the first two original experiences, leaving the third, nakedness, for
part two, when we discuss the latter’s relation to shame.
Solitude results because of Adam’s realization that no other creature in
the world is like him.75 In Genesis 2:19 we read that Adam names the
animals. In the process of this naming, he realizes that he is unique among
all other creatures around him. Only his body is able to express a
“person.”Yet in this self-knowledge, Adam also becomes aware that he is
alone. However, God does not desire this state for him (i.e., man). Earlier,
we read:“It is not good that man should be alone” (Gen 2:18).Thus, the
inspired biblical author informs us, it is only through another person that
this solitude on the part of Adam can be overcome.
Moreover, Adam was still incomplete as a human person: As a being
created to love, he could not love! For love obviously implies both a “lover”
and a “beloved.” As authors Hogan and LeVoir nicely comment: Adam
“could not truly love the animals because love is a mutual self-donation of
at least two persons to one another. It was the discovery that only he was
a person called to love in and through a physical body that led directly to
his loneliness. . . . But Adam had to experience solitude . . . his unique call
to imitate God in love expressed through the body” before he could see
that only another person could satisfy this powerful innate need.76
73 I do not concern myself here with the important question of the historicity of

the creation accounts found in Genesis. See the brief discussion of this issue in
George Hunston Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: The Origins of His Thought
and Action (New York: Seabury Press, 1981), 271–72.
74 The structure and at times the substance of my presentation of these themes are
indebted to Hogan and LeVoir, Covenant of Love, 11–27.
75 As Lorenzo Albacete points out, however, it “is not that the lonely individual
Adam needs others to assist him physically or accompany him psychologically.
His solitude is much deeper, much more fundamental. It is a wound in his very
experience as a person, a need that must be fulfilled if the human creature is to
achieve its potential” (Albacete, God at the Ritz: Attraction to Infinity [New York:
Crossroad, 2002], 21).
76 Hogan and LeVoir, Covenant of Love, 14. See on original solitude and original
unity, Mary Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage
(Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 94–105.

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This other person is, of course, Eve, the “mother of all the living” (Gen
3:20).After casting the man into a “deep sleep,” she is made by God “with
the rib” taken from Adam (see Gen 2:21–22). Upon seeing her, Adam
exclaims: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen
2:23).77 This passage has great significance, for as John Paul II notes, it
conveys the fact that both Adam and Eve are created from the same stuff,
from the same humanity.There is, in fact, a “somatic homogeneity” (even
though there are obvious sexual differences), which the Pope speaks of,
that becomes evident with Adam’s breathless poetic joy in discovering
another being like him.78
The masculinity of Adam and the femininity of Eve are really, then,
“two ways of ‘being a body,’ ” two equal, but complementary ways of
being a human person created in God’s image.79 It is precisely this duality (not dualism!) of man’s bodily nature that enables him to overcome
his original solitude, unite him in communion with another person of
the opposite sex, and thus become “two in one flesh/body” (see Gen
2:24). For masculinity and femininity, that is, sexual differentiation, in this
perspective, makes possible a true (physical and spiritual) union between
persons. Sexuality, in other words, gives persons the bodily agency to
express this unity, which without there would be no union.80
The physical union of spouses is also a holy or sacred one, for through
it the man and the woman are able to express a personal communion
(communio personarum), one that is a sacramental reflection of the Trinitarian
communion of divine Persons in heaven.This is why the Pope argues that
Genesis 2:24 (“A man . . . cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh”)
constitutes marriage “as an integral part and, in a certain sense, a central
part of the ‘sacrament of creation.’ ” In this sense, John Paul II says, it “is the
primordial sacrament.”81 Thus, man and woman are not only images of
God insofar as they are human, with reason and will, but also insofar as they
form a communion of persons with each other that reveals God’s love.82
77 John Paul II remarks that here Adam, in speaking this way, seems to say, “here is

a body that expresses a person” (“The Nuptial Meaning of the Body,” in Theology
of the Body, 61, emphasis added).
78 John Paul II,“Original Unity of Man and Woman,” in Theology of the Body, 44–45.
79 Ibid., 43.
80 Richard M. Hogan,“A Theology of the Body:A Commentary on the Audiences
of Pope John Paul II from September 5, 1979 to May 6, 1981,” Fidelity (December 1981): 10–15, 24–27, at 14.
81 John Paul II,“Marriage is the Central Point of the ‘Sacrament of Creation,’ ” in
Theology of the Body, 335.
82 John Paul II,“By the Communion of Persons Man Becomes the Image of God,”
in Theology of the Body, 46. See John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), nos. 6–7.

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The fulfillment of man’s original solitude is the result of the communion of persons in unity; this is the second original experience. This
communion signifies a relationship “existing in mutual ‘for,’ in a relationship of mutual gift.”83 The actual truth of this aspect of the relationship,
the Pope argues, is found in two passages from Genesis: “It is not good
that man (male) be alone,” so God says, “I will make him a helper . . .”
(Gen 2:18). Thus, these words (“alone” and “helper”) indicate that the
man and the woman are to exist with each other and for each other in
total mutual self-giving.84
Because the bodies of Adam and Eve could, before the Fall, express
their persons authentically and fully (for sin had not yet affected them),
their gift (which each of them is to the other) could be a total gift of two
persons to one another.This gift is the external expression or revelation
of a “communion of persons.”85 Moreover, both bodies bare witness to
creation as a gift, and to the fact that the fountain from which this giving
springs is God, who is love itself (see Jn 4:8). It is precisely this capacity
of the body (with its sex and bi-sexuality) to express a unique “gift-love”
that constitutes the “nuptial meaning of the body.”
All married persons (as well as all single persons, too) are called to
imitate the experience of original unity, that is, to live in accord with the
will of the Creator for human love.This gift of love is to be given freely
from the “heart” of the person—“for the sake of the other.”86 In giving
love this way, the human person is able to transcend the solely physical
aspect of sexuality (good in itself), and see that through its proper exercise,
he or she is able to affirm the unique value of another person.The Pope
comments:“On the one hand, [the nuptial meaning of the body] indicates
a particular capacity of expressing love, in which man becomes a gift. On
the other hand, the capacity and deep availability for the affirmation of the
person corresponds to it.This is, literally, the capacity of living the fact that
the other—the woman for the man and the man for the woman—is, by
means of the body, someone willed by the Creator for his or her own
sake.”87 In other words, the person (as mutual gift) is viewed (and treated),
83 John Paul II, “The Nuptial Meaning of the Body,” in Theology of the Body, 61.
84 Ibid., 60. For a discussion of this point, see the essay by Daryl J. Glick, “Recov-

ering Morality: Personalism and the Theology of the Body of John Paul II,” Faith
and Reason 12 (1986): 7–25, at 12–15.
85 Hogan, “A Theology of the Body,” 12.
86 John Paul II, “The Human Person Becomes a Gift in the Freedom of Love,” in
Theology of the Body, 64–65.
87 Ibid., 65. See Jorge V. Arregui, “The Nuptial Meaning of the Body and Sexual
Ethics,” in Luke Gormally, ed., Issues for a Catholic Bioethic (London:The Linacre
Centre, 1999), 119–33.

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by means of the body, as someone who is created by God to be irreplaceable and unrepeatable:“someone chosen by eternal Love.”88
In affirming the value of the person, one thus accepts the gift, and by
means of reciprocity, “creates the communion of persons.”89 It is only by
total self-giving to another, then, that the person can truly discover himself
or herself, as John Paul II ceaselessly proclaims in his echo of Vatican
Council II’s Gaudium et Spes, no. 24.90 In other words, the human person
can only exist and grow in the “plural,” in communion. Without
communion-in-love there is, ultimately, only death, despair, and loneliness.
But this form of self-giving love really “enables a person to experience his
own life in a way that unifies it with the life of another person and establishes an inner bond between their individual selves.”91 “Gift-love” also
presupposes that the spouses see in each other that “unique value” that the
“personalistic norm” speaks of and exhorts them to recognize.
Originally, as we noted, Adam and Eve were able to exchange the gift
of their selves in total innocence, for sin had not yet impaired their bodies
from expressing their persons.92 This mutual and selfless exchange is
based upon and made possible by freedom (for freedom is to be at the
service of love); that is, the human will, which is originally innocent in
their case, enables Adam and Eve to fully give and accept each other.They
are able to “will” or act out internally what their bodies will express
externally. Put another way, in the state of original innocence, their minds
and acts of the will are in perfect harmony with their acts of the body.93
Since Adam and Eve were able to fully express their persons by means
of the body, the communion of persons was perfectly realized for them.
This communion of persons, the Pope states, is characterized by the
“mutual interpenetration” of giving and receiving as gift. John Paul II
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.
90 The conciliar text in Austin Flannery, OP, ed., Vatican Council II:The Conciliar and

Post Conciliar Documents (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Co., 1984), 925
reads as follows: “. . . if man is the only creature on earth that God has wanted
for its own sake, man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of
himself.”This is a consequence, the Council Fathers maintain, of Jesus implying
in John 17:21–22, that “there is a certain parallel between the union existing
among the divine persons and the union of the sons of God in truth and love”
(Gaudium et Spes, no. 24).
91 Andrew Woznicki, A Christian Humanism: Karol Wojtyla’s Existential Humanism
(New Britain, CT: Mariel Publications, 1980), 36–37.
92 See John Paul II,“The Mystery of Man’s Original Innocence,” in Theology of the
Body, 66–69.
93 See Hogan and LeVoir, Covenant of Love, 16.

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beautifully articulates what he means by “mutual interpenetration”: “In
the mystery of creation, the woman was ‘given’ to the man. On his part,
in receiving her as a gift in the full truth of her person and femininity,
man thereby enriches her. At the same time, he too is enriched in this
mutual relationship.The man is enriched not only through her, who gives
him her own person and femininity, but also through the gift of himself.”
Through this giving of himself is manifested “the specific essence of his
masculinity, which, through the reality of the body and of sex, reaches the
deep recesses of the ‘possession of self.’Thanks to this he is capable both
of giving himself and of receiving the other’s gift.”94
John Paul II sees in the second “original experience” implications for
our understanding of marriage today. The union between Christian
spouses, if it is to be a communion-in-love of persons, must be based on
the “personalistic norm.” The bond that joins them must, therefore, transcend mere erotic attraction and strive for that unique graced love (which
can heal, purify, and elevate attraction and desire) and which is proper to
spouses in the sacrament of marriage, and which reflects the love of the
divine Persons. By doing so, the married couple realizes the “nuptial meaning” of their bodies:They see that they are capable of giving to each other
the love that the Creator wills them to give, the love that expresses their
persons as both made in God’s image and likeness and redeemed by His
Son.This is a love, moreover, that is open, indeed ordained to the handing
on of new human life, that is, the blessing of children. Hence, like God’s
love, it is inherently a fertile love, a procreative love (see, e.g., Gen 1:28).95
The use of contraception by couples, however, according to John Paul
II’s view of fertility, can only be a “lie,” a deception. It is both a falsification
of their conjugal love and a denigration of their human personhood: for
each of them is called to give life in imitation of God—to be, in a word, a
94 John Paul II, “Man and Woman: A Gift for Each Other,” in Theology of the Body,

71–72.
95 See John Paul II, “The Nuptial Meaning of the Body,” in Theology of the Body,

60–63. See “Analysis of Knowledge and Procreation,” and “The Mystery of
Woman is Revealed in Motherhood,” in Theology of the Body, 77–80 and 80–83,
respectively. In his Love and Responsibility,Wojtyla asks: How is it possible for the
husband and wife to avoid treating each other as nothing more than a means to
an (selfish) end? Spouses, he replies,“must share the same end. Such an end, where
marriage is concerned, is procreation, the future generation, a family, and, at the
same time, the continual ripening of the relationship between two people, in all
areas of activity which conjugal life includes” (30). See Janet E. Smith, Humanae
Vitae: A Generation Later (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1991), chapter 8, “Self-Giving and Self-Mastery: John Paul II’s Interpretation of Humanae Vitae,” especially 255–56.

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“co-creator” with God.96 Contraception, then, involves not only a refusal
to hand on new life (a “no” to life), but a refusal to give oneself totally to
the other (“I withhold a basic aspect of my person which makes me like
God, namely my fertility, my power to give life”).97 Thus, for John Paul II,
contraception involves both moral and anthropological concerns.98 This
makes sense, since human sexuality, as the Pope argues, is no mere biological phenomenon, but is something that permeates the entire being of the
person. The human power to give life surpasses the biological order and
involves a whole series of profound personal values.99
II. The Phenomenon of Sexual Shame
In order to examine the phenomenon of shame as experienced by Adam
and Eve, it will be necessary to first deal with the third “original experience”—nakedness.100 It is only by describing the experience of nakedness
(an experience that changed after the Fall), which enables John Paul II to
show the dichotomy between humankind’s original innocence and its’
fallen (although not totally corrupted) state.
96 As John Paul II states,“the conjugal act signifies not only love, but also potential

fecundity.”When contraception is used, however, “a real bodily union is carried
out in the conjugal act, but it does not correspond to the interior truth and to
the dignity of personal communion—communion of persons. . . . Such a violation of the interior order of conjugal union, which is rooted in the very order
of the person, constitutes the essential evil of the contraceptive act” (“The
Church’s Position on the Transmission of Life,” in Theology of the Body, 398).
97 See John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio (1981), no. 32. See also the audiences in the
section, “Reflections on ‘Humanae Vitae,’ ” in Theology of the Body, 386–423;
Wojtyla, “The Teaching of the Encyclical Humanae Vitae on Love,” in Karol
Wojtyla, Person and Community, 301–14. In commenting on the “theology of the
body,” Benedict Ashley, OP, argues that, according to John Paul II, the use of
contraception involves treating the person “as a mere object of erotic pleasure”
because it not only “artificially alters the act in its biological structure [i.e., its
teleology] but because it depersonalizes it.” See Ashley,“John Paul II:Theologian
of the Body of the Acting Person,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 7 (2000): 31–45,
at 34.
98 See ibid., where John Paul II recognizes that there is a radical “difference, both
anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of
the cycle . . . one which involves . . . two irreconcilable concepts of the human
person and human sexuality.”
99 Ibid., no. 11. See John Grondelski, Fruitfulness as an Essential Dimension of Acts of
Conjugal Love:An Interpretive Study of the Pre-Pontifical Thought of John Paul II (Ph.D.
Diss.: Fordham University, 1985).
100 On the theme of original nakedness and shame, see the helpful analysis of Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love, 121–30.

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1.The Experience of Nakedness
In Genesis 2:25 we read: “And the man and his wife were both naked,
and were not ashamed.”This passage refers to the actual state of mind or
consciousness of Adam and Eve. In fact, John Paul II says, it articulates
“their mutual experience of the body,”“the experience on the part of the
man of the femininity that is revealed in the nakedness of the body and
reciprocally, the experience of masculinity on the part of the woman.”101
Thus, the words of Genesis 2:25 do not imply a “lack,” but rather show
the “particular fullness of consciousness and experience” on the part of
Adam and Eve. “Above all they indicate a full understanding of the
meaning of the body, bound up with the fact that they were naked.”102
Furthermore, the nakedness of our first parents corresponds to an
immediate and spontaneous participation in the “perception of the
world—in its ‘exterior aspect. . . . ’ It is prior to any ‘critical’ complication
of knowledge and human experience,” and is viewed as closely linked
with the meaning of the human body.103 One could say that the (proto)
couple of humankind objectively “experience” their nakedness before
being “aware” of it.Yet the meaning of this original nakedness cannot be
understood by considering only the “exterior” aspect of Adam and Eve’s
experience. Consistent with his phenomenological method, there is still
another aspect of the human body that the Pope believes he must look
at to help us understand original nakedness.This aspect is the “consciousness” of the human being, that is, his or her interiority.
First, recall what was said about John Paul II’s understanding of the
human body. He teaches that “the body expresses/reveals the person.” It
is “something more than the ‘individual,’ and therefore expresses the
personal ‘self,’ which derives its ‘exterior’ perception from within.”104 The
body enables the man and the woman to “communicate” their desires,
feelings, thoughts, and intentions. It acts as a “bridge” (although one not
separate from the person) whereby the spouses can manifest their persons
to each other.
In the beginning, man and woman are characterized by an original
innocence that both reveals and determines the perfect exchange of the
mutual gift. Moreover, there is also a primordial consciousness of the
nuptial meaning of their bodies. For as yet, Adam and Eve had not eaten
the fruit of the forbidden “tree of knowledge of good and bad [evil]” (see
101 John Paul II,“The Meaning of Original Experience,” in Theology of the Body, 52.
102 John Paul II, “The Fullness of Interpersonal Communication,” in Theology of the

Body, 55.
103 Ibid., 56.
104 Ibid.

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Gen 2:17); hence original sin was not a part of their nature.Without the
reality of original sin (and its residue, concupiscence) to affect them,
Adam and Eve could stand naked before each other, in all the fullness of
their masculinity and femininity, and be without shame. As John Paul II
comments, interior innocence “as purity of heart made it impossible
somehow for one to be reduced by the other to the level of a mere
object.The fact that they ‘were not ashamed’ means that they were united
by awareness of the gift. They were mutually conscious of the nuptial
meaning of their bodies, in which the freedom of the gift is expressed and
all the interior riches of the person as subject are manifested.”105
This mutual self-giving creates the “communion of persons” John Paul
II constantly refers to: By the sincere “giving” and “accepting” of the gift, its
meaning is expressed in its purity and strengthened in its substance. It is only
when the man or the woman deny the fact that the other person exists as a
gift in his or her own right, does the gift of oneself become cheapened,
while at the same time reducing the gift that is the other human being to
an “object” to be used or exploited, instead of one (who is) to be loved
totally and unselfishly.106 It is by such a depersonalized act that one severs
the intimate connection that should exist between affirming the value of
the person and his or her body (sensuality).Without the affirmation of the
value of the person, the man and the woman cannot become “one
flesh/body” together.They are unable as it were to come to a “full realization of the union of persons, which results from reciprocal conjugal love.”107
2.The Experience of Shame
After the fall (see Gen 3:1–24), with the onset of, among other things, the
“war of the sexes,” the ability of man and woman to perfectly affirm the
value of the other person is damaged. No longer could it be said that
Adam and Eve were without shame. With the first sin, then, comes the
first experience of (sexual) shame; in fact, shame, like death, is a direct
consequence of sin. Genesis 3:7 reads: “Then the eyes of both were
opened and they knew that they were naked.” Hogan and LeVoir state that
because of sin, our first parents not only lost the gift of divine life, they
“lost the gift of integration.”108 In other words, their bodies no longer
were able to perfectly express their personhood: From now on their
105 John Paul II,“Man Enters the World as a Subject of Truth and Love,” in Theology

of the Body, 75.
106 See John Paul II, “Man and Woman: A Gift for Each Other,” in Theology of the

Body, 69–72.
107 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 184.
108 Hogan and LeVoir, Covenant of Love, 20.

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bodies and wills (as well as ours) would not always operate in harmony to
reveal the value of each as a person.
With the introduction of sin into the world by Adam and Eve’s freely
chosen act, “a fundamental disquiet” occurs in human existence, as John
Paul II poetically expresses it.109 No longer able to control their bodies as
they had before the Fall, their shame “confirms that the original capacity
of communicating themselves to each other, which Genesis 2:25 speaks
of, has been shattered.”110 It is as if the body, John Paul II continues, in “its
masculinity and femininity, no longer constituted the trustworthy substratum of the communion of persons, as if its original function were called
in question in the consciousness of man and woman.”111
Now, the Pope observes further, within the human person a “rupture”
has taken place, causing “man’s original spiritual and somatic unity” to be
separated on the existential plane. Man “realizes for the first time that his
body has ceased drawing upon the power of the spirit, which raised him
to the level of the image of God.”112 However, not only does this rupture
affect the nature of the individual, it also affects society insofar as the
rupture hinders the person’s ability to bring into existence the communion of persons. From now on, the body is no longer the perfect means of
revealing the person and giving love—and since love is both the condition
and fruit of the communion of persons—the union of the man and
woman is damaged and the “nuptial meaning of the body” is distorted.
As theologian Benedict Ashley, OP, comments:“The experience of shame
reveals the human condition [as a result of original sin]: our sense of
alienation from our true selves, from other human persons, and from
God. Yet at the same time that shame obscures our true selves, it also
reveals our responsibility for ourselves and for others and hence our
personhood, as sickness reveals the glory of health.” It spurs us also,Ashley
argues,“to acknowledge that God has not abandoned us, since he promises to Eve and to all her and Adam’s children that the serpent will not
have final victory” (see Gn 3:15).113
In Genesis 3:7 we also read the following:“[T]hey knew that they were
naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.”
109 See John Paul II,“A Fundamental Disquiet in All of Human Existence,” in Theol-

ogy of the Body, 114–17.
110 John Paul II,“The Relationship of Lust to the Communion of Persons,” in Theol-

ogy of the Body, 117.The Pope notes that this shame induces them to hide their
bodies, especially their sexual differentiation, from each other.
111 Ibid., 117–18.
112 John Paul II, “A Fundamental Disquiet in All Human Existence,” in Theology of
the Body, 115.
113 Ashley, “John Paul II,” 35.

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Thus, shame is also a communal experience (“they knew . . .”).Yet unlike
the experience of love, it does not lead to a true communion of persons.
The Pope states that this feeling of shame is a “symptom” or consequence
of the first sin.114 However, Adam and Eve could never again experience
the disinterested loving gaze of each other’s bodies without seeing in the
other the possibility of making that person an object of use.The phenomenon of sexual shame occurs precisely when the (naked) body is viewed
as an object. Paradoxically, we can say that the body, even though it might
be naked, often acts more as a barrier to the revelation of the inherent value
and worth of the person.We can also say that after the first sin is committed, the body in its maleness and femaleness, does not constitute the “trustworthy substratum of the communion of persons.”115 Rather, as we read
in Romans 7:22–23, it goes off on its own, obeying a “law” of its own (i.e.,
“the law of sin in my members”), in search of sensual pleasure (here is the
beginning of lust, which I shall treat in the next section).
In discussing lust, however, we must keep in mind that the concepts of
“nakedness” and “shame” do not refer solely to the body. That is, John
Paul II believes that the experience of nakedness (and the shame that
results) manifests the profound spiritual and metaphysical deficiencies
that man brought into existence by sinning. In the damaged state of sin,
humankind is seen as “deprived of participation in the gift . . . alienated
from that love which had been the source of the original gift, the source
of the fullness of the good intended for the creature.”116
We are able to witness the profound spiritual change that takes place
in the depths of the human person, when we read the words of Genesis
3:10: “I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”These words,
according to John Paul II, both reveal that shame causes fear in the
human person (i.e., fear of the material world and its deterministic
processes) and they illumine the loss of certainty that the body of the
114 John Paul II, “The Real Significance of Original Nakedness,” in Theology of the

Body, 111.
115 John Paul II,“The Relationship of Lust to the Communion of Persons,” in Theol-

ogy of the Body, 118. See the section titled,“The Metaphysics of Shame,” in chapter 3 of Love and Responsibility (especially 177–86). Here Wojtyla makes the
observation that sexual shame arises when the person realizes that his or her
body is being regarded as an object to be used for pleasure alone.Wojtyla refers
to this phenomenon as “depersonalization by sexualization” (191). This is not
compatible with the “value of the person.” Thus, “The experience of shame is a
natural reflection of the essential nature of the person” (178). It truly reveals the “suprautilitarian” nature of the person.This is the exact opposite of prudery (see 188).
116 John Paul II, “The Real Significance of Original Nakedness,” in Theology of the
Body, 112.

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person is a “sign,” an image of God in the visible world.117 In short, in
the state of original unity and innocence, man and woman could love
perfectly through bodies that expressed their persons.Thus, their love for
each other was able to mirror the love of the divine Persons. However,
sin prevents the gift of this love from being given. Humankind has lost
the original certainty that they can express this image of God through
their bodies.And, as noted, the body no longer draws upon the power of
the spirit to control the desires of the person.
3.The Threat of Lust
Virtuous self-control of the body is gravely threatened by lust. Unlike the
couple in the state of original innocence, who were able to control or
master their bodies and their desires according to the measure of reason,
the ability of the human being to do this under the influence and power
of lust is “shaken to the very foundations in him.”118 The body now “bears
within it a constant center of resistance to the spirit. It threatens, in a way,
the unity of the person, that is, of the moral nature, which is firmly rooted
in the constitution of the person.”119 Since both Adam and Eve give birth
to lust in their hearts, lust too becomes a communal experience. Because
of it, they are ashamed.This communal character of lust testifies also to the
relative character of sexual shame (i.e., lust causes shame of their individual sexuality with regard to the other human being).120 Thus, one must
usually have another human being present for the phenomenon of shame
to occur. By understanding the chief characteristics of lust, we can see
how John Paul II will argue that it destroys the communion of persons.
Lust will distort sexuality, in such a way, as to make it an obstacle in the
relationship of man and woman. It will prevent the man and the woman
from exchanging the self-giving love they were once able to experience and
give to one another in their pre-lapsarian condition.The Pope comments
on this situation: Lust causes an “almost constitutive difficulty of identification with one’s body.This is not only in the sphere of one’s own subjectivity, but even more with regard to the subjectivity of the other human being,
of woman for man, of man for woman.”121 Each of them becomes an
“object” in the eyes of the other, instead of a gift.This does not mean, in any
117 Ibid., 112–14.
118 John Paul II, “A Fundamental Disquiet in All Human Existence,” in Theology of

the Body, 115.
119 Ibid.
120 Ibid., 114–15.
121 John Paul II,“The Relationship of Lust to the Communion of Persons,” in Theol-

ogy of the Body, 119.

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way, we should add, that every spousal relationship today, whether Christian
or not, is by definition sinful or characterized at all times by behavior that
treats the other as an “object of use.” It is only the spouses “driven by lust”
who make the “gift of love to a person of the opposite sex impossible.”122
To lust after another person, then, is not to love him or her—it is to
depersonalize; and it is also to enslave oneself to one’s disordered
passions.123 However, all spouses (both now and in the future) are called
by God to strive for the (ideal) state of original innocence and overcome,
with His grace, the desires of the flesh, that is, to live according to the
new law of Christ, which addresses each and every person throughout
the ages.All persons and hence, all spouses, are called to control themselves.
As John Paul II writes, “the ethos of redemption [of the body] contains
in every area—and directly in the sphere of the lust of the flesh—the
imperative of self-control, the necessity of immediate continence and of
habitual temperance.”124 It is only by developing this virtue that the man
and the woman can free themselves from lust and become a free gift to
each other.125 Thus, each spouse “must will (love) as our first parents did
and control concupiscence. . . . [C]ontrol and self-mastery begin with the
interior man and this is why” John Paul II will always emphasize that
Christ “appeals to the heart,”126 as we see him do paradigmatically in the
Sermon on the Mount (see Mt 5–7).
III. Sexual Shame in Light of the
“Nuptial Meaning of the Body”
“From the beginning” man and woman were called to form a mutual
communion of persons. They were entrusted to be the guardians of the
“reciprocity of donation and its true balance.”127 Because of sin and (one
122 Hogan and LeVoir, Covenant of Love, 21. John Paul II expresses the idea this way:

The gift becomes impossible when,“The relationship of the gift is changed into
the relationship of appropriation” (see “The Heart—A Battlefield Between Love
and Lust,” in Theology of the Body, 127). See John Paul II, “Mutual Attraction
Differs from Lust,” in Theology of the Body, 147–50.
123 See John Paul II,“The Depersonalizing Effect of Concupiscence,” in Theology of
the Body, 150–52.
124 John Paul II,“Christ Calls Us to Rediscover the Living Forms of the New Man,”
in Theology of the Body, 175.
125 See John Paul II, “The Heart—A Battlefield Between Lust and Love,” 127.
126 Hogan,“A Theology of the Body,” 24. See John Paul II,“Christ Appeals to Man’s
Heart,” in Theology of the Body, 103–6.
127 John Paul II, “The Opposition in the Human Heart Between the Spirit and
the Body,” in Theology of the Body, 128. John Paul II notes that although “The
maintenance of the balance of the gift seems to have been entrusted to both .
. . a special responsibility rests with man above all, as if it depended more on

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of) its consequence, lust, masculinity and femininity (constituting the
mutual gift or “nuptial meaning of the body”) became means of possible
disordered enjoyment and pleasure.128 At the same time, man and woman
are still called to live in accordance with the will of God,“to rediscover,” as
it were—“on the foundation of the perennial and indestructible meanings
of what is human—the living forms of the new man” in Christ.129 This is
made possible only by Christ’s redemptive act on the Cross, his death and
resurrection, which provides the grace for all persons to live in harmony
with his commandments and beatitudes. Richard M. Hogan states that
Christ is therefore the “link” between the state of original innocence and
humankind’s condition after the Fall (i.e., so-called “historical man”):
Christ “bridges the gap caused by sin because he redeems the body.”130 This
is an idea that the Pope will constantly return to, for example, in his affirmation of the resurrection/redemption of the body (i.e., the “eschatological state”).131 There can be no dualism in the kingdom of God!
We will never again, obviously, attain our original innocence in this life.
However, as transcendent beings created for union with God, we cannot,
like St. Augustine, be fully satisfied with this conclusion. For not only does
the moral law of Christ call into question all sinful relationships of men and
women, our own experience of shame clearly shows that we are not content
to live in conjugal unions based solely on the “law of lust.” In other words,
we battle to regain the pristine condition we had before original sin. Moreover, God’s never-failing grace empowers the Christian to live a life worthy
of his or her supreme calling in Christ.Yet, in the present age,“sin and shame
him whether the balance is maintained or broken or even—if already broken—
re-established” (ibid., 128–29).
128 Here it is important to note that lust radically differs from the good and natural
experience of mutual attraction on the part of spouses. Lust reduces the value of
the person merely to his or her sexuality. On the other hand, a healthy and virtuous mutual attraction situates sexuality in a whole spectrum of other values (e.g.,
love of the person). See John Paul II, “Mutual Attraction Differs from Lust,” in
Theology of the Body, 147–50.
129 John Paul II,“Christ Calls Us to Rediscover the Living Forms of the New Man,”
in Theology of the Body, 175.
130 Hogan, “A Theology of the Body,” 13. Christ, John Paul II says, “leads us, in a
certain way, beyond the limit of man’s hereditary sinfulness to his original innocence. In this way he enables us to find the continuity and the connection existing between these two situations” (“Analysis of Knowledge and Procreation,” in
Theology of the Body, 77).
131 See John Paul II, the audiences in the section, “The Redemption of the Body,”
in Theology of the Body, 233–61. See John Paul II, “The Mystery of the Body’s
Redemption,” and “The Redemption of the Body and the Sacramentality of
Marriage,” in Theology of the Body, 299–302 and 419–22, respectively.

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still exist in us because we have not been restored to the state of original
innocence, but only to the possibility of self-control (integration).”132
In Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla states that shame, paradoxically, serves as a means for leading a person to discover the value of
another person. When a human person recoils from the reactions of
others that are purely sexual in kind, he or she wishes to spark a reaction
to himself or herself that corresponds more closely to the value of the
person in and through love.This,Wojtyla maintains, is not a retreat from
love, but rather a way of opening oneself to it.133
For spouses who truly love each other, shame,Wojtyla argues, is “swallowed up by love, dissolved in it.”134 Yet to say that shame is “absorbed”
by love does not mean, of course, that it is totally eliminated: “‘Absorption’ means . . . that love fully utilizes . . . the characteristic effects of
shame, and specifically that awareness of the person and sexual values.”135
Thus, shame both protects and strengthens love. True married love
consists, then, in the affirmation of the person, making shame really
unnecessary. No longer does the other person have to fear he or she will
be looked at or treated as an object for use—rather the spouse is seen as
a person with inherent dignity.There is no need for shame in a relationship of mutual conjugal love, trust, and abandonment!
We, “historical man,” tainted with original sin, cannot recover, as we
indicated, the “nuptial meaning of the body” on our own power, with
our own resources. We are in desperate need of the grace of Christ
(which we first receive in the sacrament of baptism), in addition to our
own firm wills to change. Christ, as John Paul II reminds us, offers this
grace to us every day.We, already as “adopted” sons and daughters,“children” of his Father (see Rom 8:14–17), must open ourselves to this grace
and accept it.That is, in biblical terms, we must undergo a conversion, a
metanoia. Only then will man and woman, in the words of John Paul II,
regain the “possibility of loving each other in truth and freedom.”
IV. Some Implications of the Pope’s Teaching
for Marriage and Sexual Morality
Since, to a great extent, I have already indicated some implications of the
Pope’s “theology of the body” for bioethics, let me in this last part of the
essay say something, in the way of a sketch, about the implications of this
theology for Christian marriage, sexual ethics, and the family, that is, how
his specific moral teaching in these areas is grounded in his theology of
132 Hogan and LeVoir, Covenant of Love, 29.
133 Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, 179.
134 Ibid., 181.
135 Ibid., 182.

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the body and his personalistic perspective.136 To some degree, we have
already partially done this with respect to the moral issue of contraception—an issue also treated in various ways in bioethics.
1. Marriage and the Family as an “Icon” of the Trinity
Following the New Testament witness, John Paul II affirms in his 1981
Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio137—which will serve as my
primary guide—the innate vocation of every human person is to love.138
This vocation can be fully realized in either the state of marriage or in
consecrated celibacy/virginity for the kingdom of God or the single
life.139 In choosing marriage, which has God as its author—a man and a
woman commit themselves to the intimate community of life and love
willed by God.140
Marriage, moreover, is a human reality inwardly ordered toward God’s
covenant of grace; and, in and through Jesus Christ marriage becomes
fully integrated into God’s loving plan for the salvation of human
persons. So, by virtue of their baptism, the marriages of the lay faithful
are sacramental, that is, living images of the spousal covenant of Christ
with his bride, the Church.141
Because marriage is also inherently ordered to the procreation and
education of children and the good of the spouses, it requires, John Paul
II argues, lifelong indivisible unity and indissolubility.142 Moreover, God
“wills and . . . communicates the indissolubility of marriage as a fruit, a
sign and a requirement of the absolutely faithful love that God has for
man and that the Lord Jesus has for the Church.”143
136 See Karol Wojtyla, “The Problem of Catholic Sexual Ethics,” 279–99; Ronald

Lawler, OFM Cap, Joseph Boyle, Jr., and William E. May, Catholic Sexual Ethics: A
Summary, Explanation, and Defense, 2nd Ed. (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor
Press, 1998), which skillfully integrates the Pope’s “theology of the body” with
his teachings in particular areas of sexual morality; and Donald P.Asci, The Conjugal Act as a Personal Act:A Study of the Catholic Concept of the Conjugal Act in Light
of Christian Anthropology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002). On a more popular level, see Christopher West, Good News About Sex and Marriage (Ann Arbor,
MI: Servant Publications, 2000).
137 In addition to Familiaris Consortio, John Paul II’s “mini summa” on marriage and
the family, one should consult his Letter to Families (1994) and the audiences in
the section, “The Sacramentality of Marriage,” in Theology of the Body, 304–85.
138 See Familiaris Consortio, no. 11.
139 See ibid., nos. 11, 16.
140 See Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes, no. 48.
141 See John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 13.
142 See ibid., nos. 14, 19–20.
143 Ibid., no. 20.

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Out of marriage arises the family, which is the basic unit of society (its
“first and vital cell”).144 The Christian family, as the “domestic Church,”
participates in the threefold mission (or office) of Christ as prophet,
priest, and king. Hence, the family will exercise its prophetic role by being
a believing and evangelizing community, its priestly role by being a
community in dialogue with God, and its kingly role by being a community at the service of mankind.145
The primordial model of the Christian family, for John Paul II, is the
Trinitarian mystery of God’s life.Thus, as we saw, the communion of the
spouses in love is an “icon” or “image” of the mutual exchange of love
among the divine persons of the Trinity.146 It is, in a word, a sacrament of
divine love. It is this divine love that ultimately grounds the family’s
unique apostolate to build up the kingdom of God through the everyday
realities that distinguish its unique state of life.
2.The Pope’s Personalism and Specific Moral Teachings
Pope John Paul II’s personalistic teaching—which I believe is firmly
rooted in sacred scripture and tradition—on such controversial subjects
as contraception, premarital sex, adultery, divorce and remarriage, and
other non-marital acts is based on first, his understanding that human
sexuality is no mere biological datum, but something that permeates the
entire being of a person. In this perspective, as we noted earlier, one’s
fertility or power to give life surpasses the biological and animal order
and involves a whole series of personal values.147 Thus, when spouses use
contraception to separate the “procreative” and “unitive” meanings of the
conjugal act, they falsify their sexuality’s innate, God-given language of
“total” self-giving. In other words, as we previously observed the Pope
saying, they engage in a “lie,” in a deceit with their bodies.148
144 See ibid., no. 42.
145 See ibid., nos. 49–64.
146 See ibid., nos. 11–13.
147 See ibid., no. 11.This personalistic conception of the body and fertility has obvi-

ous implications for an issue that we will not consider, that is, artificial means of
reproduction (e.g., in vitro fertilization and cloning). On this issue, see Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Vitae (1987), a document greatly
influenced by John Paul II’s “theology of the body” in its condemnation of technologies of birth that violate the following values: the “language of the body,”
the inseparability of the unitive and the procreative meanings of the marital act,
and the dignity of the child conceived.
148 See ibid., no. 32. When, however, by means of natural family planning, “the
couple respect the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative
meanings of human sexuality, they are acting as ‘ministers’ of God’s plan and they
‘benefit from’ their sexuality according to the original dynamism of ‘total’ self-

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Second, the Pope’s teaching is based on the argument that an intelligent, loving response to the personal values of human sexuality requires
the lifelong covenant of marriage in order to make a man’s gift of himself
to a woman and a woman’s gift of herself to a man truly a “gift.” Thus,
sex outside of marriage (i.e., fornication or adultery) is also a deception,
a “lie.”149
Third, his teaching is based on the very nature of conjugal love itself,
which requires that marriage be a permanent and exclusive relationship,
that is, that it be a true conjugal “communion of persons.”150 This
excludes adultery in desire (i.e., the adultery of the heart, see Mt
5:27–28) and deed.
Fourth, his teaching is based on the notion that because the human
body is “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (see 1 Cor 6:19–20; 15:44–45),
with “nuptial” significance, the body is never to be “instrumentalized” in
masturbatory, anal, or oral sex—whether heterosexual or homosexual.151
Only by living faithfully and chastely within the “covenant of love,”
can spouses respect both their own dignity and God’s redemptive plan for
marriage as a sacramental and social reality. In this way, according to John
Paul II, such a great human good as marriage can truly be an authentic
way of holiness, of sanctity.152

giving, without manipulation or alteration” (Here the Pope refers to Pope Paul VI,
Humanae Vitae, no. 13).The latter would involve treating sexuality as an “ ‘object’
that, by breaking the personal unity of soul and body, strikes at God’s creation
itself at the level of the deepest interaction of person and nature” (ibid.). So, the
Pope implies, the use of contraception depends on a dualistic view of the
human person.
149 See ibid., no. 11.
150 See ibid., nos.18–21.
151 See Robert P. George and Gerard V. Bradley, “Marriage and the Liberal Imagination,” Georgetown Law Review 84 (1995): 301–20, and Patrick Lee and Robert P.
George,“What Sex Can Be: Self-Alienation, Illusion, or One-Flesh Union,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 42 (1997): 135–58. Both of these excellent essays are
reprinted in Robert P. George, In Defense of Natural Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1999). See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus,Vol. 2, 649–51, who develops
an argument, rooted in John Paul II’s understanding of the “nuptial meaning of the
body” (see footnote 190 on page 650), that masturbation “damages the body’s
capacity for the marital act as an act of self-giving which constitutes a communion of bodily persons” (650). On pages 651–54, Grisez extends this analysis to
show how fornicators “achieve only the illusion of marital communion” and how
sodomites “use their bodies in a self-defeating attempt at intimacy.”
152 See Karol Wojtyla, Fruitful and Responsible Love (NY: Crossroads, 1979) for a good
synthesis of Wojtyla’s views on many of the topics dealt with in this section.

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V. Conclusion
In this essay, I have sought to expound Pope John Paul II’s thought on
two specific themes—the “nuptial meaning of the body” and “shame”—
integral to his “theology of the body” and specific teachings on bioethical and sexual matters. While by no means intended as an exhaustive
treatment of these contested areas, or the many other aspects of John Paul
II’s thought, my hope has been to provide an adequate introduction to
the Pope’s theology of the body and sex. To my mind, to ignore the
Pope’s insights on these matters is to remain ignorant of many basic
aspects of the human condition involving Christian marriage and human
sexuality. As the philosopher Donald DeMarco has written, “The Theology of the Body offers a coherent image of masculinity and femininity. It
enjoys a remarkable consistency, not only with Vatican II and Church
teaching in general, but also with psychology, philosophy, anthropology,
and the natural law. The reason for this lies in the simple fact that the
Theology of the Body is centered on truth rather than trend, and takes an
approach that is broad and trans-cultural.”153
Overcoming the “culture of death” and restoring the Christian vision
of human life, marriage and sex vitally depend, in many ways, then, on
the whole Church—clergy and laity—fully appropriating this coherent
and consistent teaching of the Pope in the coming years. There is no
greater contribution than this that the Church can make toward building
the “civilization of love” with a “culture of life” at its heart.154

153 Donald

DeMarco, “The Nuptial Significance of the Body,” available at:
www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Faith/2001-04/demarco.html.
154 See, further, Damian P. Fedoryka,“John Paul II as a Prophet of Life in a Culture
of Death,” Faith and Reason 24–25 (1999–2000): 67–84.

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Revelation, Natural Law, and Homosexual Unions
G UY M ANSINI , OSB & L AWRENCE J. W ELCH
St. Meinrad School of Theology and Kenrick Seminary
St. Meinrad, Indiana and St. Louis, Missouri

I. Introduction
AT A RECENT CONFERENCE celebrating the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the Holy Father’s pontificate, Cardinal Ratzinger recalled the
aim of Veritatis Splendor to help moral theologians bring together the metaphysical and biblical sources of moral theology.1 Both are necessary.A pure
biblicism set free from the appreciation of the natural law founded in
creation cannot address contemporary questions, while confining the Bible
to providing inspiration to do good and avoid evil empties Christian morality of its specific ethos. On the other hand, inattention to creation means
inattention to the creation that the Lord God found good and even very
good.We end with a rationalism that, divorced from both the Bible and the
order of creation, can do nothing but calculate the consequences of acts.
It is easy to see that limiting the Bible in the way Cardinal Ratzinger
laments means limiting Christ himself, who is the fullness of revelation and
the only adequate referent of the Scripture, to the role of a moral motivator or cheerleader.Truly to found moral theology in the Bible would be,
contrariwise, to take Christ as the one who in the concreteness of his life,
death, and resurrection conveys to us the content of the moral law.2
1 Intervention by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the Symposium of the Pontifical

Lateran University on the 25th anniversary of the Pontificate of His Holiness
John Paul II (May 9, 2003). For the full text of Ratzinger’s remarks, see:
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_
doc_20030509_ratzinger-simposio_laterano_ge.html
2 Veritatis Splendor, no. 15: “Jesus himself is the ‘fulfillment’ of the Law inasmuch as
he fulfills its authentic meaning by the total gift of himself: he himself becomes a
living and personal Law, who invites people to follow him; through the Spirit, he
gives the grace to share his own life and love. . . .” For a particularly vigorous

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It must be said, unfortunately, that the call of Veritatis Splendor has not
been entirely met. If there has been positive reception of the encyclical,
there has also been non-reception.An especially good instance of its nonreception, we think, is to be found in Professor Stephen Pope’s recent
treatment of homosexuality. It is a good instance, not only because Dr.
Pope seems content with the consequentialism the Holy Father reproves,
but also because, although he seems to see what Veritatis Splendor is offering by way of a properly Christian apprehension of the natural law, where
nature is illumined by revelation, he rejects it. It is this second issue we
would like to take up. We would like to show both the unsatisfactory
character of Dr. Pope’s approach and as well indicate what the road not
traveled might look like. In other words, we want to show how the revelation of Christ—Christ himself—provides the “content” of the moral
law relative to sexuality and marriage.3
II. Stephen Pope on Natural Law on Homosexual Unions
Dr. Pope characterizes the Magisterium’s rejection of same-sex relations as
a position based on what he calls “‘revealed’ natural law.”4 The seemingly
contradictory nature of this name is calculated and is meant to indicate
that the position holds not only that grace is necessary to keep the law but
also that revelation—supernatural revelation—is necessary even to know
the law.This is to say that supernatural revelation teaches and is required for
us to know the natural law. Veritatis Splendor is an expression of this, according to Dr. Pope, and we may well agree.5 Dr. Pope seems at one point to
recognize that this position has the support of St.Thomas.6 Subsequently,
however, he wants to distinguish it from St.Thomas’s position, and he criticizes the idea that we need revelation to know the natural law on the
ground that it is not the position of St.Thomas.7 So to speak, the difference between Dr. Pope and us is wholly and entirely over this name—
statement of this view, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Nine Theses in Christian
Ethics,” in International Theological Commission:Texts and Documents 1969–1985, ed.
Michael Sharkey (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 105–20.The theses first appeared
in 1974.
3 For an overview of the problem of Christocentricism and moral theology as well
a summary of moralists who approach Christ as a motivator, see Livio Melina,
“Christ and the Dynamism of Action: Outlook and Overview of Christocentrism in Moral Theology,” Communio 28, 1(2001): 112–39.
4 Stephen J. Pope,“Scientific and Natural Law Analyses of Homosexuality,” Journal
of Religious Ethics 29(2001): 89–126.
5 Ibid., 104.
6 Ibid., 105.
7 Ibid., 108.

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“revealed natural law.” For Dr. Pope, the paradox invites dismissal. For us,
the paradox leads to some important truths.
Dr. Pope thinks the Magisterium’s rejection of same-sex relations is not
really a rejection based on the natural law, but a rejection based on revelation. He thinks that when the Magisterium takes the procreative finality
of sexual relations to be evident and evidently constitutive of such relations, such that it is immoral to take steps to thwart this finality, that this
is based on a “certain interpretation” of such passages as Genesis 1:27–18
and not also a straightforwardly factual claim. He thinks the Magisterium’s
rejection relies too much on such passages as Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, and
Romans 1:26, and is therefore unsuccessful, since the meaning of such
passages is controversial.8 Further, Dr. Pope considers that the “revealed
natural law” position “attends too narrowly to the ultimate [supernatural]
end [of man] and does not give sufficient attention to the inclusive end of
human desire, encompassing body as well as soul.”9 Allied with this, the
position too much “isolates” the theological understanding of man from
modern empirical scientific interpretations of man.10
In the absence of a natural law argument against same-sex unions, and
on the supposition that biblical revelation does not speak clearly on the
issue, Dr. Pope wants to listen to the experience of homosexual couples.
If they report happiness and fulfillment and flourishing within the context
of such unions, then this should count heavily for their moral legitimacy.
The happiness of stable gay unions is an empirical question,11 and we will
find out whether such unions contribute to the human flourishing of
couples and communities by both psychological and sociological investigation.12 Dr. Pope seems to recognize that the sciences cannot determine
issues of virtue and vice;13 still, if human flourishing is an empirical question, and is to be settled by psychological and sociological survey, it is hard
to see that this will entail anything much more sophisticated than asking
couples whether they are “happy,” and neighbors whether such couples
keep their lawns mowed and sort their recyclables.14 It is this approach,
8 Ibid., 107, n. 13.
9 Ibid., 109. How it is that risen life in Christ is not sufficiently “inclusive” is not

explained.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 118.
12 Ibid., 120.
13 Ibid., 119.
14 Ibid., 112. Exactly what Dr. Pope thinks science contributes to ethics is in fact hard

to say, nor does it seem any clearer in his The Evolution of Altruism and the Ordering
of Love (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1994), where an elaborate

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moreover, that Dr. Pope thinks congruent with St. Thomas’s way to the
discovery of ethical principles.15
Dr. Pope’s position is in fact hard to summarize.Whatever he seems to
give with one hand he takes away with the other. So, St.Thomas agrees
with “revealed natural law” on what it takes to know the natural law
easily and accurately, and he does not; the question of the morality of
sexual unions cannot be settled by science, and then it can be so settled;
appeals to lived experience in settling matters moral are inadequate and
treacherous,16 and on the other hand reports of such experience are a
font of theology.17 He is apparently evenhanded in criticism of both the
“revealed natural law” and “revisionist” positions. But this a mere appearance. The only thing he brings to the revisionist discussion is a call for
more “science,” which quickly devolves into a call to listen to the experience of homosexuals as reported by homosexuals.
III. Initial Criticism of Stephen Pope’s Position
1. A First Criticism
In the first place, it has to be said that the natural law argument for the
immorality of same-sex relations has been made several times and that, in
its own order, it is very strong.We return to the qualifying phrase shortly.
The argument has been made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith in 1975 and again in1986.18 As Dr. Pope recognizes in a note,
John Finnis has addressed the natural law argument that same-sex relations are immoral at length.19 Martin Rhonheimer is alert to the natural
law’s declaration of the “truth” of the sexual inclination in stable and

deployment of sociobiological machinery somehow gives intelligibility to the ethical obligation of parents to love their own children more than other children.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., 116.
17 Ibid., 111–12.
18 Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics, 1975, no. 8; Letter to the
Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, 1986, no. 7.
19 John Finnis, “Natural Law and Unnatural Acts,” Heythrop Journal 11 (1970):
365–87. In this article, Finnis is especially aware of the relation of the natural law
to revelation in the area of sexual morality. Finnis returns to the topic of same-sex
relations in “Law, Morality, and ‘Sexual Orientation,’ ” Notre Dame Law Review 69
(1994): 1049–76, and “The Good of Marriage and the Morality of Sexual Relations: Some Philosophical and Historical Observations,” The American Journal of
Jurisprudence 42 (1997): 97–134.

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permanent marriage ordered to procreation.20 The natural law argument
for the immorality of same-sex unions is already made in principle by
Humanae Vitae and its many able apologists.21 Among these should be
mentioned John Paul II in Familiaris Consortio.22 It should be clear that
the natural law exclusion of contraception found there is equally exclusive of homosexual acts, and this is indicated briefly in Veritatis Splendor,
where it restates the principle of Humanae Vitae.23
One will think the argument has not been made only if one is
persuaded that natural law arguments, if made, must be found persuasive
by any man of good sense, whatever his religious persuasions or lack
thereof. Russell Hittinger charts the course by which it came to be
supposed that the truth of a natural law argument can be “measured by
its success in garnering assent” and that appeal to the natural law is an
appeal to “what every agent is supposed to know according to what is
first in cognition.”24 If this is erroneous, it should not surprise us that
what Hittinger characterizes as “the thin strands of argument about natural functions” in Humanae Vitae did not carry the Western world.25
Three reasons especially may be given why the argument against
same-sex relations and same-sex unions is unconvincing to modern men.
First, there is no argument from a natural finality or the procreative
meaning embedded in human persons and their sexually differentiated
bodies to a moral obligation of law unless one thinks nature, including
human nature, is created, and its finalities capable of speaking the mind
of a Lawgiver.26 Apart from creation, we may speak of natural right but

20 Martin Rhonheimer, “Excursus:The Natural Law and Contraception,” 109–38,

in his Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2000).
21 One can start with Janet E. Smith, Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991).
22 Apostolic Exhortation on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World
(1981), Familiaris Consortio, no. 32.
23 Read no. 47 and no. 50 together.
24 Russell Hittinger, “Veritatis Splendor and the Theology of the Natural Law, “ in
Veritatis Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology, ed. J. A. Di Noia, OP, and
Romanus Cessario, OP (Princeton, NJ: Scepter Publishers, 1999), 108, 111. A
fuller statement of this material can be found in chapters 1 and 2 of Hittinger’s
The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003).
25 Ibid., 107.
26 Lawrence Dewan, OP, “St. Thomas, Our Natural Lights, and the Moral Order,”
Angelicum 67 (1990): 297–98.

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not of natural law.27 But non-existent babies have no rights, and the
rights of spouses can easily be supposed freely and morally renunciable.
Second, and even granted that all natural finalities are created, such
finalities may, but again may not, bespeak a moral obligation.The natural
finality of the hair follicles on masculine faces does not forbid shaving.
The natural finality of sex to procreation forbids contraception and
homosexual acts. For in the first place, this finality is not realized apart
from an exercise of the properly human agency, informed by thought and
presupposing freedom (even where freedom is pressured by passion), of a
man and a woman. In the second place, this finality terminates in the
instantiation of another agent similarly endowed with intelligence and
freedom—a person. Part of our appreciation of the difference between
the finalities of hair follicles and of sex, in both the realization of the
finality and its term, therefore, will be a function of apprehending human
persons as the only personal reality within a material world created by a
transcendent personal agency.28 Our ability to respond to the good of
persons, in other words, is conditioned according as we think them the
product of the chances of evolution, or the product of the choice of a
transcendent Person.29 Where there is nothing above it, the universe itself
and everything in it too easily gets flattened out, and in a time when all
our bodily functions are increasingly under technological control, it can
be hard to see why any finality should escape our own direction of it by
our own choice to good ends, even where such direction is contrary to
what is given prior to our choice.
A third reason the natural law argument seems weak, a reason with ties
to the first, is that even supposing one has the greatest respect for the
procreative meaning of sex, and wants children, it can still be hard to see
why every single act of sexual intercourse must be open to procreation.
Why must union and fecundity go together in every act? Even if they do
so “naturally,” in a sexual practice unconditioned by interventions ranging from coitus interruptus to the use of condoms to an orally ingested
contraceptive, why must they? It is not that there is no good natural law
27 Ernest Fortin, “Natural Law,” in Human Rights, Virtue, and the Common Good:

Untimely Meditations on Religion and Politics, ed. Brian J. Benestad (New York:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 160.
28 See John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (1995), no. 83.
29 See Robert Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence: A Study in the Theology of Disclosure
(Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1994), Chapter 10,
“The Christian Understanding of the Person.” The New Testament brings a
further light, according as our personal agency is now to be a participation in the
personal agency of Christ.

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argument here, but only, we are saying, that at this point especially, an
unreligious man of good will will most easily fail to be moved.
Even so, there is one thing in the argument of Humanae Vitae, as well
as in the argument against same-sex unions, that really should be taken as
obvious, and that is the procreative finality of sexual acts. If this is obvious, and if we see the rightness of never impeding this finality because of
the dignity and fundamentality of the good it is ordered to, and if we take
the world as created, then the moral obligations themselves become
“obvious” as a matter of “natural law.” What, however, of the first and
foundational obviousness? Is not such a characterization of the procreative finality or meaning of sexual acts as “obvious” a polemical one and,
as well, something that begs the question Dr. Pope addresses?30 Kevin
Flannery nicely expresses the way in which such a thing may be said to
be obvious.
Consider the type of acts characteristic of homosexual activity: acts in
which one of the partners penetrates the body of the other or somehow simulates such penetration (as even a masturbator can do). If one
is to give a complete account of such acts, one must acknowledge that
they belong properly to heterosexuality. Why this desire to penetrate?
And why penetration with that organ from which is discharged semen?
Homosexual advocates prefer to look away from these facts and limit
their account of what homosexuals do to talk about providing pleasure
or intimacy or about giving expression to their true selves.31

This account is noteworthy for its calm insistence, first, that the heterosexual and therefore procreative finality of sexual acts is nothing except
the intelligibility of facts (penetration, discharge of seed) universally
available to every human being.32 Moreover, if the intelligibility of a fact
is part of the fact, then the procreative finality of sexual acts is also a

30 See “Scientific and Natural Law Analyses,” 99, for dutiful reportage of the socio-

biological assessment that homosexual behavior is “normal,” “beneficent,” and
related to altruism.
31 Kevin L. Flannery, SJ, “Homosexuality and Types of Dualism: A Platonico-Aristotelian Approach,” Gregorianum 81(2000), 363–64. Is this physicalism? Then so
is the recognition of the eye as the organ of sight.
32 See St. Augustine, The City of God, Book 14, c. 22: sicut evidentissime apparet in
diversi sexus corporibus, masculum et feminam ita creatos, ut prolem generando crescerent
et multiplicarentur et implerent terram, magnae absurditatis est reluctari. “As appears
most evidently in bodies of diverse sex that masculine and feminine were so
created that they might increase and multiply by generating offspring and fill the
earth, it is a great absurdity to deny it.”

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“fact.”33 Second, the sort of fact or insight that is determinative of the
issue of the morality of sexual acts is something available to common
experience. It is not something for which one needs the refined, specialized experience of the modern empirical sciences.34 It is not something
for which we need modern chemistry, biology, or psychology.Third, the
heterosexual and procreative meaning of sexual acts is nonetheless something that one can ignore. One turns away from such givens as the desire
to penetrate, and the capacity of semen, and changes the subject. To say
that something is “obvious” does not mean one does not have to look.
The “obvious,” therefore, is not the “undeniable.” It might also therefore
be the case that we need help to see the obvious.
To conclude this first criticism. If deliberately to destroy the procreative meaning of heterosexual acts is immoral, if it is to act against the
truth of the language of the body, in John Paul II’s way of putting things,
then it must be likewise so for homosexual acts.35 Even though intended
to signify a sincere gift of the self, the homosexual act cannot of itself bear
that meaning, because the meaning of the body that is part of one’s “self ”
has been ignored.36 The “proper and primordial nature” of man, “which
is the person himself in the unity of soul and body, in the unity of his
spiritual and biological inclinations,” has been ignored.37
2. A Second Criticism
There is a second initial criticism of Dr. Pope to be made. The kind of
grounds upon which he thinks same-sex unions could be seen to be
legitimate would also legitimate polygamy.There are men and women in
polygamist families in Utah and Arizona, so-called “fundamentalist
Mormons,” that will readily assert that their form of marriage is an active
ingredient in their human flourishing and felt satisfaction.38 The reports
of the lived experience of such families, the narrative of their own lives
33 See Bernard J. F. Lonergan’s discussion of “data” and “facts” in Method in Theology

(New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 201–3.
34 For the notion of “common experience,” see Henry B.Veatch, “Some Sugges-

tions on the Respective Spheres of Science and Philosophy,” The Thomist 3
(1941): 177–216.
35 See John Paul II, General audience of August 22, 1984, in The Theology of the
Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1997),
398.
36 See John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, no. 32.
37 Veritatis Splendor, no. 50.
38 For an instance with regard to the experience of women see Janet Bennion,
Women of Principle: Female Networking in Contemporary Mormon Polygyny (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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such as they can give them, will be filled with accounts of the warmth of
the affective exchanges and loyalties such families foster among the adults,
man and women, and of the advantages for the children of many caregivers, and all this quite independently of the special satisfaction such
families take in living according to the will of God as they hold is
revealed to them by the teaching and example of Joseph Smith.
IV. That We Need Revelation Even for What
We Can Know by the Natural Light
The above criticisms are easily made. What is more vexing about Dr.
Pope’s essay is its failure to understand the relation between reason and
revelation, nature and grace, in the Church’s apprehension of the
immorality of same-sex relations and unions. In the first place, this is
indeed a matter of seeing in general that we need revelation to strengthen
our grasp of the natural law. In the second place, it is a matter of beholding the quite explicit light that revelation sheds on the immorality of
same-sex relations and unions.This is in fact what Veritatis Splendor invites
us to do.
Our ordinary apprehension of the natural law needs to be strengthened by the light of revelation. Dr. Pope’s rejection of previous natural
law arguments concluding that same-sex relations are immoral is itself a
kind of proof of this.The inability of people to see the immorality of such
relations on natural grounds is not extraordinary or remarkable and is not
evidence that the argument has not been made.
1. St.Thomas, Revelation, and Natural Law
First, just what is St.Thomas’s position as to whether we need revelation
to strengthen our grip on the natural law? Denis J. M. Bradley has
recently addressed this question. After noting that the love of neighbor is
a primary and self-evident principle of the natural law for St.Thomas, he
reports his position on how evident the Ten Commandments are.
It should be . . . apparent that killing, committing adultery, bearing false
witness, and stealing are not beneficent acts to one’s neighbor. These
acts clearly violate the first-order principle that one should not harm
or do evil to any person.Yet ordinary men, because of passions and evil
habits, can ignore what is obviously just and what is obviously unjust.39

39 Denis J. M. Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good: Reason and Human

Happiness in Aquinas’s Moral Science (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of
America Press, 1997), 321.

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This is an accurate summary. Can the natural law be removed from the
heart of man according to St. Thomas? In the abstract, the first principles of the natural law cannot not be known; they cannot be expunged
from the human heart, St.Thomas says.40 Concretely, even they can, as
it were, be suspended by passion. As for the secondary principles, such
as are to be found in the Decalogue, they are even more fragile. St.
Thomas says:
as to the secondary precepts, the natural law can be blotted from the
human heart, either by evil persuasions, just as in speculative matters
errors occur in respect to necessary conclusions; or by vicious customs
and corrupt habits, as among some men, theft, and even unnatural
vices, as the Apostle states, were not esteemed sinful.41

Therefore, St.Thomas expressly remarks the “fittingness” of the assistance
provided by revelation for our apprehension of the secondary principles
of the natural law, conclusions from the first principles. Reason can err,
and sinful habits corrupt our purchase on these principles.Therefore, he
concludes, “there was need for the authority of the divine law to rescue
man from both these defects.”42 There is a lapidary summary of St.
Thomas’s thought in his late conferences on the Ten Commandments:
Because the law of nature had been destroyed by the law of concupiscence it was necessary that man be brought back to the works of virtue
and withdrawn from vice: for which needful things there was the law
of Scripture.43

Man still desires the good, but “the law of concupiscence frequently
corrupts the law of nature and the order of reason.”44
40 Summa theologiae I–II, q. 94, a. 6.
41 Ibid.
42 ST I–II, q. 99, a. 2, ad 2. See q. 100, a. 5, ad 1. See for the same position St.Augus-

tine, The City of God, Book 18, c. 41 and Book 22, c. 22. On the problem of the
naturally unknowable character of the natural law, see Ernest Fortin,“Augustine,
Thomas Aquinas, and the Problem of the Natural Law,” Ernest Fortin: Collected
Essays, II: Classical Christianity and the Political Order, ed. J. Brian Benestad (New
York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 199–222, for an examination of the role of
revelation in knowing natural law.
43 Expositio in duo praecepta caritatis et in decem legis praecepta, in Opuscula Theologica II
(Rome: Marietti, 1954), Prologus I, no. 1131. Or see the new edition by Jean-Pierre
Torrell, Collationes in Decem Preceptis, I, line 27, in Revue des sciences philosophiques et
théologiques 69(1985): 5–40, 227–63.
44 Ibid., no. 1130. See the discussion in Hittinger,“Veritatis Splendor and the Theology of the Natural Law,” 102–4.

