Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 1 (2006): 1–16

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St. Thomas Aquinas: Theologian and Mystic
J EAN -P IERRE TORRELL , OP
University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland

THE TITLE of this study may be surprising.1 Thomas Aquinas is
unquestionably a great theologian, but is he also a mystic? A preliminary
answer to this question could be found in the fact that he is a canonized
saint, and that, in one way or another, God was at the heart of his life, as
is true of all saints. While this answer is certainly true, it is not specific
enough. Since this saint is a theologian, we can disregard neither his
understanding of theology nor the way in which he practiced it, lived it,
and finally surpassed it. I would like to show here that the experience of
God, which is essential to the mystical life, is as much at the heart of
Thomas’s knowledge as of his life. If this can be established, the title of
this study will be validated:Thomas Aquinas can be counted among the
mystics. But we must first avoid a false approach.
If we want to discover Thomas Aquinas’s thoughts on what today is
known as “mysticism,” it is almost useless to seek such terminology in his
work. He is certainly familiar with the word and frequently uses it; but
he adopts it above all in two specific areas, fairly remote from the meaning reserved for it by the manuals of “ascetical and mystical theology,” as
this used to be called. He speaks of it, on the one hand, in relation to the
Church as the body of Christ, which, he says, forms with its head one
single mystical person.This signifies that, through the action of the Holy
Spirit, Head and body constitute one single and unique organism of
grace.This topic is certainly an essential dimension of his spirituality, but
it is not necessary to dwell on it since it is a well-known topic and was
1 Translation by Therese C. Scarpelli of “Théologien et mystique: le cas de Thomas

d’Aquin,” Revue des sciences religieuses 77 (2003): 350–65.

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Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP

the subject of excellent recent studies.2 On the other hand,Thomas also
uses this word to refer to one of the four senses that he regularly employs
in his interpretation of sacred Scripture, the mystical sense being one of
the names given to the spiritual sense that he distinguishes from the literal
sense.After having highlighted the literal sense, which he favors,Thomas,
like all medieval theologians, extracts the applications to be derived from
it for the life of the ecclesial body or of its members. Although he does
this with more or less consistency for the different passages he examines,
it is a part of his method.3 Nevertheless, this second meaning of “mystical” does not shed any greater light on what we are looking for.
Since this direct approach through terminology proves to be inconclusive, we must therefore seek for the reality itself rather than the words, and
take up our question once again. Is there a way to verify whether Thomas
Aquinas discusses what we designate as “mystical,” and can we say that he
is himself a “mystic”? The answer to this question depends largely upon
what we mean by the word “mystic.” If one does not restrict the meaning
of this word to exceptional states accompanied by unusual phenomena,
and if one agrees to use it in reference to the Christian experience of a
high degree of exercise of the theological virtues (which seems today to
be the common use of the word), we can certainly agree that Thomas
Aquinas is truly a Christian mystic. But to content oneself with this statement is to risk banality; we must go further and try to understand why he
is a mystic. Our task then is not simply to affirm that Thomas is at once
theologian and mystic, as though these were two qualifications juxtaposed
in his person and not specifically linked in any way. Rather, we must
endeavor to show that he is a mystic in the manner of a theologian, that
he is a mystic precisely because he is a theologian.There are numerous and
explicit texts that support this conclusion; it will suffice to survey them
and to extract the implications. For conclusion, a short review of the way
in which Thomas ended his earthly existence should confirm our thesis.4
2 Cf. Martin Morard, “Les expression ‘corpus mysticum’ et ‘persona mystica’ dans

l’oeuvre de saint Thomas d’Aquin. Références et analyse,” Revue Thomiste 95
(1995): 653–64. The author has found eighty-nine uses of “corpus mysticum,”
about half of which refer to the Eucharist; the term “persona” is used ten times
to designate the “Christus totus,” specifically with respect to its unity.
3 See Marc Aillet, Lire la Bible avec S.Thomas. Le passage de la littera à la res dans la
Somme théologique (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1993); but there are
numerous studies on this subject.
4 I have already discussed these ideas in greater detail; see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint
Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 2, Spiritual Master (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2003); idem, “Théologie et sainteté,” Revue Thomiste 71
(1971): 205–21.

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Contemplatio primae veritatis
The first question of the Summa theologiae, dedicated to the theory of theological knowledge, opens with an affirmation that today sounds somewhat
surprising: “It was necessary for the salvation of the human race that
besides the philosophical disciplines, works of human reason, there be a
different doctrine received through divine revelation.The reason for this is
that man is destined by God to an end which surpasses the capacities of
his reason . . . and that it is necessary that this end be known to him in order
that he might direct his intention and his actions towards it.” This assertion
is insisted upon a second time at the end of the same text: “It was necessary that there should be . . . a sacred doctrine obtained from revelation.”5
This sacra doctrina, necessary for salvation, is a much broader reality than
theology alone: In fact, in addition to revelation, which, properly speaking,
is transmitted in Sacred Scripture, sacra doctrina incorporates all forms of
Christian teaching at all levels.Theology is therefore not identical with sacra
doctrina, but is rather its scientifically developed form.This is why, in order
to distinguish it from metaphysics, the theology of the philosophers,Thomas
designates it as theologia quae ad sacram doctrinam pertinet.6 At the same time,
everything that he says about theology assumes that on its own level it
participates in the necessity of sacra doctrina itself in relation to salvation.
This position results immediately in an obvious consequence: Since
sacra doctrina is received from divine revelation, it must be received
through and practiced in theologal faith.Thus the subordination of theology to the science of God and of the blessed through faith is the first
characteristic of theology, according to Thomas Aquinas. The theory of
the subordination of the sciences, for Aristotle, verifies our own experience: Scientific disciplines are not all on the same level. Those sciences
that proceed by way of knowledge acquired in other sciences exist in a
relation of dependency on them, as in the case of optics in relation to
geometry, or music in relation to the laws of mathematics.Without going
into detail, it is enough to know that theology is in an analogous position, because the supernatural realities of which it speaks are not evident
to us.The existence of God in his Trinitarian mystery and all that he has
accomplished for the human race in the history of salvation are not
evident except to the eyes of God himself; if they are made evident to the
blessed by participation in the beatific vision face to face, men who are
5 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 1; for a more in-depth proof of

what is proposed here, see my study,“Le savoir théologique chez saint Thomas,”
in Recherches thomasiennes (Paris:Vrin, 2000), 121–57.
6 ST I q. 1, a. 1, ad 2; for the distinction between the theology of the philosopher
and the theologia sacrae scripturae, cf. Super Boetium de Trinitate q. 5, a. 4.

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still journeying cannot have access to them except through and in faith.
The subordination of theology to the knowledge that God has of himself
and that the blessed have of God is simply the technical expression of the
necessity of faith for the practice of theology. This fact is of utmost
importance. It signifies that theologal faith is the spiritual locus where the
ignorance of the theologian connects with God’s own knowledge; it is
only by faith that the theologian’s science has real content, but it is also
thanks to faith that theology finds itself situated on the path leading from
the obscurity of this world to the full daylight of vision.Thus it is sufficient, but necessary, for the theologian as a scholar to direct the requisites
of his knowledge right to their final end, in order to culminate by reaching him who is the ultimate end of his life as believer. Here, then, is the
most profound reason why the theologian can also become a mystic.7
The second characteristic of theology, according to Thomas Aquinas, is
that God is the “subject” of this unique science. We can leave aside the
more technical aspects of what is implied by the Aristotelian notion of the
subject of a science,8 but it is necessary to know at least why we speak
here of subject and not of object. The subject is the extramental reality
that the science seeks to know; the end of a science is no other than the
knowledge of its subject. But this reality cannot exist in the soul, cannot
be known, except through the mediation of concepts that are like so many
holds upon it, and that constitute the object of this science. Thus the
concepts do not exhaust the subject; they must be multiplied in order to
render one’s approach to the subject a little less inadequate. It even
happens that the knower must admit that he is conquered and recognize
that the object as known remains perpetually inadequate in relation to the
reality that is to be known.This is indeed verified to an unequalled degree
where God is involved.Thomas Aquinas means precisely this, then, when
he speaks of God as the subject of theology.“Everything in sacra doctrina is
considered in relation to God (sub ratione Dei), whether it has to do with
God Himself, or whether it is related to God as principle or as end.”9 It
also means that in treating of God, the true theologian should never forget
that the subject of his knowledge, the end which he pursues, is not the
7 For the theory of subordination, see Sentences I, Prol. a. 3; ST I, q. 1, a. 2; Super

Boetium de Trinitate q. 2, a. 2, ad 5; cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master, 7–9;
or Recherches thomasiennes, 140–44.
8 Cf. Recherches thomasiennes, 144–48.
9 ST I, q. 1, a. 7; the same expression is found in the Sentences I, Prol. a. 4:“Omnia
enim quae in hac scientia considerantur sunt aut Deus aut ea quae ex Deo et ad
Deum sunt”; each word of this definition is evidently weighted, since Thomas
takes here a position relative to several other definitions current in his time,
which he recalls in these two passages.

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simple accumulation of objective facts about God the subject, but is rather
the very knowledge of the living God of the history of salvation. In this
regard, a mystic would naturally speak of a meeting with or experience of
God; the theologian has no reason to repudiate such language.
This second characteristic entails a third, concerning the nature of
theology, which Thomas enunciates rather disconcertingly by saying that
since it has God as its subject, theology is more a speculative than a practical science.10 This affirmation, which may seem rather esoteric to twentyfirst century readers, is also of great importance, since among the scholastic
theorists of the science of theology who preceded him, Thomas Aquinas
occupies, in this regard, a place entirely apart.Although those scholastics all
admitted that theology is a speculative science, they also held that it was
primarily practical, that is, essentially ordered to the perfect attainment of
charity. Starting with his Commentary on the Sentences,Thomas is the first to
affirm, on the contrary, that “the ultimate end of this doctrina is the contemplation of the first truth in the fatherland (contemplatio primae veritatis in
patria).”11 And thus, given that each science must be judged in relation to
the end which it pursues, we may conclude that this science, theology, is
“principally speculative.”
It can be immediately understood that in this context “speculative” in
fact means “contemplative.”12 This is not to say that theology is nothing
more than contemplative; Thomas likewise acknowledges that it is also
“practical” and that it has the task of guiding human action according to
the Gospel within sight of the beatitude that is to be attained, but this is
not its determining attribute:“Action is not what is ultimately pursued in
this scientia, but rather the contemplation of the first truth in the fatherland, to which we will attain once we have been purified by our good
works, according to Mt 5:8: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: they shall see
God.’This is why it is more speculative than practical.”13 In other words,
God is not the object of human action, of “something that is to be done.”
The theologian does not have God at his disposal: He can only situate
himself in relation to God, see in him his origin and his end, bring back
to God everything in the universe as well as his own actions, and finally,
pray to him, adore him, humble himself before him in contemplation.
This supreme finality serves to express the fact that theology is a
knowledge completely apart. This idea needs no more emphasis, but
10 ST I, q. 1, a. 4; Sentences I, Prol. a. 3.
11 Sentences I, Prol. a. 3.
12 Cf. Servais Pinckaers, “Recherche de la signification véritable du terme ‘spécu-

latif,’ ” Nouvelle revue théologique 81 (1959): 673–85.
13 Sentences I, Prol. a. 3, ad 1.

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another dimension remains to be revealed:The end pursued by theology
is identified in fact and by rights with the final end of man and of the
universe. Indeed, if Thomas Aquinas, not only as Christian but also as
thinker, is certain of one thing, it is that the entire universe, including
man himself, can neither find its meaning nor be understood except in
relation to God.This is not simply an affirmation but a well-reasoned and
ceaselessly repeated conviction, the most beautiful illustration of which is
found in the structure of the Summa theologiae: It begins with God and
returns to God according to the well-known schema of “departurereturn” (exitus-reditus).14 This generic truth is expressed in a manner that
is just as universal, but also specific to man himself, from the very first
words of the Commentary on the Sentences, where Thomas categorically
states, “All those who think rightly recognize that the end of human life
is found in the contemplation of God (Omnes qui recte senserunt posuerunt
finem humanae vitae Dei contemplationem).”15
It is significant that this statement immediately precedes the discussion
on the end of theological knowledge, a clear sign that the latter extends
and further defines the former. The same perspective, this time argued
more at length, is found in the Summa contra Gentiles, where after having
rejected everything which does not cause happiness (riches, satisfaction
of the sensible appetite, good of the soul, or of the body, and so on),
Thomas concludes forcefully,“Thus the ultimate beatitude of man resides
in the contemplation of truth.”16 And again at the end of the Summa
theologiae, practically at the close of his life, the author repeats unhesitatingly,“The contemplation of truth . . . is the end of the whole of human
life (contemplatio divinae veritatis . . . est finis totius humanae vitae).”17 Clearly,
Thomas sees no difference between God and the First Truth, and can
make a transition between the two easily.
We have just seen why theology occupies such a unique position in
the organization of knowledge according to Thomas Aquinas: It is the
sole body of knowledge whose end as a science (finis operis) is identical
with the end of him who practices it (finis operantis). This much cannot
be said of any other body of knowledge, but it can be said of theology.
14 Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master, 53–58.
15 Sentences I, Prol. a. 1.
16 SCG III, ch. 37 (Marietti ed., no. 2152); this thought is rendered more precise

several lines later:“At the end of our reasoning by induction it is thus shown that
the ultimate beatitude of man can consist in nothing else than the contemplation of God” (no. 2160); cf. Super Boetium de Trinitate q. 5, a. 1, ad 4:“(finis) beatitudinis, ad quem tota vita humana ordinatur.”
17 ST II–II, q. 180, a. 4.

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With fear and trembling, certainly, the theologian lives in the humble
awareness that the practitioner does not always measure up to his own
knowledge, but also in the peaceful certitude that the one who practices
his science in theologal faith permeated with the love, which is charity,
according to all the demands of the integral method required by its
“subject,” can become a mystic in the manner of Thomas Aquinas. This
first approach must nevertheless be supplemented, because not all
contemplation is theological contemplation, and the latter must not be
confused with nontheological contemplation.
Contemplation of the Philosophers,
Contemplation of the Saints
Following a method for which he has great affection and which he
employs every time he discusses his theory of theological knowledge,
Thomas situates theology in relation to philosophy. A re-reading of the
first pages of the Commentary on the Sentences demonstrates why. “All
those who think rightly” certainly agree in seeing contemplation of the
first truth as the final end of human life, but it must be acknowledged
that there are two kinds of contemplation. Given up to the powers of
reason alone, the philosophers were limited to seeking a contemplation
of God starting from the created world. They could thus only attain an
imperfect beatitude, restricted to this life. On the other hand, thanks to
the theologal faith that leads it as though by the hand (manuducatur), doctrina theologiae makes it possible to pursue another contemplation, likewise
temporarily incomplete, at least as long as it remains on this earth, but
which will blossom into the perfect contemplation by which God will
be seen in His essence in the everlasting fatherland.18
Here we can immediately see the two differences between philosophy
and theology to which Thomas constantly refers.19 First of all, although
they are not in themselves opposed to each other, they represent two intellectual ways in opposite directions.The first starts from creatures to culminate in God at the end of an inductive inquiry. The second, conversely,
begins with God and, even if on occasion its reasoning proceeds exteriorly
in the manner of the first, it remains under the influence of this divine
origin that gives meaning and consistency to all its search. It is this that
18 Sentences I, Prol. a. 1; cf. Super Boetium de Trinitate q. 6, a. 4, ad 3.
19 In addition to the passage here in question, see Sentences II, Prol. S.Thomae (first

lines); SCG II, ch. 4 (Marietti ed., no. 876); I have discussed this comparison at
length in “Philosophie et théologie d’après le Prologue de Thomas d’Aquin au
Super Boetium de Trinitate. Essai d’une lecture théologique,” in Documenti e Studi
sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 10 (1999): 299–353.

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allows Thomas to state that sacra doctrina is “like a certain imprint of the
divine science.”20 Although this statement appears extravagant at first sight,
it is merely one more expression of theology’s relationship of dependency
on the revelation received from God.The privilege belongs less to theology than to the faith that is its very soul, since it is faith that ensures the
continuity between the theologian’s knowledge (savoir) and God’s own
knowledge of himself, enabling in this way the birth and growth of theological knowledge.21 The second difference is no less evident: Assuming
that it succeeds (Thomas is not very optimistic about the potential of
reason left to itself), the philosophical path can only end in an imperfect
contemplation limited to this life, while because of the continuity established by faith, theological contemplation already procures, as it were, a
foretaste of eternal beatitude, a praelibatio quaedam of the divine goods that
we shall enjoy in the beatific vision.22
Besides these two characteristics linked to the very nature of things,
philosophical contemplation is characterized by a more serious deficiency to which Thomas alludes here and there, but which he explains in
more depth in a rare text deserving to be better known. Far from digressing from our topic, the clarifications that this text provides can definitely
contribute to our progress:
The contemplative life consists in an act of the cognitive power directed
(praeacceptatae) by the will. Now, the operation is in a certain way the
midpoint between the subject and the object; it is a perfection of the
knowing subject, and is qualified by the specifying object. It follows
therefore that the operation of the cognitive power can be qualified by
affectivity (affectari) in two ways. On the one hand, insofar as it is the perfection of the knower, and in this case the affective quality of the cognitive
operation proceeds from love of self; and this was the kind of affectivity in
the contemplative life of the philosophers. On the other hand, insofar as it ends
in the object, and in this case the desire of contemplation proceeds from
love of the object, for where love is found, there also is found the gaze;
cf. Mt 6:21:“Where your treasure is, there also is your heart.” And this is
the kind of affectivity in the contemplative life of the saints of which we speak.
Thus contemplation consists essentially in an act of the cognitive
[power] which requires charity for the reason we have just mentioned.23
20 ST I, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2: “velut quaedam impressio divinae scientiae.”
21 It is indeed in a discussion of faith that Thomas employs a formula very similar

to the preceding quote; cf. Super Boetium de Trinitate q. 3, a. 1, ad 4: “Lumen . . .
fidei . . . est quasi quaedam sigillatio primae veritatis in mente.”
22 Compendium theologiae I 2; cf. ST II–II, q. 4, a. 1; De veritate q. 14, a. 2.
23 Sentences III, d. 35, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1; see also qc. 3.

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Despite its apparent serenity, this passage is a battle-text. It must be
interpreted in the polemical context of the era, during which a whole
philosophical current was born in the Paris faculty of arts, asserting that
it was possible for philosophers to attain perfect beatitude already in this
life.24 What Thomas disputes here is not philosophical research per se, nor
the love of truth by which it may be inspired, nor the beatitude, no
matter how limited, which it can procure; rather, he argues against an
inaccuracy that he believes he has identified in Aristotle and in those who
claim to follow Aristotle alone. For Aristotle, the happiness of the
philosopher consists in contemplation, not by virtue of the object
contemplated, but rather because contemplation is the highest activity of
man, who finds his perfection therein. This strictly intellectual activity
achieves its perfection in immanence, not in a transcendent object.25
Thomas could only disdain this enclosure of self in pure humanism, and
it is this that he rejects under the name of contemplation of the philosophers. He certainly admits that contemplation is an act of intelligence, but
he warns against what he calls “the love of knowledge for its own sake,”26
and explains that “the delectation which the contemplative life procures
does not come only from the contemplation itself.”27 More than that, it
is rooted in the love of the reality contemplated and it can only be
fulfilled in this same love. In speaking of “contemplation of the first
truth,” we must therefore not allow ourselves to be drawn into error as
though we were dealing with a purely intellectual activity.Thomas speaks
more precisely: “The end of contemplation as contemplation is nothing
else than truth; but when contemplation becomes a way of life it also has
the account of affectivity and the good.”28
It already happens likewise in relation to philosophical contemplation:
Disinterested love of the truth sought and attained should suffice to
prevent the temptation of becoming wrapped up in self, so that in this
way the practice of philosophy could be an authentic springboard toward
24 Cf. my “Philosophie et théologie,” 339–43, for further details and the necessary

bibliography.
25 Cf. R.-A. Gauthier, La morale d’Aristote (Paris: 1958), 101–4; nevertheless, the

author underlines that Aristotle occasionally seems to raise himself to a more
mystical view of contemplation.
26 ST II–II, q. 180, a. 1: “propter amorem ipsius cognitionis quam quis ex inspectione consequitur.”
27 ST II–II, q. 180, a. 7: “in vita contemplativa non solum est delectatio ratione
ipsius contemplationis.”
28 Sentences III, d. 35, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1, ad 1:“finis contemplationis, inquantum contemplatio est veritas tantum; sed secundum quod contemplatio accipit rationem vitae,
sic induit rationem affectati et boni.”

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the love of God.29 For an even greater reason, the same applies to Christian contemplation: “The contemplative life of the saints presupposes
love of the reality contemplated and proceeds thence.”30 Here the saints
are simply the faithful, among whom theologians clearly rank; theological contemplation thus can benefit from what is said of contemplation in
general. The faith that is at the source of this very particular knowledge
is itself already permeated with affectivity; it is “faith which works by
charity” (Gal 5:6). But Thomas insists on further defining the place of
theologal affectivity: “Since the contemplative life consists principally in
the contemplation of God to which charity impels . . . , it follows that the
delectation of the contemplative life does not result only from contemplation itself, but from the very love of God.”31
Although it resides essentially in the intellect, the contemplative life finds
its origin (principium) in affectivity, since it is charity which impels towards
the contemplation of God. And since the end corresponds to the beginning, it follows that the term and end of the contemplative life are equally
found in affectivity, since we find joy in beholding the reality which is
loved, and the very delectation which we feel therein further arouses our
love for that object. This is why Gregory says in his commentary on
Ezekiel that when the lover beholds the object of his love he is inflamed
even more towards it. In this is truly found the ultimate perfection of the
contemplative life, when the truth be not only known, but also loved.32

This perspective enables us to better comprehend how Thomas can
speak of contemplation as though it were the beginning of a process that
will only find its perfection later: “Here on earth the contemplation of
divine truth is only possible for us in an imperfect way, ‘in a mirror and
dimly’ [1 Cor 13:12], but in this way there appears in us the incipience,
as it were, of this beatitude (inchoatio beatitudinis) which begins here on
earth and will be completed in the age to come.”33
29 Cf. ST II–II, q. 180, a. 7, which connects the delectation procured in the contem-

plation of truth, with the desire for knowledge that all men have by nature.The
background context is clearly as much Aristotle’s affirmation at the beginning of
the Metaphysics as Thomas’s own statements about the natural desire to see God.
30 Sentences III, d. 35, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 3.
31 ST II–II, q. 180, a. 7.
32 ST II–II, q. 180, a. 7, ad 1; the same doctrine, together with the same quotation
from St. Gregory, is found in ST II–II, q. 180, a. 1.
33 ST II–II, q. 180, a. 4; a similar expression in another context shows the degree to
which such language is familiar to St.Thomas and how much he is concerned with
the totality of theologal life: “per gratiam acceptam et nondum consummatam
(fuit) in eis [homo et angelus] inchoatio quaedam speratae beatitudinis quae
quidem inchoatur in voluntate per spem et caritatem, sed in intellectu per fidem.”

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It could not be clearer: Contemplation is not merely concerned with
intellectual vision, but engages the whole theologal affectivity of the one
who gives himself to it; and it engages not only his intellectual affectivity (will), but also his sensible affectivity, as Thomas does not hesitate to
clarify at times.34 Contemplation, then, is an arduous experience that
embraces the totality of the person who desires to follow his intention
through to the end. Of course, all this is not said directly about theology,
and we should be careful not to infer that all theologians show themselves
worthy of the noble science that they practice. But it is no less certain
that it is in practicing theology in this way that Thomas Aquinas himself
became a saint.
Theological Contemplation, Infused Contemplation
Another clarification is necessary in order that these texts not be interpreted wrongly. As all-encompassing as it may be, this description of
contemplation does not extend to the reality to which the same name
normally refers after the sixteenth century. Beginning with St. John of the
Cross, the word “contemplation” is used in a more distinctly specialized
and restricted sense than that which characterizes its use in St. Thomas.
For the latter, contemplation is the highest act of a mode of life (religious,
philosophical, theological), which it defines and polarizes; and it is such
a difficult act that it cannot be constantly sustained, so that one could
speak more naturally and with greater exactitude of the contemplative
life rather than of contemplation. Nevertheless, this supereminent act,
which requires all the intellectual and affective powers of the person
dedicated to it, all the resources of a graced nature open to the gifts of
the Holy Spirit, remains an activity within the capacity of human potential. The religious, theologian, or philosopher is responsible for living in
conformity with his ideal and for sharpening his capacity for intellectual
intuition to the point that, at least at certain moments, he can free himself
from all rational and conceptual baggage, in order to lift a purely contemplative gaze to the reality that he pursues.The goal of his knowledge or
of his life is not reasoning itself, but rather the contemplation of the reality to be known and loved.
Mystical contemplation operates in a different way. This kind of
contemplation is not within the capacity of human potential: It is purely
a grace. It too doubtless requires preparation, but this preparation derives
from asceticism and prayer rather than science or intelligence. And this
preparation can never be such as to procure in an assured fashion, much
34 Cf. Disputed question De Virtutibus a. 5, ad 8; ST II–II, q. 181, a. 1.

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less automatically, the gift of contemplation. In this area, the initiative
returns to God “who provides for his beloved as they sleep” (Ps 127:2).
This is why we speak of infused contemplation, while for theological
contemplation we speak rather of acquired contemplation.
Although Thomas does not use this terminology himself, he is familiar with the distinction and uses it in his own way.35 Thus, when he questions whether theological science is the same as wisdom, he recalls that it
is proper to wisdom to judge all things according to the highest causes,
and since the “subject” of theology is the highest cause of all, God
himself, theology is therefore wisdom par excellence. Nevertheless, he
clarifies that there are two types of wisdom: one, theological wisdom,
which is obtained through study ( per studium); the other, the effect of the
gift of wisdom of the Holy Spirit, which is obtained by infusion ( per infusionem). It is true that the principles of the first are found in revelation,
but its manner of judging derives from science in a human way; one is
more or less wise to the degree that one is more or less learned about
divine things. The second is the fruit of a freely granted divine gift, and
the judgment which it procures derives from a knowledge by connaturality. In the way that the virtuous make right judgments about good and
evil quasi-spontaneously, the one enlightened by the gift of wisdom
possesses an intimate familiarity with divine things that the theologian
cannot procure merely by his pure science. According to Dionysius,
whose statement Thomas willingly applies to his own theme,“Hierotheus
became wise not only by studying, but by experiencing the divine (non
solum discens, sed patiens divina).”36
Thomas returned to this distinction several times, and he clearly considered the topic an important one. Beginning with the Sentences, in discussing
the gift of wisdom he recognizes immediately that if one can only judge
well that which one knows, it is no less true that this capacity for judgment
is actualized in a different way in each person. For some, it derives from
35 To my knowledge, the term infusa is used near the word contemplatio only once

in his writings, in his commentary on the verse: “No one has ever seen God.”
He declares that amid the different ways of “seeing” God, there is one which
comes “by a certain light infused into the soul by God during contemplation; it
is in this way that Jacob saw God face to face [cf. Gen 28:19], in a vision granted
to him, according to St. Gregory, through elevated contemplation” (In Ioan. 1:18,
lect. 11 [Marietti ed., no. 211]; see the complete translation of this text in Saint
Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master, 49–51).
36 ST I, q. 1, a. 6 and ad 3; this manner of distinguishing between the two types of
wisdom, acquired and infused, is one of the points on which Thomas is most
clearly distinguished from his contemporaries, for whom theological wisdom was
in itself a delightful knowledge [connaissance]; cf. Recherches thomasiennes, 135–37.

St.Thomas Aquinas:Theologian and Mystic

13

study and knowledge, together with a certain penetration of intellect; in
this case, wisdom is an intellectual virtue. For others, this capacity derives
from a certain affinity to divine things, as Dionysius expressed with regard
to Hierotheus, who “learned divine reality through his experience of it.”
According to Thomas, it is this wisdom to which St. Paul refers when he
affirms that “the spiritual man judges all things” (1 Cor 2:15); and St. John,
in asserting that the “anointing [of the Holy Spirit] will teach you all
things” (1 Jn 2:27). This passage, which serves to better clarify the difference between the two types of wisdom, is followed by another that characterizes the knowledge obtained through the gift “as an intuitive grasp
(cognitio simplex) of the realities of the faith which are at the origin of all
Christian wisdom [hence knowledge through the supreme cause].The gift
of wisdom thus culminates in a deiform and in a certain sense explicit
contemplation (deiformem contemplationem), of the realities which faith holds
implicitly in a human manner.” Here, unequivocally distinguished from
theological contemplation, is an exact description of the reality designated
as mystical contemplation: While theological contemplation, primarily
directed by theologal faith, remains available to human initiative, mystical
contemplation, without separating itself from faith, is primarily directed by
the gift and depends entirely on divine generosity.37
The comparison between the two types of wisdom does not end there,
and when it comes time to make definitions according to essence,Thomas
never forgets to clarify more exactly the relationships that intelligence and
will enjoy in this regard. He says that one can judge of divine things from
the point of view of the inquiries of reason, and this derives from wisdom
as intellectual virtue, but the perception of these things “by connaturality”
belongs to that wisdom that is a gift of the Holy Spirit, as in the case of
Hierotheus who had perfect knowledge of divine things because he had
learned them by lived experience: “This ‘compassion’ or connaturality
with divine things is the work of charity which properly unites us to God:
‘he who unites himself to God is one spirit with Him’ (1 Cor 6:17).Thus
the cause of wisdom as gift is found in the will, i.e., in charity; but its
essence is found in the intellect, to which it pertains to judge rightly.”38
Here, one may notice not only the continuity with the immediately
preceding texts, but also the parallel with previously cited texts concerning
theological contemplation: In either of the two cases, the objective analysis that identifies contemplation as an act of the intellect does not take
precedence over Thomas’s concern to uphold its status as all-encompassing
37 Sentences III, d. 35, q. 2, a. 1, qc. 1, ad 1.
38 ST II–II, q. 45, a. 2

14

Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP

act that lends full value to the status of its affectivity. One last text will
provide a deeper understanding of this difference: “(Besides speculative
knowledge), there is also an affective or experiential knowledge of the
divine goodness or the divine will; one experiences in oneself the taste of
the sweetness of God and the lovability of the divine will, according to
what Denys says of Hierotheus who learned divine things from having
experienced them in himself.We are thus invited to experience the will of
God and to taste His sweetness.”39
Thus although he does not directly use the terminology of mystical
contemplation, which would become widespread only after his time,
Thomas is very familiar with the reality meant by these words. But his
particular approach to things further has the advantage of better clarifying
the existence and requirements of the other reality, which is theological
contemplation. He therefore distinguishes the wisdom of the mystics that
blossoms into infused contemplation, from the wisdom of the theologian
that merely grants an acquired contemplation.Although he repeats that one
who theorizes about divine things does not have the same kind of competence as the one who practices them, he does not preclude the theorist’s
experiencing divine things as well. It is even possible to add without the risk
of erring that the very demands of the wisdom that the theologian practices make it desirable for him not to remain a pure theorist. His knowledge
could only become sharpened by this experience and thus increase in penetration.Without extrapolating too much outside the limits of the texts, we
may even say that this is what happened for St.Thomas himself.
Conclusion: Thomas Aquinas, Theologian and Mystic
Relatively little is known about the life of St.Thomas apart from his own
writings, and it must be honestly stated that the witnesses are hampered
by the factor of uncertainty common to such documents, closer to
hagiography than to history. I have nevertheless attempted elsewhere to
unearth the solid kernel of what has been handed down to us, and I
believe that we can say that these documents are for the most part credible enough, since they transmit scarcely more than the portrait of an
exemplary religious “of great contemplation and prayer.”40 Without
39 ST II–II, q. 97, a. 2, ad 2; these little-known texts on a delightful knowledge

through experience connect with an authentically Thomistic theme that is
developed somewhat in Saint Thomas Aquinas, Spiritual Master, 90–99.
40 Cf. J.-P. Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1, The Person and his Work (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 267–89 (here 286);
cf. C. Le Brun-Gouanvic, Ystoria santi Thome de Aquino de Guillaume de Tocco
(1323) (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1996).

St.Thomas Aquinas:Theologian and Mystic

15

taking this up again here, it seems that we can retain as unquestionable
three principal traits of Thomas’s religious life and in particular of his
prayer: first of all his devotion to the crucifix, of which we have numerous moving testimonies,41 then his great veneration for the Eucharist, of
which the most eloquent example is surely the prayer Adoro Te,42 and
finally the link connecting Thomas’s prayer to his intellectual work.
Under rigorous inspection—if there were any—the first two aspects
could be imagined to be simply parallel to his theological research, but
the third takes us directly back to this theological research and is
frequently highlighted: We see Thomas engaging in prayer in the
moments when he had to study, teach, write, or dictate, and in particular
when he had to treat of difficult topics. His biographer has captured very
well the stakes involved in the qualities that characterized Thomas and his
confreres in this regard; in attacking their way of life, the secular masters
of the university of Paris showed that they had not understood that one
could reach salvation in sola studii contemplatione.43 When we recognize
the concept that this phrase signifies in Thomas, we can better grasp its
import and reasonably suppose that he effectively practiced what he
taught.Thomas should be reread from this point of view in order to see
how his contemplation as friar-preacher-theologian found its natural
expression in his work.44
A reading of the life of Thomas reveals how he practiced theological
contemplation, but it also manifests that his life ended in a confession-inact of the insufficiency of this first form of contemplation. Novelists and
historians have made the most audacious and sometimes incredible
suppositions about the death of St.Thomas.While remaining within the
bounds of history, it can be said with certitude at least that the final
months of his life were marked by repeated ecstasies, the last-known
occurrence of which provoked the cessation of his writing activity. It was
around the feast of St. Nicholas, December 6, 1273, and the author was
still in the midst of composing the Summa.45 To his secretary who
bemoaned this interruption, it is said that he simply replied,“I no longer
can. Everything that I have written seems straw in comparison with what
41 Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas,The Person and His Work, 287–88; idem, Le Christ en ses

mystères, vol. 1 (Paris: Desclée, 1999), 325–27.
42 The authenticity of this prayer is now unquestioned: cf. Torrell, “Adoro Te. La

plus belle prière de saint Thomas,” La vie spirituelle, no. 726 (March 1998): 29–36.
43 Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas,The Person and His Work, 283–87.
44 This is precisely what I have attempted to accomplish in Saint Thomas Aquinas,

Spiritual Master.
45 Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas,The Person and His Work, 289–95.

16

Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP

I have seen.” These words have sometimes been interpreted as Thomas’s
repudiation of his work as theologian.This is highly improbable. It would
be closer to the truth to remember that straw is merely the support and
the sheath of the grain. The words of the Summa or of his other works
are very clearly not the reality of which they speak; they do not limit this
reality, but they point it out and lead to it. Elevated by a special grace to
contemplate the reality itself, Thomas had good reason to feel detached
from the words he had employed until then, but this does not imply that
he considered his work worthless. Simply, from that moment on, he had
passed beyond it. In words relating back to our theme, we are assured that
theological contemplation—without having thereby lost its merit—
having played the role of a preparatory manuductio, could now give way
to infused contemplation.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 1 (2006): 17–28

17

Business Ethics and Catholic Social Thought
G. J. M C A LEER
Loyola College
Baltimore, Maryland

AT THE J ESUIT UNIVERSITY where I work there is a business
school. At the suburban satellite campus of the business school there are
no religious symbols inside the classrooms. The rationale is well known
to many readers: Because graduate programs serve a diverse business
community, reasons the administration, the classrooms should be a place
of welcome and comfort.There is one symbolic nod to Christ allowed at
the building. Drivers passing the building on the freeway see a tall oblong
structure with a large square cross superimposed of the face of the
oblong. Now, superimposed upon the cross are two short straight lines
that move: the hands of a clock.This is the humiliation of the Cross in a
sense different from that understood by Christians and theologians.You
don’t need to have been at the planning meeting of that decision to know
how it went. A consultant who has set up many such campuses for secular and Catholic institutions alike thought it would be a really cool
symbol of the infusion of Christian life into business: the Cross regulating the time by which labor, commerce and production are ordered. It is
easy to shake one’s head at such folly but this symbolic effort raises the
profound issue of how to conceive the integration of business and Christian norms of action and social order.
It is often assumed that the flashpoint of evangelization at universities is
in medical schools, that science is the great competitor in matters of faith
and morals. After all there is a President’s Committee on Bioethics which
includes prominent Christian intellectuals that garners enormous attention, and rightly: It grapples in a serious, intellectual way with the life and
death issues that arise from medical technology and basic science. It is
undeniable that Christian combat is required in medicine to convert hearts

18

G. J. McAleer

away from abortion, euthanasia, and the instrumentalization of the human.
But when religious intellectuals say that science is “the only game in
town”—meaning that religion has been marginalized by the prowess and
progress of science—are they right? It is easy to forget to what degree business is an engine driving biotechnology forward. The Wall Street Journal is a
remarkable illustration of this.A superb newspaper, it is the only conservative newspaper with national reach. Because it is conservative, much
column space is given to intelligent writers on the positive role of religion
in America today and it is the only national newspaper that has pro-life
commentary. Nevertheless, there is a constant drumbeat of articles about
the business potential of embryonic stem-cell research.This is responsible
journalism, of course, for there is enormous business interest in the profits
to be made from such research. So, whilst there are journals of Catholic
bioethics and Catholic institutions devoted to those issues, there is no journal of Catholic business ethics and no special Catholic foundations devoted
to business ethics. Not only has a vital field of evangelization been largely
overlooked, but this fact perhaps illustrates that the enormity of the task of
evangelization of business is radically underestimated.
This is all the more strange in that John Paul II provided thorough
leadership in this matter. Known to the public as someone with strong
views about sex and fertility it is seldom realized that he probably wrote
more frequently on business ethics than sexual ethics. This leadership
perhaps fell on rocky ground because many American Catholic intellectuals are not especially business friendly.1 Much of this has to do with old
political alliances that are probably now shifting, though sadly that shift
will not come quickly in Catholic universities since the faculties are
strongly opposed to business.At my own university, until very recently no
permanent member of the faculty had taught business ethics in over a
decade. This is not merely because of indifference, it is rather more a
matter of contempt. Intellectuals believe themselves above business and
the business faculty and their students. The lack of justice and charity
demonstrated by this contempt is disturbing but far worse is the
complete underestimation of the intellectual power and allure of thinkers
like Adam Smith or the combination of philosophical imagination and
technical virtuosity of thinkers like Donaldson, Dunphy, and Frederick in
the contemporary American business school.
1 In no way do I mean to belittle the work of Catholic thinkers like Michael

Novak or Richard John Neuhaus. My point is rather that these business-friendly
thinkers are a minority and are often sneered at themselves. About this, I merely
ask readers to think back to various comments they may have heard about them
in theology departments, faculty lounges, and religious houses.

Business Ethics and Catholic Social Thought

19

To establish what the task of evangelization is for business ethics, and
of the students who take courses through business schools at Catholic
universities, a consideration of the powerful intellectual vision of Adam
Smith is necessary. Smith has a special claim to attention not only because
of his foundational role in economic theory but because he is the author
of one of the greatest masterpieces in ethics, his 1759 Theory of Moral
Sentiments.2 Moreover, he was not only observing commercial life at the
very moment of its modern birth but making observations in a thoroughly modern manner. Catholic social thought needs to be able to
match its observational talent or phenomenology of commercial life to
that of Smith’s and this, I insist, would be no small achievement. After a
discussion of Smith, I want to argue, and somewhat darkly, I suppose, that
two common ways Catholic social thought aims to introduce norms into
business are not straightforwardly equal to the task. Concluding more
positively, however, I argue that the moral realism of the Church is
certainly equal to the task rightly understood.
Catholic response to Smith is of two types: Smith is a utilitarian and a
theorist of inequality. These critical responses3 to Smith can be found
respectively in Joseph Pieper’s defense of leisure as the basis of culture and
in a rather typical use of the idea of dignity in Christian discussions of
business. At the heart of Adam Smith’s ethics of commercial life is his
Platonism, a conviction that human imagination is governed by beauty.4
For Smith moral approbation is understood in terms of what is becoming and well-formed and moral disapprobation in terms of the unseemly
and ill-formed. It is very important to appreciate that for Smith utility is
not basic to commercial life, it is secondary to the pursuit of beauty.5 As
one of his most famous passages has it, it is because of beauty that people
wish to live close to palaces and avoid living near prisons.The utility of
the prison is obvious but it is ugly whilst palaces are largely useless but
because they are becoming they attract.6 Of course, Smith is here giving
an analysis of desire and the property market and it is completely true:Academics and theologians can sneer all they like at business types but whom
2 Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1982).
3 There is a third Catholic response to Smith that is positive. It is principally asso-

ciated with Michael Novak. I shall not be discussing Novak in part because
something like his approach must be right: The conclusion of this essay is that
accommodation for Smith inside Catholic social thought is necessary. However,
I shall not be discussing Novak partly because I am as yet unsure what to make
of the “Catholic Whig” position.
4 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 11; 35–37; 117; 179–87.
5 Ibid., 179–80.
6 Ibid., 35.

G. J. McAleer

20

among us lives near the local prison? Smith gives dozens of similar examples—and a large part of why his writing is so convincing is the clarity
and aptness of his examples—and they rather confound one of the classic Catholic responses to Smith.
Basic to recent Catholic social thought is Scheler’s axiological hierarchy in which utility values stand lower than vital, personal, and spiritual
values. Reversing this order of preference is immoral, a sign of value delusion or ressentiment. If commercial life is not an ordering of desire around
utility values, however, but around beauty, then it is far from clear that
Catholic social thought has a ready handle on Smith and his promotion
of commercial life. Smith, as much as Scheler, thinks that values exist in
the world distinct from the comprehension of values7 and, after all, a
theologian of the stature of Bonaventure observed that beauty is a basic
category by which God makes himself present to us.Which is to say, that
if the mark of a contemplative is response to high value, then Smith’s ethics
is contemplative.8 Pieper’s critique of work in the modern world assumes
that work is done for its own sake and that the discipline and sacrifice
required by work are purposeless.9 By contrast, Pieper quotes Thomas’s
Summa that, “the end and norm of discipline is happiness.”10 Thomas’s
insight, he thinks, is completely lost in the modern valorization of work.
Yet, were Smith to paraphrase Thomas, he would write “the end and norm
of discipline is beauty.” Commercial life, as understood by Smith, revolves
around beauty, a high-ranking value on the axiological hierarchy. The
Catholic critique of “economism”—the reduction of persons to utility
values—has a genuine target, certainly, but in reading Smith it is not
perhaps a target that is as pervasive in business as is commonly thought.
The approach of Pieper—a major influence on the work of Michael
Naughton, for example11—has limited potential, I fear. For Smith, leisure
is the engine of ambition. However, that leisure provokes the sacrifice and
production of ambition is more apparent than real. Underwriting
leisure—and this is why it matters little that Pieper is interested in leisure
that gives opportunity for contemplation—is the desire to complete a
7 Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Evanston, IL:

Northwestern University Press, 1973), 266–67.
8 Josef Pieper, Leisure:The Basis of Culture (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1999),

7–11.
9 Pieper, Leisure:The Basis of Culture, 23.
10 Ibid., 17.
11 For the best book of American Catholic business ethics, see Naughton’s co-

authored work with Helen Alford, Managing As If Faith Mattered (South Bend,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).

Business Ethics and Catholic Social Thought

21

system or order of beauty.12 Smith’s portrait of the ambitious young
man13—and just how evocative it is for today’s students will readily be
seen by anyone who teaches it—describes a youth whose life is given
over to work and production in service of a leisure that forever escapes
him:That is because leisure is not the real object of pursuit but rather is
the completion of a beautiful arrangement, a harmony and flow of
objects. It is a matter of “enchantment,” says Smith. Ordering the active
or contemplative life is beauty and the pursuit of its regularities. The
Platonism of such a conception of human desire is obvious—and perhaps
a recommendation—but its damage to Pieper’s concern about modernity
is evident. The active life, argues Smith, is as thoroughly Platonic as the
contemplative life and has the same object in view. In other words, it is not
merely that Smith valorizes the active life—his horror of the contemplative life of monks is famous—it is rather that he thinks the tradition has
misunderstood what is the object of the active life.The ordo amoris of the
active life is the affirmation of a hierarchy and ranking of objects imposed
by beauty. The “value-ception,” as Scheler would put it, is the same for
both Pieper and Smith—contemplation, albeit in a different mode and
with a narrower range of objects in the case of Smith.That is, Smith did
not believe in a personal God. Pieper, of course, thinks contemplation
that does not ultimately acknowledge God as the highest object truncated. Pieper is correct, but formally commercial life is contemplative, as
least as compellingly described by Smith. And if this is so, then Pieper’s
argument is not powerful against Smith and may well mischaracterize the
modern world as well.
A more fruitful Catholic approach to Smith is found in John Paul II’s
use of dignity. But the idea of dignity as a norm of business ethics is not
straightforward either. Relying on ideas of dignity and the person will
require Catholic social thought to make a place for Smith even as an advocate of inequality. Thinkers like Novak argue that Catholic social thought
has already allied itself to Smith. I think this is true when we look at John
Paul II’s use of dignity as a norm, but his “concessions” to Smith, if I may
put it that way, bring Catholic social thought into a high state of tension
with itself. In fact, since Paul VI employed the same notion of dignity this
tension has been present for nigh on forty years. I will argue that this
tension is only really able to be resolved by a deepening alliance with
Smith. John Paul II’s business ethics rests on an understanding of the active
life as a participation in the work of Creation itself, work happens within
12 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiment, 180–81.
13 Ibid., 181–82.

G. J. McAleer

22

the “original ordering.”14 John Paul II is thoroughly modern, to be
provocative, thoroughly Smithian, in seeing the issues of commercial life
as directly issues of the active life. Eschewing stoicism, John Paul II has
focused on the ethics of business organization as a support for virtue in
the work place. Commercial life requires a management order that fosters
human dignity. I think it thoroughly remarkable that John Paul in Laborem
Exercens focuses upon dignity as a quality rather than as a fixture of the
ontological order.15 It is a commonplace in discussions with Christians
about commercial life that since man is made in the image of God, man’s
dignity must be fostered.There can be no dispute about this, of course, but
as a matter of explanation it is lacking in power. We run into almost
complete silence as soon we ask what we mean by dignity.16 What is the
content of this notion? For John Paul II work is intrinsically linked to
dignity for in work, man “confirms his dominion over the visible world”17
but only so long as work affirms human dignity by affirming man as a
person. For this “subjective meaning of work” to be realized, work, in its
objective content, that is, the “strategic” organization of a successful business, must do three things: It must engage the intellect of its workers,
require their self-management, and have a “tendency” to encourage human
flourishing.18 Work that does these things affirms man as a person.What is
striking here is not that dignity is cast as the actualization of various human
powers—the intellect, the will, and the appetites more broadly—for this is
what one would expect of any Aristotelian or Thomist. It is rather that
dignity is not cast as an ontological object but as a set of qualities to be
attained and achieved in the workplace.
It is because dignity is a quality that business ethics is so imperative:
Business must be organized to help man attain these qualities of dignity.
Sometimes one’s role in business affirms these qualities. Workers in the
“knowledge economy” use their intellects, are expected to manage themselves, and can well expect that their work environment and their salaries
will permit human flourishing for them and their families. However,
some jobs are simply not like this. Being a member of a team working at
14 Pope John Paul II, Laborem Exercens (1981), no. 15; hereafter.
15 For a brilliant treatment of dignity as quality, see Aurel Kolnai, “Dignity,” Philos-

ophy 51 (1976): 251–71.
16 An interesting account of dignity as an ontological object can be found in Josef

Seifert, What is Life? (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), chapter 4. Seifert’s theory of
dignity contrasts significantly with that of Kolnai, but, as will become clear, I
think John Paul II’s business ethics rather favors Kolnai’s approach.
17 Laborem Exercens, no. 15; Paul VI, Populorum Progressio, no. 28.
18 Laborem Exercens, no. 23.

Business Ethics and Catholic Social Thought

23

a fast food restaurant requires little to no initiative, is highly regularized,
and one’s function is completely managed.This work as such cannot affirm
human dignity. It is not enough just to say, “But the workers still have
their human dignity for dignity is an ontological object!” John Paul II
was concerned about the ethics of business organization because
dignity—as the English langauge makes quite clear—can be impaired,
destroyed, and willfully thrown away.19 For this reason, Catholic social
thought has argued that workers who perform a function will then require
a role in the overall management order if their intellects and wills are to
be engaged.20 In an extremely interesting article, David Herrera describes
how this requirement of Catholic social thought is met in the business
organization of the Spanish cooperative Mondragón.21 At Mondragón
the workers own the various businesses that make up the cooperative, all
major management decisions are vetted by the workers, and management
cannot gain more than an 8:1 advantage in pay over the least paid
member of the cooperative. He describes a dramatic contrast between the
democratic equality of Mondragón’s business organization and the hierarchy and inequality of the contemporary “neo-American” corporation.
Obviously, John Paul II must have found the move to a “knowledge
economy” very satisfying, but the basic business environment in the
United States, whether family-run businesses or corporations, is hostile
to ideas of worker participation in management or the democratic equality of Mondragón’s ownership and pay structure.
However, it is crucial to recognize that the inequalities of the contemporary “neo-American” corporation are not merely a matter of thoughtlessness or heartlessness.To use Scheler’s language, it is a matter of an ethos
and “an order of preference” that is not merely a cultural phenomenon but
has a remarkable philosophical and ethical basis that aspires to affirm some
values central to Catholic social thought, namely, liberty, pluralism, justice,
and even constitutional order. From a comparison of Mondragón and the
typical American corporation we can see that two streams within Catholic
social thought are in tension: the need for business organization to serve
both equality and dignity. It is typically assumed that these two easily map
the one onto the other.Yet this is very far from clear. A democratic organizational model is inevitably one that relies on the idea of function whilst
19 Cf. St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II–II, q. 64, a. 2, ad 3.
20 Laborem Exercens, no. 14.
21 D. Herrera, “Laborem Exercens, ‘Traditional’ Organizations and the Democratic

Mondragón Model,” Work as Key to the Social Question: The Great Social and
Economic Transformations and the Subjective Dimension of Work (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002), 235–53.