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Dr. Pope does not accurately reflect this teaching when he says that for
St.Thomas “human reason is more or less adequate for understanding the
natural law per se,” and that the competence of reason is “unnecessarily
diminished in revealed natural law” as measured by the teaching of St.
Thomas.45 It is not quite clear what the “per se” is doing here. But, yes,
St.Thomas’s position is that human reason is “more or less adequate,” that
is, in itself or “per se” competent to understand the natural law since the
natural law means especially the first principles of practical reason.These
principles of the law, such things as that life is to be preserved, remain
always in the habit of synderesis, which can be styled a natural habit,
which is to say a natural faculty of the intellect whereby we understand
and assent to the truth of these principles.46 Since the first principles are
correlative to the fundamental inclinations of human nature, and human
nature is wounded but not destroyed by sin, they must always be able to
be formulated.47 These are but seeds, however; to get a crop requires
more.48 The first principles must grow into prudence and the moral
virtues, and are themselves as little sufficient for human action as is seed
just broadcast in the field for a harvest. Moreover, human reason does not
exist in itself, abstractly, and it does not operate unconditioned by history,
culture, sin, grace. Especially as to those last, reason operates conditioned
by either sin or grace or both. Dr. Pope makes St.Thomas out to be some
Enlightenment philosophe for whom “reason” is ever the same, has always
the same prospects, sees always clearly and distinctly.49
2. Revelation and the Knowledge of God
Further, our cognitive situation relative to the natural law is not unique. It
is very like our cognitive situation relative to the knowledge of God. God
is naturally knowable, and knowable as creator. But as St. Thomas notes,
the natural knowledge of God is difficult, is restricted to those fortunate
enough to have the leisure required for the philosophic life, and is
commonly mixed with error.50 Chapter 2 of Dei Filius follows St.Thomas
45 Pope, “Scientific and Natural Law Analyses”, 108.
46 See the detailed treatment in Bradley, Aquinas on the Twofold Human Good, 296–313.
47 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 1 and q. 109, a. 2.
48 See ST I–II, q. 61, a. 1 for naturally known first principles of both knowledge

and action, first principles that are seeds (seminalia) of both intellectual and moral
virtue.
49 See the discussion of what is called “Encyclopaedia” in Alasdair MacIntyre’s Three
Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990).
50 ST I, q. 1, a. 1; cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics I, 1, 981b19–22.

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here.51 So also does Fides et Ratio, expressly attributing our difficulty in
coming to know God by the natural light to sin.52 Veritatis Splendor recognizes an analogous cognitive situation in the moral order.53
The supposition that since something is contained in or follows
strictly from the natural law, it ought therefore to be acknowledged by all
men is reminiscent of the naïve supposition that since St. Paul says truly
that God can be known from the things that have been made and the
First Vatican Council repeats him, therefore his existence and the character of his transcendence are generally acknowledged by all men in every
state and condition. But these implications by no means follow. If there
is a nation that does not know God, the teaching of St. Paul is not falsified, and if there is a nation that does not recognize the immorality of
contraception, the claim that contraception is contrary to the natural law
is not invalidated. For our ignorance of first things, whether they be
metaphysical or moral, the Catholic tradition has always supposed, with
St. Augustine, that the condition and orientation of our will affects what
we can see. And for the deformation of our appetite and the wounding
of our will itself, we know of the presence of sin, both original and
actual, and of the absence of original justice. Apart from grace, we will
not keep the moral law; not keeping the moral law, we shall soon be
unable to see it.
Now, just as Christ is the author of grace, so is he the fullness of revelation who perfects it in both word and deed, in the personal history that
leads from cradle to cross and from death to risen life. Just as we should
not expect to keep the moral law apart from his grace, so we should not
expect to know it in any detail apart from his light.
What most of all one misses in Dr. Pope’s article, therefore, is any
awareness of the context, cognitive and affective, in which we both act
morally and think about our moral action. It is awareness of this context,
however, the context of sin and grace, that in part constitutes Catholic
moral theology as Catholic.
3. Revelation and the Knowledge of the Nature
and Properties of Marriage
In the third place, our cognitive situation relative to same-sex relations
and unions is not unique even within our knowledge of the nature and
properties of marriage.
51 DS 3005. See Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman Tanner (Washington,

DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), II, 806.
52 Fides et Ratio, nos. 21–23.
53 Veritatis Splendor, no. 12.

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There is a natural law argument for the unity and indissolubility of
marriage, as required for the successful prosecution of the ends of marriage.
One would never learn from Dr. Pope that it is just as strong, or for him,
just as weak a position as the natural law argument against same-sex unions,
for both depend on the procreative meaning of sexual relations.
But revelation, in providing further grounds for the unity and indissolubility of marriage also enables that natural law grounding to be more
easily and confidently seen. It is admitted by theologians that otherwise
this grounding is difficult to perceive. After all, for hardness of heart
Moses permitted divorce even though from the beginning and by the
nature of marriage as fashioned by the Creator’s hand it was not so.
Michael Schmaus, who can stand for the traditional theological sensibility here, readily acknowledges this.
As the history of marriage shows, not only has it been difficult for man,
in the course of his development, to preserve the unity and indissolubility of marriage; it has been difficult for him even to recognize it.54

If there were no natural grounding for the unity and indissolubility of
marriage, then a revealed requirement of these things would be a deformation of marriage, a deformation of something natural or at best a burden
imposed on marriage extrinsic to its nature. What revelation provides is
rather, as John Finnis puts it, a more “intense grasp” of the basic value of
life, since human life is now ordered to share in the divine life.55 But it is
the same value, life, that is grasped both naturally and supernaturally.
V. Revelation on Same-Sex Unions
1.The Exemplarity of the Moral Agency of Christ 56
It is usually taken for granted that the revelation of the immorality of
same-sex relations is confined to a few pieces of Old Testament legislation or New Testament condemnation. In fact, it is much more massive
and, one can even say, central to revelation as a whole and especially as
completed by Christ.Also, this revelation is such as to bring out the natural law prohibition itself more plainly, and make it easier for us to see it.
54 Michael Schmaus, Dogma, Vol.V: The Church as Sacrament (London: Sheed and

Ward, 1975), 289, emphasis added.
55 Finnis, “Natural Law,” 384.
56 In what follows, we will take St.Thomas as a guide; for a brief exposition of St.

Bonaventure on this theme, see Livio Melina, Sharing in Christ’s Virtues: For a
Renewal of Moral Theology in the Light of Veritatis Splendor, trans. William E. May
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 128–34.

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Veritatis Splendor invites us to see this more massive witness of the New
Testament to the immorality of same-sex unions where, in affirming the
immutability of the natural law, it remarks that according to St. Thomas
moral norms maintain a “determinate content” in the New Law because
of “the assumption of human nature by the Word.”57 The encyclical
directs us to the Prima secundae of the Summa, q. 108, the first article, on
whether the New Law ought to proscribe or prohibit any exterior acts.
The question arises because, according to q. 106, article 1, on whether
the New Law, the law of the New Testament, is a written law, we learn
that “the New Law is chiefly the grace of the Holy Spirit.” And in the
reply to the first objection, we read that “the gospel writings contain only
such things as pertain to the grace of the Holy Spirit, either by disposing
us to it, or by directing us to its use.” They dispose us, for example, by
manifesting the divinity of Christ and so inviting us to faith, whereby we
receive grace. As to directing the use of grace, “this consists in works of
virtue to which the writings of the New Testament exhort men in various ways.”And in q. 107, article 1, the New Law is again first of all grace
poured into our hearts. However, as the reply to the third objection has
it, the New Law of which Christ is the author “consists secondarily in
certain moral and sacramental acts.” So, regarding these acts, are new or
different exterior acts prescribed? That is the question of q. 108, article 1.
In addressing the question whether the New Law prescribes external
acts, article 1 of q. 108 determines the basis upon which it does so. The
New Law is grace; but grace is from the incarnate Word, whose humanity grace filled first. Hence, it is fitting that the grace that comes from the
incarnate Word “should be given to us by means of certain external sensible objects,” “and that from this inward grace, whereby the flesh [our
flesh] is subjected to the Spirit, certain external works should follow.”
The external sensible objects are the sacraments; the external works
concern acts that are necessarily either in keeping with or opposed to
internal grace: so, for example, the confession of faith is prescribed, and
the public denial of faith is forbidden. Above, in article 1 of q. 106,
however, the external acts are acts of the virtues.
This last point finds more complete expression in article 2 of q. 108,
on whether the New Law made sufficient ordination about external acts.
“The New Law had to make such prescriptions or prohibitions alone as
57 Veritatis Splendor, no. 53, fn. 98. Nor, as the letter tells us, at no. 37, n63, is this a ques-

tion touching theological opinion alone, since the Council of Trent reproves those
who deny a moral teaching to the New Testament and see Christ only as redeemer
and not also as law-giver; see the Sixth Session, canons 19–21 of the Decree on
Justification. For these canons see Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils II, 680.

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are essential for the reception or right use of grace.” So, Christ instituted
the sacraments, and they are for the reception of grace; but, the article
continues, “the right use of grace is by means of works of charity,” and
these “insofar as they are essential to virtue, pertain to the moral precepts,
which also formed part of the Old Law. Hence, in this respect, the New
Law had nothing to add as regards external action.”58 “Accordingly, the
New Law had no other external works to determine, by prescribing or
forbidding, except the sacraments, and those moral precepts which have
a necessary connection with virtue, for instance, that one must not kill,
or steal, and so forth.”59
Now, although St.Thomas does not belabor the idea here, we perceive
that just as the sensible and bodily incarnation makes it fitting that grace
be given through sensible and bodily sacramental forms, so the exercise
of grace in Christ himself is according to the moral precepts of the New
Law, which repeat the Decalogue.The giver of the Law on Sinai gives it
again, and—mystery of condescension—obeys it perfectly as a man.60
He gives it again in giving the New Law, most obviously in his teaching, preeminently the Sermon on the Mount. St.Thomas has it in q. 107,
article 2, that “Christ fulfilled the precepts of the Old Law both in His
works and in his doctrine,” where by works is meant the ceremonial
precepts and by doctrine the moral precepts. Christ fulfills the sense of
the moral precepts by teaching that the true sense of the Law regards not
just the exterior act of the moral precepts but the interior act as well.61
The New Law adds to the Old Law the interior disposition of charity.
He obeys the Law as a man, both Old and New. For in addition to
Christ’s role as teacher, there is his example. In q. 108, article 1, St.
Thomas does not dwell on the point that the incarnate Word not only
institutes the sacraments but himself also exercises the very external acts
we are called upon to exercise, and with the right interior disposition.
58 See ST I–II, q. 108, a. 3, ad 3:“the moral precepts necessarily retained their force

under the New Law, because they are of themselves essential to virtue.”
59 ST I–II, q. 108, 2.
60 Recall the Great Antiphon for the Magnificat of December 18: O Adonai, et Dux

domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et ei in Sina legem dedisti: veni
ad redimendum nos in brachio extento. “O Adonai and Leader of the house of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush and who gave him the
Law on Sinai, come to redeem us with your powerful arm.” His redemption of
us includes keeping the Law he gave to Moses.
61 For an extended treatment of Christ’s fulfillment of the Law according to St.
Thomas, see Matthew Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation
according to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
2002), 15–30, 51–79.

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Elsewhere, however, he takes it up quite explicitly. So, in the Tertia pars of
the Summa, q. 7, article 2, he asks whether Christ possessed the virtues.
The answer is yes, that all the virtues were in Christ.As powers flow from
the essence of the soul, so virtues from grace.62 Here, evidently, it is a
question of the infused supernatural moral virtues.63 In fact, Christ
possessed them “most perfectly” and “surpassing the common mode.”64
So, as Michele Schumacher says: “Christ, the new Moses, giver of the
New Law, is the first to obey its precepts and, in so doing, he sets the
standard of its perfection.”65
Further, the exercise of the virtues depends on knowledge, practical
knowledge, which must be the case in Christ, too, a man like us in all
things but sin. St. Thomas recognizes such knowledge in Christ in two
places. First, presenting the reasons for acknowledging created knowledge
in the soul of Christ, he gives as the third reason the existence of a
knowledge natural to man: “[S]ome created knowledge pertains to the
nature of the human soul, namely, that whereby we naturally know first
principles.”66 Therefore, we must acknowledge the naturally known first
principles of practical reason in Christ, too, which are first principles of
the natural law, the habit of which is synderesis. Second, St. Thomas
acknowledges in Christ the virtue of practical wisdom itself, prudence:
“[S]ince Christ had the fullness of prudence by the gift of counsel, he
consequently knew all singular things—present, past, and future.”67
Beholding Christ, we see that human nature, its exercise within a
human history, is the fitting and adequate expression of a divine person, a
divine identity, that of the Son.This means also that the humanly natural
knowledge of the natural law, and the virtue of prudence, which knows
what is right in the sensibly perceived here and now, and the moral virtues
properly so called—it means that all these things are fit instruments of the
expression of the moral agency of the Son of God within the economy of
salvation. By the incarnation, there is therefore a sort of seal stamped on
the moral principles with which we are endowed by nature, as well as their
62 The same argument appears in In III Sent., d. 13, q. 1, a. 1, and a. 2, q.la 1.
63 Though different in species from the acquired moral virtues, since they enable

acts that move us to our final and supernatural end, the infused virtues perfect
action with regard to the same matter as the acquired virtues; see ST I–II, q. 63,
a. 4 and ad 2. Infused temperance does not, for instance, permit the agent any
indulgence forbidden by the standard of acquired temperance.
64 ST III, q. 7, a. 2, ad 2. Christ possesses the gifts, too: q. 7, a. 5.
65 Michele M. Schumacher, “An Inseparable Connection: The Fruitfulness of
Conjugal Love and the Divine Norm,” Nova et Vetera 1(2003), 389–90.
66 ST III, q. 9, a. 1.
67 ST III, q. 11, a. 1, ad 3.

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development in prudence, and of the virtues that we know by the natural light are the excellences of man. What were once the instruments of
the expression and a part of the expression in time of the moral agency of
a divine and eternal Person remain for all time models for the moral
agency of us who are created in the image of that eternal Person. Christ
is the incarnate Word in whom and according to whom all things, including our freedom and its exercise were created. His moral agency must be
the expression of the norm of our own.68 Furthermore, we see in Christ’s
agency not only the beginning and pattern but also the end of our own.
We can say that his agency is the norm of our own because our very
“person” is now to be included in his person; we are to have the same
mind as was in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5), and our mission is an extension of
his mission.69 Because we act in the power of the grace of Christ, moreover, we can say with Livio Melina that the moral acts of a Christian are
“a participation in the action of Christ,” and for that reason are they beatifying and a foretaste of beatitude.70
It is by both grace and revelation, therefore, that Christ conforms us
to the moral law in conforming us to himself.We find inspiration in his
example; also, he inspires the Holy Spirit in us. Nor is it the case that his
exemplarity is merely illustrative of a moral knowledge we already
possess.Yes, the seeds of virtue remain in us, but by them and by the first
precepts of the natural law we recognize only that the supernaturally
graced moral agent is in continuity with, builds on, and perfects the naturally constituted moral agent. This continuity is presupposed in beholding Christ as the standard of human moral agency than whom no greater
could be conceived. But the content of that agency, beyond the fulfillment of the rudiments of the natural law, is difficult for us to see in our
post-lapsarian condition, and impossible for us to anticipate insofar as it
bespeaks action inspired by charity. So, without his example, we could
not really see, clearly and effectively, what human life should look like.As
the Holy Father puts it: “The crucified Christ reveals the authentic
meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the total gift of himself and calls
his disciples to share in his freedom.”71
To ask WWJD? (“What would Jesus do?”) is therefore an entirely
appropriate question, a necessary question, for a morally earnest Christian. One of the motives of the incarnation is to promote us in the good,
68 See Livio Melina, “Christ and the Dynamism of Action,” 126.
69 See here Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama III. Dramatis Personae: Persons in

Christ, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 263ff.
70 Livio Melina, “Christ and the Dynamism of Action,” 138.
71 Veritatis Splendor no. 85.

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and in particular,“with regard to well-doing, in which he set us an example.”72 It is therefore wholly right and just to ask what a divine person
operating through human senses, mind, synderesis, prudence, and moral
virtues would do. Just so, St. Paul tells the Corinthians, “Be imitators of
me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1).
2.The Exemplarity of the Chastity of Christ
If we say with q. 108, articles 1 and 2, that by his incarnation Christ
confirms the material content of the natural law, he must do this also relative to the sixth and ninth commandments. Again, if we say that Christ
had all the virtues, then he had also the virtue of chastity, and his chastity
is an example and norm for ours.73
The vice opposed to chastity is lust, a species of which is “unnatural
vice.” When St. Thomas discusses it in due course, he purports to show
the immorality of same-sex relations by saying simply enough that they
are pursued for erotic pleasure but without being able to be procreative.74
This, it will be said, is a mere statement of the natural law exclusion of
such relations; it does not add anything to what we know from the natural law or strengthen it by an appeal to the example of the chastity of
Christ.Where is that given to us?
The example and manner of Christ’s chastity is communicated to us in
what the New Testament says about Christ and the Church. Commenting on chapter 5 of the Letter to the Ephesians, St.Thomas notes that the
chastity of the husband is a matter of both the precept of Genesis (2:24)
and of the example of Christ.75 It is in contemplating this example that
we can perceive a revealed judgment of the immorality of same-sex
unions. St. Paul, it will be remembered, says that he betrothed the
Corinthians as a chaste bride to Christ (2 Cor 11:2). The Lord styles
himself a bridegroom in Mark (2:19), something said also by the Baptist
in the Gospel according to John (3:29). Ephesians (5:25, 28–32), however,
is the great text.76

72 ST III, q. 1, a. 2.
73 This is not to say that Christ’s is the only chastity the New Testament presents

to us as an example. See John Paul II, “Letter to Families,” no. 20, on Mary and
the Holy Family.
74 ST II–II, q. 154, a. 11.
75 Lectura super epistolam ad Ephesios, V, lectio 8, no. 321.
76 See Mt 22:1–14, the parable of the wedding feast, and Mt 25:1–13, the parable
of the wise and foolish virgins, and the characterizations of Christ and the
Church in Rev 19: 7, 9, and 21:2.

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Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself
up for her. . . . Even so husbands should love their wives as their own
bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his
own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church,
because we are members of his body.“For this reason a man shall leave
his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall
become one flesh.”This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that
it refers to Christ and the church.

The teaching about Christ’s relation to the Church in Ephesians calls on
our acquaintance with marriage.Also, it reveals something about marriage,
and speaks normatively about marriage.77 We would not know of the
extent to which a husband is to love his wife by looking to our already
known and measured human experience of marriage; we know of it by
looking to Christ. Of course, there is a circle, and Ephesians presupposes
a prior acquaintance with marriage just as did Isaiah before him speaking of the relation of Israel to God. The point is that we can and ought
to argue from the Christological–ecclesiological reality to the nature and
structure of marriage.This is completely classical. So for instance Michael
Schmaus says that husband and wife “re-enact” the relation of Christ and
the Church.78 “Husband and wife play the roles of Christ and the
Church.”79 Christ is the perfect revelation of the man who abandons all
to cling to his wife, and so gives Christological concreteness to Genesis
2:24,“therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his
wife.”80 The same mutual illumination of marriage and the relation of
Christ and the Church is pursued by the Holy Father.81
Others, however, are wary of such argument. Elizabeth J. Picken, for
instance, warns us against making too much for sacramental theology of the
nuptial imagery the Bible uses in speaking of the relation of God to Israel,
of Christ to the Church. “A metaphor is a metaphor. God is not married
to Israel any more than God is a shepherd of sheep.”82 The appeal to the
relation of Christ to the Church, however, is not an invocation of a purely
symbolic reality. Truly, the Old Testament characterization of the relation
between God and Israel in nuptial terms can be called figurative. However,
77 Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Epistle to the Ephesians: A Commentary, trans. Helen

Heron (Edinburgh:T. & T. Clark, 1991), 241, 154, 257.
78 Schmaus, Dogma, 269.
79 Ibid., 272.
80 Ibid., 270.
81 John Paul II, The Theology of the Body, 304ff.
82 Elizabeth J. Picken, “If Christ is Bridegrom,The Priest Must be Male?” Worship

67 (1993): 274.

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as Louis Ligier says, the New Testament is “the passing from figures to the
time of reality.”83 The incarnation makes of the Word a quite concrete and
historically apprehensible man of the male sex. “For this reason,” Ligier
says, “his nuptial relations with his people take on a sacramental value
which goes beyond that of the symbols of the first covenant.”84 The surplus
sacramental value he alludes to is spelled out by Michele Schumacher, who
points out that the relation signified by marriage, that of Christ and the
Church, is also shared in and fostered by marriage:The grace of the sacrament is a participation in the life-giving grace Christ gives to the Church
as a whole in sanctifying each of her members.85 Therefore we may expect
that the resources for thinking about the sacrament of marriage offered by
the nuptial characterization of Christ and the Church are a little richer
than Picken allows. Especially, to characterize Christ, a man like us in all
things but sin, as “spouse” of the Church is to direct us to the determinate
moral character of a quite concrete human being. If we then say that Christ
is “personally” chaste, therefore, we are saying that it is the chastity of the
Son of God displayed, as chastity perforce must be, since it is a virtue whose
formality presupposes both the body and sexual differentiation, in the flesh
and blood, the passions and prudence and practical wisdom that are part of
the perfection of the assumed humanity of Christ.
It may be rejoined that, although Christ is not figuratively a man, but
concretely and literally so, the Church remains figuratively a bride just as
much as Israel in the Old Testament. Does not the symbolic character of
the Church as bride destroy the inference from the theological to the
anthropological level? No, it does not. First, it is enough that one pole of
the relation be concretized and take historical form. We see that the
chastity of Christ, which is a determination of reason in his passional
nature, and that the self-gift he makes of his entire being are both turned
to and specified by a femininely characterized personal subject, and this
is enough to indicate what must be true when both poles are concrete,
historical individuals.86 Moreover and second, the contours of the nuptial
chastity of the Church are concretized for the Christian, as is the very
person of the Church herself, in Mary.87 Third, the extreme density of
83 Louis Ligier, “Women and the Ministerial Priesthood,” Origins 44.7 (April 20,

1978), 698.
84 Ibid.
85 Michele M. Schumacher, “An Inseparable Connection,” 385, 387–88.
86 Ibid. For the same teaching, see Gaudium et Spes, no. 49.
87 See, for instance, among many, many things, Hans Urs von Balthasar,“Who Is the

Church?” 112–65 in Church and World (New York: Herder, 1967), or “The
Marian Principle,” Communio 15 (1988): 122–30.

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the symbolic value of the nuptial imagery follows from the Eucharist.
The relation of Christ and the Church is not indeed sexual, but it is
consummated in a “one flesh” union, really and not figuratively, in virtue
of the Eucharist.88
To repeat, it is not, then, as if Christian spouses are told to imitate some
purely figuratively indicated heavenly or theological reality when we read
Ephesians. The heavenly and theological has become the earthly and
anthropological. That is the point of the incarnation. Here, we have the
chaste Jesus who takes the Church for his spouse, a Church styled as
Bride, and this shows us something about chastity. Moreover, if the relation of Christ to the Church is normative for marriage, what Christ’s
chastity shows us is something normative for the virtue of chastity that
marriage, every marriage, calls on. Furthermore, if every sacrament
depends on a natural sign, then we can deduce what the parameters of
the sign are from the nuptial relation of Christ and the Church.To quote
Ligier again, “the sacraments are not only instruments of a purely spiritual grace; they are also natural signs of it because they symbolize it in
their natural structure.”89 Symbolizing grace in its natural structure, the
sacrament of marriage as kept in the Church, and even more the great
sacrament of Christ and the Church, both declare what the “natural
structure” of marriage is and that it is constituted by sexual distinction. If
in a period of cultural and moral confusion, we have forgotten this, revelation comes to the aid of what we should see, and used to see more readily, by the natural light.
3.The Content of the Exemplary Chastity of Christ
The Chastity of Christ and the Chastity of Christians
What then does the chastity of Christ, as displayed relative to the Church,
his Bride, teach us about sexual morals and marriage?
The relation of Christ and the Church implies the duty of faithfulness.
Christ is faithful to the Church unto his death, giving himself up for her
(Eph 5:25). It implies exclusivity or “unity,” for the Bride is the Body, and
there is only one body of Christ just as there is only one Christ (Eph 4:4).
88 Michele M. Schumacher, “An Inseparable Connection,” 396. Earlier, see Yves

Congar, Lay People in the Church, trans. Donald Attwater (Westminster, MD:
Newman Press, 1967), 128:“[T]he body God has fashioned [Heb 10:5] is at the
same time Christ’s personal body, his fellowship body—the body of which we
are the members—and, making a living bond between these two, his sacramental body.” Congar appeals to St. Augustine for this point.
89 Ligier, “Women and the Ministerial Priesthood,” 698–99.

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The relation of Christ and the Church implies indissolubility. For again,
the Bride is the Body, and the members of the Body are one person in
Christ. Further, as the Church is the fullness of Christ (Eph 1:23), so a man
comes to the fullness of his personal reality when he makes the gift of
himself as husband. It is therefore well said in Ephesians that “he who loves
his wife loves himself ” (Eph 5:28).90 Last, the relation implies fruitfulness.
The bridal bath in which Christ washes the Church is the bath at once of
his passion and of baptism, in which we are made to die to self and live in
Christ.91 The laver is the womb of the Church, and makes it be that Christ
is the first born among many brethren.92
So, the relation of Christ to the Church teaches us that marriage
excludes adultery, polygamy and polyandry, divorce, and the separation of
the marital act from its reproductive possibilities, which separation would
be like celebrating baptism without the baptized, keeping the bath water
without the baby.
But does the relation of Christ to the Church also imply that marriage
must be between a man and a woman, and so exclude same-sex unions?
Most obviously and certainly, for how can the couple be a sign of the
relation of Christ to the Church if in the absence of their sexual distinction they would more naturally be taken to be an image of the relation
of Christ to Christ or Church to Church?
As was said above, the distinction between Christ and the Church is
more than “symbolized” by styling Christ as the husband and the
Church as wife. Christ really is male.The differences between male and
female here help to show the identities of the differentiated. We come
to know Christ and Church across the distinction. So also, and in the
same way, we come to know man and woman, which is to say man and
woman come to know themselves as male and female, and in those
ways human, across and through the distinction. Man as such is shown
in the distinction of male and female, and male and female themselves
only appear within their distinction from one another, a distinction that
allows for marital union and that marital union is uniquely privileged
to bring to light.“The encounter of man and woman presupposes their
diversity,” Schmaus says, commenting on Genesis 2.93 Moreover, “the
fullness of being-human, according to the testimony of Genesis, is
achieved only in the encounter of man and woman.”94 As the Holy
90 Schnackenburg, Ephesians, 257.
91 Ibid., 249–51.
92 See here John Paul II, “Letter to Families,” no. 19.2.
93 Schmaus, Dogma, 265.
94 Ibid.

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Father says, commenting on the expostulation “bone of my bones and
flesh of my flesh”:
The man uttered these words, as if it were only at the sight of the woman
that he was able to identify and call by name what makes them visibly
similar to each other, and at the same time what manifests humanity.95

Writing in 1952, Schmaus says that the diversity of the partners of the
marital encounter is “not only external” but determines the whole reality of the spouses.96 Writing today, one supposes, he might be tempted to
reverse the emphasis and say that the diversity of the spouses is not only
“internal,” a matter of the mind and freedom of the person, but also
somatic and “external.” The Holy Father asserts both kinds of diversity,
both kinds of complementarity.
These are, as it were, two “incarnations” of the same metaphysical solitude before God and the world.They are two ways of “being a body”
and at the same time a man, which complete each other.They are two
complementary dimensions of self-consciousness and self-determination and, at the same time, two complementary ways of being conscious
of the meaning of the body.97

It might be objected that the symbolic structure of marriage is in fact
more complicated than has been represented above. Each spouse, after all,
is conformed to Christ.98 Both spouses together form a domestic church
that images the great Church.99 While the latter may be granted, it should
be recalled that the conformation to Christ that the grace of the sacrament works is interior, a conformation in charity.The sexual difference of
the spouses, on the other hand, both bodily and personal, belongs to the
exterior, sensible, and natural sign the sacrament presupposes.Within and
on basis of imaging Christ and the Church visibly and publicly, each is
interiorly conformed to Christ by grace, both image the Church publicly.
Each sacrament is built on a natural sign.The signification of grace in
marriage is built on the difference of man and woman, which recalls the
95 John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 47.
96 Michael Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik, IV,1: Die Lehre von den Sakramenten

(Munich: Max Hueber, 1952), 609: “Die Bestimmtheit als Frau bzw. als Mann
haftet dem Menschen nicht nur äußerlich an, sondern prägt ihn vom Innesten
her. Der Mensch ist ganz Mann oder ganz Frau.”This is repeated in Dogma, 265.
97 John Paul II, The Theology of the Body, 48. See the whole of the 8th, 9th and 10th
catecheses in “Original Unity of Man and Woman,” 42–51.
98 Schmaus, Dogma, 282.
99 Ibid., 283.

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relation of Christ and the Church, wherein Christ purifies and sanctifies
the Church. Marriage is like the sacrament of orders in that both require
sexually determinate subjects: male and female for marriage, male for
priestly orders. It is no accident that those who do not see the relevance
of maleness for priestly orders do not see the relevance of sexual diversity for marriage.A reading of Ephesians that suppresses its implied rejection of homosexual unions was first produced by those who wished to
suppress its implication for orders.
Objection: An Alternative Reading of Ephesians
Ephesians 5, in helping us see the content of Christ’s exemplary chastity,
is directing us at the same time to what Catholic tradition has always said
the natural law also teaches us. Those who do not see what is inscribed
in the relation of Christ and the Church for our moral instruction
predictably do not perceive the law that is written on our heart and vice
versa. Just as predictably, failure to hear the word about orders spoken by
the relation of Christ and the Church silences it for marriage as well.
Elizabeth Picken is concerned not to restrict priestly orders to men.
She sees no grounds for such restriction in the nuptial imagery of the
Bible. She wishes to reduce the content of the Bible’s nuptial imagery to
fidelity. For Picken,“sexuality and marriage are not the model on which
Christ fashions his relationship to the Church,” and marriage does not
tell us anything about this relationship.100 This relationship rather tells us
of something about marriage, but what it tells us is only that spouses
should be faithful to one another.“What is the point of the comparison?”
she asks.“Is it not the loving fidelity of the covenant relationship . . . ?”101
In this reductive reading of the data of revelation, Picken is preceded
by David Power and Carroll Stuhlmueller and followed by Susan Ross.
So Power, also writing about the ordination of women, reduces the
meaning of the nuptial symbolism to unity.
It is doubtful that prevailing importance needs to be given to the sexual
side of this imagery in configuring the Christ-Church or Christhumanity relationship. Indeed, that would risk undermining the unity
that has been established between Christ and the Church through the
work of reconciliation.102
100 Picken, “If Christ is Bridegroom,” 276.
101 Ibid., 276–77.
102 David N. Power, “Representing Christ in Community and Sacrament,” in Being

a Priest Today, ed. Donald J. Goergen (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press,
1992), 120.

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In other words, the imagery cannot be used to argue that the distinction
of the male Christ from the femininely figured Church is significant,
and calls for male priests. Stuhlmueller concludes his study of the image
with the judgment that “the Yahweh-Spouse or Jesus-Bridegroom image
does not stress sexual differences but intimate, joyful and fruitful union
of all persons.”103
Susan Ross’s immediate concern is likewise ordination. She does not
see quite the same thing in the “spousal/nuptial imagery” that Picken
does. Where Picken sees fidelity, Ross sees what she thinks is the same
thing, namely “intimacy,”“the close relationship between God and Israel,
and between priest and faithful, as it is also found in the relationship
between husband and wife.”104 Ross sees something Power and Picken
do not, however, and that is the extension of the implication of this
reductive reading of Ephesians to the question of same-sex relations. She
reproves the Magisterium for adverting to the differentiation of Christ
and Church as inscribed in the difference of man and woman, husband
and wife, and alleges the deleterious consequences of such a focus on
differences, not only for women within marriage, and not only for the
prospect of the ordination of women, but also for same-sex relations.The
implications of “Vatican theology,” she says “for men and women in
same-sex relations are at least as severe as they are for women in heterosexual relationships.”105
What shall we make of these other ways of reading the nuptial theme
of revelation whose climax is found in Ephesians? In the first place, the
unity that Power rightly sees established between Christ and the Church
and that is enacted in the Eucharist does not mean the Church is
absorbed into Christ.The Mass is indeed the sacrifice of Christ himself,
as Congar observes, but it is also the Church’s sacrifice, first,“in as much
as Christ’s sacrifice is offered by the Church,” and second “in as much as
the Church offers her own sacrifice in and through Christ’s.”106 Thus it
makes sense for Congar to say:
The worship of the Church as such, considered not simply as Christ’s
worship sacramentally celebrated but as her own worship, is worship as
103 Carroll Stuhlmueller,“Bridegroom:A Biblical Symbol of Union, not Separation,”

in Women Priests, ed. Leonard Swidler and Arlene Swidler (New York: Paulist
Press, 1977), 283.
104 Susan A. Ross, Extravagant Affections: A Feminist Sacramental Theology (New York:
Continuum, 1998), 114–15. She makes no distinction between her “intimacy”
and Power’s “unity.”
105 Ibid., 115, n 67.
106 Congar, Lay People, 216.

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bride, and in this respect a theology of liturgy must learn from an ecclesiology of the Church as bride.107

In the second place, let us note that Ross, with her “intimacy,” sees
even less there than Picken’s fidelity. There can be plenty of intimacy,
sexual and personal, without fidelity. Can that really be the only thing
that Scripture has to say to married people? In order for women to be
ordained, and in order for same-sex marriage to be blessed, the word of
God is prevented from speaking to genuinely married couples about
anything except “intimacy.” But of course, we do not need the Scripture
to speak to us about intimacy. That is one of the watchwords of the
modern de-sacralized world. Sexual intimacy and sexual self-definition
together make one of the chief things modernity recognizes as sacred,
and worthy of worship and sacrifice.108 We can learn about intimacy
from watching Friends. There really is a slippery slope. Get rid of the
procreative meaning of sexual relations, and the whole ensemble of the
properties of marriage dissolves. In the third place, the reductive readings,
as a group, seem not to reckon with the overwhelming testimony of the
Bible to the Lord God’s interest in life and in fostering life. He is the God
not of the dead, but of the living (Mt 22:32); he is the God of life, who
gives life—and this is arguably the most characteristic description of God
in the Old Testament.109 Does this interest in life and the production of
life turn up expressly every time the nuptial imagery is used? No, just
enough to see that it is most certainly co-intended whenever the symbolism is used, something that therefore can go without saying. Particularly
fine and express, on the other hand, is Isaiah 54:1.
Sing, O barren one, who did not bear;
break forth into singing and cry aloud,
you who have not been in travail!
107 Ibid., 209.
108 See Jacques Ellul, The New Demons, trans. C. Edward Hopkin (New York: The

Seabury Press, 1975), 70–80. Ellul also points out the convergence of technology, another object of modern absolute reverence, with sex. This book is too
early for an appreciation of “deep ecology,” but we see how things shape up: the
nature that man is not is the nature that is to be preserved pure and inviolate
from technological alteration and manipulation; the nature that man is is open
to every such possible manipulation. This is because, really, modern man no
longer has a nature, but is only a locus of rights and the freedom to exercise
them; see Pierre Manent, The City of Man, trans. Marc A. LePain (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1998), 133–55.
109 Cf. Alfons Deissler, “Gottes Selbstoffenbarung in Alten Testament,” in Mysterium
Salutis, ed. J. Feiner and M. Löhrer (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1965) II, 238–39.

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For the children of the desolate one will be more
than the children of her that is married, says the Lord.

And with regard to Ephesians itself, it is an uncontroversial exegesis to see
the bridal bath as also the laver of baptism, the teeming womb of the
Church.What this Great Mystery tells us of marriage, then, beyond “intimacy” and even beyond fidelity, is that marriage is to be fruitful, for
which procreative end there is required the congress of two distinct but
complementary principles of sexual fecundity.
A same-sex union, on the other hand, can neither look back to the
origins of Genesis nor forward eschatologically to the Bride and the Lamb
of Revelation. Marriage passes away, according to that saying whereby
there is no marriage or giving in marriage in heaven (Mk 12:25), but what
it figures and in what it finds its norm does not. In that respect, therefore,
it is not just an “earthly” reality, but “an element” of the Kingdom, in
Schmaus’s words, and this is shown by the very fact that Jesus spoke of it
in the first place.110 The Holy Father says the same when he speaks of the
nuptial meaning of the body finding its fulfillment in heaven.111
The Fundamentality of Fecundity
We said that orders and marriage are alike in depending on sexual
distinction. They are alike in this, too, that as marriage passes away into
eschatological fulfillment, so also an ordained priest’s priesthood passes,
in the sense that it is no longer exercised in the eschaton, because in
heaven everyone has immediate access to what the ministerial priesthood
imitates and is a participation of, Christ the High Priest. Both in their
various ways are signs of the eschatological goods of the last age.
Priestly orders and marriage are alike in a third way, too. Both are
ordered to fecundity. Priestly evangelization and catechesis should be
fruitful in drawing new Christians from the laver of baptism. As was
briefly noted above for marriage, the unity and indissolubility of
marriage were classically seen to follow from its procreative end. The
friendship enacted within marriage is also served by exclusivity and
permanence.112 It is the good of children, however, that demands a stable
and permanent union of man and wife so that a child can have both a
father and a mother available. Finnis puts it this way:
110 Schmaus, Dogma, 268.
111 John Paul II, the catecheses entitled “The Resurrection of the Body,” in The

Theology of the Body, 233–61, especially 243–45.
112 See Gaudium et Spes, no. 50.

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. . . what, in the last analysis, makes sense of the conditions of the marital enterprise, its stability and exclusiveness, is not the worthy and
delightful sentiments of love and affection which invite one to marry,
but the desire for and demands of a procreative community, a family.113

That the procreative good of marriage calls for stability and permanence is
a matter of justice rendered to children.114 Of course, pursuing this procreative good, remaining open to it, is a matter of justice to one’s spouse as
well. It is a matter of the justice of spousal love, in that one does not render
the complete gift of oneself to one’s spouse if one withholds one’s fecundity, nor does one receive the complete gift of one’s spouse if one refuses
to receive his or her fecundity. Nor is justice rendered to the sacrament, to
the Great Mystery of which the sacrament is a sign, if the procreative
meaning of marriage is abrogated. Certain it is that the bonum prolis is not
the only good of marriage. But it is foundational. Getting in its way wrecks
all the other goods of both nature and grace in Christian marriage.115
This priority of fecundity, this foundational role that fecundity plays in
the natural law intelligibility of the traditional form of marriage, is true
also for the relation of Christ and the Church, which in turn enables us
to discern the natural order more clearly. That is to say, the unity and
indissolubility of the relation of Christ to the Church in the supernatural order is a function of the good of the life, but here, the supernatural
life, of the children of this union, the members of the Church, Christians.
They need the constant availability of both the Church and her head, and
so the promise of Christ to be Spouse must be unbreakable, and the
Church’s cleaving to Christ indefectible.
The Inseparability of Procreative and Unitive Meanings
There is, finally, the issue of the inseparability of the procreative and
unitive meanings of sex for each sexual act. Does the symbolic force with
which the Church is Bride, and the denial that the relation is, in fact,
sexual, mean that revelation finally deserts us, and has nothing to say here
in order to strengthen the natural law assertion of this inseparability?
Michele Schumacher offers two resources here.
Because . . . the conjugal act is considered . . . as an act of love, it is necessarily governed by the love of Christ.Thus the same logic applies: because
113 Finnis, “Natural Law,” 383.
114 See, for instance, John Paul II, “Letter to Families,” no. 10.
115 See Bernard J. F. Lonergan,“Finality, Love, Marriage” in Collection, ed. F. E. Crowe

(New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 22, 49: While the supernatural goods of
marriage are more excellent, children are the more essential good of marriage.

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the divine love is so fully generous not merely in itself (as a mutual gift
of Persons, bearing fruit in a third, divine Person) but also in the economy of creation and redemption . . . the spousal love of Christians, and
more specifically the conjugal act itself, ought to be generous.116

But then, second, there is also the Trinitarian gift of Persons that is fecund.
While marriage finds its exemplar, a exemplar in which it participates, in
the Christ-Church relation, that relation itself is a sign and a function of
a yet higher relation, that of Father and Son in the Trinity. Here, union and
fecundity coincide.117 That the three Persons are one eternal God means,
Schumacher says, that “neither the ‘union’ nor the ‘fruit’ is subsequent to
the real distinction of Persons within the Trinity.”118
Both as to the kinds of goods and the ordering of these goods in
marriage, revelation gives us to see in the relation of Christ and the Church
the natural order writ more clearly, more largely. Just as one cannot look at
the nuptial relation of Christ and the Church and ask whether there could
be such a thing as Christian polyandry, or a sacramental marriage that was
“open” and “non-exclusive,” so little can one look at the Great Mystery
and ask whether same-sex unions could be blessed in the Church. But, and
this is the point, in showing us these holy things, the Great Mystery also
and at the same time shows us the natural things of marriage, the structure
and requirements of marriage such as can in principle, “per se,” be made
evident to us by the natural light.
VI. Conclusion
That we should expect not to need revelation in order to know the natural law with the completeness required to direct our action betrays a
twofold forgetfulness, dogmatic and historical. First, we are forgetting the
ignorance that is a result of original sin and the enfeeblement of our sight
by passion and vice. Second, we forget how much of the intellectual effort
of modernity is devoted systematically to obscure the very idea that man
has a nature. If Pierre Manent is correct in this characterization of the
modern project, then there can be no argument for modernity from the
nature of sexuality as concerned with the good of new human life to such
things as the immorality of contraception and homosexual unions.119
116 Schumacher, “An Inseparable Connection,” 399.
117 Ibid., 399–402.
118 Ibid., 391.And again, 391, the Trinity means that “God is ‘always-already’ fruitful.”
119 For a brief expression of Manent’s view, see his “Christianity and Democracy:

Some Remarks on the Political History of Religion, or, on the Religious History
of Modern Politics,” 97–115, in Modern Liberty and Its Discontents, ed. and trans.
Daniel J. Mahoney and Paul Senton (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998).

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There can be no invocations of bodily distinction as by nature fitted to
signify the altereity of persons in marriage, or as expressing anything about
the person except what the person says it expresses. Neither can there be
any argument from the nature of child-rearing to a requirement of permanence and promise.All there can be are persons—not necessarily inclined
to respect the antecedent givenness of their bodies—who are subjects of
rights.Then we shall very easily construct the sexual culture and mores of
modern America. But this is not to say it will have anything to do with
the civilization of love, or the culture of life.
Understanding Stephen Pope’s article as an instance of the non-reception of Veritatis Splendor shows some important things. It lays bare the
possibilities: either a Christ that speaks to the moral life as empowering
us to enter into him and the moral pattern that he lived and that he
revealed to us as the full revelation of man’s true identity, or a Christ
understood as one who inspires us to do the good, whatever that is, and
avoid evil, however we may make it out by our own lights—a Christ who
can be the truth and the life, but who cannot be the way. Such a view of
Christ is far from the view of St. Thomas and, indeed, from the experience of the Church.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004): 367–92

367

The Holiness of the Church: Communio Sanctorum
and the Splendor of Truth
F RANCIS M ARTIN
Pope John Paul II Cultural Center
Washington, DC

Introduction
I N AN ANCIENT baptismal rite practiced in Syria, Egypt, and
Africa, the bishop begins by asking the candidate, “Credis in Deum . . . in
Jesum Christum . . . ?” and continues with: “Credis in Spiritum sanctum in
sancta Ecclesia?”1 The final three words of this last question most probably refer back to the previous two questions as well, thus implying that
the Trinity is manifested in the life, worship, and teaching of the Church.
It may be, however, that Irenaeus had a different understanding of the
relation between the Holy Spirit and the holy Church in his famous
phrase: “Ubi enim Ecclesia, ibi et Spiritus Dei, et ubi Spiritus Dei, illic Ecclesia
et omnis gratia.”2 In any event, certain realities mediated in these ancient
expressions must be grasped if we are to move closer to a common
understanding today of what it means to say that the Church is holy and
that it is and bears within itself the communio sanctorum.The first of these
realities is the oneness of the Church. Our belief takes place “in the holy
Church,” not in the churches. Second, the oneness of the Church may be
seen as the work of the Holy Spirit or of the whole Trinity.3 Third, the
holiness of the Church lies in the fact that it has been made so by the one
1 For a discussion of this text, see Henri de Lubac, The Christian Faith:An Essay on

the Structure of the Apostles’ Creed, trans. Richard Arnandez (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1986).
2 Adversus Haereses 3, 24 (PG 7, 966B). Cited in de Lubac, The Christian Faith, 204,
n4.
3 Thus Cyprian describes the Church as, “de unitate Patris and Filii and Spiritus
Sancti plebs adunata” (De orat. dom. 23; cf.Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 4).

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God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus holiness and oneness are two
integral aspects of the Church’s being.
In this brief essay, I wish to reflect on the mystery of the one, holy
Church and seek to present an understanding of this mystery in such a
way that we can appreciate the intimate connection between the splendor of truth and the radiance of this splendor as it appears in the Communio Sanctorum. As the encyclical itself expresses it:
The natural law “is nothing other than the light of understanding
infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and
what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at
creation.” He also did so in the history of Israel, particularly in the “ten
words,” the commandments of Sinai, whereby he brought into existence
the people of the Covenant (cf. Ex 24) and called them to be his “own
possession among all peoples,” “a holy nation” (Ex 19:5–6), which
would radiate his holiness to all peoples (cf.Wis 18:4; Ez 20:41).4

In this study, I wish to explore the intimate connection established by the
encyclical between sharing in the holiness of God and the radiation of
that holiness.To this end, I will proceed in two steps. I will first consider
the biblical teaching on the mystery of God who is holy and the relation
between this holiness and the holiness of his people. In this part of the
study, I will enlist some philosophical and theological insights that can
render more intelligible especially the New Testament teaching about our
relation to God and his holiness. Then, in the second part, I will reflect
on some modern discussions of the unity and holiness of the Church. In
this I will present some characteristic Catholic understandings of the
expressions sancta ecclesia and communio sanctorum.
I. The Holiness of God and of His People
Old Testament Teaching
A Sense of the Holy
It is a fact that we find in the Old Testament some vocabulary and attitudes
in regard to the numinous well described by Hans Urs von Balthasar:
Along with the creature’s primal intuitive knowledge concerning the
abyss in being between a relative and an absolute, between the world of
men and that of the gods, there also comes a primal concept of holiness:
4 Veritatis Splendor (VS) no. 12.The text quoted in the encyclical is from Thomas

Aquinas, In Duo Praecepta Caritatis et in Decem Legis Praecepta. Prologus.

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everything within the world that belongs to the realm of the divine or
the god is radically “set aside” or “separated” from the world . . . and it
is therefore dangerous for mortals to approach it.5

We see this natural intuition caught up into an understanding of God
conferred upon Israel through revelation. Two things emerge as a result
of this revelation. First, the notion of “holy” is first and foremost a personal
attribute of YHWH and not a vague, numinous force that permeates the
world of gods and men.6 Holiness, therefore, is the inner mystery of
God’s unique being. Second, this personal God is creator, and that means
he is unique:
The object of creation is without exception something outside the
divine.The action of God as creator is directed exclusively to the world.
God is outside creation; to be created means to be not-god.7

Glory is the outer manifestation of that mystery, and Name is the expression of his being that he shares with us a gift. Because of his generosity we
are enabled to know something of God and indeed are taught to imitate
him. I wish to give here a brief survey of some of the ways in which Israel
thus understood and spoke of God and the mystery of his being.8
How Israel Understood the Holy9
The presence of God means the presence of the Holy. Places where God
reveals himself are thus sometimes called holy. Moses is told, “Do not
come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you
are standing is holy ground” (Ex 3:5; see Jos 5:15). In another place Moses
says to God,“The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai; for you yourself charged us, saying,‘Set bounds about the mountain, and consecrate it
5 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. VI:

Theology: The Old Testament, ed. John Riches, trans. Brian McNeil, CRV and
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991) 61.
6 This is brought out well by Walther Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, trans.
J. A. Baker (London: SCM Press, 1961), 270–82.
7 Claude Westermann, Genesis, vol. I/1, Bibl. Kommentar Altes Testament (NeukirchenVluyn, 1974), 26.
8 I have left aside many other expressions wherein the “primal intuitive knowledge” shared by all human beings is also voiced.These are well treated by H.-P.
Müller, “QDS,” in Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. Claus Westermann
and Ernst Jenni (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 1103–18.
9 With a few exceptions the quotations from the Bible in this essay have been
slightly adapted by the author from the RSV.Those from other published translations are noted.

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(qidas̆to—“make it holy”).’At the same Sinai incident Moses is commanded
to “consecrate (qds̆)” the people to prepare them for the coming of YHWH
on the mountain (Ex 19:10), a command he also gives to the people to
prepare them for the manifestation of YHWH in providing food for them
(Num 11:18).The abiding of YHWH in the midst of his people perpetuates this sanctifying presence:
There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it (the tent of meeting) shall be sanctified by my glory [manifestation of my holiness]; I
will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar;Aaron also and his sons
I will consecrate, to serve me as priests (Ex 29:42–44).

This notion underlies the expression “holy assembly” (miqr’ [from the
root qr’ “to call”] qds),10 which occurs some nineteen times in the Old
Testament, usually in connection with the phrase “appointed feast (mw‘d)
of/for YHWH.” God’s people are most themselves, they are in a particular way “holy” when they are assembled to worship and praise YHWH
and know his presence in their midst.Thus, in the introduction to the list
of appointed feasts (within which we find the expression “holy assembly” eleven times), we read: “Say to the people of Israel, The appointed
feasts of YHWH which you shall proclaim as holy assemblies, my
appointed feasts, are these” (Lev 23:2). Having been called by YHWH, the
people belong to him and thus are holy: “For you are a people holy to
YHWH your God; YHWH your God has chosen you to be a people for
his own possession, out of all the peoples that are on the face of the
earth” (Dt 7:6).
We see that YHWH will call himself Holy in order to indicate that he
is “utterly other”: “I will not unleash my anger I will not return to ruin
Ephraim for I am God not man. In the midst of you, the Holy One: I do
not come to destroy” (Hos 11:9). And this truth is proclaimed in Israel’s
life of praise:“There is none holy like YHWH, there is none besides you;
there is no rock like our God” (1Sam 2:2). “Who is like you, O YHWH,
among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, terrible in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Ex 15:11). The notion that YHWH reveals
or manifests his holiness by his “glorious deeds” is a central theme in the
prophet Ezekiel.
10 It is important to note here that the Septuagint employs a neologism in order to
– e– agia.This forms the basis for many Pauline turns
translate miqr’ qds̆,namely, kl et

of phrase as we will see. For more on this, see Lucien Cerfaux, The Church in the
Theology of St. Paul, trans. Adrian Walker and Geoffrey Webb (New York: Herder
and Herder, 1963), 118–20.

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As a pleasing odor I will accept you, when I bring you out from the
peoples, and gather you out of the countries where you have been scattered; and I will manifest my holiness among you in the sight of the
nations (Ez 20:41).
Sidon, I am against you and I shall show my glory in your midst.
People will know that I am YHWH which I execute judgment on her
and show my holiness in her (Ez 28:22, NEB).
The Lord YHWH says:When I gather the Israelites from the peoples
among whom they are dispersed, I shall show my holiness in them for
all the nations to see. (Ez 28:25, NEB).
I shall hallow my great name, which you have profaned among those
nations.When they see that I reveal my holiness through you, they will
know that I am YHWH, says the Lord YHWH. (Ez 36:23, NEB).

It is not only that God’s actions reveal his holiness, the mystery of his
being, but human actions reveal his holiness as well as reveal man to
himself. As the encyclical expresses it:
What man is and what he must do becomes clear as soon as God reveals himself.
The Decalogue is based on these words:“I am the Lord your God, who
brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”
(Ex 20:2–3). In the “ten words” of the Covenant with Israel, and in the
whole Law, God makes himself known and acknowledged as the One
who “alone is good”; the One who despite man’s sin remains the
“model” for moral action, in accordance with his command,“You shall
be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev 19:2); as the One who,
faithful to his love for man, gives him his Law (cf. Ex 19:9–24 and
20:18–21) in order to restore man’s original and peaceful harmony
with the Creator and with all creation, and, what is more, to draw him
into his divine love:“I will walk among you, and will be your God, and
you shall be my people” (Lev 26:12). (Veritatis Splendor no.10).

Negatively, our failure to obey obscures the holiness of God. Moses is
told that he will die before entering the Promised Land, just as Aaron has
already died:“ because both of you broke faith with me in the midst of the
people of Israel at the waters of Meri-bath-kadesh, in the wilderness of
Zin; you did not manifest my holiness in the midst of the people of Israel.”
(Dt 32:51; see Num 27:14).11 The notion that by responding to YHWH’s
offer of a covenant the people become “to me a kingdom of priests and a
holy nation” (Ex 19:6) means that they are to manifest God’s holiness by
11 It is probable that Moses’ sin on this occasion was to arrogate to himself the

saving power, the holiness of YHWH. He is told in Num 20:12:“Because you did
not believe/trust me so as to manifest my holiness in the sight of the Israelites,
you will not lead this community into the land I am giving them.”

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keeping faith with him. This extends to each individual Israelite who is
told, “You shall be holy for I, YHWH, your God, am holy” (Lev 19:2 et
passim), which is to say, the Israelite by his actions becomes more and more
like God.The significance of this refrain is well expressed by John Hartely
whose words can serve as a summary of our consideration:
Israel is to be qds̆,“holy” because Yahweh, her God, is qds̆,“holy” . . . Holiness is the quintessential quality of YHWH. In the entire universe, he
alone is intrinsically holy.The nominal sentence, YHWH is holy, points in
this direction. That God is holy means that he is exalted, awesome in
power, glorious in appearance, pure in character. God’s holiness is contagious. Wherever his presence is, that place becomes holy. Since Israel’s
holiness is learned and is derived from YHWH, the command for Israel to
become holy is expressed in a verbal sentence; the use of the verb yhy
“be, become,” captures the maturing dimension of holiness on the
human plane. Being YHWH’s representative on earth, Israel is to evidence
in her community characteristics that are similar to God’s.12

Holiness in the New Testament
The fact of Christ, one Person in two natures, literally a hypostatic union,
creates a new category and thus gives new understanding to all of the
Old Testament. In the light of Christ risen from the dead the entire
understanding of holiness acquired in the Prior Testament is enshrined,
deepened, and carried to a higher plane.The Incarnation is not merely a
piece of new information to be placed in pre-existing categories. Rather,
knowledge of this reality changes all that we previously knew. When
Helen Keller, blind, deaf, and apparently dumb, first perceived the relation between words and things, as her teacher, Anne Sullivan, traced the
letters “water” on her hand as water was flowing over it, a new dimension of being was disclosed to her, not just a new thing.13 The Incarnation is a disclosure of an even greater magnitude.
It was already perceived, for instance, that the unity of God’s people
derived, not only from the fact of a common revelation and a common
worship, but also more profoundly from the fact that “God is one.” In the
light of Christ it was further understood that the oneness of the Church
is caused by the fact that it shares in a mysterious way in the very unity
of God himself.The holiness of God, the mystery of his triune being, is
12 John E. Hartley, Leviticus, ed. David A. Hubbard (Dallas:Word Books, 1992), 312.
13 I owe this clarifying example to Robert Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence:A Study in

the Theology of Disclosure (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
1993), 201.

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373

the reason for the holiness and thus the unity of the Church.14 We have
seen that the people are never more holy as a people than when they are
gathered together to worship and praise God and know his presence.
Now that Christ is among us we understand that holiness is realized in
that act in which God’s people, in the Holy Spirit, gather and celebrate
in sacrament that communion of persons that shares in the very
communion of the Trinity.
Since the being of God only exists in three hypostases, we must understand God to be relational in his essence: the eternal, freely willed relationality of the Father is the personal source of the Son and the Spirit who
are equal to him in an infinite movement of freedom and love. Holiness,
the mystery of God’s inner being, is, therefore, a mystery of communion.
In the following section, I will look briefly at the ways in which the
New Testament predicates holiness of the Father, the Son, and especially
the Holy Spirit. I will then look at the ways in which the endowment of
“holy” is predicated of the Church.We will then finally be in a position
to reflect theologically on the mystery of the Church as holy.
The Holy God in the New Testament
The New Testament does not apply the term “holy” with great frequency
to the Father or to Jesus his Son, and some of these New Testament usages
clearly cite or reflect the Old Testament. In order to understand the latter,
we must bear in mind the entirely new dimension of reality opened up to
the New Testament community by the resurrection of Christ. In this new
dimension not only the teaching of the Old Testament, but even the words
of Jesus himself now reveal their true inner meaning. Before this event,
who could have ever imagined the true identity of the Father and the
depth of intimacy to which he calls us with himself? Who could have
understood the meaning of Jesus’ use of the word Abba before Jesus’ glorious resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Or again, who
could have understood the meaning of the exhortation expressed in the
words of Leviticus 11:44 (19:2, etc.),“Be holy as I am holy” (1 Pet 1:16)?
We must surely hear this exhortation within the entirely new context of
those who were ransomed by the precious blood of Christ, who was
known before the foundation of the world but revealed in the final time
(see 1 Pet 1:17–21).We will return to this.
God the Father is called “holy” (agios) in the lines immediately preceding those just cited from the First Letter of Peter: “but as he who called
14 For a development of this theme, as well as Jewish and Hellenistic expressions of

divine unity, see Francis Martin, “Pauline Trinitarian Formulas and Christian
Unity,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 30 (1968): 199–219.

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you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct . . .” (1 Pet 1:15). Mary
sings that “his name is holy” (Lk 1:49), Jesus addresses him as “holy Father”
( Jn 17:11), and the Book of Revelation tells us of “the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within,
and day and night who never cease to sing, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord
God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Rev 4:8).
Then we see how Jesus is addressed in Peter’s act of faith:“and we have
believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God”
( Jn 6:69). John surely intends this in its most solemn sense, as opposed to
the demons quoted in Mark 1:24 and Luke 4:34.15 The angel tells Mary
that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and “the child to be born will
be holy, he will be called the Son of God” (Lk 1:35). Jesus himself is
“filled with the Holy Spirit” (Lk 4:1), anointed by the Holy Spirit at his
baptism (Acts 10:38; Lk 3:22) in such a way that his works manifest his
unique holiness. Peter, like Isaiah, when confronted with such a manifestation of holiness is brought to confess his sinfulness (Lk 5:8; Is 6:5). Peter
tells the inhabitants of Jerusalem, “you denied the Holy and Righteous
One” (Acts 3:14), a title whose full meaning is now revealed since Jesus
has been “instituted Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness due to resurrection from the dead (Rom 1:4). Thus, John receives
instruction: “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: ‘The
words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who
opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens’ ” (Rev 3:7).
Finally, believers are told, “But you have an oil of anointing from the
Holy One, and you all have knowledge” (1 Jn 2:20).16
It is significant that the Spirit of the Father and the Son is called the
Holy Spirit, using an expression already present in the Old Testament.17
15 I say “as opposed to the demons” reported in the Synoptic tradition. What the

Evangelists, at level three of the tradition, intended is more likely to be ironic:
what the demons confessed was true in a way they could not suspect.
16 Some commentators would see the title “Holy One” as being applied here to the
Father, but the context and general tone of the passage favor seeing the risen Jesus
as the “Holy One.” See Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Johannine Epistles:A Commentary, trans. Reginald and Ilse Fuller (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 142–43.
17 “Paul’s experience of God as Spirit, as mysterious vivifying and inspiring power,
was of a piece with the experience of ruach attested by Moses (2 Cor. 3.16) and
the prophets before him. That experience could be more clearly defined and
recognized by reference to Christ, as the Spirit of Christ. But it was not another
Spirit, which was so designated, only the Spirit of God, the Spirit given by God.
If the character of Christ had now defined the character of the Spirit, it was the
Spirit of God which was so defined.” James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the
Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 717.

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Jesus is conceived by the action of the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:35), in his
ministry is anointed by God with this same Spirit (Acts 10:37–38; Mt
3:16, par.), and now raised to the right hand of the Father, “he received
the promised Holy Spirit from the Father and has poured him out” (Acts
2:33).The Spirit is mentioned with the Father and the Son in two texts
that accent the unity of the Church (1 Cor 12:4–6; Eph 4:4–6); it is in
their threefold name that the baptismal mandate is given (Mt 28:19); and
it is through Christ, in one Spirit, that we both ( Jew and Gentile) have
access to the Father (Eph 2:18). Indeed “in one Spirit we were all
baptized into one Body . . . and we all drank of one Spirit” (1 Cor
12:12–13). It is the one Spirit of the Father and the Son who gives access
to the mystery of their being and thus makes the Church both one and
holy.We will see how prominent is the unifying and sanctifying action of
the Holy Spirit as we now discuss how the Church is holy.
One Holy People
I have already pointed out that the Septuagint, by coining a new phrase,
– e– agia, to translate the Hebrew expression “holy assembly,” provided
kl et
Paul with vocabulary to express part of his understanding of the church.
– os
In writing to the Corinthians, he first calls himself a “called apostle (kl et
apostolos) of Jesus Christ,” and then describes them as the “Church
–
(assembly/ekklesia)
of God at Corinth, made holy in Christ Jesus, “holy
– ios agiois)”(1 Cor 1:2). Much of the same vocabulary is
called ones” (kl et
found in the opening lines of the Letter to the Romans, and in the Letter
to the Colossians.18 The influence of the Septuagint phrase as adapted by
Paul is certainly one of the sources of his ability to call Christians
“holy/agioi” (Rom 8:27–28, 16:2; 1 Cor 6:1–2; Eph 1:1; etc.).
If we strive to grasp more deeply what is implied in the call of God,
we will be able to more adequately understand the New Testament
teaching regarding the holiness of the Church.This call, in effect, is made
up of two realities: the sanctifying work of Christ on the cross and the
action of the Holy Spirit in bringing people into touch with this work.
This rhythm of the work of God is well expressed in the teaching of the
First Letter of John (5:6): Jesus Christ came, that is, he accomplished the
work of redemption, and the Spirit bears witness, that is, he brings people
– apostolos, which is then specified as “set apart for the Gospel of
18 In Romans: kletos
–
–
–
–
Christou (1:6), agapetois
Theou, kletos
agiois (1:7). In ColosGod”(1:1), kletoi Iesou
–
–
emenoi
. . .”elect of
sians 3:12, “Put on then as the eklektoi tou Theou, agioi kai egap
God For a complete treatment of this theme, see Lucien Cerfaux, The Church in
the Theology of St. Paul, trans. Geoffrey Webb and Adrian Walker (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1959).

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376

to know and be transformed by that work. Or again in the words of the
Letter to the Hebrews (9:13–14):“For if the blood of goats and bulls and
the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those defiled sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more the blood of Christ who by the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, will purify your conscience
from dead works for the worshipping of the living God?” Christ offered
himself by the “eternal Spirit” who in this sacrifice accomplished what
the “eternal fire” did in the old sacrificial system.19 The transforming fire
of the Spirit who moved Jesus to die in an act of love is the one who
animates those who, “baptized into his death,” now walk in newness of
life/Spirit (Rom 6:3–4, 7:6).
The New Testament expresses in several different ways the fact that by
his death out of love Jesus has reconciled us to God and sanctified us.
There is first of all the rhythm of “love—give himself over” that we find
in Galatians 2:20: “The life I now live in the flesh, I live in faith, faith in
the Son of God who loved me and gave himself over for me.” This is
repeated in Ephesians 5:2 and applied to the obligation of husbands to
their wives in Ephesians 5:25. We read in John 14:31 that Jesus goes to
his passion in obedience to the Father and to show the world his love for
the Father: “But that the world might know that I love the Father; and
as the Father commanded me, so I do . . . rise up, let us go from here.”
Jesus’ self-gift to the Father merited his exaltation, which consisted in
rendering his humanity apt to reveal his divine Personality: “And therefore God exalted him and gave him the Name that is above all names, so
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . and every tongue
confess to the glory of God the Father that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Phil
2:9–11, cf. Is 45:22–25).This act of love, accomplished in the fire of the
Holy Spirit, makes Christ’s blood capable of purifying our conscience
from dead works in order to serve the living God. Because he possesses
a body, Christ is able to give human, historical existence to the will of
God: “In this will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the
body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb 10:10). For this reason Paul tells
us:“The body is not for immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for
the body. . . .You have been purchased at a price, therefore glorify God
in your body” (1 Cor 6:14, 20). We are holy, we belong to God, we are
the people he has acquired (Eph 1:14) and we join those in heaven who
sing: “Worthy are you to receive the scroll, and to open its seals because
you were slain and purchased for God with your blood from every tribe
19 See Albert Vanhoye, “Esprit éternel et feu du sacrifice en He 9,14,” Biblica 64

(1983): 263–74.

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and tongue and people and nation; and made them for our God, a kingdom and priests, and they will reign upon the earth” (Rev 5:9).
This action of God in Christ changes us. Our holiness is not that of
an external adherence to God’s people at worship, rather,“we are the true
circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God, who boast in Christ
Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:3). Christ dwells in us
by faith and the Spirit of God is in our inner being (Eph 3:16–17; see
Rom 8:10–11). This means that we have been called into “participation
in his Son” (1 Cor 1:9) and we have “participation in the Holy Spirit” (2
Cor 13:13; see Phil 2:1).20 This participation extends to sharing in the
sufferings and resurrection of Christ: “that I may know him and the
power of his resurrection, and participate in his sufferings, becoming like
him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the
dead” (Phil 3:10–11; see Rom 8:15), which means that Paul’s wounds are
“the brand marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17),21 and that we are “always carrying
in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor 4:10).
The Church’s union with Christ is set forth even more powerfully with
the use of the analogies of vine and branches, temple, and most important,
body. In this last predication, which is Pauline, it is revealed to us that we
are physically joined to the Holy One ( Jn 6:69; 1 Jn 2:20; Rev 3:7, 16:5)
and make one reality with him.This fact is the basis for Christian chastity
– and for
(1 Cor 6:12–20), it is the source and reason for Christian agape,
good order in the community (1 Cor 12–14), it is the context within
–
which we offer our whole selves (somata)
to God as a “living sacrifice, holy
and pleasing to God,” and practice mutual love and concern (Rom
12:1–2, 3–8, 9–21). Not only have we received from his fullness ( Jn 1:16),
but this fullness from him who is the Head “from whom the whole body,
joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when
each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in
love (Eph 4:15).We are thus parts of him and parts of each other (1 Cor
12:12–31).This union is not only spiritual, it is human, that is, it involves
the physical dimension of our personality as well as the spiritual (see
20 For an ample treatment of these texts and a justification of the above translation

of koin?nia, see J. Y. Campbell, “Koinwnia and Its Cognates in the New Testament,” in Three New Testament Studies (Leiden: Brill, 1965), and the discussion in
Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 561–62, 616–17.
21 Robert Jewett comments on this text, “Already it is evident that the body of
man, the focus of suffering in this world, was viewed by Paul as the sphere where
Christ’s rule becomes visibly evident.” Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms:
A Study of Their Use in Conflict Settings (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971.)

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Heb 2:14–16). Failure to recognize this, failure to “discern the Body,” has
resulted in “many of you being ill and infirm, and a considerable number
are dying” (1 Cor 11:29–30).
Marriage, Communion, and the Splendor of Truth
It is particularly in the spousal mystery that the relation between holiness
and communion shows us the perfective nature of truth: Truth desired
and received becomes a value, and as a value it becomes a force, a power:
In a particular way, it is in the Crucified Christ that the Church finds the
answer to the question troubling so many people today: how can obedience to universal and unchanging moral norms respect the uniqueness
and individuality of the person, and not represent a threat to his freedom and dignity? The Church makes her own the Apostle Paul’s awareness of the mission he had received: “Christ . . . sent me . . . to preach
the Gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be
emptied of its power. . . .We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block
to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:17,
23–24). The Crucified Christ reveals the authentic meaning of freedom, he lives
it fully, in the total gift of himself and calls his disciples to share in his freedom. In a particular way, it is in the Crucified Christ that the Church finds
the answer to the question troubling so many people today: how can
obedience to universal and unchanging moral norms respect the
uniqueness and individuality of the person, and not represent a threat to
his freedom and dignity? The Church makes her own the Apostle Paul’s
awareness of the mission he had received: “Christ . . . sent me . . . to
preach the Gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of
Christ be emptied of its power . . .We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called,
both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of
God” (1 Cor 1:17,23–24). The Crucified Christ reveals the authentic meaning of freedom, he lives it fully, in the total gift of himself and calls his disciples
to share in his freedom. (Veritatis Splendor no. 85)

The mystery of the physical union of Christ and his Body is important
for our understanding of the holiness of the Church. We will reflect
briefly on the most mature expression of that union as set forth in the
Letter to the Ephesians 5:21–33.22 We may first note how the holiness of
22 The lines which follow are adapted from Francis Martin, “The New Feminism:

Biblical Foundations and Some Lines of Development,” in Women in Christ.
Toward a New Feminism, ed. Michele Schumacher (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2004), 141–68.

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the Church is directly attributed to the act of love in which Christ died,
a theme we touched upon above:
Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the Church and gave
himself over for her that he might make her holy, purifying her in the
washing of water, with a word, that he might present to himself
the Church resplendent, not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the
sort, but that she be holy and without fault. (Eph 5:25–27)

This is an eschatological vision of the completed work of Christ: the
Church, his bride “holy and without fault” thus realizing the eternal plan
of the Father (see Eph 1:4).This plan is being worked out even now, and
that is why the Church is incipiently holy:The believers are called “holy”
nine times in this Letter alone,23 and their corporate reality is called a
“holy temple” (Eph 2:21). The theme of bride is then developed, indicating that the holiness of the Church lies fundamentally in its physical
and spiritual union with Christ.Thus we read in the lines that follow:
Even so husbands are obliged to love their own wives as their own
bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself. No one ever hated
his own flesh; rather, he provides and cares for it just as Christ [does]
for the Church, because we are parts of his Body (Eph 5: 28–30).

We may ask why the norm for this love of husband for wife, is given not
only as that of the love of Christ for the Church, but is also presented as
–
“love for their own [eauton]
bodies.” I believe that behind these lines
stands an Old Testament anthropology that looked upon unity between
human beings as grounded on the fact that they share “flesh” (basar).The
concept moved in concentric circles. Humanity as a whole can be called
“all flesh,” and this outer circle becomes progressively denser until the
immediate family is considered to be sharing the same flesh. Thus, the
laws against incest in Leviticus 18 begin with the enigmatic phrase (literally): “No one shall approach any flesh of his body/flesh (basar) to
uncover nakedness (i.e., have sexual relations). I am YHWH.” This is
further specified by specific instances of what “flesh of his body/flesh”
may mean. For example, “You shall not uncover the nakedness of your
father, that is, the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall
not uncover her nakedness” (18:6).“You shall not uncover the nakedness
of the wife of your father, she is your father’s nakedness” (18:7).“You shall
not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister because she is your
mother’s flesh” (18:13).
23 Eph 1:1, 15,18; 2:19; 3:8,18; 4:12; 5:3; 6:18.

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It is clear from this that there are degrees of what we would call
consanguinity, which the Hebrews considered as “con-fleshness.” The
source of consanguinity is marriage. That is why when a man marries a
woman they become “one flesh.” A development of this notion is found
in the phrase (literally) “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh” and similar expressions that indicate the familial bonds, either very close or, at
least among Israelites, which form the basis for a covenant.24 Both
expressions “one flesh” and “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”
occur in Genesis 2:23–24, texts alluded to in the Ephesians passage we
are considering.When we add to this the fact that there was no current
word for “body” in Hebrew, we realize that the substitution in Greek of
the word sôma (body) where sarx (flesh) might be expected would occasion no surprise. Paul, in fact, when he loosely cites Genesis 2:24 in
1Corinthians 6:16 speaks of “one body”:“Do you not know that anyone
who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body [with her]? For it
says, ‘the two will become one flesh’.”
The lines in the passage that we are studying now are based on just this
type of thinking and reflect, I think, the fundamental source of Paul’s
description of the Church as the Body of Christ.What the Ephesians text
does here is render more explicit the equation Body/Flesh = Bride, which
Paul has already exploited in 2 Corinthians 11:2–3: “I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to Christ to present you as a pure bride
to her one husband. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by
his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” Time does not allow us to develop this line of thought
here, but it is important to consider some of its anthropological implications in regard to the notion that the Church is the Body of Christ.25
For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be joined
to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This Mystery is great:
for my part, I am speaking in reference to Christ and the Church (Eph
5:31–32)

Without any indication that he is citing a biblical text, probably because
he considers it too well-known, the author, with slight variations from
our present Septuagint text (Gen 2:24) begins, “For this reason.” The
reason given in the text is that as the Lord God (Kyrios o Theos) leads the
24 For a complete treatment of this point, see Maurice Gilbert, “ ‘Une Seule Chair’

(Gen 2,24),” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 100 (1978): 66–89.
25 For an initial development of what I hope to treat at greater length in another

study, see Paulus Andriessen, “The New Eve, Body of the New Adam,” in The
Birth of the Church (New York: Alba House, 1968).

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woman to Adam, he exclaims, “This now is bone of my bones and flesh
of my flesh; she shall be called woman because from her man (andros) she
was taken.” In the Ephesians text, the reason referred to is that Christ
provides and cares for his own flesh, the Church, because we are parts of
his body.
The Genesis text continues to speak of a man leaving father and
mother, which is an aspect ignored by Paul who puts the accent on being
joined to his wife so the two become one flesh. The physical union
between Christ and the Church is precisely the great Mystery, as the
author explicitly says, and it is precisely that union, which forms the
model for husband and wife, and is itself the living source of the love that
binds them together. As Pierre Benoit expresses it:
In this union (between Christ and the Church), which is the model for
human marriage, and which is not endowed with any less physical realism, the “mystery” of the Genesis text is fully realized and definitively
clarified.26

We may ask why, after citing the Genesis text with the intention of
applying it primarily to the union between Christ and the Church, the
author calls it a “mystery.” Some commentators point to the fact that raz
and sod, the semitic terms that lie behind the New Testament mysterion,
can sometimes mean the secret meaning of a text and they apply that
meaning here.27 But the author’s point is that the mysterion is an aspect
of God’s plan now revealed. He is insisting on the analogical relation
between the union of husband and wife, who become one flesh and the
union of Christ and the Church who form one flesh. The “mystery” is
not primarily in the text but in the realities it is mediating to us. To
employ Augustine’s phrase: “In ipso facto, non solum in dicto, mysterium
requirere debemus.”28
With the creation of the New Man/Adam by Christ’s act on the cross
(see Eph 2:15) it becomes apparent, as Heinrich Schlier expresses it, that,
“In Adam as the original (ursprünglichen) man, the creation of God, the
future Christ is already hidden, but really present. Christ is the revealed,
26 “Corps,Tête et Plérôme dans les Épîtres de la Captivité,” in Exégèse et Théologie

2 (Paris: Cerf, 1960), 107–53, at 135.
27 This is the position of Raymond Brown in his fine study, The Semitic Background

of the Term “Mystery” in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968), 65.
28 On Psalm 68 (Patrologia Latina 36,858). For a number of patristic texts on this same

theme, see Henri de Lubac, Catholicism. Christ and the Common Destiny of Man,
trans. Lancelot Sheppard and Sister Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1988), 165–70.

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original man . . . in the creation is already hidden the redemption provided
in Christ.”29 Adam, as Paul tells us was the “type” (typos) of the one to come
–
(Rom 5:14), who is the “second man (anthropos),
the one from heaven” (1
Cor 15:47).While these texts place the accent on Jesus Christ as the individual man who recapitulates the reality of the “first man,” our Ephesians
text reminds us that as we now see Christ, the “second man,” we understand that creation itself is a prophecy of redemption. This means that in
the corporate reality of man and woman, as Genesis describes it, is already
present in a proleptic symbol—the unity of Christ and the Church:
– he made him in the image of
On the day when Elohim created ’adam
Elohim; male and female he created them, and he blessed them and
– on the day they were created (Gen 5:1–2).
called their name ’adam

– so it also
As it requires male and female to make up God’s creation, ’adam,
requires Christ and the Church to make up God’s new creation, the
Christ (see 1 Cor 12:12; 1:13[?]).30 The great mystery, therefore, is in the
fact of Christ’s physical union with the Church, a union effected by the
Holy Spirit.This is the deepest source of the Church’s holiness.
That all of the great work of Christ actually exists now in an actual and
historical dimension is due to the action of the Holy Spirit. At baptism
believers receive the Holy Spirit in their hearts: “he has put his seal upon
us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee” (1 Cor 1:11; Eph
1:13; see Rom 5:5);“God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts” so
that we can, with all truth, pray and relate to the Father as Jesus did and
does. Because the same Spirit dwells within us, the Church is one and holy:

The Father and the Son wanted us to enter into communion with each
other and with them through what is common to them and wanted to
join us together as one through that Gift that they both possess
together, namely the Holy Spirit, God, and Gift of God. It is in him that
we are reconciled with the Deity and that we enjoy the Deity.31
29 Der Brief an der Epheser: Ein Kommentar (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1958), 278.

The translation is basically that of Barth, Ephesians 2, 643, n141.
30 Gordon Fee, one of the few commentators to comment on 1 Cor 12:12, says

that the phrase “so it is with the Christ” is a form of metonomy:“Thus,‘Christ’
means the church as a shortened form of the ‘body of Christ.’ ” This is true as
far as it goes, but what could Paul possibly mean by employing such a shortened
form at all? See Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 603.
31 St. Augustine, Sermon 71,12,18 (PL 38,454), cited in Yves Congar, “The Holy
Spirit Makes the Church One,” in I Believe in the Holy Spirit (New York: Seabury,
1983), 23.

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The Spirit co-institutes the Church as Christ institutes it, that is, because
of the Spirit, the Church brought into existence and made one and holy
by Christ, actually lives its existence authentically: It is actually one and
holy.32 Just as it is because of the action of the Holy Spirit that Christ in
his human nature exists, so it is because of the same Holy Spirit that the
Church in its actual human and historical nature exists. This mystery of
the action of the second and third Persons of the Trinity characterizes all
their activity outside the Godhead in both creation and redemption.The
Spirit hovers over creation and over the people (Gen 1:2; Ex 19:4; Dt
32:11) and thus the word addressed by God has its effect:There is light,
there is a people made one by being addressed as one.33
It is in this light that we can understand the New Testament teaching
in regard to the Holy Spirit and the Church. Having been baptized in
one Spirit into one Body (1 Cor 12:13), we have “participation in the
Spirit” (2 Cor 13:13; Phil 2:1; see above), and “he who cleaves to the
Lord is one Spirit with him” and becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit (1
Cor 6:17, 19). It is by the “ministry of the Spirit” that God’s people are
formed (2 Cor 3:4–11).They are justified and sanctified “in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). Indeed,
“when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he
saved us . . . in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration
and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us richly through
Jesus Christ our Savior” (Tit 3:4–7).34 I will end this all too brief section
with a quote from Lumen Gentium (no. 8), which may serve to sum up a
Catholic understanding of the Spirit and the Church.
Just as the assumed nature inseparably united to the divine Word serves
him as a living instrument of salvation, so, in a similar way, does the
communal structure of the Church serve Christ’s Spirit who vivifies it
by way of building up the body (cf. Eph 4:16). This is the unique
Church of Christ, which in the Creed we avow to be one, holy, catholic
and apostolic.After his resurrection our Savior handed her over to Peter
to be shepherded ( Jn 21:17).
32 The term “co-institute” is found in Yves Congar, “The Church is Made by the

Spirit,” in I Believe in the Holy Spirit (New York: Seabury, 1983). For a development of this notion using the term “constitute,” see John D. Zizioulas, Being As
Communion (Crestwood, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985).
33 For a study of this rhythm in the theology of St. John, see Ignace de la Potterie,
“Parole et Esprit dans S. Jean,” in L’Évangile de Jean. Sources, Rédaction,Théologie,
ed. M. de Jong (Gembloux: Duculot, 1977).
34 These last two texts are illustrative of the rhythm,“institute–constitute” mentioned
earlier.

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II. Communion of Persons and Communio Sanctorum
In this part, I wish to reflect briefly on three aspects of holiness and unity
as they are relevant to our understanding of the holiness of the Church.
First, I will discuss the priority of ontology over morality in a consideration of personal holiness. I will then place the discussion within the
context of the relational character of the human person: the Body of
Christ as holy. Finally, I will look at what the traditional understanding
of communio sanctorum can add to a more profound grasp on the note of
“holy” as applied to the Church.
Moral Actions and Ontological Change
It is simply a matter of common wisdom that a person becomes virtuous
or vicious as a result of a consistent series of repeated decisions. Unfortunately, this wisdom was not sufficiently operative in the course of the last
few hundred years of Christian moral thinking, which contented itself with
the question “What is the law?” rather than the ancient and much more
profound question “What must I do in order to arrive at the goal of my
life and find happiness?”35 As Josef Pieper once expressed this basic law of
moral action: “Human activity has two basic forms: doing (agere) and
making (facere).Artifacts, technical and artistic are the ‘works’ of making.We
ourselves are the ‘works’ of our doing.”36 The consequence of recent lawbased moralism (as opposed to morality) has been that we read the New
Testament exhortations to a holy life as having little to do with the objective state of our being.Yet, what the New Testament teaches us is really that
our actions are meant to flow from our ontological union with Christ and
to increase our participation in his life by yielding to the activity of the
Holy Spirit moving us to acts of love.37 If holiness is a share in the mystery
of God’s being, then, in our own case as well, it is an ontological reality.
I believe that this is the intent of the famous statement in 2 Peter
1:3–4: His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for
35 For a history of this situation and an analysis of its causes and remedies, see

Servais Pinckaers, The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Mary Thomas Noble
(Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1995).
36 Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, trans. Lawrence E. Lynch, Richard and
Clara Winston, and Daniel Coogan (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1966), 29. Consider this remark by Karol Wojtyla: “The self constitutes
itself precisely through the acts proper to man as a person.” Karol Wojtyla (Pope
John Paul II), “The Person: Subject and Community,” Review of Metaphysics 33
(1979/80): 273–308.
37 I have developed this point using the ancient concept of the imitation of Christ
in Francis Martin, “Historical Criticism and New Testament Teaching on the
Imitation of Christ,” Anthropotes 6 (1990): 261–87.

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life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his
own glory and excellence, by means of which he has bestowed on us his
precious and magnificent promises, that through them you may become
–
sharers (koinonoi)
of the divine nature having escaped from the corruption
that is in the world as a result of desire.
The phrase “sharers of the divine nature,” while it borrows its terminology from Jewish–Hellenistic mysticism, refers to the common New
Testament theme that we have become children of God, animated by his
–
Spirit (Rom 8:5, 14–17; Gal 4:6); that we have fellowship (koinonia)
with
the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ (1 Jn 1:3); that a Christian is a
–
sharer (koinonia)
in the glory to be revealed (1 Pet 5:1).With such parel–
– omenoi)
–
lel expressions available (see Col 2:9 pleroma–pepl
er
it is exaggerated reductionism to restrict this text to similar expressions elsewhere in
extra-biblical literature when the precise point is to show that now in
Christ these aspirations have been fulfilled.
Peter teaches us that our holiness comes from knowledge of the One
who has called us to his own glory and excellence and that our immortality is fundamentally a share in his own. The text goes on immediately
to urge us to supplement our faith with virtue, our virtue with knowledge, and finally our godliness with brotherly affection and our affection
with love (see 2 Pet 1:5–7). Our acts therefore are changing us and bringing us into a deeper participation in the divine nature. I recognize that
most modern commentators tend to avoid this line of thinking being
content to point out the relation in Jewish–Hellenistic mysticism between
immortality and sharing in the divine nature. I think, however, that the
massive patristic tradition cannot be ignored here.As J. N. D. Kelly puts it:
His [the author’s] tentative ideas, however, were destined to provide a
firm scriptural foundation for the vast theology of redemption by the
divinization of human nature which, beginning with Clement of Alexandria, was to dominate the patristic centuries and remains immensely
influential in large sections of the Church down to the present day.38

While the text from 2 Peter is helpful it is not necessary in order to establish the point that holiness for the Church and for all the persons who
make up the Church is an ontological quality and not merely a moral
quality. Before passing on to consider the intrinsically relational quality of
moral action we should add two reflections.We should first observe that
human activity is always historical, that is, it is the activity of a being who
38 J. N. D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude (Grand Rapids, MI:

Baker, 1981[reprint]), 304.

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is both spiritual and material, whose spirituality pervades his materiality
and gives it a properly human dimension. Spirituality for a human being
is not immateriality, and, as we shall see, it is not individual but shared.
Holiness is a complete fulfillment of the human person because it realizes the transcendent orientation of the whole human being and results
in a transformation that is perfected in that act in which the Trinity gives
himself unreservedly to the whole spiritual–material being in an embrace
of love that is eternal life.
Secondly, genuine holiness realizes and sublates the autoteleological
drives of human nature, bringing them to a transcendent fulfillment.39
Thus, to quote Karol Wojtyla:
Man fulfills himself, he realizes the autoteleology of his personal self
through the transcendent dimension of his action. The transcendence
of truth and good has a decisive influence on forming the personal
subject as is evident in the analysis of conscience and morality. The
same analysis allows one to penetrate more profoundly the contingency
of man, elucidating how essential is his striving for self fulfillment, how
in this striving he is constantly torn between good and evil, between
self-fulfillment and non-fullfillment. . . . 40

The Human Person as Essentially Relational
In his recovery of the thinking of the Cappadocians in regard to personhood, John Zizioulas has managed to forge a link between the enormous
reversal effected by these saints within classical Greek thought and the
modern move from the “turn to the subject” to the “turn to the
person.”41 I wish, in just a few lines, to show how this understanding of
the human person renders intelligible the twofold holiness of the Church,
individual and corporate.
39 The process I am referring to is aptly portrayed in this description of sublation

given by Bernard Lonergan:“What sublates goes beyond what is sublated, introduces something new and distinct, yet so far from interfering with the sublated
or destroying it, on the contrary needs it, includes it, preserves all its proper
features and properties, and carries them forward to a fuller realization within a
richer context.” Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder &
Herder, 1972), 241.
40 “The Person: Subject and Community,” 287. For a discussion of how these
philosophical principles are elaborated in terms of nature and saving grace, see
Gerard Beigel, Faith and Social Justice in the Teaching of Pope John Paul II (New
York: Peter Lang, 1997), Chapter Three, “Man Within the Sphere of Redemption.”
41 Zizioulas, Being as Communion. This mode of thought is also part of Western
theological thought: see Yves Congar, “The Father, the Absolute Source of
Divinity,” in I Believe in the Holy Spirit (New York: Seabury, 1983).

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The understanding that within the Trinity the Father is the very source
of the Divinity for the Son and Spirit helps us to understand that Person is
not added to substance, as though with the Trinity there were a neutral
substance equally divided among the Persons. It is rather that the Father, as
essentially Father, hypostasizes the Divinity in a relational manner eternally
and freely begetting the Son and giving rise to the Spirit who is, as it were,
the subsisting “we” between the Father and the Son. Having arrived at this
insight, it is easier to see that the human person is also essentially relational,
and that, in a created manner that does not identify substance and relation,
it is still possible to understand that a human person hypostasizes his or her
substance, drawing it up into the very relational nature of personality.This
means that community, when it is genuine, is not added to personhood but
belongs to it essentially, though only in such a way that the selfhood of each
person is enhanced and not diminished.
The classical definition of person, given by Boethius (and modified
somewhat in the course of history) asserted basically that a person is “an
individual substance of a rational nature.”42 Modern philosophical and
theological thought has advanced the understanding of person and thus
would understand these terms in a more existential manner than that in
which they were formerly understood. When “substance” is seen in the
light of creation, it becomes obvious that it is what it is by its relation to
God, that it subsists as what it is, and that it expresses what it is by relation to other beings.Thus,W. Norris Clarke proposes a triadic structure
of being:“being from another, being in oneself, and being toward others.”43
Given the dynamic structure of all being it is true to say that the individuum, the concretum, seen in the light of its reality as created, is constituted by relation: to God, to itself, and to other beings.This last relation,
that to other beings, is what Maritain calls, “the basic generosity of existence,”44 in which every being at its own level does impart something of
itself: bonum est diffusivum sui.
Similarly, when we reflect on what “rational” means, we see that the
unique and incommunicable reality of a person is also constituted by relation, it is from God, it relates in itself and to itself, and it is a being toward
others. Because in regard to person we are concerned with a spiritual
reality that is one who possesses itself and can reflect upon itself, we are
42 For a discussion of this definition and its history, see Max Müller et al.,“Person,”

in Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. Karl Rahner (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1969), 404–19.
43 W. Norris Clarke, “A Response to David Schindler’s Comments,” Communio 20
(1993): 596.
44 Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent (New York: Doubleday, 1957), 90.

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in the presence of the mystery of freedom. From this point of view we
can see that what is unique in the instance of person is that this threefold
relation is actualized in the personal activity of freedom by which the
relation, accepted and lived in love, becomes relationship.Thus, the particular property of a “rational” substance is that it is constituted by relation
in such a way that this is given properly human existence in the free acts
by which the person realizes him- or herself.This philosophical elaboration is expressed biblically by saying that man is the image of God, and
can find himself only in a relationship of mutual self-giving love.
For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely
Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery
of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes
his supreme calling clear. . . . Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to
the Father, “that all may be one. . . as we are one” ( John 17:21–22),
opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s sons
in truth and charity.This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except
through a sincere gift of himself (Gaudim et Spes nos. 22, 24, emphasis added).

The mention of the Trinity in the above text points once again to the
fact that communio in the Church is an icon of the Trinity, a realization on
the human level of the mystery and fulfillment of person through love.
This communion is a communion of persons. On the created level of the
Church it can increase or decrease according to the degree of love with
which the created and graced persons actually give themselves to each
other in love:Their actions affect their being and the being of the whole
Church. These actions cannot be, of their nature, purely spiritual. They
must be human actions and thus the holiness of the Church has a physical dimension: It is realized by body-persons. I will return to this in
discussing communio sanctorum.
The final point to be realized here in the discussion of communio
personarum is that the Catholic view understands the nature of these relationships to be stronger than death since they are centered on the relationship to the risen Christ whose Body we are. It is for this reason that
the “communion of saints” includes the Church triumphant, the Church
suffering, and the Church militant, and that the celebration of the heavenly banquet gathers all of the Church together. I will give here some
expressions of this faith from Vatican II.45
45 See Christoph Schönborn, “The ‘Communion of Saints’ as Three States of the

Church: Pilgrimage, Purification and Glory,” Communio 15 (1988): 169–81. For
an even stronger expressions, see Zizioulas, Being as Communion, Chapter 4,

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Until the Lord shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him
and death being destroyed, all things are subject to Him. Some of His
disciples are exiles on earth, some having died are purified, and others
are in glory beholding “clearly God Himself triune and one, as He is”;
but all in various ways and degrees are in communion in the same charity of God and neighbor and all sing the same hymn of glory to our
God. For all who are in Christ, having His Spirit, form one Church and
cleave together in Him.Therefore the union of the wayfarers with the
brethren who have gone to sleep in the peace of Christ is not in the
least weakened or interrupted, but on the contrary, according to the
perpetual faith of the Church, is strengthened by communication of
spiritual goods.
For by reason of the fact that those in heaven are more closely
united with Christ, they establish the whole Church more firmly in
holiness, lend nobility to the worship which the Church offers to God
here on earth and in many ways contribute to its greater edification.
For after they have been received into their heavenly home and are
present to the Lord, through Him and with Him and in Him they do
not cease to intercede with the Father for us, showing forth the merits
which they won on earth through the one Mediator between God and
man, serving God in all things and filling up in their flesh those things
which are lacking of the sufferings of Christ for His Body which is the
Church. Thus by their brotherly interest our weakness is greatly
strengthened (Lumen Gentium, no. 49).

Communio Sanctorum
The origins of this expression and its precise original understanding are
shrouded in the mists of history.46 This much is clear: From a very early
date the phrase referred to two different but interconnected realities,
namely, participation in holy things, specifically baptism and Eucharist,
and communion among those sanctified by the Holy Spirit. I will give
here two quotes from Catholic authors to give an idea of how the phrase
functions in Catholic thought and practice. The first is from the
Commentary on the Apostles Creed by St.Thomas Aquinas:
Just as in a physical body the operation of one member conduces to the
good of the whole body, so it is in a spiritual body such as the Church.
And since all the faithful are one body, the good of one member is
“Eucharist and Catholicity.” One might also consult the study by Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue
(Edinburgh:T & T Clark, 1993).
46 For a study of these origins one may consult Stephen Benko, The Meaning of Sanctorum Communio (Naperville, IL: Allenson, 1964); J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian
Creeds, 3rd ed. (London: Longman, 1972),“The Communion of Saints,” 388–97.

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communicated to another: every one, as the Apostle says (Rom. xii, 5),
members, one of another. Wherefore among points of faith handed down
by the Apostles, is that there is a community of goods in the Church,
and this is expressed in the words Communion of saints. Now of all the
members of the Church Christ is the principal, for He is the head: He
. . . hath made him head over all the Church which is his body (Eph. i, 22).
Accordingly Christ’s good is communicated to all Christians, even as
the power in the head is shared by all the members.
This communication is effected by the sacraments of the Church,
wherein the power of Christ’s passion operates, the effect of which is
the bestowal of grace unto the remission of sins. . . .47

The second text is by Hans Urs von Balthasar who reflects a typically
Catholic sense of interconnection between the saints on earth and
between those in heaven and those on earth. After speaking of the vertical dimension of unity and holiness effected by the Holy Spirit, von
Balthasar goes on to speak of the “horizontal element,” which equally
owes its existence to the same Spirit.
The extent to which the “saints”—those who attempt to take seriously
their sanctification by the holy triune God and to respond to it—are
able in their community to be, to live, to work, and to suffer for one
another can only begin to be realized when one has grasped the principle which welds them together into the unity of the community of
the Church: the unity of the triune God manifested in the self-giving
of Christ and poured out in the Holy Spirit. For this unity is nothing
other than pure being-for-another. . . .
It is here that the biblical concept of fruitfulness is introduced.This
supersedes (but without destroying their limited meaning) the concepts
of works and rewards, which at first, as images taken from the world of
human labour, presuppose a system of individuals distinct from one
another in order to be able to stress the effective “being-for” of the
“saint” (that is to say of the truly believing, hoping, loving man). . . .
There is perhaps no more comforting truth about the Church than
that in it there is a community, a communism of saints. For, on the one
hand, this means that there is a continually overflowing richness on
which all the poor may draw; it is called the treasure of the Church.
It is precisely the same as the incalculable fruitfulness of those who
offer themselves and all they have to God to dispose of for the sake of
the brotherhood.48
47 Thomas Aquinas,“Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed,” in The Three Greatest Prayers:

Commentaries on the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Apostles’ Creed (Westminster,
MD: Newman Press, 1956), 80.
48 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Elucidations, trans. John Riches (London: S.P.C.K., 1975),
58–59, 62.

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III. Conclusion
In the Catholic tradition the expressions sancta ecclesia and communio sanctorum have come to designate two aspects of the one mystery of the holiness of the Church.The first puts the accent on the aspect of person, and
of how the “subsisting altruism” of the Trinity is shared in and manifested
in the human dimension.The second places the accent on what is shared,
namely the life of Christ as he shares himself in the Eucharist. One of the
contributions of the encyclical Veritatis Splendor is, as we have seen, to set
forth the rhythm between holiness received and holiness manifested. Let
this text from the encyclical sum up this teaching in the context precisely
of the Eucharist:
The lives of the saints, as a reflection of the goodness of God—the One
who “alone is good”—constitute not only a genuine profession of faith
and an incentive for sharing it with others, but also a glorification of
God and his infinite holiness. The life of holiness thus brings to full
expression and effectiveness the threefold and unitary munus propheticum,
sacerdotale et regale which every Christian receives as a gift by being born
again “of water and the Spirit” ( Jn 3:5) in baptism. His moral life has the
value of a “spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1; cf. Phil 3:3), flowing from and
nourished by that inexhaustible source of holiness and glorification of
God which is found in the Sacraments, especially in the Eucharist: by
sharing in the sacrifice of the Cross, the Christian partakes of Christ’s
self-giving love and is equipped and committed to live this same charity in all his thoughts and deeds. In the moral life the Christian’s royal
service is also made evident and effective: with the help of grace, the
more one obeys the new law of the Holy Spirit, the more one grows in
the freedom to which he or she is called by the service of truth, charity
and justice. (Veritatis Splendor no. 106).

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393

The “New” Evangelization, Catholic Moral Life
in Light of Veritatis Splendor, and the Family
W ILLIAM E. M AY
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family
Washington, DC

I WILL BEGIN by showing why a new evangelization is needed and
summarizing what it means, and then focus on the intimate link between
it and Catholic moral life. A centrally important document for understanding what a Catholic moral life entails is Pope John Paul II’s masterful encyclical of 1993, Veritatis Splendor. I will therefore focus on central
themes of this great encyclical and show how the Holy Father relates the
moral life to the new evangelization both in this encyclical and in other
writings, especially in his 1988 apostolic exhortation, Christifideles Laici. I
will end by summarizing John Paul’s thought on the evangelizing mission
of the Christian family, particularly as set forth in his 1981 apostolic
exhortation, Familiaris Consortio.
I. The “New” Evangelization: Its Necessity and Nature
Fierce debates rage in our society over such issues as abortion, euthanasia, and “gay” marriage. I believe that cogent arguments can be and have
been developed to show the truth of propositions such as: It is always
gravely immoral intentionally to kill innocent human persons; unborn children,
whose lives begin at fertilization are human persons and therefore it is gravely
immoral intentionally to kill them; it is utterly impossible for persons of the same
sex to marry because they cannot do what married persons are supposed to do, etc.
The difficulty is that cogent arguments demonstrating the truth of these
and other morally significant propositions frequently fail to persuade
others. For instance, one could give arguments to members of the
Planned Parenthood Federation to show that it is always wrong intentionally to abort unborn babies and not succeed in having them accept

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the truth of this proposition. One could give strong arguments to
members of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance to show why it is not possible
for same sex couples to marry and fail to change their minds.The reason
is that “whatever is received is received in the mode the recipient” (an old
scholastic adage), and we make ourselves the kind of receivers we are by
the choices that we make, preeminently by choices that can rightly be
regarded as fundamental commitments.1 Thus a person who has committed himself/herself to the way of life proposed by the Planned Parenthood Federation has made himself or herself the kind of person less
capable of receiving the truth about the grave immorality of intentionally aborting unborn human life.What is needed is not an argument but
a change of heart—a metanoia, a conversion, a new kind of fundamental
commitment.That is why a new evangelization is needed.
The necessity and nature of this new evangelization has been a
constant theme in the pontificate of John Paul II. Thus, for example, in
Tertio Millennio Adveniente (November 1994), he proposed a special assembly of the Synod of bishops for each of the five continents (Africa,America, Asia, Oceania, Europe) to prepare for the new millennium, and these
synods subsequently took place. In proposing them, he affirmed that “the
theme underlying them all is evangelization, or rather the new evangelization,” whose “foundations had been laid down by Paul VI in his 1975
apostolic exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi” (no. 21, emphasis added).
Earlier, in his 1990 encyclical, Redemptoris Missio, John Paul II had
declared: “I sense the moment has come to commit all of the Church’s
energies to a new evangelization” (no. 3; emphasis added).The Holy Father
has made similar references to the imperative need of a new evangelization or “re-evangelization” again and again over the past 25 years. Calling attention to the loss of faith in the countries of the so-called First
World, for example, he said in 1987:“Without a doubt a mending of the
Christian fabric of society is urgently needed in all parts of the world”
(Christifideles Laici, no. 34), and he insisted that “the entire mission of the
Church . . . is concentrated and manifested in evangelization. . . .‘To evangelize,’ writes Paul V I, ‘is the grace and vocation proper to the Church,
1 On this see John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, no. 71, where he cites a marvelous

passage from St. Gregory of Nyssa’s De Vita Moysis, in which this great Father of
the Church declared:“All things subject to change and to becoming never remain
constant, but continually pass from one state to another, for better or worse. . . .
Now human life is always subject to change; it needs to be born ever anew. . . .
But here birth does not come about by a foreign intervention, as is the case with
bodily beings . . . ; it is the result of free choice.Thus we are in a certain way our
own parents, creating ourselves as we will, by our decisions.”

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her profound identity’ ” (ibid, no. 33, citing Paul’s Evangelium Nuntiandi,
no. 14).To evangelize in essence means to proclaim the good news of our
redemption in Christ and to lead people to embrace him and to be
united with him through baptism.
John Paul II emphasizes that lay men and lay women are called in a
unique way to share in the work of evangelization by bearing witness to
Christ and to his Church in the “world,” which is precisely “the place and
the means for the lay faithful to fulfill their Christian vocation. . . .The lay faithful, in fact [as Vatican Council II reminds us], ‘are called by God so that
they, led by the spirit of the gospel, might contribute to the sanctification
of the world, as from within like a leaven, by fulfilling their own particular duties.Thus, especially in this way of life, resplendent in faith, hope,
and charity, they manifest Christ to others’ ” (Christifideles Laici, no. 15,
citing Lumen Gentium, no. 31). Laypeople, however, will be able to exercise properly the evangelizing task entrusted to them only if they “know
how to overcome in themselves the separation of Gospel from life, to take
up in their daily activities in family, work, and society, an integrated
approach to life that is fully brought about by the inspiration and strength
of the Gospel” (ibid. no. 34).They must open their doors, their hearts, to
Christ (cf. ibid.) and “Put out into the deep for a catch!!!—duc in altum”
(the major theme of Novo Millennio Adveniente). They must encounter
Christ and “put on Christ.” And this leads us to consider the nature of
Catholic moral life and its relationship to the “new evangelization” and,
in particular, the indispensable role of laypeople in this ecclesial task.
II. Catholic Moral Life in Light of Veritatis Splendor
and Its Relationship to the New Evangelization
1. Catholic Moral Life in Light of Veritatis Splendor
John Paul II himself identified the “central theme” of Veritatis Splendor as
the “reaffirmation of the universality and immutability of the moral commandments,
particularly those which prohibit always and without exception intrinsically
evil acts” (no. 115). This reaffirmation was necessary insofar as so many of
our contemporaries, including, unfortunately, a sizable and influential
number of Catholic theologians, were claiming that norms such as those
forbidding the intentional killing of the innocent, adultery, fornication, and
the like were not absolute. According to them such norms admit “exceptions” whenever engaging in the acts they proscribe is necessary to achieve
some alleged “greater good” or to avoid some alleged “greater evil.”
John Paul II’s reaffirmation of the universally binding force of the
moral norms prohibiting intrinsically evil acts was needed; it constitutes,

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as it were, the “first word” about living an upright moral life whether or
not one is a Catholic. But this reaffirmation, as he himself makes clear in
this great document, in no way constitutes the “last word” about Catholic
moral life. It is in essence a “following” of Christ, a matter of becoming
conformed to him.
The Holy Father insists on this. Indeed, in his introduction to the
encyclical John Paul II calls attention to a truth of supreme importance
for Catholic moral life.This is the truth, central, as he reminds us, to the
teaching of Vatican Council II, that “it is only in the mystery of the Word
Incarnate that light is shed on the mystery of man. . . . It is Christ, the last
Adam, who fully discloses man to himself and unfolds his noble calling
by revealing the mystery of the Father and the Father’s love” (Veritatis
Splendor, no. 2, citing Gaudium et Spes, no. 22). Jesus, in his very person,
“fulfills” the natural law, among whose universally binding norms are the
moral absolutes whose “reaffirmation” was the “central theme” of the
encyclical. Jesus does so by bringing the natural law to perfection and
revealing to man his noble calling. Thus to live a Catholic moral life
means to follow Christ; it is a “sequela Christi.” “Following Christ,” John
Paul writes, “is the essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality,”
and following him involves “holding fast to the very person of Jesus” (no. 19).
It means “becoming conformed to him who became a servant even to giving
himself on the cross (cf. Phil. 2:5–8) (no. 21).
But how do we become conformed to Christ; how do we hold fast to
his very person? One requirement is that we are to keep his commandments, and first of all the precepts of the Decalogue. John Paul II emphasizes that the “different commandments of the Decalogue are really only so
many reflections on the one commandment about the good of the person,
at the level of the many different goods which characterize his identity as
a spiritual and bodily being in relationship with God, with his neighbor,
and with the material world” (no. 13). Indeed, “the commandments of
which Jesus reminds the young man [who asks him what he must do to
gain eternal life] are meant to safeguard the good of the person, the image
of God, by protecting his goods. . . .The commandments thus represent the
basic condition for love of neighbor, at the same time they are proof of that
love. They are the first necessary step on the journey to freedom” (no. 13).2
The commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves, which is at the
heart of the precepts of the Decalogue, had been given to the Chosen
2 Here John Paul II simply articulates accurately the Catholic tradition as found in

the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, who centuries ago emphasized that “God is
offended by us only because we act contrary to our own good” (Summa contra
Gentiles, 3.122).

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People of old (cf. Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18). But, as the Holy Father reminds
us, Jesus has given us a new commandment.We are to love one another
as Jesus, who gave himself for us on the cross, loves us (cf. Jn 15:12) (no. 20).
Commenting on this new commandment, the Pope writes:“Jesus’ way of
acting and his words, his deeds and his precepts constitute the moral rule
of Christian life. Indeed, his actions, and in particular his Passion and
Death on the Cross, are the living revelation of his love for the Father and
for others.This is exactly the love that Jesus wishes to be imitated by all
who follow him. . . . Jesus asks of everyone who wishes to follow him:‘If
any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross
and follow me’ ”(Mt 16:24) (no. 20).
Moreover, the vocation to perfect love “is not,” the Pope declares,
“restricted to a small group. . . . The invitation,‘go, sell your possessions and
give the money to the poor,’ and the promise, ‘you will have treasure in
heaven,’ are meant for everyone, because they bring out the full meaning of
the commandment of love of neighbor, just as the invitation which
follows, ‘Come, follow me,’ is the new, specific form of the commandment of love of God” (no. 18).
John Paul II also underscores the truth that to follow Jesus and to love
even as he has loved us by giving himself for us on the cross requires us to
shape our lives in light of Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount and of the
Beatitudes found in it. The Holy Father, following an ancient Christian
tradition,3 declares that the Sermon on the Mount is the “magna charta of
Gospel morality” (no. 15). Jesus calls us to be perfect, and the Beatitudes
of the Sermon on the Mount “speak of basic attitudes and dispositions in
life.” The Beatitudes are “promises from which there also indirectly flow
normative indications for the moral life. In their originality and profundity
they are a sort of self-portrait of Christ, and for this very reason are invitations to discipleship and to communion of life with Christ” (no. 16).
The Beatitudes, consequently, are not optional for the Christian.They
describe the dispositions and attitudes that ought to characterize followers of Christ.The Beatitudes, rooted in the new command to love as Jesus
loves, can be considered, as Germain Grisez has proposed, “modes of
Christian response.” They designate characteristics of Christians that
inwardly dispose them to do only what is pleasing to the Father. They
specify ways of acting that mark a person whose will, enlivened by the
3 See, for instance, St. Augustine, The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, I, 1; trans. John J.

Jepson, SS, in Ancient Christian Writers, No. 5 (Westminster, MD: Newman Press,
1948), 18–21. On the Sermon on the Mount as the magna charta of Christian ethics
see Servais Pinckaers, OP, The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sister Mary Noble,
OP (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 134–67.

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love of God poured into his or her heart, is connaturally inclined to act
with confidence, born of his or her Christian hope, that complete human
fulfillment is realizable because of Christ’s redemptive work.4
In considering Catholic moral life as a following of Christ John Paul II
also shows the paramount importance of the Christian’s baptismal commitment for that life. He reflects on this commitment in the section of Veritatis Splendor where he shows the fallacious reasoning of those who deny
that we determine ourselves through our freely chosen actions and claim
that we do so through an alleged act of “basic” or “fundamental” option
at the core of the person different from and other than free choice. The
Holy Father rightly repudiates this erroneous view; it has been responsible for the denial that one always commits mortal sin if one freely chooses
to do what one knows to be gravely evil, for example, killing innocent
persons, committing adultery, and similar deeds. However, he takes care to
note that “[E]mphasis has rightly been placed on the importance of
certain choices which ‘shape’ a person’s entire moral life, and which serve
as bounds within which other particular everyday choices can be situated
and allowed to develop” (no. 65). He goes on to declare:
There is no doubt that Christian moral teaching, even in its biblical
roots, acknowledges the specific importance of a fundamental choice
which qualifies the moral life and engages freedom on a radical level
before God. It is a question of the decision of faith, of the obedience of
faith (cf. Rom 16:26) “by which man makes a total and free selfcommitment to God, offering ‘the full submission of intellect and will
to God as his reveals.’ ” This faith, which works through love (cf. Gal
5:6) comes from the core of man, from his “heart” (cf. Rom 10:10),
whence it is called to bear fruit in works (cf. Mt 12:33–35; Lk 6:43–45;
Rom 8:5–10; Gal 5:22) (no. 66; internal citations from Vatican II, Dei
Verbum, no. 5 which in turn cites Vatican I, Dei Filius, Chap. 3; DS 3008).

Here the Holy Father is referring to our baptismal commitment, to our
free choice (made for most of us in our name by our godparents and reaffirmed at various times in our lives, for instance, during the Easter vigil
service) to renounce Satan and to follow Christ, to be Christians, that is, to
be other Christs in the world.
This baptismal commitment is the fundamental choice or option of
the Christian. In and through this choice, which henceforth “shapes the
Christian’s entire moral life and serves as the framework within which
other particular everyday choices can be situated and allowed to develop”
4 See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, Vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles

(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), 627–59.

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(Veritatis Splendor, no. 65), Christians freely take on the task and honor of
sharing in Christ’s redemptive work; through it they commit themselves
to complete, in their own flesh,“what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for
the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Col 1:24).5
Speaking of baptism and Christian life elsewhere, John Paul II declared:
It is no exaggeration to say that the entire existence of the lay faithful
has as its purpose to lead a person to a knowledge of the radical
newness of the Christian life that comes from Baptism, the sacrament
of faith, so that this knowledge can help that person live the responsibilities which arise from that vocation received from God. . . . Baptism
regenerates us in the life of the Son of God, unites us to Christ and to his body,
the Church, and anoints us with the Holy Spirit, making us spiritual temples
(Christifideles Laici, no. 10).

2.The Relationship Between Catholic Moral Life
and the New Evangelization
As we have seen, Catholic moral life is in essence a following of Christ,
of inwardly conforming oneself to Christ, of committing oneself to be as
perfect as the heavenly Father is perfect and to love even as Jesus loves us.
It is a call to holiness, and this call is addressed to all Christians. Here I will
focus on Catholic moral life and its call to holiness and to the indispensable role that Catholic laypeople are called upon to play in the work of
the new evangelization.
John Paul II addresses this issue at greatest length in his 1988 apostolic
exhortation, Christifideles Laici.There he emphasizes that the call to holiness, so eloquently expressed at Vatican Council II (see Lumen Gentium,
no. 31 and nos. 39–42, and Apostolicam Actuositatem), is addressed to
laypeople as well as to clergy and religious. Holiness is in fact “their
fundamental vocation,” and it “is not a simple moral exhortation but is
an undeniable requirement arising from the very mystery of the Church . . .” (no.
16). The lay vocation to holiness “expresses itself in a particular way in
their involvement in temporal affairs and in their participation in earthly activities” (no. 17).This is so because “the ‘world’ . . . [is] the place and means for
the lay faithful to fulfill their Christian vocation.” Reminding laypeople of the
teaching of Vatican Council II, John Paul II says:
He [God] entrusts a vocation to them [the lay faithful] that properly
concerns their situation in the world.The lay faithful, in fact, [as Vatican
Council II affirmed] “are called by God so that they, led by the spirit of
5 For a masterful development of these ideas, see ibid., 551–71.

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the gospel, might contribute to the sanctification of the world, as from
within like leaven, by fulfilling their own proper duties.Thus, especially
in this way of life, resplendent in faith, hope, and charity, they manifest
Christ to others:” Thus for the lay faithful, to be present and active in
the world is . . . in a specific way a theological and ecclesiological reality as well. In fact, in their situation in the world God manifests his plan
and communicates to them their particular vocation of seeking the
Kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and ordering them
according to the plan of God (no. 15, citing Lumen Gentium, no. 31).

The “world” in which laypeople are summoned to find holiness and
to evangelize is well described by Paul VI in Evangelium Nuntiandi, and
John Paul II cites him at length in Christifideles Laici. Paul had said that
this world is:
the vast and complicated world of politics, society and economics, as
well as the world of culture, of the sciences and the arts, of international
life, of the mass media. It also includes other realities which are open to
evangelization, such as human love, the family, the education of children
and adolescents, professional work, and suffering. The more Gospelinspired laypeople there are engaged in these realities, clearly involved in
them, competent to promote them and conscious that they must exercise to the full their Christian powers which are often repressed and
buried, the more these realities will be at the service of salvation in Jesus
Christ, without in any way losing or sacrificing their human content but
rather pointing to a transcendent dimension which is often disregarded
(Evangelium Nuntiandi, no. 70; cited in Christifideles Laici, no. 23).

It is thus in the “world” that laypeople are called on to share in the ecclesial work of evangelization or rather, in view of the rendering of the
“Christian fabric of society” (cf. Christifideles Laici, no. 34), of re-evangelization or of a new evangelization. Here the major responsibility of the
lay faithful is “to testify how the Christian faith constitutes the only fully
valid response . . . to the problems and hopes that life poses to every
person and society” (no. 34). As we have seen, if the lay faithful are to do
this work entrusted to them they must live a Catholic moral life and be
holy. For “holiness must be called a fundamental presupposition and an
irreplaceable condition for everyone in fulfilling the mission of salvation
within the Church” (no. 17).6
6 I have developed the role of laypeople in evangelization in my essay,“Evangeliza-

tion: The Apostolate and the Personal Vocation of Laymen and Women,” in The
Church’s Mission of Evangelization: Essays in Honor of the Most Reverend Agostino
Cacciavillan, ed. William E. May (Steubenville, OH: Franciscan University, 1996),
265–86.

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III. The Indispensable Role of the Christian Family
in the New Evangelization
John Paul II addressed the indispensable role of the Christian family most
fully in one of his earliest apostolic exhortations, namely in Familiaris
Consortio, promulgated on November 22, 1981. John Paul II himself identified this document as a “summa of the teaching of the Church on the
life, the tasks, the responsibilities, and the mission of marriage and of the
family in the world today.”7
The third and longest part of this document considers in depth the
“role of the Christian family in the world today,” and it contains four
major sections: (1) building a community of persons; (2) serving life; (3)
participating in the development of society; and (4) sharing in the life and
mission of the Church.The fourth section, in which John Paul develops
magnificently the idea of the Christian family as the “domestic church,”
contains three subsections, devoted to (1) the family as a believing and
evangelizing community—its prophetic role; (2) the family as a community in dialogue with God—its priestly role; and (3) the family as a
community at the service of man—its kingly role. Of these subsections
the one immediately relevant to our concerns is the first, devoted to the
Christian family as a believing and evangelizing community.
The Christian family shares in Christ’s prophetic mission “by welcoming and announcing the word of God” (no. 51).Thus the first requirement
of Christian spouses and parents is faith, because “only in faith can they
discover and admire with joyful gratitude the dignity to which God has
deigned to raise marriage and the family, making them a sign and meeting
place of the loving covenant between God and man, between Jesus Christ
and his bride, the Church” (no. 51). The driving force of the Christian
family is the love specific to spouses, but Christian spouses know through
faith that their love is a sign and real participation in the love of God and
in his redemptive power. God, who through faith “called the couple to
marriage, continues to call them in marriage” (no. 51).“In and through the
events, problems, difficulties, and circumstances of everyday life, God comes
to them, revealing and presenting the concrete ‘demands’ of their sharing
in the love of Christ for his Church in the particular family, social, and
ecclesial situation in which they find themselves” (no. 51).
Faith thus heard and experienced in love makes the Christian family
a fire that sheds its light on many other families (cf. no. 52). This
prophetic mission of the family, John Paul II emphasizes, is the dynamic
7 John Paul II,Address of December 22, 1981, in which the Pope presented the new

apostolic exhortation.

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expression of its inner identity; the family carries this mission out by
being faithful to its own proper being as a community of life and love:
The “apostolic mission of the family is rooted in baptism and receives
from the grace of the sacrament of marriage new strength to transmit the
faith, to sanctify and transform our present society according to God’s
plan” (no. 52).
The Pope notes two characteristics of the prophetic apostolate of the
family. First of all, it is exercised within the family itself by encouraging
and helping family members to live fully their Christian vocation.Wisely,
the Holy Father notes that “just as in the Church the work of evangelization can never be separated from the sufferings of the apostle, so in
the Christian family parents must face with courage and great interior
serenity the difficulties that their ministry of evangelization sometimes
encounters in their own children” (no. 53). In addition, this prophetic and
evangelizing apostolate, begun within the family itself, includes the “task
of defending and spreading the faith, a task that has its roots in baptism
and confirmation, and makes Christian married couples and parents
witnesses of Christ ‘to the ends of the earth,’ missionaries, in the true and
proper sense, of love and life” (no. 54). One form of this missionary activity, John Paul II observes, “can be exercised even within the family.This
happens when some member of the family does not have the faith or
does not practice it with consistency. In such a case the other members
must give him or her a living witness of their own faith in order to
encourage and support him or her along the path toward full acceptance
of Christ the Savior” (no. 54).
This, then, is the evangelizing role John Paul II assigns to the Christian family.
IV. Conclusion
There is an intimate bond between Catholic moral life, understood as a
sequela Christi, a call to holiness, and a summons to be faithful to our
baptismal commitment and the work of the “new evangelization.”
Laypeople in particular have the sacred mission of bringing the truth and
good news of Jesus’ saving death and resurrection to the secular world in
which they live their lives.They are called to be “other Christs,” to be his
vicarious representatives in the world of everyday life. If they are true to
their call they will indeed be a “light to the nations,” people who bring
others Jesus’ own self-giving love.

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403

Revisiting the Biblical Renewal of Moral Theology
in Light of Veritatis Splendor
W ILLIAM F. M URPHY, J R .
St. Charles Borromeo Seminary
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I. Introduction
A S THE NEO -T HOMISTIC revival lost momentum in the 1950s,
a growing number of Catholic thinkers had been persuaded by those
who emphasized a “return to the sources” that a more rigorous philosophical development of the Thomistic tradition, broadly speaking,
should not be at the forefront of the Church’s intellectual response to the
challenges presented by modern thought. Instead, many were convinced
that the mysteries of the faith would be most appealing when presented
through a rich array of primarily biblical language and images. On the
other hand, John XXIII and Paul VI insisted that the Second Vatican
Council must uphold the doctrinal and moral tradition, expressed especially in the conceptual formulations of Thomism.1
In moral theology there was growing dissatisfaction with the predominant emphasis on natural law and casuistry, and with the lack of integration with Scripture, the sacraments, and the spiritual life. Following the
enthusiastic response to the more ample reference to Scripture in Bernard
1 Here I cite footnote 100 of Veritatis Splendor, as it makes my point precisely.“The

words spoken by John XXIII at the opening of the Second Vatican Council can
also be applied to moral doctrine: ‘This certain and unchanging teaching (i.e.,
Christian doctrine in its completeness), to which the faithful owe obedience,
needs to be more deeply understood and set forth in a way adapted to the needs
of our time. Indeed, this deposit of the faith, the truths contained in our timehonored teaching, is one thing; the manner in which these truths are set forth
(with their meaning preserved intact) is something else’: AAS 54 (1962), 792; cf.
L’Osservatore Romano, October 12, 1962, 2.”

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Häring’s The Law of Christ, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council
issued their oft-cited call for a biblical renewal of moral theology.2 In the
post-conciliar era, various efforts have been made toward fulfilling this
mandate; however, none of these have been successful in combining a
credible and compelling biblical vision of the Christian life with a moral
philosophy adequate to the Catholic tradition.
In this essay, I will focus primarily on offering an explanation of why
this mandate has yet to be fulfilled, following the principle that a problem
properly defined is half-solved. On this basis, I will argue that Veritatis
Splendor not only encourages us to take up again the mandate of the
Second Vatican Council for this biblical renewal of moral theology, but
also gives several helpful indications of how this might be done. I will
proceed in three steps. First, I will briefly sketch the decisive characteristics of the theological and philosophical context in which early efforts
toward this renewal were attempted. Second, I will highlight some of the
most influential developments in Catholic moral theology between the
Council and the encyclical, offering a preliminary assessment of the extent
to which these efforts can be considered an authentic biblical renewal of
the discipline.Third, I will summarize how Veritatis Splendor, read in light
of John Paul’s basic theological approach, both encourages a recommitment to conciliar mandate and exemplifies how it might be fulfilled.
II. The Post-Conciliar Theological and Philosophical Context
Early efforts toward the biblical renewal of moral theology were heavily
influenced by the theological and philosophical context in which they
took place. Whereas various forms of what John McDermott has called
“conceptual Thomism”3 had formed the backbone of Catholic theology
2 The primary text is from the decree on the formation of priests: “Special atten-

tion needs to be given to the development of moral theology. Its scientific exposition should be more thoroughly nourished by scriptural teaching.” Note that
this reference to the renewal of moral theology follows a more general discussion of a renewal of theology, in which Scripture is first treated as the animating
principle of theology, followed by a study of the Fathers and the broader historical development, giving special attention to the Thomistic synthesis. See Austin
Flannery, ed., “Optatum totius,” in Vatican Council II: the Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (North Port, NY: Costello Publishing Co., 1975), Chap. 5, §16.
3 For the notion of “conceptual Thomism,” and the following characterization of
the shift from it to “transcendental Thomism,” I am following the work of John
M. McDermott, SJ, because it offers a particularly thoughtful analysis of postconciliar intellectual climate, including the place of John Paul II’s thought within
it.This is an important area needing further research, and I plan to offer a more
extended discussion in a forthcoming book that expands upon the present article. For a more adequate presentation of McDermott’s work on this “shift,” see

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and philosophy since the Council of Trent, especially during the neoThomistic revival, the period following Vatican II was marked by a widespread shift to “transcendental Thomism.” Among other characteristics,
this “conceptual Thomism” had been distinguished by a confidence in
the ability of Thomistic concepts and propositional formulations to attain
to the truth of things.4
This first part will proceed in four major steps: (1) we will trace the
shift from conceptual Thomism to transcendental Thomism;5 (2) we will
summarize several of the ways that transcendental Thomism impacts
moral theology; (3) we will briefly survey some ways in which the
embrace of historical-critical methods of Scripture study impacts efforts
his “The Methodological Shift in Twentieth Century Thomism,” Seminarium 31
(1991): 245–66, and the many references cited therein and below. More generally,
the approach one takes to the renewal of moral theology is heavily dependent
upon the narrative framework within which one interprets not only the history
of moral theology, but also the history of the Thomistic intellectual tradition.
4 For example, some of the most important of these Aristotelian/Thomistic
“concepts” pertaining to the articulation of Catholic doctrine include nature,
person, substance, accident, form, matter, essence, and existence. For the sake of
precision we should note that, strictly speaking, Thomism distinguishes between
the internal “concept” as “the natural, formal and imaging sign” and the corresponding “term” (a written or spoken word), understood as the external, “artificial, instrumental and non-imaging sign of the concept.” Thus, my examples are
really “terms,” which are understood to correspond to concepts in our minds. See
William A.Wallace, The Elements of Philosophy: A Compendium for Philosophers and
Theologians (New York: Alba House, 1977), 15–16. Most philosophical traditions
hold for the existence of concepts, or mental entities as the internal signification
of our words. But for a provocative rejection of the very existence of such mental
entities, see Robert Sokolowski, “Exorcising Concepts,” Review of Metaphysics 40
(1989): 451–63.This topic also requires a more extended discussion.
5 In what follows, I will offer descriptive, sometimes sympathetic and sometimes
critical comments regarding transcendental Thomism.While open to draw useful
insights from this school, my position is closer to Avery Dulles’s “postcritical
theology,” to the example of John Paul II, to Aquinas himself, and perhaps to
many associated with what McDermott calls conceptual Thomism. Dulles
summarizes that “Insofar as [transcendental Thomism] retains its Thomistic inspiration, it is unquestionably viable. But to the extent that it borrows from transcendental idealism, it remains contestable.” See his The Craft of Theology: From
Symbol to System (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 132 and also 124. It seems to me
that, when one adopts a “modern/critical” bias toward revising traditional
conceptual and propositional formulations of doctrinal and moral teachings as
opposed to a post-critical respect for them as bearing tacit knowledge and mediating true judgments, one has conceded too much to a highly deficient modern
epistemology. Further clarification and broader consensus on this point is crucial
to the renewal of Catholic theology. For a study of the important but neglected
dialogue between Jacques Maritain and J. Maréchal on this topic, see Ronald

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toward a biblical renewal of moral theology; and (4) we will note how
the centrality of the debate over sexual ethics diverts attention from a
biblical renewal of moral theology.
Tracing the Shift from Conceptual to Transcendental Thomism
Transcendental Thomism shares common roots with mid-century
nouvelle théologie in the work of the Jesuits Pierre Rousselot and Joseph
Maréchal.6 These thinkers sought to show that Aquinas offered a better
framework within which to appropriate certain insights of modern
philosophy than the various post-Kantian alternatives.
This school of thought is built upon Rousselot’s recovery and elucidation of Aquinas’s distinction between intellectus, or understanding, and
ratio, or reason.7 Following this distinction, the prime analog for intellectus, and knowledge in general, is the divine mind, or God’s knowledge of
all things through a simple act of understanding. The human intellect is
understood primarily in light of its orientation and underlying dynamism
toward fulfillment in the perfect knowledge of beatific vision; indeed, this
dynamism was considered so fundamental that each earthly act of human
knowing was understood to include an implicit knowledge of God.
However, because of its limited character as intellectus imperfectus, human
knowing involves both intellectus and ratio, with reason working to
remedy our defects in understanding.8 This foundational element of transcendental Thomism is widely accepted today, even by scholars who stick
McCamy, Out of a Kantian Chrysalis?:A Maritainian Critique of Fr. Maréchal (New
York: Peter Lang, 1998). For a recent rejection of any basis for transcendental
Thomism in Aquinas, see John F. X. Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century
Thomists, 1st ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003).
6 For this section, I have benefited from John A. Gallagher’s Time Past,Time Future:An
Historical Study of Catholic Moral Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 140–61.
7 See his L’ intellectualisme de saint Thomas (Paris: Beauchesne, 1909), ET: The Intellectualism of St.Thomas, trans. James E. O’Mahoney, OFM Cap (New York: Sheed
& Ward, 1935). Joseph Maréchal is the other major figure in the early development of transcendental Thomism. As evident in the previously cited work by
McCamy, traditional Thomists saw these thinkers as Kantians and predicted their
movement would lead to problematic theological consequences. For a careful
analysis of this question, granting various modern insights while rejecting a
strong transcendentalism and the resulting revisionism, see the works of John M.
McDermott, SJ, starting with his Love and Understanding:The Relation of Will and
Intellect in Pierre Rousselot’s Christological Vision (Rome: Universita Gregoriana
Editrice, 1983). For our present purposes, McDermott’s reading is helpful as it
parallels John Paul II’s theological approach.
8 Here I borrow from the more detailed discussion in my “Martin Rhonheimer’s
Natural Law and Practical Reason,” Sapientia 56 (2001): 533–34.