24

G. J. McAleer

the “neo-American” is a promotion of privilege and the idea of roles: But
it is the latter that fosters dignity, not the former. In fact, here there is more
than a simple tension between values—which is a real enough problem!—
there is also an exclusion built into the idea of dignity that prohibits the
equality provided by the idea of function. In a fascinating reflection on the
difference between role and function, Chantal Delsol argues that not
everyone is equal to the same role and that these inequalities are essential to the very idea of what it is to be a person.22 In the idea of a role,
comments Delsol, there is the original notion of person, the playing of a
part in theatre with its irreducible particularity.As a rather critical friend of
the Enlightenment, Delsol argues that there is real value in the idea of the
function and its creation of individuals as opposed to persons:The idea did
liberate whole classes, especially women, from confined, invariant roles in
the social world. As a Catholic theorist and mother of five, however, she is
equally eloquent that the abolition of roles is not only absurd (when your
mother needs to go to the hospital can you really just call a cab?) but pernicious to ideas of personal uniqueness. A fundamental threat to Catholic
values is subjectivism, but the idea of function and the equality it brings in
its wake is a formal equivalent to subjectivism: It includes the elimination
of the social fabric that otherwise emerges from the idea that not everyone
can do the same tasks, that not everyone is equal to every task. Indeed, as
Delsol points out, moral obligation is attached to roles whilst the essential
substitutability of individuals in any function destroys any sense duty. One
recent contributor to the voluminous literature on leadership has recently
argued that business managers need to model themselves on the early
Jesuits. If there is to be moral management of business, Chris Lowney
argues,23 then a disciplining similar to that taught to the Jesuits is necessary.
It is an implication of this use of early Jesuit priests as exemplars that
managers are to be bearers of roles not functions. If Catholic social thought
must be understood in the egalitarian way that Herrera believes, and there
are elements within the tradition that point in this direction, then the
mission of the Church to protect persons will be impaired.
Evangelization of business requires the inequality of roles and power
that typifies “neo-American” hierarchical corporate structure. Such business organization is required, I would argue, if the tradition of the
Church’s moral realism is to be maintained. Rejecting hierarchy one
22 Chantal Delsol, Icarus Fallen:The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World (Wilm-

ington, DE: ISI Books, 2003), chapter 13.
23 An ex-Jesuit and former high-ranking manager of J. P. Morgan, Lowney’s book

is Heroic Leadership: Best Practices from a 450-Year-Old Company that Changed the
World (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2003).

Business Ethics and Catholic Social Thought

25

necessarily rejects the vantage point needed if the priorities within the
field of values and reality are to be properly appreciated. In a wonderful
example, phenomenologist Aurel Kolnai (1900–1973) describes what
happens when one climbs from a plain up a mountain and comes by a
commanding vision of the landscape in which one had previously moved
around with little understanding of its true contours. The phenomenon
of “height” and its realization in the social order—whether this be elevation to the bench or high management—is really to inculcate structurally
a discrimination in which order and the relationship between values can
be observed.The social distinction that separates people—a basic phenomenon in commercial society, according to Smith24—enables distinctions
amongst values to be clearly recognized; the diversity that issues from this
is essential to Catholic social thought. Supporting hierarchy in business is
not separable, I would argue, from the imperative of maintaining diversity within authority in the broader social order.The cultural crisis of our
times, the culture of death, has occurred because “progressive democracy” (Kolnai) has increasingly rejected the distinction between public
and private authority. In matters respecting abortion and euthanasia, it is
now dogma amongst progressives that private individuals are free to exercise lethal authority that was once the provenance of constitutional
government. It is because the diversity and hierarchy amongst authorities
is rejected that the same people who insist upon the private authority to
exercise lethal force against others also believe that government does not
have the authority (“not in my name,” as the slogan goes) to kill in
matters of war and capital punishment. Aquinas insisted upon these
distinctions in his treatise on homicide in the Summa II–II, q. 64, and
John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae reaffirmed Thomas’s teaching. Although
John Paul II made the argument there that capital punishment was no
longer applicable—technology restrains its use—there is no suggestion
that constitutional government no longer has the authority to hand
down capital punishment for certain crimes.The social philosophy of the
Church will need to acknowledge, I think, that the principles that lead
to the hierarchy between public and private authority are also those that
make hierarchy and roles in business necessary.
In conclusion, whilst certain kinds of labor in America sustain human
dignity, other kinds do not and, if I can put it this way, and hopefully not
too enigmatically, not without reason. Smith, of course, is a theorist of
inequality, just as Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Burke, Nietzsche, and Scheler
are, all in their different ways. An implication of Smith’s work is that
24 Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments,50–58.

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G. J. McAleer

inequality is constitutive of dignity as a quality.25 In suggesting the need
for a fresh appropriation of Smith, I do not mean to imply that there is a
contradiction at the heart of Catholic social thought—not at all. The
argument presented here is to recall a moral realism (appreciated by John
Paul II) that unless dignity be understood as a quality there is no purchase
for business ethics. Business ethics is an attempt to bring about as much
dignity in the workplace as there can be. And here one cannot be
utopian. Evangelization must have an Augustinian tone:26 The Church
must seek to moderate the diminishment of dignity that can occur and
does occur in commercial life, but realism requires that the Church think
in terms of moderation and not extirpation. And, of course, by realism, I
am not talking of the knee-jerk realism of the person who says, “Ethics
is not about the real world. It’s nice in theory but won’t work in practice.” Moral realism is the insight that reality and value stand intimately
linked albeit in tension, that there is a landscape and a geology of values
throughout reality with certain constants, gradations, emphases, and limitations.The Christian love of persons cannot ignore the Smithian love of
beauty, nor expect to supplant its inequalities. Evangelization must
happen within this “manifold” wherein values of beauty and person both
limit and illuminate one another. The manifold includes liberty, cleanliness, justice, utility, loyalty, equality, efficiency, integrity, and many other
values, and only excludes evil. It might be an unhappy fact, but surely not
an immorality, that some jobs do not affirm human dignity as a quality:
Such jobs are not thereby evil jobs.The moral and the dignified are part
of the manifold of value but do not absolutely overlap, or overlay, one
another. I draw this point from Aurel Kolnai, and it is one, I think, of the
utmost importance. 27 It is a point that draws much from Augustine and
Aquinas, as well as Scheler, and it is a point found in Adam Smith and
one in continuity with basic insights of John Paul II’s business ethics, as
well. John Paul II has expressed reservations about Scheler’s ethics,28 but
his business ethics remains thoroughly rooted in Catholic realism: An
ethics of business organization only makes sense if dignity is thought of
25 Ibid., 50–58.
26 For why this must be so, please see my Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics: A

Catholic and Antitotalitarian Theory of the Body (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2005).
27 Please see Early Ethical Writings of Aurel Kolnai, trans. F. Dunlop (Aldershot, UK:
Ashgate, 2002), 59–60.
28 Karol Wojtyla, “On the Metaphysical and Phenomenological Basis of the Moral
Norm in the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and Max Scheler,” in Person and
Community (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 73–94.

Business Ethics and Catholic Social Thought

27

as a quality and not an invariant ontological object.Yet, if this is so, it is
necessary for all of us interested in the Church’s new evangelization to
live up to the standards imposed by this moral realism. If personal values
are served by the concept of role then inequality will have to be
acknowledged as part of the social order, including business organization.
A lot of work is required in Catholic business ethics, and some of it might
be discomforting, but resources abound in the Catholic tradition, and the
basic moral tenor of Catholic social thought is thoroughly sound and
N&V
equal to the task.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 1 (2006): 29–54

29

Fallible Teachings and the Assistance
of the Holy Spirit Reflections on the
Ordinary Magisterium in Connection with the
Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian*
G IOVANNI S ALA , SJ
Hochschule für Philosophie
Munich, Germany

From the Missionary Command
to the Magisterium of the Church
M ATTHEW CONCLUDES his Gospel with the missionary mandate
of the Risen Jesus to the Eleven: “Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them . . . [and] teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age”
(Mt 28:19–20). During his earthly life, Jesus directed his public ministry,
and particularly his proclamation of the Kingdom of God, to all men.
However, at the same time he gave special attention to a group of disciples, the Twelve. Mark narrates the call of the Twelve in the following
way: “And he went up on the mountain, and called to him those whom
he desired. . . . And he appointed twelve, to be with him and to be sent
out to preach” (Mk 3:13–14).
The Acts of the Apostles recognizes a teaching authority belonging to the
Apostles and to those whom the Apostles gradually associated with themselves in the work of founding and guiding Christian communities. It is
because of this that Acts refers to the gospel by which these communities
* Translation by Ivo Coelho, SDB, of “Insegnamenti ‘fallibili’ e assistenza dello Spir-

ito Santo. Riflessioni sul Magistero ordinario in connessione con l’Istruzione su
‘la vocazione ecclesiale del teologo,’ ” Rassegna di Teologia 34 (1993): 516–543; also
published in Kontroverse Theologie (Festschrift in Honor of Giovanni Sala, SJ), eds.
Ulrich Lehner and Ronald K.Tacelli (Bonn: Nova et Vetera, 2005), 237–58.

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Giovanni Sala, SJ

were living, not vaguely as the teaching of the community, but rather as the
“doctrine of the Apostles” (Acts 2:42).The council of Jerusalem is a further
testimony that the early Church recognized in the Apostles the authority for
resolving questions of doctrine and of discipline (Acts 15).
The second and third centuries have left us numerous testimonies that
the “apostolic succession” was considered a criterion for establishing the
true doctrine of Christ.The pride that many churches took in their lists
of bishops going back in an unbroken line to the apostles is a proof that
the early Church recognized an essential connection between those
“sent” and the Good News of Jesus Christ. In the process of development
and clarification that the hierarchical constitution of the Church underwent, there is discernible from the very beginning a ministry of teaching,
regarded as the official and normative proclamation of Revelation, and
distinct from other forms of teaching, exhortation, and admonition, as for
example the prophetic charisms about which St. Paul speaks to the
Corinthians (1 Cor 14:5).
Theological reflection on such an authoritative proclamation of the
Gospel has given rise to the doctrine of the ecclesial magisterium—a
magisterium linked to the ordination of successors to the apostles, one
which therefore participates in the sacramental character of the Church.
This is not the place to present a detailed exposition of the theology of
the magisterium. The First and Second Vatican Councils have given an
authoritative formulation to this theological doctrine. In this essay I wish
rather to draw attention to that perspective under which the magisterium
is often seen in the current debate and to the conception of the magisterium that derives from such a perspective. In my opinion an adequate
understanding of the problem demands that we begin from the magisterium as a constitutive element of the Church, having the function of
guiding and conserving it in the truth. From this it will then be possible
to establish the significance of the well-known distinction between ordinary and extraordinary magisterium.
Ordinary and Extraordinary Magisterium
The Church, which the pastoral letters refer to as “the pillar and bulwark
of the truth” (1 Tm 3:15), is the place of saving truth, and this not in the
sense of a fossilized conservation of the preaching of Jesus but rather in
the sense of a living presence of this preaching. Such a living presence and
the corresponding actualization of Revelation is the work of the Holy
Spirit who is the soul of the Church. Now in the course of history,
tensions arise within the Church regarding the teaching of Jesus, caused
by the emergence of new questions, formulated with conceptual and

The Ordinary Magisterium

31

linguistic tools derived from diverse and changing cultures. Because of
their content and implications, these tensions can become such as to call
for definitive doctrinal decision, a binding “Yes” or “No” in response to
a precise question.The first ecumenical council held at Nicea in A.D. 325,
which discussed the question,“Who is he whom the New Testament calls
the Son?” is a classic example of a situation that involved the very survival
of the Christian faith.The council resolved this situation by defining Jesus
as being “consubstantial with the Father.”
Subsequent theological reflection has seen in this response the first
dogma in the strict sense, and the first case of the exercise of that teaching office of the Church that came to be called the extraordinary magisterium. This magisterium is the supreme and, in a certain sense, timely
exercise of a magisterial mission that touches the entire Church in its life
in the truth. This extraordinary exercise of the magisterium does not
embrace the whole life of the Church in the truth, nor does it exhaust
the service to the truth proper to the successors of the apostles. Rather,
it exercises a hermeneutical function that is supplementary to the ordinary and permanent mission entrusted to the pope and bishops of guiding the Church into the unity of truth. It represents the frontline of the
journey toward the truth in which the Church is continually engaged. In
order to indicate the specific character of this exercise of the magisterium, theology speaks of an “infallible” magisterium. A dogmatic definition issued by an ecumenical council, or an ex cathedra decision of the
supreme pontiff, are actualizations of the promise of Christ to preserve
his Church in the truth, and to lead her to the fullness of truth ( Jn 16:13)
by means of a charism of infallibility in which the Church places her
complete confidence and which, in decisive moments of her history, she
has always experienced anew, without however being able to manage it
and dispose of it according to merely human calculations.
Seen from the perspective of saving truth, which is a constitutive
element of the Church, the adjective “extraordinary” is not completely
appropriate. What is extraordinary instead is the modality of the proposition enunciated with the intention of deciding in a definitive manner
some point of Christian doctrine, with the purpose of preserving the
Church indefectibly in the revealed truth.The extraordinary magisterium
represents, therefore, the supreme expression, exceptional insofar as
dependent on particular historical circumstances, of a finality to which
the whole of the magisterium constantly addresses itself.
At any rate, the term “extraordinary” suggests the existence of an
“ordinary” magisterium. In reality the ordinary magisterium represents
the usual means through which the Good News is announced and

Giovanni Sala, SJ

32

received in the Church.At the basis of this magisterium is the promise of
the Lord to his apostles to assist them “always, to the close of the age”
(Mt 28:20). John intends precisely this assistance when in the farewell
discourse he speaks of the “Paraclete” (the advocate, the one who helps;
Jn 16:7), and of the “Spirit of truth” ( Jn 16:13) who will teach the disciples everything and will bring to their remembrance what Jesus had said
to them ( Jn 14:16 and 26; 15:26).
In recent years the discussion regarding the ordinary magisterium has
intensified, practically replacing that of the seventies regarding the
extraordinary and infallible magisterium, which had been occasioned
partly by the centenary of the Vatican definition.The new discussion has
its own very precise ecclesial context, which we can establish broadly by
a double reference. First, there is the profound crisis that has affected the
Church in the decades after Vatican II; second (and this is really part of
the same crisis) there is the questioning of the moral norms traditionally
taught by the Church and of the competence of the magisterium in
moral matters.We must note, of course, that it is not solely in the sphere
of morals that the magisterium is being challenged, though in this area,
which affects every believer in a more immediate and existential manner,
the polemic has been given massive publicity by the media.
In this context may be placed the fact that in recent years the pastors
of the Church, and in particular the Holy Father, have repeatedly raised
their voices in defense of the ordinary magisterium as an element essential to the Church, and which therefore is not under the dominion of any
human authority in the Church.The Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of
the Theologian (Donum veritatis) issued by the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith on the feast of the Ascension 1990, is also to be
situated in the same context.1
In the pages that follow I do not intend to give a detailed commentary
on the text of the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian. I
would rather like to examine its relevance with regard to the debate on
the ordinary magisterium. The Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the
Theologian discusses this issue at length, with the aim of clarifying the
proper task of the pastors of the Church as teachers of the faith, the way
in which this task differs from the teaching of the theologian, and the relationship between the theologian and the successors of the Twelve. More
particularly I wish to examine the sense in which Catholic doctrine, as
reconfirmed by the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian,
1 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of

the Theologian (1990).

The Ordinary Magisterium

33

recognizes an assistance of the Holy Spirit proper to the bishops in the
ordinary exercise of their mission as teachers of the faith.This does not, of
course, constitute the whole of Catholic doctrine regarding the ordinary
magisterium; it is however a key element, such that an erroneous or insufficient understanding of it leads inevitably to an erroneous or insufficient
conception of the magisterium itself.
The Magisterium and the Assistance of the Holy Spirit
As a point of reference for my inquiry I take an article published by a
theologian from Munich insofar as it takes up directly the question of
an alleged particular assistance of the Holy Spirit to the magisterium of
the Church.2
The author approaches the question whether and in what measure the
ordinary magisterium enjoys a particular assistance of the Holy Spirit, by
beginning from the extraordinary magisterium.This approach is in itself
legitimate; in point of fact, however, it easily leads to a distortion of the
proper tasks of the magisterium of the Church, insofar as it tends to identify the magisterium tout court with infallibility, and to thus eliminate
the ordinary magisterium on the grounds of its not being infallible.
Catholic doctrine holds that the magisterium of the Church enjoys a
special assistance of the Holy Spirit. This is verified without a doubt,
according to Weger, every time an ecumenical council or the pope in his
role as head of the apostolic college infallibly defines a doctrine,3 in the
2 K. H. Weger, “Wie weit reicht der Schutz des Heiligen Geistes? Einige Fragen

zur Unfehlbarkeit in der katholischen Kirche,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
( July 28, 1990: 8). The article has been included, together with thirteen others,
in Streitgespräch um Theologie und Lehramt: Die Instruktion über die kirchliche Berufung des Theologen in der Diskussion, ed. P. Hünermann and D. Mieth (Frankfurt
am Main: Knecht-Verlag, 1991), 108–17 (in the course of my reflections I will
refer to the pages of this publication). The articles differ among themselves in
content and viewpoint; the balance, however, is in favor of those that are strongly
negative, and many of these make use of a language that is manipulative and journalistic.Thus, for example, Christian Duquoc, observes that the Instruction on the
Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian addresses itself to “party intellectuals” (179) with
the intention of “resurrecting procedures which seemed to have disappeared
with the states of the Eastern bloc” (182). Such expressions are certainly efficacious in discrediting the document in the eyes of a public not specialized in
theological matters, but they do not offer elements for a serious theological
dialogue. Accordingly I will not concern myself with such arguments.
3 Weger speaks of infallible doctrines (“Wie weit reicht der Schutz,” 109).This terminology, which is not found in the theological tradition and does not correspond
to that used by Vatican I, may be traced to one of the confusions that Hans Küng
introduced in his book Unfehlbar? Eine Anfrage (Zürich: Benziger, 1970), and

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case therefore of the so-called extraordinary or infallible magisterium.
From here the theologians who argue in the manner just outlined
continue in this way:What must be said about the assistance of the Holy
Spirit when the bishops or the pope propose teachings that are of themselves not infallible, nor claim to be such, but are rather fallible in principle and therefore capable of being objectively erroneous? Once the
question has been formulated in this way, it seems easy to pass to the
conclusion that in this type of pronouncement the magisterium does not
enjoy a proper assistance of the Holy Spirit. As evidence for such a
conclusion that the ordinary magisterium lacks a proper assistance of the
Holy Spirit (that is, an assistance that goes beyond that promised by Jesus
to the Church as a whole),Weger points to the incontestable fact that the
magisterium has repeatedly fallen into error in the exercise of its office.
Surely, he concludes, no one would attribute such errors to the Holy
Spirit (“Wie weit reicht der Schutz,” 110).
Let us examine more closely this argument, which is typical of theologians who want to distance themselves from the (ordinary) magisterium
of the Church.
1. Jesus has promised the assistance of the Holy Spirit to the Church as
a whole. The most explicit magisterial text in this connection is
found in the constitution Lumen gentium of Vatican II, in the discussion regarding the “people of God.”The council affirms that
the whole body of the faithful who have an anointing that comes
from the Holy One [cf. Jn 2:20 and 27] cannot err in matters of
belief.This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation
of the faith (sensus fidei) of the whole people, when,“from the bishwhich was then taken up by other theologians. If we wish to express ourselves
more exactly, however, it is not propositions that are infallible or fallible, but
rather the act by which some particular subject makes an affirmation;“infallible”
or “fallible” designates therefore a property of the subject who affirms or defines.
A proposition or doctrine in itself is either true or false. The tendency that
underlies the terminology of Küng is that of conceiving infallibility as a sort of
increase in truth. Now this is nonsensical insofar as truth is already of itself
absolute, an exclusion of the contradictory proposition on the basis of the principle of excluded middle. As we will see in what follows, the truth of a proposition is not connected necessarily with infallibility, and therefore does not in
every case call for a subject who is infallible. However this is not the decisive
point in the question under discussion. One could speak, for the sake of brevity,
of infallible propositions, provided one means the proposition in its subjective
aspect as the intentional act of an affirming subject.

The Ordinary Magisterium

35

ops to the last of the faithful” they manifest a universal consent in
matters of faith and morals. (no. 12)

2. This assistance of the Holy Spirit, insofar as it is promised to the
whole Church, evidently holds good also for those members of the
faithful who form part of the magisterium. The passage from St.
Augustine cited by the council explicitly mentions the bishops. But
the text of the council has more to say:
By this appreciation of the faith, aroused and sustained by the
Spirit of truth, the People of God, guided by the sacred teaching
authority (magisterium), and obeying it, receives not the mere
word of man, but truly the Word of God [cf. 1 Thes 2:13[, the faith
once for all delivered to the saints [cf. Jude 3]. (no. 12)

The magisterium, concretely the pope and the bishops, are introduced here not merely as members of the people of God and for that
reason enjoying the assistance of the Holy Spirit; rather they are
recognized as having, in addition, a special function as guides with
the task of conserving the whole Church in the truth. Such a task
entrusted to the magisterium implies a charism of truth proper to it:
a special assistance of the Holy Spirit.There exists therefore an inseparable connection between the sensus fidei of the people of God and
the guidance of this people by the magisterium of the Church (cf.
Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, no. 35).
3. It is not possible here to examine the important doctrine of the
sensus fidelium.4 This doctrine of the council, under different names,
has a long history behind it.This is not surprising because it is really
an expression of that abiding in the truth of which the Church has
had a clear consciousness from the very beginning. But the ecclesial
situation of today calls for a delicate clarification. Already before the
council Yves Congar had noted that, notwithstanding the great
importance of the sensus fidelium in the life of the Church, too much
must not be attributed to it as far as its concrete realization and
expression is concerned.5 It is quite possible that the sensus fidelium
does not always correspond to the form and determination willed it
4 Cf.The excellent study of L. Scheffczyk, “Sensus fidelium–Zeugnis in der Kraft

der Gemeinschaft,” in Internationale Zeitschrift “Communio” 16 (1987): 420–33.
5 Y. Congar, Lay People in the Church. A Study for a Theology of Laity (Westminster,

MD:The Newman Press, 1965), 288.

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by God. This makes it necessary to distinguish in the clearest possible way between the work of the Spirit in the faithful and erroneous
developments in the life of the members of the Church. The sensus
fidei is not to be identified with “public opinion,” which today, in the
age of the mass media, can undergo distortions not only in civil society but also within the Church; it is not the result of majority decisions, nor can it be determined through opinion polls. It is the result
rather of the promise of Christ to his Church; it is the capacity of
judgment and of witness of believers, of those who live without
compromise in the community of the Church, which is the place of
the presence of the Spirit. Such an idea is not the fruit of an elitist
attitude (such an attitude has no place in the realm of grace), but
rather of an objective appraisal of the essence of the faith.
In 1969 Karl Rahner had observed:
[T]he present-day situation of the Church is one in which we are
faced with the phenomenon of individuals only partially identifying
with her, and so too of varying very greatly in the degree in which
they do so identify themselves with the Church. Now in this situation there is a very real danger that under cover of the watchword
of democracy many individuals will be carried away from the
Church into positions which are un-Christian and un-Catholic.6

In its turn the declaration Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973) of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith had observed that
although the magisterium profits from the contemplation, life, and
study of the faithful, its task cannot be reduced to one of ratifying the
consensus at which these have already arrived; rather, in the interpretation and explanation of the Word of God, whether written or
handed down, it can anticipate and demand such a consensus. [no.
2, emphasis added]

In the confusion, uncertainties, and divisions of a Church without
consensus, the magisterium has the power and the obligation to
propose the word of God, which both demands and grounds the
consensus of all the faithful.
4. Not only in its discussion on the participation of the people of God in
the prophetic office of Christ, but repeatedly also elsewhere, the
constitution Lumen gentium recognizes a particular assistance of the
6 K. Rahner,“Das kirchliche Lehramt in der heutigen Autoritätskrise,” in Schriften

zur Theologie, vol. 9 (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1970), 356.

The Ordinary Magisterium

37

Holy Spirit to the magisterium. In the words of the constitution Dei
Verbum,“the task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of
God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been
entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this
matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ” (no. 10, emphasis
added). In number 25, dedicated to the magisterium, Lumen gentium
affirms that the work of the magisterium, whether ordinary or extraordinary, takes place “in the light of the Holy Spirit,” “under the assistance of the Holy Spirit.”With respect to the ordinary magisterium in
particular, it is the doctrine of the council that
the faithful, for their part, are obliged to submit to their bishops’
decision, made in the name of Christ, in matters of faith and morals,
and to adhere to it with a ready and respectful allegiance of mind.
This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given, in a
special way, to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman
pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra. [emphasis added]

It is therefore Catholic doctrine, proposed once again by Vatican
II, that the magisterium of the Church in its entirety—including the
ordinary magisterium—enjoys a special assistance of the Holy Spirit.
It is this teaching that, in my opinion, leads to a more adequate
understanding of Catholic teaching on the magisterium, rather than
the doctrine of the extraordinary magisterium, the exercise of which
remains in a certain sense exceptional.
The “Fallible” Teachings of the Magisterium
We have seen that for the theologians who deny that the ordinary magisterium enjoys a special assistance of the Holy Spirit, the medium probationis lies in the non-infallible character of what the pope and the bishops
ordinarily teach.The point to be clarified is whether there really is such
a connection between non-infallibility (= fallibility) of the acts of the
ordinary magisterium and the absence of a special assistance of the Holy
Spirit. An example may help obtain a better grasp of the question, keeping in mind the precautions necessary for any argument that begins from
natural realities (and such a procedure is inevitable for us human beings!)
to arrive at some understanding of what we profess in faith.
The example is this: It is as inadequate and misleading to define the
ordinary magisterium as a “fallible” magisterium (that is, through a negative definition) as to define human knowing in terms of its fallibility.
Human knowing is the achievement of an intelligent and rational intentionality oriented by its very nature to being and therefore to truth. In its

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Giovanni Sala, SJ

concrete functioning this intentionality may well miss its objective, but
this fact does not justify a methodical and universal doubt, which far from
providing a more adequate access to truth, leads rather to an emptying of
the mind of all knowledge—untrue as well as true.The case of the magisterium is analogous. If the magisterium is, within the hierarchical constitution of the Church, the means used by the Lord for maintaining his
Church in the truth, then we must admit that it is by its nature oriented
toward the truth. But since this is not realized by means of a scientific
knowledge given to the successors of the apostles, which would make
them superior to the faithful from a human point of view, it must be said
that their ability to teach the truth in matters of faith is founded ultimately on a particular grace of state, granted them in conformity with
the general principle in the order of salvation according to which there
is a proper grace corresponding to every mission—a grace of state, which
in this case may conveniently be called a “charism of truth.”7
What is the meaning of the “fallible” teaching on which some theologians insist, which results in the elimination of the ordinary magisterium?
Taken in itself this term does not say anything about the effective status
of the truth of the proposition in question: This may be either true or
false. It is a question of a neutral qualification, which says only that the
proposition originates from a subject who in every case, or at least in the
specific realm of knowledge to which this proposition belongs, does not
possess a criterion of infallibility. An “infallible” subject on the contrary
would be one who in some particular realm of knowledge, or else in all
realms, could not but make true judgments, that is, judgments therefore
that are necessarily true. Now the criterion of infallibility8 is not the only
criterion of truth. It is quite possible to possess a criterion of truth without being infallible. Such is the case for us human beings in all the
concrete judgments of fact through which we arrive at knowledge of
reality.9 For example, the judgment,“The Gulf war lasted six weeks,” is a
7 Cf. Ireneus, Adversus haereses, 4, 26.2:“Qui cum episcopatus successione charisma

veritatis certum . . . acceperunt.”The expression is used also by Vatican I (DS, no.
3071), and is taken up by Vatican II in the constitution Dei Verbum, no. 8, without an indication however of the source.
8 It is not necessary to explain here exactly what constitutes this criterion of infallibility and which are the subjects for whom it is valid.
9 By a “concrete judgment of fact” I mean a judgment that is the term of a process
of knowing that begins from data of experience, whether external or internal; a
judgment therefore that is not based on mere hypothesis or convention, as in the
case of hypothetico-deductive systems. Cf. B. Lonergan, Insight.A Study of Human
Understanding (London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1957), 281–83; also G. Sala,
“Intentionalitat contra Intuition,” in Theologie und Philosophie 59 (1984): 259–63.

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39

judgment that is in fact true, and insofar as it is true, it absolutely excludes
its opposite.This judgment is the result of an exercise of my intentionality that is in fact correct. But I could also have made use of my intentionality in a way that did not conform to its immanent laws, resulting
thus in an erroneous judgment. Now all my judgments, insofar as they do
not arise from an infallible subject, may possibly be false, and are therefore “fallible.” But this says nothing about the truth of the particular judgments that I have made.They may be true or false; and I am completely
certain that at least some of them are true.
At the root of the argument, which from the affirmation of “fallible
teachings” concludes to the absence of an assistance of the Holy Spirit,
lies the surreptitious passage from “fallible” teachings, in the sense
explained to “false” teachings.And false teachings certainly cannot be the
fruit of an illumination of the Holy Spirit! Once fallible teachings (and
such are all the teachings of the ordinary magisterium!) are in fact made
equivalent to erroneous teachings, the general thesis that the ordinary
magisterium does not involve a special assistance of the Holy Spirit
becomes altogether plausible. This sophism reveals the import of the
misleading definition that takes “fallible” propositions as the defining
characteristic of the ordinary magisterium: In the course of the argument, such propositions are taken as actually “false.” Such an equivocation is favored also by the erroneous epistemological conception of
which we spoke above, which attributes infallibility and fallibility to the
judgment rather than to the subject. Now nobody can deny that a fallible subject may be able to express judgments, which are true.
Where then lies the difference between the natural orientation to
truth that all men have and the orientation toward supernatural truth that
belongs to the (ordinary) magisterium of the Church? The difference lies
in the assistance of the Holy Spirit and therefore in a supernatural “illumination.” If one admits the existence of an ordinary magisterium—and
this is doctrina communis—and therefore the existence of a special magisterial mission entrusted to some in the Church (otherwise we would not
have a specific ministry), I do not see how this can be understood if not
as a service to the truth in virtue of a special assistance of the Holy Spirit.
In other words: We can speak of a teaching ministry in the strict sense
only if this belongs exclusively to some in the Church, and if its exercise
occurs in virtue of a specific assistance of the Spirit of truth.
In sum, we can fix the salient points of Weger’s argument in the
following manner:The ordinary magisterium is a fallible authority—the
authority of fallible teachings is equivalent to the authority of erroneous
teachings—erroneous teachings cannot be attributed to the Holy Spirit—

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the ordinary magisterium does not enjoy a particular assistance of the
Holy Spirit—there does not exist an ordinary magisterium.
For the theologians who from “fallible” teachings conclude to a negation of the assistance of the Holy Spirit with regard to such teachings, there
remains only the so-called extraordinary magisterium of the few popes and
ecumenical councils that have either defined or will define a dogma.
Consequently it becomes impossible for them to understand why, according to Catholic doctrine and in particular according to Lumen gentium, no.
25, the faithful ought to adhere to the teaching of the magisterium with a
“loyal submission of the will and intellect” (religioso animi obsequio).This is
an assent founded on theological faith, an “obedience of faith” in the words
of St. Paul to the Romans (1:5, 16:26). Evidently, such obedience is not
possible to those who see in the ordinary magisterium a fallible authority
rather than a service to the truth founded on a supernatural illumination.
If one separates the ordinary teaching of the bishops from the work of the
Holy Spirit, then this teaching has as much weight as the rational arguments put forward in its favor. “Now to evaluate such arguments is the
sacred right of every Christian! On this basis, religious assent can mean
only that the documents of the Church must be studied with respect. But,
whatever the pope says, the discussion must go on!”10
It is useful to mention also another consequence of this reduction of
the magisterium to a scientific authority on the same level, as a matter of
principle, as other such authorities. Given such an understanding, the
service of guiding the Church entrusted to the successors of the apostles
becomes separated from the truth—it becomes a guidance of the Church
that is purely pragmatic.
Authentic Magisterium and Theological Argumentation
The denial of a special divine assistance proper to the magisterium raises
the question regarding the specific role of the pope and bishops, and therefore also the question regarding the difference between the teaching of the
bishops and that of theologians.The logic of the theological position under
consideration suggests the following reply:The pope and the bishops may
speak in the Church on the strength of the rational arguments that they are
able to put forward in support of their teachings.This implies that there is
no real difference between theology as a science and an authentic magisterium; in fact, there really does not exist any such authentic magisterium,
or a hierarchical authority endowed with a supernatural power proper to
10 A. Laun, “Das Urteil des Gewissens—Richtige und falsche Subjektivitat,” in

Ethos und Menschenbild. Zur Überwindung der Krise der Moral, ed. M. Rhonheimer
et al. (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1989), 16 ff.

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41

it. There would exist only a reasoning that is rational as to its cognitive
principle and theological as to its content11—a reasoning that is, in principle, open equally to all men. In the Church, as in any human enterprise,
the decisive factor would be competence.And when the specialists are not
in agreement, the only way out would be recourse to the decisions of the
majority. A. Laun has described the role of such a magisterium in the
following way, with particular reference to moral teaching:
All the same the Church may intervene in the discussion regarding
concrete norms of behavior, not however with its specific authority
founded on the Holy Spirit, but only with its arguments as a partner
with the same rights as the others. One could say: the pope may return
to the University, but only if he first takes off his papal miter.12

The case of the teaching of Paul VI in the encyclical Humanae vitae is
emblematic for the Catholic doctrine of an authentic magisterium. It
shows in a dramatic manner what it means for the pope to take a doctrinal decision with full consciousness both of the authority given to Peter
and to his successors and of his personal responsibility before Jesus Christ.
The task which the Lord assigns to each of his disciples has a strictly
personal character, such that the one concerned can be substituted
neither by an anonymous commission of experts nor by a majority decision.This does not of course deny the opportuneness and even the moral
necessity, in conformity with the historical and cultural situation, of
having recourse to all available means for discovering the truth. It is not
a relic of ancient times that in the Eucharistic prayer the celebrant explicitly mentions “our pope [name], our bishop [name],” just as the Gospels
have left us the names of those to whom Jesus entrusted the mission of
carrying his message to the ends of the earth.
The proper nature of the teaching ministry of the bishops is linked in
an essential manner to the sacramental character of the episcopate and
therefore to the principle of the “apostolic succession,” which is really the
uninterrupted succession in the sacrament of ordination.We have seen in
the first section that the early Church used to consider as true the
doctrines taught by those Churches in possession of a list of bishops
going back without interruption to one of the apostles. This is not a
purely historical question. The principle of the apostolic succession
reflects the consciousness that the Church possesses a sacramental nature
11 Whether on the basis of these ecclesiological premises we can still speak of a

Catholic theology, that is, of an intellectus fidei, is another question!
12 A. Laun, “Das Urteil des Gewissens,” 38.

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42

proper to it. Because of this sacramental nature, the imposition of hands
(ordination) and the ministry of teaching (authoritative testimony) form
an intrinsic unity. For this reason the Catholic Church and the other
churches that have preserved the reality of the apostolic succession
“consider the insertion into the ecclesial ministry, realized through the
imposition of hands with the invocation of the Holy Spirit, as the indispensable form for the transmission of the apostolic succession, which
alone allows the Church to preserve in doctrine and in communion.”13
The sacramental character indicates the type of teaching proper to the
magisterium: It is a teaching that does not originate in the preacher
himself; it is neither a conquest of human intelligence, nor the expression
of what some particular community thinks. Its origin is of a transcendent
nature. It is not therefore the result of a merely extrinsic link that “the
minister of the word [is] also the minister of the sacraments of faith, and
first of all of the Eucharist.”14 An obscuring of the sacramental nature of
ministry in the Church leads to an obscuring as much of the nature of
the truth by which the Church lives as of the nature of the magisterium
itself: Revelation tends to be reduced to truth within the limits of reason
alone, and the magisterium to a service that is exclusively scholarly.15
From what has been said up to now, it follows that the magisterium and
theology are situated on different planes and operate in different ways in
their service to revealed truth.This does not detract from the fact that as a
priest the theologian participates in the sacramental character of the proclamation of the Good News,16 and that as a teacher he receives from the
Church the “canonical mission,” participating thus “in a certain sense . . . in
the work of the magisterium to which he is linked by a juridical bond.”17
The Instruction speaks therefore of “mutual collaboration” between the
magisterium and theology (part IV, A): “The living magisterium of the
Church and theology, while having different gifts and functions, ultimately
have the same goal: preserving the People of God in the truth which sets
free.”18 It is a question of a reciprocal collaboration between different tasks:
13 International Theological Commission, “L’apostolicitá della Chiesa e la succes-

sione apostolica,” in La Civiltá Cattolica 125 (1974) III, sec.VI.
14 Ibid., sec.V. Cf. Acts 2:47.
15 Regarding the sacramental nature of the magisterium, cf., besides the already

mentioned document of the International Theological Commission, also the
constitution Lumen gentium, no. 21.
16 This is true in the first place for the homily, which is an essential part of the
liturgy. Cf. Codex Iuris Canonici (1984), canon 767, §1.
17 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of
the Theologian, no. 22.
18 Ibid., no. 21.

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43

The magisterium proposes the doctrine of the apostles in an authentic
manner, that is, in virtue of an authority received from Christ, while theology elaborates the same doctrine in a rational and reflective manner.
The Brokenness of the Magisterium in the Pilgrim Church
Once the existence of the magisterium of the bishops in union with Peter’s
successor has been recognized, there arises once again the question about
the errors into which this magisterium has fallen in the course of the
centuries.This is precisely the reason why not a few theologians today hold
a position that is in fact equivalent to a denial of the ordinary magisterium.19 Although strictly speaking history is not in a position to furnish
any “demonstration” in favor of a theological doctrine, and much less of a
dogma, a serious study of the history of the Church leads to the recognition
19 This is not the place to enter into a historico-theological examination of the

errors attributed to the magisterium. It is striking however, as L. Scheffczyk has
observed (“Die Freiheit des Glaubens bindet katholisches Forschen und Lehren.
Zu einer Kritik an der romischen Instruktion über die kirchliche Berufung des
Theologen,” in Deutsche Tagespost [January 19, 1991], 5f), that in this field those
who challenge the magisterium capitalize on everything, without bothering to
make those distinctions and differentiations that are necessary if one wants to have
recourse to history with the purpose of demonstrating not only the fallibility of
the magisterium, but also concretely, when and in what measure it allegedly led
the faithful into error. Often recourse is made to historical institutions and
customs that have no direct bearing on the faith as such; in other cases, it is a question of decisions that are not strictly of a doctrinal nature, but rather prudential
directives with respect to exegetical hypotheses or new methods of research,
which were in need of further perfecting before being used without danger to
the faith. One may think, for example, of the judgments of the Pontifical Biblical
Commission in the first decades of our century; while recognizing their limits and
provisional nature, it cannot be denied today that they contributed to preserving
Catholic theology, and with it the faithful, from the one-sidedness and excesses of
the historical-critical method. But there is more. It is striking that while the
theologians are so resolute in denouncing the shortcomings of the ecclesial
magisterium, they rarely mention the errors into which theology has fallen in the
course of the centuries (none of the critiques of the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian gathered in Hünermann and Mieth, Streitgespräch um Theologie und Lehramt [see note 3 above] contain so much as an allusion to this).Truth
and justice demand that such errors be not passed over in silence, especially by
those theologians who try to so inflate the importance and the necessity of theology as to show that it (that is, theology) is called to prevent or correct the errors of the
magisterium.The outcome of such a dosing of criticism against the Church and of
lack of self-criticism is the reversal of the relationship between magisterium and
theology, not only from the theological but also from the historical viewpoint. On
this point see also Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on the
Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, no. 24.

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of how positive and providential the work of the successors of the apostles
has been down the centuries in preserving that saving truth by which the
Church lives.With humility and gratitude, it is legitimate for the Catholic
Christian to see in the innumerable divisions, reductions, deformations, and
even negations of essential elements of Revelation in Christian communities outside the Catholic communion, a confirmation that the magisterium,
both in its everyday exercise and in the “kairoi” of its extraordinary exercise,
has functioned truly as an instrument through which Christ has maintained
his Church in the truth and has allowed it, time and again, to actualize the
one and enduring divine Revelation.
It remains true, all the same, that in this ordinary service to Revelation,
the magisterium has proved to be a “treasure” that we, the Church,“carry
in vessels of clay” (cf. 2 Cor 4:7).The indefectible truth of God has been
entrusted to men who, despite the grace and light which the Lord gives,
remain fallible and sinful. In point of fact we are dealing here not with a
unique case, but rather with something that corresponds to the incarnate
structure of the Church, to its transitory status as a pilgrim Church. The
Church, the community of eschatological salvation that has taken the
place of the synagogue, is, in the period until the second coming of the
Lord, also the assembly of believers that fails repeatedly and so is always
called to conversion “in capite et in membris.” The Christian knows, or
better believes, that Jesus assists his servants in the ministry of leading and
of teaching.Therefore his attitude toward them is one of an obedience of
faith, remembering the word of the Lord:“He who hears you, hears me”
(Lk 10:16). But he also knows that these authentic witnesses of the Gospel
remain fallible servants to whom the appeal to conversion is addressed, and
that they have constantly to be “confirmed” so that they might fulfill the
mission entrusted to them (cf. Lk 22:32).
What attitude then should the believer have toward the vast body of
teachings of the Church, which although binding are not properly speaking irreformable, insofar as they do not originate in a magisterial act that
is formally infallible? To such a question there is no simple and univocal
answer applicable like a recipe to all cases. But the indispensable presupposition in every case for finding the right response is an attitude of faith
toward a magisterium willed by the Lord. From this attitude of faith, says
the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, it follows that “the
willingness to submit loyally to the teaching of the magisterium on
matters per se not irreformable must be the rule” (no. 24).This willingness will lead to a search for the meaning and the reasons for the teaching itself. Such a search amounts to a retracing in faith of the way that
the successors of the Apostles have earlier followed in virtue of the assis-

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45

tance of the Holy Spirit. But the same attitude of faith, precisely because
it is not an ideological choice, equally implies loyalty and co-responsibility toward the truth of God, and therefore requires that the believer, in a
filial and trustful dialogue with the pastors, penetrate deeper into the
truth taught, and thus help purify it from one-sidedness, narrowness, and
defects, even to the point of bringing to light erroneous elements present in a non-irreformable doctrinal decision of the magisterium.
The obedience of faith that believers owe to those sent by the Lord
does not imply the pretense of considering every word of the pope and
bishops as absolutely guaranteed by the charism of infallibility. In this
sense it is correct to speak of “fallible” teachings, teachings that could
possibly turn out to be erroneous. In this same sense I spoke above of the
incarnate and faulty character of the magisterium and of a Church journeying toward perfection. It is precisely this character that a part of contemporary theology refuses to recognize; instead, on the basis of a maximalist
conception, it questions the magisterium in its non-infallible or ordinary
exercise. As the article or Weger argues, “an illumination of the Holy
Spirit should exclude all possible error.”20
The power of error, during the time of the Church, is broken but not
completely overcome. But the obedience of faith toward the representatives
of Christ, imperfect as they are, is not in vain.The choice between doctrines
that are defined, and therefore to be accepted in faith, and doctrines that
are not defined, and therefore, being fallible, to be rejected en masse or else
considered as opinions having no greater value than what the individual
faithful can know by himself, is arbitrary and ultimately impossible. It is not
through such a choice that the Christian is able to remain in the fullness of
truth. A growing adherence to saving truth is instead possible through a
filial trust in the Church in which and with which the Christian believes,
and therefore through a magnanimous acceptance of all that the Church
teaches. If this acceptance is the fruit of theological faith, it will be marked
by a sincere and open attitude, ready to recognize that the Spirit of truth
operates even without the mediation of the magisterium and also outside
the visible Church, and therefore ready to assume its own responsibility in
that search for the truth in which the whole Church is engaged.This is true
for every Christian, and in a particular way for the theologian in his “disinterested service to the community of the faithful.”21
The assent of the believer who receives the truth of God incarnated
and concealed beneath aspects of this world that are transitory and even
20 Weger, “Wie weit reicht der Schutz,” 113.
21 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of

the Theologian, no. 11.

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false (cf. Gal 4:3–9) is of great religious significance.There is no need for
a Catholic to claim absolute certitude for every word of his pastors,
because he knows with St. Paul that “all things work for good with those
who love God” (Rom 8:28).22 But precisely because this attitude of
obedience arises not from a pathological need for security but out of
respect for the truth, he is ready with intellectual honesty to bring his own
contribution toward a fuller attainment of truth.The entire Church is also
a learning Church, and the individual is called to participate in this movement of learning according to the post he occupies in the Church and in
proportion to his personal gifts. The adequate basis for this service to a
truth that is not a human achievement but rather a gift of God is precisely
believing and “feeling with” the Church. And, adds the Instruction on the
Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian with reference to the proper task of the
theologian,“a loyal spirit, animated by love for the Church” (no. 31).
If this spirit is present, the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the
Theologian will not be accused of being Utopian23 when it affirms that
22 A comparison may be helpful also here. The relationship between magisterium

and faithful is, in some ways, analogous to the relationship between parents and
children or teacher and pupils. Certainly it happens that with the passage of time
one realizes that some knowledge communicated by one’s parents and educators
was not exact and that the values inculcated by them were not completely
genuine (at least in the way they were transmitted). Does this give one the right
to conclude that every influence of parents, educators, and teachers should be
rejected, except those affirmations that enjoy a mathematical certitude? It is not
difficult to see that this presumed elimination of every error and of every prejudice does not in fact open up a viable way to a better education and a more
solid intellectual formation; rather it leads to an impoverishment in the area of
knowledge and values, to an estrangement from the culture in which one lives,
and this without providing a better alternative. It is difficult not to see here a
parallel with the attitude of numerous Catholics today toward the teaching of the
Church.Think, for example, of the “partial identification” with the Church that
is so popular today, which leads to a faith that is the fruit of a subjective selection (Auswahlglaube), where the criterion of choice is, within the horizon of a
culture that defines itself as post-Christian, what is still plausible and what can
still be demanded from a moral point of view. Speaking of faith, St.Thomas notes
that the one who accepts certain articles of faith and rejects others (“pertinaciter”—otherwise it would be a question of error and not formally of heresy)
does not in fact have supernatural faith at all, insofar as the formal object of
supernatural faith is adherence to God, the first truth, who manifests himself in
Scripture and in the teaching of the Church.That is why, writes St.Thomas, the
heretic “ea quae sunt fidei alio modo tenet quam per fidem.” And he goes on,
“si de his quae Ecclesia docet quae vult tenet et quae vult non tenet, non iam
inhaeret Ecclesiae doctrinae sicut infallibili regulae, sed propriae voluntati.” Such
a faith, he concludes, is in reality an “opinio quaedam.” ST II–II, q. 5, a. 3.
23 Weger, “Wie weit reicht der Schutz,” 116.

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47

the theologian who finds difficulties in some teaching of the Church,
must, rather than having recourse to the media, find some other way to
deepen, clarify, and, if necessary, even correct that teaching. Ever since the
media discovered the theologians, experience has shown that theological
disputes, conducted in the media for the benefit of a public, which for
the most part lacks the necessary scientific preparation, often make use of
categories and conceptual tools that are wholly inadequate. The choice
of issues and spokesmen, as also the way in which the issues are discussed,
is largely governed by the need to create a sensation and to gain the favor
of the public. Such criteria are not adequate to a truth that by its very
nature surpasses the human mind and at whose center stands the cross of
Christ. With such recourse to the media as a means of pressurizing the
magisterium, St. Paul’s words to Timothy have come true in a startling
manner. Paul calls upon Timothy to proclaim the Word at every occasion,
“in season and out of season,” because “the time is coming when people
will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings and will turn
away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2 Tim 4:2–4).
An Unacceptable Dilemma:
Either Define a Doctrine or Keep Silent
The questioning of the ordinary magisterium on the grounds of “fallible” propositions ends up by admitting only a miraculous assistance of the
Holy Spirit, one that is not conditioned in any way by history and
culture, and which would issue in “oracular” pronouncements on the part
of the pope and the bishops.The theologians demand that these teachers
of the faith make public the alleged special illumination on which they
ground their teachings.24 If they fail to do this, the theologians consider
themselves authorized to make the limits of dogmatic decisions coincide
with the beginning of the realm of free opinions. Where there are no
propositions of faith in the strict sense, the teachings of the magisterium
24 As regards the way in which the charism of the pastors operates in the realm of

the proclamation of the truth, it is necessary to note two things. First, the illumination of the Holy Spirit, in virtue of which the successors of the apostles
receive a particular understanding of the things of faith and morals, should be
distinguished from the capacity to thematize this understanding on the level of
scientific reflection. The former does not necessarily imply the latter. Secondly
(and this is connected to the first), the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the
Theologian recalls “the principle which affirms that magisterial teaching, by virtue
of divine assistance, has a validity beyond its argumentation, which may derive at
times from a particular theology” (no. 34). Pope Paul VI had already recalled this
principle in his encyclical Humanae vitae, no. 28.