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more closely to Aquinas such as Servais Pinckaers. Indeed, Bernard
Lonergan and others have argued forcefully that the conceptualists were
closer to Scotus than Aquinas in their overemphasis on the concept and
corresponding neglect of the act of understanding.9
Early advocates of this distinction between intellectus and ratio not only
pointed to its textual basis in the Angelic Doctor’s teaching, but also
argued that it merited greater contemporary development to purify
Thomistic thought from the influences of enlightenment rationalism,
with its exaggerated confidence in human reason. Similarly, they saw a
greater appreciation for this distinction as providing a better account of
human knowledge of the divine mysteries; these, they would argue, are
initially grasped intuitively through intellectus, and then more discursively,
though imperfectly, through a reasoning (ratio) that makes use of concepts
and rational explication, leading to a deeper understanding. Moreover, this
basic approach of affirming the mysterious depths of theological realities,
claiming a real but limited grasp of them through a knowledge that is
initially more intuitive, and then allowing for a deeper grasp of their intelligibility through reason and conceptual formulations, offered a promising
framework for addressing the question of the development of doctrine.10
Perhaps more importantly, advocates saw in this epistemological
distinction between intellectus and ratio a path toward the reintegration of
the Thomistic tradition with its biblical, patristic, and spiritual roots.11
9 Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. David Burrell (Notre

Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967). Knasas, on the other hand,
rejects this a priori emphasis on an intellectual dynamism and argues for a
retrieval of the neo-Thomistic a posteriori emphasis on sensation as the basic
access to reality. See his Being, 285–313. It is a positive sign for Thomistic thought
that these central questions are getting the attention they deserve.
10 For example, whereas the magisterial declarations of Marian dogmas might be
explained as deductions from previous doctrinal propositions according to the
methodology of conceptual Thomism, this framework would treat them as a
further unpacking of something implicit in the mystery of Christ.
11 The recovery of this dimension of Thomistic thought facilitated the appropriation of various useful insights from modern philosophy. For example, it helped
Catholic scholars to accommodate something of Heidegger’s emphases on the
importance of implicit knowledge over explicit, on the importance of an
involved, practical viewpoint over detachment and objectivity, on the social
dimension of knowing over methodological individualism, and on the importance of holistic perspectives over a mere multiplication of distinctions.This parallels Avery Dulles’s characteristics of a post-critical philosophy. See his Craft of
Theology, 5–7. On the other hand, it is not clear to me how a more neo-Thomistic
and philosophical retrieval of Aquinas, such as that proposed by Knasas, will
address the need of Thomistic theologians to appeal to these more biblical, patristic, and postmodern sensibilities.

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William F. Murphy, Jr.

However, while recovering and emphasizing the underlying dynamic
movement of the intellect toward the fullness of truth, and thereby relativizing somewhat the epistemological status of conceptual formulations,
John M. McDermott shows that the best transcendental Thomists
acknowledged the ability of concepts and propositional statements to
attain to the truth of things in judgments.12 Put another way, just as
Aquinas maintained a careful balance between a dynamic existential
order and an Aristotelian essential order, these thinkers hoped to maintain a similar balance in the contemporary context.
Indeed, we might read the documents of the Second Vatican Council
as embodying a blending of this new emphasis with the earlier conceptual Thomism. For example, documents like Lumen Gentium utilize various biblical images to mediate the mysteries of the faith, while the
documents as a whole explicitly maintain continuity with previous
doctrinal formulations, although often in footnotes. Similarly, McDermott argues persuasively that, although there is no evidence that transcendental Thomism directly influenced Pope John Paul II, his basic
theological approach could be understood as a commonsense blending of
these two.13
On the other hand, the risks inherent in such partial movements from
traditional varieties of conceptual Thomism were clearly recognized
before the Council, and clearly proven thereafter. The most obvious
example of pre-conciliar concern was the 1950 encyclical Humani
Generis of Pius XII, which effectively halted the nouvelle théologie movement, citing concerns over a false irenicism toward modern thought and
a tendency toward dogmatic relativism.14 In this period leading to the
Council, the two thinkers who were to lead the transition to transcendental Thomism, Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan, escaped a similar
critical scrutiny in light of the encyclical, even though they followed the
fundamental shift initiated by Rousselot and Maréchal; this is perhaps
12 See his “The Context of Veritatis Splendor,” in Prophecy and Diplomacy:The Moral

Doctrine of Pope John Paul II, ed. John J. Conley, SJ and Joseph W. Koterski, SJ (New
York: Fordham University Press, 1999), 115–72.
13 See, for example, John M. McDermott, SJ, “The Theology of John Paul II: A
Response” in The Thought of John Paul II, ed. John M. McDermott, SJ (Rome:
Editrice Pontifica Universita Gregoriana, 1993), 55–68, and “The Context of
Veritatis Splendor,” 166–72. I would suggest, however, that Karol Wojtyla was
certainly exposed to the moderate accommodation of transcendental insights
through the work of Henri de Lubac. Moreover, we might say that his accommodation of certain insights from modern philosophy, without loosing the metaphysical grounding of truth claims, mirrors that of the best transcendentalists.
14 See Gallagher, Time Past,Time Future, 149–51.

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because their early works were so explicitly grounded in Thomistic
thought.15 However, the fears of doctrinal anarchy were realized in the
years following the Council, especially as Catholic thinkers engaged
more seriously with modern philosophy.16
Rahner was the most influential of the leading transcendental
Thomists, perhaps because of his focus upon particular theological questions, whereas Lonergan focused more upon methodological issues.17
Although a thorough discussion of this movement is far beyond the scope
of this essay, I think it is fair to say that transcendental Thomism can
develop in either orthodox or heterodox directions, the former generally
characterizing the great thinkers like Lonergan and Rahner, given their
deep familiarity with the tradition, and the latter more prevalent among
disciples who lack such familiarity.18 Among the latter it becomes clear
that the less one is able to affirm the truth-bearing capacity of traditional
and authoritative doctrinal and moral formulations, the more problematic for Catholic theology.19
With a growing reliance on modern philosophy and a corresponding
loss of confidence in traditional Thomistic metaphysics, this new era
dominated by transcendental Thomism led to a critical re-evaluation,
15 Ibid., 153–54.
16 By modern philosophy, I mean all philosophy following Ockham’s break with

realism up to the advent of the contemporary, postmodern, era. For those who
doubt whether a more traditional Thomistic epistemology is a serious contender
in contemporary debate, see John O’Callahan’s Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003).
17 For understanding these developed forms of transcendental Thomism, the classic
work is Otto Muck, The Transcendental Method, trans. William D. Seidensticker
(New York: Herder and Herder, 1968). For a recent introduction, see J. A. Di Noia,
OP., “Karl Rahner” in The Modern Theologians, ed. David F. Ford (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). Concise introductory remarks pertaining to moral theology can be
found in Gallagher, Time Past,Time Future, 151–58 and 207–9.
18 This is not to say that the works of Lonergan and Rahner themselves should be
exempt from critical scrutiny, especially as their thought contributes to the
subsequent departure of their disciples from the Catholic moral tradition; but the
present essay can only touch obliquely on such matters. Once again, the work of
John McDermott provides an excellent starting point for those willing to
consider developments of, and departures from, traditional Thomistic positions.
See, for example, his “Dialectical Analogy: The Oscillating Center of Rahner’s
Thought,” Gregorianum 75 (1994): 675–703; and his “Tensions in Lonergan’s
Theory of Conversion,” Gregorianum 74 (1993): 101–40.
19 At a minimum, those who wish to appropriate selected insights associated with
transcendental Thomism, in a way that does not lead to Kantian idealism, will
need a post-critical stance of deep familiarity with, and sympathy for, the traditional doctrine and practices of the Church.

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William F. Murphy, Jr.

reformulation, and revision of both the doctrinal and moral teachings
that had been expressed in these traditional concepts. Given the midcentury consensus that Western thought had embraced modern philosophy
in a definitive way, thereby rejecting Thomistic realism and metaphysics,
many concluded that Catholic theology needed to forgo traditional
metaphysics and philosophical categories and be rethought in contemporary ones.
Although one can argue that efforts to communicate the faith through
the categories of modern, and especially Kantian, philosophy have a
certain merit in cultures where such language is widespread, such strategies have proven highly problematic.20 Moreover, recent years have
witnessed a shift from the modern to the postmodern era, indicating that
the widespread embrace of modern presuppositions by Catholic thinkers
needs a critical re-evaluation. Furthermore, within the more recent postmodern context, more Christian thinkers are recognizing the dangers of
subjecting Christian theology to the epistemological criteria of modern
philosophy.21 This may be leading to a more fruitful theological context
that remains open to accommodating the legitimate insights of transcendental thought, modern philosophy, and postmodern philosophy while
retaining the crucial elements of Thomistic realism and metaphysics,
thereby upholding the doctrinal and moral tradition.22
As practiced in the post-conciliar era, transcendental Thomism is
inclined toward the ongoing reformulation of doctrines in the terminology of contemporary cultures, presupposing these cultures are something
to which the faith needs to accommodate itself.This basic presupposition
20 Bruce Marshall observes that when Christian doctrine has conflicted with the

perspective of modern philosophy, the general approach of modern theology has
been to reinterpret even the most central Christian claims to meet the epistemic
standards of modernity. See his Trinity and Truth, Cambridge Studies in Christian
Doctrine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 4.
21 I deal at some length with the problematic relationship between modern philosophy and Christian theology in my “Towards a Postcritical Recovery of the New
Testament Foundations of Christian Ethics: A Catholic, Evangelical and
Thomistic Narrative,” Pro Ecclesia 12 (2003): 261–86.
22 From our postmodern perspective, we can suggest several factors that indicate
whether a scholar achieves the benefits promised by such developments of the
Thomistic tradition, or whether they necessarily lead to the doctrinal anarchy of
the post-conciliar era. For example, one must first have a deep familiarity with
the tradition. Second, in marked contrast to the modern distrust of tradition, one
must have a sympathy toward it, treasuring it as a vehicle through which God
discloses to us knowledge of himself and the divine plan of salvation.Third, one
must affirm the ability of past and present conceptual formulations to mediate
true, albeit limited, judgments.

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of much post-conciliar thought is now receiving the level of critical
scrutiny that it deserves. As Tracy Rowland has argued forcefully, the
treatment of culture in Gaudium et Spes is ambiguous and, if interpreted
through the metaphor of “opening the windows” instead of through the
Christocentric theological anthropology of No. 22, is highly problematic.23 Indeed, the first reading ignores all the significant pre-conciliar
scholarship on culture, including that of Romano Guardini, Hans Urs
van Balthasar, and others who insist that culture is inseparable from religious presuppositions (i.e., cultus). If the document is read in this first way,
culture appears as an autonomous, theologically neutral reality, and something to which the Church must accommodate itself, assuming modern
persons are fundamentally products of secular modern culture. However,
leading contemporary thinkers like Alasdair MacIntyre have offered
powerful analyses of modern culture, emphasizing how it works against
an understanding of human flourishing through growth in the Christian
virtues. Moreover, other scholars like von Balthasar, and David Schindler
following his lead, argue that the culture of modernity, because of its antitheological bias, is unable to mediate the transcendentals of goodness,
truth, and beauty, which disclose the supernatural destiny of human
persons. In light of these growing critiques, the Church needs to be more
critical in its accommodation to modernity.
The Impact of Transcendental Thomism on Moral Theology
Following upon the more general philosophical and methodological
shifts indicated above, the widespread adoption of strong forms of transcendental Thomism had profound implications for moral theology.
Because of its emphasis on the dynamism of the mind toward the fullness
of truth in an intuitive vision of God, transcendental Thomism tends to
relativize internal mental concepts, the external terms corresponding to
them, the propositional statements through which doctrines are articulated, and the judgments corresponding to them.
Similarly, in light of the prevailing preference for a unified, intuitive
perspective over divisions and concepts, this transcendentalism tends to
dissolve various distinctions deemed essential in traditional moral theology and philosophy.These would include the distinctions between intellect and will, matter and form, subject and object, love of God and love
of neighbor, and the natural and supernatural orders. I would agree that
there are many reasons to prefer more unified perspectives, especially in
23 See Tracey Rowland, Culture and the Thomist Tradition after Vatican II (London:

Routledge, 2003).

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theology.24 For example, rather than continuing the common Thomistic
practice of speaking as if faculties like the intellect and the will act on
their own, it is better to adopt a personalistic perspective following
Thomas’s affirmation, however occasional, that “actions are of the
person.” However, such a shift of emphasis need not come at the cost of
rejecting useful distinctions, such as that between the intellect and the
will as in the present example, or any of the others mentioned above.
Similarly, an emphasis on a more unified perspective on knowledge,
which recognizes that the fullness of human knowing comes in the
beatific vision, need not come at the cost of denying the ability to make
judgments that attain to the truth of things through concepts and propositional formulations. Just as Thomas did not hesitate to multiply distinctions within his Summa to allow for more fine-grained moral analysis, we
should not hesitate to do the same, rejecting an extreme transcendentalism that would have us dismiss conceptual formulations and distinctions
that are of great use to moral theology and philosophy.25
Besides the general tendency to distrust or revise classical distinctions,
concepts, and doctrinal formulations, post-conciliar transcendental
Thomists, associated especially with Karl Rahner, introduced and advanced
several notions that were to have great and often problematic implications
for moral theology.26 Prominent among these is the programmatic distinc24 For example, in contrast to the scholastic principle of distinguishing in order to

unite, ressourcement theologian Henri de Lubac emphasizes the unity of revelation, theology, and Christian life around an all-inclusive interpretation of the
Pauline notion of “the Mystery of Christ.” Von Balthasar observes that this
notion is chosen based on a philosophical decision that the “power of inclusion
that becomes the chief criterion of truth.” See Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac: An Overview (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 28–29.
We might also note that, although more difficult to defend on biblical grounds,
the notion of “nuptiality” can function similarly in Balthasarian thought.
25 Indeed, making distinctions has been, and should remain, central to philosophy.
Although he is a phenomenologist and not a Thomist, see Robert Sokolowski’s
“The Method of Philosophy: Making Distinctions,” Review of Metaphysics 51
(1998): 515–32.
26 My point here is not to give an adequate account of these complex notions in
their native contexts, but simply to identify them in a simplified form and indicate how they follow from transcendental Thomism and contribute to the crisis
in moral theology that Veritatis Splendor attempts to address.The enormous and
highly problematic influence of Karl Rahner on post-conciliar moral theology
will be discussed briefly below. The extent of this influence is noted in recent
histories of moral theology including that of Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor, Moral
Theology in an Age of Renewal: A Study of the Catholic Tradition Since Vatican II
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 85–98, and Gallagher,
Time Past,Time Future, 152–58 and 207–9.

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tion between the “transcendental level,” pertaining to salvation, and the
“categorical level” pertaining to particular acts. Building upon this distinction, revisionists articulated the theory of a “fundamental option” for God,
which occurs solely at the transcendental level, beyond the categorical
realm of free and conscious choice. Because this transcendental notion of
the fundamental option cannot be overridden by particular sinful acts, the
traditional notion of mortal sin is rendered obsolete and the salvific relevance of moral action obfuscated. Building further on this understanding
of the fundamental option, and rejecting the distinction between nature
and grace to affirm their continuity, the theory of the “anonymous Christian” seeks to explain how those outside the visible Church are saved.
Despite certain merits, this theory tends toward the presupposition of
universal salvation and, in practice, has undermined not only evangelical
preaching but also the call to moral conversion.
In summary, the recovery of Aquinas’s distinction between intellectus
and ratio, which marked the beginning of transcendental Thomism, offers
many benefits including a more adequate theory of cognition, the ability
to accommodate valuable insights from modern philosophy, and a framework congenial to the retrieval of more biblical and patristic perspectives.
However, it is crucial to guard against an extreme transcendentalism that
denies the ability of traditional concepts and propositional statements to
mediate true, albeit limited, judgments.
The Unfinished Appropriation of Historical-Critical Methods
Associated with the widespread appropriation of transcendental and critical philosophy within Catholic theology, the post-conciliar era is also
marked by the great attention given the question of historicity.27 This
corresponds to the wholehearted embrace of historical-critical methods,
especially in the study of Scripture, resulting in unquestionable gains in
understanding the sacred texts themselves, along with unprecedented
challenges in grasping their theological relevance.
The main challenge following this embrace of historical-critical studies can be seen by recalling the Second Vatican Council’s Dei Verbum no.
12, on the interpretation of Scripture. In stark contrast to biblical studies
27 For a thoughtful discussion of this topic in post-conciliar Catholicism, see Philip

Gleason,“History, Historical Consciousness and Present-Mindedness,” in Keeping
the Faith: American Catholicism, Past and Present (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1987), 202–25. For a good overview of the growing contemporary literature regarding the debate over the epistemological status of historical
knowledge, see Mark Noll’s series on the “History Wars” in Books and Culture.

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in the post-conciliar era, this decisive paragraph from the Dogmatic
Constitution on Divine Revelation gave about the same amount of attention
to the question of how historical-critical exegesis pertains to the theological tradition as to the utilization of historical methods. In other
words, Catholic biblical scholars, while embracing the historical-critical
methods developed primarily through liberal Protestantism, have almost
completely neglected the more challenging task of interpreting Scripture
in light of the theological tradition.28 Thus, for example, while gaining a
wealth of historical information about various biblical writings, Catholicism has struggled with what Hans Frei called “the eclipse of biblical
narrative,”29 the widespread loss of an understanding of the Bible as a
unified story of salvation in Christ.30 Similarly, Catholic scholarship has
yet to recover a sacramental understanding of the Scriptures, and instead
continues to read them with nominalist presuppositions, intentionally
restricting attention to the text itself, and not the theological realities
mediated by the text. Fortunately, more recent scholarship is beginning
to focus attention on more theological readings of Scripture, in light of
tradition, while giving increasing attention to philosophical issues.31
While this bodes well for the future, it also helps explain why it has been
difficult to renew moral theology in light of Scripture.
28 For an initial discussion of this neglected dimension of Dei Verbum, emphasizing

how such elements as an adequate philosophy and a recovery of the spiritual
understanding of Scripture can help, see Francis Martin’s “Vatican II and the
Holiness of the Church: A Contribution of Dei Verbum,” forthcoming in Called
to Holiness and Communion, Proceedings of the November 2003 conference at
the Sacred Heart Major Seminary of Detroit.
29 See Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative:A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1974). Frei traces
how this eclipse plagues liberal Protestantism with the acceptance of historicalcritical methods. We should notice how post-conciliar Catholicism, unfortunately, recapitulates in many ways the experience of liberal Protestantism.
30 For efforts to recover such a unified reading of the Bible, see W. T. Dickens, Hans
Urs Von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics: A Model for Post-Critical Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003). See Donald
Keefe, SJ, Covenantal Theology: The Eucharistic Order of History, 2 vols. (Lanham,
MD: University Press of America, 1991).
31 See, for example, Thomas F. Torrance, Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic
Hermeneutics (Edinburgh:T & T Clark, 1996); Joel B. Green and Max Turner, eds.,
Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology,Two
Horizons (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000); Luke Timothy Johnson and
William S. Kurz, SJ, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive
Conversation, 1st ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002); and the new “The
Bible in its Tradition” project of the École Biblique.

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Centrality of the Debate over Sexual Ethics
After remaining somewhat in the background before the Council, the
deep divisions over contraception became evident during conciliar deliberations, foreshadowing what some have described as a “schism” in
Catholic moral theology.32 Soon after the Council, the movement to
reject the norm against contraception was broadened to include a revision of traditional sexual norms in general, as exemplified in the 1977
document Human Sexuality, published under the auspices of the Catholic
Theological Society of America and edited by Anthony Kosnick.33 Three
points regarding this controversy are relevant to our study: First, postconciliar efforts toward the renewal of moral theology took place in the
context of an unprecedented and interminable debate between those
theologians seeking to revise traditional sexual norms and those struggling to uphold them;34 second, this context relegated efforts toward a
biblical renewal of moral theology to a secondary place, at best; third,
because a sola scriptura ethics is impossible and philosophy is essential,
even the more biblical efforts usually embodied philosophical presuppositions reflecting one side or the other of the debate on sexual ethics.
We can now summarize our reflections on the philosophical and theological context in which the first generation of efforts toward the biblical renewal of Catholic moral theology took place, from shortly before
the Council to the promulgation of Veritatis Splendor. In general, this was
an era of vigorous and unprecedented exploration. While in some ways
it brought much needed renewal, in other ways it fostered an almost
unprecedented crisis because of the radical departure from Scripture and
Tradition as interpreted in light of the Magisterium.As we have seen, the
turbulence of this era is centered on several factors: a paradigmatic shift
from conceptual to transcendental Thomism; the widespread appropriation of historical-critical methods and the still limited progress toward
determining the epistemological, theological, and moral relevance of
Scripture; and the explosive debate over whether Catholic sexual norms
should be revised to conform more closely to those of the prevailing
secular culture. Following this lengthy but necessary discussion of the
theological and philosophical context, we are ready to focus directly on
the biblical renewal of moral theology before Veritatis Splendor.
32 See, for example, Todd A. Salzman, What Are They Saying about Catholic Ethical

Method? (New York, Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2003), 3.
33 Anthony Kosnick, Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought:

A Study (New York: Paulist Press, 1977).
34 As we will discuss below, much of the motivation behind this generation of theo-

logical work comes from an effort to overturn Catholic teaching on contraception.

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III. The Biblical Renewal of Moral Theology
Prior to Veritatis Splendor
Following the conciliar mandate, Catholic moral theologians of the last
generation have clearly given more attention to Scripture than those of the
Tridentine and neo-Thomistic eras. Similarly, biblical ethicists have made
considerable progress in understanding the ethical teachings of the various
biblical writings. Moreover, in spite of the post-conciliar collapse of neoThomism,35 progress continued toward a more theological and biblical
retrieval of Aquinas, one that has borne fruit in recent years. However, as I
indicated above and will sketch below, moral theology in the period leading to the publication of Veritatis Splendor was characterized less by the
anticipated biblical renewal than by the debate between various types of
revisionists and more tradition-minded thinkers, primarily those following
the basic goods theory (BGT) of Germain Grisez and his collaborators.36
This second part will be divided into four subsections: (1) Bernard
Häring as the most biblical of the revisionists; (2) Karl Rahner and the transcendental revisionists; (3) Richard McCormick as a representative American revisionist; and (4) the biblical renewal in the basic goods theory.
Bernard Häring as the Most Biblical of Revisionists
Bernard Häring was a leading moral theologian both before and after the
Council.37 He was deeply influenced by the German Tübingen movement and therefore inclined toward Scripture and away from neoThomism, with its emphasis on the metaphysical foundations of moral
norms. As a Redemptorist priest, Häring had a deep familiarity with the
manualist tradition, and, as a gifted and circumspect German intellectual
of the mid twentieth-century, he was well-versed in the intellectual
currents of phenomenology and situation ethics. Alert to the contemporary appeal of existentialist and personalist thought, he was persuaded of
the need for Catholic moral theology to give greater attention to the
moral judgment of the person in the concrete situation as a corrective to
the predominant emphasis on nature and moral law.
35 See, for example, Gleason, Keeping the Faith, 172–77.
36 For a recent treatment of the contemporary status of this debate, which provides

a sympathetic account of revisionist developments since Veritatis Splendor, see
Salzman, Catholic Ethical Method.
37 For this section, I have drawn from especially from Gallagher’s Time Past, Time
Future, 169–76 and 204–7, and also from Häring’s The Law of Christ and his Free
and Faithful in Christ: Moral Theology for Priests and Laity, 3 vols. (Slough: St Paul
Publications, 1978). See Artur Niemira’s Religiosità e moralità: vita morale come realizzazione della fondazione cristica dell’uomo secondo B. Häring e D. Capone, Collana
Tesi Gregoriana (Roma: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2003).

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Häring’s first comprehensive work, the three-volume The Law of Christ,
was originally published in German in 1954; it was so well-received that
it initiated the replacement of the neo-Thomist manuals of moral theology. Indeed, it provided an exemplar when the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council called for a biblical renewal of the discipline. In this work,
Häring seeks explicitly to ground moral theology in Scripture rather than
in a systematic theological context. Thus, he emphasizes New Testament
themes like the invitation of Christ; the human response to Christ’s call,
conversion and the imitation of Christ; the person of Christ as the norm
and standard for Christian moral action; and the inseparability of the religious response to God and the moral life. In its biblical foundations, this
work remains an indispensable point of reference for the biblical renewal
of moral theology after half a century.38 In addition, Häring emphasized
the “new law of the gospel” and the theology of grace, as opposed to
moral law and legalism, foreshadowing a tendency that would later place
him at odds with Catholic teachings.
The crucial issue for our purposes is Häring’s underlying moral theory
or moral philosophy. He develops this through a creative synthesis of traditional Thomistic elements, though mediated through the manualist tradition, along with insights from contemporary thought. From the Thomistic
tradition he retains the natural law, though presented quite differently
from the neo-Thomists, as subordinated to the new law of the gospel.39
Although transposed to a more evangelical context, the natural law in The
Law of Christ retains some access to an objective moral order. But it will
lose this foundation in his later Free and Faithful in Christ, where it is
reduced to something more like a gentle curb on moral relativism.
Häring’s analysis of the moral act also follows the manualist tradition he
had received, treating object, intention, and circumstances. However, as the
debate surrounding Veritatis Splendor has shown, this tradition had an inadequate understanding of the all-important object of the moral act, understanding it merely at the physical or material level, and neglecting the
intellectual and volitional dimensions that make it a properly human act.40
This physicalist or naturalist understanding of the object will make the
38 For this reason and others, I would argue that his work merits renewed study by

contemporary moralists.The following paragraphs offer some preliminary reflections on his work in light of Veritatis Splendor.
39 Interestingly, this priority is also seen in Servais Pinckaers’s interpretation of
Aquinas.
40 For a defense and exposition of Veritatis Splendor on this point against the criticism of a leading revisionist, see Martin Rhonheimer, “Intentional Actions and
the Meaning of Object: A Reply to Richard McCormick,” The Thomist 59
(1995): 279–311.

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notion of an objective moral order seem contrary to a personalistic ethics.
Similarly, The Law of Christ relied upon the Thomistic and manualist traditions for an account of the virtues; but the ordering of the first volume
around the two poles of “law and conscience” reflects less a Thomistic
ordering of the moral life toward human flourishing through the growth
in virtue, than the influence of nominalism on the subsequent tradition.
In addition, Häring develops a comprehensive theory of conscience,
which although far superior to largely imprecise references to conscience
in post-conciliar ethics, foreshadows a movement toward a revision of
moral norms. This is especially true when a moral philosophy based on
an expanded notion of conscience, over a more Thomistic notion of
prudence, is combined with (1) an aversion to moral law in general—in
contrast to a more biblical understanding of law as covenantal gift; (2) an
emphasis on person over nature; (3) an emphasis on the inviolability of
conscience; and (4) an emphasis on freedom. Moreover, even Häring’s
relatively developed theory of conscience is lacking many of the elements
included in Aquinas’s notion of prudence.41 Therefore, the analysis of
moral action suffers a considerable loss of philosophical precision. More
recently, the growing recognition of this loss of precision with the widespread recourse to an expanded notion of conscience contributes to a
renewal of interest in accounts that are more Thomistic.42
The most contemporary and creative aspect of Häring’s underlying
moral philosophy was his attempt to propose a coherent account of the
modern and phenomenological notion of “value,” which he presented as
something that engages not merely the intellect, but the whole person,
emotions, intellect, and will. For Häring, value was the foundation of moral
obligation.Thus, although his theory of value was rooted ultimately in the
perception of God, it was ordered toward the practical significance of value
perceived in existential situations. His theory of value included three
components: “basic value,” perceived as an awareness of God; “types of
values” such as the virtues of charity, justice, or chastity; and “particular
41 Robert J. Smith discusses this in his Conscience and Catholicism: The Nature and

Function of Conscience in Contemporary Roman Catholic Moral Theology (Lanham,
MD: University Press of America, 1998).
42 David M. McCarthy discusses Aquinas’s more precise language as primary, or first
level philosophical discourse about ethics, that is, a set of concepts that is adequate
to the complexities of the moral life. He suggests that the expanded notion of
“conscience,” on the other hand, can be seen as a less precise way of speaking
which, although more congenial to the postmodern context, leads necessarily to
moral confusion. Still, many find it desirable because it allows us to dodge the
question of moral truth and “agree to disagree.” See his “Conscience: A Richer
Moral Language,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 8 (2001): 43–53.

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values,” which are realized in concrete acts and provide the basis for concrete
norms.These concrete norms were seen as guides to help the person realize the particular values, and as a summons in continuity with the most
fundamental or basic summons from the personal God, and not as an arbitrary constraint.
In this preliminary reconsideration of Häring’s moral philosophy, I
would suggest that his general tendency is to highlight neglected elements
of moral theory that needed greater contemporary attention, and to
underestimate the ability to do so while maintaining continuity with the
moral tradition. In this respect, although Häring is not closely associated
with transcendental Thomism, his thought exhibits a similar tension with
the metaphysical grounding of traditional moral norms.
As a first example of this observation, The Law of Christ reflects Häring’s
concern to develop a personalistic presentation of moral theology.Thus, he
emphasizes the person over against the neo-Thomistic emphasis on nature.
This project parallels early efforts to articulate more personalistic accounts
of Thomism, such as those of Maritain and even Wojtyla, although some
Thomistic scholars have been slow to embrace a distinct priority of the
person over nature. In the pre-conciliar era, Catholic thinkers who placed
greater emphasis on the person generally did so while retaining both a
metaphysical account of human nature, and the resulting moral norms.
Similarly in The Law of Christ, although Häring leans toward personalism,
he maintains this pre-conciliar balance and supports traditional Catholic
teaching regarding sexual ethics, including a rejection of contraception.
However, his traditional articulation of the object of the act at the material
level, along with his treatment of sexual ethics with reference to human
nature, indicates in the former a weakness in the tradition and in the latter
a tension with his preference for personalism; this ambiguity foreshadows
his later dissent from Catholic teaching on contraception.
Second, similar to the tension he sees between person and nature,
Häring presents his preference for the imitation of Christ, and exemplary
causality in relation to God, as an alternative to the metaphysics and final
causality of Thomism, apparently assuming these are incompatible, which
they are not.Third, the weak Christological dimension of neo-Thomistic
ethical treatments leads Häring to see a Christocentric ethic as an alternative to a Thomistic one, where it is more accurate to say that a more
Christological articulation of Thomistic ethics is needed.43 Fourth, Häring
43 As I will discuss below, the early work of Josef Fuchs was along these lines, and

I have argued more recently, that a more Christocentric Thomistic ethic can and
should be developed. See my “Christ as a Principle of Moral Action in Thomistic
Ethics,” Angelicum 79 (2002): 147–75.

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emphasizes the biblical notion of conversion as a more inclusive alternative, rather than a complement, to a Thomistic understanding of growth
in virtue through the habitual shaping and integration of our appetites,
intellect, and will. Similarly, he emphasizes “getting the right vision” as
opposed to fulfilling laws and duties, whereas he could have emphasized
following laws and duties as integral to growing in virtue and therefore
“getting the right vision.”
Biblical Renewal in Rahner and the Transcendental Revisionists
Earlier we considered some of the general ways that the transition to
transcendental Thomism impacts moral theology, including the relativization of traditional concepts, propositional statements, and philosophical distinctions, and the introduction of several new and problematic
distinctions. In this section, we will look more closely at how this movement impacts the biblical renewal of moral theology, considering the
work of Karl Rahner, Josef Fuchs, and Richard McCormick.44
Karl Rahner
Because of his widespread influence, we will first offer some general
and introductory remarks regarding the moral thought of Karl Rahner,
and then do the same for some of the most influential moralists who
followed his lead. Because Rahner is generally seen as a systematic theologian, his significance in post-conciliar moral theology is often overlooked.Whereas Bernard Häring located moral theology within a biblical
context, Rahner chooses instead to locate it in the systematic context
of his transcendental Thomism. This does not mean that he thereby
condemns his followers to neglect Scripture, but it does relegate Scripture to a subordinate role within this broader context. In other words,
Rahner’s primary goal is not a biblical renewal of moral theology, but the
transposition of moral theology into his transcendental framework, which
I would argue, inclines it toward a problematic updating and revision of
Catholic thought in modern concepts and according to contemporary
sensibilities.
John Gallagher provides a concise summary of how Rahner builds
upon his theological anthropology to articulate both an “essential ethic”
and an “existential ethic.”45 His essential ethic is a revised, or critical,
natural law theory, which follows from the German theologian’s under44 A more detailed treatment would need to include thinkers like Bruno Schüller,

Bernard Hoose, and Bernard Lonergan.
45 See Gallagher Time Past,Time Future, 207–9.

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standing of the “three a priori conditions of personhood,” namely freedom, power, and grace. While these pertain to the moral order, Rahner
sees them as insufficient for determining specific moral norms, which
require a further consideration of the a posteriori of concrete human
experience. Moreover, any such norms are considered potentially incomplete, inaccurate, and even misleading, because of their dependence upon
historical and cultural context. Thus, although Rahner’s essential ethic
can determine norms that proscribe certain acts as immoral, it can only
do so in a highly qualified way, emphasizing their historical and cultural
dependence. His existential ethic, on the other hand, focuses more positively on what one ought to do. It addresses the realization of personal
identity through choices and acts. This involves not universal moral
norms, but an individual judgment of what ought to be done in a particular, existential situation; only this determination attains to the concrete
will of God.
Note how clearly this rejection of the universal, and exclusive insistence on the particular, shows the nominalism that underlies Rahnerian
thought.46 Moreover, in an important recent study, Louis Roy, while
acknowledging Rahner’s contributions, elucidates the deficiencies in his
epistemology and its unfortunate consequences among his more revisionist followers. Roy argues that the fundamental problem in Rahner’s
epistemology is the lack of a cognitional theory, based on a Scotistic
misreading of Aquinas that leads to a diminished understanding of how
understanding and judgment attain to truth.This misreading results in a
moderate anti-intellectualism and anti-dogmatism, which fosters “disrespect for the Christian insights of the past and has legitimized the
primacy of the imagination in its free choice of symbols.” Moreover,
“his continual stress on the mystery and on human transcendentality has
brought about the relativization of the ecumenical councils, of the
doctors of the church, and of the Magisterium. Evidently Rahner
would disapprove of that trend among his disciples. Nevertheless, the
seeds of that deviation from sound doctrine are found in his deficient
epistemology.”47

46 John

McDermott identifies this nominalism as a fundamental weakness of
Rahner’s transcendentalism. See “The Context of Veritatis Splendor,” 153–54 and
his “Metaphysical Conundrums at the Root of Moral Disagreement,” Gregorianum 71 (1990): 713–42.
47 See Louis Roy, OP, “Rahner’s Epistemology and its Implications for Theology,”
forthcoming in the proceedings of the Lonergan Workshop, edited by Frederick
Lawrence.

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Josef Fuchs
Josef Fuchs was another leading figure in post-conciliar moral theology
who exemplifies the widespread transition to transcendental Thomism.
His early seminary manual, Theologia Moralis Generalis,48 offers a creative
synthesis of the more biblical and Christocentric perspectives of Häring
with more traditional neo-Thomistic moral theory. From Thomism, he
retains the traditional philosophical categories and recourse to the metaphysics of human nature, which provides the basis for upholding traditional norms of sexual ethics. Following the precedent of Häring,
Tillman, and others, Fuchs emphasizes not only Scripture and the
person of Christ, but also the integral relation between the moral and
spiritual life, the notion of response to the divine call, and the location
of natural law within the law of Christ. Thus, for example, Theologia
Moralis Generalis retains Thomistic themes like final end or beatitude, but
utilizes the biblical language of the kingdom of God, with an emphasis
on God’s personal call and our free response. This work also reflects a
greater emphasis on the notion of person, though not yet to the detriment of nature, and it shows a growing emphasis on unity over distinctions, especially regarding nature and grace, faith and reason, and body
and soul.
Tragically, Fuchs undergoes a significant “intellectual conversion”
while participating in the Pontifical Commission on Population, Family,
and Birth from 1963 to 1966, which leads him to change his position on
contraception, and to embrace Rahner’s existential ethics as a framework
to accommodate his new position.49 Bernard Häring played an indirect
role in this conversion, not so much through theological or philosophical arguments since he was not a Rahnerian, but through the testimony
of Catholic couples that he helped to bring before the group.50 Häring,
a trusted advisor who had just preached a retreat to Paul VI, persuaded
the pontiff to expand the commission to include married laypersons, in
particular Patrick and Patricia Crowley of the Christian Family Movement (CFM), acquaintances of Häring’s through a speaking engagement

48 Josef Fuchs, Theologia Moralis Generalis, editio altera (Roma: Editrice Universita

Gregoriana, 1963). For this paragraph, I am drawing on the study by John Gallagher,
Time Past,Time Future, 176–81.
49 Mark E. Graham, Josef Fuchs on Natural Law, Moral Traditions Series (Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), especially 83–110.
50 On Häring and the Crowleys, see Robert McClory, Turning Point: The Inside
Story of the Papal Birth Control Commission, and How Humanae Vitae Changed the
life of Patty Crowley and the Future of the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1995).

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for their movement.51 Along with a few other lay participants, the Crowleys were especially influential in providing testimony about the difficulties faced by couples practicing the “rhythm method” in its current state.
When this testimony was not sufficient to sway commission members
like Fuchs, the Crowleys and their collaborators arranged for a broader
survey of CFM members through the help of the Notre Dame sociology
department.The results of the survey were mixed, with 64% finding the
rhythm method helpful to marriage in at least some ways, but 78% claiming it had caused at least some harm.The written comments were decisive, with many accounts of the hardships faced by couples in modern
societies who were restricted to periodic continence. Moreover, the written comments mirrored and supported the arguments of revisionists on
the commission, arguments that had already influenced the public debate
and presumably shaped the views of the respondents who sought an
“easier” means to practice responsible parenthood.52
In a nutshell, Fuchs became convinced that the experience and testimony of these highly committed couples in marriage must provide a
more reliable guide on this question than a combination of historical
precedent, traditional moral philosophy—including a Thomistic metaphysics of human nature—and the guidance of the Magisterium. This
“intellectual conversion,” turning on the testimony of these couples, leads
Fuchs to repudiate much of his earlier work, with its traditional position
on the existence of intrinsically evil acts, and the dependence of moral
theology upon a metaphysics of human nature. In its place he adopted
Karl Rahner’s transcendental Thomism as the new systematic context for
51 In the euphoric context of the early 1960s, the Crowleys were intrigued with

the progressives and promptly reported news about the growing debate about
contraception in their CFM newsletter. They had invited Häring, who was the
world’s leading liberal/progressive moral theologian, to speak at one of their
conferences in August of 1963, two months before the first session of the
commission, although he did not touch on the disputed topic. See McClory,
Turning Point, 45–50, and Graham, Fuchs on Natural Law, 91–95.
52 The historical context here was several years into the sexual revolution, when
moral teaching was in considerable need of renewal, when moral teaching and
preaching was not well-integrated with the universal call to holiness, and when
methods of natural family planning were not well-developed. Even if the surveys
were unbiased, well-designed, and well-implemented, this context raises important questions regarding how they should be interpreted. Did they indicate that
new methods of contraception were morally acceptable in this new historical
situation? Or did they reflect certain disorders in modern societies, a need for
better methods of NFP, a need for better support for couples and deeper moral
and spiritual maturity, along with a frank acknowledgment of the difficulties of
following Christ in any state of life?

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a moral theology that would give greater weight to the moral experience
and aspirations of persons in modern societies than to traditional and
more abstract moral principles, thereby providing a framework for revised
sexual norms.
The decisive role of such experiential and empirical claims in Fuchs’s
decision to adopt a new moral framework merits further consideration,
especially since other post-conciliar revisionists give similar weight to
such claims. In particular, it invites a critical reconsideration in light of a
broader review of the experience of the last generation. Such a study
would consider the dependence of the various deviant practices of the
sexual revolution upon availability of the pill, the various moral, medical,
social, and political links between contraception and abortion, the
emerging culture of death, the “gender wars,” the breakdown of marriage
and family life, the ongoing vocations crisis, the “queering” of Western
societies, and the emerging demographic crisis and Islamization of
Europe. Indeed, it seems clear that the practice of contraception has not
delivered on its promises of stronger marriages and children better
formed to live their Christian vocations.53 Instead, it seems that even the
dire consequences of contraception that Pope Paul VI predicted in
Humanae Vitae no. 17 have been far exceeded, whereas those who follow
Church teaching are much more likely to realize the benefits that the
revisionists promised to those who practice contraception.
Following his intellectual conversion, Fuchs continued to exercise
considerable influence in Catholic moral theology. His project is both
deconstructive, methodically dismantling the earlier natural law tradition,
and constructive, building especially on the theological anthropology of
Karl Rahner. Thus, he emphasizes Rahnerian notions like the fundamental option, the distinction between the transcendental and categorical levels, and the concrete situation over universal principles. As Mark
Graham has shown in his recent study, Fuchs’ natural law ethic has many
merits, along with serious deficiencies.54 For our purposes, it suffices to
note that his post-conversion natural law theory is unable to exclude any
particular moral judgment, and therefore is highly problematic in light of
Scripture,Tradition, and the Magisterium.
53 On the contrary, there is now evidence that, although involving real sacrifice and

discipline, the practice of natural family planning has many benefits along these
lines. Especially within the context of a strong religious conviction, it contributes
greatly not only to the communication and intimacy of the marriage, but also
corresponds with a dramatic increase in marital stability.
54 See his Fuchs on Natural Law.

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3. Richard McCormick as a representative American revisionist
Through his contribution to the development of proportionalism,
Richard McCormick was one of the most influential American revisionists of the post-conciliar generation.55 He is best categorized as a casuist
since his work grew out of this tradition and because he wrote primarily
in response to particular questions, especially in the area of medical ethics.
Although biblical and theological themes have little role in many of his
writings, McCormick was also well aware of their pertinence to moral
theology. He showed this in various ways, beginning with an early essay in
which he summarized several common components of Catholic moral
theology such as the primacy of God’s grace and charity, the interiority of
the new covenant, and the existence of the natural law. He later discusses
13 key elements in the Christian story, “such as ‘God is the author and
preserver of life,’ and ‘in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection we have been
totally transformed into new creatures, into the community of the transformed.’ ”56 Moreover, through his “Notes on Moral Theology,” written
from 1965 through 1984, McCormick was in critical dialogue with almost
everything pertaining to the discipline, including works emphasizing biblical foundations.Through them, he introduced the leading European revisionists like Häring and Fuchs to American readers. However, given his
primary focus on particular issues in medical ethics, McCormick never
wrote a text in fundamental moral theology where he might have developed at greater length his moral theory and how Scripture informs it.
Given that McCormick does not make a major contribution to the biblical renewal of moral theology, we will attempt to summarize the primary
factors—shared by many of his contemporaries—that lead him to advocate
revision of numerous traditional moral norms, and that place him at the
center of the debate leading to the publication of Veritatis Splendor. First,
McCormick adopts key aspects of Karl Rahner’s theological framework,
especially through the influence of his teacher and friend Joseph Fuchs.57
Thus, for example, McCormick considers the notions of the “fundamental
option,” and “the anonymous Christian” as among the most significant
55 For a concise introduction to McCormick’s thought, see Gallagher, Time Past,Time

Future, 214–17, followed by a discussion of his contribution to the development of
proportionalist moral theory on 245–56. For a more detailed discussion of
McCormick’s work, see Paulinus Ikechukwu Odozor, CSSp, Richard McCormick and
the Renewal of Moral Theology, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1995). I draw upon both for the following summary comments.
56 See Gallagher, Time Past,Time Future, 214–16.
57 For this and the following sentences, see Odozor, McCormick and the Renewal,
28–31. See 159 to 160 where Odozor summarizes the decisive influence of
Schüller and Fuchs on McCormick’s thought.

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theological developments of his generation. Similarly, he follows Rahner’s
emphasis on the fundamental distinction between the pre-moral and moral.
Second, although McCormick seeks to address moral problems
through a development of the Catholic and especially casuist tradition, the
balance he strikes between learning from contemporary culture and
upholding tradition is too slanted toward the former, reflecting a common
tendency of his generation.58 Motivated by a critical desire to overcome
the weaknesses he perceived in Catholic thought, McCormick sought a
dialogue between Church and culture to the enrichment of both.
However, I would argue that McCormick’s critical scrutiny of the moral
tradition accepts too much of the philosophical bias of modernity,59 and
also embodies the deficient ecclesiology to be discussed below, thereby
underestimating the truth-bearing capacity of the tradition. Along the
same lines, his thought reflects an affirmation of both “the secular” and
“the autonomy of earthly affairs,” and along with a concern that Catholics
should overcome a “ghetto mentality” as exhibited by holding too tightly
to their distinctive cultural and intellectual traditions.60 In contrast to this
widespread post-conciliar adoption of a critical stance toward the tradition and openness toward modern culture, more recent trends include a
critical scrutiny of the deficiencies of modern philosophy and culture, and
of the dangers involved in appropriating it.61
Third, McCormick emphasizes the tentativeness of moral judgments,
based on his growing attention to the question of historical consciousness.
This emphasis on tentativeness is also consistent with his Rahnerian
tendencies, and does not adequately allow that true and binding judgments about moral norms could have been made in previous historical
and cultural contexts.
58 This bias reflects a reaction against the intellectual climate of the “cultural

Catholicism” that peaked in the mid-twentieth century, with its cradle-to-grave
institutions, and multi-faceted isolation. Most important, the educational system
of this cultural Catholicism featured neo-scholastic manuals, which although
valuable in various respects, were more the latest iteration of the manualist tradition than a fresh and thoughtful engagement with contemporary thought. See
Odozor, McCormick and the Renewal, especially 1–7.
59 See chapter 1 of Avery Dulles’s The Craft of Theology, where he critiques this
modern stance and suggests a post-critical alternative more appropriate for theological reflection. Notice, for example, the revealing title of McCormick’s The
Critical Calling: Reflections on Moral Dilemmas Since Vatican II (Washington, DC:
Georgetown University Press, 1989).
60 See Odozor, McCormick and the Renewal, 6–7.
61 Indeed, the widespread capitulation of Catholics to the thought and culture of
modernity is now getting the critical attention it deserves. See, for example,
Rowland’s previously cited Culture and the Thomist Tradition.

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Fourth, McCormick’s understandable rejection of the legalism and
extrinsicism of the manuals goes too far, denying the existence of any
universally applicable moral norms and placing his thought in tension
with Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium.62 This overreaction
mirrors his exaggerated position against the manualist and casuist emphasis on individual acts. Like most revisionists of his generation, the decisive
event that leads McCormick to abandon a more organic development of
traditional methodologies and conclusions is the debate over contraception, although he is also influenced by the debates regarding the Vietnam
War and his involvement in medical ethics. Once he accepts the conclusion of his mentor Fuchs and other revisionists on this disputed question,
McCormick abandons his earlier arguments and works toward the development of a methodology that supports his new position.63
Fifth, McCormick’s revisionism follows from his inadequate account
of the object of the moral act, and of its relation to the intention and
circumstances—a faulty understanding he adopts from the manualist
tradition. At the risk of oversimplifying a complex matter, McCormick
understands the traditional notion of the object of the act to include only
the physical level, separate from the intention or circumstances.64 As
Martin Rhonheimer shows in a published exchange with the Jesuit
moralist on the teaching of Veritatis Splendor, McCormick fails to account
for the basic level of intention that is included in a proper understanding
of the object, which allows a determination of the moral species.65
The sixth, and closely related, factor in McCormick’s revisionism is his
acceptance of Peter Knaur’s expanded application of the principle of
double effect (PDE).The scope of PDE is expanded, from a limited role
constrained by moral norms, to become the decisive criterion for the
62 This reflects the nominalist tendencies in McCormick’s post-Humanae Vitae

work, reinforced by the nominalist tendencies of Rahner. John M. McDermott
discusses the affinities between the moralists Fuchs and Schüller and transcendental systemmaticians like Rahner in his “The Context of Veritatis Splendor,”
especially 139–52. As noted above, he touches upon the nominalist character of
McCormick’s thought on 153–54, and in especially in his “Metaphysical Conundrums,” 713–42.
63 See Odozor, McCormick and the Renewal, 96–99.
64 If the object of the act is understood in this deficient sense as merely physical,
and not including any level of willing, it is not sufficient to describe a human act
in the proper sense, and therefore is not sufficient to identify its moral species.
Thus, McCormick insists that intention and circumstances must also be taken
into account, which is correct, but he does not offer an adequate account of how
this can be done.
65 See Rhonheimer’s, “Meaning of Object.” See Richard A. McCormick, “Some
Early Reactions to Veritatis Splendor,” Theological Studies 55 (1994): 481–506.

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evaluation of every act.As we will discuss in our subsequent discussion of
the work of Germain Grisez, McCormick exemplifies the common revisionist mistake of confusing the moral order of practical reasoning with
that of technique, an error with remote roots in a lack of clarity by
Aquinas, and more proximate roots in the manualist tradition. Moreover,
the criteria used to apply the PDE are reduced to that of commensurate
or proportionate reason, involving a weighing of pre-moral values and
disvalues.66 Ironically, as Chris Kaczor has shown, when the system is
strengthened by the additional conditions and principles that enable it to
handle basic moral test cases, it rules out practically all recourse to the
contraception it was developed to justify.67
The seventh factor contributing to McCormick’s revisionism is his deficient ecclesiology, which distorts the teaching of Vatican II by claiming that
the Council’s retrieval of the biblical theme of the “people of God” overrides what the third chapter of Lumen Gentium clearly states about the ability of the Magisterium to teach authoritatively regarding faith and morals.
As the respectful but gently critical Paulinus Odozor observes, McCormick
tends to make the Magisterium irrelevant in moral matters.68
Eighth, although McCormick seeks to consider moral matters primarily in terms of “the person integrally and adequately considered,” his shift
to proportionalism implies a rejection of the metaphysics of human nature
as a potentially decisive aspect of anthropology for certain moral questions. Ninth, McCormick emphasizes the distinction between moral
rightness and moral goodness, which, as Odozor rightly observes, introduces an unacceptable dualism into moral analysis.69 Moreover, it neglects
the salvific relevance of moral action.
In the concluding chapter of his evaluation of McCormick’s work,
Odozor points out various potential contributions and deficiencies and
concludes generously:“[N]o one can doubt the overall significance of his
66 For a discussion of McCormick’s treatment of proportionate reason, see Odozor,

McCormick and the Renewal, 91–118.
67 See Christopher R. Kaczor, “Proportionalism and the Pill,” The Thomist 63

(1999): 269–81, especially 280–81. Kaczor discusses how the conditions of
necessity and chronological simultaneity “exclude the most common motives for
using contraception, including financial stability, family harmony, and career
advancement.” Similarly, the “condition of avoiding superfluous evil leads to the
elimination of various means of contraception, including the pill.” Finally, “the
principle that in conflict situations one should choose the lesser of two evils or
the greater good leads to the conclusion that one should choose NFP over
contraception.”
68 See Odozor, McCormick and the Renewal, 70–73, 160–61.
69 Ibid., 70–73.

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contribution to the renewal of moral theology in the post-Vatican II
Church.”70 Whatever legitimate contributions he may have made,
however, it seems clear that McCormick’s work does not exemplify the
biblical renewal envisioned by the Council, and has major philosophical
and theological deficiencies; thus, it contributes at least as much to the
post-conciliar crisis in moral theology as to an authentic renewal.
Although we cannot discuss other revisionists in the present context,
for our purposes, those treated above are representative of the strengths
and weaknesses of their generation.
4. Biblical Renewal in the Basic Goods Theory
The most prominent alternative to revisionism in the post-conciliar era
has been the “basic goods theory” (BGT) associated especially with
Germain Grisez, John Finnis, and Joseph Boyle. Building upon Grisez’s
early work in distinguishing logic from metaphysics and technique, the
BGT proceeds from a distinction between four rational orders: the moral
order, and those of nature, logic, and technique.71 Whereas nature or
metaphysics were emphasized as the standard for morality in typical neoThomistic accounts, the BGT reformulation of Thomistic natural law
theory emphasizes reasoning according to principles of the moral order,
which are distinguished sharply from those of metaphysics and nature.
This basic goods theory has been advanced through both theological
and philosophical works. On the theological side, the primary exposition
is Germain Grisez’s Christian Moral Principles (CMP), the first installment
of his The Way of the Lord Jesus.72 In general, the BGT seeks to provide a
70 Odozor discusses the primary contributions under the headings of “retrieving

the critical component of moral theology,” “entering into critical dialogue with
culture,” “acceleration of theological dialogue,” “the rediscovery of casuistry,”
“methodology” and “theology.” See his McCormick and the Renewal, 163–80.
71 The best starting place for understanding the basic goods theory is Germain
Grisez and Joseph M. Boyle, “Response to Our Critics and Collaborators,” in
Natural Law and Moral Inquiry: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Politics in the Work of
Germain Grisez, ed. Robert P. George (Washington, DC: Georgetown University
Press, 1998), 213–37. On distinguishing these four orders, see 213–14.
72 Germain Gabriel Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles, (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983). See the work of William E. May,
such as his An Introduction to Moral Theology, 2nd ed. (Huntington, IN: Our
Sunday Visitor, 2003). Besides, on the favorable side, Robert George, Natural Law
and Moral Inquiry, some of the major secondary literature on this school includes
Russell Hittinger, A Critique of the New Natural Law Theory (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), and Nigel Biggar and Rufus Black, The
Revival of Natural Law: Philosophical,Theological, and Ethical Responses to the FinnisGrisez School (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000).

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contemporary development of the Catholic and Thomistic tradition that
meets the needs of the post-conciliar era. Because of the crisis created by
the widespread adoption of revisionist methodologies, CMP rightly gives
considerable attention to the challenge of defending Catholic moral
doctrine and refuting those who seek to undermine it. In various ways,
it succeeds in providing a serious alternative to revisionism in the years
preceding Veritatis Splendor. For example, it not only provides a more
coherent framework for the analysis of human acts, but also offers a
powerful critique of proportionalist moral theory.
Christian Moral Principles also seeks to respond to the call for a biblical
renewal of moral theology through extensive reference to Scripture, as
can be seen through a review of the index. But how well does it meet
the need for the biblical renewal of moral theology called for by the
Council, and presumably still needed by the Church of our day? Perhaps
the best way to answer this question would be to evaluate questions such
as the following: (1) whether it utilizes the best available moral philosophy; (2) whether the theological approach it employs is considered sufficiently credible to support fruitful dialog with scholars from outside the
school itself; and similarly (3) whether its utilization of Scripture is
considered sufficiently credible to support fruitful dialogue with the
broader intellectual community. While a careful evaluation of each of
these questions is beyond the scope of the present discussion, I will offer
some preliminary remarks to encourage further study.
Comments on the Moral Philosophy of the BGT
Considering first the moral philosophy of the basic goods theory, I would
argue that it has made an important contribution in a difficult historical
context and deserves serious ongoing attention. As noted above, the
BGT’s analysis of the moral act remains a significant contribution,73 and
the massive body of work produced by these scholars contains many
others. Beyond this, much depends on whether one accepts Grisez’s
strong distinction between the four orders, and his judgment that a careful definition and exposition of the virtues is not important to moral
philosophy and theology.74
Although this is not the place for a lengthy treatment, I would agree
that the distinctive character of practical reasoning had been neglected in
many Thomistic interpretations, and the focus placed on the moral order
73 For a discussion of how this compares to some other Thomistic interpretations,

see my “Martin Rhonheimer’s Natural Law and Practical Reason,” Sapientia 56
(2002): 538–44.
74 See Grisez and Boyle, “Response,” 218, 235–36.

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by the BGT has helped stimulate further clarification.75 But I would also
argue that this must be done in a way that does not lead readers to
conclude that the BGT holds nature and metaphysics to be irrelevant to
moral norms. I would argue that the real challenge for contemporary
Thomists is not to emphasize a metaphysical thesis about the irreducibility of the moral order to other orders, but to articulate the relationship
between (1) God’s eternal wisdom; (2) the created order and especially
human nature understood through a development of classical metaphysics in dialogue with modern science; (3) right practical reason within
the distinctively “moral order” of practical reasoning; (4) the normative
content of the Catholic moral tradition as articulated by the teaching
office of the Church; and (5) growth in virtue.76
The great emphasis that the basic goods theory places on the distinctiveness of the moral order from that of nature is the apparent cause of
some perceived weaknesses in the system. For example, whereas Aquinas
can discuss how moral choices and corresponding external actions shape
our capacities and help us to develop virtuous or vicious dispositions,
Grisez writes that our choices “endure,” without reference to an anthropological theory of powers, faculties, and virtues, leaving many readers
perplexed as to what this might mean.
Moreover, a moral system that gives such prominence to self-evident
principles, self-evident human goods, deductive reasoning, and rational
argumentation is not congenial to the postmodern philosophical and
cultural climate. This emphasis upon self-evident principles and rational
argumentation reflects the confidence in reason that characterized
Enlightenment thought and can still be seen in analytic philosophy, but
can no longer be assumed. For example, it reflects a strong tension with
the thought of scholars like Alasdair MacIntyre who, taking account of
Nietzschean and Genealogical critiques, emphasize that traditions of
moral reasoning are dependent on various presuppositions, practices, and
communal context. Given these features, the BGT appears to be optimized for a rational defense against moral revision, which was especially
75 This distinction has been recognized as reflecting the authentic thought of

Aquinas by various scholars, including Wolfgang Kluxen, Philosophische Ethik bei
Thomas von Aquin (Hamburg: Meiner, 1980), 21–71, Livio Melina, “The ‘Truth
about the Good’: Practical Reason, Philosophical Ethics, and Moral Theology,”
Communio 26 (1999): 644–46, and Martin Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy, trans. Gerald Malsbary (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2000).
76 I argue that alternative interpretations of Aquinas, such as that of Martin Rhonheimer, better meet these needs in my previously mentioned “Rhonheimer’s
Natural Law and Practical Reason.”

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important before Veritatis Splendor, and retains a certain value. However,
our primary need today is a moral theology that is developed explicitly
for an age of evangelization, which will be more organically biblical and
Christocentric, as I will argue below.
Comments on the Methodological Approach of the BGT
Regarding the basic methodological or theological approach, it seems
that the basic goods theory was developed when the primary options
were retaining a strong continuity with neo-scholasticism or adopting
transcendental Thomism, especially in the Rahnerian forms that I have
argued are inclined toward doctrinal and moral revision. Given these
options, the BGT sticks closer to the former path, with an emphasis on
deductive principles, propositional revelation, and the Magisterium as a
primary source of true propositions, while most revisionists take the
latter.77 If one were to develop a fundamental moral theology today with
the potential for a broad range of fruitful dialogue, while retaining the
ability to defend truth claims, several options appear especially promising.
These would include the contemporary emphasis on more historically
informed, theological, and biblical readings of Aquinas, with an openness
to insights from the ressourcement theology of de Lubac and von Balthasar,
and from more moderate forms of critical and transcendental thought
that are better able than Rahnerianism to affirm the truth-bearing capacity of traditional doctrinal and moral formulations.
Scripture in the Basic Goods Theory
Next, we will offer a few summary comments regarding the use of Scripture in the basic goods theory.Although Grisez does support his work with
some reference to contemporary biblical studies, Christian Moral Principles
primarily seeks to employ Scripture as the Church has traditionally done
in its official teachings, such as the documents of Vatican II.This should not
be dismissed as mere proof-texting, as it can be defended through phenomenology,78 although it could still benefit from further recourse to the best
77 Although Aquinas does write that Sacra Doctrina is a science (ST I, q. 1, a. 2), he

also writes that it is most especially called wisdom (ST I, q. 1, a. 6, est maxime sapientia). However, the place of “scientific” deduction from principles gains a new
prominence in the tradition as it develops under the pressure of modern philosophy and enlightenment rationalism, often at the cost of the sense of mystery that
pervades patristic thought. Thus, although there is a place for principles and
conclusions within theological and especially moral reflection, one must retain a
place for mystery, wisdom, intuition, connaturality, spiritual gifts, etc.
78 See Robert Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence: A Study in the Theology of Disclosure
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), chapters 11 and 13.

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contemporary exegesis.79 Christian Moral Principles gives priority both to
Matthew’s gospel, reflecting its prominence in Catholic liturgy between
Trent and the novus ordo of Paul VI. Within Matthew, it emphasizes the
Sermon on the Mount, which mediates the authoritative teaching of Jesus
about an interior righteousness and holiness that includes, but surpasses, the
exterior righteousness of the Old Testament.
In emphasizing Matthew’s gospel and reading the Scriptures in a traditional, non-critical manner, Christian Moral Principles does not attempt the
more comprehensive and systematic biblical grounding that Grisez
admits would be ideal.80 This choice reflects his judgment that the state
of Catholic biblical studies was not able to support such a project because
scholars had yet to fulfill Vatican II’s mandate for interpreting the Bible.81
Following the propositional understanding of revelation he finds in Dei
Verbum no. 11—though not giving sufficient attention to the broader
theology of revelation in the document—Grisez discusses the development of a more adequate biblical foundation for moral theology in terms
of determining which propositions the sacred writers assert in the Scriptures. Of course, an important part of the task of evaluating moral norms
is determining which propositions were asserted in Scripture, and in the
broader Tradition. However, I would also emphasize the need for a much
broader biblical foundation than propositional assertions, which Grisez
also attempts to provide.
Thus, Grisez explains the moral implications of New Testament revelation in terms of cooperating with Jesus and imitating his exemplification
of the Beatitudes through a personal vocation to share in his redemptive
work. In this distinctively Christian way of life, the “modes of responsibility” corresponding to the Basic Human Goods are transformed by charity into the “modes of Christian response,” which Grisez attempts to align
with the Beatitudes. Although, many readers find his attempt to reconcile
the Beatitudes with the Basic Human Goods unsatisfactory, Matthew does
present Jesus as exemplifying them,82 and this does need to be integrated
with an account of how Christians share in the mission of Jesus.
79 See Grisez, Christian Moral Principles, 24. For a critical discussion of the use of

Scripture in the BGT, see Salzman, Catholic Ethical Method, 87–96. See Benedict
Ashley,“The Scriptural Basis of Grisez’s Revision of Moral Theology,” in Robert
P. George, Natural Law and Moral Inquiry, 36–49, and Grisez and Boyle, “A
Response to our Critics and Collaborators,” esp. 232–36.
80 See Grisez and Boyle, “A Response to our Critics,” 232–33.
81 Ibid., 233–34.
82 See Frank J. Matera, New Testament Ethics:The Legacies of Jesus and Paul (Louisville,
KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 53.