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are to be considered in the same manner as opinions of some particular
school of thought, in brief, as “fallible” teachings—no more.
The attitude to be assumed toward fallible teachings is that of the
“hermeneutic of suspicion” proposed by philosophers like Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. This hermeneutic presumes the falsity of what is
affirmed, as long as the contrary has not yet been demonstrated with
absolute evidence. But since no rational demonstration is infallible, the
suspicion always remains. It is on the basis of such a hermeneutic that the
passage is easily made from “fallible” propositions to false propositions.
Within the horizon of such a hermeneutic the place of the obedience of
faith is taken by the so-called “critical” believer.
On the practical plane, the challenge to the ordinary authentic magisterium is equivalent to constraining the sacred hierarchy, in its ministry
of teaching the people of God, to choose between “issuing doctrinal
decisions that are absolutely binding, or else simply keeping quiet and
leaving everything to the opinion of the individual,” as the German bishops so appropriately expressed the problem already in 1967.25 But,
continue the bishops, just as concrete human living requires that we make
decisions on the basis of a knowledge that is not completely certain, but
which nevertheless must be regarded hic et nunc as a valid norm for
thought and for action, so (in an analogous manner!) the Church, in
order to defend efficaciously the substance of the faith and to apply it
effectively to new situations, must propose teachings that are binding to
a certain degree and which nevertheless are in a certain measure provisional and even open to the possibility of error.
The fact that the problem of the ordinary magisterium has become
acute today is a direct consequence of this dilemma put before the magisterium: Either define a doctrine or else shut up.26 To demand infallible
doctrinal decisions in every case, in order to have binding doctrines,
amounts to a distortion of the nature of the magisterium and results in
its elimination.What remains of its ordinary exercise is something merely
“scientific,” equivalent in principle to other such authorities: not only
universities and scholarly circles, but also journalism and its like. Once the
real and supernatural principle of the assistance of the Holy Spirit has
been rejected, on what grounds can there be attributed a priority and
25 Sekretariat der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz ed., Schreiben der deutschen Bischöfe

an alle, die von der Kirche mit der Glaubenserkündigung beauftragt sind (Trier: Paulinus Velag, 1967), no. 18.
26 Not that the pope and bishops are prohibited from presenting their own opinions in the arena of diverse and contrasting opinions—but only inter pares!

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49

normativity to the teachings of the pope and bishops in the life of faith?
Which of the many and discordant opinions disseminated by the media
is the non-theologian to follow? Only one answer seems realistic: to that
opinion presented with greater persuasiveness. Now this will be without
doubt that opinion which best corresponds to the “Zeitgeist.”The confusion and bewilderment in which large sectors of Catholics find themselves today is a dramatic reproof of this.
It is not therefore a question of an excessive insistence on the part of
the Holy Father if, in recent years, he has repeatedly urged obedience
toward the doctrine of the Church.We must not read here a hidden intention to put on the same plane the ordinary and the infallible magisterium;
rather the pope wants to “save” the ordinary magisterium of the Church—
if we may express ourselves thus in speaking of a tension that cannot be
completely eliminated, being part of the mystery of the Church, between
faith in God who guides his Church, and the personal responsibility of the
successors of the apostles with regard to the same Church.The preoccupation of the Pastor of the Universal Church is about the needs of and the
risks to so many faithful; the insistence on his right and duty to teach the
Church is a tangible sign of his respect for the “simple,” that these may not
be robbed of the treasure of the true faith.27
The repeated and preoccupied interventions of the Holy Father and
the Roman congregations who participate in his universal magisterium
must be seen against the background of the attack in course against practically the whole of Catholic doctrine. An inability to see this would be
an indication of total abstraction from reality. By way of example, I note
some of the doctrines that in recent years have become objects of debate
and rejection: the divinity of Jesus Christ, the founding of the Church by
Jesus, the ministerial priesthood, the Eucharistic presence, the sacrament
of penitence, original sin, the virginity of Mary Most Holy, the last things.
As far as moral teaching in the area of sexuality is concerned, it is superfluous to say anything. In addition, there is the tactic of allowing certain
fundamental truths of the faith to disappear merely by not speaking any
more about them: such is the case with the doctrine of grace and sin.
In the third section above,“The Magisterium and the Assistance of the
Holy Spirit,” I observed that, at least apparently, the theologians do not
have any difficulty in admitting infallible definitions. Seen from the
outside, the infallible magisterium has a formal logical structure: If the
conditions laid down by the two Vatican councils are satisfied, it is evident
27 Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation

of the Theologian, nos. 37 and 27.

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Giovanni Sala, SJ

that, from the viewpoint of Catholic doctrine, we have an infallible
teaching. But the assent to the dogmas of the Church, which at first does
not seem to raise difficulties, may have motivations other than the theological virtue of faith. In fact many of these dogmas appear to us today as
abstract formulas, extraneous to our lives and difficult to understand.The
attitude of a Catholic toward these may well be one of practical indifference, leaving to the magisterium itself the task of seeing why they have
been defined and what exactly they mean—granted that they mean
something at all. But examined more closely, these infallible teachings
appear as stray entities or as fruits of a tree from under which the ground
has been removed. The disappearance also of these mythical remnants
forms part of the logic of an attitude of spirit which regards autonomous
reason as the ultimate criterion of truth.The spiritual and scientific itineraries of both well-known and lesser known Catholic theologians have
already provided us with too many examples of such a logic.
Calling into doubt the validity of the ordinary magisterium implies
questioning the effective presence and action of those to whom Jesus has
entrusted the mission of teaching all nations. The teachings of the ordinary magisterium are as many and as varied as the circumstances of place,
time, and culture in which the Gospel is proclaimed and lived.The binding character of these teachings also varies according to the persons for
whom they are directly intended, the tenor of the expressions used, the
frequency and insistence of the pastors in proposing them, and many
other factors.28 Only a life lived within and with the Church allows the
believer to grasp the true meaning, significance, and degree of obligation
of what the pastors say to the people of God. Now it is precisely this
ordinary magisterium that touches the faithful in a close and sometimes
painful way. For one who lives in communion with the Church, the
magisterium becomes a constant point of reference, as concrete as everyday life itself. It is thus that the Christian realizes that life in the Church
is not a vague ideological superstructure, but rather a way of life that
envelops everything and that touches him personally.
In the Church, the Christian experiences that Jesus Christ is not
merely someone who said something two thousand years ago in a culture
completely different from our own, but rather is “the Way, the Truth, and
the Life” ( Jn 14:6) of every believer. Through his representatives, Jesus
intervenes here and now in the life of the believer, both in what he does
and in what he leaves aside, imposing a conduct of life that not infre28 Cf.Vatican Council II, Lumen gentium, no. 25; Congregation for the Doctrine of

the Faith, Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, no. 24.

The Ordinary Magisterium

51

quently calls for the courage of non-conformism. Here lies the true existential problem of the ordinary magisterium today—a problem which
has found its expression in the slogan: “Jesus yes, but not the Church.”
Theological Research and Personal Sanctification
In keeping with the faulty character of the magisterium of which I spoke
above, the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, while recognizing the possibility of inadequate doctrinal decisions on the part of the
magisterium, not only exhorts the theologian to place his expertise at the
service of the teachings of the Church in order to deepen, perfect,
complete, and even, where necessary, to correct them through the channels
of scientific publications and dialogue with the pastors (no. 40), but also
considers the case in which the truth makes its way in the Church through
the suffering, silence, and prayer of the theologian (no. 31). This is something that cannot be completely eliminated from a divine Revelation that
is incarnate. The shortcomings of the servants of the Church in the
ministry of government and of teaching is not due to historical and cultural
conditioning alone; it can also be the consequence of personal failure.
The saints, who were the ones who best understood Revelation, provide
us with examples of situations in which the ways and times of God and of
his truth do not coincide with our ways and our times. The reflections
developed by the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian on this
theme are not a way of circumventing the tasks proper to theology as
science, nor do they exonerate the members of the magisterium from the
obligation to make use of all available means for discovering the truth.They
are rather a fraternal reminder of what ultimately counts in the Kingdom
of God: charity, which in the time of the pilgrim Church can also be a
charity that is called to suffering. Love for the Church, the mother of our
faith, can also pass through the Cross. It is here that the science of the word
of God, which cannot but be intellectus fidei, finds its confirmation. The
effort of the theologian to give respect and obedience to a magisterium
which he finds to be in error, together with the willingness to do whatever
is possible so that the truth might prevail, in the firm hope that the Church,
notwithstanding deviations and errors, will not be lacking in salvific truth,
is a real service to Christian redemption.When the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian says:“The commitment to theology requires a
spiritual effort to grow in virtue and holiness” (no. 9), it does not indulge
in an empty phrase but rather touches the heart of the question and indicates the foundation on which alone the theologian can carry out his task
within the mystical body of Christ.The history of theology confirms this:
It is not merely coincidental that the great theologians have been saints.

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Giovanni Sala, SJ

In an allocution to the bishops of the United States of America on
October 15, 1988, Pope John Paul II, after having recalled that “theology
is an ecclesial science that constantly develops within the Church and is
directed to the service of the Church,” went on to outline the spiritual
figure of the theologian in the following terms:
The authentic faith of the theologians, nourished by prayer and constantly
purified through conversion, is a great gift of God to his Church. On it
depends the well-being of theology in our day. As I mentioned at the
Catholic University of Washington:“It behooves the theologian to be free,
but with the freedom that is openness to the truth and the light that
comes from faith and from fidelity to the Church” (October 7, 1979).29

The analysis made by the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian of the situation in which theology finds itself today, has pinpointed
the root of the problem and, it must be frankly admitted, of the disarray
in which theological research and teaching find themselves in a number
of particular churches.The disappearance of the supernatural horizon of
faith with a culture which is drawing the ultimate consequences of an
anthropological turn understood in an immanentist sense, is reflected in
the tendency on the part of certain contemporary theologians to relegate
a magisterium founded on the assistance of the Holy Spirit to the realm
of mythical conceptions or of ideological constructions of the past.
The indispensable condition for doing theology today is the existential recovery of the horizon of faith, within which alone the tools
provided by modern culture can and must be used to mediate supernatural Revelation to the people of today. But the recovery of the horizon
of faith is not a question of speculation or argumentation. Every argument is based ultimately upon premises that are not themselves the result
of a demonstration. This is true not only for every human science but
also, in its own way, for the science of faith. In the realm of natural
knowledge the indemonstrable premise is the subjectivity of the scientist
himself, his intelligence, rationality, and morality; it is the authentic
human subject inasmuch as objectivity in human knowledge is the fruit
of authentic subjectivity.30 In the realm of supernatural knowledge, the
ultimate premise is the subjectivity of the theologian in his authenticity
29 Pope John Paul II, “The Universal Ordinary Magisterium Can Be Considered

To Be the Usual Expression of the Church’s Infallibility,” ad limina address to the
U.S. bishops of New York (October 15, 1988), L’Osservatore Romano (English),
October 24, 1988, no. 7.
30 This is a key idea in B. Lonergan’s Method inTheology (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1990).

The Ordinary Magisterium

53

as a Christian believer (in addition to his human authenticity on the level
of intellect and will).
For this reason Lonergan, in his Method in Theology, places the foundation of the last three theological functional specialties (discerning the true
Christian doctrines, elaborating their meaning, communicating them in
a manner conducive to the building up of the Church) in religious
conversion. Now religious conversion is not some particular doctrine, but
rather a highly personal event; it is the life itself of the theologian as tending towards sanctity. To say that the personal commitment to sanctity
establishes the horizon of pre-understanding within which the theologian can do theology in the strict sense, is to indicate the point of
conjunction between Christian life and reflection on the Christian
mystery, the point at which an authentically Christian life expresses itself
in a theology adequate to its object. This is not an attempt to blur the
distinctions between the two, nor does it amount to establishing an automatic passage from the first to the second. Cultural and speculative problems have their own laws and are to be resolved by means of proper
scientific procedures. But scientific procedures are at the service of the
human mind and yield no results independently of the horizon of truth
and values constitutive of the concrete subject. Now when the Christian
existence of the subject, the theologian, is undermined by inauthenticity,
an adequate understanding of Revelation cannot be expected—indeed,
not even the indirect and analogous understanding of theology. A regress
in Christian living, in prayer, charity, self-denial, and obedience, inevitably
works as a negative factor with regard to the supernatural truth communicated by God to his Church.The transcendence of Christian truth—its
supernatural character—calls for the transcendence of Christian living;
otherwise it becomes an ideological superstructure which is then used to
give a Christian veneer to a conception of the world whose matrix is no
longer the Gospel.
Revealed truth is an essential part of the Christian life. Reflection on
this truth can therefore be done only by one who lives it, just as communication of that truth can be done only through a living testimony. Now
there is no Christian life except in communion with the Church, the
adequate subject of our faith. It is only within a communion with the
Church and in a constant endeavor toward personal sanctification that a
proper relationship is possible between the theologian and the living
magisterium.To formulate the problem from the assumption that theology and magisterium are separate and opposing realities, is to miss the
proper solution from the very start. It amounts to wanting to assure a
space for theology, while forgetting that theology acquires its character as

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Giovanni Sala, SJ

a science only by entering into the realm of faith, which is always the
faith of the ecclesial community. It is only in the realm of faith that the
theologian finds that freedom of research and of teaching, which belong
to him. Such a freedom is intrinsically linked to the mystery of the
N&V
Church, from which the theologian receives his mission.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 1 (2006): 55–94

55

Francisco Marín-Sola, OP, and the Origin of Jacques
Maritain’s Doctrine on God’s Permission of Evil
M ICHAEL TORRE
University of San Francisco
San Francisco, California

I N 1996, Editiones Universitaires Fribourg Suisse published the first
volume of the lifelong correspondence between Jacques Maritain and
Charles Journet.1 From it, one can discover the origin of the former’s
view on God’s permission of evil (and other directly related ideas pertaining to God’s governance of created liberty). The correspondence reveals
that Maritain’s thought depends, directly and substantially, on that of Francisco Marín-Sola, OP.2 This had already been surmised by some familiar
with the latter’s published work on these matters;3 the correspondence
1 Journet Maritain: Correspondance, vol. 1, 1920–1929, ed. Mgr. Pierre Mamie (Paris:

Éditions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse and Éditions Saint-Paul, 1996); vol. 2,
1930–1939, and vol. 3, 1940–1949, were published in 1997 and 1998. Their
correspondence began in 1920; within two years, they were addressing each
other as “friend”; by late 1924, they were corresponding very regularly.
2 Marín-Sola published three articles on this matter: “El sistema tomista sobre la
moción divina,” La Ciencia Tomista 32 (1925): 5–54; “Respuesta a algunas objeciones acerca del sistema tomista sobre la moción divina,” La Ciencia Tomista 33
(1926): 5–74; and “Nuevas observaciones acerca del sistema tomista sobre la
moción divina,” La Ciencia Tomista 33 (1926): 321–97.
3 This was noted by L.Vereecke, CSSR, in his entry “Alphonse Ligouri” in the New
Catholic Encylopedia, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1967),
339; and by John Rock, sJ, in “St. Thomas on Divine Causality,” Philosophical
Studies 5 (1955): 22. Jean-Hervé Nicolas, OP, also associates the two positions in
his “La permission du mal” (Revue Thomiste 60 [1960], 5–37, 185–206, and
509–46), but he tries to show that they are really distinct positions (whereas, as
will be seen herein, they are essentially the same). See also my “God’s Permission
of Sin: Negative or Conditioned Decree?” (Ph.D. diss., Graduate Theological
Union, 1983), 825–49.

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Michael Torre

reveals both the degree of this dependence and the very interesting way
in which it developed.
Charles Journet had a high opinion of Marín-Sola’s book on the evolution of Catholic dogma.4 In his second letter to Maritain after arriving in
Fribourg, Journet asks him to send any objections he has to the book, after
he has read it; he can then pass them on to Marín-Sola, who appreciates
them, since they give him the opportunity to develop certain finer points.5
In a reply that has been lost,6 Maritain apparently forwarded to Journet
some objections of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP,7 for Journet says he
knew of these, but does not find them telling: He had hoped for Maritain’s
own objections.8 In his next letter, Maritain admits that he has not yet had
time to read the book, passes on one difficulty he foresees, and says that he
is also asking for the opinion of Roland Dalbiez.9 Journet then gives
4 Starting in 1911, Marín-Sola published a series of articles on this matter in La

Ciencia Tomista (and occasionally in the Revue Thomiste). He then published a
book on the subject, La Evolución homogénea del dogma catolico (Madrid: Biblioteca
de Autores Cristianos, 1923), translated into French as L’Évolution homogène du
dogme catholique (Fribourg: St. Paul, 1924). Emilio Sauras wrote a general introduction to the second, 1952, BAC edition (3–125), that supplies valuable information concerning Marín-Sola’s life and work (especially 12–34), including his
as yet unpublished three-volume masterwork, the Concordia Tomista.
5 Journet, letter no. 87 (November 14, 1924), 247.The editors indicate that Maritain had previously received a dedicated copy of the book (Mamie, Journet Maritain, 252, note 1).
6 The editors note this in p. 250, note 1. In his own letter of November 14 (no.
86), 245, Maritain had thanked Journet for sending him some volumes of
Norbert del Prado, OP, although we now possess no letter or note from Journet
that may have accompanied this package. It is possible that Journet sent him
Marín-Sola’s book in the same packet, since his next letter asks for Maritain’s
views on it. It also seems likely that Journet did not keep the objections sent him,
since they were not Maritain’s own, but ones of Garrigou-Lagrange that he
already possessed.
7 Garrigou-Lagrange had himself dealt with this issue in his De Revelatione (Rome:
Ferrari, 1918). He favored the view of Reginald Schultes, OP who had argued
against Marín-Sola’s view. See the latter’s Introductio in historiam dogmatum (Paris:
Lethielleux, 1922); and De Revelatione, vol. 1, 509, for Garrigou-Lagrange’s view.
Marín-Sola acknowledged their differences (see Evolución, 465, note 42, in relation to Garrigou-Lagrange, and 809 ff. in relation to Schultes), but sought to
minimize their differences and to laud their respective virtues.
8 Journet, letter no. 88, (November 20, 1924), 249–50.This letter immediately
follows his previous one of the fourteenth. As Journet notes, their letters of the
fourteenth had crossed in the mail. In this second letter, Journet also expresses
his irritation with Garrigou-Lagrange for objecting to Marín-Sola’s views from
his articles alone, and without reading his book.
9 Maritain, letter no. 89 (December 2, 1924), 251.

God’s Permission of Evil

57

Maritain’s difficulty to Marín-Sola and sends back the latter’s answer to
Maritain.10 Maritain replies to this letter by forwarding to Journet
Dalbiez’s favorable “review” and expressing annoyance with himself for
not yet having gotten to Marín-Sola’s book.11 Maritain seems content
with Dalbiez’s opinion and willing to entertain Marín-Sola’s position. A
month later, Journet forwards the latter’s answer to one matter Dalbiez had
raised, reporting that he had liked Dalbiez’s remarks.12 This marks the end
of the exchange.
There are several features of this initial exchange worth noting. First,
Marín-Sola is at the center of their correspondence at this time. Indeed,
starting with Journet’s second letter from Fribourg (no. 88, November 20),
Marín-Sola is mentioned in all of their next eleven letters save three (each
a brief note). Second, while Journet greatly admires the latter’s person and
work, Maritain is more hesitant. Third, the reason for this is clear: Maritain is aware of the opposition of Garrigou-Lagrange, with whom he was
at that time very close. (Garrigou-Lagrange had only recently helped
Maritain found the Cercles Thomistes and was giving its yearly retreat at
Meudon.) Fourth, his own admiration of Garrigou-Lagrange and consequent hesitation in relation to Marín-Sola does not prevent Maritain from
appreciating the latter’s work. Fifth, their relation follows a pattern: Maritain becomes familiar with Marín-Sola’s thought through Journet; he
sends Journet his difficulties, which the latter gives to Marín-Sola in
Fribourg; and Marín-Sola then replies to Maritain via the same conduit.
All of these features also mark their second exchange, which concerns
God’s permission of evil and the ideas directly related to it.
That new exchange begins with Journet’s fifth letter from Fribourg
(no. 92, December 10, 1924). In it, he indicates that Marín-Sola is “meditating on a way to restore the Thomistic notions of predestination, operating and efficacious grace, etc.” and that he is ready to publish a series of
articles on them.13 Maritain shows an immediate interest in this question.
In the same letter in which he forwards Dalbiez’s favorable opinion on
evolution, he says he hopes that Marín-Sola will particularly address the
issue of sin and its permission: He believes the Dominican position on
10 Journet, letter no. 90 (December 4, 1924), 254–55.
11 Maritain, letter no. 93 (December 26, 1924), 262. Dalbiez’s letter to Maritain was

published seventy years later:“Une letter de Roland Dalbiez à Jacques Maritain,”
Nova et Vetera 69 (1994/2), 155–59.
12 Journet, letter no. 95 ( January 28, 1925), 271–72, and letter no. 97 (February 11,
1925), 276. Maritain much later makes one further reference to this matter, indicating he had by then read Marín-Sola’s book (letter no. 237a [May 11, 1928]).
13 Journet, letter no. 92 (December 10, 1924), 260, my translation (and hereafter, of
both Journet and Maritain).

Michael Torre

58

the morally good act is clearly “triumphant,” but that there remain “difficulties to resolve” concerning the morally evil act.14 From this letter
throughout 1925, Marín-Sola’s views on this matter become a central
topic of their exchange, so much so that the editors include an explanatory appendix on it by Georges Cottier, OP.15 Save for two brief notes,
Marín-Sola is discussed in their next six letters (nos. 94–99) and, after a
month’s hiatus, four of their next six (nos. 104–109); after the summer,
there are another eight letters devoted to his views (nos. 109, 111, 112,
123, 125, 127, 128, and 131), culminating in a long letter in early 1926
that Maritain sends to Marín-Sola via Journet (no. 138a); three further
letters (nos. 139, 148, and 149) end their exchange, a total of some two
dozen letters, mostly in a one-year period (February 1925–February
1926). From it, the way Maritain comes to his own views through the
teaching of Marín-Sola emerges clearly.
In his first letter expressing interest in this whole subject, Maritain says
that he believes the “proposition” or “first initiative” of sin must come
from the sinner (and not God).16 The sinner is
actually present to God’s eyes by reason of the eternity of his creative
knowledge, and, because he is created from nothing, because nothingness is in the very entrails of the creature, he is constantly tending
towards that nothingness under the hands of God and is in this way
constantly demanding permission to engage in such and such sins.17

God sees the possibility of such sins in his simple intelligence and, for a
greater good, gives his permission for one such, “from which follows (not
according to time, but according to priorities and posteriorities of nature)
the pure privation, inordination, or inconsideration of which GarrigouLagrange speaks (Dieu, 689–99), which sterilizes sufficient grace and in
reason of which occurs the refusal of efficacious grace; in this way, we
ourselves are sufficient in order to sin (Dieu, 684).”18 Maritain also thinks
that we should give a double sense to the words “without Me you can do
nothing” (sine me nihil potestis facere):Without Me you cannot do anything
14 Maritain, letter no. 93 (December 26, 1924), 262.
15 See Cottier, Journet Maritain: Correspondance, appendice 2, “La Liberté Créée

Devant Dieu (À propos de la prémotion physique),” 742–46.
16 Maritain, letter no. 93 (December 26, 1924), 262.
17 Ibid., 262. Throughout this paper, all emphases in this paper are original, unless

otherwise noted.
18 Ibid., 262–63. Garrigou-Lagrange’s work is Dieu, son existence et sa nature (Paris:

Beauchesne, 1914); English, God: His Existence and Nature (St. Louis: Herder, 1946).

God’s Permission of Evil

59

and without Me you can “do nothing” (faire le rien).19 He allows that
Garrigou-Lagrange says all of this, but “more in the conclusions than in the
principles and without sufficiently dotting his ‘i’s.”20
This long paragraph is the first time Maritain gives his own personal
view of this matter, one he had developed before possessing any knowledge of Marín-Sola’s view.There are several things especially worth noting
about his ideas. First, they depend upon those of Garrigou-Lagrange in
important ways.The latter had also argued that God’s refusal of efficacious
grace supposed a defect on the part of the sinner (one that “sterilized sufficient grace”); but, he had also argued, that defect itself supposed God’s
permissive will; and, furthermore, he had argued, that defect followed
infallibly from the divine permission.21 Maritain follows him on these key
ideas, so much so that one could speak of his view at this point as a variant on that of Garrigou-Lagrange (a characterization he himself more or
less makes).Yet it is clear that already Maritain wants to find a way to give
the first initiative in sin to the creature, and not to God’s permission:The
creature “constantly tends towards nothingness” (“faisant constamment
pression vers le néant”) and thus is “constantly demanding permission”
(“demandant constamment la permission”) to engage in sin.22 In this crucial
respect, his view tends to differ from Garrigou-Lagrange’s. Finally, in
Maritain’s exegesis of sine me nihil potestis facere, the passage implies or
suggests the “nihil” [“le néant”] that the creature tends toward on his own
initiative.This creative exegesis and use of “nihil” is characteristic of Maritain’s writings on this matter throughout his career.23
This paragraph is also interesting for what it does not contain. There
is here no distinction made between a “negatio pura” that precedes sin
19 Maritain, letter no. 93 (December 26, 1924), 263.
20 Ibid.
21 See Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and Nature, vol. 2, 365–96.
22 Maritain, letter no. 93 (December 26, 1924), 262.
23 He first uses it in Freedom in the Modern World (London: Sheed and Ward, 1936)

and systematically thereafter. (See notes 143, 149, and 150, below, for his first two
usages of this in French works and his first important usage of it in English.) He
uses it first in an English work (albeit not “technically”) in “The Thomist Idea
of Freedom,” in Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1940),
119. Other typical examples can be found in Maritain, Existence and the Existent,
92; idem, God and the Permission of Evil, 33; and idem, On the Philosophy of History,
119. He uses it last in “Réflexions sur le savoir théologique,” in Maritain,
Approches sans entraves (Paris: Fayard, 1973), 292–326, esp. 308–9; English:“For an
Existential Epistemology II: Reflections on Theological Knowledge,” in Untrammeled Approaches, trans. Bernard Döering (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1997), 243–71, especially pages 248–64.