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Moreover, Grisez’s broader treatment deserves more scholarly analysis
than it has received to date. But, since a comprehensive treatment is not
possible in the present context, I will limit my critical comments to one
area, namely Grisez’s claim that “virtue ethics is a singularly unpromising
framework for a renewed moral theology nourished by sacred Scripture.”83 This assertion is in tension with both much of the tradition and
more recent studies, which are rediscovering the fecundity of a virtueoriented approach to Christian ethics.84 To be sure, Grisez does not deny
that the moral virtues are essential for a morally good life. However, he
emphasizes how they are transformed in Jesus, and gives little attention
to defining or providing an exposition of them, because he sees no
evidence that such efforts help people to be good and holy.85 Grisez is
correct to insist that a renewed moral theology needs to give much more
attention to the Christological dimension of the virtues than we see in
the Thomistic tradition, but he has underestimated the importance of a
careful definition and exposition of them.86 Of course, a more intuitive
grasp of prudence can be gained to some degree through experience and
example. But given that all Christians are called to holiness, that this holiness is defined in terms of the practice of heroic virtue, that Catholics in
modern societies receive a relatively high level of education, that it is not
so difficult to understand the virtues, and given the widespread revival of
virtue ethics, a strong case can be made that moral theology needs to
include a more thorough treatment of the virtues than Grisez allows.
As noted above, critics of the biblical foundations of the basic goods
theory also point to the way the philosophical nucleus of Christian Moral
83 Grisez and Boyle, “A Response to our Critics,” 236.
84 On the Old Testament, see for example William P. Brown, Character in Crisis: A

Fresh Approach to the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1996). On the New Testament, see among others Joseph J. Kotva, The
Christian Case for Virtue Ethics, Moral Traditions & Moral Arguments (Washington,
DC: Georgetown University Press, 1996), and Daniel J. Harrington and James F.
Keenan, Jesus and Virtue Ethics: Building Bridges Between New Testament Studies and
Moral Theology (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 2002).
85 Grisez and Boyle, “A Response to our Critics,” 235.
86 I would argue, for example, that in developing the capacity to act prudently, it is
quite helpful to know the “integral parts” of the virtue, such as understanding of
moral principles, knowledge of how to apply them, memory of past experience, the
disposition to seek and take counsel, the astuteness to make quick decisions when
necessary, along with the foresight and circumspection to take account of the proximate implications of a given action. Similar arguments could be offered regarding the definition and parts of justice, charity, or other virtues. As rational
animals, we benefit from a reasoned account of the character traits that contribute to our flourishing.

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Principles, the basic goods, is correlated with the Beatitudes.87 In particular, the Beatitudes are presented as “modes of Christian response” that
complete the moral order embodied in the basic goods. To those who
approach the theory, and who may already be struggling with the claim
that the basic goods are self-evident, this appears as a forced fit, with
Scripture “added on” afterward to a philosophical theory, a pattern
repeated in the very structure of the work. Grisez responds first that the
basic goods themselves were formulated to correspond to the Beatitudes.
Moreover, he argues further that chapters 13 through 34 of his CMP seek
to “root his moral theology firmly and profoundly in Scripture, not so
much by the many Scripture texts he quotes or cites, or by his references
to Scripture scholars, but by his drawing the implications for Christian
life from all the central truths of faith, which are themselves rooted in
Scripture.”88 However, even though these later chapters of Christian
Moral Principles are more biblical, the more philosophical flavor of the first
300 pages leaves readers with the impression that Scripture is largely an
afterthought.89 Moreover, the revisionist Todd Salzman charges, not
surprisingly, that Christian Moral Principles approach to Scripture is also
characterized by the citation of particular texts based on their ability to
illustrate moral teachings of the Church, implying proof-texting and a
lack of critical rigor.90
I would draw the following conclusions following this three-part
preliminary study of the basic goods theory. First, although it provides a
much-needed defense of traditional morality and has made important
contributions in areas such as the analysis of moral action, which make it
a useful source for further study, the underlying moral philosophy is
skewed by a concern to defend a metaphysical theory that traces to
Grisez’s work in logic.This, along with other characteristics, makes it less
promising than contemporary Thomistic alternatives.91 Second, the basic
87 See Ashley, “The Scriptural Basis,” 36–49, and Salzman, Catholic Ethical Method,

87–96.
88 Grisez and Boyle, “A Response to our Critics,” 234.
89 For example, the largely philosophical topics treated in the first 300 pages of

Christian Moral Principles include choice and self-determination, conscience,
moral principles, the basic human goods, a critique of proportionalism, the natural law and principles of morality, the modes of responsibility, voluntariness,
moral norms, laws, and judgments.
90 See his Catholic Ethical Method, 159–60, n37.
91 Indeed, John Finnis now tries to present himself more as an interpreter of
Aquinas than as a follower of the new Grisez school. See his Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory, Founders of Modern Political and Social Thought (Oxford; New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998). However, more traditional Thomists argue

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theological approach is isolated from the most promising streams of
contemporary theology. Third, although the approach to Scripture has
some merit, it was always considered an interim measure, it includes
major elements that are not convincing, and it is too focused on propositional assertions.
Unfortunately, the present context does not allow for an adequate
discussion of the beginnings of a Thomistic renewal before Veritatis Splendor, which could be seen in the work of philosophers like Alasdair
MacIntyre and theologians like Servais Pinckaers and Romanus
Cessario.92 However, I would argue that, with the publication of Veritatis
Splendor, there had not yet been an attempt to articulate a fundamental
moral theology thoroughly grounded in a sound contemporary reading
the Scripture, drawing upon the best of the contemporary Thomistic
renewal, and upholding traditional norms of Christian sexual ethics
against the pressures of the sexual revolution.
IV. Veritatis Splendor as Stimulus and Exemplar
In this section, we will consider several ways that Veritatis Splendor exemplifies a promising path toward an authentic biblical renewal of moral
theology as envisioned by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council.
1. In the Context of John Paul II’s Broader Theological Approach
As noted above, John Paul’s basic theological approach is best understood
as a prudent blending of strengths drawn from two primary schools of
thought.93 The first of these we previously characterized, following the
work of John McDermott, as “conceptual Thomism,” which dominated
he ought to follow Aquinas more closely. See Steven A. Long, “St. Thomas
Through the Analytic Looking Glass,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 259–300.
92 In the forthcoming book mentioned above, I hope to discuss the contributions
of such thinkers in some detail.
93 Of course, anyone familiar with John Paul’s thought knows that he interacted with,
and did not hesitate to draw insights from, the widest range of sources. For example, he learned German to read Kant in his original language, and drew from him
what he would call “the personalistic norm,” to never use a person as a means to
an end. Similarly, he wrote his second dissertation on Max Scheler, considering
whether his phenomenological ethics of value was adequate to the Catholic moral
tradition. Moreover, he interacted extensively with Marxist thought. Indeed, his
interaction with various movements in Western and especially continental philosophy was so broad that some readers fail to recognize his deep commitment to
Thomistic metaphysical realism. On the other hand, it is just as easy to overlook
the ways in which he suggests developments of Thomism, especially his basic shift
of emphasis from “nature” to the “person” and “freedom,” while still upholding the
intelligibility and moral implications of the natural order.

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Catholic thought before the Council, and emphasized a metaphysical and
epistemological realism that affirmed the ability to grasp the truth of things
through conceptual formulations.The second was the ressourcement or “back
to the sources” movement, especially as integrated with the Thomistic
tradition through the recovery of the distinction between intellectus and
ratio.94 The retrieval of this synthesis, already embodied in Aquinas’s work,
allows contemporary theologians to make wide recourse to the more
symbolic language of biblical and patristic sources, while retaining the ability to uphold truth claims of the doctrinal and moral tradition through
recourse to Thomas’s metaphysical and epistemological realism.
Although this synthesis is present more implicitly in Veritatis Splendor,
perhaps the most systematic and explicit example of how John Paul blends
these two aspects of Catholic thought can be seen in the encyclical Fides
et Ratio, where he addresses the relationship between faith and reason, and
the corresponding rapport between theology and philosophy. Chapter 1,
which functions as the doctrinal core of the encyclical, presents the mysterious and Christocentric character of revelation95 and then situates human
reason as striving to grasp the intelligibility of this mystery.
Thus, the first half of Chapter 1 is titled “Jesus, Revealer of the Father,”
which locates the relationship between faith and reason within the
context of a biblically grounded theology of revelation centered in the
disclosure of the mystery of God, and his plan of salvation as it has been
made manifest in the person and work of Jesus Christ.96 In this allencompassing theological perspective, the God who is utterly transcendent and mysterious is also luminously intelligible through the cosmos,
through his actions in history as mediated to us through the inspired
Scriptures, and especially through the person of his Son.The second half
of the first chapter is titled “Reason Before the Mystery,” and presents
human reason as striving to grasp the infinite intelligibility of this reality,
whether through its natural capacities, or with the benefit of the light of
faith. Philosophy, like the other human disciplines, is understood to pursue
knowledge according to its proper methods, while theology studies God
and all things in relation to Him, according to its own distinctive approach,
94 This allows John Paul II to take a middle position regarding concepts, allowing

true access to the thing known while avoiding the extremes of reification and
nominalism.
95 For a more detailed discussion of this situating of faith and reason within the
context of a Christocentric theology of revelation, see my “Revelation in Fides
et Ratio,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 8 (2001): 74–89. See Avery Dulles, “Can
Philosophy Be Christian,” First Things 102 (2000): 24–29.
96 This paragraph is adapted slightly from pp. 276–77 of my “Postcritical Recovery.”

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which proceeds by the light of faith, and with special priority given to the
biblical revelation. This two-part structure of (1) the intelligible mystery
of God and the divine plan of salvation, and (2) human reason that seeks
to comprehend it, provides an epistemological framework within which
we can understand how God reveals through the Scriptures as read in the
Church, while recognizing that many things are known in a way that is
tacit, intuitive, or implicit, and therefore imperfect.
Both those aligned with ressourcement theology and those who identify
themselves as Thomists will recognize that this two-part structure corresponds to Aquinas’s basic distinction between intellectus and ratio, which as
discussed above, provides the basic framework for further reflection on
the dynamic orientation of the intellect toward the fullness of truth.
Later, the encyclical presents Aquinas as a prime example of one who has
successfully integrated faith and reason (nos. 43–44), and also points
toward a recovery of key elements central to Thomistic thought such as
a sapiential view of reality (no. 81) and epistemological realism (no. 82).
It also emphasizes the importance of metaphysics (no. 83), albeit one that
gives new prominence to the metaphysics of the person, reflecting John
Paul’s prioritization of person over nature. Such an approach, remaining
open to insights from more recent thought, has great and largely
untapped potential for the biblical renewal of moral theology.
2. Biblical and Christocentric Priorities of the Encyclical
Although limited by its genre as an encyclical, and therefore vulnerable
to critique as insufficiently historical and critical in its use of Scripture,
Veritatis Splendor encourages a biblical renewal of moral theology in
several ways: through the evangelical theme of “the encounter with
Christ,” as expressed in the dialog with the rich young man; through the
structure of the encyclical, which locates the technical matter of chapter
2 in a rich biblical setting; and through a broad sampling of key New
Testament themes, which encourages moral theologians to draw deeply
from the wellspring of Scripture.
First, the emphasis on the theme of “the encounter with Christ” relocates morality within the context of evangelization.Although a preoccupation with historical and literary questions can lead one to overlook the
role of the inspired texts in mediating such an encounter with the risen
Christ, this is a legitimate though neglected use of the text,97 and its location at the beginning of this moral teaching sets an important example
97 See, for example, Luke Timothy Johnson, Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the

Gospel (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999).

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for future moral teaching in a postmodern age of evangelization. Moral
theologians looking to build on this example will find ample resources in
contemporary New Testament studies, in the tradition of lectio divina and
the moral sense of scripture,98 and in the spiritual thought of the great
theologians like Aquinas.99 Moreover, a recovery of the notion of the
mysteries of the life of Christ,100 especially as mediated through the
liturgical year, will make the liturgy of the word within the Eucharistic
liturgy the privileged place for a regular encounter with Christ and
ongoing evangelization.
Second, the overall structure of the encyclical signals the priority of
Scripture in the moral life, with the opening and closing chapters aptly
situating a distinctively Christian morality within the envelope of a
broader biblical and Christocentric spirituality.101 Following the introduction, this structure begins with the encounter with Christ in the first
chapter and concludes with an exhortation to the fullness of Christian
life in the third. The reader will quickly recognize the sharp contrast
between utilizing moral philosophy to address technical matters within
this evangelical and biblical framework, and an alternative approach that
follows a lengthy philosophical prologue with a biblical reflection meant
to complete it. Surprisingly, apart from some less ambitious efforts, such
as those of Carlo Caffarra,102 the exemplar for a biblical presentation of
Catholic moral theology life remains the pre-conciliar work of Bernard
Häring discussed earlier.
Third, the encyclical encourages a biblical renewal of moral theology
through a rich survey of the central themes of New Testament spirituality
98 See, for example, my “Henri de Lubac’s Mystical Tropology,” Communio 27

(2000): 171–201.
99 See, for example, Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas: Volume II—Spiritual

Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 2003).
100 See, for example, Jean-Pierre Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystéres: la vie et l’oeuvre de
Jésus selon saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Desclée, 1999). Recall also, the classic work
by Don Columba Marmion, Christ in His Mysteries, trans. Mother M. St.Thomas
(London: Sands & Co., 1939).
101 This broader NT spirituality could be conceived, for example, in terms of the
Pauline language of living “in Christ,” the Johannine language of living in Christ
the vine ( Jn 15) or “abiding in God” (1 Jn), or the synoptic notion of living in
light of the inbreaking Kingdom of God. More precisely, this kingdom is present fully in Jesus’s preaching, teaching. and healing; present in a hidden way in
the hard-hearted disciples who are only beginning to believe; and will be present fully when Jesus returns.
102 Carlo Caffarra, Living in Christ: Fundamental Principles of Catholic Moral Teaching:
A Brief Exposition of Catholic Doctrine (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987).

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and morality, especially in the first chapter, but also throughout the document. For example, the introduction presents the existential situation of
man, wounded by original sin, with a darkened intellect and disordered
appetites, and vulnerable to a distorted understanding of freedom that is
separated from the truth. It proclaims that, though wounded by sin, we do
not lose our dignity as the image of God, but retain an inclination to
know the ultimate truth about human life, the truth about fundamental
questions, and the truth about particular moral questions (no. 1).
Building on this introduction, the first chapter presents a survey of key
New Testament themes. For example, it teaches that natural law is available
to human reason through reflection on the created world, and that the
promised new covenant is fulfilled in Christ and his kingdom (no. 12). In
this kingdom, the commandments of the Old Law find their place as pedagogy on the path toward true human freedom (no. 13), and are summarized
in the twofold command to love God and neighbor (no. 14).Throughout
his Sermon on Mount, Jesus gives the authoritative interpretation of God’s
law (no. 15) and calls us to the perfection of holiness (nos. 16–18).This is
achieved by accepting his invitation to discipleship, by imitating him, and
by being conformed to him (19–21).The first chapter also emphasizes that
all things are possible through the grace of God (nos. 22–24).This implies
that even difficult moral teachings, like those that inspired the post-conciliar debate on contraception and broader questions of sexual ethics, are
indeed practicable as an integral part of a life oriented toward holiness,
because of the ongoing presence of Christ through his Spirit (nos. 25–27).
Through this rich sampling of NT themes, the encyclical suggests a
promising but widely neglected approach for a moral theology at the
service of the new evangelization.
A Creative Retrieval of Thomism in Support of Moral Tradition
Whereas the first and third chapters of the encyclical reiterate the basic
contours of the Christian life through a judicious but ample selection of
biblical texts, the burden of the second chapter is to respond to the various challenges presented by revisionist moral theology. Thus, biblical
references, while still present and operative, yield the heavy lifting to
more philosophical argumentation, drawn from the Thomistic tradition.
This chapter is divided into four major subsections, each addressing a
central deficiency of revisionist moral theology.
The first and longest section addresses the topic of freedom and its
relation to moral law. It focuses on the fundamental problem of a widespread understanding of freedom as absolute and autonomous, and therefore directly opposed to the biblical notion that an objective moral law

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appropriately regulates human action.This Promethean notion of moral
freedom can be traced to the late medieval nominalism of William of
Ockham and his “freedom of indifference,” which has exercised a wide
influence in the West, especially as reinforced by Luther’s unfortunate and
unbiblical dichotomy between faith and works.103 Of course, this “freedom of indifference” is quite different from the Christian freedom Paul
presents in Galatians chapter 5, or that promised to those who receive the
truth revealed by Jesus ( Jn 8:32).
In response to a freedom that would claim autonomy from the truth
of moral law, the encyclical distinguishes a “rightful autonomy,” which is
better described as a “participated theonomy” that includes the acceptance of God’s law. This divine moral law is available to us through both
revelation and human reason, which is able to grasp the natural law
through its participation in divine wisdom and Providence.The encyclical recalls how the existence of the natural law, especially as articulated by
Aquinas, has long been affirmed by the Church and utilized in ecclesial
documents. It concludes by responding to various revisionist strategies
designed to undermine the normative force of natural law and advance a
notion of freedom incompatible with Scripture and Tradition.104
Moral theologians wishing to address more fully the question of freedom and law can follow John Paul II in drawing on the riches of the
Thomistic tradition. For example, Servais Pinckaers describes how Aquinas
provides an account of this “moral or personal freedom” that is adequate to
biblical revelation. This can be described as a “freedom for excellence,”
which is achieved through a formation in truth and virtue under the
movement of Grace. It presents this moral or personal freedom, which is
not merely the freedom to choose, but the freedom to perform excellent
actions, and do them promptly, easily, and joyfully. It does so by taking into
account the role of the intellect in grasping moral truth, of the inclinations in
inclining persons toward perceived goods, and of the way that virtuous or
vicious dispositions condition our moral freedom.
The second section addresses the confusion that has arisen in postconciliar moral theology around the notion of conscience.This confusion
103 On this, see my “Towards A Narrative of Truth and Freedom,” Logos 12 (2002):

65–98. On antinomianism that follows from Luther, see Reinhard Hütter,“(Re) Forming Freedom: Reflections ‘After Veritatis Splendor’ on Freedom’s Fate in
Modernity and Protestantism’s Antinomian Captivity,” Modern Theology 17
(2001): 117–61.
104 Tragically for Western culture, Ockham and his followers have confused the basic
freedom to choose, which is characteristic of the will, with a moral freedom at the
level of the person.

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arises for several reasons: because the theological and philosophical tradition includes several loosely defined and often overlapping notions of
conscience; because the Thomistic tradition, where conscience is defined
more precisely within a comprehensive moral philosophy, was poorly
understood and in the process of being abandoned; because of the increasing contemporary reference to the inviolability of conscience; and because
Catholic moralists of this era were often looking for ways to justify a position they had adopted based upon largely experiential claims, to allow for
contraception and other violations of traditional sexual ethics.
Therefore, this section of the encyclical can be read as both a general
appeal to, and acknowledgment of, a loosely defined notion of conscience
that is part of both the tradition and common vocabulary, and a clarification of confusion in moral theology by reference to a narrow and
precisely defined notion. It therefore recognizes the practical reality that
speaking about conscience in the contemporary context involves appealing to something familiar but not well understood, and then backing this
up with a coherent account that is part of a broader moral philosophy.
Once again the encyclical relies upon the Thomistic tradition, by presenting a very limited notion of conscience as a judgment of reason about
the moral quality of an action, whether antecedent or consequent. This
allows for a more comprehensive moral theory—including an underlying
metaphysics, anthropology, theory of cognition, and an account of natural
law and the virtues—to complement an account of conscience in a way
that upholds the moral tradition.
In a crucial text, no. 64 of the encyclical indicates the ongoing value
of the Thomistic tradition in this regard as a useful tool in the service of
biblical revelation:
In the same vein, St. Paul exhorts us not to be conformed to the mentality of this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of our mind (cf.
Rom 12:2). It is the “heart” converted to the Lord and to the love of what
is good that is really the source of true judgments of conscience. Indeed,
in order to “prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable
and perfect” (Rom 12:2), knowledge of God’s law in general is certainly
necessary, but it is not sufficient: what is essential is a sort of “connaturality” between man and the true good. (110).105 Such a connaturality is rooted
in and develops through the virtuous attitudes of the individual himself:
prudence and the other cardinal virtues, and even before these the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. This is the meaning of Jesus’
saying:“He who does what is true comes to the light” ( Jn 3:21).
105 Footnote 110 of the encyclical refers to ST II–II, q. 45, a. 2.

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The third section addresses the problems resulting from the widespread acceptance of a Rahnerian account of the transcendental fundamental option. It acknowledges that some choices do “ ‘shape’ a person’s
entire moral life” (no. 65), but insists that our overall choice for or against
God is reflected in, and can be revised through, the performance of
particular acts. Thus, it rejects the exaggerated separation between the
transcendental choice for God and particular acts, and insists, with Scripture and Tradition, that some acts are mortal sins, which disrupt our
graced union with God and place us in danger of eternal loss. Following
the biblical and evangelical character of the entire document, it includes
two long paragraphs that emphasize the fundamental choice to respond
to God in faith, and to Jesus’ call to discipleship, true freedom, and the
perfection to which God has foreordained us in Christ.
The fourth section addresses the somewhat technical topic of the
moral evaluation of the human act, which lies at the heart of the postconciliar debate. In summary, it rejects the proportionalist strategy of
redescribing human acts in terms of their hoped for benefits and insists
that the object must be understood properly. It apparently agrees with
revisionists that a merely external or physicalist description of an act is
insufficient, because it does not take into account the volitional dimension. Thus, the encyclical insists that the object be understood from the
perspective of the acting person, which includes a basic level of intentionality, and may also include morally relevant circumstances.The essential point is to uphold the biblical and traditional notion that certain types
of acts are intrinsically and therefore always wrong, while recognizing
that a proper description of particular acts can be a complex matter.
V. Conclusion
In this essay, I have first offered an explanation for why, although a great
deal of valuable work was done, the theological and philosophical
context of the post-conciliar generation was not conducive to the
successful realization of the call for a biblical renewal of moral theology.
Second, in light of this context, I have surveyed the work of leading postconciliar moral theologians and suggested reasons why these efforts do
not yet realize this vital objective. Third, I have presented an interpretation of John Paul II’s basic theological approach as, on the one hand,
more open to both ressourcement theology and the appropriation of
contemporary insights than most of the more traditional forms of
Thomism, and on the other hand, better able to uphold traditional
doctrinal and moral teachings than extreme forms of transcendentalism.
In this context, I have highlighted the central characteristics and themes

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of Veritatis Splendor, suggesting that it provides a promising, but largely
unexplored path toward a biblical renewal of fundamental moral theology along the lines envisioned by the Council Fathers, and badly needed
by the Church in its newly rediscovered evangelical mission.106

106 Special thanks to Dr. Carmina M. Chapp and Damian Lenshek for reviewing the

manuscript, identifying various errors, and suggesting clarifications and improvements. Of course, any remaining deficiencies are my responsibility.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004): 445–60

445

Human Suffering and John Paul II’s
Theology of the Body
A DRIAN J. R EIMERS
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana
The root reason for human dignity lies in man’s call to communion
with God. From the very circumstance of his origin man is already
invited to converse with God. (Gaudium et Spes, no. 19)

T HE ROOT of our dignity as human beings lies in our destiny. As
beings created in God’s image and likeness, we are destined and called to
share the good of eternal friendship in communion with him, the vicissitudes of this “vale of tears” notwithstanding. Thanks to our medicine
and advanced technologies, however, we can prevent or alleviate these
vicissitudes.A Bengali typhoon kills thousands, but thanks to good roads,
advanced building codes, and efficient communications, Hurricane Isabel
killed fewer than a score in the U.S.A. in 2003.Trauma centers and hospitals can restore accident victims and military casualties “as good as new,”
and if eighteenth century surgery required a shot of whisky and a bullet
clenched in the teeth, contemporary anesthetics make the cutting and
much of recovery relatively pain-free.As a result, we tend to regard sufferings and misfortune as anomalous evils that can, in principle, be avoided
completely. It is not at all surprising that as the promise of scientific technology was on the verge of its realization, J. S. Mill held the maximization of pleasure to be the touchstone of the good life, that intelligent
public administration combined with industrial technology could make
possible lives of prosperity, comfort, and minimal suffering, at least for
most.1 We now expect the pleasures of bed and banquet without their
1 See J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism.

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usual but unwanted consequences, and we look for a healthy old age
ending in a comfortable, sanitary death. In many ways we have created an
analgesic society in which suffering and humiliation constitute the only
intolerable evils.And yet suffering exists, not just bodily pain, but psychological anguish and—for us all—death. In encyclicals, letters, and addresses
Pope John Paul II has repeatedly addressed the questions of pleasure and
pain. The key to understanding both is the human person’s destiny to
love: “The meaning of life is found in giving and receiving love, and in
this light human sexuality and procreation reach their true and full significance. Love also gives meaning to suffering and death.”2
I. Suffering Characterized
What is suffering? John Paul II defines it as the experience of an evil,3
and in doing so he holds that it is not suffering that is, in the first
instance, an evil. John Paul II accepts the classical analysis that evil has no
reality of its own, but is parasitic upon good.4 Since evil is a loss of or
disorder with respect to the appropriate good, we find the significance of
suffering in relation to the good. Indeed, we know that the pain associated with trauma is often a good,5 and this reveals something essential
about suffering. Why does a blister affect the mechanics of one’s tennis
serve? Despite its exposed nerve, a decayed tooth can still bite an apple.
Grieving her husband’s sudden death, the scholar can make no sense of
the differential equations she had handled facilely the day before. In each
of these cases—and in almost any other one may think of—suffering
hinders the ability to act. The sufferer cannot easily get on with life as
normal. Popular wisdom has it that pain is nature’s warning against
danger. But this can be only one function of pain and not the most
important one at that. The warning is always too late. Those who suffer
really serious injury—catastrophic burns are a good example—or the
gravest losses do not experience the pain until the event is over. The
essential message of suffering is “Take care of this evil.” The suffering
person needs the lost good restored.
We may contrast this position with phenomenalist philosophy, which
defines pain as a kind of perception or sensation that is disliked and
2 John Paul II, Encyclical Evangelium Vitae (EV), no. 81.
3 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris (SD), no. 7.
4 St. Augustine, City of God¸ XI, ch. 9; St.Thomas Aquinas, De malo, q. 1, aa. 1–3.
5 The starkest illustration of this is congenital insensitivity to pain. Children afflicted

with this condition have normal tactile sensitivity but feel no pain, so that a needle
is felt simply to be small. Such patients are especially susceptible to severe injury
and illness because their bodies do not alert them when something is wrong.

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shunned for its own sake.6 This position makes pain—and suffering in
general—into a kind of positive reality, an experiential surd that is evil in
itself. Under such a conception, pain is reduced to subjective experience
that may (or may not) be related to any thing or event in reality.
However, no one who has suffered grievously will recognize such a definition as adequate. More than anything else, suffering gives the lie to the
philosophical distinction between facts and values. An unrelenting
toothache is more than just another fact about the world and one’s
perception of it. Pain, by its very nature, demands a response.
Suffering tends to be holistic. The greater the suffering, the more
completely does it engulf one’s whole person.The pain in one part of the
body tends to form one’s entire consciousness, so that it is the person and
not just the arm or the tooth that is in pain. Were pain only a kind of
perception or sensation, this phenomenon would be difficult to understand. The malfunction of an automobile’s turn signal lever does not
affect the steering, but the pain from an ear infection can hinder virtually all one’s activities. If we understand pain (or suffering) to be the
experience of an evil, this phenomenon makes sense, for the evil is not
localized sensation with localized effects but rather an evil from without
that one can deal with as a person, that is, with rational understanding
and appropriate action. It is for this reason that we often feel insulted or
offended by suffering, even when we recognize that its origin is random
or irrational.
II. Kinds of Suffering
We may describe a threefold phenomenology of suffering, according as one’s
sufferings are in the feelings and perceptions, in the engagement of the
will within the world, and in the meaningfulness of one’s life. Pain, properly speaking, is the sensation that accompanies damage to the body.
Break a bone or scratch the skin and it hurts.The failure of one’s efforts
to attain an important goal is experienced as frustration.This is not only
the athlete’s “agony of defeat,” but also the embarrassment of failure and
the bitterness of being passed over.The loss of meaning, of significance is
experienced as despair. In despair, the sense of the effort is lost.There is
no point in pursuing further, for the goal will never be reached. Having
tried and tried again to pass the bar, the law graduate abandons his goal.
He despairs of ever becoming a lawyer. Despair is the loss of the good
that had shaped one’s life. Pain, frustration, and despair correspond to the
6 “Pain,” in Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1999).

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forms of evil that afflict our bodies, our intentions, and our spirits.These
three forms of suffering fall into a kind of hierarchy, an order of acceptability. An athlete, for example, will endure pain for the sake of victory;
the battered champion, his bruised face grinning in triumph, is practically
a cultural icon. More seriously, a birthing mother’s “labor pains” are
powerful muscle contractions, which she works with to bring the child
to the light. And just as success trumps pain, comfort does not assuage
failure.The worst, most destructive form of suffering, however, is despair,
the suffering of the spirit.Victory and defeat find their respective values
within a context. The local champion eventually tires of defeating his
weaker rivals and needs to prove himself against regional or national
competitors. An important measure of maturity is whether one can pick
himself up after failure and continue to meet his responsibilities.
As the loss of meaning to one’s life and experiences, despair is relatively unrelated to pain and frustration. To be sure, someone suffering
incurable, unremitting pain may foresee nothing but misery and thus
despair of life, but others in such straits do continue to find meaning in
their lives. On Black Tuesday, 1929, several Wall Street traders, having lost
the wealth for which they had invested their lives, jumped from windows
to their deaths on the street below. It is well-known that many wealthy
celebrities live lives of comfort in their personal hells, seeking refuge from
the emptiness of meaning in drink, drugs, and sensual pleasures. While
pain debilitates and defeat stings, despair is deadly, for having lost meaning one becomes destructive of his own life.
III. Engagement with Evil
Considered from a different perspective, the human person’s engagement
with evil is twofold. First, evil happens to a human being. It befalls him as
the body suffers trauma, as important projects are frustrated, and as loss
casts doubt on the sense he has made of things. Second, evil is also something that the person does.7 Further, the evil a person performs is that in
which he is most implicated, to the point that by acting evilly he
becomes evil.8 In his ethical studies, Karol Wojtyla insists strongly on this,
and it is worth reflecting upon.We may pose the problem more precisely
7 The distinction between “what happens to a human being” and “a human being

acts” is central to Karol Wojtyla’s ( John Paul II’s) analysis of human personhood. See
the Acting Person (Dordrecht, Boston, & London: D. Reidel, 1979), 38, 48, 60–65;
Person and Community; Selected Essays (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 182, 189, 224.
8 “Self-determination, therefore, and not just the efficacy of the personal self,
explains the reality of moral values; it explains the reality that by my actions I
become ‘good’ or ‘bad’ . . .” (Person and Community, 91).

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like this: How can an act one performs render him evil or bad? Is it even
reasonable to maintain that the defects of an event in the physical order
can communicate moral evil to the inner core of personal subjectivity?
Many contemporary ethicians and moral theologians deny that it can.
One act, they argue, cannot reveal the fundamental orientation of one’s
entire being.9
Wojtyla argues that it does and he takes precisely the physical act as his
starting point. The reason that the act makes the person evil is that the
act flows from the will, which is precisely what is innermost in the
person.Wojtyla maintains that “the essence of the will does not lie in (the
contents of practical reason) but in the specific dynamism contained in
the efficacy of the rational person.”10 The point is not that the physical
act, considered simply as a spatio-temporal interaction among physical
bodies, is tainted with an evil that somehow transmits itself to the moral
order, but that the act itself finds its origin within the personal subjectivity that caused it. That subjectivity is capable of choosing to act well or
evilly.The person as a free and responsible agent chooses to bring about
good or evil, and in virtue of this freely chosen action becomes personally good or evil.
Ironically, although we suffer when evil beyond our control afflicts us,
the evil we do may well cause no direct discomfort beyond some pangs
of conscience.To be sure, this evil eventually exacts its toll. Plato illustrates
dramatically (and probably from his own observation) the persistent paranoia and the anxious loneliness of the tyrannical soul, the one who gives
himself over entirely to injustice.11 We now know too well the serious
effects that abortion has on the mother—the anniversary grief, the burden
of guilt and unworthiness, the profound and unrelenting sense of loss.
What is most common in human experience, however, is that one seldom
recognizes the disintegrating effects of one’s own wrongdoing on one’s
own life.As a result, we fail to connect the resultant suffering with the evil
we have embraced. Further, compared to excruciating bodily pain, crushing defeat, and humiliating despair, the sense of guilt for having done
wrong is often modest suffering indeed. Precisely this is one of the classical problems of good and evil: The evil prosper while the good endure
misfortune. Robert Bolt’s Thomas More, stripped of office, honor, and
freedom goes to the executioner, while the perjurer Richard Rich
9 See Charles Curran, Directions in Fundamental Moral Theology (Notre Dame, IN:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 107–8.
10 “The Will in the Analysis of the Ethical Act” in Person and Community, 4.
11 Plato, Republic, Books VIII and IX. For a time Plato lived in the home of Diony-

sius II, who was himself a tyrant.

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“became a Knight and Solicitor-General, a Baron and Lord Chancellor,
and died in his bed.”12 It seems, then, that the sufferings that are most
external to the self, to the will and its responsible exercise of freedom, are
the most patent. The pains that afflict one’s physical organism and the
misfortunes that befall every wayfarer in this world shout, while the evils
one embraces within his heart whisper. Since these are the evils most
properly called “human” and “personal,” we must address this paradox.
IV. Evil and the Loss of Good
When the body is injured, the sufferer seeks relief from the pain, approaching medical professionals with the expertise to fix the damage.13 But as
much as the patient wants the pain to go away, she will endure further pain
for the sake of overcoming the evil. Here one thinks of the discomforts of
chemotherapy and physical rehabilitation.14 But repairs are not enough.
Suffering has a deeper aspect, touching the core of one’s personhood.
In suffering, the person experiences solitude and this in rough proportion to the degree of the suffering. She asks, “Why?” This “why” is of
cosmic import, for—as we so often see—no theoretical or philosophical
answer suffices.The Pope writes:“Why does evil exist? Why is there evil
in the world? . . . Both questions are difficult, when an individual puts
them to another individual, when people put them to other people, as
also when man puts them to God.”15 Christ himself cried out in his pain,
“My God, why have you abandoned me!” (Mk. 15:34). In his solitude,
the sufferer needs a helper, someone to share his burden. If in our
academic seminars we discuss the significance of suffering, an important
philosophical and theological problem, the sufferer faces it as an immediate, profoundly personal issue. If my suffering is meaningless, then evil
triumphs—not simply in the abstract, but in my life. Meaningless suffering is, in a very real sense, the ultimate insult, for it constitutes a negation
of one’s life value. My meaningless suffering makes my life less. To the
extent I am defeated by the evil I am irrelevant to reality and to its
author—defeated.
Further, suffering threatens to shut one off from the good that all others
share. To the sufferer it seems that no one can share his pain. Whatever
another says is inadequate. Unless one has suffered something similar—
and this is the value of support groups—he really does not understand. In
12 Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons (New York:Vintage Books, 1990), 127.
13 Salvifici Doloris, no. 5.
14 We must also note that once the body’s affliction has been identified or when

the affliction is beyond treatment, palliative care is certainly in order.
15 Salvifici Doloris, no. 9.

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suffering, especially in great suffering, one feels alone before the evil. Suffering calls for a Someone who can make sense of it and overcome one’s
lonely helplessness before the evil—indeed, Someone who can restore the
good completely. Here we may note the serious problem that phenomenalist accounts pose. If indeed suffering is essentially subjective, a “kind of
sensation disliked for its own sake,” then the sufferer is irredeemably alone.
The reality of her sufferings lies in her feelings and only there. And thus
there can in principle be no answer to suffering, no adequate response,
save to prevent its continuation or reoccurrence.
Also integral to suffering is shame. To be sure, Henry Fleming16 may
console himself with his war wound, his “red badge of courage.” But in
the first instance, we are ashamed to suffer. Even as one asks God why this
has happened, he asks himself what he did wrong. Right or wrong, he
senses that evil has gotten the better of him, that he cannot control the
evil that afflicts him. In suffering, one is not the subject acting on his
initiative, but the object of something alien. Ironically, it is often when the
ills afflicting our bodies are most effectively being treated—namely, in the
hospital—that we feel most like objects, poked and prodded, cut into and
sewn up again.This is one of the painful insults of aging, that one may be
incontinent and diapered, talked down to by caregivers, reduced to an
object of care but not an agent. In this context let me also mention the
retarded and the mentally disabled.Those with psychosis or autism, traumatic brain injury, developmental disability, and the like, typically experience a world in which they are treated as objects. Knowing that they are
different and somehow “less,” they find themselves in settings where they,
their lives, and their behavior are discussed in detail, where plans are made
for them—all with their having no chance to express their own wishes, to
be agents in their own lives. Less able than others, they become the objects
of others’ plans, missing out at humanity’s table where the rest of us dine
on freedom. Shame arises from the passivity of suffering. To suffer is to
become a patient, afflicted from without and by this deprived of the agent’s
dominion over his life and acts.To suffer is to experience a loss of dignity.
The shame of suffering is rooted in one’s own guilt as a sinner.
Although the Galileans Pilate butchered were not worse sinners than
others because they had suffered thus, Christ goes on to warn his listeners: “But unless you all repent you will all likewise perish” (Lk 13:1–3).
The father blames himself for the child’s injuries: “I should have
reminded him. . . . If only I had been a stronger disciplinarian. . . . If only
I had not been so harsh. . . .” And his family, his friends rightly console
16 In Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage.

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him with the truth that the child’s injuries were not his fault. But what
he knows—and what each of us knows deep in his heart—is that even if
he is innocent of causing specifically this evil, he is deeply implicated in
evil, that were an accurate tally reckoned, a much greater burden of
suffering would be levied. Another, inverse, sign of this is the survivor’s
guilt of one who has escaped a calamity that has arbitrarily fallen upon
another.Therefore we may say that beyond the shame of being an object
in the eyes of others, there is the deeper shame of being revealed as an
evildoer, as the author of wrongs that lead to suffering. Having eaten of
the forbidden tree, the first couple hid themselves from God. Adam said
to him,“I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because
I was naked” (Gn. 3:10).Thus it is that evildoing demands a satisfaction,
a setting things right.As Dostoevsky shows so clearly in Crime and Punishment, the wrongdoer needs his punishment, to experience in his own self
the evil he has wrought. He needs his punishment as part of his return to
the good he abandoned by embracing evil in his acts.
V. Theology of the Body
A fundamental principle of John Paul II’s theology of the body is that the
body itself signifies the person’s vocation to love. It is in the context of
explaining this “nuptial meaning” that the Holy Father brings forward
the importance of solitude and shame, those two experiences that lie in the
heart of suffering. In the naming of the animals (Gn 2:19–20), Adam
experienced his difference from other living beings as solitude within his
own subjectivity. John Paul II writes:“Solitude, in fact, also signifies man’s
subjectivity, which is constituted through self-knowledge. Man is alone
because he is ‘different. . . . ’ ”17 In virtue of this subjectivity, the human
being is a person.18 But solitude had also another aspect; the man had no
one like himself to share his life with. In this respect “it was not good for
the man to be alone” (Gn 2:18).And so the Lord God fashioned a helper
for him. Adam’s exclamation, “This at last is bone of my bone and flesh
of my flesh” (Gn. 2: 23), amounts to a recognition that the woman is
another self, one like him, a person. Only in communion with another
person could he overcome the loneliness of his solitude and break out of
the isolation of his own subjectivity. Man and woman realize this
communion as they give freely of themselves, each to the other in love.
17 John Paul II, The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston:

Pauline Books and Media, 1997), 37.
18 On subjectivity, personhood, and the image of God, see the audiences of

April 9 and 16, 1986. Accessed at www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/
audiences/alpha/index_it.html, 9/3/03.

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This love is a mutual giving, which fulfills the meaning of the body—
male and female—and reveals its destiny for love, its “nuptial significance.” Underlying John Paul II’s thought here is an important text from
the Second Vatican Council: “[M]an, who is the only creature on earth
which God willed for its own sake, cannot fully find himself except
through a sincere gift of self ” (Gaudium et Spes, no. 24).19
Shame, the second element found in suffering, appears in Genesis 2:25:
“They were naked but they were not ashamed.” Why did they feel no
shame? It was not that they were ignorant, too childlike to realize that they
were naked. The meaning of their sexual characteristics, that they could
unite bodily in intercourse as “one flesh,” was clear to them.Through this
union they could give of themselves freely and generously in love; intercourse was for the original pair an expression—indeed, an act—of mutual
gift of self.The issue, according to John Paul II’s analysis, is not so much
why before the Fall they lacked shame as why we experience it. Shame, he
writes, is a “boundary experience”20 between the original state and our
sinful state. In rupturing their relationship with God, the original sin also
wounded their relationship with each other. No longer could the man and
the woman—nor we, their sons and daughters—appear naked before each
other without shame. John Paul II writes:“In the experience of shame, the
human being experiences fear with regard to his ‘second self ’ . . . and this
is substantially fear for his own ‘self.’With shame, the human being manifests almost ‘instinctively’ the need of affirmation and acceptance of this
‘self,’ according to its rightful value.”21 In our post-lapsarian experience,
to be naked is to be vulnerable. Shame arises from nakedness because
others can regard the body as an object for use, for their own enjoyment.22
Shame has also a cosmic sense.23 The body, the instrument of sin, has
become another thing in the universe, an object no longer entirely
19 It would be impossible to overstate the importance of this text in John Paul II’s

thought. See, for example, Karol Wojtya, Person and Community, 193, 267, 316–18,
323, 350; Sign of Contradiction (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 132; John Paul II,
Theology of the Body, 63–66, 71, 127, 284, 286, 357; Crossing the Threshold of Hope
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 201; Encyclical Redemptor Hominis, no. 13;
Encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem¸ no. 62; Encyclical Centesimus Annus, nos. 11,
41; Encyclical Veritatis Splendor, nos. 13, 86; Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, nos. 25,
49, 96; Encyclical Ut Unum Sint, no. 28;Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, no. 8;
and Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, no. 22.
20 Theology of the Body, 53.
21 Ibid., 54.
22 We note further that the truly malicious—I am thinking of dictators and criminals—often use nakedness to humiliate their victims.
23 Theology of the Body, 114 ff.

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subject to one’s will. My body no longer transparently manifests my self.
John Paul II writes: “Through these words [of Genesis 3:10] there is
revealed a certain constitutive break within the human person, almost a
rupture of man’s original spiritual and somatic unity. He realizes for the
first time that his body has ceased drawing upon the power of the spirit,
which raised him up to the level of the image of God.”24 As St. Paul
complains,“I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rm
8:15).The body is almost the instrument of judgment, its concupiscence
inspiring our sin, and so in the body we are ashamed. We dissemble to
hide our inner selves where the guilt is hidden.
Precisely here can we find the connection between suffering and the
nuptial meaning of the body: its significance as a gift of love. Paradoxically, it is precisely through this body that one is able to give oneself in
love to transcend suffering’s shame and solitude. John Paul II writes:
“Love is also the richest source of the meaning of suffering.”25 This is to
say that the answer to suffering is the gift of self, that free gift by which
one finds himself (Gaudium et Spes, no. 24). Here we recall the fundamental principle of theology of the body: that the body is intended for
love, to be given in love.The young and fertile body is given in love to a
spouse, and the fruit of this gift is often the creation of new life. How,
then, is the weakened, suffering, even dying body given in love? And to
whom is it given? Here John Paul II cites Christ’s words at John 3:16,
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that all who
believed in him might be saved,” and continues:“Salvation means liberation from evil, and for this reason it is closely bound up with the problem of suffering. According to the words spoken to Nicodemus, God
gives his Son to ‘the world’ to free man from evil, which bears within
itself the definitive and absolute perspective on suffering.”26 This salvation was won precisely by the Son’s gift of himself in the body. “In this
way Jesus proclaims that life finds its center, its meaning, and its fulfillment
when it is given up.”27
We may indeed take this a step further.To suffer is to be ashamed and
alone, and yet the suffering Christ is exalted and surrounded by others.
In his fourth Servant Song, which the Gospel of John applies explicitly
to Jesus ( Jn 12:38), Isaiah writes: “See, my servant will prosper, he shall
be lifted up, exalted, rise to great heights.As the crowds were appalled on
seeing him—so disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer
24 Ibid., 115
25 Salvifici Doloris, no. 13.
26 Ibid., no. 14.
27 Evangelium Vitae, no. 51.

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human—so will the crowds be astonished at him, and kings stand speechless before him” (Is 52:13–14). Jesus was lifted up in shame and disgrace
(crucifixion was intended to humiliate) and died abandoned by those he
had gathered and taught. And the crowds gathered to watch. Indeed, that
was precisely the point: “And when I am lifted up from the earth,” Jesus
said, “I shall draw all men to myself ” ( Jn 12:32). As he preached and
healed he drew many to himself, but it was precisely in shame and solitude that he gathered all. On the cross, the suffering Christ made of his
own body a gift28 and thereby transcended the shame and solitude of his
suffering, reconstituting it as his exaltation.
VI. The Joys of the Wicked, the Suffering of the Good
In the light of this vocation, we may turn again to the paradox of sin and
suffering—that the evil held most closely is that which hurts the least.
Earlier we distinguished three general forms of suffering—pain, frustration, and despair—and as we consider them in terms of immediate
discomfort, we notice a kind of inverse ratio. The more deeply the evil
touched the person, the less immediate the pain. Minding her own business and doing no harm, Sally is seriously injured by a drunk driver, laid
up for weeks in the hospital, and then consigned to months of difficult
physical therapy. She did not deserve this pain. The evil came upon her
immediately and insistently to overtake her.The good to be restored is the
physical integrity of her body, and the restoration is tedious and grueling.
Sam trains long and hard for competition, but in the tournament he slips
slightly. He continues to compete, but his mistake dooms him to bitter
defeat.All he can recall of the match was “what could have been,” the lost
opportunity for a victory so urgently desired.There is no going back, of
course, but there is next year.29 Every competitor, every planner and
builder, every general and leader, has heard and is called to make her own
the exhortations: “try, try again” . . . “never give up” . . . “winners never
quit.”Today’s pain of defeat is overcome in future triumph.
The deepest and most personal evil—and with it the most insidious
suffering—comes from within.This third form of suffering is despair, the
loss of hope. To be sure, pain and frustration bring with them a loss of
hope—“This pain will never end,” “I can never win”—but this loss can
be restored or transcended from within. One can learn to live fruitfully
28 With respect to this we might note a common reaction to the recent film The

Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson.Although the film’s brutality is stark and painful
to watch, many viewers have commented that through seeing it they came to
realize for the first time how much Jesus gave of himself for them.
29 This essay is written within one hundred miles of Wrigley Field.

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456

with pain. One can set new goals.True despair, however, is the despair of
meaning. If, as Gaudium et Spes states, the human being indeed “cannot
fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self,” then it is implied
that one can fail to fully “find himself.” He can lose his own self, and this
not by losing his life or what he has, but by losing the capability to order
himself to the good, to embrace the good, and therefore to be good. To
despair is to lose the point of reference for his life as a whole.The singer
whose voice has begun to fail or the arthritic pianist can take up the
baton or (more typically) teach her art to the young. Music continues to
order her life, and therefore, in the context of her vocation, she may hope
even without the chance to perform.The person whose life is in despair
has no such principle, but he pursues apparent goods to satisfy his longing for the true good that escapes him. Because he cannot recognize it,
he is unable to orient himself to this good.
This is the significance of John Paul II’s analysis of the Gospel story of
the rich young man in the first chapter of Veritatis Splendor.“The question
which the rich young man puts to Jesus of Nazareth is one which rises
from the depths of his heart. It is an essential and unavoidable question for the
life of every man, for it is about the moral good which must be done, and
about eternal life.The young man senses that there is a connection between
moral good and the fulfilment of his own destiny.”30 The moral life is
ultimately an exercise not simply of finding the right thing and doing it
while avoiding the wrong thing, but of pursuing the perfect and all-fulfilling good that is the destiny of every person.This means to turn to God,
“who alone is good” (Lk 18:19).31 Conversely, to embrace evil by one’s
actions is to turn away from God the good and by that to turn away from
one’s own destiny. Here we can begin to glimpse the nature and depths of
the suffering consequent upon moral evil.This evil, which is not experienced directly as a pain, takes the form of a sickness, in Kierkegaard’s
analysis, a “sickness unto death.” This is a sickness, however, not of the
mortal body, the physical organism, but of the self that is no longer related
to that in virtue of which it is a self.32 This despair takes the form of an
ultimately purposeless search for things and pleasure, which are incapable
of filling up the desire for meaning. Having turned from the One who
created it for himself, the evildoer’s heart comes inexorably to despair of
finding rest. Indeed, John Paul II echoes the Second Vatican Council by
pointing to the emptiness of human development based on “having” and
30 Veritatis Splendor, no. 8.
31 Ibid., no. 9.
32 Søren Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1980), especially 13 ff. on despair as a sickness of the self understood as relation.

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not on “being.”33 Such despair is dramatically illustrated by the stories of
wealthy celebrities who turn to alcohol, drugs, and promiscuous sex to
find happiness. They have everything, but nothing satisfies. Less noticed,
but equally real are the “lives of quiet desperation” of many ordinary
people who have embraced unremarkable evils. Leading lives with little
pain and perhaps even great success, they experience no joy.
Here we may recall Dostoevsky’s theme from Crime and Punishment.
The wrongdoer needs punishment, even if, unlike Raskolnikov, he fails
to recognize this need, because the experience of moral evil—the suffering of despair—is not direct. It manifests itself in a loss of direction, a
spiraling out of control amenable to no technique or investigation. The
wrongdoer, having turned away from good and embraced evil, is no
longer able to recognize the true good, because she has forfeited, as it
were, the inner criteria by which that good may be sought and recognized.The burn victim can look at the cause of his pain and seek the help
of the professional healer.The sinner looks everywhere for consolation of
the inner loss but cannot find it, because what was lost is within.
VII. Redemption and Suffering
The answer to suffering is not simply that it must end, but that evil must
be overcome and good restored. The true good, however, that good in
virtue of which our lives have value—the good to which we are
destined—is not a good to be found in this world, but rather in relationship with the Author and Creator of it. Speaking of consumerism, in
which “having” is valued more than “being,” John Paul II writes:“In such
a context suffering, an inescapable burden of human existence but also a
factor of possible personal growth, is ‘censored,’ rejected as useless, indeed
opposed as an evil, always and in every way to be avoided.When it cannot
be avoided and the prospect of even some future well-being vanishes,
then life appears to have lost all meaning and the temptation grows in
man to claim the right to suppress it.”34 Suffering forces us to reflect, to
enter our own solitude and in that to turn to the only one whose good
transcends the evil that afflicts us. Revealing the transitory, fragile character of the goods of this body and this world, suffering is an invitation
to give our bodies, ambitions, and the very sense of self to the One who
has destined us to himself.
Suffering, then, turns out not to be the evil we are to avoid. The
goods lost in the sufferings of this life are not the goods for which we
33 Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, no. 28; cf. Gaudium et Spes, no. 35.
34 Evangelium Vitae, no. 23.

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are ultimately destined. St. Paul wrote, “I consider that the sufferings of
this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be
revealed to us” (Rm 8:18). This is not to say that the experience of
temporal evils is not real suffering. Such a position is callous. It is to say
that the patient enduring of sufferings in this life has a twofold value.
First is that of witness. If all we have to hope for are the pleasures and
triumphs of this life, then even moderate suffering may be intolerable.
However, for her who hopes in the promise of eternal communion with
God, even severe suffering does not represent the triumph of evil, nor
does it deprive her of the expectation of perfect fulfillment. In this
respect, every Christian can be a martyr, for the patient endurance of
suffering—of pain and illness, of frustration and defeat, of humiliation
and disgrace—in itself bears witness to the One who went before us in
suffering and who opens the way to the true good that transcends every
evil.The second value of suffering is the redemptive. St. Paul wrote: “In
my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of
his body, that is, the church” (Col 1:24).
Within this lies an important truth from the theology of the body.
Love is not in the accomplishment but in the gift. Christ effected our
salvation not by smashing Satan with a mighty spiritual sword but by
offering his body to the Father on the cross out of love for sinners.
By offering the gift of one’s own bodily self in patient acceptance of
suffering, the sufferer participates in that sacrifice. In his Apostolic Letter
for the third millennium, John Paul II points to the “lived theology” of
the saints35 and quotes St. Catherine of Siena: “Thus the soul is blissful
and afflicted: afflicted on account of the sins of its neighbor, blissful on
account of the union and the affection of charity which it has inwardly
received. These souls imitate the spotless Lamb, my Only-begotten Son,
who on the Cross was both blissful and afflicted.”36 Precisely here is the
mysticism that lies at the heart of the faith we all share.The patient and
redemptive acceptance of even ordinary sufferings is a participation in
the love of the Father and the Son within the Trinity. It is a distinctive
and privileged way to know Christ because it is an imitation and sharing
of his sacrifice of love.
Adam and Eve’s original solitude was overcome in their mutual
communion, a communion so profound that it shares in God’s creative
work. Protected by shame from our lusts, we their children can share this
communion and so experience something of their original joy, the joy of
35 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte, no. 27.
36 St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogue of Divine Providence, cited in John Paul II, Apos-

tolic Letter Novo Millenneo Ineunte, no. 27.

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being husband and wife. But this is not the greatest joy, nor is it the
perfectly beatifying communion. If the couple in each other’s arms share
in the work of God the Creator, the sufferer can share in the work of
Christ the Redeemer.The sinner, by sharing in Christ’s gift of his body
in suffering and death, enters into communion with the heavenly Father.
In this communion, the good lost not only in suffering, but through
Adam’s sin itself is restored.

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461

The Perspective of the Acting Person and the Nature
of Practical Reason: The “Object of the Human Act”
in Thomistic Anthropology of Action1
M ARTIN R HONHEIMER
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Rome, Italy

The Notion of “Object of the Human Act”
and the Perspective of the Acting Subject
THE PASSAGE in Veritatis Splendor no. 78 that clarifies the concept of
the “object” of a human act is widely acknowledged as decisive for the
central argument of the encyclical, which reaffirms “the universality and
immutability of the moral commandments, particularly those that
prohibit always and without exception intrinsically evil acts.”2 In accordance with the tradition, but referring explicitly to St.Thomas Aquinas,
the encyclical states that “the morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the ‘object’ rationally chosen by the deliberate
will.”The text adds:“In order to be able to grasp the object of an act that
specifies [an] act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the
perspective of the acting person.” By the term “object,” the encyclical does
not designate “a process or an event of the merely physical order, to be
assessed on the basis of its ability to bring about a given state of affairs in
the outside world.” According to Veritatis Splendor, “objects” of human
acts are not mere “givens,” that is, “things,” realities, or physical, biological, technical, or juridical structures; nor are they bodily movements and
1 Paper partially given at the Congress “Walking in the Light. Perspectives for Moral

Theology Ten Years after English translation by Veritatis Splendor” (Pontificia
Università Lateranense/Pontificio Istituto Giovanni Paolo II per studi su matrimonio e famiglia, Rome, November 20–22, 2003). Italian text to be published in
the proceedings of the Congress. English translation by Joseph T. Papa.
2 John Paul II, Encyclical Veritatis Splendor (VS), no. 115.

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the effects caused by such movements; nor is the object of a human act a
simple “physical good” or “non-moral good,” as is, for example, a human
life or a possession. Rather, the “object” of a human act is always the
object of an act of the will and, as such, the encyclical affirms, a “freely
chosen behavior”: It is a type of action, as, for example, “to kill an innocent person” or “to steal.”
For this reason, a few lines later the text of the encyclical adds:“[The]
object is the proximate end of a deliberate decision that determines the act
of willing on the part of the acting person.” The object of an act must
therefore be understood as the end of an act of the will, and thus as a practical good, presented by reason to the will. Consequently, in the moral
context, no opposition exists between the notions of “object” and “end.”3
The object is, precisely, a particular type of end, that is, that toward which,
primarily and fundamentally, the act of the will from which an action
originates tends: the act of choice or electio of an act or of a concrete
behavior.This means that it is impossible to describe the object of a moral
act without considering it as object and content of an act of choice of the
will, full of moral significance, or rather as a good toward which the elective act of the will tends. Thus, the object is necessarily already formulated by reason. As the object of an interior act of the will, it is, in the
words of St.Thomas, a “good understood and ordered by reason”4 or, put
differently, “the intelligible content that morally specifies a deliberate
choice.”5 As a “good understood and ordered by reason,” the object also
includes in itself an intentional structure, given that it is characteristic of
reason to be ordered to an end. Understood in this way, the object of a
human act is, precisely, its primary and fundamental intentional content:
The object indicates what one does when one does something, and for
this reason it also indicates, in a basic and fundamental way, why one does
what one does, given that a human act cannot be understood as a specific
kind of act without the end to which it is directed: quantum aliquis intendit tantum facit: “what someone intends, that he does.”6
3 This has been clearly shown by Servais Pinckaers in his classic essay Le rôle de la

fin dans l’action morale selon Saint Thomas, in Pinckaers, Le renouveau de la morale
(Tournai: Casterman, 1964), 114–43 (originally in Revue des Sciences philosophiques
et théologiques 45 (1961) : 393–421). I am very indebted to this article, despite the
presence of some weaknesses and ambiguities, which I will speak of later.
4 Summa theologiae I–II, q. 20, a. 1, ad 1: “bonum apprehensum et ordinatum per
rationem.”
5 E. Colom and A. Rodríguez Luño, Scelti in Cristo per essere santi. Elementi di Teologia morale fondamentale (Rome: Apollinare Studi, 1999), 127.
6 De malo 2, 2, ad 8. For some comments on this passage see John Finnis,“Object
and Intention in Aquinas,” in The Thomist 55 (1991): 1–27.

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Despite its clear Thomistic character, the notion of the “object” of a
human act as I have just described it is not accepted by all adherents of
Aquinas’ moral theology. Indeed, to conceive the object of a human act
in the way expounded above is in contrast with another vision that
would also base itself on St. Thomas. It is true that the relevant texts in
Thomas are not always clear, and the terminology adopted in them not
always coherent.This is because Thomas never treated, in an explicit and
systematic way, the question that interests us today: What is a “moral
object”? What exactly are we speaking of when we speak of the object
of a human act?
Thomas provides us with a systematic exposition of everything that
qualifies—at all levels, and not only from a philosophical perspective, but
especially theologically—the human act as morally good or evil. In this
context the “object” appears as the element that confers on the human
act its primary and fundamental moral specification. As for his theory of
action, it essentially serves this ethical-normative purpose. Conversely, he
ignores a systematic exposition of certain questions that we today call
“meta-ethical.”These are not ethical questions, but rather questions about
ethics, in part pertaining to action theory (e.g., our question regarding
the significance of the term “object” of a human act).
One can find various elements for responding to such questions spread
throughout St. Thomas’s works. His doctrine on the topic is implicit, in
the sense that while he certainly employs identifiable meta-ethical presuppositions, he nevertheless does not construct a theory from them: Precisely
this causes a lack of clarity and at times confusion. One must also admit
that, from the Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, through the De malo to the
Summa theologiae, St. Thomas’s thought is characterized, if not by contradictions, at least by a notable evolution and maturation. Nevertheless, the
Scriptum on the Sentences of Peter Lombard is very useful for understanding the genesis and the substructure of the thought—certainly more
mature, but also expressed more synthetically—of the Summa theologiae.
It would not seem to me excessive to say that Veritatis Splendor itself
invites us to further clarify some of these meta-ethical presuppositions of
St.Thomas’s moral theology, and to do so without fearing to affirm things
that St.Thomas had not yet said, or to say them in a different way, without ever, of course, ignoring what he actually did say.The encyclical also
recommends a direction, that is, that of integrating the point of view of
the subject, the perspective of the acting person, more explicitly in the
understanding of the human act and the evaluation of its morality. This
approach, in a certain sense more “personalistic,” means, as we have seen,
to understand the object of a human act as an end of the will, as action

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or behavior inasmuch as it is the object of an elective act of the will.This
is what Aquinas himself does, although to recognize it one must read the
texts in the light of questions, which, for Thomas, at least it seems, did not
yet exist.
The Object, a “Thing” or an Action?
The lack of explicitness and clarity on St.Thomas’s part regarding what is
the object of an act can be illustrated by such typical phrases as “the
primary evil in moral actions is that which is from the object, for instance,
to take what belongs to another,”7 or “the evil act ex genere is that which falls
upon inappropriate matter, like to take that which belongs to another.”8 We find
no effort here by St.Thomas to clarify whether the object, or the referredto inappropriate matter, is the “res aliena,” or rather the action itself,
“accipere/subtrahere rem alienam.” According to the perspective we are
considering, suggested in Veritatis Splendor no. 78, we would have to say that
precisely the act of “to take what belongs to another” would be the object
chosen by the will. Nevertheless, it could be objected that the object we
are seeking is not the act of “to take what belongs to another,” but rather
the object of this act (of the “taking”), that is, the thing itself “which belongs
to another.”The object of a human act, in this case, would not be an action,
but the thing or reality toward which a particular act is directed.9
This last interpretation, however, contains difficulties that in my view
are not easily overcome. In the first place, the terms “to act,” “action,”
“act,” etc. are used throughout the discussion with not a little ambivalence
and confusion. Are we considering the human act as chosen, willed, and
voluntarily carried out? Or those elements of the act that are external and
observable behavior? A second difficulty is that a res aliena simply cannot,
as such, morally qualify a human act.This would be the case, however, if
the res aliena itself were that which we call “the object of a human act.”
The confiscation of a stolen item by the police, for example, so as to
restore it to its owner, has the same res aliena as its “matter” as did the original theft, and yet we are dealing with two acts that are different precisely
because of their object.The difference seems to derive, therefore, not from the
“thing” taken, nor from the fact that it “belongs to another,” but from the
7

ST I–II, q. 18, a. 2: “primum malum in actionibus moralibus est quod est ex
obiecto, sicut accipere aliena.”
8 De malo 2, 4 ad 5: “actus autem malus ex genere est qui cadit supra indebitam
materiam, sicut subtrahere aliena.”
9 This is what, at first glance, ST I–II, q. 110, a. 1 seems to suggest, as well as the
various statements that the “materia circa quam” of the action is identical with
its object.

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difference in the act of “taking” of this “thing”: from the diversity of will
and intentionality, respectively, implicit in the act.
Analogously,“to observe an eagle” and “to kill an eagle” are two different acts because of their objects; this would be inexplicable, however, if
the object of the two acts were the eagle itself. In a certain sense it is true
that both the res aliena and the eagle are “objects,” but not of a human
act; they are rather the object of bodily movements or the acts of specific
organs. But these latter, in themselves, cannot be morally qualified; they
are not, in fact, human acts, which always proceed from a deliberate will.
The eagle as object of a visual act of the eye, or of a physical movement
that causes the destruction of its life, is not considered to be “the object
of a human act,” but only of a series of events or physical processes. In
the act “to kill an eagle,” the eagle is certainly the object that specifies the
physical act as “eagle-cide”; but this does not further specify it as “just,”
“unjust” or “indifferent”—that is, it does not specify it morally.10 We,
however, are seeking that object that specifies an act morally.
Precisely because we are speaking of the object of a human act, this
object cannot be isolated from the context of voluntary action, which
depends on reason.11 This is obviously Aquinas’s perspective, as well.
When he speaks of the object that morally specifies an act, he always
speaks of the object of a moral (i.e., voluntary) act, which is synonymous
with “human act.”12 As early as the Scriptum on the Sentences it is clear
that, just as the acts of natural agents are specified according to the
“forms” that are their principles, so human acts are specified by their
respective “form”: This, Aquinas points out, is a form of the will. “The
form of the will, however, is the end and the good which is its object and
which is what is willed.”13 We must ask ourselves therefore what St.
Thomas says when he speaks of the object of the will: He does not treat
here simple elements of exterior acts like particular movements of the
body or acts of other faculties, even if such an act (for example, an act of
sexual copulation) possesses a natural finality inscribed in it.
Thomistic theory concerning the will and its object is found in questions 19 and 20 of the Prima secundae, which treat of the goodness and evil,
10 Cf. De malo 2, 4.
11 ST I–II, q. 1, a. 1: “Illae ergo actiones proprie humanae dicuntur, quae ex volu-

nate deliberata procedunt.”
12 ST I–II, q. 1, a. 3: “. . . idem sunt actus morales et actus humani.”
13 In Sent. II, d. 40, 1, 1: “Forma autem voluntatis est finis et bonum, quod est eius

obiectum et volitum.” Subsequently, in the Summa theologiae, we find the same
perspective: I–II, q. 1, a. 1: “Obiectum autem voluntatis est bonum et finis. Et
ideo manifestum est quod principium humanorum actuum, inquantum sunt
humani, est finis.”

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respectively, of the interior act of the will (intention, choice) and of the
exterior act commanded by it (acts of other powers or organs, or bodily
movements, chosen and carried out under the rule of the will).14 It will be
useful here to carry out a more detailed exposition of this theory.
The Exterior Act as Object of the Will
According to St. Thomas (I–II, 19 & 20)15
Aquinas generally distinguishes the object of the interior act of the will,
that is, the end, from that which he sometimes calls the “object of the exterior act.”16 The “object of the exterior act,” he says, is to the end as matter
is to form. This object of the exterior act is “that on which the exterior
action is brought to bear”17 and which gives to the act its primary goodness.18 More decisive, however, is the specification that derives from the
end that the will proposes. For this reason “the species of a human act is
considered formally with regard to the end, but materially with regard to
the object of the exterior act.”19 Thomas then offers an example that shows
that he speaks here of an act that is “composed” of the choice of a means,
made with the intention of an end.The example demonstrates this: “[H]e
who steals that he may commit adultery, is strictly speaking, more adulterer
than thief.” The result, then, would seem to be as follows: For Thomas, the
14 The Thomistic notion of “exterior act” is not to be confused with that of an

external, visible act carried out with bodily organs.“Exterior acts” are those acts
of the will that the will does not carry out by itself, that is, in an “elicited” way,
(velle, intendere, eligere, uti), but by making use of another power, commanding its
act.The exterior act is therefore the action of another power as it is commanded
by the will; for example an (voluntary) act of knowing something; or also an act
of the will commanded by another act (“elicited”) of the will; but, certainly,
exterior acts are also properly “external,” bodily acts (to walk, to speak, to kill,
sexual acts, etc. as commanded by the will).The examples used below will refer
exclusively to such external bodily acts and behaviors, which could cause the
impression—which would be mistaken—that these are identical with the “exterior act.”
15 For what follows see Martin Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A
Thomist View of Moral Autonomy (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000:
originally Natur als Grundlage der Moral [Innsbruck-Wien: Tyrolia Verlag, 1987];
Italian ed.: Legge naturale e ragione pratica. Una visione tomista dell’autonomia morale
[Roma:Armando, 2001]; Spanish ed.: Ley natural y razón práctica: una vision tomista
de la autonomía moral [Pamplona: EUNSA, 2000]).
16 Cf. ST I–II, q. 18, a. 6.: “. . . id autem circa quod est actio exterior, est obiectum
eius.”; cfr. also ibid. 7: “. . . obiectum exterioris actus dupliciter potest se habere
ad finem voluntatis. . . .”
17 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 6: “id circa quod est actio exterior”.
18 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 2: “prima bonitas actus moralis”.
19 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 6.

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object of the will is the end; the object of the exterior act, on the other
hand, are particular bodily movements or acts of other powers by which
one carries out an act, as well as those things to which such bodily movements and acts are directed.A “theft,” for example, would be a type of exterior act with its proper object. This object would not be the exterior act
itself, but that to which that act is directed; in the case of a theft, the res
aliena. “To choose to steal” would be precisely to choose particular bodily
movements that take a res aliena from its owner; and the exterior act of
taking would be evil based on its object: the res aliena.
This analysis, however, is mistaken, for two reasons.The first is that a res
aliena as such is neither good nor evil. How then could it alone specify the
physical act of taking as a morally evil act? Some moralists in the past said
that the act is morally evil based on a “transcendental relationship” of the
physical object to the moral norm, according to which the act is unjust.
If this were the case, however, the evil ex obiecto would be completely
extrinsic, an explicative model being proposed that is more legal than
moral, that is, an act would be evil because it is contrary to the moral
norm, rather than vice versa.The second reason the analysis is mistaken is
that it implies that the exterior act (i.e., the bodily movements in question) would be, immediately and as such, an end of the will.This, however,
is simply impossible, and indeed is contrary to one of the most fundamental principles of Thomas’s theory of action, that is, the principle that
“the will cannot desire a good that is not previously apprehended by reason.”20
This proposed solution, then, ignores the fundamental, constitutive, and
normative role of practical reason, which for St. Thomas is the proper,
immediate, and intrinsic rule of the goodness and evil of human acts.
Accordingly,Thomas states that the goodness or evil in acts of the will
depends generally on the object,21 because the object is presented to the
will by means of reason, which is the principle and the measure of the
goodness in human acts.22 For this reason, he adds, the goodness of the will
depends on reason exactly in the measure in which it depends on the
object.23 Indeed, the goodness and evil of acts depend solely on the object,
20 ST I–II, q. 19, a. 3, ad 1: “. . . appetitus voluntatis non potest esse de bono, nisi

prius a ratione apprehendatur.”
21 ST I–II, q. 19, a. 1:“. . . bonum et malum in actibus voluntatis proprie attenditur

secundum obiecta.”
22 Ibid., ad 3: “. . . bonum per rationem repraesentatur voluntati ut obiectum; et

inquantum cadit sub ordine rationis, pertinet ad genus moris, et causat bonitatem
moralem in actu voluntatis. Ratio enim principium est humanorum et moralium
actuum. . . .”
23 ST I–II, q. 19, a. 3: “. . . bonitas voluntatis dependet a ratione, eo modo quo
dependet ab obiecto.”

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because that which specifies the will is the end, but every object of the will
is precisely also an end.24 In other words, any act of the will, and therefore
also the act that chooses a concrete action, is specified by that which is
called an “object,” which is essentially also an end of this act of the will.This
end, however, is a good rendered present and desirable to the will by means
of reason, the principle of human acts.
The coincidence between objective determination and rational determination of the will, heavily emphasized by St.Thomas, is of decisive importance for the subject we are discussing.
The first important result is that, when human action is considered
formally—according to that which is of its essence, that is, as action proceding from a deliberate will25—“the object of a human act” is precisely the
exterior act itself, or, said with more precision, it is the content, the intelligible significance, of the exterior act of the will. For this reason, the question treated in the (following) 20th question now becomes crucial: From
where does the goodness (or the evil) of the exterior act originate? Does it originate perhaps from that which, as we have seen,Thomas at times calls the
“object of the exterior act,”26 which then would finally be that object
which confers on the human act its primary and fundamental moral specification? Curiously, there is no article in question 20 that asks “if the
goodness of the exterior act depends on its object.” In fact, in the entire
question the term “object of the exterior act” does not appear again.
Rather, Thomas states that as the exterior act is ordered, through the
intention, to an ulterior end, its goodness or evil derives precisely from this
act of the will (i.e., from the object of the intention).This corresponds to
what had been said earlier.27 We would now expect the assertion that the
goodness or evil of the exterior act, in itself, derives precisely from its object.
But this is not the case. Thomas continues: “The goodness or malice
which the exterior act has of itself, on account of its being about due
matter and its being attended by due circumstances, is not derived from
the will, but rather from reason.”28 For this reason, adds Thomas, “if the
goodness of the exterior act is considered inasmuch as it is ordered and
24 ST I–II, q. 19, a. 2:“. . . bonitas voluntatis ex solo uno illo dependet, quod per se

facit bonitatem in actu, scilicet ex obiecto”; ibid., ad 1: “. . . quantum ad actum
voluntatis, non differt bonitas quae est ex obiecto, a bonitate quae est ex fine,
sicut in actibus aliarum virtutum.”
25 ST 1-II., q. 1, a. 1.
26 For example, ST I–II, q. 18, aa. 6 and 7.
27 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 6.
28 ST I–II, q. 20, a. 1: “Bonitas autem vel malitia quam habet actus exterior secundum se, propter debitam materiam et debitas circumstantias, non derivatur a
voluntate, sed magis a ratione.”

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understood (“apprehended”) by reason, it is prior to the goodness of the
act of the will.”29 In other words, the goodness of an act of choice, as well
as of the voluntary execution of the exterior act (the usus), depends on its
object, which is the exterior act; the goodness of this latter, however, does
not depend, in turn, on an object of its own, but on an “ordinatio et
apprehensio rationis” in virtue of which the exterior act becomes properly the object of a human act, a practical good that morally specifies the
act of the will, that is, the will’s elective act, and along with it the act
carried out on the basis of this choice.30
29 Ibid.: “unde si consideretur bonitas exterioris actus secundum quod est in ordi-

natione et apprehensione rationis, prior est quam bonitas actus voluntatis.”
30 Precisely in this context, Pinckaers (Le renouveau de la morale, 135) has fallen into

what seems to me a significant contradiction. Initially, he says that the object of
the exterior act (according to him, in the case of theft, “the good of another as
desirable”) confers on the act its first moral specification,“qui le constitue en son
essence sur le plan moral.” But immediately afterward he adds:“Cepandant l’object de l’acte extérieur n’a de valeur morale que si la volonté le prend pour le
but de son mouvement.” It is not possible, however, that the object of the exterior act confer the first moral specification on the act and, simultaneously, that
this act, without it being grasped by the will as an end, not yet possess any moral
significance.The cause of what seems a strange contradiction is certainly the failure to include the constitutive function of reason for the object in the analysis.
A few pages further on (140), Pinckaers states, surprisingly, that the finis operis,
which according to him coincides with the finis proximus of the will, is not “une
donné purement objective,” but “déjà une œuvre de la raison humaine.” This
seems to indicate that Pinckaers, in fact, had not forgotten the constitutive role
of reason in the formation of the object.The problem is that at this point Pinckaers asserts that this “finis proximus” (or “finis operis”) is not the object that
confers on the human act its first moral specification: “Cet object, c’est la materia circa quam qui de soi préexiste et s’impose à l’intention qui dirige l’action; ce
sont les matériaux, antérieurement à tout projet de construction.”This unfortunate metaphor taken from technology (also used later by Pinckaers in his book
Ce qu’on ne peut jamais faire. La question des actes intrinsèquement mauvais. Histoire et
discussion [Paris: Cerf, 1986]: 108ff.) seems, however, to contradict that which the
author had said on p. 135 (as has been mentioned), that is, that the exterior act
receives from the object of the exterior act, that is from the “materia circa quam,”
“une spécification morale première.” In my opinion, Pinckaers read St.Thomas
exactly as I did, but is guilty of a significant confusion in terminology.The exterior act or the “materia circa quam”—which St. Thomas identifies with the
object that morally specifies the act—is not an aggregate of “pre-existent
matters” on which the will then confers its moral significance in a “creative” way,
an impression which Pinckaers’s statements could give, but a “good understood
and ordered by reason,” presented by reason to the will as an objective datum, a
practical proposal or good, already bearing moral significance, but, obviously,
“une œuvre de la raison,” a “work of reason,” a “forma a ratione concepta” (cf.
note 35). If Pinckaers had more closely analyzed St.Thomas’s texts regarding on

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It seems significant to me that, in the context of this more analytical
discussion, the term “object of the exterior act” does not reappear. From
this perspective, in which the human act is considered as a properly voluntary—that is, chosen—act and, therefore, from the perspective of the person
who acts, it is precisely the exterior act itself, in its intelligible essence,
which shows itself to be “object.”What is chosen is not, therefore, the res
aliena, but accipere rem alienam: an intelligible proposal, presented to the will
as a good and as a proximate end.And this object is what we call a “theft.”
In the order of execution, this object—which is a proposal of action, an
intentio voluntatis directed to a way of acting, conceived by reason—confers
on the sum of bodily movements of which the exterior act of the theft is
composed its primary and fundamental moral specification as a particular
type of act; and chosen in this way, the exterior act “to take that which
belongs to another against his will” causes a disorder in the will of the
person who so chooses: It renders him unjust. The object causes such a
disorder, obviously, because the res aliena is not “appropriate matter” for an
act of taking it from someone against his will.31 We can say that materially
considered this res aliena with all its related circumstances is the object of the
act. But an object cannot be understood only materially; its formal part
must be included as well. If for Aquinas the object of an act of seeing is not
the thing, but the color that makes it visible,32 the object of an action such
as a theft cannot be properly the “thing which belongs to another,” but
rather this “thing which belongs to another” taken under its formal aspect
of being a practical good, that is, a practical aspect, to be indicated with a verb
that expresses an action.33 For this reason—and this is the decisive point—
the one hand the relation between “exterior act”/“object”/“materia circa
quam,” and on the other hand, reason, he would have in my opinion been able
to give a more coherent form to his excellent and praiseworthy initial intuition
of re-evaluating the perspective of the acting subject, of voluntariness, and of
finality in the understanding of human action.
31 Cf. ST I–II, q. 18, a. 10: “. . . tollere alienum habet speciem ex ratione alieni, ex
hoc enim constituitur in specie furti.”The fact that the thing taken is “alien”—
or rather the “ratio alieni”—is not the object, but a circumstance, which is
understood “a ratione ordinante ut principalis conditio obiecti determinantis
speciem actus” (ibid.).
32 Cf. for example ST I, q. 1, a. 7: “. . . sicut homo et lapis referuntur ad visum
inquantum sunt colorata, unde coloratum est propium obiectum visus.” In other
words: the object of the act “to see Peter” is not “Peter,” but “Peter under the
aspect of his visibility.”
33 Cf.Theo G. Belmans, Le sens objectif de l’agir humain. Pour relire la morale conjugale
de Saint Thomas (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1980), 175ff. I owe much
to Belmans’s studies. Servais Pinckaers, Le rôle de la fin dans l’action morale, 135,

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only in the context of an action, that is, of an ulterior finalization, can such
“matter” appear as “inappropriate” matter. In itself, a res aliena is neither
“appropriate,” nor “inappropriate.” It becomes so only in relation to specific
desires, choices, and corresponding modes of acting. To establish and to
know such a relation is exclusively the work of reason, which in this way
informs the will, conferring the moral species on its act. For this reason an
object is “evil” that is not in accordance with reason, and therefore “to take
another’s property” is an “object in disaccord with reason.”34
Because the morally relevant object of an exterior act is defined not in
relation to the material elements to which it refers, but to these elements as
understood and ordered by reason, St.Thomas says that as “the species of natural things are constituted by their natural forms, so the species of moral actions
are constituted by forms as conceived by reason.”35 In a more general way,Thomas
affirms in the Scriptum on the Sentences that “the good proper to any
human faculty is that which suits it according to reason, because that goodness derives from a certain ordered unification [commensuratio] of the act
with respect to the circumstances and to the end, which unification reason
performs.”36 For this reason it is important to note that when St. Thomas
speaks of the goodness or evil “secundum se” of the exterior act, he does
not say that this specification comes from its “object,” but from its matter
and its circumstances, which, nonetheless, are not the object, but the elements
from which the object is “understood and ordered” by means of reason.37
on the other hand says that the object of a theft is “le bien d’autrui apparu come
désirable.” This is true in the sense that the aspect of being desirable means to
think of the res aliena already as the matter of an exterior act insofar as this act
is, precisely, an object of the will (and a good or an end for it). For this reason,
the object is not the res aliena itself, but the action of taking it from its owner.
34 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 5, ad 2: “. . . obiectum non conveniens rationi, sicut tollere
aliena.”
35 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 10:“. . . sicut species rerum naturalium constituuntur ex naturalibus formis, ita species actuum constituuntur ex formis prout sunt a ratione conceptae.”
36 In Sent. II, d. 39, 2, 1:“. . . bonum autem cuiuslibet virtutis est conveniens homini
secundum rationem: quia talis bonitas est ex quadam commensuratione actus ad
circumstantias et finem, quam ratio facit.” An explication of the term commensuratio as “unification in an ordered way” can be found e.g., in ST III, q. 2, a. 1. Cf.
ST I–II, q. 71, a. 6:“Habet autem actus humanus quod sit malus, ex eo quod caret
debita commensuratione. Omnis autem commensuratio cuiuscumque rei attenditur per comparationem ad aliquam regulam, a qua, si divertat, incommensurata
erit. Regula autem voluntatis humanae est duplex: una propinqua et homogenea,
scilicet ipsa humana ratio; alia vero est prima regula, scilicet lex aeterna, quae est
quasi ratio Dei.”
37 ST I–II, q. 20, a. 3.We will return to this point briefly later on (the relevant texts
are cited in notes 50, 51, and 52).

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Our interpretation is confirmed by the response to the first objection
of I–II, q. 20, a. 1.The objection claims, correctly, that the exterior act is
the object of the interior act of the will and for this reason one normally
says “to will to commit a theft [to will to take something that is another’s
property], or to will to give an alms.”38 Thomas’s response confirms this,
but also makes it more precise. He replies: “the exterior action is the
object of the will, inasmuch as it is proposed to the will by reason, as a
good understood and ordered by reason.”39 The exterior act, therefore, as the
object of the will that chooses it, is a “bonum apprehensum et ordinatum per
rationem.” For this reason it is not the “object” of the exterior act that is
simply the cause of the primary goodness of the act, but rather reason,
which forms what is “matter” in this exterior act into an object for the
will—its finis proximus, on which the morality of human acts depends
“primarily and fundamentally.” This proximate end is the intelligible
content of a concrete way of acting, a “form conceived by reason.”
In this precise sense, the goodness of the will is caused by the goodness of the exterior act, which is its object.The exterior act, nevertheless,
causes this goodness not as a performed act—not as an external behavior—but precisely as it is the object of an intentio of the will, that is,
willed,40 and therefore as the intelligible content of a concrete way of
acting.This does not mean that Thomas would want to reduce the objective significance of the exterior act—making it indifferent in itself—to
that which, in each case,“is willed,” thus reducing the object to an intention that is somehow separable from its material conditions.41 This would
be, essentially, Abelard’s claim. Such an interpretation loses sight of the
fact that the exterior act, as the object of the interior act of the will, is
already a good understood and ordered by reason. For this reason, in the
same passage just cited, St. Thomas affirms that the exterior act receives
38 ST I–II, q. 20, a. 1, obj. 1:“Sed actus exterior est obiectum interioris actus volun-

tatis: dicimur enim velle furtum vel velle dare eleemosynam.”As is obvious,“velle
furtum” is equivalent to “velle accipere rem alienam.” This velle is the act of
choice, i.e., the usus, by which the act is carried out.
39 Ibid., ad 1: “. . . actus exterior est obiectum voluntatis, inquantum proponitur
voluntati a ratione ut quoddam bonum apprehensum et ordinatum per rationem:
et sic est prius quam bonum actus voluntatis.”
40 Cf. In Sent. II, d. 40, 1, 3:“. . . quia actus exterior comparatur ad voluntatem sicut
obiectum, inde est quod hanc bonitatem voluntatis actus interior ab exteriori
habet, non quidem ex eo secundum quod est exercitus, sed secundum quod est
intentus et volitus.”
41 John Finnis, Germain Grisez, and Joseph Boyle use this passage in this way, citing
it only partially, however, in their article “ ‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect’: A Reply to
Critics of our Action Theory,” in The Thomist 65 (2001): 1–44, at 16.

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its goodness not from the will, but “from the commensuration of the
circumstances, according to which the exterior act is proportioned so as
to attain the goal of man.”42 As we know, this commensuratio is a work of
reason. This being the case, it follows that the “proposal” or proximate
end, which is “the object,” is, certainly, that which is willed, but this willing cannot direct itself to other than what is presented by reason. The
measure, therefore, according to which the exterior act is configured as a
practical good and chosen by the will is not the will itself, or “that which
the agent proposes,” but reason.We cannot define or redefine the objective significance of our actions in function of what we propose. Rather,
that which an agent can reasonably propose (and consequently choose)
in a given situation is understood by reason, not simply as a function of
“proposals” or “intentions” that can be freely oriented by the agent, but
subject to the concrete circumstances in which the choice is carried out,
according to criteria of reasonableness inherent—in virtue of the natural
law—in practical reason, criteria that are therefore also objective.43
It will be useful to recall that for Thomas Aquinas, the ratio is not simply
a knowing organ that “discovers” a moral rule, preexistent in nature, so as
42 In Sent. II, d. 40, 1, 3:“actus enim exterior bonitatem habet ex circumstantiarum

commensuratione, secundum quam proportionatus est ad finem hominis consequendum. . . .”
43 For this reason ST I–II, q. 18, a. 10 is important (cf. my Die Perspektive der Moral.
Philosophische Grundlagen der Tugendethik [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001], 135ff.),
where Thomas lays out his doctrine of the formation of the object as “forma a
ratione concepta,” showing how specific circumstances can at times become a
“principalis conditio obiecti rationi repugnans” (cf. ST I–II, q. 18, a. 5, ad 4: “. .
. circumstantia quandoque sumitur ut differentia essentialis obiecti . . .”). It seems
to me that the action theory of Grisez/Finnis/Boyle ignores this decisive aspect
of Thomistic doctrine. This becomes evident, for example, in their opinion (in
“ ‘Direct’ and ‘Indirect,’ ” 30f.) that someone who blows up an airplane full of
passengers only with the intention of collecting the insurance indemnity for the
loss of the airplane does not intend and therefore does not choose the death of the
passengers (because this is not his “purpose”—he would do it even if the airplane
were empty), but only the destruction of the airplane (proximate end, object),
with the ulterior intention of enriching himself; his act, according to these
authors, is not therefore an act of “direct killing.” The death of the passengers
would only be a collateral effect of the destruction of the airplane, an unintentional effect, even if, as the authors add, such a choice would be “gravely wrong,”
as the collateral effect is foreseen and unjustifiable. I am certain that St.Thomas
would not accept such a description of this choice. He would say, rather, that the
circumstance of the presence of the passengers in the airplane is a “principalis
conditio obiecti rationi repugnans,” which causes a “differentia essentialis
obiecti”: the killing of the passengers, therefore, must be included in the description of the object; indeed, precisely this would be the object.The enrichment, on

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to then apply it to action. Moral reason—practical reason—is itself a rule:
It is “measure” of the morality of human acts, a natural rule, inherent in
human nature and a participation in divine reason.44 Participating in the
light of the intellect, reason is not only regulated by the object of its speculative act—the being of things—but, as practical, and primarily as lex
naturalis, reason itself regulates and directs the “naturalness” of human
tendencies and inclinations to their appropriate end, an end that comprises
part of an order that is not natural, but of reason.This is precisely the order
of reason, which is the adequate expression of that which is natural for man
in a properly moral sense. For this reason, as Thomas constantly affirms,
morally speaking something is in conformity with man’s nature precisely
to the degree in which it is in conformity with reason.45 According to
Thomas, this regulating task belongs to reason for a simple metaphysical
or anthropological reason: Man is man because he has a rational soul,
which is his substantial form. “For that is good for a thing which suits it
the other hand, would in reality be the ulterior intention for which the massacre
of the passengers is chosen and voluntarily carried out. This repugnance to
reason does not depend on the will, but is grasped by reason in its function of
effecting the commensuratio of the various circumstances.
44 Cf. ST I–II, q. 71, a. 6 (cited above in note 36). It is important to understand that
the rule on which reason depends is not “nature,” but properly the eternal law,
which is the divine reason itself. This accords with the Thomistic idea that the
natural law—which is man’s natural reason, distinguishing good from evil—is a
participation in the eternal law by the rational creature, an “impressio divini
luminis in nobis” (ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2). Cf. Martin Rhonheimer,“The Cognitive
Structure of the Natural Law and the Truth of Subjectivity,” The Thomist 67
(2003): 1–44; also in Italian: Rhonheimer,“La legge morale naturale: conoscenza
morale e coscienza. La struttura cognitiva della legge naturale e la verità della
soggettività,” in Natura e dignità della persona umana a fondamento del diritto alla vita
(Acts of the Eighth General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life, February 25–27, 2002), ed. Juan de Dios Vial Correa and Elio Sgreccia (Vatican City:
Libereria Editrice Vaticana, 2003), 125–58.
45 Cf. ST I–II, q. 71, a. 2: “. . . quod est contra ordinem rationis, proprie est contra
naturam hominis inquantum est homo; quod est autem secundum rationem, est
secundum naturam hominis, inquantum est homo. Bonum autem hominis est
secundum rationem esse. . . . Unde virtus humana . . . intantum est secundum
naturam hominis, inquantum convenit rationi: vitium autem intantum est contra
naturam hominis, inquantum est contra ordinem rationis.” Again, in ST I–II, q.
18, a. 5:“In actibus autem humanis bonum et malum dicitur per comparationem
ad rationem.” Cf. ST I–II, q. 71, a. 6 (cited in note 36). For a correct understanding of Thomistic doctrine according to which the rule of morality is not
“nature,” but reason, still useful is L. Léhu’s book, La raison, règle de la moralité
d’après Saint Thomas (Paris: 1930). Stephen L. Brock, in his review of my book
Natural Law and Practical Reason (The Thomist 66 [2002]: 313) has characterized
my assertion that, according to St.Thomas, not nature but reason is the measure

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in regard to its form; and evil, that which is against the order of its form.
It is therefore evident that the difference of good and evil considered in
reference to the object is an essential difference in relation to reason; that
is to say, according as the object is suitable or unsuitable to reason. Now
certain actions are called human or moral, inasmuch as they proceed from
reason.”46 “Nature,” therefore, is not the rule of the good and evil of any
operation, but only that which determines what this rule of good and evil
is in each case. In the case of human nature and human action, this rule is
reason (nor is “nature” the rule in the case of “actions” of brute animals,
but rather instinct and other sensual drives, which are of course natural, as
reason, too, is natural for human beings). Thus, nature is not a “norm of
morality,” but that which establishes this norm, the norm being reason.
4. The Object of the Human Act:
A “Good Understood and Ordered by Reason”
We can summarize the point we have reached thus far with the following four points:
1. That which morally specifies a human act is, exclusively, the object
of an interior act of the will (electio, intentio, etc.), and inasmuch as it
is such an object.
2. The primary and fundamental object of the will, which confers on the
act its primary goodness, is the exterior act as it is a “good understood
of morality, as “a disconcerting claim.” It is rather this characterization, made by
a Thomistic scholar as expert as Brock, that seems to me disconcerting.This can
perhaps be explained by the fact that Brock, like not a few other authors, creates
a confusion between the question of the ontological foundation of the moral order
(which is certainly “nature”), and that concerning the way in which this natural
foundation becomes practically effective and regulatory: This latter is brought about, as
St.Thomas never tires of repeating, precisely by means of reason, which, we must
bear in mind, is also part of human nature—indeed reason is precisely human
nature’s most formal determination, and consequently enters into its definition
as its specific difference!—and knows the human good in a natural (spontaneous,
necessary) way, promulgating the lex naturalis. Cf. Brock, Action and Conduct:
Thomas Aquinas and the Theory of Action (Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 1998) where the
constitutive role of reason in voluntary action is almost ignored, with the consequence of a certain “naturalization” of human action. (The three passages cited
above from I–II, for example, are not mentioned in Brock’s book.)
46 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 5:“Unicuique rei est bonum quod convenit ei secundum suam
formam; et malum quod est ei praeter ordinem suae formae. Patet ergo, quod
differentia boni et mali circa obiecta considerata comparatur per se ad rationem:
scilicet secunudm quod obiectum est ei conveniens vel non conveniens. Dicuntur autem aliqui actus umani, vel morales, secundum quod sunt a ratione.”

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and ordered by reason.” It is therefore precisely the exterior act as the
intelligible content of a concrete action, chosen by the will as a practical
good, which is “the object of a human act”; for example,“to take from
someone that which belongs to him.”
3. For this reason, the goodness of the exterior act does not depend, in
its turn, on its “object,” but, as Aquinas affirms with emphasis and
constancy, on reason. This is so because it is precisely reason, and
reason exclusively, which proposes the exterior act, in the variety of
its components, to the will as an intelligible good, which can then
lead to an act of choice and a subsequent action. If one were to
further seek an “object” of the exterior act itself as such, he would
inevitably fall into physicalism. He would confuse that object on
which the primary goodness of the human act depends with a series
of natural tendencies, realities, and structures, which, though perhaps
very significant morally, are not that which, as such, confers moral
species on a human act.
4. Speaking materially, we can say that the various elements that
compose the exterior act are like a “materia circa quam,” a matter
around which the action develops and that specifies it as a particular
type of action. Considered formally, however, that is, as the object of a
human act and as an end—as the object, that is, of a voluntary act—
this “materia circa quam” is the same exterior act as bonum apprehensum et ordinatum per rationem. Only in this way can the materia circa
quam be understood as a moral object, and only in this way, as St.
Thomas explicitly states, does it specify the act morally.47 This shows
that the “moral object” is not, for Thomas, properly an “object of the
exterior act,” but always and exclusively the object of the interior act
of the will and, for this reason, a forma a ratione concepta.48
47 Cf. ST I–II, q. 72, a. 3, ad 2:“obiecta secundum quod comparantur ad actus exte-

riores, habent rationem materiae circa quam: sed secundum quod comparantur
ad actum interiorem voluntatis, habent rationem finium; et ex hoc habent quod
dent speciem actui.”
48 Cf. ST I–II, q. 18, a. 10 (cited above in note 35).This “flexibility” of the “materia
circa quam” is also explained precisely by the fact that it is not a “materia ex qua,”
that is, the matter of which something is made (cf. ST I–II, q. 18, a. 2, ad 2). The
“materia circa quam” has different characteristics depending on whether it is
considered only materially—in its relation to the exterior act—or as the proximate
end of a voluntary act (ST I–II, q. 72, a. 3, ad 2; cf. previous note); in this latter case,
the “materia circa quam” is precisely that which is called the object “et habet
quodammodo rationem formae, inquantum dat speciem” (ST I–II, q. 18, a. 2, ad 2).

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To call the moral object the “object of the exterior act,” as Thomas
himself at times does, could therefore cause confusion; it would seem
inconsistent with the exposition provided in I–II, questions 19–20.49
According to that exposition, the exterior act does not properly “have”
an “object” (in a moral sense), but the exterior act itself is considered to
be the object morally, the finis proximus of the interior act of the will (i.e.,
the electio), and as such it morally specifies the human act. The expression “object of the exterior act,” however, ultimately means—including
for St.Thomas—“the exterior act as a good understood and ordered by
reason,” or “the rational and rationally ordered apprehension of the exterior act” (= of the materia circa quam, which as a good understood and
ordered by reason is the “form” that morally specifies the act). For this
reason, speaking of the good and evil, which at times the exterior act
possesses secundum se, Aquinas does not say that this derives from its
“object,” but from its “matter” and its circumstances.50 These latter are
not the object, but precisely the elements that, according to reason, are or
are not a “principal condition of the object that determines the action’s
species”51 (or an “essential difference of the object”52 ), and which are
conceived by reason as the moral species of the action. Precisely this
rational comprehension of the exterior act, which contains a rational
49 This problem goes unnoticed even in the accurate and brilliant exposition of St.

Thomas’s doctrine on this subject by R. McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action. A
Theory of Practice (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
1992); for example when the author, although correctly, says: “The external,
commanded act of the will can be good because of the kind of act it is, something determined by its object, for example, giving alms to the poor” (p. 98).
“Giving alms to the poor” appears three times in this statement, each with a
different meaning: once as “exterior act”; then as “object of the exterior act”; and
finally as “type of act” (moral species). It is not that this is incorrect, but that it
requires a further clarification so as to be comprehensible. McInerny’s clarification seems correct to me, because it points in the direction of understanding that
the object of the external act is precisely this act as its matter and circumstances
are understood and ordered by reason, which presents it to the will as a good.
50 ST I–II, q. 20, a. 3:“Quando autem actus exterior habet bonitatem vel malitiam
secundum se, scilicet secundum materiam vel circumstantias. . . .”
51 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 10: “Et ideo quod in uno actu accipitur ut cicumstania superaddita obiecto quod determinat speciem actus, potest iterum accipi a ratione
ordinante ut principalis conditio obiecti determinantis speciem actus.” (This is
the article that begins with the words “species moralium actuum constituuntur
ex formis prout sunt a ratione conceptae.”)
52 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 5, ad 4: “. . . circumstantia quandoque sumitur ut differentia
essentialis obiecti, secundum quod ad rationem comparatur: et tunc potest dare
speciem actui morali. . . . non enim circumstantia faceret actum malum, nisi per
hoc quod rationi repugnat”.

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ordinatio of its various material elements, is the object of the act of choice
and therefore of a human act.53
This is necessarily so because, as has already been mentioned, it is not
possible that the will refer immediately to the constitutive (material,
circumstantial) elements of an “exterior act,” or to things or to the natural acts of specific powers, except through the mediation of reason.54 Precisely
for this reason the exterior act as such cannot have an “object” from which
it receives its moral species—the search for such an object would end in an
infinite regression.The “objects” proper to the exterior act (as considered
materially, i.e., not as an intelligible good for the will) are found at the
physical, pre-moral level (which, to repeat, does not exclude that they be
significant and at times decisive for the morality of an act, as, e.g., the fact
that something belongs to a particular person and a corresponding right
of property exists, or that the sexual act is naturally ordered to the procreation of the human species).
Every deliberately chosen human act, on the other hand, already necessarily has an object at the moral level, because its object is this exterior
53 It is correct, therefore, when Tobias Hoffmann in his article “Moral Action as

Human Action: End and Object in Aquinas in Comparison with Abelard,
Lombard, Albert, and Duns Scotus,” in The Thomist 67 (2003): 73–94, asserts that
the “materia circa quam” is “what the agent is doing,” as “uti re sua” or “accipere
aliena” which are good or evil objects (or acts) according to their “proportion to
reason.” It must be added, however, that reason not only judges concerning the
goodness of the object, but also formulates or constitutes it cognitively, in the
sense that only before reason can it appear as this kind of object.
54 Here is where the fundamental error of the so-called “teleological ethics”
(consequentialism, proportionalism) is found, all of which assume, in one way or
another, that the will can refer in an immediate way to an exterior act and to its
elements (to goods, i.e., called “ontic,” “non-moral” or “pre-moral,” “physical”),
without this also implying a moral specification of the will. For example, according to the adherents of “teleological ethics,”“to kill a human being” would only
be to physically cause the death of a man (to cause a non-moral evil), which,
according to the totality of the circumstances and foreseeable consequences, can
be considered morally right or wrong. In reality, however, the will chooses the
action “to kill a human being” not as though it were simply the (physical) cause
of an evil that is equally physical, but as a “good understood and ordered by
reason,” as the intelligible content of an action which already implies a rational
configuration, full of moral significance, of the various “physical goods and evils”
implicated in the action.This rational configuration is what morally specifies the
act of the will as just or unjust; it specifies it, precisely, independently of the foreseen consequences and of other, perhaps worthy, intentions. I refer here to my
book Die Perspektive der Moral, which, among other things, is intended as a
systematic refutation of so-called “teleological ethics,” and to Martin Rhonheimer, “Intentional Actions and the Meaning of Object: A Reply to Richard
McCormick,” in The Thomist 59 (1995): 279–311.

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act itself, as a “good understood and ordered by reason.” To deny this is
to fall into physicalism.Traditionally, to avoid this danger, it was customary at this point to resort to the Deus ex machina of the mysterious “transcendental relation of the physical object to the moral norm.”This solution,
however, more juridical than moral, hindered a proper understanding of
the intrinsic constitution of the moral object, and therefore also of the
goodness or evil that human acts intrinsically possess on the basis of their
object.To avoid the necessity of recourse to this Deus ex machina or—like
those who were aware of the inadequacy of this “legalistic” solution and
rebelled against it—to avoid ending up in proportionalism or consequentialism (which are nothing other than variations of the same ethicalnormative extrinsicism), one must place himself “in the perspective of the
acting person,” conceiving the object of a human act as the proximate
end of the will, i.e., as an “object rationally chosen by the deliberate will”
on which “primarily and fundamentally depends” the morality of the
human act (Veritatis Splendor no. 78).
At this point we must state clearly that we have yet to resolve any of
the problems of normative ethics, i.e., of the argumentative foundation of
specific moral norms.
To object, then, that what has been said so far accomplishes nothing,
is tautological and, as has been claimed, of “little explanatory value,” and
that the ethical-normative problem has merely been “put off,” would
seem to me to express a certain ignoratio elenchi, an ignorance of the problem we have been treating so far.55 We have attempted to clarify the
notion of the “object” of a human act as “it causes goodness and evil in
the will”; we have not yet, however, spoken of that which is the proper
task of normative ethics, which is how to discern whether this or that act
is morally good or evil.
Action theory, which is properly what we have been dealing with to
this point, is not asked to resolve normative problems, even if the method
of resolving such problems depends in a decisive way on the theory of
action one uses to such an end; in the present case it depends on the
notion of “moral object,” employed in the normative task of ethics.
The theory of action proposed here, firmly based in the thought of
Thomas Aquinas, is properly an anthropology (or metaphysics) of action, and
55 This is the criticism of my position by Alberto Bonandi, “Dieci anni di teolo-

gia morale con ‘Veritatis Splendor’. Aspetti della ricezione dell’enciclia,” in La
Scuola Cattolica 131 (2003): 22f. In my opinion, Bonandi in his critique confuses
action theory with normative ethics, and fails to differentiate between their
respective tasks; nor does he seem to understand well the importance of the
former for the latter.

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not merely a logical analysis of practical reason.The correct understanding of the object of a human act, moreover, is also the key for resolving
the difficult question of so-called “intrinsically evil” acts, because what
causes problems of comprehension is not so much the objective evil of
certain acts, but precisely the notion of their being intrinsically evil.
The consequence of what has been shown so far is that to understand
the notion of the “object” of a human act, it is necessary to understand
the fundamental role—decisive from the anthropological point of view—
of practical reason in human action.Whoever looks for an “object of the
exterior act” as an external, observable behavior, will end by reducing the
human act to its non-moral elements, in a crude physicalism that ignores
the regulating and morally ordering role of reason.To ignore the decisive
role of reason for the constitution of the objective moral significance of
human actions flaws not only action theory, but also loses the “moral
perspective” itself, that of action guided by a “rational appetite,” the will.
It forgets that goods and evils in a moral sense are not “ontic” or “physical” goods like “human life,” “death,” “property,” “the conception of a
new life,” and so on, even though these are morally of great importance;
but that moral goods and evils are rather actions and their corresponding
choices, such as “respect human life,”“kill an innocent person,”“take that
which belongs to someone against his will,” “transmit human life.” The
objects that morally specify such actions are not “human life,” “another’s
property,” or “the conception of a new life,” but precisely the respective
actions inasmuch as they are the intelligible contents of concrete ways of acting,
“goods understood and ordered by reason,” and willed as such: In this
way these actions are the proximate end, the “object,” of the will, and it
is precisely this object that confers on the human act its primary and
fundamental moral specification.
The perspective set forth here maintains, to return to our earlier
example, that an external behavior considered physically (bodily movements like, for example, a sexual copulation, or the act that causes the
contents of a safe to disappear) becomes an “object” for the will, and
therefore causes moral good or evil in the will, in correlation with certain
of the behavior’s characteristics that are comprehensible only by reason,
such as the “circumstance” that one is dealing with one’s own safe or with
that of another.The res aliena, or more specifically, the circumstance that
the res in question is another’s property, and the corresponding juridicalmoral fact of the existence of the other’s right, is in no way “the object”
of a theft, but a circumstance that, before reason, shows the res to be indebita (“inappropriate”) with respect to the physical action of taking it from
its owner. The characteristic of being materia debita or indebita does not

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derive from an ulterior object of the physical act, but from reason in its
aspect of being a rule, or, in other words, from the exterior act considered as a “good understood and ordered by reason,” from the intelligible
content of a concrete type of action.
It is clear that we are speaking of a “reason” that is not a rule only in
the formal sense. It is a reason, rather, permeated with axiological
content, a content that derives from the fact of reason being a faculty
integrated into the being of a human person, constituted in a substantial
unity of body and spirit. It is not reason (or the intellect) that knows, but
the person who knows by means of reason. Even more important,
however, is the fact that reason can be the rule of that which is just or
unjust because reason itself depends on its own principles, on the natural
law. This latter, according to St. Thomas, is “the light of natural reason,
whereby we discern what is good and what is evil,” because it is essentially a “naturalis inclinatio ad debitum actum et finem,”“a natural inclination to the (morally) appropriate act and end.”56
To understand the moral configuration of an exterior act, the object of
a choice of the acting subject, we must affirm therefore that it does not
depend simply on natural acts, but neither does it depend on the will of
the subject. Rather, it depends on reason, which, as the discursive part of
the intellect, is also as intellect and practical reason precisely that cognitive
faculty that not only orders our actions, but also fundamentally opens us
to the truth of our being, in this way establishing the practical truth of our
actions, which is the “truth of the subjectivity” of the person who acts.
Kevin Flannery has raised the criticism that such an emphasis on the
contribution of the subject, or rather of the human understanding (“the
mind’s contribution”), in the constitution of the object of a human act
would be “difficult to reconcile with Thomas Aquinas,” and that at times
would lead to “the exclusion of that which is outside the mind.”57 This
objection that can be responded to easily using the words of authors who
are under no suspicion of subjectivism.58 Moreover, the criticism seems so
56 ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2. Veritatis Splendor twice cites (nos. 12 and 40) the concise

Thomistic formulation of In duo praecepta caritatis et in decem legis praecepta expositio, Prologus I:“. . . lex naturae (. . .) nihil aliud est nisi lumen intellectus insitum
nobis a Deo, per quod cognoscimus quid agendum et quid vitandum. Hoc
lumen et hanc legem dedit Deus homini in creatione.” Cf. the above-mentioned
articles (note 44).
57 Kevin Flannery, review of my book Die Perspektive der Moral, in Gregorianum 83
(2002): 591–94; at 592.
58 For example Ralph McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action, 101f.: “The human
voluntary act will be good, insofar as will is measured by reason. . . . Anything
that the mind judges to be good, sees as good, is thereby brought under the

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odd to me that it may be due to a simple misunderstanding on Flannery’s
part.This misunderstanding probably consists in the assumption—false, in
any case—that what is constituted and ordered by reason is not “objective,”
is not always rooted in extra-mental reality, and indeed, that it excludes
“that which is outside the mind” and depends on the arbitrariness of the
subject. In reality things are not this way, and to say so presupposes an
anthropology and a conception of the mind different from the Aristotelian
concept according to which “the intellect is always correct; the appetite, on
the other hand, and the sensible immagination can be either correct or not
correct,”59 an anthropology equally reflected in the Thomistic expression
according to which,“corrupt reason is not reason.”60
common formality of goodness. . . . Mind’s grasp of the good is the measure of
the will’s goodness.”
59 Aristotle, De Anima III, 10, 433a 27–28.
60 In Sent. II, d. 24, 3, 3 ad 3: “. . . ratio corrupta non est ratio”. Cf. on this subject
Die Perspektive der Moral, 146ff. (“Der anthropologische Primat der Vernunft”),
and in more detail in Rhonheimer, Praktische Vernunft und Vernünftigkeit der Praxis.
Handlungstheorie bei Thomas von Aquin in ihrer Entstehung aus dem Problemkontext
der aristotelischen Ethik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), 155–72, and passim. Like
not a few Thomists, Flannery apparently works with a somewhat “invertedCartesian prejudice” in the sense of dualistically—and in this very sense Cartesian—assuming that the “objective,” the “natural,” and the “truthful” are equal to
what is “outside the mind,” whereas what is “inside the mind” (or the mind itself)
is “subjective,” “non-natural,” and the mere representation of truth. Even if such
an inverted Cartesianism seems to be a very common Neo-Scholastic scheme, I
hardly think that it agrees with Aquinas’s way of thinking. For him, as for Aristotle (and in another way also for Plato), the human mind—especially the active
intellect, which is to intelligible truth as light is to the visibility of things—is part
of man’s nature and therefore, in a basic ontological way, it is “nature” as well. In
clarifying the concept of the “natural,” both the distinction into intra- and extramental reality and that into reason and nature seem to me to be of little use, and
anthropologically misleading. The intellect and its proper object—intelligible
reality—are, for the human person, as natural as any of his natural inclinations. It
is, therefore, strange to assume that the proper objects and goods of extra-mental
(or non-mental) natural inclinations (such as the natural object and goals of, for
example, the sexual inclination or the inclination to self-preservation) should be
more “natural” and “objective” than the inclinations, objects, and goods that
naturally spring from the mind (or the intellect, or “natural reason”), such as, for
example, the concept of “the just” or “the due” (which, as a concept of the good
and formally, is purely “mental”, i.e., not to be found in extra-mental reality). So,
nothing excludes that there is a “mind’s contribution” which is both natural and
entirely objective, without there being any problematic “subjectivism” or aprioristic transcendentalism. On the contrary, a concept of “naturalness” that excludes
the “mind’s contribution” would not seem to be an idea of “human naturalness”
at all. If we consider the human person both anthropologically and ethically as

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It is correct, therefore, to hold that the object of a human act is the act
itself. This is not logically contradictory,61 since it is this act taken
precisely as object: as the proximate end of the will, that is, as the intelligible content of a concrete action, a good that can be and is in fact
chosen, and not as an act “done” in the order of execution.62 The object
is the exterior act, as the object of of the interior act of the will.
The exterior act itself is a good, known and ordered by reason and as
such “presented” to the will, which can also be considered, as such, in
abstract.This consideration would be precisely the description of the act
in its “objective” significance, at the level of its “object.”This significance
is not a naturally preexistent “given”: it is a species, a ratione concepta, just
as at the universal level the natural law, like every law, is “something
constituted by reason,” a “work of reason.”63
5. Practical Reasonableness and Finality:
The Intentional Structuring of the Object
An important consequence derives from the fact that the object of a
human act is configured by reason: The exterior act itself, presented by
reason to the will as object, as proximate end, and therefore as a practical good, must already include an intentional element that can define it
as a “human act” or “human action.” An action without its proper and
intrinsic finality is inconceivable. Speaking of human acts,“the end is not
part of the “outside” or “objective” world, we must include in this consideration
the mind and the intellectual powers of man—otherwise such a consideration
would reduce man to his pure animality. (We will see later how this bears upon
the concept of “natural law” as a moral law.)
61 As Kevin Flannery claims in his review of Die Perspektive der Moral, and likewise
Alberto Bonandi, 23. Both seem to think that I am saying that the object of an
act of choice is the choice itself, which would in fact be absurd.
62 It could be that I have confused Flannery by my statement (somewhat embarrassing, I admit, but marginal) that the object of an act of seeing is not the
“thing” that is seen, but rather the act of “seeing this thing.”This is certainly true
if we consider the act of seeing as an exterior act, that is, as commanded by the
will, which is to say as a human act. If we consider it, rather, as a natural act of
the vision, it cannot be said that the object of this act of seeing something is the
act itself of seeing the thing.The object of the act of seeing would be rather the
“thing seen under the formal aspect of its visibility” (for St.Thomas: “the thing
as colored”; cf. note 32 above). Flannery seems to construct his entire criticism
around this imprecision, which is entirely marginal to my argument. The argument is based, rather, on the fact that the will refers to extra-mental realities as
goods and ends (for example, to another person’s watch) only by means of a
judgment of reason, and as a “good understood and ordered by reason.”
63 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 1: “. . . lex naturalis est aliquid per rationem constitutum, sicut
etiam propositio est quoddam opus rationis.”

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altogether extrinsic to the act, because it is related to the act as principle
or terminus.” It is a characteristic property of an act not only that it
proceeds from a principle, but also “ut sit ad aliquid,” it “tends toward
something.”64 It is therefore not possible to dissolve an exterior act into
a collection of material elements, devoid of order or finality, without
dissolving it, ultimately, as an action. The exterior act, as the intelligible
content of a concrete action, as the object of the will and a practical
good, is precisely a coherent and unified proposal that confers significance on
a particular aggregation of bodily movements; it is, therefore, precisely
that which explains why one does what one does. An exterior act, the
object of a choice, can be described as such an object only by including
an intentional element in the description. It is, in fact, reason’s proper task
to order something to an end.65
We again see that, in order to be able to describe an object in this way,
we must put ourselves in the perspective of the acting person. Only thus
can the object be grasped as the end of a choice, and as a good to be pursued.
Aquinas confirms this when he says that there are exterior acts that can be
per se ordered to the end of the will, such as “to fight” is per se ordered
to “victory”; and there are other acts that are ordered per accidens to an end,
as when “to rob” is ordered toward “the giving of alms.”66 “To fight” is a
series of exterior movements that can be understood as a human act—and
as that particular human act—only in virtue of the end of “victory.”
Indeed, the term “to fight” itself is incomprehensible—it simply doesn’t
make sense—without a reference to “victory” as its end.The object-basis
64 ST I–II, q. 1, a. 3, ad 1: “. . . finis non est omnino aliquid extrinsecum ab actu;

quia comparatur ad actum ut principium vel terminus; et hoc ipsum est de
ratione actus, ut scilicet sit ab aliquo, quantum ad actionem, et ut sit ad aliquid,
quantum ad passionem.”
65 ST I–II, q. 90, a. 1:“. . . rationis enim est ordinare ad finem, qui est primum principium in agendis. . . .”The fact that this is equally valid both at the universal level
(the law) and at the level of the specification of individual acts is important for
the comprehension of the unity of practical reason.
66 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 7: “. . . pugnare per se ordinatur ad victoriam . . . accipere rem
alienam per accidens ordinatur ad dandum eleemosynam.”Thomas says here that
“pugnare” (“to fight”) is “the object of the exterior act,” which is per se ordered
to the end of the will (victory). This mode of expression is a simplification,
because to understand the expression “pugnare,” we must already include in it
the notion of an end (to win), otherwise this “pugnare” would simply not be a
“pugnare.” Rather than to speak of an object of the exterior act, it would therefore be better to say “the object qua exterior act” (or “the exterior act as
object”), which would be the exterior act conceived by reason, ordered to an
end, and as such presented to the will as object.

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of the act of fighting is therefore defined by “why one does what one
does,” by that which the agent intends by what he is doing exteriorly.67
To see this more clearly, let us return to our example of the theft. A
theft, in the Thomistic tradition, is defined as “taking another’s thing
secretly.”68 We have already seen that the object of this act is not the “res
aliena.” Moral objects are practical goods, and therefore actions, and must
be expressed linguistically not with a noun, but with a verb (or with the
latter’s respective nominization).To be able, therefore, to describe the act
in question and to identify its object, we must also indicate a primary and
fundamental “why” that which is done, is done. This is equally valid for
the definition of the theft: In the expression “covert appropriation (or
taking),” such a “why” is implicit.69 This becomes clear by reflection on
the term “appropriation” (or “taking”): In fact, from a “physical” or
merely “technical” point of view, the act of theft can be carried out in
various ways.With the words “appropriate” or “take,” however, we are not
designating the act at this physical level. Rather, these words signify a
specific way of “taking” something from another: to physically take it for a
particular end, for example, to steal it from someone. “To steal an amount
of money from Paul” is more than “to cause the fact that an amount of
money pass physically from Paul to John”; it is to cause this fact with the
intention of removing the money from the discretional power of Paul, its
owner, so as to make it pass into John’s discretional power (a complex
structure, objectifiable only by reason; according to St.Thomas’s expression, this is precisely a “forma a ratione concepta”).
With this in mind, imagine two different people who, with an artist’s
skill, remove the watch attached to Mrs. Jones’s wrist. One does it merely
to entertain the public, or to play a small joke on Mrs. Jones; the other is
a pickpocket and commits the same physical action so as to steal the
watch from its owner and use it for his own purposes. The two people
have peformed two acts, which, while identical at the physical or natural
level, are different at the moral level.The two acts have a different object.
Nevertheless, in both acts the watch is identical and, from the point of
view of bodily movements or technique, the external act is also identical. The same relationship also exists between the watch and its wearer,
that is, it is her legitimate property; for the agent, therefore, it is a res
67 Cf. the well-known example of G. E. M. Anscombe in her book Intention, 2nd

ed.(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963, 35) of a person lying on a bed.To know “what
he is doing,” we must know “why” he is doing what we see him do: for example, to rest, to do Yoga exercises, etc.
68 ST I–II, q. 66, a. 3: “occulta acceptio rei alienae.”
69 Cf. G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention, 34f.

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aliena.The intentionality implicit in the bodily movements of the agent,
however, is different: For this reason, the movements proceed from different choices. A simple external observer of this act—without knowing any
of the other circumstances—would not be able to distinguish the two
actions from the moral and therefore “objective” point of view, since he
does not know the content of the agent’s choice: From the point of view
of an external observer the two acts would be identical. Only by placing
oneself in the perspective of the person who acts does it become possible to understand the difference in the acts, which is in fact a difference
in choice:The goods pursued in each of the actions are different, as is the
finis proximus. In other words: only in the perspective of the acting person
does the exterior act, the observable behavior, appear also in its significance as the “object” of a human act.
In order to make this fact even more explicit, we must make our definition of the object “a theft” more precise.The object of a theft is to “secretly
take something that is another’s property so as to appropriate it.” It seems obvious, for Aquinas, that this is understood, given that by the use of the word
acceptio he certainly does not intend to refer merely to the aggregate of physical movements that cause a local transfer of a thing from its rightful owner
to another person.The expression acceptio must therefore be understood as
including the intentionality to really appropriate the res aliena in question—
in such a way that it changes owners, against the will and right of the original owner—and not merely to “take it” in a physical sense.70
70 One can object that my description of the act in question is simply mistaken.

According to this objection, we must begin from the physical action “to take
something from someone,” which would then be morally specified by its object:
If the object is a res aliena, then the taking is illicit and we are dealing with a theft.
For this reason, the objection concludes, the object does not include the exterior act, but only the thing to which this action is directed, in this case the “res
aliena.”The objection does not seem to me, however, to be conclusive. It presupposes that we can describe the action of “taking something from someone”
without making reference to an intentional element, that is, at a merely physical
level. This, however, is not possible. Physically, the act of taking is no different
than, for example, “to cause, by means of a series of bodily movements, the fact
that a watch moves from one place to another” (for example, from Mrs. Jones’s
arm into Mr. Brown’s pocket). In this case, however, even if the watch in question were a “res aliena,” we cannot yet say whether we are dealing with a theft
or with a trick; indeed, Mr. Brown could even be a policeman who is confiscating the watch—a “res aliena”—which had been previously stolen from Mrs.
Smith, and is now being retrieved from Mrs. Jones. If we describe, however, the
acting of taking not physically, but as a human act, then it is impossible to
describe it without including the “thing” that is taken.This would mean that to
describe “to take something from someone,” we must already include the notion

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“To place oneself in the perspective of the acting person” means to
understand that to choose a type of action or behavior—or rather a series
of physical or bodily movements—and therefore to carry out a human act,
one must will this action as a good.To describe the object of a human act,
therefore, we must also include in the description the will with which it is
chosen and executed. Given that the action is an end of the will, the intervention of reason is necessary, as Aquinas never tires of repeating. It is
reason, and only reason, that presents to the will, and therefore also to the
act of choice (the electio), its object.71 How, then, could it be possible for
reason to present a series of bodily movements as a good to the will—such
as “to take a watch from Mrs. Jones’s arm in a certain way”—if not under
the aspect of an end? Indeed, reason must objectivize these movements
under the ratio formalis—the formal aspect—of a “why one does what one
does,” for example, “appropriation” or “to entertain an audience.” This
good is not already “given” with the external behavior, nor is it in some
way “included” in the external behavior; the behavior, considered in itself,
could have various meanings. It is precisely for this reason that St.Thomas
asserts, as has already been mentioned, that the species of human acts are
not, like the species of natural things, constituted by natural forms, but by
“forms conceived by reason.” From this it follows that to describe the
that this “something” be a “res aliena”; otherwise the concept of “taking” would
automatically fall back to the physical level of simply “causing, by means of a
series of bodily movements, the fact that . . . etc.” In this way, the objection falls
into a vicious circle. Even if we add to “take something” the element “to appropriate this thing for oneself ” we arrive at the same result:The description of the
act of “appropriation” includes even more clearly an intentionality.Without this,
the act would be, again, nothing other than to “cause, by means of a series of
bodily movements, the fact that . . .”; including the intentionality of “appropriating” the thing in question already includes the fact that the thing is a “res
aliena.” One could object that it is possible that we are dealing with something
that is not (yet) anyone’s property, and therefore we are not dealing with a theft
(but an act of “original appropriation”).This is true, but shows that in that case
the term “appropriation” is used twice, each time with a different meaning: in
the second case it no longer includes the element of “taking of something from
someone against his will, etc.” With this we arrive at the result, already recognized, that the existence of a “res aliena” is, certainly, an indispenable condition
for a concrete action to be a theft, but it is not a sufficient condition.We cannot
conclude: Since an act of original appropriation, given that there is no “res
aliena,” is not a theft, an act of appropriation is a theft only because it includes a
series of bodily movements that are directed toward a “res aliena” (which would
then be the object that morally specifies this act). This is a non sequitur that
obscures the circular character of the argument.
71 Cf. the texts cited above: ST I–II, q. 19, a. 1, ad 3; I–II, q. 19, a. 3 and ad 1; but
also I–II, q. 13, a. 1.

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object of a human act as chosen by the will, we must describe it in its
rational structure (as intelligible content at the practical level, as a proposal
of action), which, as is obvious, also includes its primary and basic intentionality, which defines it as the object of an act.
These statements can be misunderstood, unfairly, as subjectivism leading to arbitrariness, arguing that this perspective makes the moral value
of any action depend on the arbitrariness of the person who acts, directing his intentions in each situation toward what he wants. In my opinion, however, this criticism misses the point, since it ignores the decisive
fact that every act of the will necessarily depends on reason. Nothing can
be willed unless reason presents it to the will as a good, and the judgments of reason regarding the good can be evaluated precisely according
to criteria of reasonableness, that is, objectively and therefore not arbitrarily. “Reason is not an arbitrary measure of the will.”72 “To take and
appropriate to oneself a watch that belongs to another” is something
objectively unjust in the sense that it is precisely reason that grasps the
necessary relationship of injustice between “another’s property” and
“taking it from him against his will” so as to appropriate for oneself the
thing in question; it is also reason, and reason only, in its speculative as
well as in its practical function, which grasps the link between the thing
and its owner, that is, the right of property, the difference between
“mine” and “yours.” Practical reason comprehends all of this, on the basis
of its own principles formulated from the natural law, as contrary to
justice—for example, as contrary to the golden rule—and therefore as an
evil to avoid. For this reason, the intentionality rooted in practical reason
does not “create” the injustice of this or that theft; this intentionality only
causes that certain movements of the body would be, in fact, a theft. All
of this is knowable only by reason, and it is reason that proposes this
ordered aggregate of bodily movements and circumstances to the will, as
a good to be pursued.73
We see therefore how, for reason, there exists a non-arbitrary connection between the material elements of the exterior act, its objective moral
species as a “theft,” and its consequent valuation as “unjust.” Equally, there
exists, again for reason, a non-arbitrary connection between an act of
sexual copulation and it specification as good or evil, as, for example,“an
act of infidelity” or “an act of conjugal love.” This connection is under72 Ralph McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action, 102.
73 The first principle of the natural law expresses this structure of the “bonum

faciendum et prosequendum”; this is found also at the level of the concrete act,
which is always presented to the will as “bonum faciendum et prosequendum”;
cf. ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2.

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stood by reason on the basis of its natural principles—the natural law—
according to which reason orders the act proper to the sexual inclination
and its natural end to its morally just end, that is, according to the circumstances that are significant for reason, such as, for example, whether or not
the act is with one’s own wife.74
A possible objection is that the inclusion of a prior—and constitutive
for the object—intentionality in the notion of the object of a human act
ultimately means to render irrelevant, for the object’s description, whatever does not proceed from this intentionality, and is rather “pre-configured” by factors independent of the actor, such as the natural structures
and properties of the “things” or realities around which the action is
performed. Kevin Flannery, for example, has criticized my assertion that
“to swallow X” (where X is, for example, a morphine capsule) is not, as
such, a practical good and therefore cannot be understood as the object of
an act, precisely because a morphine capsule as such cannot be a good for
the will, and therefore cannot even be chosen.To choose “to swallow X,”
I wrote, it is necessary that there exist a primary and fundamental “why”
one does this, as for example “to take a means for alleviating pain.”75 With
this, objects Flannery (who seems to want to sustain that it is precisely “to
swallow X,” as such, that is the object of the act “to swallow X so as to
alleviate pain”), the practical sphere would be isolated from the very
sphere to which we apply descriptions such as “to swallow X,” that is, from
the physical sphere, from the nature of things.76 Which is to say, the
connection would be lost between the natural properties of morphine (its
narcotic effects) and its being a good chosen to the end of alleviating pain.
This criticism, as well, seems to me to express a difficulty that results
from failing to notice the constitutive role of reason in the constitution
of the moral object, and therefore from a different (or entirely lacking?)
anthropology of action.With the assertion, that “to swallow X” is not yet
the description of an object of a human act, but that this object is “to
swallow X so as to alleviate pain,” we in no way separate the realm of
praxis from the realm to which we apply the description “to swallow
X”—that is, the connection is not severed between the natural properties of the morphine (its narcotic effect) and its being a good chosen for
the end of alleviating pain—and this for the simple fact that to be able to
choose “to swallow X so as to alleviate pain,” reason must understand the
link between “X” and “alleviate pain”; it must know that “X,” because of
its specific (narcotic) effect, is a preparation suitable for alleviating pain.
74 Cf. De malo 2, 4.
75 Cf. Die Perspektive der Moral, 101.
76 K. Flannery, Review of Die Perspektive der Moral, 591.

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Knowing this identical information, however, it is also possible that one
choose “to swallow X” to get high on drugs! This latter act would be
different on the basis of its object, even though the external act of “to swallow X,” as well as the “X” itself, are identical in both cases. This, in my
view, proves that “to swallow X” is not the object in the moral sense, but
the action considered at a merely physical level, and therefore not as a
practical good, that is, not as an object of the will.77
At this point, one could nevertheless object that the above example of
taking the watch is poorly chosen, since the external behavior (the removal
of the watch from Mrs. Jones’s wrist) can in fact be understood as the object
of an act that is morally indifferent, which becomes evil only through the
successive intention of the unjust appropriation; because of this, according
to the objection, my argumentation becomes pointless. This objection
seems unconvincing to me, however, given that, as has already been shown,
the behavior described in our example can be described as a human act, as
an act chosen and voluntarily carried out, if and only if we include a
specific intentionality in the description. This makes clear that such an
intentionality is not an ulterior or subsequent intention by which an act, in
itself already morally defined on the basis of its proper object, becomes
ordered as a means, but rather it is this basic intentionality that defines the
act, precisely, as a human act (= an act proceeding from a deliberate will).A
different case, and a case of an act that is truly indifferent “ex obiecto,” chosen
as a means in view of an ulterior end, would be that of one who choses to
“take a walk with the intention of preserving his health.”“To take a walk” is
an act, definable as a human act, which can be considered to be morally
indifferent: It is a type of bodily movement or bodily behavior—“walking”—chosen in view of what we typically call a “walk,” for example, “to
go for a walk”; the term “a walk” itself means:“An act which is the effect
of walking without hurry and without fixing a particular destination in
advance, so as to move a bit, to enjoy oneself. . . .”78 Here also the basic
intentional element is not lacking in the description of the act and of its
objective significance.“To take a walk” is more than simply (physically) “to
77 This unfolds in what is called a “practical syllogism,” in which, by means of theo-

retical judgments (assertions of facts) one infers, from a higher-level practical
judgment, a successive, more-concrete practical judgment, to the point of arriving at the choice of an action, and to the action itself.We will speak of this briefly
at the end of this study.
78 “Atto, effetto di camminare, senza affrettarsi e senza prefiggersi una meta particolare, per fare un po’ di moto, svagarsi. . . .” (Nicola Zingarelli, Vocabolario della
Lingua Italiana [11th edition], entry passeggio, 1345). In Italian the word
“camminare” indicates the physical act of “walking,” while “passeggiare” means
“to take a walk.”