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Michael Torre

and the “privatio” of sin itself or between a “non-consideration” of the rule
and an “inconsideration” of it. Neither is there any distinction between a
divine permission that antecedes this “negatio pura” and one that supposes
it. Nor, and even more importantly, is there any suggestion of a divine
permission that simply permits sin to be possible and one that supposes
a defect in the creature and from which sin infallibly follows. Similarly,
there is no idea of God’s antecedent will being conditionally efficacious
and grounding a divine motion that can effect a true good or that can be
impeded (that is, a “motion brisable”). All of these ideas are characteristic of Maritain’s mature thought on sin and its cause, but there is not the
least indication that he has yet thought of or embraced such ideas when
he first begins to think about this matter.
In his letter, Maritain apologizes to Journet for all of his “chatter”
(“bavardage”) and asks Journet to correct it, should he think otherwise.24
He also is obviously much interested in what Marín-Sola may think
about what he had written. For, upon learning from Journet that he had
forwarded his ideas to Marín-Sola,25 but hearing nothing further from
him in his next two letters about what the latter thinks, Maritain writes
that he would be happy to learn of his views, should Marín-Sola mention
something to Journet concerning the permission of sin.26 In his following letter, Journet sends back to Maritain Marín-Sola’s reaction.27
Journet says that Marín-Sola was very brief in his response, because
this is precisely the question he is just beginning to address in his series
of projected articles for La Ciencia Tomista.28 Journet passes on three
comments. First, that Maritain is right to see that the issue that needs
more debate is God’s permission of sin. However, in the second place,
that for sin infallibly to follow God’s permission, one must suppose the
creature to be totally corrupt (the unacceptable premise of Calvinism).
Thirdly, what Thomists have not sufficiently exploited is that, for Thomas,
the cause of evil stops with the secondary cause: God does not know evil
in himself, but in knowing the evil will of the secondary cause.
Three things should be noted here. First, Marín-Sola sees that Maritain is trying to move toward the position he himself had worked out,
namely, that the first initiative for sin must lie with the creature’s will, not
with God’s will (permissive or otherwise). Second, Marín-Sola puts his
finger on the weakness in Maritain’s first view: In thinking that a defect
24 Maritain, letter no. 93 (December 26, 1924), 263.
25 Journet, letter no. 95 ( January 28, 1925), 271.
26 Maritain, letter no. 98 (February 14, 1925), 278.
27 Journet, letter no. 99 (March 5, 1925), 282.
28 Ibid., 282.

God’s Permission of Evil

61

must follow infallibly from God’s permission, he inevitably makes the
creature unable to do any good when left to himself.Third, he indicates
why Maritain and Thomists make this error:They want to explain all of
God’s knowledge, including sin, through himself alone—that is, through
his own permissive will—rather than through the secondary cause.
Journet writes Maritain again twenty-six days later (March 31) without mentioning Marín-Sola, while Maritain’s next surviving letter29 to
Journet is only written on April 28, thus coming almost two months after
receiving Marín-Sola’s response. It is perhaps not too surprising, then, that
he makes no allusion to it in that letter. He remains, however, quite interested in what Marín-Sola has said, and thus six weeks later ( June 2), he
asks Journet whether he has spoken further with him about the permission of sin.30 He also asks for the address of La Ciencia Tomista (having
searched Paris in vain for months to find it!) and asks if Marín-Sola has
begun to publish his articles there.31 That he has followed his thought can
be seen in his response to it. He tells Journet that he can see how MarínSola’s view will “marvelously explain” that God’s will does not initiate sin,
but will it not make God’s knowledge be determined by the creature?
[I]f evil—I do not mean the evil act effectuated, but the deficience or
inordination that is the root of evil in the will of the creature; I mean
this determinate deficiency, here and now, and which could not have been—
precedes the permission that God accords it. . . . Is not the divine
knowledge going to find itself determined by the creature?32

He cannot see how to get past this obstacle posed by Marín-Sola’s view.
Several observations are worth making here. First, Maritain also goes
directly to the heart of the difficulty. Marín-Sola will himself affirm that
how God knows sin is obscure for us, and that it may remain so in his
account is practically its only real difficulty.33 Second, although Maritain
29 In a later letter (no. 106, June 12, 1925), Journet mentions some corrections

Maritain had made in a book he had sent Marín-Sola. They had only recently
referred to this book (in no. 95, January 28, 1925; and in no. 98, February 14,
1925), so Maritain must have only recently sent it to Marín-Sola; there is,
however, no surviving letter that indicates when he did. There may have been,
then, some exchange between Maritain and Marín-Sola during this two month
period that is missing from his correspondence with Journet.
30 Maritain, letter no. 104 ( June 2, 1925), 293.
31 Ibid., 295.
32 Ibid., 293–94.
33 For the obscurity of God’s knowledge of sin, see Marín-Sola,“Respuesta a algunas objeciones,” 41; for explaining it satisfactorily being practically the only difficulty his doctrine presents, see Marín-Sola, “Nuevas observaciones,” 360. As we

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distinguishes the defect that is the “root” of sin from the sinful act, he is
still conceiving of this defect as “inordinate” (that is, not a “negatio pura”).
Similarly, he supposes that no divine permission “precedes” it, because he
is conceiving of permission as infallibly entailing what is permitted; (that
is, he has not yet conceived of a divine permission that makes a defect
possible, but not infallibly entailed). Thus, we can see that Maritain’s
initial response is much like the response of other Thomists (such as
Garrigou-Lagrange or Jean-Hervé Nicolas), who will later object to
Marín-Sola’s position.
Journet writes Maritain within a week. He indicates that he has sent
Marín-Sola Maritain’s difficulty, but does not yet have his response. He
also reports a very revealing conversation. He had been saying that there
was no middle ground between the scientia media and the divine decree.
This prompted a sudden outrush of breath in Marín-Sola, who replied
“yes, there was a middle ground for evil.”34 He said that many Thomists ought
to have seen the difficulty, but they have not dared take it up: It has been
twenty years since he thought so.35 Both Journet and Marín-Sola understood the risk he was taking in criticizing a position that many Thomists
had taught all their life, and Journet describes him as “carrying a great
weight.”36 He thinks his articles will be a “great event,” but worries especially about the reaction of Garrigou-Lagrange. Marín-Sola knew that
the latter had wanted to denounce him to the Dominican Master
General for his work on the evolution of dogma; the previous general
had supported Marín-Sola, but Journet is worried that the new general
will not be as sympathetic on this issue.37 Journet fears that “the good F.
Garrigou or the Angelicum will immediately oppose him and will judge
will have the occasion to see, Marín-Sola makes this last observation with Maritain very much in mind.
34 Journet, letter no. 105 ( June 9, 1925).
35 Ibid., 299. It would be interesting to know what prompted Marín-Sola’s initial
interest. Perhaps it was the series of articles of Henri Guillermin, OP, (to whom
he refers in his second article) on sufficient grace. See his “De la grâce suffisante,”
Revue Thomiste 9 (1901): 505–19, Revue Thomiste 10 (1902): 47–76, 374–404, and
654–75; and Revue Thomiste 11 (1903): 20–31. In this last article (p. 23), Guillermin even says that sufficient grace might seem to be an impedible motion that
will not always be impeded; he argues, however, that it will be. Were one not
convinced by his arguments there, one would end with a view of sufficient grace
very similar to Marín-Sola’s.
36 Ibid., 298.
37 Ibid. In this, Journet was prescient. He, not surprisingly, assumed that a Spanish
Master General would look favorably upon his work. In fact, the new Master
General—Buenaventura Garcia de Paredes—while Spanish, was not well
disposed toward Marín-Sola.

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him, with pen still in hand, from the Salmanticenses or some other later
Thomist, without waiting to read all.”38 (This was what GarrigouLagrange had in fact done in relation to Marín-Sola’s Evolution, and it is
what he was to do in relation to this question as well.What Journet feared
is exactly what came to pass.)
Three days later, Journet writes Maritain again, forwarding him
Marín-Sola’s reply to his difficulty. He says that his first article on this
question, which was to appear shortly, will be sufficient for him to resolve
all the other questions.39 In response to his difficulty, Journet reports his
reply as follows:
[I]t is necessary to concede that God is determined, not subjectively and efficiently (by good!) but objectively and deficiently (by evil) and, at my astonishment, he placed under my eyes in two seconds a text of Billuart that
places an objective determination in God. God knows evil post decretum
non per decretum, in his eternity, not in his causality.40

Marín-Sola knows that Garrigou-Lagrange will shiver (“fremira”) when
he reads his work. He believes that he is not changing the Thomistic
view, but he also believes that Garrigou-Lagrange will not see this.41
Journet knows that Marín-Sola has deeply studied this matter, for he has
seen his “enormous notebook of notes” that follow each historical development of this matter with great patience and method.42 Journet hopes
38 Ibid., 299.
39 Journet, letter no. 106 ( June 12, 1925), 303.
40 Ibid.The phrase “objective determination” affirms that there is a determination

(one that is purely negative) in the created term or object of the divine decree.
God knows the defect not in knowing himself alone, but in knowing the created
object. This is just what Thomas himself says in Summa theologiae I, q. 14, a. 10,
ad 3:“evil . . . is opposed to the effects of God, which He knows by His essence;
and, knowing them, He knows the opposite evils.” When confronted with the
objection that it is an imperfection to know a defect through another (“per
aliud”), he replies (ad 4) that it is no imperfection, because this is the only way
a defect can exist (in a created good) and that it can be known: “To know a thing
by something else only belongs to imperfect knowledge if that thing is of itself
knowable; but evil is not of itself knowable” (my emphases). Note that this
answer holds equally for physical evils caused by God and for moral evils caused
by free creatures. Marín-Sola’s merit lay as much in calling attention to what
Thomas had, in fact, said in this text as it did to any further commentary he made
on it. It is this text that Thomists had insufficiently “exploited.”
41 Journet, letter no. 106 ( June 12, 1925), 303–4.
42 Ibid., 305. There are presently some twenty notebooks of Marín-Sola’s notes on
this matter (of some two hundred pages each, roughly) in the archives of the Spanish Dominicans in Avila.These are probably the notebooks to which Journet refers.

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to avoid an antagonism between the two Dominicans: He will try to
work on Marín-Sola, and he urges Maritain to do the same with
Garrigou-Lagrange.43
The risk he was running can be seen from another of his comments
that Journet passes on to Maritain. He told Journet that “the question in
de Auxiliis had not been settled with the desirable sangfroid and objectivity.”44 To the Jesuit formula that with a general aid or “versatile grace,”
man is able to have more than that to which God moved him, the
Dominicans had opposed the formula that man is able to have only that
to which God moved him; but the correct formula should have been that
man is able to have less than that to which God moved him. And, against
the Jesuit formula that God knows sin in the scientia media, the Dominicans had opposed the formula that God knows sin in His permissive
decree; but the correct formula should have been that He knows sin in
the sinner physically present to His eternity (“post decretum in his eternity,”
as Journet reported).45
We have no evidence of Maritain’s first reaction to Marín-Sola’s reply.A
month later, however, Journet writes him a second letter, in which he tells
Maritain how very much Marín-Sola appreciates his work: “[H]e told me
that he had for you more than admiration, a real veneration, and that you
had spoken of things in a way that ‘we’ were not able.”46 He is in the process
of reading Maritain’s Three Reformers,47 which had just appeared, and he
finds it admirable, especially Maritain’s characterization of Descartes’s “angelism.” It is obvious, from this and from his previous comment, that MarínSola regards their exchange on God’s permission as one that is amicable, one
proper to friends equally dedicated to Thomas.
At this time, Marín-Sola published his first article in La Ciencia Tomista.
Our interest in it here lies only in the way it bears upon Maritain’s later
doctrine. Since Marín-Sola carefully distinguishes what he terms “the line
of good” from the “line of evil,” and since his central interest is with the
43 Ibid.
44 Journet, letter no. 106 ( June 12, 1925), 304.
45 Ibid., 303–4. Those unfamiliar with the 1920s may be puzzled by this idea of

“risk.”The recent Thomistic revival had also revived the dispute between Jesuits
and Dominicans concerning the ideas of de auxiliis. In criticizing an idea held by
many Dominicans, he ran the risk of being accused of betraying his order’s position.This is just what happened.
46 Journet, letter no. 109 ( July 13, 1925), 308–9. The “we” presumably refers to
“Catholic clerics.”
47 Maritain, Trois Réformateurs: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau (Paris: Plon, 1925), English:
Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau (London: Sheed and Ward, 1928).

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65

second (which also is Maritain’s central interest in his later doctrine on the
permission of evil), we will be concerned here mainly with this “line.”48
Marín-Sola makes the following points: God’s antecedent will that one
attain a certain end (for example, salvation) is real and conditionally efficacious; in accord with it, God moves a creature toward the moral good
(bonum honestum) in a way that is fallibly efficacious or impedible; God thus
infallibly places a free creature in act or moves toward a determinate end,
but it can impede this motion from reaching the end towards which it is
moved; there is no other cause or explanation of this impediment than the creature’s
own will; the first defect or impediment of the creature is its voluntary nonconsideration of the rule that should govern action; this is not yet sin itself
(a faulty consent or election), but the cause of sin (a defective final practical
judgment); the sinful election infallibly follows the defective judgment,
unless God intervenes in a special way; God infallibly knows the creature’s
defective judgment, because the creature is physically present to his eternity;
God’s permission that a creature sin infallibly entails that a creature sin only
on the supposition that the creature is defective; however, supposing a creature is not defective, God’s permission only makes sin possible; thus, it is the
free creature’s (fallible) will, and not God’s (permissive) will, that determines
the creature’s actual defect and consequent sin.49 Anyone familiar with
Maritain’s views will find them in this first article. In substance and in almost
all details, most of Maritain’s later views are simply those of Marín-Sola.
Marín-Sola indicates that much in his doctrine is not new to
Thomists. It is principally new in not trying to explain a creature’s initial
defect by reference to a divine permission that would infallibly entail or
determine that it exist; consequently, God’s infallible knowledge of this
defect must derive not from a divine decree, but from something else,
namely, the fact that God’s knowledge is eternal and all creation is present to it; finally, since a creature need not impede a divine motion to the
moral good, the proper idea of a motion that is sufficient is one that
effects the end toward which it moves, unless impeded. Let us attend to
Marín-Sola’s own words regarding these crucial points of his position.
In an interesting note, one can see Marín-Sola developing the same
point on God’s permission that he had made in relation to Maritain’s
own first ideas on this subject:
48 Marín-Sola’s first article was published in the July–August 1925 edition of La

Ciencia Tomista. He begins his exposition by distinguishing the lines of good and
evil (10). He later says that his main interest is with the second (11), and that he
had arrived at his position some five years previously (1920), precisely in teaching a course devoted entirely to Thomas’s teaching on the origin of evil (11).
49 Marín-Sola, “El sistema tomista,” esp. 17–22 and 46–52 (my emphasis).

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[T]he divine permission that a creature sin is infallibly connected with
sin, once one supposes the actual defect of the creature, but it is not so
on every supposition, unless one is supposing a creature who is essentially
evil. In effect, my permission that Peter fall, when he has not yet begun
to fall nor even tripped, and therefore can not fall, in spite of my
permission, is one thing; and a very distinct thing is the permission that
he fall when he has already tripped and begun to fall, and infallibly will
fall, if I do not support him.50

To “trip” here is the inconsiderate final judgment that precedes choice;
to “fall” is the sinful choice.51 Yet it is true, more generally, that there are
two different senses to God’s permission: that we become defective
(when we are not) and that we remain defective, when we already are.
Given the first, to sin is only possible; given the second, to continue in
sin follows infallibly. Many Thomists had mistakenly collapsed both
suppositions. This yields a divine permission from which defect and sin
infallibly follow, even though the creature is in a good (or graced) state.
The key to Marín-Sola’s position lies in correcting this mistake.52
Since God’s decree (permissive or otherwise) is not the cause of the
creature’s actual defect, God cannot know this in knowing his own will
alone. Again in a note, Marín-Sola deals with a problem this raises:
Perhaps someone will object that if the impediment or defect of the
creature cannot be seen by God in his decrees insofar as decrees, but
can be insofar as eternal, then God, before giving sufficient grace, does
not know what this effect will have in the creature and He will be
acting blindly.To this one responds that, in the first place, before giving
sufficient grace is one thing and before decreeing to give it is another.
Before giving it, He infallibly knows its effect, because He gives it in
50 Ibid., 49–50, my translation of Marín-Sola: both here and hereafter.
51 In an interesting note in his second article, Marín-Sola writes that “what in neces-

sary agents is the specific form is for intelligent or free creatures the final practical judgment that terminates ‘consilium’ or deliberation,” (“Respuesta a algunas objeciones,”
p. 57).The exercise of this act thus will follow infallibly, save by a miracle.
52 To see better Thomas’s teaching on God’s permissive will, one should consult his
extensive treatment in the Sentences (1, 47, 1, 2). He there teaches that we may
not choose the object that is permitted (sin): “potest fieri oppositum eius quod
permissum est”; that is, we are able not to sin, even though God permits sin.We
find the same teaching elsewhere: God “permits some to be attacked, but He
gives the fortitude to resist against this attack” (On Divine Names, 8, 5); and “God
does not permit one to be tempted without the aid of divine grace” (In 2
Corinthians, 11, 5).There is no hint that Thomas means that we are “able” not to
sin or to resist temptation only in the divided sense, and that we de facto will
infallibly sin, given a divine permission; rather, God even aids us not to sin.

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time and God knows everything from eternity. In the second place, if it

concerns the before of decreeing to give it, and by “before” one intends
an anteriority that affects the very decrees of God, then the phrase has
no sense, because all the decrees are one sole and eternal act, without
before or after. Thus God, from the first moment, knows everything
and in no moment is ignorant of anything. Finally, if by this “before”
one refers, as one ought to refer, to the objects of the decrees or to our
human manner of conceiving them, then there is no inconvenience in
conceding, and I believe that it ought to be conceded, that God does
not infallibly know the outcome of sufficient grace before decreeing to
give it, nor even in the very decree of giving it, insofar as decree. . . .To
pretend that God knows all before every decree is Molinism and the
scientia media. Whereas to pretend that God knows all in the decrees
insofar as decrees will lead to placing the first cause of the actual defect
of the creature in the divine decree. To one who objects that, in this
case, the knowledge of God will be determined by the creature, we
remind them to go to the proposition of Billuart: “indebita voluntatis
dispositio objective determinat Deum ad movendum ad actum malum.”53

This text is obviously the one he had earlier shown Journet when replying to Maritain’s question, and the “one” referred to here is presumably
Maritain himself.That this passage, as the previous one, appears in a note
suggests that at least in part Marín-Sola added some notes only at the end,
to reply to the difficulties that Maritain (and some others) had raised.
Finally, Marín-Sola is at pains to make clear that an impedible motion
or sufficient grace does not imply that the creature is the first cause of
any good. Some might argue that his theory entails that the creature’s
“non-impediment” implies this and that it positively determines God’s
grace or will. He anticipates this objection and replies to it as follows:
From the fact that God always gives an ulterior grace to one who has not
placed an impediment to an anterior grace, it does not follow that the
one not placing an impediment is the cause or reason of conceding a new
grace.A seed or plant continues in its course or growth, not because one
does not place an impediment (because a stone is not placed as an impediment and still it does not grow), but by virtue of its own vital power.
Thus, the grace or supernatural premotion, once given by God, follows
its course or growth, not because the will does not place an impediment,
but by its own proper virtue.Yes, it is true that this power or course of
grace will not continue, if the will places an impediment; but from this,
that the will can paralyze or deviate the course of the motion or the
53 Marín-Sola, “El sistema tomista,” 52–53. Billuart’s text is from his De Deo Uno,

dissertation 8, article 5. The reference, here and to other commentators later
referred to in this article, is taken from Marín-Sola.

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68

divine grace, it does not follow that this motion is not intrinsically efficacious: it only follows that it is not infallibly or perfectly efficacious, as is no
sufficient grace nor any motion of general providence. Neither does it
follow that the not placing of an impediment is at least the condition sine
qua non, since, even supposing the placing of an impediment, God can
remove it and make it not interrupt the course of grace.54

In other words, that the creature does what is in him (“faciendi quod in
se est”) follows from the very power of the sufficient motion or grace
itself (“ex viribus gratiae”), since it is moving him towards a determinate
moral good.55
As with Marín-Sola’s Evolution, so with this article, it comes to Maritain already under the negative judgment of Garrigou-Lagrange. For,
when Maritain first mentions it to Journet, he says that the latter is up in
arms against (“trés monte contre”) it. Maritain has been unable to get it
and asks Journet to bring it with him (since later that month he is
coming to Meudon for the fourth retreat of the Cercles Thomistes).56 Journet does better, immediately sending him an extra copy he possessed.57
A month later, Maritain travels to Fribourg to give a public lecture. Journet, reporting on its success in a letter to Raïssa, says that “F. MarínSola—he who never comes to conferences!—had attended in a beautiful,
new, white robe.”58 In his next letter to Maritain, Journet pronounces the
conference a complete success and adds that Marín-Sola had spoken of
“the enchantment he had had in seeing you; he loves you for the affability of your manner and is content to see that you are following the thread
of his thought (while I am all at sea).”59 This indicates that Maritain both
had read his article and had spoken with him about it in Fribourg, but
what he had thought of it is unclear, for Maritain does not mention
Marín-Sola, in the letter immediately following his return to Meudon.60
In this same letter in which he speaks of Marín-Sola, Journet indicates
that he will interrupt his series of articles just this once to reply to difficulties that are being raised. Journet worries about this affair:
How will this end? I would have much preferred that F. GarrigouLagrange had reserved his objections to the end: in objecting after his
54 Ibid., 29.
55 Ibid., 31.
56 Maritain, letter no. 111 (September 9, 1925), 312.
57 Journet, letter no. 112 (September 12, 1925), 313.
58 Journet, letter no. 121 (October 23, 1925), 326.
59 Journet, letter no. 123 (October 30, 1925), 330–31.
60 Maritain, letter no. 122 (October 24–25, 1925), 328.

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first article, he gives the air of a man who is too pushy [“trop pressé”]
and fevered [“fievreux”].That annoys me the more inasmuch as I love
him with all my heart.61

Maritain must have responded to this letter, sending him some questions;
for, two weeks later, Journet writes to respond to them. He indicates that
Marín-Sola has finished his second article, part of which deals with the
divine knowledge. Marín-Sola told Journet that, in writing this part, he
had thought constantly of Maritain.62 Journet (worried that he may be
prevented from completing his work) had urged him to publish his book
all at once, and Marín-Sola had said he could do so by the following
Easter: Only the citations would take some time.63
In his reply to this letter, Maritain indicates that “this Marín–Garrigou
controversy has caused me much worry.”64 He would very much like for
the former to have reason, but
my instinct continues to make me terribly suspicious of a humanization and facilitation that would be at the expense of the great essential
principles that the [Dominican] order was created to maintain.To admit
in God the least formal determination coming from the creature is to
destroy God.65

The only way he thinks Marín-Sola can save his position is by showing
how he can “safeguard the absolute independence of the divine knowledge, while avoiding Molina.”66 This needs to be addressed with metaphysical profundity, but he worries that Marín-Sola “prefers to concern
himself with considerations that are more moral and less high.”67 Despite
these misgivings, however, Maritain asks Journet to pass on to Marín-Sola
“all my respectful sympathy.”68
Journet, in his reply, says that he is of the same mind: One cannot “put
into the ‘homo est prima causa mali’ anything that would make God passive.”69
It makes him a little uneasy to “hear him say that it is too bad if one cannot
explain the divine knowledge.”70 Yet, Journet thinks that Marín-Sola has
61 Ibid., 331.
62 Journet, letter no. 125 (November 12, 1925), 334.
63 Ibid., 334.
64 Maritain, letter no. 127 (November 19, 1925), 337.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid.
67 Ibid., 337–38.
68 Ibid., 338.
69 Journet, letter no. 128 (November 29, 1925), 341.
70 Ibid., 340.

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many resources to deal with his difficulties: He would have preferred
Garrigou-Lagrange to remain calm, while waiting for further articles.71 The
latter chose not to, however, opposing him in the November–December
1925 issue of the Revue Thomiste.72 After reading his article, Journet writes
Maritain that he himself could resolve many of his difficulties without too
much trouble.73 Maritain swiftly replies to this letter, but he makes no allusion to the controversy that has now “gone public.”74
Marín-Sola himself replied to each of Garrigou-Lagrange’s difficulties
in the following issue of La Ciencia Tomista.75 Since our concern with it
again is only as it bears upon Maritain, we will only review clarifications
to the three central points earlier noted.
To take the last first, Marín-Sola is again at pains to indicate that his
doctrine does not entail any first causality of the creature in the good.
First, he notes that theologians speak of motions that are “frustrable,”
“fallible,” or “impedible,” but he prefers the third (which is evidently
closer to Thomas’s own language); for God’s glory and the good of the
universe are not frustrated (even if a creature sins), and it is not God’s
motion that “fails,” but the sinner.76 Second, “the making use of grace
comes from the grace itself; but the not making use or abuse comes from
our own fault, in which we, and not God, are the first cause.”77 And thus,
if Peter is moved by God most determinately to act well, he is thereby
moved not to place an impediment to the divine motion, since in this
precisely consists to act well. . . . If Peter does not place an impediment,
then, he has in truth more than John, who places it, but he has neither more
nor less than that to which God moves him.78

Furthermore,
to the one who does not place an impediment to the sufficient prevenient or operating grace received, God will give a further aiding or
cooperating grace, because God never interrupts the course of grace if
71 Ibid., 341.
72 Garrigou-Lagrange,“La grâce efficace est-elle nécessaire pour les actes salutaires

faciles?” Revue Thomiste 30 (1925): 558–66.
73 Journet, letter no. 131 (December 24, 1925), 348.
74 Maritain, letter no. 132 (December 31, 1925), 350.
75 Marín-Sola, “Respuesta a algunas objeciones”: See note 2 above for the full

reference.
76 Ibid., 33.
77 Ibid., 56–57.
78 Ibid., 60.