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walk”: It is a specific type of “walking,” which as intelligible content can be
chosen by the will as a good and an end. We can distinguish “to take a
walk” from other types of human acts, which, from the point of view of
the bodily movements involved, are exactly the same, but which are chosen
for a different intrinsic end: for example, from the action “to walk to work.”
One who performs this latter action does not “take a walk with the intention of going to work,” for the simple reason that precisely what he does
not do is “take a walk.” Rather, he has chosen, and carries out, a different
action: He takes a trip (he “walks to work”).“To take a trip” and “to take a
walk” are two human acts that are indifferent, but distinguished by their
respective objectives; their intelligible content, capable of being chosen by
the will, is different. What cannot be done, however, is to describe the
external behavior alone—the bodily “to walk”—as a human act, without
making reference to an intentionality of the type “take a walk,”“take a trip,”
or something else of this nature (e.g., “make a pilgrimage”).This demonstrates that these bodily movements are not yet the object of a human act,
but only the physical elements and requirements of an act, not yet rationally ordered to an end and for this reason not yet morally qualifiable.The
same can be said about “to raise an arm,”79 which is an act of greeting, or
one indicating departure, but never simply “to raise an arm.”This latter, as
such, cannot be chosen. There would not be an intentional basic-action,
and therefore no action at all. Nor can it be chosen only so as to falsify the
theory of action just proposed, because in that case “to raise an arm” would
again be something more than simply “to raise an arm”: It would be “to
raise an arm so as to demonstrate that my affirmation is in error.”
Something similar is valid also for a sexual act:The simple natural end
of sexual copulation between a man and a woman—procreation—is not
the object that provides such an act with its primary and fundamental
moral characteristic. I do not want to say here that the moral object of a
sexual act has no relation to its natural end. But to grasp the moral object
of the sexual union between man and woman, something more is necessary, something that only reason can conceive as a good, and propose to
the will as an end to be pursued. “Marriage” is not a “natural” fact or
finality, in the sense of being pre-existent independently of the ordering
act of human reason and of subsequent acts of the will. The objective
significance of human sexuality is understood only in the context of the
auto-experience of the subject as a being constituted in a unity of body
and spirit, of the experience of the other not merely as a body or a
79 I have used this example, taken from Wittgenstein’s “Philosophische Unter-

suchungen,” to illustrate the notion of “intentional basic-action,” in my judgment
very important in Die Perspektive der Moral, 96ff.

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“sexual partner,” but as a person,“equal to me,” and of the sexual act itself
as a relationship of love between two persons.
It is equally true, however, that between the act “to play a trick” and
“to remove another’s watch from the arm to which it is attached,” or
between “to take a walk” and “to walk,” there is a different relationship
than between “the marriage act” and “the natural end of sexuality.” We
will speak of this shortly.The only thing I want to point out here is that,
just as with “to play a trick,”“the marriage act,” in its specific configuration (as an act of love and special friendship, of affective union between
two persons, open to the transmission of life), is not simply an object
“given” by nature, but something in whose configuration also enters the
intentionality of the acting person. As an act of love and fidelity between
two persons—as an act of persons—sexual union presupposes an intentionality on the part of the persons who perform this act. This intentionality certainly assumes the natural finality of the sexual act, but it also
transforms, regulates, and orders it, in accordance with the requirements
of reason, to the end of love between persons and of the procreation of
human life. Only within the order of reason can the circumstance that
the agents either are, or are not, married—that is, mutually bound in an
indissoluble union—present itself as a decisive circumstance for distinguishing, on the basis of their object, the marriage act from an act of
fornication.The fact of not being married becomes, therefore, a “principal condition of the object . . . opposed to reason.”80 Considered, on the
other hand, outside the order of reason, the sexual act cannot be morally
qualified as “good” or “evil,” even if it fulfills its natural finality of being
the cause of the conception of human life.81
It would, of course, be equally possible to describe the action of
“taking the watch” without making reference to a “why” or to a particular intention of the agent. But in this case, one would be describing this
action not as a human act, deliberately chosen and morally qualifiable, but
only an event or a physical process. In this case, therefore, the act would
not be described from “the perspective of the acting person,” and therefore as an act or behavior that is chosen, the “proximate end” of an act of
the will, informed by reason that orders the external behavior to this end,
presenting it as a (practical) good to the will. If we remain at the merely
physical level, we would not be able to understand why Veritatis Splendor
affirms, in accordance with the entire Thomistic tradition, that the
“morality of the act depends primarily and fundamentally” on such an
80 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 10: “. . . principalis conditio obiecti rationi repugnans.”
81 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 5, ad 3.

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object. We observe, moreover, that Veritatis Splendor does not say merely
that the morality depends on the “object,” but that it depends “on the
object rationally chosen by the deliberate will.” With this expression, everything contained in this passage of the encyclical is synthesized at the
outset: Such an object is the intelligible content of a concrete type of
action that is presented by reason to the will as a good, as the proximate
end of the will’s elective act, that is, of the choice of a concrete action.
6. The Intentional Constitution of the Object
and the “Ethical Context”; the Example of Lying
If we compare no. 78 of Veritatis Splendor with the exposition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published a year prior to Veritatis Splendor, on
the theme of the “sources of morality,”82 it is clear that the Catechism takes
a somewhat different approach on the matter, one based more in the classical tradition of the manuals, with a clear opposition between “objective”
and “subjective.” Compared with the Catechism’s approach, that of Veritatis
Splendor seems innovative in various respects, even if there is not yet consensus on the exact meaning and importance of the encyclical’s approach.
“The chosen object” of an action is defined by the Catechism as “a
good toward which the will deliberately directs itself. It is the matter of
a human act.”83 To speak, in the Thomistic tradition, of the object as the
“matter” of a human act is certainly correct in the sense that the object
is called, precisely, “materia circa quam.” Nevertheless, we must not forget
(as we have seen) that for Aquinas this materia circa quam has in a certain
sense the character of a form, inasmuch as it confers on the act its
species.84 Human acts, however, receive their species from their end.85
For this reason Thomas says that the materia circa quam—which is the
object as exterior act—as it is considered formally, that is, as the object of
an interior act of the will (which the act of choice is), possesses the character of an end, and as such gives the act its species.86 It follows that for
Thomas the “materia circa quam” is the end and the form of the act.
For precisely this reason, every object is also “matter,” in the same sense
in which all that is capable of being ulteriorly determined by a form is
82 Cf. the CCC nos. 1750ff.
83 CCC no. 1751.
84 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 2, ad 2: “. . . habet quodammodo rationem formae, inquantum

dat speciem.”
85 ST I–II, q. 18, a. 6.
86 Cf. yet again ST I–II, q. 72, a. 3, ad 2:“obiecta, secundum quod comparantur ad

actus exteriores, habent rationem materiae circa quam; sed secundum quod
comparantur ad actum interiorem voluntatis, habent rationem finium; et ex hoc

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also “matter.”The object, which confers on the act its first moral species,
is susceptible of being informed by successive ends to which this act is
ordered by the will, that is, by an “intention” in the strict sense (as distinct
from the choice [electio] of the means to an end). The object is not,
however, “matter” in the sense of a material element of an act which,
considered in itself, would as yet be lacking any finalization whatsoever
on the part of the subject.This, as we have seen, is not possible, given that
the object of the act is the object of an act of the will—the act of
choice—and therefore, as voluntary, depends on a previous ordinatio on
the part of the practical reason of the acting subject: It includes the intelligible content of the constitutive voluntariness of this act.87
The distinction between “object” on the one hand and “end” on the
other can therefore cause misunderstanding, because the object is the
“finis proximus” of the act of choice [electio], and the “end” to which the
intention tends is the “object” of the act of intention [intentio]. Nor can
it be said that, unlike the end followed by the intention, the object is
something that does not proceed from the acting person.
In particular, the following statement of the Catechism could cause
confusion: “In contrast to the object, the intention resides in the acting
subject.”88 With this statement, what is valid generally for human action
at all levels is attributed to the intention alone. In our example, the difference between the two objects “a trick” and “a theft” is constituted by
what the Catechism seems to attribute exclusively to the intention: by a
different “movement of the will,” a different “[orientation to] the good
anticipated from the action undertaken.”89 But it is precisely this—a
particular movement of the will and an intentional orientation toward a
good—that we find also at the level of the object of the action itself, and
without which we cannot describe this object. Otherwise, we would not
be dealing with a human act, morally qualifiable on the basis of its object.
In discussing intrinsically evil acts, however, the Catechism of the
Catholic Church itself confirms the approach suggested by Veritatis Splendor and the interpretation that we have proposed here: to describe, at the
moral level, the object of some types of actions that are categorized as
habent quod dant speciem actui”; cf. De malo 2, 4 ad 9: “Finis proximus actus
idem est quod obiectum, et ab hoc [actus] recipit speciem”; ST I–II, q. 73, a. 3,
ad 1: “obiectum, etsi sit materia circa quam terminatur actus, habet tamen
rationem finis, secundum quod intentio agentis fertur in ipsum. . . . Forma autem
actus moralis dependet ex fine.”
87 E. Colom and A. Rodríguez Luño, Scelti in Cristo per essere santi, 127.
88 CCC no. 1752.
89 Ibid.

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morally evil, neither can the Catechism do without a reference to an
intentional element, constitutive for the object of these actions.
The Catechism defines the act of contraception, for example, using the
words of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, as any “action which, whether in
anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means,
to render procreation impossible.”90 Masturbation is defined as “the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure.”91
For the description of the act of lying, also traditionally considered to be
an intrinsically evil act, the Catechism refers to St. Augustine’s De mendacio:“A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.”92
The following number adds:“To lie is to speak or act against the truth in
order to lead someone into error.”93
It is not possible here to analyze the objects of these types of behavior.94 It will be useful, however, to further specify some aspects of lying,
which will also be important for an exegesis of St.Thomas. It is common
opinion that on this point Aquinas differs notably from St. Augustine’s
position.The difference is, however, not as great as is customarily claimed.
For St.Thomas, as well, to tell a lie includes not only to say what is false,
but also an intentio voluntatis to say what is false, the voluntas falsi enuntiandi,
90 CCC no. 2370: “actus qui [. . .] id tamquam finem obtinendum aut viam

adhibendam intendat, ut procreatio impediatur” (emphasis added).
91 CCC no. 2352:“voluntarium organorum genitalium excitationem, ad obtinendam

ex ea veneream voluptatem” (emphasis added).
92 CCC no. 2482: “. . . enuntiatio falsa] cum voluntate ad fallendum prolata . . .”

[emphasis added].
93 CCC no. 2483: “Mentiri est contra veritatem loqui vel agere ad inducendum in

errorem” (emphasis added).
94 Concerning contraception, see my analysis in “Contraception, Sexual Behavior,

and Natural Law. Philosophical Foundation of the Norm of Humanae Vitae,” in
Humanae Vitae: 20 anni dopo. Atti del II Congresso Internazionale di Teologia Morale
Roma (9–12 novembre 1988) (Milan: ARES, 1989), 73–113; also published in
The Linacre Quarterly 56 (1989): 20–57, and in an expanded version in German
as Sexualität und Verantwortung. Empfängnisverhütung als ethisches Problem (IMABE
Studie Nr. 3) (Vienna:Verlag IMABE—Institut für medizinische Anthropologie
und Bioethik,1995); in Italian in Sessualità e responsabilità: la contraccezione come
problema etico, in Rhonheimer, Etica della procreazione. Contraccezione—Fecondazione artificiale—Aborto (Milan: Edizioni PUL-Mursia, 2000), 15–125 (Spanish
edition Ética de la procreación [Madrid: Rialp., 2004], 27–131). See my “Contraccezione, mentalità contraccettiva e cultura dell’aborto: valutazioni e connessioni,” in R. Lucas Lucas, ed., Commento interdisciplinare alla «Evangelium vitae»
(Pontifical Academy for Life, Italian edition eds. E. Sgreccia and R. Lucas Lucas)
(Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 435–52.

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the “will to say what is false,” which includes the intention to say something that is contrary to what one has in mind.
Thomas expressly says that the act of “manifesting the truth” is an act of
reason, which joins a sign to something signified.95 Even animals, which do
not possess reason, manifest something signified by means of signs, but these
“do not intend to manifest anything.”96 As the manifestation of the truth is
a moral act, Thomas continues, it must be voluntary and depend on an
intention of the will.97 For this reason, he says, the intention of a disordered
will can refer either to the declaration of the untruth itself, or to the effect
of deceiving someone;98 this second intentio, the intentio fallendi, according to
Thomas, is not part of the ratio mendacii, but only of its perfection, which is
the effect of deceiving. But even the object of the ratio mendacii in the proper
sense includes an intentio voluntatis, that of declaring what is false.With this,
Thomas obviously means that lying is lying merely by the will to say what
is false, without there being necessary an explicit intention to deceive someone.What, however, causes difficulties in Thomas’s position—and that seems
to make St. Augustine’s definition preferable—is to understand how someone could will to lie without also willing to deceive the person to whom
one lies. Perhaps St. Thomas would not claim that this is possible; he says
only that formally, that is, essentially, lying must be defined without this
second intention, and that the first suffices. It seems more logical, however,
to include the intentio fallendi in the definition of lying or, said otherwise, to
consider the will to say what is false and that of deceiving as a single intentio voluntatis, constitutive for an act to be a lie according to its object.
In any case, when the Catechism says in the following no. 2485 that
“by its very nature, lying is to be condemned,” which is to say it is per se
evil and not only due to circumstances or ulterior motivations, this refers
to a “nature” of the object which includes a basic intentionality, whether
95 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1: “. . . est rationis actus conferentis signum ad signatum.”
96 Ibid.: “. . . non tamen manifestionem intendunt. . . .”
97 Ibid.: “Inquantum

tamen huiusmodi manifestatio sive enuntiatio est actus
moralis, oportet quod sit voluntarius et ex intentione voluntatis dependens.”
Although St.Thomas says in the following sentence that the object of the manifestatio or enuntiatio is “the true or the false,” he speaks there of the power moved
by the will, and not of the object of the act qua a human act. This latter object
is the object of the “voluntas falsi enuntiandi,” that is, a “collatio” of a signum to
a significatum that is properly an act of reason and includes a corresponding intentional structure, without which it could not be an object for the will that chooses
this act.
98 Ibid.:“Intentio vero voluntatis inordinatae potest ad duo ferri: quorum unum est
ut falsum enuntietur; aliud quidam est effectus proprius falsae enuntiationis, ut
scilicet aliquis fallatur.”

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it be to will to deceive (Augustine), or at least the will to intentionally
say what is false (Thomas).99
The most important point, however, and one that is often ignored,
seems to me to be that for Aquinas, lying by its nature is not only
contrary to the nature of linguistic acts and to the truth, but it is also a
violation of justice.To say what is false so as to mislead is injust, because it
violates another’s right, that of living in community with one’s fellow
men on the basis of a mutual trust. By their nature, lingustic acts are
communicative acts, the object of the virtue of truthfulness.
According to Aquinas, the duty to manifest the truth with one’s
linguistic acts derives from the fact that “it would be impossible for men
to live together, unless they believed one another, as declaring the truth
one to another.”100 This speaks of a “moral duty” based on the fact that
human honesty requires that one manifest the truth to others in his use
of language,101 that is, that he not abuse the proper nature of language
that consists in the manifestation, by means of words, what one has in
mind. This is the virtue of truthfulness, which is part of justice; we can
call it “communicative justice.”
Contrary to an exegesis that seems to me to concentrate too unilaterally on article 3 of I–II, q. 110, I believe that for St.Thomas lying is evil,
not because it is contrary to the nature of language, but because it is
opposed to the virtue of truthfulness, to communicative justice.102 The
fact that words, as Thomas affirms, are by nature signs of what one has in
99 It is important to specify “to intentionally say what is false,” since simply “to say

what is false” (a mere falsiloquium) would not be a lie even for St.Thomas (even
if the “falsiloquium” were voluntary, as in the case in which someone voluntarily says something false, thinking however that it is true: He says what is false, but
he does not say it intentionally). Also if ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1 says that the “false”
and the “true” are the object of linguistic acts, this object is not yet the object that
specifies morally.This latter occurs only when “to say what is false” becomes an
object of the will. Thomas calls this the “falsitas formalis.” We can describe it as
“the will to manifest with linguistic acts something that is contrary to what one
has in mind.” Such a “will to say a falsehood” is necessarily the will to carry out
a linguistic act (an exterior act in the material, physical sense) with the intention to
manifest something that is contrary to what one has in mind.This is already very
close to the Augustinian “intentio fallendi,” which shows that the differences, in
the end, are practically insignificant.
100 ST II–II, q. 109, a. 3, ad 1: “Non autem possent homines ad invicem convivere
nisi sibi invicem crederent, tanquam sibi invicem veritatem manifestantibus.”
101 Ibid., a. 3, corpus: “. . . debitum morale, inquantum scilicet ex honestate unus
homo alteri debet veritatis manifestationem.”
102 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 1; the virtue of truthfulness is treated in the preceding question, 109.

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mind is not the reason for which lying is evil, but that for which every lie
is evil.103 But it is also clear that for Thomas “to say what is false”—a
falsiloquium—can be a lie (in the moral sense) only inasmuch as it is
opposed to the virtue of truthfulness. “Formal untruthfulness” or “the
will to tell a falsehood,” in which according to Thomas lying consists, is
evil precisely because such a will is opposed to the virtue relative to veritas: truthfulness.104 The finality of the virtue of truthfulness constitutes,
therefore, the “ethical context” in relation to which lying acquires its
objective identity as a particular type of linguistic behavior and, therefore,
also its specification as a morally evil act. One who “lies,” however, in the
context of a scientific experiment so as to test a lie detector or during a
party game in which lying figures as part of the game, clearly does not
sin, even if he does do something contrary to the nature of language!
Precisely for this reason the following two cases are completely different: (1) those who told representatives of the Gestapo, searching for Jews so
as to deport them, that there were no Jews in the house; and (2) the case
of a person, for example, a functionary, a minister, a professor, or a father,
who considers that in a particular situation their questioner does not have
the right to know what he asks (or, which would be equivalent, that they
themselves do not have the right to reveal that which the questioner wants
to know) and who therefore thinks that he can licitly mislead his questioner with false answers or by responding “I don’t know.”105 In this second
103 ST II–II, q. 110, a. 3: “. . . malum ex genere. . . .”
104 For this reason article 1 of ST II–II, q. 110, where lying is defined as “voluntas

falsum enuntiandi,” bears the title: “Utrum mendacium semper opponatur veritati.”This article establishes, therefore, the reason for which lying is a morally evil
act. ST II–II, q. 110, a. 3, on the other hand, where Thomas speaks of lying as
being contrary to the “nature of language,” is titled: “Utrum omne mendacium
sit peccatum.” This latter article, therefore, does not deal with the question of
what a lie is, and why it is morally evil, but rather why lying is intrinsically, always
and without exception, evil: It is the “nature of language” itself—the natural and
necessary relationship between vox and signum—which makes every act of
“saying what is false,” performed with the will to say what is false, to be a lie,
contrary to the virtue of truthfulness, and hence evil. A movement of the hand
or an inclination of the head can also, according to the situation, be lies, but they
aren’t always, because there is no natural link between a movement of the hand
(or an inclination of the head) and their being a sign of a specific mental content.
Given that words are naturally signs of what one has in mind, to profer words
contrary to what one has in mind is an “actus cadens super indebitam materiam”
(ibid.), an act whose matter is (in this case: by nature) inappropriate.
105 Kevin Flannery arrives at the opposite result—according to my moral intuition
in a way that is inadmissible—in his article “The Multifarious Moral Object of
Thomas Aquinas,” in The Thomist 67 (2003): 95–118:“Thus, all lies are sins, even
the notorious lie told to the Nazis who come to the door asking whether there

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case, in the context of normal life, a “communicative community” exists
between the people involved in which language fulfills its communicative
function, and in which, given a “normal” situation or context, there exists
a right that words spoken by one’s neighbor be expressions of truth, with
a corresponding duty on the part of the neighbor.This is valid also for the
case in which someone could, by lying, gain a great advantage or avoid a
great disadvantage: A lie remains a lie, even if put forth with good intention. In the first case, on the other hand, a situation of war and aggression
exists in which the social significance of linguistic acts is altered; to say what
is false becomes an act of self-defense—and of the defense of others—not
because “in this case” it is so, but because objectively there no longer exists
between these persons a communicative community that could be
damaged. For this same reason, neither can communicative justice be
damaged in such a case.This latter is the reason why saying what is false,
abusing language, is morally evil and is called “lying.”
What has been said so far can be summarized in the following two
points: First, we cannot understand and define the object of a human act
without including in this definition an intentional element that expresses
the “why” one does what one (externally) does.Without such a “why” (a
basic intentionality is configured by reason) we would be left with only
the material elements of the action, not yet ordered by reason, and therefore incapable of being the “form” of an act of the will and of conferring
on it, as an end, its moral species.This basic intentionality, which comprises
part of the object is, not to forget, Thomistically speaking its “formal”
part; as such it is the expression of a good, the “finis proximus” pursued
in the action.106
are Jews inside . . .” (109). Cf. Flannery’s critique of my position in his review
(cited above) of my book Die Perspektive der Moral.
106 For this reason it seems strange to me that Jean Porter would assert: “In some
cases, the agent’s aim forms an essential component which must be taken into
account, in order to determine the object of the action” (“The Moral Act in
Veritatis Splendor and in Aquinas’s Summa theologiae:A Comparative Analysis,” in
Michael E. Allsopp and John J. O’Keefe, Veritatis Splendor: American Responses
[Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1995], 278–95; at 288). I do not see why this would
be true only in “some cases.” Porter maintains this because she thinks that one
who commits an adultery does not want to commit an adultery, but to enjoy himself
(“what he wants is not to commit adultery, but to have a good time”), even if,
in fact, he commits an adultery (cf. ibid.). For Porter, this would be the example
of an external action whose object could be determined without reference to
what the agent wills. This is false, however: One who (voluntarily) commits an
adultery knows that it is in fact an adultery he is committing, and therefore also
wills to commit it, that is, he wills—intends—“to unite sexually with a woman who
is married to another” (even if, obviously, he does not do it “to commit an

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Second, I want to accentuate the fact that such a basic intentionality
can be formulated and acquire its moral significance only in relation to
what we can call the “ethical context.” Outside the context of a proposal
to have sexual relations with someone and, for this reason, to want to
impede the possible procreative consequences of the act, the ingestion of
a contraception would not be, in a moral sense, an act of contraception.107 It would be, for example, an act of self-defense, if done to prevent
the procreative effects of a foreseeable rape; or a therapeutic act, in the
case of a woman who intends by doing so to regulate her rhythm; or it
could be a measure taken by a woman athlete who wants to impede
menstruation during the Olympics. If the ethical context changes, so
does the basic intentionality, as well as the object of the act—even if,
considered physically, the act is the same in each case. Even lying, as an
act contrary to justice, can be defined only in relation to the ethical
context of the “communicative community” and therefore as contrary to
communicative justice.108
7. Objective Evil and Intrinsic Evil:
“Intrinsically Evil” Acts
Given that the object of a human act cannot be understood without the
inclusion both of a primary and fundamental intentionality and of referadultery”). Without the basic intentionality “to will to unite oneself sexually
with a woman,” the bodily movements, commanded by the will and constitutive
of sexual union between a man and a woman, could not be understood as a
human act.The fact that the woman is the wife of another is not the object, but
a circumstance, relevant, however, for the constitution of the object, and therefore
to be included in its description; it is, in this case, a “principalis conditio obiecti
rationi repugnans” (ST I–II, q. 18, a. 10): it makes the action of uniting sexually
with this woman to be morally evil (because it is unjust), and that the action be
what is called an “adultery.”
107 Cf. Martin Rhonheimer, “Minaccia di stupro e prevenzione: un’eccezione?,” La
Scuola Cattolica 123 (1995): 75–90 (reprinted in Rhonheimer, Etica della procreazione, 110–25).
108 The notion of “ethical context” does not lead to subjectivism or arbitrarity, at
least no more than does the notion itself of the “moral object” of an act. The
latter is not simply a “given object,” and to know whether it is good or evil,
virtuous or opposed to moral virtue, is not always easy, causes debates and at
times diverging conclusions; nevertheless, all else aside, the identification of the
object always includes a rational valuation. In the same way, an “ethical context”
is also an objective, non-arbitrary datum, but not in the sense of something given
naturally (like, e.g., meteorological facts concerning today’s weather), but as
something to be ascertained rationally on the basis of the ends of the individual
virtues (justice, temperance, courage, etc.), whose rule are the first principles of
practical reason, known naturally, which are also called the “natural law.”

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ence to its specific ethical context, the qualification of an act as “intrinsically evil” also presupposes that it be understood precisely as an intentional act, defined with reference to a specific ethical context. Such
ethical contexts are conceivable only by reason, which gives them their
specific moral configuration. This “ethical context” is always that of a
particular virtue. In the case of lying, the virtue is justice; with contraception and masturbation, chastity.The moral virtues, nonetheless, are not
defined without reference to anthropological truth, that is, to human
nature, which is made known and imposes itself as a moral rule by means
of reason, beginning with the natural law, which is the ordinatio rationis at
the universal level and at the level of principles.
Certainly, in a particular sense of the term “intrinsically,” every evil act
is intrinsically evil, given that it is not evil because it is prohibited, but
prohibited because it is evil, precisely on the basis of its intrinsic and
specific “moral nature.” This meaning of the term “intrinsically evil” is
trivial, however, and pleonastic in the context of ethical theory. Veritatis
Splendor, rather, clarifies the significance of this expression, saying in no.
80 that intrinsically evil acts are evil “always and per se, in other words, on
account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions
of the one acting and the circumstances.”What does this mean?
The notion of “intrinsically evil act” does not include, according to the
citation from Veritatis Splendor, the idea that, independent of the person
who acts, there would be something evil “in the action,” considered as a
natural datum by itself, and independent of any intentionality on the part
of the subject who acts. Rather, according to the encyclical an act that is
“intrinsically evil” is simply an act that is evil when considered independently of ulterior intentions. It seems therefore that according to Veritatis
Splendor “intrinsically evil” is equivalent to “evil ex obiecto”; what would
not be considered “intrinsically” evil would be an action that is evil only
because of successive intentions (and perhaps circumstances) for which it
is done, that is, actions that by their object are good or indifferent, but are
made evil by the evil intention with which they are chosen (such as “to
give alms with the intention of committing adultery”).
For every human action, as Veritatis Splendor no. 80 affirms, the possibility of distinguishing, in each case, an object (finis proximus) from ulterior ends for which this object is chosen is fundamental; and,
consequently, to be able to morally qualify this object in a way independent from the whole that is the action and all the ulterior intentions.
Such a possibility is the basis for refuting every type of “teleological
ethics” (e.g., consequentialism or proportionalism), which claims that this
distinction is not possible since, according to such ethics, we can know

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what a person objectively does only if we take into consideration all ulterior intentions referred to non-moral goods and the consequences that
foreseeably derive from the action.109
Nevertheless, to read Veritatis Splendor in this way, in the sense that every
act that is “evil on the basis of its object” would also be an “intrinsically
evil” act, also seems unsatisfying, because the term “intrinsically evil act”
commonly designates something more than simply “evil on the basis of its
object.”With the words of the Catechism cited in no. 78 of Veritatis Splendor, “intrinsically evil” means that “there are certain specific kinds of
behavior that are always wrong to choose, because choosing them involves
a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.” But, to return to our example,
the series of bodily movements that cause the watch to disappear from
Mrs. Jones’s wrist are not a behavior the choice of which is always wrong,
because that behavior can also be chosen to play an innocent trick, and
therefore as an act that is good or at least indifferent.When, however, this
choice is wrong, when it is in fact a theft, then the choice is evil ex obiecto.
It seems, therefore, that if the argumentation until now put forth is universally valid and applicable to all human acts, then one must deny the existence of certain types of behavior “that it is always wrong to choose,” and
reduce the notion of “intrinsically evil” to “evil ex obiecto.”
This would be a rather awkward conclusion, because the affirmation
of the Catechism, repeated by Veritatis Splendor, that “there are certain
specific kinds of behavior that are always wrong to choose, because
choosing them involves a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil”
seems to indicate the contrary, that the malice of the “intrinsically evil”
act is found, not at the level of the choice of a behavior, but rather in
the behavior itself that is chosen: Veritatis Splendor seems to affirm that
it is precisely this or that type of external behavior that causes the disorder in the will. It would be, therefore, precisely the behavior as such, in
its pure “physical materiality,” which is the cause of the moral evil of
the choice of this behavior and, therefore, the object that morally specifies the act.
It is obvious that such an interpretation would contradict not only the
entire analysis proposed so far in these pages, but also the text itself of
Veritatis Splendor, which immediately prior had affirmed that the object
of an act “is the proximate end of a deliberate choice, which determines
the act of willing on the part of the acting person.” We must therefore
hold, with Veritatis Splendor, that that which is “always wrong” are not
particular kinds of behavior, considered in their physical materiality, but
109 Cf. Martin Rhonheimer, Intentional Actions and the Meaning of Object.

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particular kinds of choices of such behaviors. Even the object of an intrinsically evil act can only be understood “putting oneself in the perspective
of the acting person”; it is therefore the object of a choice, and, therefore,
the object of a judgment of reason.110
The contrary affirmation holds that specific exterior behaviors as such,
in their “physical materiality” or “natural structure”—for example, bodily
movements, including insofar as they produce specific effects, such as “to
kill a human being,” “to copulate with a human being of the opposite
sex,” “to utter certain words” (“to speak”), “to walk,” “to detach a watch
from a wrist,” and so on—can immediately and as these types of behavior
materially considered, be morally wrong and, consequently, are capable of
negatively specifying an act of the will, rendering it disordered and evil.
We must emphasize here that such a claim would violate one of the basic
principles of a Thomistic theory of action. Indeed, it would imply the
necessity of formulating a thesis directly contrary to what St.Thomas, as
has been shown above, explicitly teaches: that it is always reason that presents to the will its object.111 An “external behavior,” an aggregate of
“material” elements such as movements of the body, processes, effects
caused by these cannot influence the will directly; they are not an
“object” for the will, except through the mediation of a judgment of
reason, as a bonum apprehensum et ordinatum per rationem.112 The material
elements of any behavior can be willed as a good and as an end only in
the measure in which they are presented to the will as a totality ordered
by reason,113 as a bonum faciendum et prosequendum.114 It seems, therefore,
that we find ourselves back at the preceding argument. In a certain sense,
this is true, but we return to this argument only so as to be able to take
a step forward.
The conclusion is inevitable, in fact, that the “intrinsic evil” we are
speaking of is none other than a case of “evil ex obiecto,” and that essentially it is precisely this. If this were not the case, we would destroy the
fundamental determination of human action on the part of reason, and
with that the very voluntariness and freedom of action, given that every
110 This is precisely what John Finnis states, with clarity and proficiency, in his study

Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision and Truth (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1991), 67ff. What seems to be lacking in Finnis’s
analysis is an emphasis on the constitutive role of reason in the formation of the
object (and therefore of the intentional content of a choice).
111 ST I–II, q. 19, a. 1, ad 3; q. 19, a. 3, ad 1 (cf. the text cited in notes 22 and 20).
112 ST I–II, q. 20, a. 1, ad 1 (cf. the text cited in note 39).
113 ST I–II, q. 19, a. 3.
114 Cf. ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2.

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voluntary act is specified by its object, and only by its object.115 This
notwithstanding, a difference remains between the act of the theft of a
watch or a trick (with the same watch)—and of any theft, for that
matter—on the one hand, and a homicide, a lie, or an adultery on the
other.This difference, intuitively grasped by all, is that in the case of the
watch we are faced with a collection of elements that are in a certain
sense accidental, artificial, and manmade (e.g., the watch itself is an artifact; wearing it on the wrist is, though very practical, a human invention;
and the relationship of property between Mrs. Jones and the watch is
circumstantial and proceeds from the will, for example, that of Mr. Jones
who had bought the watch and given it to his wife—it is not, therefore,
a natural and intrinsic characteristic of either the watch or of Mrs. Jones).
In the case of lying or of contraception, on the other hand, we are dealing with “material elements” that are more “substantial” and intrinsically
linked to the nature of the agent, in the sense that they are less disposable
or accidental. They have to do with the “nature of man,” the nature of
human sexuality, that of human language, and with natural inclinations
that spring from the very being of the human person; we are also dealing with the essence of social relationships among people, these in a
certain sense also being “natural,” not the mere fruit of invention, which,
while perhaps useful, are more or less arbitrary.We are entering here the
realm of specific natural conditionings of human identity, such as life and
self-preservation, sexuality and its procreative function, language and its
natural communicative function: a “nature” that is not an environment in
which we find ourselves and that surrounds us, but that nature that each
one of us is, and that constitutes and delimits the realm of fundamental
human goods.
This being the case, I believe it is important to emphasize the following about our approach, according to which (1) the object of an act
cannot be understood except by placing oneself in the perspective of the
acting person; (2) this object always includes an intentional element; and
(3) this intentional element must be understood with reference to a
precise “ethical context,” which is the sphere of a specific moral virtue.
Our approach does not exclude two things. First, it does not exclude that
between certain natural data, such as the natural inclinations of the
human person and their inherent finality, on the one hand, and the basic
intentionality with which these inclinations are pursued, on the other,
there exist a necessary and natural connection. Second, inversely, it does
115 Cf. again ST I–II, q. 19, a. 2: “. . . bonitas voluntatis ex solo uno illo dependet,

quod per se facit bonitatem in actu, scilicet ex obiecto.”

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not exclude that there are behaviors or ways of acting that it is not possible to choose reasonably with any intention. One is certainly free to
choose the physical act of “laying down on a bed,” whether for the end
of resting, to do a Yoga exercise, or to annoy someone: All of these are
different human acts on the basis of their object. The same is not true,
however, for a linguistic act: To articulate glottal sounds in the form of
words includes, as it were, in itself a finality that tends to the expression of
what one has in mind, that is, it is an act of communication. To engage
in sexual intercourse and pretend that this act has nothing to do with an
act that is by nature procreative means to choose and act in an unreasonable manner.116 There exist natural finalities that form a necessary
presupposition for the reasonableness of any intentionality with which
the corresponding acts are carried out.
In this regard, the objects of acts such as “to commit a murder,” “to
lie,” “to commit adultery,” “to fornicate,” “to render infertile one’s own
freely performed sexually acts,” are not formulated in the same way that
the object of a theft is constituted. All of these acts have in common the
fact that in them there exists a merely “material” plane—the action
considered in its genus naturae—such as in a murder, the physical act of
killing (that perhaps could be licit in a just war),117 in lying the act of
saying what is untrue (that could be licit in the context of a game, in the
theatre, in an experiment to test a lie detector); in adultery and fornication the sexual act as such (licit in marriage); in a contraceptive act the
interference in the hormonal process (licit, for example, for therapeutic
reasons, to regulate a woman’s rhythm, to avoid the procreative consequences of a foreseeable rape). But all of these differ from an act of theft
by the fact that the “material elements” of a theft have nothing to do with
“human nature,” they are not elements, structures, or natural data that
have a relation to what the human person is.They lack a certain anthropological “anchoring.”
Even if a quantity of money is another’s legitimate property and it
would normally be a theft to appropriate this money for oneself, it is
thinkable that the same action, considered materially—the external
“behavior”—could also be chosen licitly in particular circumstances, for
example, in the case of extreme necessity or to save one’s life. In such
116 This is valid also for someone who intends to render such an act infertile; he does

so precisely because he is dealing with an act that is by nature procreative.
117 On the various types of “killing” in St.Thomas and some problems in this regard,

cf. Martin Rhonheimer, “Sins Against Justice (IIa IIae, qq. 59–78),” in S. J. Pope,
ed., The Ethics of Aquinas (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002),
287–303; particularly pp. 292 ff.

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circumstances, says St. Thomas (in accordance with the theological and
canonical tradition of his and later times), everything is common property: Even though the right of the owner remains, it becomes relativized
in the measure of the neighbor’s vital interests; consequently such an act,
which normally would be a theft, no longer is, but is rather a licit act of
the preservation of one’s life.118 The act of taking a person’s property
from him against his will is evil due to the fact that it is unjust, but not
due to the fact that it is (physically) “to take a quantity of money from its
owner” (even if against his will); this latter behavior, in other well-defined
circumstances (according to criteria of justice, grasped by reason in an
objective manner), can also be not contrary to justice.A moral norm that
says that “it is not licit to appropriate another’s property to oneself ” is
therefore valid “ut in pluribus”; if it is formulated rather as:“it is illicit to
steal,” then it is valid semper et pro semper, given that it is already implied
that some (well-defined) cases of “appropriating another’s property” are
not theft and, therefore, do not fall under this norm.119
Such a mutatio materiae, change of matter—not a change of intentionality, but a change of an important circumstance for the object, relativizing the right of property and with that, the significance of the external
behavior—is not possible in acts like “to commit a murder,” “to lie,” “to
commit adultery,” “to fornicate” or “to practice contraception.” Evil,
therefore, not only ex obiecto, but inalterably and always “ex obiecto,” are
precisely those evil “ex obiecto” acts whose “materia circa quam” does
not permit alteration, because constituted by something naturally given
and constitutive for the nature of the human person, and inasmuch as this
“given” is morally significant. A norm of the type: “[O]ne must never
take another’s property from him” is not sufficient—rather, one must add
“one must never unjustly take;” conversely, the norm “one must never
have sexual relations with a woman who is married to another man” is
valid: The choice of this act, described in behavioral terms, is always
objectively an act of infidelity and of injustice, contrary to the nature of
conjugal love. What is constitutive for human nature cannot depend on
circumstantial facts, as can, alternatively, property rights, because this
would mean that the nature of the human person itself could change.
118 This is also due to the fact that the right to property is not absolute, in the sense

that it is regulated by the higher principle that the goods of this earth are
destined to the use of all.
119 For the validity “ut in pluribus” of the precepts of the natural law cf. ST I–II, q.
94, a. 4.The prohibitive norms, if they are formulated correctly, do not admit of
exceptions, and St.Thomas applies validity “ut in pluribus” only to some (positively) prescriptive norms (his example is “deposita sunt reddenda”).

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With this we arrive at the conclusion that to affirm the existence of
intrinsically evil acts is equivalent to affirming that there exists a nucleus of
the human person, called “human nature,” which is unchangeable and as
such also morally significant, because it formulates the ontological and
cognitive presuppositions for the order of reason, which is the moral order.
8. The Principles of Practical Reason: The Natural Rule
of the Objective Significance of Human Action
We have not, however, arrived at the end of the ethical-normative
discourse. Indeed, we have yet to begin! The response just given is still
inadequate, since, leaving things at this point, such an argumentation
would finish in a pure naturalism. “To act against nature” (against the
inclination to self-preservation, against the communicative nature of
language and the social nature of man, against the natural meaning of
sexuality) cannot be considered morally evil, as well, simply because it is
contrary to something “natural.”To this point we have merely found an
argument apt to show why some acts, as opposed to others, and these acts
always presupposed to be morally evil, are so intrinsically. But the real ethicalnormative question is: How does one know that these are precisely
morally evil? From where, for example, come our notions of “just” and
“unjust,” and how do we know if something is not only naturally given
and therefore practically important—to be taken into consideration when
we act—but also, as natural, morally significant? Why are many things that
are not “natural,” or that even go against nature, such as, for a human
being, to swim, to shave one’s beard, or to chew gum (frustrating the
natural end of the jaws), not morally evil? It is only here that the task of
normative ethics begins.
I stated above that, between the intentionality that constitutes the
object and certain structures and natural givens, a connection exists that is
not at the disposition of the agent.This means that we cannot reasonably
choose any behavior we wish with whatever intentionality we wish, even
if everything we choose we choose as a proximate end, this latter being
precisely the object of the action. It is not rationally possible to chew gum
with the end of feeding oneself; nor is it rationally possible to hit someone on the head with the purpose of healing his migraine.To claim to do
so would be a sign of irrationality or even of insanity. Nor can two people
of the same sex, even if moved by real affection and a bond of friendship,
reasonably give fulfillment to their affection and express their friendship
by means of acts involving the genital organs, because this would mean to
err concerning the nature of the link between love and sexuality. That
which we can reasonably will as the end of a concrete choice, doing specific

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things, depends therefore not only on our subjective opinion or on our
freedom, but in some cases also on natural preconditions, grasped by reason
and understood as human goods.120
Even though every “object” is in fact a type of intentionality—a
“proposal”—we must not forget that these proposals are also naturally
conditioned.The object of an act is not therefore only “what I want” or
“what I propose to do”; rather, a materiality proper to the “physical”
nature of the act is also present, a materiality that enters into the constitution of the object. In particular cases, this natural matter of the act can
have a special importance for reason, due to the fact that we are speaking
of a nature that doesn’t merely surround us, but that we ourselves are.121
There exists, in fact, a “nature” of language, of sexuality, and so on, a
“nature” that nevertheless makes itself known, as a human good, only
within the ordo rationis, which is the order of the moral virtues, which
finds its fulfullment in the ordo amoris. Likewise, the natural inclination to
self-preservation reveals its “nature” as a human good and as part of the
ordo rationis within the totality of that which is the human person. This
nature, of course, can also appear as a simple natural conditioning, as a
limit of our human possibilities. But in this latter sense, “nature” is
morally ambivalent and does not provide us with a practical orientation:
It is natural for a man to walk, and not to fly, yet we can fly artificially,
and we do not consider this morally evil, even though it goes against
120 At this point one must speak of the notion of “sin against nature” and the

Thomistic doctrine of “nature” as “praesuppositum” of the moral order, a theme
amply treated in my Natural Law and Practical Reason, 94–109. Jean Porter, in her
review of the English edition of this book (in Theological Studies 62 [2001]:
851–53), reproves me for having completely ignored St. Thomas’s teaching on
the “moral significance of pre-rational nature” and on the “peccatum contra
naturam.” Surprisingly, however, Porter completely fails to mention my ample
treatment of the theme. I respond to the objections—unfounded—raised by
Porter in my article “The Moral Significance of Pre-Rational Nature in Aquinas:
A Reply to Jean Porter (and Stanley Hauerwas),” in American Journal of Jurisprudence 48 (2003): 253–80.
121 In this sense I agree with what Steven A. Long says in his article “A Brief Disquisition Regarding the Nature of the Object of the Moral Act According to St.
Thomas Aquinas,” in The Thomist 67 (2003): 45–71:“The moral object of an act
is the act itself—inclusive of its essential matter or integral nature—under the
ratio of its order to the end sought; it is not solely and simply that ratio apart from
the essential matter or integral nature of the act” (p. 50). I think, however, that
Long has a too-narrow understanding of the significance of the term “intentio”
in St. Thomas and, consequently, of the expression “praeter intentionem” (pp.
62ff.), something that cannot fail to have repercussions on his understanding of
the structure of the object.

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nature.The same is true for the act, also against nature, of having a kidney
removed so as to give it to another person who needs one. In other cases,
however, “nature” presents itself as a “good,” as that which is to be
pursued and done, and to act against which would be to err morally.The
object of the human act is precisely such a good, at the concrete and
particular level. It is the task of practical reason to determine this. But
practical reason, which is directed to particular goods, is regulated by its
own principles. Some of these principles are “natural”:They are the principles of natural reason, also called the “precepts of the natural law.”
We now arrive at the decisive point:The practical reason that “forms”
the object of an act is not a reason that lacks principles of its own.These
principles are precisely the precepts of the natural law.The natural law is,
simultaneously, the principle of praxis—it impels and motivates the
subject to act—and the principle of morality, that is, the rule of the goodness of praxis. Analyzing St. Thomas’s exposition on the natural law we
discover that, for him, nature and the constitution of this moral law
correspond exactly, both at the universal level and at that of principles, to
that which we have said about the constitution of the object of a human
act. There is a strict parallelism. As the objects and the moral species of
human acts are formae a ratione conceptae, the natural law is, like every law,
ordinatio rationis, and as such “something constituted by reason” and a
“work of reason.”122 The first precept of the natural law, which is based
on the ratio boni—its character of being the object of appetite, tendency,
and will, commands “bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum.”123 All of the other precepts of the natural law, which correspond
to that which the practical reason naturally understands as the human
good, are based on this practical principle.124
These goods, naturally grasped by the practical reason as human
goods, are the ends of the various natural inclinations, not, however—and
this is important—as such, but precisely “regulated” by reason.The ends
of natural inclinations enter as objects, therefore, in the successive unfolding and specification of practical reason: as objects and “goods of reason”
and “for reason,” undergoing a respective commensuratio of reason itself.125
122 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 1: “. . . lex naturalis est aliquid per rationem constitutum: sicut

etiam propositio est quoddam opus rationis.”
123 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2.
124 Ibid.: “Et super hoc fundantur omnia alia praecepta legis naturae: ut scilicet

omnia illa facienda vel vitanda pertineant ad praecepta legis naturae, quae ratio
practica naturaliter apprehendit esse bona humana.”
125 For the concept of “good of reason” (bonum rationis) cf. my systematic study
Praktische Vernunft und Vernünftigkeit der Praxis, 124–35.

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Thus, they are understood—in the perspective of the human person who
tends to the good and therefore becomes an acting subject, and at the
level of the order of reason—as human, and not merely natural, goods,
inasmuch as they are grasped by reason, as ends and goods of the voluntas ut natura, of the natural act of the will.
The natural inclination to self-preservation is, as a human good apprehensum et ordinatum a ratione, more than mere self-preservation: It is the
will—that is, rational desire—to live, which is capable of opening itself to
the demands of justice and love of neighbor (to the point, possibly, of
giving one’s life for him, something that is opposed to the natural inclination as mere natural inclination). The sexual inclination, which mutually attracts the sexes to each other, when understood by reason as a
human good is more than mere sexuality, which by means of the sexual
instinct and its gratification serves to proprogate the species: It is love
between persons that becomes marriage, mutual donation and affective
union, a faithful and indissoluble union in the service of the transmission
of human life, which, nevertheless, a person may freely renounce for the
sake of pursuing other goods. In the sphere of the natural inclination to
live in community with one’s neighbors, reason finds language to be a
natural and indispensable means of communication, whose use against
nature, presupposing the existence of a communicative community, would
be an injustice and therefore in itself evil (i.e.,“quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances,” as is said in Veritatis Splendor no. 80).
The first practical and moral principles (the precepts of the natural law)
develop in reference to these human goods:They are the source of man’s
self-understanding as human being and moral subject. This self-understanding is the necessary presupposition for every subsequent theoretical
and metaphysical comprehension of what we call “human nature.” We all
know, from our infancy and progressively thereafter, who we are as “human
beings” and moral agents; we know this not because we have studied metaphysics and anthropology, but because we possess the reflected experience
of our interiority, part of which is the natural law, which is none other than
the entirety of the first principles of the practical reason, commanding us
to pursue what is good for man and to flee the contrary evils.126
These principles provide us with the fundamental notions of the
specific virtues and of particular “ethical contexts,” without which understanding practical reason would remain without orientation. Therefore it
126 On this topic I refer the reader to my systematic works on the theme: Natural

Law and Practical Reason; Praktische Vernunft und Vernünftigkeit der Praxis; Die
Perspektive der Moral.

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belongs to this “natural law,” as well, to be the basis of the understanding
of the distinction between “good” and “evil” in human acts. The natural
principles of the practical reason—the precepts of the natural law—are
therefore like a light that illuminates particular acts, rendering transparent
that in them that is objectively good or evil.127 The analysis of this can be
conducted for every area of human action, for example, for the specific
areas of sexuality, of truthfulness, and of respect for human life—analyses
I have done in other works to which I refer the reader in the footnote.128
The underlying idea in such analyses is to show that some kinds of
behavior can never be reasonably chosen without contradicting some of
the first practical principles that order human action to the human good.
Such a contrarity consists precisely in a fundamental non-agreement of
the practical judgment and the chosen action with correct desire, in a
contrarity with respect to practical truth.The fundamental correctness of
desire depends, however, on the natural reason, from which emanates the
natural law. Precisely in this sense the words cited in Veritatis Splendor no.
78 are germane, that “there are certain specific kinds of behavior that are
always wrong to choose, because choosing them involves a disorder of the
will, that is, a moral evil.”
9. The Unity of the Practical Intellect and the Interrelationship
between Subjectivity and Objectivity
At every level, whether at the level of the first practical principles, naturally
understood, or at that of concrete acts and of their first moral specification
127 This is not to be understood in the sense that from the principles it can be

deduced how, in each situation, it is good to concretely act. The demands of
concrete action, in the variable and complex circumstances in which human life
takes place, cannot be deduced from any principle, but must be judged by
prudence. The principles are, however, the foundation that makes it possible to
evaluate the act of prudence and the concrete action according to criteria which
are, precisely, moral, and which pertain to the ends of the individual moral virtues.
In addition, the principles delineate the limits of the “morally possible,” that is,
they determine what one may never do. In this sense, and only in this sense, the
principles, formulated as universal prohibitive norms, also regulate concrete
action—they are valid semper et pro semper—prohibiting the choice of specific
concrete behaviors. Cf. M. Rhonheimer,“Praktische Prinzipien, Naturgesetz und
konkrete Handlungsurteile in tugendethischer Perspektive. Zur Diskussion über
praktische Vernunft und lex naturalis bei Thomas von Aquin,” Studia Moralia 39
(2001): 113–58.
128 Die Perspektive der Moral, 303ff.; Natural Law and Practical Reason, 452–90; Contraception, Sexual Behavior, and Natural Law; Etica della procreazione; Abtreibung und
Lebensschutz.Tötungsverbot und Recht auf Leben in der politischen und medizinischen
Ethik (Paderborn:Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003.

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by means of their object, we find the subjectivity and the objectivity of the
practical reason intertwined: It is intellective acts that open the subject to
the truth that, precisely as truth, is always also objectivity. Moreover, it is the
intellect itself that also forms the nucleus of human subjectivity: It is the
soul of the will, which is free precisely in the measure in which it is
rational. Reason is not only openness to the truth, but also the root and
cause of freedom.129 In this way an objectivity is constituted that, ultimately, is nothing other than the “truth of subjectivity.”
The judgments of the practical intellect, nevertheless, should not be
understood as simple applications of what is known by the speculative or
theoretical intellect. Even if, as St. Thomas says, the intellect becomes
practical by its extension to action,130 this does not mean that practical
judgments are extensions and applications of theoretical or speculative
judgments. It means only that the intellectual power—and this is what
Thomas speaks of when he speaks of “extension”—which is by its nature
originally and per se speculative, becomes practical in the extension of its
cognitive activity to the realm of action.131
This extensio is due to the fact that man is a being that tends to the
good; in other words, to the fact that the intellect as a power of the soul
is always integrated into the totality of the structure of a human person,
which is itself a bundle of inclinations and natural tendencies that aim at
a variety of goods that this same intellect grasps naturally, rendering them
intelligible, as human goods, in the context of the totality of the human
person and of the ordo rationis that corresponds to him. Because the intellect becomes practical, it is not theoretical judgments that are applied to
praxis, but it is the intellect as faculty that applies itself to the sphere of
praxis, generating in this sphere, however, judgments of a particular
type—practical judgments—which possess a point of departure of their
own. St. Thomas explicitly affirms this: As with the speculative intellect,
the practical intellect also has its proper point of departure, its own first
principle. Insofar as they are practical, practical judgments of the intellect
are not derived from judgments of the speculative type.132
To affirm that practical reason has its own point of departure and that
practical judgments are not derived from theoretical judgments, as
though the former were a simple application of the latter to action, is not
to say that in the process of practical reasoning, composed of a series of
judgments—what Aristotle calls the “practical syllogism”—theoretical
129 ST I–II, q. 17, a. 1, ad 2; De veritate 24, 2.
130 ST I–II, q. 79, a. 11: “Intellectus speculativus per extensionem fit practicus.”
131 Cf. for this Rhonheimer Natural Law and Practical Reason, 24ff.
132 Cf. ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2.

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judgments do not intervene, along with perceptions and experiences of
facts. In a practical syllogism, the minor premise, indeed, is not practical;
but the major premise and the conclusion are.133 What is important to
maintain is that the practicality of reason is not reduced to a simple “application,” a “practical use” of theoretical judgments (which regard facts, the
nature of man, etc.), but that it possesses, as St. Thomas clearly states, its
own gnoseological and anthropological point of departure: the ratio boni.
As being is the first object of the intellect as such, the process of the practical intellect begins with the apprehensio of the good (which, certainly,
would not be possible without a prior cognition of being).134 From this
moment on, however, the logic of the practical reason follows its own
course, with its own logic, an “autonomy,” which, to repeat, does not mean
independence from the theoretical intellect, but precisely “auto”-“nomia.”
This is clearly demonstrated in the natural cognition of fundamental
133 In this sense it is true that:“Practical judgments draw on theoretical insights and

theoretical insights motivate practical operations” (Romanus Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2001], 160).The example of the fish eaten by the author on the shore of
Lake Geneva in the company of his Swiss friend (I confirm the exactness of the
account) is also correct. I only want to highlight that a practical judgment is
neither an application of a theoretical judgment, nor a simple inference from
such a judgment. In its practicality it does not derive from any theoretical judgment, even if it can be derived from another practical judgment, of a higher
order, by means of a theoretical judgment. We can examine his example, putting
it in the form of a “practical syllogism”: 1. [Major premise, a practical judgment]:
“It is good for me (i.e., I want to) to eat a delicious fish.” 2. [Minor premise, a
theoretical judgment or sensible perception]:“This fish is delicious.” 3. [Conclusion, practical judgment and subsequent action]: “It is good for me (i.e., I want
to, choose to) eat this fish.”The conclusion is not an application of the theoretical judgment “this fish is delicious,” but an inference from the first practical judgment by means of the theoretical judgment “this fish is delicious.”The process of
the practical reason does not derive from an application of theoretical judgments,
but is from its beginning practical. Structurally it is based on the first principle
of practical reason, “one must do the good and avoid evil,” and from the other
principles, which are immediately grasped by the practical reason in the totality
of the natural inclinations of the human person. For the practical syllogism and
the structure of the process of the practical reason cf. Rhonheimer, Die Perspektive der Moral, 108–15.
134 Cf. ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2:“Sicut autem ens est primum quod cadit in apprehensione
simpliciter, ita bonum est primum quod cadit in apprehensione practicae rationis, quae ordinatur ad opus: omne enim agens agit propter finem, qui habet
rationem boni. Et ideo primum principium in ratione practica est quod fundatur
supra rationem boni, quae est ‘Bonum est quod omnia appetunt.’ Hoc est ergo
primum praeceptum legis, quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et
malum vitandum.”

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human goods:They are originally known in the context of the unfolding
of practical reason,135 and only afterward, in the subject’s reflection on this
original internal moral experience, do they become the object of the
theoretical intellect, which on the basis of this practical original experience progresses in the understanding of “human nature.”136
The fact that practical reason has its own point of departure means
that the natural law, which contains the first principles of practical reason
in the form of precepts, is, as has been mentioned, simultaneously both
the principle of praxis—that is, stimulus and motivation of the subject
toward action—and the principle of morality, that is, the rule of the
goodness of praxis. The practical intellect, also, is always intellect, i.e., a
cognitive faculty, although according to the structure of all imperative (or
“prescriptive”) acts, it would be “located” in an appetitive movement of
the will.137 The latter is in this way directed toward the truth of things.
The practical intellect, also, is always the one and same human intellect
whose natural object is properly the truth of being, even if, as practical
intellect, it knows this truth under the “ratio boni,” which is to say as an
end, the object or the intelligible content of a tendency, a desire or a
natural inclination.
The truth of the practical intellect is a “practical truth.” Practical truth
is, in the Aristotelian formulation, that truth that consists in the adequation of the judgments of practical reason with a right appetite. These
practical judgments have as their object, as Aristotle never tires of repeating, a variable, contingent matter: the sphere of praxis, which is the
sphere, not of the immutable order of being, but of that “which could
also be differently.” Some of these practical judgments, nevertheless, are
natural:They have the character of principles, and as principles they do not
refer to and are not measured by any superior appetite (except to that of
the good in general).They are goods that refer—as St.Thomas affirms—
in a non-derived, spontaneous way to the natural ends of the natural
inclinations, grasping their intelligible content as human goods138 (note
the analogy with the object of the human act as “intelligible content of
135 Cf. ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2 (cit. in note 124).
136 In my opinion, De veritate, 1, 9 and 10, 9 is fundamental for this; cf. Rhonheimer,

Natural Law and Practical Reason, 29f. (and notes 47 and 48).
137 What St.Thomas says of the act that he calls “imperare“ (“to command”), which

is “actus rationins, praesupposito actu voluntatis” (ST I–II, q. 17, a. 1), generally
applies here.
138 Yet again ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2: “. . . ut scilicet omnia illa facienda vel vitanda
pertineant ad preacepta legis naturae, quae ratio practica naturaliter apprehendit
esse bona humana.” And further on: “. . . omnia illa ad quae homo habet naturalem inclinationem, ratio naturaliter apprehendit ut bona. . . .”

The Acting Person

515

a concrete action”), which implies precisely a regulation on the part of
reason: Human goods also, grasped by natural reason, are, as the objects
of human acts, “goods understood and ordered by reason.”139 The principles of practical reason—the natural law—express that which is “by
nature reasonable,” a reasonableness that cannot be reasonably founded or
ulteriorly demonstrated, precisely because it is the natural law itself that
founds all practical reasonableness.140 Combined in an original way in
the natural law, therefore, are the subjectivity of the person who acts and
the objectivity of the natural knowledge of human good, a knowledge
understood and made explicit by means of a discursive process of the
natural reason, to the point of arriving at a knowledge of the species of
the concrete acts pertaining to the individual virtues and of acts opposed
to them, which latter are therefore evil.141
“To place oneself in the perspective of the acting person” is necessary
therefore not only for comprehending what constitutes the object of a
human act, but also for the correct understanding of the principles of
practical reason, which we also call the natural law. It is important to
139 Ibid., ad 2: “. . . omnes inclinationes quarumcumque partium humanae naturae,

puta concupiscibilis et irascibilis, secundum quod regulantur ratione, pertinent ad
legem naturalem. . . .”
140 Cf. Rhonheimer, Die Perspektive der Moral, 227ff.; Rhonheimer, “Praktische
Vernunft und das ‚von Natur aus Vernünftige.‘ Zur Lehre von der Lex naturalis
als Prinzip der Praxis bei Thomas von Aquin,” Theologie und Philosophie 75 (2000):
493–522.
141 In my opinion, what I have expounded in this paragraph was the basic idea, with
which I agree completely, of J. M. Finnis, in his book Fundamentals of Ethics
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1983). My objections against
Finnis’s criticism of the Aristotelian doctrine concerning the ergon idion can be
found in Praktische Vernunft und Vernünftgkeit der Praxis, 53ff. In his debate with
Finnis, and more generally against the differentiation between the theoretical and
practical use of the intellect, Ralph McInerny commits the error—in my view
significant—of confusing “practical knowledge” (of the moral subject) with
“ethical reflection”:“Finnis, it seems, wishes to maintain that the end, the good,
that guides ethical reflection is known in what he earlier called purely practical
knowledge. . . .” (Aquinas on Human Action, 188).That which McInerny considers to be so fundamentally erroneous is, however, precisely what St. Thomas
explicitly teaches in ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2. Speaking, on p. 155, of the “unwisdom
of trying to separate as well as distinguish the theoretical and practical uses of the
mind,” McInerny counters this “incipience” with the argument: “The practical
syllogism incorporates speculative truths.” Nothing is more true than this, but
this is not the question. Here we are speaking of the constitution of the “practicality” itself of a judgment, of the origin of the principles of practical reason, and
of the constitution of a line of reasoning insofar as it is practical: These cannot
be derived from the theoretical or speculative use of the intellect; they do not

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emphasize that through the natural law, the human person is constituted
simultaneously as a practical subject—an agent or actor—and as a moral
subject. In precisely the measure in which the natural law—practical
reason at the universal and natural level—is the principle of praxis, it is
also the principle of morality. As ordinatio rationis it becomes the measure
of the goodness of the pursuit of individual natural inclinations, and of all
the specific acts that arise from these inclinations.

originate from a simple application of theoretical judgments to action, rather this
process of practical reason is from its origin practical: It begins with the cognition of the precepts of the natural law, which is not only the principle of morality and the moral rule, but also the principle of praxis, because it urges and
motivates the subject to action within the realm of the intelligibility of fundamental human goods, grasped by practical reason in the subjectivity of the
person’s natural inclinations.This is St.Thomas’s teaching in ST I–II, q. 94, a. 2.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004): 517–46

517

Book Reviews
The Virtues, or the Examined Life by Romanus Cessario, OP (New
York: Continuum, 2002), vii + 202 pp.
T HIS BOOK is part of a multilingual theology-textbook series known as
the “Handbooks of Catholic Theology.” The AMATECA Foundation
(L’Associazione manuali di Teologia Cattolica) sponsors this series, which
includes approximately twenty-two volumes in ten different languages,
and now, via Continuum offers five theology texts on various subjects to
the English-speaking world. The series points to the theologies of
Balthasar and De Lubac as “roots . . . guaranteeing the identity of the
individual volumes.”
The volume under review here, as the title suggests, is dedicated to
moral theology. Unique to this present volume among others within the
“virtue renewal” is its explicit theological commitment.Those intrigued
by the revival of virtue theory among both Catholic and Protestant
theologians and philosophers—but unhappy with the way the “revivalists” have disembodied Thomas’s virtue-theory from its theological backdrop—will find a friend in Fr. Cessario. From beginning to end, this
volume remains methodologically committed to the work of theology.
This is not to say that Cessario does his moral theology in a vacuum
devoid of nature or of a philosophical foundation; on the contrary, he
affirms the value of “authentic human knowledge” (5) within the context
of the Christian faith. But, consistent with both the data of revelation and
the theological tradition of the Church, Cessario presents a morality of
virtue in harmony with its theological fonts and cognizant of man’s eternal destiny. Hence, Cessario unabashedly affirms the uniqueness of the
Christian moral life—as Christian. Fr. Cessario explains that:
This means that without an effective union with Christ, no human
person can in practice achieve the perfection of the moral life that
conduces to beatific fellowship with the Trinity. . . . In other terms, only
the person who embraces a life of Christian virtue lives fully according
to the norm of moral truth that Christ, the “image of the invisible

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Book Reviews
God,” communicates to the world, and so in Christ achieves the perfection of his or her human nature. (4)

Consequently, for Cessario, the life of virtue within the Christian framework is “virtuous” precisely because it is a life directed toward the perfection, completion, and fulfillment of human nature, which through grace
culminates in the beatific vision in heaven. This commitment to offer a
true “theology” of virtue enables Cessario to present a moral theology that
does not sacrifice the overall unified nature of sacra doctrina. Similar to the
secunda pars of Thomas’s Summa theologiae, no explicit “Treatise on Christ”
can be found within this book. Yet, also analogous to the Summa, and
unfortunately not frequently pointed out, nearly everything about the
Christian moral life found in this book can be traced back to Christ.The
infusion of grace, the possibility of the Gifts of the Holy Spirits, the Beatitudes, and so on, are all intimately connected with the life of virtue and
depend explicitly on the saving value of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.Thus this work dedicated to moral theology, as a part of sacra doctrina,
can only be appreciated within the panoply of the doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and the ecclesial (communio) nature of Christian existence.
As Cessario succinctly intimates,“Christian faith determines ethical issues.
And so the virtues of the Christian life are among those visible realities
that find their fullness in Christ” (4).
Consistent with his theological commitments and Thomistic understanding of virtue, Cessario structures this work around seven chapters,
dedicating one chapter to each of the three theological and four cardinal
virtues. Refreshingly aware of St. Thomas’s own “theo-logical” ordering
of the Summa theologiae, Cessario discusses the three theological virtues
first, and presents the four cardinal virtues in the final four chapters.
Moreover, when applicable, each chapter includes a discussion of the Gift
of the Holy Spirit that corresponds to the virtue under discussion.
When Cessario passes from his discussion of the theological virtues to
the cardinal virtues, he doesn’t check his faith or theology at the door, as
if descending from the supernatural to the natural. Even though,“Christian theology today does not take much account of the distinction
between the infused and the acquired virtue,” (101) the distinction forms
an integral part of Cessario’s overall treatment. Affirming the preeminence of the theological virtues in the Christian moral life, Cessario
further notes that:“[T]he Christian believer requires other human virtues
in order to lead a good life” (99). Hence, for Cessario even the cardinal
virtues (and their potential parts), in light of the infusion of grace, play a
part in the specifically Christian character of Gospel morality.