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man does not interrupt it, and with this greater grace, he has a greater
continuation of the act than the other.79

He again explains, now in greater depth, God’s knowledge of the
defect he does not cause. He again refers to a teaching of some Thomists
(now Gonet, not Billuart) that man “objectively and materially determines the divine motion.”80 He then adds:
By only recalling that, in Thomism, all divine knowledge of the contingent is always posterior to [that is, supposes] the decree, one will immediately see that, if it is right to say that the divine motion and divine
decree are modified by something of the creature, it will be right—and
with greater reason—to say that the divine knowledge, always posterior to
the decree, is modified. But all this is an objective and material modification made by the defect of the creature. It is, in a word, a defective modification.This in no way prejudices the rights and the dignity of the first
cause, because God is the first cause only in the line of the good.81

His doctrine is that this defect is known in God’s eternal action and he
offers the following analogy:
[I]f I am raising in the air an object that can offer resistance to my
action, a child for example, then in that very arm—that is, in my action
or my causality—I am perceiving the effect of raising it; in that very
arm, I perceive that the child struggles or resists my action; in that very
arm, I perceive that the child has broken loose or escaped my action.82

Or again: “If I see a statue well and it has no head, I see the statue to be
without head; that is, I see not only what it has, but also, seeing all that it
has, I see ipso facto all that it does not have, all that it lacks, all its defects.”83
Or, finally:
This action of God, this actual not potential causation, in being infinitely
intimate to being insofar as being, which is its proper and formal effect, is
present to everything; and, in being infinitely intelligent, sees all of it; and,
in being eternal, foresees all of it: whether positive or negative, whether
good or defective, whether infallibly or fallibly caused: absolutely all.84
79 Ibid., 54.
80 Ibid., 38–39. Gonet’s text is from his De Scientia Dei, disputation 4, no. 200

(Vives,Tome I, 426).
81 Ibid., 39.
82 Ibid., 49.
83 Ibid., 50.
84 Ibid.

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As can be seen, Marín-Sola appeals to God’s eternity (or his decree as
eternal) to explain how he can know infallibly something that is not caused
infallibly. He points out that something can be present to another in two
ways: by causality and by real containment. Thus, for example, water is
contained in a vase or bodies in space (and are present to the latter without
being caused by it); and thus, were these containers “by nature completely
intellectual and infallibly comprehensive, they would contain all these things
intellectually and would infallibly know them, without any relation to their
causality.”85 Since, “in order for a thing to be present to eternity what is
required according to Thomistic principles, neither more nor less, is that it exist
in time”;86 and since this only requires that it be caused not that it be caused
infallibly, it follows that something can be fallibly caused and yet be present
to, or contained by, God’s eternity, and thus be known infallibly.
Finally, as regards God’s permission itself, it might be wondered why
God allows a creature to resist him, since he could move him irresistibly
to the moral good.With other Dominicans, Marín-Sola allows that there
is nothing contradictory to freedom in willing the moral good irresistibly; indeed, he holds that this is a perfection of freedom, one proper
to God himself (who freely yet infallibly wills the moral good).87 And he
holds that God does move the will this way: for example, in the process
of justification, when he infuses sanctifying grace.88 Yet, Marín-Sola
argues, God also (and generally) moves creatures in a way that is “exactly
accommodated to the exigencies and conditions of the creature.”89 Since all
free creatures are by nature defectible, God moves them in a way accommodated to their defectible nature, such that they can resist or not his
solicitations to act rightly.90 In other words, God wills absolutely that a
85 Ibid., 36.
86 Ibid, 44.
87 Ibid., 24.
88 Ibid., 58. In Marín-Sola’s doctrine, if God calls, then one is infallibly called; like-

wise, if God justifies, one is infallibly justified; and, finally, if God wills that one
persevere in grace, then one infallibly perseveres. But there is a course between
vocation and justification and between it and final perseverance, and one may
impede that course.Thus, God moves free creatures in two different ways: sufficiently and efficaciously. The first is the general way proportioned to the free
creature’s own nature, which is defectible; the second is the special way proportioned to God’s own indefectibility, when he introduces his divine life into his
creature’s own: when the Holy Spirit first inspires it, in its vocation; when the
Holy Spirit first dwells in the creature through sanctifying grace, in its justification; and when, by its final perseverance, the Holy Spirit ensures its entrance into
God’s everlasting glory.
89 Ibid., 23.
90 Ibid., 24.

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free creature be able to resist him or not. In his first article, Marín-Sola
notes (following Ferrariensis) that God’s antecedent will of an end
includes the consequent will of means to that end:91 that is, God wills
absolutely that a free creature be moved toward an end defectibly, permitting the end to be, or not to be, impeded.
Marín-Sola supports his position by an abundance of texts from his
Dominican tradition. Indeed, no one—before, during, or since his time—
has displayed a similar mastery of that tradition, at least in relation to these
matters.92 He also quotes a number of important texts in Thomas. Here
are just a few key examples: “quod aliquis dicitur extinguere Spiritus
Sanctum in se, vel in alio, cum alius aliquid boni ex fervore Spiritus Sanctum vult facere, vel etiam cum aliquis bonus motus in ipso surgit, et ipse
impedit: actorum 7—vos semper spiritui sancto restitistis” (In I Thessalonians, cap. 5, lect. 2);“in potestate liberi arbitrii est impedire divinae gratiae
receptionem vel non impedire” (Summa contra Gentiles, III, 159); “in rebus
volunatarius defectus actionis a voluntate actu deficiente procedit,
inquantum non subjicit se actu suae regulae. Qui tamen defectus non est
culpa, sed eum sequitur culpa, ex eo quod cum tali defectu operatur”
(Summa theologiae I, q. 49, a. 1, ad 3); “ratio interdum cessat a consideratione regulae debitae, et sic voluntas producit actum peccati” (ST I–II, q.
75, a. 2, ad 1); “non uti regulae rationis praeintelligitur in voluntatem ante
inordinatem electionem: huius autem quod est non uti regula rationis non
oportet quaerere aliam causam nisi voluntatis libertatem quia videlicit in eius
potestate est ut sinat moveri a ratione, vel non sinat” (De malo 1, 3).93
I note the above texts of Thomas, as I have various of Marín-Sola’s
texts, only so that one can better see the degree to which Maritain’s later
doctrine depends upon his. (It can still be difficult, as it was for Maritain,
to obtain Marín-Sola’s articles.) As those familiar with Maritain know, he
refers to many of these very same texts in support of his own position.
This is not surprising, for they are central to the question at issue. Still, it
91 Marín-Sola, “El sistema tomista,” 16–17. Ferrariensis’s text is from his In Summa

contra Gentiles, III, 94.
92 He quotes, often at length and from different works, the following Thomists: Juan

de Aliaga, Alvarez, Bancel, Billuart, Cajetan, Capreolus, Contenson, Ferrariensis,
Pedro de Godoy, Gonet, González de Albeda, Goudin, John of St.Thomas, Peter
de Ledesma, Lemos, Massoulié, Medina, Navarette, Nicolaï, Reginald, the
Salmanticenses, Serry, and Domingo Soto. He also quotes from works of his
immediate predecessors (for example, Guillermin and del Prado) and from his
contemporaries (for example, Hugon).
93 See Marín-Sola, “Respuesta a algunas objeciones,” 12; and idem, “El sistema
tomista,” 25 and 46 (my emphases).

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74

was Marín-Sola who first called attention to the way they supported
views Maritain will hold.
Maritain apparently never had any difficulty with Marín-Sola’s views
on permission. As noted earlier, he himself tended toward a somewhat
similar view. Neither was he concerned with the idea of an impedible
motion, although this considerably exercised Garrigou-Lagrange and
thus seemingly gave him some pause. Maritain’s difficulties ever
concerned the divine knowledge. This can be seen from a remarkable
letter forwarded to Marín-Sola via Journet.94 Maritain thanks him for
sending a copy of his second article and responds to it.
Maritain begins by saying he remains much interested in his views and
he desires that his thesis be demonstrated. He believes he has put his finger
on difficulties that cannot be hidden, but a great “obscurity” remains for
him: not so much in the infallibility of God’s knowledge (which MarínSola’s second article treated at length), but in its independence.95
Again with his customary intelligence, Maritain puts his finger on the
key issue: what explains the way in which “the obstacle the creature
opposes to the course of sufficient grace”96 passes from God’s simple
knowledge (of its possibility) to his knowledge of vision (of its actuality).
“Is it the will (at least permissive) of God that effects this passage? Or is
it the defectus of the creature? And, in this last case, how avoid having the
knowledge of God depend upon the creature?”97 The first option is the
one defended by Garrigou-Lagrange (and many previous Dominicans);
the second is the one proposed by Marín-Sola.
Another way of putting the difficulty is to ask by what medium God
knows the created deficiency: for the existence of an object to God’s
eternity “is only a necessary condition for the certitude of God’s knowledge, but in no way a reason for that certitude.”98 He thus concludes as
follows: “[H]ere is the gross objection, the antinomy that I do not see
how to resolve: (1) The creature is the first cause of evil as such; (2) Nothing created can be the cause of the knowledge that God has of it.”99 One
could only wish that every objector in a debate would pose as trenchant
a difficulty as this one is with as much clarity and grace!

94 Maritain, letter no. 138 (February 19, 1926), 369–371.
95 Ibid., 369. Maritain had mentioned this problem to Journet (note 66, above)

before reading the second article.
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid.
99 Ibid., 370.

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Having raised the objection, Maritain then admirably suggests that
Marín-Sola may have offered its possible solution, namely, by affirming that
the creature is the cause of God’s knowledge of this deficiency, but that
this does not render God’s knowledge dependent on things, for the
created object is for it only a term materially attained. . . . One would
thus say that God knows the good in his decree and the evil in this
good itself (and in the decree ut aeternus), modified in fact by the first
causality in the line of evil.100

In other words, he wonders whether the idea of a term “materially
attained” does not answer his new objection concerning the independence of God’s knowledge, as well as his first objection concerning its
determination. The former does not suffer any more than the latter,
because what is at issue is no being or form, but an absence of being and
form, a defect in being. Maritain regards this solution as “risky,” but he
sees no other way of defending the thesis.101
This is the last we hear of Maritain’s response to Marín-Sola’s views in
these letters.The exchange thus ends on a positive note. For, despite his
strong initial misgivings, which have not entirely been removed, he is
inclining toward the latter’s position (even if it is “risky”). He asks his
forgiveness for writing him so freely, and hopes he will see in this “only
a mark of the powerful interest I have in your work and of the excellent
souvenir I retain of our conversation in Fribourg.”102 Maritain here
acknowledges his intellectual debt.
In his next letter, Journet indicates that he has passed his letter on to
Marín-Sola, although he has not seen him since then (and we never do
gather from him whether he sent a personal reply).103 Journet thinks
Maritain has raised a good objection; he admits that he is unable to
decide between Marín-Sola’s position and that of Garrigou-Lagrange,
both of which seem to contain a contradiction (in the case of MarínSola, the idea of a creature modifying the divine motion); and he worries
again about the outcome.104 That very month gave him further cause, for
100 Ibid. Maritain refers to Gonet’s passage quoted in note 80 above. It is more accu-

rate to say that God’s knowledge of vision supposes the term materially attained:
It makes no sense to say that God “sees” a creature, if no creature exists (at some
time) to be seen.That the creature does exist, with whatever being it may possess,
is caused by God’s formative idea of it and his creative will.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid.
103 Journet, letter no. 139 (March 8, 1926), 371.
104 Ibid., 372.

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Garrigou-Lagrange was not mollified by Marín-Sola’s second article, and
he published a second article against it, in the March–April issue of the
Revue Thomiste.105 Curiously, neither Journet nor Maritain ever refer to
this second article. Perhaps that is simply because their surviving correspondence from this time is very thin.106 Marín-Sola, however, responded
to it in the next issue of La Ciencia Tomista. Since he had already written
his next article, he merely adds an appendix, replying to the further difficulties raised.107 In this article and appendix, he also responds to Maritain’s concerns.
He begins the article by addressing a concern that Maritain had raised
with Journet. (We cannot tell from the correspondence whether the latter
passed this one on to Marín-Sola. If not, then he is responding to others
who had the identical concern.) Marín-Sola had argued that sufficient
grace gives man the power not to sin in easy (not difficult) matters, and
for a limited time.This led to an objection, which he reports as follows:
[T]hey believe that this distinction is proper to casuists, that it considers these questions from a moral or practical point of view, which is
improper to Thomistic metaphysicians or theologians, who always have
founded their theory on an ontological point of view.108

In reply to this difficulty, he points out that, for Thomas, fallen man is
neither healthy nor whole, but sick; that is, he has the capacity to do some
moral good—but not the difficult moral good—and for some time—but
not for long. Since the actual graces remotely preparatory to justification109
105 Garrigou-Lagrange,“La grâce infalliblement efficace et les actes salutaires faciles,”

Revue Thomiste 31 (1926): 160–73.
106 There is a “lull” in the published exchange at this point: Maritain writes no

letters in March, one in April (no. 140), one (no. 147) and a postcard (no. 146)
in May, and none in June; Journet writes only three letters in April and one in
May (no. 141 and nos. 143–145): thus, there is an exchange of only seven letters
over four months (March 8–July 11).
107 Marín-Sola, “Nuevas observaciones”; the appendix is 384–97.
108 Ibid., 321. For Maritain’s concern on this point, see note 67, above.
109 Marín-Sola’s theory should not be confused with that of González d’Albeda
(later adopted by Henri Guillermin), who held that sufficient grace not only was
an impedible motion, but that it could cause the proximate preparation for justification (my emphases). Marín-Sola holds that the latter is caused only by efficacious grace, the infusion of a new (and sanctifying) form. (On this point, see
Marín-Sola,“Respuesta a algunas objeciones,” 7 note 1.) For a later, more historically based, account of Thomas’s own teaching on actual, preparatory grace, see
Guérard des Lauriers, OP, “La théologie du saint Thomas et la grâce actuelle,”
L’Année Théologique 6 (1945): 277–300. For a similar type of analysis of what

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77

are received in man’s fallen nature, they move him to do some (easy) goods
and to avoid sin (for example, not impede God’s grace) for some time (not
long). In speaking thus about “sufficient grace,” he is speaking of the capacity of man’s nature (that is, from an ontological point of view), but in its
fallen state.
Later, in a footnote to the substantive portion of his article, he replies
directly to Maritain’s difficulty (and perhaps that of others, as well). He
reports it as follows:
[I]n reading our first article, some Thomists became alarmed, believing
that our solution destroyed the infallibility of the divine knowledge.
After our second article, they now concede that it saves the aforesaid
infallibility; but they object that they see even less clearly how it saves
the independence of the divine knowledge, which requires that it not
have any created thing as a ratio cognoscendi.110

Marín-Sola first answers this difficulty by reference to the following text
from Godoy:
Objicies primo: “nihil creatum potest esse Deo ratio cognoscendi; alias eius
scientia dependeret a rebus: sed si malum aut privatio cognosceretur a
Deo per bonum creatum esset illi ratio cognoscendi privationem; ergo
Deus non cognoscit mala per bonum creata.” Respondeo: ratio cognoscendi
posse quadrupliciter sumi. Primo, ex parte cognoscentis, per modum
speciei aut verbi. Secundo, per modum objecti motivi. Tertio, per
modum objecti formalis terminativi. Quarto, ut objectum in quo materiale.Tribus illis modis nihil creatum potest esse Deo ratio cognoscendi,
ne illius cognitio a creatura dependeat. Quarto modo potest aliquid creatum esse illi ratio cognoscendi, nec ex illo sequitur dependentia cognitionis
divinae a creatura, sed tantum dependentia objectorum: et solum hoc
modo malum per bonum creatum ab intellectu divino cognoscitur.111

It is ever typical of Marín-Sola not to take credit for someone else’s idea:
His own idea is obviously that of Godoy. His central idea is thus not new;
he does, however, provide the following commentary:
[T]he reason of knowing follows the reason of being.Thus just as it would
be impossible—according to the teaching of Saint Thomas (Summa
Thomas himself meant by “sufficient,” see M. D. Chenu, OP, “Sufficiens,” Revue
des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 22 (1933): 251–59.
110 Marín-Sola, “Nuevas observaciones,” 360.
111 Ibid., 360–61. Godoy’s text is from his De Scientia Dei, disp. 26, no. 307, book I,
282. Godoy (and Gonet and Billuart) are defending Thomas’s teaching of ST I,
q. 14, a. 10, ad 4 noted earlier: See the text in note 40, above.

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78

Contra Gentes I, 71)—that God know the essence of sin, were He to
know only his own essence, without knowing the essence of the creature, so it would also be impossible for God to know the existence of sin
were He to know only his own will or action, without knowing the
will or action of the creature. In both cases, the creature must enter as
a medium or as a reason of being and thus as a reason of being known. In
the first case, the essence of the creature; in the second, the action of the
creature. . . . Thus, to us it appears evident that, according to the
doctrine of Saint Thomas, to put in God alone the futurition of sin or the
truth of sin or the divine knowledge of sin, is to put in God alone the
reason of being of sin. If the creature enters, as it must enter, in the reason
of being of formal sin, because it—and not God—is its first cause, there
is no other remedy than to make it also enter in some manner in the
reason of being known of sin, at least “per modum objecti in quo materialis,” without this interfering either with the infallibility or with the
independence of the divine knowledge.112

Marín-Sola here argues not that this doctrine is perfectly “clear,” or
that it removes the mystery for us of “how” God knows sin, but that it is
the truth we are left with when other alternatives are eliminated as
impossible. From his first article on, he argues that this is to place the
mystery in these matters in the right place. In his third article, he appeals
to John of St. Thomas: “Hoc est ergo maximum et obscurissimum
mysterium hujus attributi et in quo humanus intellectus omnino caliigat.”113 His is a salutary reminder that mystery is no weakness in theology, especially when it results from avoiding an absurd contradiction.
Garrigou-Lagrange had equally worried that, if God’s knowledge
supposed anything created, this would render it dependent or passive. In
his appendix, Marín-Sola supplies this decisive remark:
The essential or metaphysical relations of things, and, therefore, the infallibility of these relations, are not born of the will or efficient causality
of God or of pure Act, but are supposed by it. Well then: in all existing
being, even in the case of its existing by a fallible causality, there is an
essential metaphysical property, supposed and not caused by the free will
of pure Act.This essential property is the “infallibility of fact,” expressed
many times by Saint Thomas in the formula that “all that exists, while
it exists, exists infallibly. . . .” In virtue of this essential principle that “all
the existent or caused (whether caused infallibly or fallibly) exists infallibly while it exists,” it results that the effect of a fallible causality can be
the object of an infallible knowledge. In this case, the infallible knowledge
112 Marín-Sola, “Nuevas observaciones,” 361.
113 Ibid., 360, note 1. John of St.Thomas’s text is from his De Deo, q. 10, disp. 9, art.

3, num. 1 (Vives, book 2, 80).

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of vision supposes something in the created object, without receiving
anything of the created object. That which the knowledge of God
supposes is something essential (the essential law of “infallibility of fact”)
and, as all the essential—although it is supposed by the free will of God,
and therefore, by the knowledge of vision—is a formal effect of the
divine intelligence or simple intelligence, exemplary cause of all the essential, we hold that the science of vision of pure Act can suppose something in known objects; but this is something that, in its turn, comes
from the very essence or simple intelligence of pure Act. One can
affirm a supposition of something, without any divine dependence or
divine passivity.114

He again takes no credit for this reply, pointing out that Cajetan had given
a similar reply to an objection of Scotus (in a passage he had earlier cited).115
Finally, his third article also provides a metaphor for his doctrine on
sufficient grace. The electric company supplies electric current to his
house and gives him two keys with which he can turn it off: One that
turns off one floor only, the other that turns off both.Although he cannot
light his house (that is the work of the electricity supplied by another),
he can darken it (either partly—the sin of commission—or wholly—the
sin of omission). All that is in his hand, as first cause, is something negative: to turn off the light (that is, not to use the power that is in his hand,
not to use his intellect to consider the rule that he could consider).116
This is a modern equivalent of Thomas’s metaphor that we close our eyes
to the light or close the shutters of our house to the sun:117 Again, our
responsibility as first cause is purely negative.
Just as neither Journet nor Maritain refer to Garrigou-Lagrange’s second
article, neither do they refer to Marín-Sola’s reply to it. Instead, Journet’s
next reference to the controversy is to a further piece Garrigou-Lagrange
114 Marín-Sola, “Nuevas observaciones,” 386–87. Marín-Sola indicates that he is

preparing a book on these questions. This is the first volume of his Concordia
Tomista, dealing with God’s knowledge. (It runs to over one thousand portfolio
pages.) He finished it in 1928, in Ocaña, the year after leaving Fribourg, together
with a reply to Garrigou-Lagrange’s final piece written against his position: See
note 118, below. The third volume of the Concordia Tomista, on God’s will, was
then worked on during his return to Manila in 1929, but was left incomplete at
his death in 1932. It runs to over six hundred portfolio pages.
115 Marín-Sola, “Nuevas observaciones,” 387. Cajetan’s text is In I, q. 14, a. 13, no.
14 (Leonine, t. 4, 188–189) and was cited in Marín-Sola, “Respuesta a algunas
objeciones,” 47.
116 Marín-Sola, “Nuevas observaciones,” 375, note 1.
117 For an example of Thomas’s first use of the metaphor of shutting our eyes to the
light, see 1 SN, 40, 4, 2, and ad 4; for that of the shutters, see 3 SN, 33, 2, 1, 1
and obj. 4.Thomas uses these metaphors throughout his career.

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wrote against Marín-Sola.118 While he thinks many of its difficulties could
be avoided, he still thinks it “hits home” (“cela porte”).119 He does not find
Marín-Sola’s solution to the divine knowledge “solid”; and, while he is not
satisfied with Garrigou-Lagrange’s solution either, he thinks it is “better to
put obscurity on sin than on the divine knowledge.”120 He also mentions
that Marín-Sola has asked him if Maritain had received his (third) article.
In reply, Maritain indicates that he has, but asks Journet to excuse him from
answering further: He “no longer is able to,”121 apparently wishing to
honor the silence the Master General is imposing on this controversy.122
He comments that Garrigou-Lagrange is content with this action. While
perhaps “politic,” he himself can imagine “more noble solutions,” and says
there still is need of a profound study of the permission of evil.123 (Some
thirty-five years later, he himself would attempt to supply this.)
Journet’s last comment on this controversy is not very even-handed,
for the difficulty in each position concerns something of God. While
Marín-Sola must explain God’s knowledge of sin, the other position must
explain God’s will in relation to sin: not just sin itself, but the divine
118 Journet, letter no. 148 ( July 11, 1926), 388. Garrigou-Lagrange’s piece was titled

“Principia Thomismi cum novisimo congruismo comparata:Thomismi renovatio an eversio?” This was to have been published in the Angelicum; since the
Master General imposed a silence on this controversy in the summer of 1926, it
came out instead as a fascicule of that publication ([1926]: 121–75). Marín-Sola
wrote a line-by-line reply to it (that runs to over twelve hundred portfolio pages,
forming the actual second volume of his Concordia Tomista).
119 Ibid., 388.
120 Ibid., 389.
121 Maritain, letter no. 149 ( July 15, 1926), 390. Given the warmth and depth of
their previous exchange, it is difficult to interpret his words (“Je n’en peux plus”)
as deriving from any other source than a desire to be sensitive to the silence that
the Master General was “about to impose on all the world” (“le P. General va
imposer silence à tout le monde”).This silence would not have applied to Maritain, a layman with no formal affiliation to the Dominicans, much less to his
private correspondence. Yet, as the Journet correspondence itself makes very
clear, Maritain was much involved with many Dominicans at this time of his life.
(Indeed, this was to be true throughout his life.) Given that Garrigou-Lagrange
was a close personal friend, Maritain seems to have felt it was politic to avoid a
further exchange at this time with Marín-Sola.
122 Ibid. This imposed silence explains both why Marín-Sola ceased publishing his
series of articles and also why the first volume of his Concordia Tomista, although
a complete book, was not then published.When Marín-Sola also wrote his reply
to Garrigou-Lagrange, he must have known that it, too, was not likely to be
published at that time. Seventy-five years later, it still awaits publication.
123 Ibid.