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519

For example, relative to the difference in perspective caused by distinguishing between infused and acquired virtues, and the specifically
Christian character of the infused virtues, Cessario explains in reference
to temperance:
Like the virtue of fortitude, Christian temperance serves the needs of
the Church. As a gift that observes the norm of grace, infused temperance may observe a different rule or measure with respect to food; this
happens in fasting and abstinence or even with regard to sexual abstinence, as is the case with consecrated chastity and celibacy. (194)

Concurrent with this book’s uniquely and integrally theological presentation of virtue, Cessario is able to unite (or reunite) the oft and
unfortunately separated subjects of Christian morality and the spiritual
life. Throughout The Virtues, or the Examined Life a conscious effort is
made to tease out the spiritual implications of Christian virtue.To offer
two specific examples, closing out the chapter on faith is a fine reflection on “Our Lady and the Recollected Life”; moreover, the final pages
of the book contain a section dedicated to “Infused Temperance and
Christian Humility.”
Also of special interest is the way in which Cessario discusses the problem of the nature-grace relationship from within his treatment of theological charity as the “form” of all the other virtues.The light of revelation
requires us to affirm that even if certain people were able to acquire all of
the “natural moral virtues,” natural virtue as “natural” cannot unite a
person with the ultimate Good, viz., God (72). “The Christian life,”
Cessario affirms, “animated by theological charity, provides the only way
for the human person to reach the full perfection of human existence and
to avoid the disintegrating effects of original sin” (74–75).
Those already familiar with the author’s diverse bibliography of theological works—one that spans deeply into both dogma and morals—can
expect yet another manifestation of Fr. Cessario’s acute grasp of St.
Thomas’s theology. Beyond the Thomistic panorama, this book also draws
heavily from the insights of many other saints, fathers, and doctors of the
Church besides St. Thomas, including his much-neglected renaissance
commentators. Cessario also proves conversant with contemporary issues
and authors, especially Von Balthasar’s “Nine Theses” and important texts
of the Magisterium.
This work is readable, but not superficially so.The sacrifice necessary
to traverse its pages is far outweighed by the breadth of insight contained
within them. The Virtues, or the Examined Life is worthy of commendation

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for its fidelity to Thomas, its eclectic sourcing, and contemporary relevance. But, more than anything else, this book is noteworthy because it
offers a full-blown virtue-theory written completely from within the
Christian economy of salvation and the “universal call to holiness.”
Because of this rare accomplishment, the book stands as a true response
to Vatican II’s call for a renewal of moral theology.
N&V
Roger W. Nutt
Aquinas College
Nashville,Tennessee

The Church in a Postliberal Age by George A. Lindbeck, edited by
James J. Buckley (London: SCM Press, 2002; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,
2003), xviii + 300 pp.
T HROUGHOUT HIS LIFE , George Lindbeck (b. 1923) crossed
borders—both in the geographical and theological sense. He spent seventeen years in Asia and more than five years in Europe. He started out
specializing in medieval philosophy and became—after having been a
Lutheran observer at Vatican II—a key interpreter of contemporary
Catholicism for Protestants.Yale University was his academic home for
half a century. His education and teaching at Yale and even more his
manifold activities in national and international ecumenism inspired him
to denounce a split between doctrine and church practice, theology and
Christian discipleship, ecumenical advances and confessional identity.
Lindbeck’s corpus reflects his geographical and theological globe-trotting: It consists chiefly of numerous articles that were mostly written on
specific occasions and can only be fully appreciated when read in the
context of their respective historical and theological settings and the
author’s life. Although the Yale scholar’s writings exhibit to a great extent
similar themes and arguments, they pose a special challenge to the reader
who seeks to assess them systematically and as a unified whole. This
might be the underlying reason why Lindbeck’s thought is nearly exclusively associated with his celebrated and controversial book The Nature of
Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (1984).
Considered against this background, James J. Buckley’s effort to make
some of Lindbeck’s more important articles accessible to readers who
might be familiar only with The Nature of Doctrine deserves special
acknowledgment. Buckley, a Catholic theologian at Loyola College in
Maryland, has collected fourteen of his former teacher’s writings, which
span a period of several decades and cover a range of theologcial specialities. In addition to providing a splendid overview and evaluation of

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521

Lindbeck’s work and its reception (VII–XVIII), the volume also offers
brief but very helpful introductions to each of the essays as a means of
situating them in their wider theological context and the overall trajectory of Lindbeck’s career.
According to Buckley, the hermeneutical vantage point that holds
these quite disparate writings together is that they form and articulate a
“radical tradition.”This view is not arbitrary, for the volume in question
appeared in a series titled “Radical Traditions—Theology in a Postcritical Key,” edited by Lindbeck’s students Stanley Hauerwas and Peter Ochs.
The definition of “radical traditions” employed by Hauerwas and Ochs
fits perfectly with the aims of Lindbeck’s postliberal project over the
years, namely, to retrieve Christian resources—long ignored in modernity’s reduction of theological reasoning—in a wholly renewed way and
thereby to lay a new foundation for the future theology and ecclesial life
that is utterly scripture-based, ecumenical, unapologetic, and attuned to
contemporary social and political practice. Within such a conception,
Buckley locates Lindbeck’s thought within a triangular pattern consisting
of three elements:“Evangelical,”“Catholic,” and “Postliberal.”These categories also structure the three sections of the book.Well aware that articles in one section may be marked by the other two categories, Buckley
argues convincingly that “ ‘evangelical, catholic and postliberal’ while not
a comprehensive characterization of Lindbeck’s theology, is useful for
understanding some of the debates over it, including the way some critics only focus on one or two of its strands.” In sync with Lindbeck’s spirit,
the editor holds out an additional challenge to the reader: “But more
important than understanding this theology’s radical traditions is participating in them” (xvi).
Having chosen this approach for a collection of Lindbeck’s essays,
Buckley certainly does justice to the aim and scope of the series “Radical Traditions.” Yet one could also argue that a more genealogical
approach would more clearly document the core of Lindbeck’s thought
and its development from the 1950s to the present. On the one hand, it
would have been more apparent to the reader that Lindbeck mirrors in
his early writings much more the theological mainstream and zeitgeist of
his time than in his later writings; and that he only later gave the church
a postliberal spin in reaction to what he perceived to be unwarranted
developments in and outside of Christianity. On the other hand, such a
chronological approach might have run the danger of being more
concerned with Lindbeck’s own development than with prospective
theology and the kinds of methodological issues that have been central
to Lindbeck’s scholarship.

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In addition, the selection of articles itself can be questioned. The
volume begins with a personal account from 1990 in which Lindbeck
characterizes his life and work. It is followed by “Reminiscences of Vatican II,” a moving conference given in 1993 and published previously
only in pamphlet form.The Catholic reader might be particularly interested to learn from the former observer at the Council that, in his view,
aggiornamento took precedence over ressourcement because the bishops
opted for something that they themselves did not know how to put into
effect. In the category “Evangelical” we find an essay on the congruity
of Martin Luther and the rabbinic mind, one on the seminal problem of
justification by faith and two pieces on theology in the Lutheran and
Reformed traditions.The “Catholic” section is opened by “Ecumenism
and the Future of Belief ” (1968), which can also be read as a precursor
of the postliberal agenda that would only be made explicit as a distinctive research program in the 1980s. “Hesychastic Prayer” testifies within
the sphere of spiritual pracitices to Lindbeck’s overall desire to study
religious traditions in their particularity. “Infallibility” (1972) takes up a
specific theme in ecclesiology while avoiding a one-sided endorsement
or refutation of the dogma of papal infallibility, whereas “The Church”
(1988) elucidates the foundation of Linbeckian ecclesiology that would
achieve by the 1980s a formulation in terms of “Israelology.”“Towards a
Postliberal Theology,” which appears as the sixth chapter of The Nature
of Doctrine, highlights the third section (“Postliberal”) and is followed by
the English text of the foreword to the German edition of that book
(1994). In this latter piece, which had previously been accessible only in
the German translation, Lindbeck comments on the ten years of heated
discussion about his postliberal manifesto and informs the reader about
his original intentions. “Scripture, Consensus and Community” delineates the biblical hermeneutic of the postliberal school and is based on
a lecture given in 1988 at a gathering of scholars that included Joseph
Ratzinger, Avery Dulles, and Raymond Brown. The last essay, “The
Gospel’s Uniqueness: Election and Untranslatability” (1997), provides
one of the most up-to-date articulations of the postliberal challenge.
This reviewer submits that the still-unpublished English version of
“Theologische Methode und Wissenschaftstheorie,” which appeared in
Theologische Revue 74 (1978): 265–80 and lays open Lindbeck’s methodological creed like no other essay by the author, would also have been
opportune. Another critical piece might have been the still-unpublished
manuscript on the rule theory of doctrine, namely, the 1987 Princeton
lecture, “Doctrine in Christianity: A Comparison with Judaism.” And
maybe there is not enough emphasis given in this volume that Lindbeck’s

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523

ecclesiological vision emerges out of a postcritical approach to Scripture.
But we have to keep in mind that Buckley’s principal aim is to introduce
Lindbeck to a wider audience, and not to be of service to a limited group
of postliberal scholars. As indicated at the beginning of this review, the
difficulty in arriving at such a collection is owing to the nature of Lindbeck’s oeuvre.Were ten proponents of postliberalism invited to come up
with their own list of Lindbeck’s key writings, no doubt they would all
be different. While not exhaustive of Lindbeck’s rich proposals for
contemporary Christian theology, the present volume serves as a useful
reference for those who wish to pursue a deeper understanding of the
postliberal program. The bibliography that appears at the end of each
chapter provides especially useful direction for engaging specific areas in
Lindbeck’s thought.
In reading through the essays of this book, it became clear once more
to this reviewer that a unified ecclesiological framework cannot be
distilled from Lindbeck’s publications.The principal benefit of engaging
the Yale theologian and noted ecumenist lies in his intriguing proposals
for theological inquiry that set the church on a promising track in a postmodern and post-Christian world.The fact that Lindbeck does not offer
us a series of volumes of a “systematic” theology need not imply a shortcoming. Indeed, for the European observer it is particularly striking how
much Lindbeck has—both as a theological teacher and as a writer—stimulated his peers in the academy and the broader church across generations and confessional boundaries. This collection of essays is essential
reading and a useful reference for all those who participate in the discussion about postliberal theology or who consider George Lindbeck a
model theologian and churchman. It exhibits Lindbeck’s contribution in
a comprehensive way and aptly serves as a precursor of and a hermeneutical framework for the magisterial book The Nature of Doctrine.
N&V
Bernhard A. Eckerstorfer, OSB
Benedictine Abbey
Kremsmünster, Austria

Sharing the Inheritance: Identity and Moral Life in Colossians by
Allan R. Bevere (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003), x + 294 pp.
O F LATE there have been a spate of dissertations and monographs on
Colossians and/or Ephesians that have shed some fresh light on these
documents, and this monograph is one such document. The published
form of this work is a revision of a dissertation done under J. D. G. Dunn
at the University of Durham in the 1990s. Like most such dissertations,

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it has its pluses and minuses, and it also very much reflects the orientation of Bevere’s mentor when it comes to matters such as the so-called
new perspective on Paul and the basic character of Colossians. For example, Bevere uses as his operating hypothesis that Colossians is written by
Paul and Timothy, or perhaps Timothy on behalf of Paul, and in any case
is a late Pauline document. Also following Dunn, he accepts the proposition that the letter to some degree is written as an apologetic in
response to the propaganda of the synagogue that was affecting some of
the Colossian converts. Surprisingly, since this conclusion makes Colossians an act of persuasion, Bevere completely ignores the rhetorical analysis of the document. It is a significant lacuna, in a dissertation that
otherwise has some helpful argumentation, but then Dunn also spends
very little time on the issue of rhetoric in his own work on Colossians.
The burden of Bevere’s argument can be summed up as follows. First
and foremost, the target against which Paul is arguing, particularly when
he is dealing with the Colossian philosophy in Colossians 2, is a Jewish
one.This argument is made over against the suggestions of T. Martin that
Paul is opposing some sort of pagan philosophy, in particular a Cynic
and/or Stoic one (see his volume in this same Sheffield series, By Philosophy and Empty Deceit: Colossians as a Response to a Cynic Critique), or the
arguments of C. Arnold that some kind of folk religion that entailed a
magic tainted syncretistic philosophy is involved (see his The Colossian
Syncretism:The Interface between Christianity and Folk Belief at Colossae). In
my judgment Bevere’s arguments against these proposals and in favor of
the uniformly Jewish character both of what Paul is affirming and what
he is opposing are quite convincing. But in some of the particulars of his
argument there are difficulties.
For example, Bevere simply asserts, without detailed argument, that the
much-controverted phrase stoicheia tou kosmou can refer to elementary
beings in Paul’s letters. He seems to think there is evidence for such a
meaning at this juncture in time, but in fact there is not.There is no lexical evidence that this phrase refers to beings until well after New Testament times. The only two meanings for which there is clear evidence
before or during New Testament times is that this phrase can refer to the
elements of the universe, or the elementary principles that govern the
universe (or at least the human sphere). Furthermore, stoicheia is never a
term Paul uses when he gives a list of powers and principalities (see, e.g.,
Col 2:15). Paul is likely referring to elementary teachings when he uses
this phrase, and he never uses this phrase when he is talking about angels.
There is the further problem with Bevere’s case that while he rightly
draws on parallels with Galatians to show the Jewishness of what Paul is

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525

opposing, he does not seem to see that the case would be far more
compelling if he recognized that not only are the “opponents” in Galatia
Judaizing Jewish Christians, but this is also the case in Colossae. There is
simply no direct evidence at all in Colossians that Paul is opposing the
synagogue or some of its leaders in Colossians. Not only is there no reference to the synagogue in Colossians, there is no reference to Judaism per
se. If Paul were arguing against non-Christian Jews then Colossians 2:19a
would be a singularly ineffective argument. Paul says there that “they” (the
so-called opponents) have lost connection with the Head (i.e., Christ).
One cannot lose connection with Christ if one has never had it in the first
place. Colossians appears rather to be very much an in-house argument.
The lack of direct reference to Judaism in Colossians is why it was possible for Martin or Arnold to make the cases they are making.
If one were to take Colossians 2:8–23 out of Colossians one would not
know that this was a problem-solving letter at all. There is the further
factor that the author or authors of this document do not know this
audience firsthand.They have simply heard of the faith of Colossians (Col
2:4). This does not mean that Colossians is some sort of general broadside including general parenesis, a sort of shooting in the dark, but it does
mean that the authors have signaled they are at some remove from what
is going on in Colossae.
Bevere, following Dunn, also makes much of the references to the socalled Jewish badges of identity. Paul is simply opposing the nationalistic
features of Judaism that make it a distinct ethnic group. Paul is arguing
for unity and he takes a minimalist approach in opposing that in Judaism,
which undermines unity in Christ. But surely the most important of the
badges, if we must call them that, that which most sets Judaism apart from
Greco-Roman religions, is its monotheism. It is precisely the oneness of
God that comes up for elaborate discussion in Colossians 1–2, in particular the Christological redefinition of monotheism. In Christ the fullness
of deity dwells.
So as it turns out, Paul is arguing not only against Gentile Christians
getting themselves circumcised and keeping the Law, as well as against
various Jewish mystical practices (worshiping with the angelic host aided
and abetted by ascetical practices), he is also arguing for a Christological
redefinition of monotheism that makes obedience to the Mosaic Law no
longer an obligation even for Jewish Christians. In other words, what is
assumed in Colossians is what is argued at length in the earlier letter in
Galatians. No Christian is obligated to keep the Mosaic Law, though
Jewish ones may do so as a blessed option. They are under a different
covenant, expected to keep the Law of Christ, which has some overlap

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with and some differences from the Mosaic Law. One can be the Jew to
the Jew and the Gentile to the Gentile as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9 of
himself, precisely because neither orientation is obligatory when it comes
to matters of “badges of identity.”
One problem with Dunn’s take on the new perspective on Paul is that
it fails to plumb the depths of Paul’s critique of the Mosaic Law. It is quite
true to say that early Judaism was a religion that involved covenantal
nomism in regard to the issue of “staying in,” but it also required a
commitment to the Law at the juncture of getting in whether one was
becoming an observant Jew at the coming of age or one was a nonJewish proselyte.The phrase “works of the Law” is not a code phrase for
simply taking up the badges of identity, as is quite clear from 4QMMT
where the text speaks of such things as merely “some of the works of the
Law” (see my critique in Grace in Galatia and the recent study edited by
D. Carson and others on righteousness in early Judaism). This is not to
deny at all that early Judaism was also a religion of grace, but Paul is not
simply opposing imposing the badges on Gentiles when he critiques
“works of the Law.”
Bevere has, however, made a very good case for the unity of the theology and ethics in Colossians, indeed the unity of the entire letter, as well
as its thoroughly Jewish character. While he admits that the household
codes in Colossians 3–4 do not seem to be directly tied to the argument
against the Colossian philosophy, he is able to show how even this section
of the letter is not some sort of general broadside without particular relevance to the rest of the letter’s discussion. M. Dibelius’s older thesis about
the general character of such paraenesis is successfully countered and laid
to rest.
It is the hallmark of a good dissertation that it moves the discussion of
a particular matter along, closing off some options, and opening up others
that seem more fruitful. Bevere has certainly done this and has done so in
an effective manner showing the unity and the Jewishness of the case Paul
is making for theological and ethical unity in Colossae.This is a dissertation that was certainly well worth publication and a careful reading. N&V
Ben Witherington, III
Asbury Theological Seminary
Wilmore, Kentucky

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Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, Sixth Edition,
edited by Etienne Gilson, translated by Laurence K. Shook and Armand
Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2002), 454 pp.
D R . G ILSON PUBLISHED the first edition of his Le Thomisme in 1919.
The second edition appeared in 1922, the third in 1927, the fourth in
1942, the fifth in 1944, and the sixth in 1965.The third edition was translated into English by Edward Bullough, and the fifth by Father Shook.
This translation of the sixth edition was begun by Fr. Shook but was left
incomplete because of his failing health. Fr. Maurer, a student of Dr.
Gilson, and later his colleague, began again at the beginning and brought
the translation to completion, calling himself the “editor and continuator” of the work of Fr. Shook. This edition, he says, “while remaining
substantially the same as the fifth edition, . . . offers the reader significant
new clarifications of Gilson’s views on the philosophy of Thomas
Aquinas. In many ways it is his last word on the subject.”
The publication includes (1) an appendix on Gilson’s revised interpretation of Boethius’s notion of esse; (2) an appendix on the life of St.
Thomas; and (3) an appendix with a modern chronology of selected
works of Thomas Aquinas, dealing with more recent studies on his writings and their improved editions. There is also a bibliography of the
primary sources cited in the book, especially the works of St. Thomas,
and indices of names and subjects.
A review of this large book cannot deal adequately with individual
areas of Aquinas’s philosophy, such as the existence and nature of God,
creation, the human person, intellect and will, or morality. Instead, it will
consider what Gilson says (1) in his introduction, (2) in connection with
Aquinas’s central philosophical doctrine, and (3) in his summing-up.
Gilson points out that St. Thomas Aquinas was a philosopher, but a
philosopher in the service of a theologian. “What characterizes Thomas
and gives him a special place in this general movement [using philosophy
in theology] is precisely the intellectual effort he made to introduce this
human learning into theology without destroying its [theology’s] unity.”
For Aquinas, the revealed is what is knowable to us only by revelation;
the revealable is what reason can know on it own and what is drawn into
theology because it is necessary for salvation, revelation diffusing itself, as
it were, by human reasoning.
Aquinas unified theology as a study of what is necessary or useful to
salvation. His philosophy, which is part of the revealable, was “exalted, as
it were, by being assumed into theology. . . . In becoming something
revealable, philosophy does not give up in any way its essential rationality,

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but it raises the use of rationality to its own ultimate perfection.” In
Aquinas, faith and reason are not isolated from one another, nor are they
confused with one another. “For, if faith enlivens his reason, this reason,
supported and enriched by this faith, always carries out purely rational
operations and draws conclusions based solely on the evidence of first
principles to all human minds.”
Moreover, “we must state that there is room for rational argument
even when it is a question of truths inaccessible to reason; and also for
theological intervention in areas apparently reserved for pure reason.”
Some philosophers think that combining theology so closely with
theology is bound to result in faith somehow filling in for philosophy.
But Aquinas’s philosophy “is not philosophy because it is Christian; but
he knows that the truer his philosophy will be the more Christian it will
be, and the more Christian it will be the truer it will be.This is why he
is equally open to Augustine and Aristotle. Rather than passively following the traditional path of Augustinism, he formulates a new theory of
knowledge, changes the bases on which proofs of God’s existence rest,
submits the notion of creation to a new critique, and establishes or
completely reorganizes the structure of traditional morality. Rather than
passively following the philosophy of Aristotle, he everywhere breaks free
from its limitations and transforms it by infusing into it a new meaning.
The whole secret of Thomism lies in this immense effort to reconstruct
philosophy on a plane where its agreement in fact with theology may
appear to be the necessary consequence of the demands of reason itself,
rather than the accidental result of some simple desire for conciliation.”
The Thomistic revolt in philosophy came about because Aquinas
achieved what a number of predecessors had glimpsed but were not able
to adequately express: Reality has essences but beyond essence is existence. Existence is not simply a fact; it is an act, an actuality positing
things outside of nothingness. It is “an act and not a state,” “the peak of
reality,” the “act of acts,”“at the heart or, if you prefer, at the very root of
reality,”“the very core of being,”“that primitive energy from which arise
both every knowing subject and every known object.”“It is therefore the
principle of the principles of reality. Absolutely first, it precedes even the
good, for a being is good only if it is a being; and it is a being only in
virtue of the ipsum esse that allows us to say of it: It is.” “We cannot see
existence, yet we know it is there, and we can at least affirm it by an act
of judgment as the hidden ground of what we can see and of what we
try to define.”“The action of a being is only the unfolding in time of the
primal act of existing that makes it be.”

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All knowledge requires concepts but they do not constitute knowledge of reality. Existence is “an act transcending any concept.” “It is
impossible to reach the act of existing by an intellectual intuition that
would grasp it directly by itself. . . . A pure est is unthinkable; but an id
quod est can be thought.” “What characterizes Thomistic ontology . . . is
not so much the distinction between essence and existence as the
primacy of the act of existing, not over and above it, but within in.” “It
is the act of existing in each being that is most inward, deepest, and metaphysically primary.”
Since the intellect is more at home with essences, for most philosophers it may never arrive at the notion of existence as the act of essences,
and, even it has once done so, it may soon forget what it has discovered.
“In a philosophy in which the act of existing can be conceived only in
and through an essence, but in which every essence points to an act of
existing, concrete riches are practically inexhaustible. But reason dislikes
what is inconceivable, and because this is true of existence, philosophy
does all it can to avoid it. It is inevitable that this natural tendency of
reason should affect our interpretation of Thomism. Even those who
vigorously deny this tendency know very well that they will succumb to
it.We must know it at least as a temptation inviting us to err.A Thomism
remaining on the level of concepts will exhaust itself by making one
inventory after another of the concepts it has inherited. Raised to the
level of judgment,Thomism will again make contact with the very heart
of the reality it elucidates. It will become fruitful and creative again.”
“The question is whether we will try to take [essences] alive or if our
philosophy will be only a herbarium of dead essences.An essence is dead
when the residue it leaves is deposited in the mind as a concept, without
preserving its contact with its act of existing.”
Aquinas’s philosophy is highly unified. It gives a complete explanation
of the universe from the point of view of human reason, an explanation
entirely derived from various aspects of one central notion, the notion of
being. “It would be difficult to find in the works of Thomas Aquinas a
single concrete problem whose solution does not ultimately depend on
this principle.”
Our knowledge begins with physical things. Their perfection is
proportionate to their being; their existence is limited by their essence.
They are in a constant state of becoming. Their essence does not fully
realize its definition. Because they lack something, they cannot explain
themselves. To explain them we have to posit a being that is what it is
totally, “removed from becoming and situated entirely outside it.” “All

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things hide some mystery; all things are veils which hide God.”“To prove
the existence of God is, in the last analysis, to ascend by reason from any
finite act of existing to the pure Act of Existence that causes it.”
Unknowable in himself, God is knowable only by analogy. All creatures participate in God, according to their nature. God is transcendent,
not confused with creatures. Nor do creatures add anything to God.They
are images, imitations, of God. And they imitate him primarily by existing.“Instead of having an intuition of the divine essence, we have only a
vast number of concepts that, taken together, are a confused sort of imitation of what would have been a true notion of the divine being. When
all that we have been able to say about such a subject is put together, the
result is a collection of negations and analogies and nothing more.”
“Reason here [concerning God] knows very little, yet the little it knows
surpasses in dignity and value any other kind of certitude.”
Gilson gives the highest praise to Aquinas’s genius: “It would be hard
to imagine something more perfectly and lovingly devised than his
demonstrations fashioned from clearly defined ideas, presented in
perfectly precise statements, and placed in a carefully balanced order.”
And Gilson is also grateful concerning where this genius leads: “If we
grant that a philosophy is not to be defined by the elements it borrows
but by the spirit that quickens it, we shall see in this doctrine neither
Platonism nor Aristotelianism but, above all, Christianity. It intended to
express in the language of reason the total destiny of the Christian man;
but, while constantly reminding him on earth he must travel paths of
exile where there is no light and no horizon, it never ceased to guide his
steps toward the height from which can be seen, far off in the mist, the
N&V
borders of the Promised Land.”
Leonard A. Kennedy, CSB
St. Michael’s College
University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada

A Thomistic Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Étienne Gilson edited
by Peter A. Redpath (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2003), xx + 243 pp.
T HE PRESENT VOLUME , the first in the series of Gilson Studies,
contains eleven essays that in various ways recall and honor the work of
Étienne Gilson (1884–1978). Gilson was a philosopher and historian of
philosophy who had a tremendous impact on North American Catholic
philosophy during the second half of the twentieth century, especially
through his many years at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at

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531

the University of Toronto. I had the privilege of hearing Gilson deliver a
lecture during my own days as a student of philosophy at Toronto in the
late sixties, but I had earlier benefitted from the Gilson’s eminence as a
philosopher and historian of philosophy through my teachers at St. Louis
University, many of whom studied under Gilson during the heyday of
the Pontifical Institute, although I myself avoided—much to my present
regret—any contact with things medieval while pursuing my degree at
Toronto. A volume, such as the present one, honoring Gilson is long
overdue and highly valuable for the many ways in which it portrays the
impact of Gilson in the last century and indicates his continuing relevance, even for today.
The essays are diverse in their subjects, lengths, and appeal, as is bound
to be the case with any collection of essays. They are complemented by
brief biographies of the contributors; a group of photographs of Gilson
and others; and indices of works and professional appearances, of authors,
editors, and translators, and of names and subjects. The volume also
contains a foreword by Curtis Hancock, the president of the Gilson Society, and an introduction by Peter Redpath.
Jorge J. E. Gracia’s “The Enlightening Gloss: Gilson and the History of
Philosophy” describes Gilson’s method in the history of philosophy as
glossing a text in a way that enlightens. Gracia illustrates this method by the
treatment Gilson gave to Abelard’s teaching on universals in his History of
Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages; contrasts Gilson’s method with that
of others; and suggests some limitations on his procedure.
In “The Practical Nature of Moral Philosophy,” Richard Geraghty
discusses a problem about the practical nature of moral philosophy
according to St. Thomas. After surveying the views of the Thomistic
commentators and of Jacques Maritain, Geraghty presents his own solution and points out how it contributes to an understanding of John Paul
II’s call for a new evangelization.
Peter Redpath pays tribute in his article, “Philosophy’s Non-Systematic
Nature,” to the great men who taught philosophy at the Pontifical Institute.
Among these he singles out Armand Maurer, to whom the volume is quite
appropriately dedicated, and he focuses on Maurer’s article, “The Unity of
a Science: St.Thomas and the Nominalists,” which he praises as “a devastating attack on the metaphysical foundations of modern philosophy” (30).
In “The Beauty of Wisdom: A Tribute to Armand A. Maurer,” Robert
Delfino deals with Maurer’s book About Beauty:A Thomistic Interpretation,
which he describes in some detail and cites as a tribute to Father Maurer,
who was a colleague of Gilson at the Pontifical Institute. In his Introduction, Peter Redpath claims that Mauer is one of the most brilliant

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exponents of Gilson’s historiographical method. Delfino stresses Maurer’s
identification of beauty with being and of happiness with a life beautifully lived. He also contrasts Maurer’s epistemology of beauty with the
views of Umberto Eco.
Desmond J. Fitzgerald’s essay, “Étienne Gilson and the San Francisco
Conference,” is a fascinating historical piece on the presence and role of
Gilson at the 1945 conference that drafted the United Nations’ Charter.
In fact Fitzgerald provides some very interesting biographical details
about Gilson before and during the war and about his arrival in Toronto
after the conference.
In “Maritain’s Reply to Gilson’s Rejection of Critical Realism,”
Raymond Dennehy examines Jacques Maritain’s critical realism and
Gilson’s criticism of any such form of realism. He ultimately suggests that
there may be little actual difference between the two views.The last three
sections of the article trace Maritain’s philosophical development with
regard to the possibility of objective knowledge, his defense of conceptual knowledge, and his battle against the so-called irrationalists. In
conclusion, Dennehy suggests that the epistemological battles that Maritain waged may very well explain his disagreement with Gilson over
whether realism needed the defense of a critique.
The eighth article by Francesca Murphy, “Gilson and Maritain: Battle
over the Beautiful,” recounts the differences between Maritain and
Gilson on the topics of art and the beautiful from the early twentieth
century and their reactions to Bergson and modernism on to their major
works on aesthetics toward the middle of the century. Murphy ties these
differences, which at times led to a bitter conflict between the two great
Thomists of the last century, to other differences in their philosophical
and religious lives and at times to simple misunderstandings.
By far the longest essay is Richard Fafara’s “Gilson and Gouhier:
Approaches to Malebranche,” which explores and contrasts the approaches
of Gilson and Henri Gouhier to the study of the great occasionalist of the
seventeenth century. Gouhier, like Gilson, was one of the great historians
of philosophy in the last century and a man who, though a student and
friend of Gilson, differed from him on the way to study the history of
philosophy.The article presents the views of the two on Christian philosophy and on the philosophy in the history of philosophy, especially with
respect to Père Malebranche’s views. The work of Gilson and Gouhier
marks “a fascinating chapter in French intellectual history” (148), and, as
Fafara notes, the study of one leads to and complements that of the other.
James Maroosis’s article,“Poinsot, Pierce, and Pegis: Knowing as a Way
of Being,” takes its start from a seminar on intentionality that Anton Pegis

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533

taught at the University of Toronto, which led the author to discover the
similarity between the views of Pierce and John of St.Thomas on intentionality and semiotics.
In the final essay in the volume, “Possessed of Both a Reason and a
Revelation,” James V. Schall turns to Gilson’s Reason and Revelation in the
Middle Ages and to his The Unity of Philosophical Experience. He points out
the relevance, especially today after the attack of September 11th, of the
Averroistic separation of reason and revelation, which he suggests still
plays an important role in Islamic thought, as opposed to the views of St.
Thomas, who saw reason and faith, not as opposed, but complementary.
All told, the essays make up a splendid tribute to Étienne Gilson and
to Armand Maurer and, indeed, to the entire faculty of the Pontifical
Institute, whose members contributed greatly to the character of North
American Catholic philosophy in the second half of the last century. The
first volume in the Gilson Series makes an excellent beginning, and since
Gilson’s legacy is too rich for a single volume to exhaust, we can look
forward to future volumes in the series, which will retrieve for readers of
the twenty-first century other facets of Gilson’s thought.
N&V
Roland J.Teske, SJ
Marquette University
Milwaukee,Wisconsin

Boethius by John Marenbon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 272 pp.
J OHN M ARENBON ’ S fine introduction to Boethius provides a brief
overview of most of Boethius’s extant works and goes a long way toward
orienting the novice to many of the current trends in Boethius scholarship. In addition to the well-known Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius’s
corpus, as we have it, includes commentaries on Porphyry’s introduction
to Aristotle’s logical works (Isagoge), on Aristotle’s Categories and On Interpretation, and on Cicero’s Topics; treatises on discovering definitions (De
Divisione liber) and on hypothetical and categorical syllogisms; books on
music and arithmetic (a free translation of an earlier neo-Platonic work);
and five theological treatises (a brief catechetical summary of salvation
history titled On the Catholic Faith; a defense of Chalcedon; two works on
the Trinity; and the De hebdomadibus, in which he explains how things are
good in themselves because they are derived from God). Marenbon’s
book focuses on some of the more important arguments in the logical
works, treatises, and tractates. Of particular interest are his subtle handling
of Boethius’s commentary on Porphyry’s three most difficult questions
concerning genera and species, and the central role Marenbon grants to

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On the Catholic Faith in the theological tractates. Only in the past century
has this text been accepted by the scholarly community as genuinely
Boethian, and its importance for Boethius’s theological method has not
been measured.The largest and most argumentative portion of the book
concerns the Consolation.
Boethius includes a short biographical chapter, two chapters on the
logical works, one on the theological tractates, three on the Consolation,
and a concluding chapter on Boethius’s influence in the Middle Ages.
Each chapter includes a description of the works and some interpretive paragraphs that locate Boethius within his neo-Platonic context
while acknowledging the unique contributions of the Latin master. A
drawback of Marenbon’s early chapters is that he treats each category of
writing in isolation and does not attempt to incorporate Boethius’s various writings into a unified vision.This tendency to treat texts and arguments discretely is turned into a thesis in the final chapters in which
Marenbon, who does not think the Consolation does console, argues that
Boethius presented Lady Philosophy as an inconsistent character for the
sake of exposing the limits of philosophy in dealing with the problem of
suffering. Lest it appear that the thesis determines the analysis, several
further issues ought to be addressed: the unity of Boethius’s thought, the
integrity of Lady Philosophy’s arguments, and the role of the poetry in
the genre of Consolation.
In the biographical chapter, Marenbon locates Boethius within the
neo-Platonic commentary tradition. The practitioners of this tradition
regarded it as their duty, as formulated by Simplicius, to reconcile the
texts of Plato and Aristotle at the level of thought and not of mere words.
In practice this often meant resolving aporia in Aristotle’s texts that either
were ambiguous in themselves or else seemed to conflict with the teachings of Plato.The resolution preserved the unity of understanding and the
integrity of being. Marenbon’s tendency to read Boethius’s texts in isolation and to settle for apparent contradictions and inconsistencies is in
tension with Boethius’s project and method of philosophizing. This
makes suspicious his claim to have discovered in the Consolation deliberate inconsistencies.
One instance of such isolation is Marenbon’s interpretation of
Boethius’s understanding of the status of universals in the logical works
and in the De hebdomadibus. Marenbon affirms that Boethius read Aristotle’s Categories as a treatment of things that signify insofar as they signify.
What signify are words, so the categories are not the genera of beings.
What words signify are conceptions and neither things nor the eternal
forms of things. The meanings of words are determined by what the

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535

mind derives from the things under consideration. Thus both authors
exploited an understanding of an ordered relationship among words,
intellect—things. For Boethius, as for Porphyry, the mediating role of the
intellect was what accounted for equivocation and ambiguity, and, at least
as far as Boethius was concerned, for the knowledge of contingents.
Boethius attributed to Porphyry the insight that a simple proposition is
one that can mean only one thing.The task of logic is the elimination of
equivocation. Boethius analyzed ambiguity not only in conceptual terms
but also as existential impositions.That is, the Categories show us that est
is predicated analogically.When we say “He is a man,” “He is a brown,”
and “He is a father,” the senses of “is” are distinct. Each of the predicates
is posited as inhering in a distinct manner. Further, all are distinct from
the necessity posited in “He is God.” Since, no common conception is
implied, thus there is no genus for these est ’s. As Marenbon notes,
Boethius rejected, or at least, never had recourse to the neo-Platonic
conception of three distinct universals: as separated, as immanent and as
abstracted. Boethius could not have made serious use of this schema
because he rejected a concept of being that could range over an ordered
series. Being conceived as necessary (self-subsistent), as substantial (relatively self-subsistent), and as accidental (dependent) would be such an
ordered series.
It is in order to eliminate ambiguity that Boethius took up the discussion of the necessity, contingency, and time-quality of predications in
Book 9 of the commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation. Among the
arguments we find in that section is that some predicates refer to contingent beings and some to eternal and necessary beings. As Marenbon
rightly emphasizes on pages 39 to 40, for Boethius predications of
contingent realities are true only if they contain a sense of the contingency of things. True predications are, of course, expressions of knowledge. Boethius’s realism, therefore, is founded not on the results of
abstraction as Marenbon argues (30–31) but on the mode in which the
concepts abstracted are posited in reality. If we take this principle into
account, then it is perhaps easier to see that in the De hebdomadibus,
Boethius was not articulating a difference between a thing and an immanent universal (Marenbon, 89), but rather between a thing and its act of
being on the basis of which one posits contingent or necessary existence.
An immanent universal is a particular, substantial form, and was already
an element in Boethius’s logical works. An act of existence is a forma
essendi, “form of being,” which can only be form in an analogous sense.
Boethius consistently held that ens,“being,” is not a genus and cannot be
a true form. Therefore, all things are good in being derived from or

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having as one of their principles an act of existence that is dependent on
God and not on themselves. To be so dependent is not a predicate like
substance and is not made explicit in the Categories.
What is the integrity of Lady Philosophy’s arguments? Marenbon’s three
chapters on the Consolation are ordered to his thesis that Boethius deliberately introduced incoherencies into Lady Philosophy’s arguments in order
to exploit the gap between philosophy and theology. He is inclined to treat
as six distinct and conflicting arguments the discussions of happiness in
terms of a complex view (II–III.8) and in terms of a monolithic view
(III.9–12); the treatment of Providence in terms of final causality (IV.1–4)
and in terms of the efficient causality of the divine Craftsman (IV.5–6); and
the resolution of the problem of Providence conceived as “causal determinacy” (V.1–2) and as prescience (V.3–6), both of which seem to destroy free
will.The commentator affirms that the two arguments in Book III are “at
odds,” and that in Book IV Boethius “suddenly changes direction” (117).
In fact, the picture of God as divine planner who prepares a response ahead
of time to human vice and virtue is “in stark contrast to that presented by
III.9–IV.4” (119). I will argue that there is more unity to the text that
Marenbon is willing to discover or to grant.
Marenbon believes that the problem of the relationship between
Providence and free will only emerges with the treatment of Providence
as causal:“So long as divine government was explained solely in terms of
final causality, there was no tension between acknowledging it and maintaining free will” (121). However, this easy concord was not apparent to
Proclus who conceived of Providence almost exclusively in terms of final
and paradigmatic causality. He found that the free pursuit of a natural
end required defense. Boethius himself acknowledged that while there
was something true in the Stoic account of non-necessitate yet natural
motion of the will toward the good, the Stoics had not really preserved
freedom. For Boethius, the natural motion of the will is free, in one
sense, because its necessary pursuit of the good is check and governed by
reason. Marenbon quotes a characteristic line: “. . . For desire for the
good is there naturally within the minds of men, but wayward error leads
away to false goods” (105).The complex view of happiness sorts out false
and from true goods. This first approximation of the essence of human
freedom is articulated in the face of the final causality of the good. All
along the line Lady Philosophy had conceived of Providence as causal,
even in terms of a divine Charioteer who governs the cosmos by the
reigns of love.
An additional element of human freedom is identified in the context
of the recognition that the one true good, God, is the same for all.Where

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537

the complex view treats the parts of happiness, the monolithic view treats
the whole. The will desires the good determined by reason, yet the will
is clearly not satisfied with just any good proffered. Marenbon points out
that Lady Philosophy argues that the will is satisfied not with means but
only with the end for the sake of which the means are chosen (105–6).
This one end moves all things including the will.The will is, in fact, only
satisfied with the whole of the good, the one end of all of creation.The
moral agent who is not an inveterate liar may still be aware when he or
she is “rationalizing.”The will either resists rationalizations or else moves
the mind to find them.The difference is not simply in the knowledge of
one and the ignorance of another, nor is it in the end itself. The difference is in the moral character of the agent. Boethius seems here to have
drawn on St. Augustine’s distinction between will and power.The power
to achieve what the will desires is the virtues of the will.Thus, the will is
freed by virtue and constrained by vice.
The difference then between Boethius’s presentations of the problem
of Providence and free will in Book V is not one of causality. Marenbon
considers that Lady Philosophy first distinguished between events caused
by Providence—the unfolding of the chain of events within the natural
order—and free events subject only to the human will. On this interpretation, all non-human events are causally determined, but human events
are free. However, consistent with the treatment of the same problem in
the commentaries on On Interpretation, Boethius distinguished among
necessary, contingent, and free events. All three types are governed in
unique ways by the order determined by Providence. Boethius rejected
the idea that Providence causes all things discretely after the image of
some divine puppet master, yet the divine mind is responsible for the
ordered whole within which events occur that are the effects of necessary, contingent, and free causes. Contingent beings are caused, and
though there is no necessity to their being, they depend on God for their
existence (esse). Likewise free will is a quality of a contingent being that
moves itself toward its natural end.
What is the function of the poems? The following are some suggestions for further consideration. Marenbon treats the poems as largely
decorative. Even when the content of a poem supplies some unique
image or idea, it does not advance the argument. It does not appear to
me, however, that argumentation is the purpose of the poems.Among the
likely sources for Boethius’s Consolation are neo-Platonic protreptic, Stoic
consolations, and Augustine’s Confessions. In the case of the first, authors
ascribed a positive role to music and poetry in preparing the heart of
disciples for rigorous philosophic discourse. In the case of the second, at

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least Cicero wrote that he put his hand to practicing this Greek style of
discourse, mingling prose and verse. Augustine repeated many times that
his own pride and disordered desire was a cause of his mistaken ideas
about God. In his case the most effective poems for healing his soul of its
pride were the Psalms. In all of these cases there is a recognition that the
intellect does not operate in isolation from competing desires.There are
things that cannot be understood, arguments that cannot be grasped until
the heart is freed from its attachments to search for the truth. Perhaps, a
full estimate of the extent to which the Consolation is in fact consoling,
will have to await a clearer analysis of poetry and argument, desire and
knowledge. Perhaps Boethius had in mind a clear sense of the type of
person for whom Lady Philosophy’s arguments would be acceptable.The
Prisoner is not yet that person at the beginning of the work, but he does
become so as he takes over the discourse.
This newest book naturally invites comparison with the Henry Chadwick’s comprehensive treatment of the same subject matter, Boethius:
Consolations of Music, Logic,Theology and Philosophy (1981), also published by
Oxford University Press. Marenbon’s work should prove to be a helpful
supplement to Chadwick’s more encyclopedic work for two reasons. First,
it will be more accessible to the beginner and even perhaps to inspire interest through his provocative thesis concerning the relationship of philosophy and theology in the Consolation. Second, Marenbon includes or at least
references a good deal of scholarship written since 1981, and his text is rich
with insights from many sources.The final chapter is a helpful reminder of
the vast and deep influence Boethius had on the medieval world. The
publication of Marenbon’s text witnesses to the profound effect Lady
Philosophy has had on the framework and terms of perennial debates in
the western world concerning philosophy, theology, God, contingency,
human freedom, vice, virtue, and the solicitude of Providence.
N&V
Paul J. LaChance
St. Anselm’s College
Manchester, New Hampshire

The Beauty of the Infinite. The Aesthetics of Christian Truth by
David Bentley Hart (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 448 pp.
D ESPITE THE RELATIVE youth of its author, The Beauty of the Infinite
merits consideration as one of the most ambitious and theologically
insightful contributions to the field in the past decade. David Hart’s fluid
prose, sweeping grasp of theology and continental philosophy, and
creativity enables him to ferry the reader from eastern patristic theology

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to French postmodernism, from Greek Attic tragedy to Nietzsche and
Heidegger. His work deserves a careful reading by all serious students of
theology, especially those interested in how theology should relate and
respond to questions raised by postmodern thinkers.
Hart begins the book asking whether a peaceful Christian rhetoric is
still possible.The Christian worldview narrates a creation ex nihilo poured
out as gift, a grace never owed but given freely, the peaceful witness of
Jesus, a sacrifice on Golgotha that ends all sacrifice, and an eschatology
that seeks to reconcile all of creation.This question is so essential for Hart
because he sees rhetoric not as an optional addendum to a prior Christian metaphysics, but instead as part of the very essence of Christianity.
The Christian evangel is rhetoric.
Hart outlines how postmodern (neo-Nietzschean) philosophy challenges the foundation of Christian rhetoric. He writes,“A certain current
within contemporary philosophy, however, asserts that violence is—
simply enough—inescapable.” Through Nietzsche there has arisen “a
profound prejudice . . . to the effect that every discourse is reducible to a
strategy of power, and every rhetorical transaction to an instance of an
original violence. From this vantage a rhetoric of peace is, by definition,
duplicity” (2). Although largely critical of the violent underpinning of
dialectic, Hart poses a choice between two starkly contrasted narratives:
“one that find the grammar of violence [. . .] hidden within the syntax
of every rhetoric, and another that claims that within history a way of
reconciliation has been opened up that leads beyond, and ultimately
overcomes, all violence” (2). In nuce, the book recounts the challenge
posed by Nietzsche and the response Christianity should offer. For Hart,
Christianity’s rhetoric cannot abandon the aesthetic because God is
beauty, and the beautiful is convertible with the good, the true, and being.
One may ask how original a work has been produced. By combining
a return to a theological aesthetics with a massive attack on all variants of
agonistic ontology, Hart coalesces the visions of Hans Urs von Balthasar
and John Milbank. He admits this debt—really, he is too creative a
thinker to be shy about borrowing. While not quite as polemical as
Milbank, Hart wields his theological thresher adeptly. His critiques of
Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, and Deleuze are impressive, but the section in
the first part worth recounting is the devastating blow dealt to Levinas,
whose Catholic admirers are many (even the pope, allegedly). Hart’s reading of Levinas is not a cheap gloss on a particular text; instead, he shows
a facility with Levinas’s opera. This facility is important to remember
because the force of Hart’s critique is so heavy (he describes Levinas’s
philosophy on page 75 as “the banal tortured into counterfeit profundity,

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the obviously false propounded as irresistibly true, other forms of thought
caricatured and condemned with a vehemence frequently vicious, and a
fulminant tone of mystical authority assumed wherever principled argument proves impossible”). For Hart, Levinas is a Gnostic: The Other
never appears; the face is invisible. Because of his ethical (and Kantian)
puritanism, the resulting ethic remains “devoid of the affectivity of love
or natural benevolence” (81). However benign Levinas’s intentions, the
results of his ethical project are so perverted—Hart refers to such an ethic
as “a grim sickliness so profound that it often appears merely to convert
some private melancholy into a resentful malice toward all being” (86)—
that the good outlined by Levinas is only a privatio mali (83).
Hart’s hermeneutical creativity allows him to realign the philosophical constellation: “Even the outrageous juxtaposition of Deleuze and
Levinas—absolute antinomian affirmation of the world and infinite ethical flight from it—proves perfectly logical: pagans and Gnostics both
assume the iron law of fate to operate here below and violence to be
pandemic in the sensible order” (91). In a similar fashion, Hart connects
Attic tragedy to the highest achievements of Greek philosophy, unveils
Nietzsche’s project as imbued with a Cartesian self, and unites Bultmann’s
theological project with the liberal Protestantism of the nineteenth
century that sought to reach the far bank of Lessing’s ditch.
Up to now this review has focused on the negative power of Hart’s
book, but his work extends far beyond a negation of the postmodern
project. The second (and by far largest—covering about 260 of the 445
pages) part of the book, a dogmatica minora, tells the Christian story by
“addressing the creed in four discrete moments: Trinity, creation, salvation, and eschaton” (153). Hart’s hero, and the subject the dissertation
from which the current work was born, is Gregory of Nyssa. In his
section on Trinity, Hart declares that Nyssa’s theology centered on the
question of how “God is at once transcendent, no being among beings,
but also infinitely rich in being’s splendors, outstripping creation in his
concrete and determinate fullness” (188). In one word, Nyssa’s theology
refracts the Pauline theme of epektasis (Phil 3:13). Following (and surpassing) Ekkehard Mühlenberg, Hart asserts that Nyssa does not understand
divine infinity (aperion) as another example of the via negativa, but as
positive infinity, and consequently concludes that Nyssa is the first real
Christian thinker of difference.
An essential part of Hart’s argument comes in his understanding of
analogy. Only through an analogia entis can Christianity avoid a Gnostic
flight from or a nihilistic embrace of the world.The importance of analogy explains why theology must answer postmodern thought—in this

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541

instance Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology—because otherwise theologians will borrow too uncritically from these spoiled spoils. Hart takes
issue with the most formidable attempt, by Jean-Luc Marion, to divorce
the Christian God from being and defends Erich Przywara against Barth’s
famous critique (although, it must be said, a bit more exposition should
have followed given the importance of the debate and the people in it—
Hart does not address Barth’s analogia fidei or Jüngel’s interesting plea for
a major similitudo in reaction to the famous decree of the Fourth Lateran
Council that proved so central for Przywara). Here Catholics will owe
Hart a special thanks: Many blush in the face of Barth and assume he got
the better of his Catholic interlocutor, but Hart, an Eastern Orthodox
theologian, offers a compelling explanation of how the analogia entis
protects theology from Hegelian dialectic: “The rejection of the analogy
[of being], far from preserving God’s transcendence, actually serves only to
objectify God idolatrously as a sublime absence or contradiction: one is
left with a duality that inevitably makes of God and creation a dialectical
opposition, thus subordinating God to being after all” (242), and turns
Barth’s famous “invention of the anti-Christ” remark on its head.
The previous sampling of Hart’s contribution to theological and
philosophical debates leaves the reader with much to ponder. His exposition of classical Christianity through the texts of Bonaventure, Maximus,
Augustine, and the Capaddocians (among others) should encourage readers to return to the center of the theological tradition. His argument is
more fugal than linear; he explains that there is “no systematic or deductive sequence” to his dogmatic treatise. Instead he provides an argument
that “proceeds by steps but will also occasionally double back to reassert
a theme with a new resonance” (154).The less single-minded reader may
occasionally feel that the answer can be anticipated and want to skip
ahead, but the abundance of wit, subtlety, and brilliance—his discourse
on Bach (282-84), the brilliant summary of analytic philosophy (314), his
labeling Henry Ford a Nietzschean deity (435 fn), and so on—reward the
reader for keeping a steady hand on the wheel.
There is much else to say about the book. From an ecumenical standpoint, Catholics should be encouraged by Hart’s sympathetic reading of
both Augustine’s treatment of the Trinity and Anselm’s theory of atonement, and should not underestimate the significance of this reading
considering the author’s ecclesial location. Recently the German
Lutheran theologian Oswald Bayer called for a “poetic theology.” Similar
to Bayer, Hart likens God’s creation to a work of poetry in language that
makes Christianity attractive through a majestic vision and almost hortatory tone. Indeed, perhaps the greatest favor Hart has done academic

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theology is to help theologians “see the form” as Balthasar has called for.
Although traditional Christian apologetics (e.g., C. S. Lewis) may have
seen its day, recent European fundamental theology (Pottmeyer, Metz, and
Guido Vergauwen) has called for a “practical apologetics.” Hart’s “aesthetic
apologetics” can perhaps open a new flank in this region of theology.
There are a few problems with the book. Although Hart offers many
biblical citations, he never buttresses his argument with contributions
from recent biblical scholarship. This would have made his critique of
Girard on biblical sacrifice more convincing. The philologically challenged—that is, most American readers—will probably find aggravating
Hart’s failure to translate French and German secondary literature in the
body of the text. His critique of Heidegger is harsh but does not mention
the sad state of theology Heidegger faced when he was a young seminarian, and surely helped to convince him to abandon the metaphysics
taught in the Catholic seminary he attended.
Despite the obvious comparison to Balthasar’s Glory of the Lord or
Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory, the type of book Hart’s resembles
most closely is Jüngel’s God as Mystery of the World. This is high praise
(although perhaps not for Hart since he is critical of Jüngel at several
points). Like Jüngel, Hart takes a serious question seriously, and proceeds
in the style of a continental thinker by mining the recent and less recent
texts of western theology and philosophy for insights. Jüngel says in the
first preface that “Contemporary theologians write too quickly and too
much, but think too little.” Hart’s book comes seven years after the
completion of his dissertation.While many academics of Hart’s stature are
into their second or third book at such a juncture, the theological
N&V
community can thank Hart for his patience.
Grant Kaplan
Loyola University of New Orlean
New Orleans, Louisiana

Discovering Aquinas:An Introduction to His Life,Work and Influence by Aidan Nichols, OP (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 214 pp.
I T COULD BE ARGUED that no greater contributor to the work of
retrieving the Catholic theological heritage, both new and old, inhabits
the English-speaking world than the Dominican Aidan Nichols. His
mastery of historical context, both in method and in working knowledge,
as well as his formidable theological intellect find a compelling combination in several scholarly “introductions” to theological greats such as Yves
Congar, Joseph Ratzinger, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. No less important

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to his stature is Nichols’s characteristically English capacity to render
compelling analogies and explanations that illuminate rather than repeat
or obscure key ideas. As a specimen, one need look no further than The
Shape of Catholic Theology, which stands out as the most lucid primer in
theological method to be encountered in contemporary writing.
In the present work, Nichols reveals himself to be just as helpful an
interpreter and explainer of Thomas Aquinas as he is of lesser theologians.
This is a time period in which both gifted newcomers (Dauphinais and
Levering) as well as an undisputed master ( J.-P.Torrell) have issued introductions to Thomas’s thought. Nichols’s volume adds one more strain to
the symphony of appreciation for Thomas and the consequent inspired
creativity that may ultimately require characterization as the most significant trend in Catholic theology since the Nouvelle Theologie of the 1950s.
Always sensitive to historical context, Nichols begins his work by first
situating himself as a Thomistic interpreter buoyed by two vital currents
in twentieth-century Catholic thought: English sensitivity for Thomas’s
“powerfully incarnational idiom,” and the more “metaphysically and
dogmatically meaty” French Dominican approach (viii–ix). This signals
Nichols’s willingness to rely on other sources, which is one of the great
merits of the work. Rather than succumb to either of the twin dangers
of total originality or solo virtuosity, Nichols is willing to be aided, even
guided, by the insights of other Thomas scholars. He presents their
insights in toto, and wherever possible, without revision. Yet far from
subtracting from the quality of Discovering Aquinas, this serves to ground
its assertions and makes Nichols’s own insights stand out more clearly.
The book is divided into three parts. “Part One:The Man” consists of
only one chapter, which traces Thomas’s life and career. “Part Two: The
Doctrine,” the longest section of the work, offers seven chapters focused
on the highlights of Thomas’s teaching in the key areas of Christian belief.
“Part Three:The Aftermath,” which forms a diptych with Part One, offers
a single chapter summarizing what Nichols calls “the posthumous St.
Thomas” (129). Finally,“Part Four:The Tools” is a re-examination of some
key areas from Part Two from the perspective of theological method.
Chapter 1,“Thomas in His Time,” is Nichols at his very best. He does
not tarry on disputed points; rather, he focuses on uncovering how the
events of Thomas’s life (including his vocation, circumstances, and difficulties) deeply influenced his prodigious literary career and his theological conclusions. Most significant in this chapter is Nichols’s compelling
argument that Thomas’s exitus-reditus principle of “theological intelligibility” (6) is the recurring theme of his entire career. In the process, he makes
a strong (albeit indirect) rebuttal of Chenu’s premise that this “principle of

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organization” is primarily a neo-Platonic, rather than biblical, architectonic, although he does not investigate the possibility that the shape of
Thomas’s theology may involve other, equally important biblical influences (cf. A. Hayen, Saint Thomas d’Aquin et la vie de l’église, 81–85).
As noted above, this chapter has a companion in Chapter 9, “Thomas
in History,” in which Nichols manages to summarize the ebb and flow
of Thomistic thought since the time of his passing. Most notable in this
latter chapter is Nichols’s insight into the last 100 years, with both its
“dark days” as well as the “promise of dawn” (139)—“a new Thomistic
renaissance” occupied by scholars who have been won by the “intellectual, moral and spiritual coherence” of Thomas’s theology (142). Observing this chapter out of its turn is certainly justified—it could easily stand
alone with Chapter 1 as the best available brief introduction to the
historical Aquinas and his far-reaching influence on Catholic theology.
“Part Two: The Doctrine” begins with Nichols tackling the issue of
the de facto activity of God in revealing himself to humanity (Chapter
Two, “Revelation”). Thomas’s focus on revelation as an “intellectual
event” is deftly explained in its “analogy” with “variegated natural experience,” and its ability to cover God’s diverse methods of revealing himself
(21–23). Most noteworthy here is an explanation of the development of
Thomas’s theology of the senses of Scripture and its culmination in a
theory of the literal sense that even includes the spiritual sense, an important detail that Nichols derives from M. D. Jordan (32–33, fn. 18) and one
that is a helpful prolegomena to a fruitful encounter with Thomas’s exegetical corpus.
Chapter 3, “God and Creation,” covers well-charted ground in recent
Thomistic research. Yet Nichols offers a less familiar starting point:
Thomas’s doctrine of man’s knowledge of God as found in the Summa
contra Gentiles. The interplay Nichols detects between “anabatic,” natural
approaches to God and knowledge given katabatically in revelation lays
an informative foundation for considering how natural knowledge of
God and creation is made foundational by Thomas to investigating what
God has revealed (40). This approach enables Nichols to access the
profundity of Thomas’s metaphysics (40–44) and his natural theology
(45–57) in a way that does not separate them from one another nor from
their all-important context, which is theology.
Chapter 4,“The Trinity,” finds Nichols once again exercising his greatest strength—historical analysis.Tracing the progress of both eastern and
western theologies of the Trinity before Thomas, he uses the sticking
points of the Greek approach as a helpful contrast to their resolution,
found potentially in Augustine and actually in the “strongly personalist

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545

cast” of Thomas’s approach (67). The insights of this chapter are powerfully completed in Chapter 5, where Nichols explores Thomas’s insights
into the Trinitarian structure of God’s creative activity and the pinnacle
of that creation, the “imago Trinitatis,” man—whose imagehood is completed
by a growing similitude to Christ through grace.
Chapter 6, which concerns Thomas’s famous angelology, says as much
about Thomas’s teaching by the place Nichols gives the chapter as the
same does in its contents. By serving as an interlude between the chapters
on God and his creative work on the one hand, and those to come on his
salvific work on the other, this pivotal interlude draws the reader’s attention to the open roof on Thomas’s theology, revealing it as one hospitable
to vast realms of God’s creativity largely inaccessible to human knowing.
It also offers an fitting segue into Thomas’s theology of sin and redemption in the fall of the angels, a tragic foreshadowing of the fall of man and
a central illustration of the pivotal principle of creaturely reality as Thomas
sees it—that “self-existence in joy is only possible through divine grace
and that deiformity that comes from the theological virtues” (90).
Chapters 7 and 8 trace the reditus creaturae rationalis in Deum in the
order that its components are considered in the Summa, first in regard to
its actualization through the power of grace and the fructification of
grace in virtues both natural and theological (Chapter 7), and then in the
cause (Christ), the total dynamic (Church), and the instrumental causes
(sacraments) of this reditus (Chapter 8). Nichols sounds off on some areas
of dispute—the relationship of nature to grace; the critique of Thomas’s
moral teleology offered by the Grisez school (to which he makes a justified and enlightening response vis-à-vis Benedict Ashley)—and bypasses
others. While in these two chapters he is at his most summary and least
original in treatment, he continues to exercise his aptitude for lucid
summary and expression, offering a great deal of intellectual traction to
the beginner.
Moving ahead to Part Four, Nichols returns to familiar Thomistic
terrain from a new and complementary perspective—that of theological
methodology. Indeed, these two chapters can be understood as an
extended response to the question, “What, if any, continuing value does
Aquinas’s approach to theology have for those who endeavor to advance
the process of theological speculation?” In Chapter 10,“Thomas and the
Practice of Philosophy,” Nichols attempts to justify his claim that
“Catholic appeal to a philosophia perennis can hardly bypass Thomas, its
classic exponent par excellence” (148); this he does by sounding off on
some of Thomas’s major philosophical insights in metaphysics and
anthropology.While largely successful, the brevity of the chapter sets the

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author (and reader) at a breathless pace that rushes past much of the
depth and potential of the subject matter. In fact, Nichols attempts to
catalog Thomas’s philosophy in one chapter, a feat he can only manage to
accomplish in seven chapters for Thomas’s theology!
Chapter 11, “Thomas and the Idea of Theology,” approaches a much
more manageable subject in a much more penetrating way. Nichols does
a commendable job of coupling his observation of Thomas’s scarce references to his method with an illuminating observation of Thomas’s actual
practice. This largely consists of reflection on the first question of the
Summa. However, the bookends of the chapter are easily the most fascinating and insightful, for it is in them that we encounter facets of Thomas’s
approach that are both least like mainstream theological speculation and
also most relevant to it. The first, a section on the modes of theological
discourse as found in the prologue of the Scriptum super Sententiis
(168–70), reveals (through Nichols’s analysis of one such mode, “argumentative discourse”) the ease by which Thomas passes from the Bible to
the “wider context” of “divine revelation as passed on in the Church”
(169). The second, a section on “Thomas as mystical theologian”
(176–77), reveals how effortlessly Thomas’s discourse travels between the
two poles of theological speculation and mystical intuition, the latter “an
existential and mystical depth to theology” in which God draws the
rational appetite “into an apprehension of the Trinity” (177).
As noted earlier, Discovering Aquinas is one new entry in an ever-growing list of introductory works to St.Thomas Aquinas, each with its own
merits and limitations.Yet what makes Nichols’s work unique is that it
does not simply introduce the reader to Aquinas, but to the whole world
of Thomistic scholarship, its recent lights, and its historical pitfalls, its
conversations and the dialogue partners who have contributed most
recently to those conversations.Thomas surrounded himself with a great
cloud of theological guides, both biblical and extra-biblical, in his own
pursuit of theological insight. In a similar way, Nichols does the beginner
an inestimable favor by providing readers with guides to Thomas, and to
this bonum he adds another: his own service as an important guide to the
topography of contemporary Thomistic scholarship.
N&V
Christopher T. Baglow
Our Lady of Holy Cross College
New Orleans, Louisiana