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permission of it.This is often pointed out by Marín-Sola, and never more
eloquently than in these words:
Really, if one notices the phrases, more than the mind, of certain
theologians, one would gain the impression that—under the pretext of
saving the infallibility of divine knowledge—they are intent on establishing an infallible connection between divine causality and sin,
making sin or the impediment be known by the sole means of a decree,
even though disguised with the name of permissive decree, and that the
premotion or beginning of the act leaves the most holy and most loving
hands of God already infallibly connected with sin. No, no, and a thousand times no!124

Rarely has a Dominican been willing to express so forcefully the objection of many other Catholics when faced with what has to them seemed
a necessary implication of the “Thomist” view!
When confronted with Jansenism, many Dominicans attempted to
elucidate how grace could truly be “sufficient” and sin could thus truly
be our responsibility.125 Yet, because God’s permission itself limited that
grace to be only a capacity, which God (by his permission) chose not to
activate, the word “sufficient” again seemed little more than a disguise.
Here are Marín-Sola’s eloquent words on this development:
All those who admit in God no more providence than the infallible nor
more decrees than the infallible nor more premotions or graces than the
infallible appear to us to rest on that theory that there is no more will in
God than the infallible or consequent, and thus that the antecedent will
(with the decrees, motions, and graces that correspond to it, and that are
called sufficient) is a will of pure name, a will of sign, not a real, true, and
124 Marín-Sola, “Respuesta a algunas objeciones,” 38, note 1.
125 As Marín-Sola argues throughout his articles, the Dominican position on these

questions is framed by two controversies: on one side by that of de auxiliis and
on the other by that of Jansenism. Both prior to the first and after the second,
Dominicans make a strong use of God’s antecedent will and man’s resistance to
it in order to explain man’s responsibility for sin. But Bañez regarded that will as
one of “sign” only, and his systematic use of that idea in the controversies on
grace led to a “hardening” of the Dominican position, for a brief time.Yet, due
to the nature of the de auxiliis controversy, aspects of that position became
“enshrined,” as “the” Thomist view on these issues, and it was difficult for
Thomists responding to Jansenism (for example, Gonet and after) to free themselves entirely from those aspects, even though these no longer accorded with
their own teaching on God’s antecedent will. Marín-Sola saw himself as attempting this “liberation,” and as, thereby, returning the Dominican view to positions
and principles also held prior to the de auxiliis controversy.

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sincere will of beneplacito.126 It is true that this is not said clearly, and that
the names of antecedent will and will of beneplacito are conserved.Yet, in
reality this antecedent will is then destroyed in one of two ways: either
by converting it into a will of pure sign, which is the equivalent of saying
that it does not suffice in fact for anything, nor certainly for not placing
an impediment in easy things and for a little time, and this way affirms
that sufficient grace is a pure potency; or by transforming it into the consequent will and saying that it serves for something, but all that one has one
has infallibly, and this is the theory that admits that sufficient grace is a
premotion, but an infallible premotion, which is the equivalent of saying
that there are no more true divine decrees than the infallible. Both theories are going to end up the same, that is, in denying the antecedent will
of God: either by reducing it to so little that it serves in fact for nothing
or by augmenting it to so much that there are no more ways than the
infallible or irresistible in fact, with which one converts it into the
consequent [will]. No, no, and a thousand times no!127

126 The author of this invention within Thomism (that the antecedent will is one of

“sign” only) would appear to have been Cajetan. For a summary of diverse
scholastic views of the antecedent will, see Albert Michel OP,“Volonté de Dieu,
salvifique universelle,” in the Dictionnaire du Théologie Catholique, vol. 15, 2nd part
(Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1950), 3368. Scotus had argued the antecedent will was
one of sign only (see his In 1 SN, 46, 1), following both Alexander of Hales and
Bonaventure. In adopting this view, Cajetan incorporated a typically Franciscan
position into that of Dominicans. A Thomist might suppose that he had some
ground for this view, since in the Summa theologiae,Thomas himself describes the
antecedent will as more like a “velleity” or mere wish (ST I, q. 19, a. 6, ad 1) than
an absolute will; that is, it is like an inefficacious will, such as the desire “I wish
I could fly,” which gives rise to no further action. However, this is to forget the
supposition of Thomas’s text, which is that God (the just judge) is confronted
with a sinner (a hardened criminal deserving of death). On that supposition,
namely of a sinner with an impediment to his grace or who has resisted his
conditioned will to save him, such a will may indeed be inefficacious. But that
is because the sinner, not God, has first placed an impediment to it, and because
God—in his absolute will—chooses not to overcome this impediment. The
entire mistake of some Thomists on this point is to forget Thomas’s supposition
that grounds his use of “velleity,” and thus to make it universally applicable: to
those in sin and those not in sin. This error is the complement to the error of
holding that God’s permission infallibly entails sin on any supposition, rather
than for someone in sin: See note 52, above.
127 Marín-Sola, “Respuesta a algunas objeciones,” 43. Another reason for this error,
as he remarks later, is that “some theologians, even Thomists, want to give a
universal extension to many Augustinian formulas on infallibly efficacious grace
(67).”The “logical-mindedness” of Dominicans thus led to the curious situation
of their placing a greater emphasis on God’s efficacious grace and decree (and his
knowing sin by virtue of his decree) than Augustinians (who held differently
regarding the grace of Adam). I say “curious,” because Thomas himself was
initially criticized by some Franciscans (who regarded themselves as “truer” to

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Again, those who have in the past been critical of the way Dominicans have
interpreted sufficient grace could hardly articulate a stronger objection.
Indeed, one of the characteristics of Marín-Sola’s treatment of this
matter is to indicate how the Thomist interpretation he is offering makes
the Dominican position much more acceptable to other Catholic positions, especially that of St. Alphonsus Ligouri.128 He not only notes this
in relation to Augustinians129 and to “Sorbonic congruism,” but also in
relation to some Jesuit theologians (for example, Billot), who tend toward
the more traditional Dominican view.130 (He never mentions St. Robert
Bellermine’s theory of “negative determination,” but it bears an obvious
relation to his view: What Bellermine had applied to man’s freedom, he
limits to the fallible mode of that freedom, or to man’s fallibility.)131
Furthermore, since Marín-Sola is intent on showing that his theory
accords in its essentials with the solid “Thomistic edifice” of Bañez, and
thus on distancing himself from the errors of Molina,132 he does not
Augustine) for not taking this view, and the very first Dominicans to defend
Thomas did so precisely in relation to the importance of his doctrine concerning the physical presence of created things to God’s eternity! (See John Quidort’s
Correctorium corruptorii circa, ed. Jean Pierre Muller, OSB [Rome: Herder, 1941], a.
3, 26.) Thomas ameliorates Augustine’s position through Damascene’s antecedent
will. In making this inefficacious (either a will of “sign” only or an idle “velleity”), later Dominicans become even more “rigorous” than Augustine.
128 See Marín-Sola, “El sistema tomista,” 14 and 31, note 1; and especially idem,
“Respuesta a algunas objeciones,” 17–20. For a study of Ligouri’s position that
brings out their agreement fully, see Jose Fidel Hidalgo, Doctrina Alfonsiana acerca
de la gracia eficaz y suficiente (Rome: Angelicum, 1951).
129 For the Augustinians’ view, see Winifried Bocxe,“Introduction to the Teaching of
the Italian Augustinians,” Augustiniana 8 (1958): 356–96. In a remarkable series of
articles in the Revue des Études Augustiniennes (1960–1966), the modern Augustinian Athanase Sage,A.A., applies Augustine’s ideas on Adam’s grace to those who
are returned to a state of grace but still remain in via. He develops therein the
Augustinian position in a way that accords perfectly with the Thomist position
defended by Marín-Sola. See, especially, Sage’s “Augustinisme et théologie
moderne,” Revue des Études Augustiniennes 12 (1966), 134–56.
130 See Marín-Sola, “El sistema tomista,” 14 and 31, note 1.
131 For an exposition of Bellarmine’s theory, see J. M. Hellin, SJ, “Determinación
negativa en S. Belarmine,” Estudios Eclesiásticos 10 (1938): 161–99. In English, a
good article is R. Z. Lauer,“Bellarmine on Liberium Arbitrium,” Modern Schoolman 33 (1955–1956): 61–89, esp. 79–89.
132 See Marín-Sola,“Respuesta a algunas objeciones,” 71–73. Marín-Sola argues that
Bañez and his companions held (against Molina) that grace was efficacious ab
intrinseco and that predestination was completely free or “ante praevisa merita.” In
defense of those theological positions, they advanced two philosophical ideas: the
divine decrees and physical premotion (both as necessary to cause free acts). He
defends Bañez on each of these points.

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underline that it also saves his “intent behind the error”; for God’s
“general concursus” can be modified by the creature (but only negatively,
and as a subordinate cause—not a coordinate one), and God does not
know sin in his decree alone (but because creatures are present to his
eternity—not because of a scientia media).133 Marín-Sola even acknowledges that some “Molinists” have raised a telling difficulty: How could
God know a defect “in his permissive decree,” if the latter supposed a
knowledge of that same defect, which impedes sufficient grace?134 His
own distinction between man’s actual defect of non-consideration
(which precedes sin and God’s permission of that) and sin itself (which
supposes a final permission) is crafted in part to overcome this objection.
Finally, since “negative reprobation” is one of the most controversial
ideas of the Thomist position, this text seems worth quoting at length:
Some Thomistic novices, in reading phrases where St. Thomas clearly
says that the unique motive of negative reprobation is the greater good of
the universe, thereby imagine that negative reprobation cannot suppose
the foreknowledge of actual sins, as though “being uniquely for the
greater good of the universe” and “supposing the foreknowledge of
sins” were incompatible things, whereas, on the contrary, they are things
that can be united. Let us take a common example to make this clear.
Let us suppose that Peter has committed a crime, punished by the laws
of the nation with the penalty of death. Let us also suppose that the
prince of the nation so loves Peter that he has a true and most sincere
will to pardon him and free him from death, but it is a will conditioned
133 Marín-Sola argues that Molina also defends two theological positions: predesti-

nation “post praevisa merita” and “versatile grace” (Marín-Sola,“Respuesta a algunas objeciones,” 70). Marín-Sola’s view likewise “saves” truths contained in these
theological positions. For God’s gift of final perseverance, while free and in no
way “due” to previous merits, can still suppose them; and God’s sufficient grace
can be impeded or not (and is “versatile” in that sense).Thomas himself expressly
taught that predestination could suppose the foreknowledge of futures, both in
the Summa theologiae (III, q. 1, a. 3, ad 4) and in a late quodlibet question (5, 5,
1): that is, in late and most authoritative texts.
134 Marín-Sola mentions this difficulty in “El sistema tomista,” 50 and note 1. He
says it was brought against Gonet first by Johannes Baptist Cardinal Franzelin (De
Deo uno [Rome: Typographia Polyglotta, 1876], 458–59) and then is repeated
later by a defender of the scientia media, Francis Zigon, in Divus Thomas, arbiter
controversiae de concurso divinae (Gorizia, 1923), 148. Zigon was later to offer a
critique of Marín-Sola’s own view from his “Molinist” viewpoint in “MarínSola, OP, de motione divina,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis 8 (1931): 17–46
and 51–72. Herman Lange, SJ, was also to give a Molinist “critique” of his views
in “Marín-Sola, Bañez und Molina,” in Scholastik 1 (1926), 533–65. For an effort
to reply to these objections, and to other objections later advanced by diverse
theologians to Marín-Sola’s view, see my “God’s Permission of Sin,” 413–533.

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by one sole condition: by the condition that the pardon does not
oppose the good of the republic. Let us suppose, finally, that the prince,
after studying the case well, sees that to pardon Peter would be against
the greater good of the republic, and in consequence, he decrees two
things: (a) not to pardon him, but (b) to surrender him to the law and that
he be hanged. In this case, a current and common one every day, two
things are clearly evident: (a) the true and unique cause of not forgiving
Peter (negative reprobation) is not the crime, but the greater good of the
republic, since even after and despite the crime, the prince has the true
and sincere desire to pardon him; (b) on the other hand, the true cause
of hanging him ( positive reprobation), is the crime committed.Thus are
verified two affirmations of the doctrine of St. Thomas: first, that the
motive of positive reprobation is sin; second, that the motive of negative
reprobation is the greater good of the universe, but a good of the universe
that supposes sin, because without sin the salvation of a person would
never be opposed to the good of the universe.135

Marín-Sola’s work in these articles is nothing less than an attempt to
exorcise from Thomism the idea of “negative reprobation ante praevisa
demerita.” So much does his position open itself to the other schools of
Catholic theology on these issues that it has well been said to have
brought an end to the quarrel generated by de auxiliis.136
Despite his last comment noted, Journet clearly continues to be uncertain about these issues. Thus, over two years later, he makes a final
mention of Marín-Sola.137 He indicates that he is now in Manila; he
notes Franzelin’s objection that Marín-Sola had acknowledged and
admits that he continues to find Garrigou-Lagrange’s “solution” to it
unsuccessful;138 and he asks Maritain to work “to shed a little light on
135 Marín-Sola, “Nuevas observaciones,” 370–71, note 1.
136 See Illytd Trethowan, OSB, “St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil,” Dublin Review

212 (1943): 176.This is a review article of Maritain’s book by the above name, and
thus as he articulated Marín-Sola’s position. One can take this idea further. The
recent declaration on justification between Catholics and Lutherans holds that
“personal consent [to grace] . . . is itself an effect of grace” and yet that “a person
can reject the working of grace” ( Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by
the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, 4.1, nos. 20 and 21): This
exactly follows the “directive line” of his thought. And, in emphasizing Damascene’s antecedent will, his position is equally consonant with that of Orthodoxy.
137 Journet, letter no. 276 ( January 11, 1929), 658–75.
138 Ibid., 661. Garrigou-Lagrange’s solution applies the adage “causae ad invicem
sunt causae” to this problem, but Journet here, as previously (for example, letter
no. 139, July 15, 1926, 372) finds this to be a misapplication; for the same aspect
is considered as both previous and posterior to the permission: There is thus a
vicious circle. In other words, he acknowledges that Garrigou-Lagrange fails to
answer Cardinal Franzelin’s objection.

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the question of premotion, above all on the points of resistance to grace”
and how God can know this in his permissive decree.139 Much later, he
himself would attempt to shed some light on these difficulties.140
Given Maritain’s avid interest in Marín-Sola’s views, the degree to
which he vanishes from his correspondence following his last letter is
remarkable. He makes only one other reference to him, almost two years
later, and this in relation to a matter raised in Marín-Sola’s Evolution
(which he had by then read), and not in relation to God’s permission.141
Nevertheless, his interest in the questions raised remained strong. As
Cottier notes in his appendix to the correspondence, Maritain dedicated
his course on metaphysics at the Institut Catholique, in 1936–1939, to
“questions of freedom in God and in man”142 (thereby fulfilling Journet’s
request). It seems, then, that he followed Marín-Sola in fixing his position
only after a thorough examination of Thomas’s text. The evident consequence of this study was to put to rest his lingering doubt about MarínSola’s position. His own writings on this subject come increasingly to
defend ideas and distinctions that derive directly from that position.
We can see the parentage of his position from his very earliest writing
on this subject. In his “A Philosophy of Freedom,” he insists that man is
the first cause of sin, specifically of “the mutilation that deforms my
act,”143 and this is something that he can do “without God, by withdrawing myself, as if by an initiative emanating from my nothing, from the
139 Journet, letter no. 276 ( January 11, 1929), 661.
140 See his Le mal, essai théologique (Paris: Desclee, 1961), in English, The Meaning of

Evil (New York: Kenedy and Sons, 1962), 176–82. He there indicates his clear
sympathy for Maritain’s views, as he had gone on to elaborate them in Existence
and the Existent and in On the Philosophy of History. Journet had already endorsed
Maritain’s positions in Entretiens sur la grâce (Paris: Desclee, 1959), in English, The
Meaning of Grace (New York: Kenedy and Sons, 1960), 25–31, a series of talks first
given in 1956. Indeed, he had communicated to Maritain that, after attentively
reading Existence, he found it “marvellous,” (vol. 3 of their correspondence, letter
no. 937, November 26, 1947).
141 Maritain, letter no. 237 (May 6, 1928), 566. (The editors also annex some texts,
on the matter of Catholic faith and doctrine [749–56] that Journet had supplied
him in September 1927, and which make much use of Evolution.) Maritain ends
by accepting Marín-Sola’s views on the development of doctrine, as can be seen
from a letter in vol. 2 of their correspondence, no. 306 ( January 4 or 11, 1930),
21 and 24. In the same volume, he also expresses to Journet how very pained he
was to learn of Marín-Sola’s death (no. 419, July 31, 1932, 256).
142 Cottier, “La liberté,” 746.
143 Maritain, “Une philosophie de la liberté,” in Du regime temporal et de la liberté
(Paris: Desclée, 1933):The English is from “A Philosophy of Freedom,” in Freedom in the Modern World (London: Sheed and Ward, 1936), 27.

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current of divine causality.”144 Maritain here adopts Marín-Sola’s very own
metaphor. Not surprisingly, he also adopts other elements of his position:
God’s (final) permission supposes our “refusal,” but “does not will to
prevent”145 its effect; history is the result of “concordant or discordant
initiatives”146 of Creator and creature (of being and non-being, respectively); and God’s knowledge of the creature’s first causality in sin is
secured by virtue of His eternity “where all the moments of time are indivisibly present.”147 We also find here his first characteristic exegesis of
John’s “without me you can do nothing.”148 Maritain’s position regarding
sin is altogether brief, but its directive lines are clearly set.
Two years later, he expands on these ideas. He now uses the word
“nihilate” to refer to man’s first initiative in evil, which he here identifies
as the creature’s “free non-attention to the rule of action.”149 This word
(“nihilation”) is unique to Maritain, but he here indicates that it is identical in concept to the “non-consideration of the rule” to which MarínSola had earlier called attention: to the creature’s initial free defect that
causes sin.150 Maritain also again argues that God knows this defect
because it is present to his eternity; but he now further insists that “evil
cannot be known save in the same instant when it thus wounds existence”151 (thus in the creature’s will, and not in God’s will or decree).
Maritain here clearly accepts Marín-Sola’s solution to the difficulty of
God’s infallible knowledge of sin.
He goes even further, answering his own initial worry that this would
“determine” God’s knowledge, by giving us Marín-Sola’s very own
response! Thus, to one so worried (as he had once been), he responds by
asking: “Do you believe that created beings are for divine knowledge
anything else but a secondary term attained as a mere ‘material’ or factual
144 Maritain, “A Philosophy of Freedom,” 27 (my emphasis).
145 Ibid., 27.
146 Ibid., 28.
147 Ibid.
148 Ibid., 27.
149 Maritain, “La clef du chant,” published first in the Nouvelle Revue Française 5

(1935): 778–809; and then as chapter five of Frontières de la poesie et autres essais
(Paris: Rouart, 1935); the English is from “The Freedom of Song,” in Maritain,
Art and Poetry (New York: Philosophical Library, 1943), 85. Journet writes Maritain his strong approval of this article. He does not miss its parentage, saying he
believes that “Father Marín-Sola would have been ravished” by Maritain’s work
(vol. 2, letter no. 518 [May 29, 1935], 466).
150 In his next treatment of this subject, he explains that “nihilate” merely describes
this initial defect “in picturesque present-day language”: Maritain, St.Thomas and
the Problem of Evil (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1942), 24.
151 Maritain, Art and Poetry, 83–84.

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88

datum, in no way formative or specifying?”152 It may be remembered
that Maritain had initially regarded this answer as “risky”; he is now ready
publicly to embrace that risk.
World War II brought Maritain to America, and it was there that he
was to present a “rough draft” of his entire position in his Marquette
lecture of 1942. Here, he even more clearly insists on the real distinction
between sin and the initial defect that is its defective cause, now relying
on the same text of De malo (1, 3) that Marín-Sola had earlier noted: One
must “consider as prior” (“praeintelligitur”) to sin a defect in the will, and
one need seek no further than the will itself for its reason.153 Maritain
also notes that Thomas specifies that this defect is not yet sin or a privation, but the cause of sin or a “negatio pura.”154 In this he is original, for
Marín-Sola had not quoted this text. However, since Thomas divides
defects between privations and negations and since Marín-Sola had
expressly affirmed that the will’s prior failure to use the intellect to
consider the rule was not a sin (and hence not a privation), he had said
virtually as much. Pointing out this text does have the merit, however, of
demonstrating the consistency of Thomas’s position.
There is again nothing more than a verbal novelty in the way Maritain now chooses to speak of the divine motion or grace that is resisted
by the creature: it is one that is “merely ‘sufficient’ or breakable (‘brisable’).”155 There is no real or conceptual difference between a motion
that is “impedible” and one that is “breakable.” Maritain himself later
acknowledged this, saying that he had “proposed this expression ‘breakable motion or actuation’ as a kind of philosophical equivalent of the
theological expression ‘sufficient grace.’ ”156 He also now uses MarínSola’s words of “the lines of good and evil,” pointing out that there is a
“dissymmetry” between them (since the creature is first cause only of an
impediment to God’s motion).The word “dissymmetry” is new, but not
the concept.
All of the distinctions Maritain has been developing hang together and
are aspects of Marín-Sola’s theory.To this point, the remarks Maritain has
made on the subject are embedded in longer works and do not tackle at
length the relation between the divine motion and free will. He does this
152 Ibid., 84.
153 Maritain, St.Thomas and the Problem of Evil, 24. Marín-Sola quotes the text in “El

sistema tomista,” 46, note 1.
154 Ibid., 29.Thomas’s text is De malo, 1, 3, ad 13 (although it is mistakenly printed

as “ad 3” in his lecture).
155 Ibid., 37.
156 Maritain, On the Philosophy of History (New York: Scribners, 1957), 120, note 3.

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first following World War II in the fourth chapter of Existence and the
Existent. In this work, he now makes the following points, all made previously by Marín-Sola: that the creature’s “non-impediment” adds nothing
to the divine motion;157 that a breakable motion moves the free creature
according to the fallible mode proper to its nature;158 that there are two
divine permissions: one that makes sin possible (by moving the creature
in an impedible way), and the other that infallibly entails sin (supposing
that the creature impedes the motion by his defect);159 that the order of
motions that is sufficient or breakable derives from God’s antecedent will,
which is an active will of beneplacitum and not an idle velleity;160 and that
God’s providence “takes into account” the “nihilations” of the creature, as
first cause.161 The latter is clearly just another way of saying that God’s
predestination can suppose a knowledge of our defect (a position MarínSola again expressly defends).162
With Existence and the Existent, Maritain commits himself to MarínSola’s position, both in its directive lines and in its details. On one point,
however, he seems to differ from him slightly. In a lengthy footnote, he
argues that—supposing a creature does not impede the divine motion—
it then receives a new, infallibly efficacious motion that is specifically
different and that effects the good election.163 It seems evident that
Maritain is here trying to accommodate the earlier concern of GarrigouLagrange; for, with him, he here holds that an infallibly efficacious
motion is necessary to cause any good choice. (Or, to put the point
differently, he here appears to be ontologizing Marín-Sola’s sufficient and
efficacious graces, making both types of motions be proper to every
choice.) Yet his thought is murky here. For he also says that, should we
not impede the divine motions, then they “fructify by themselves into the
unshatterable divine activation.”164 This is Marín-Sola’s view. In any case,
Maritain was later to repudiate certain aspects of this footnote and to
157 Maritain, Court Traité de L’Existence et de L’Existant (Paris: Paul Hartmann, 1947);

the English is from Existence and the Existent (New York: Pantheon, 1948), 92. See
also page 100 and its note 10.
158 Ibid., 93–94.
159 Ibid., 110.
160 Ibid., 102.
161 Ibid., 118.
162 Marín-Sola, “El sistema tomista,” 32–40. He is mainly concerned to defend that
predestination supposes the knowledge of sin; as he says (44), the idea that
predestination can also suppose the existence of non-persevering merit is
secondary and not necessary to defend the first proposition.
163 Maritain, Existence and the Existent, note 9, 94–99; see especially 95 and 97.
164 Ibid., 94.

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maintain that its attempted distinctions were “to a large extent incidental” to his main thesis.165
Marín-Sola had himself anticipated the type of reservation that Maritain
apparently had felt. In a footnote, he observed that some Thomists might
“become frightened” by the idea of man’s defect modifying the divine
motion and thus want to hold that it is God himself who modifies His own
motion.166 He says that “this accidental change of formula is to us of little
importance”:167 What is essential is that God never causes the activity in
sin unless man’s defect is supposed as ontologically prior. Now, what is
accidental in regard to an impediment is likewise so in regard to a nonimpediment.The essential point is that God permits a free creature to be
moved to the honest good in a way that can or cannot be impeded, and
that his defect or failure derives from his will alone, not God’s permission.
Given the extraordinary degree to which Maritain follows MarínSola, it is remarkable that he does not mention him further. His involved
footnote may supply the reason: He was still mindful of GarrigouLagrange and his former strong opposition to this view. Perhaps Maritain
felt that he was trying to stake out a “middle ground” between the two
positions. More likely, he simply did not want to find himself in
contention with his old “mentor.”168 He was evidently not the only one
to proceed in this manner. For, in his notes to volume 1 of the Spanish
bilingual edition of the Summa theologiae published that same year, Francisco Muñiz, OP, advocates Marín-Sola’s position on these matters . . .
without ever once mentioning his name!169 He acted the same way
165 Maritain, God and the Permission of Evil, viii. In that same work, he says that his

thought in that footnote involved a “complementary distinction badly arrived
at” (55).
166 Marín-Sola, “Respuesta a algunas objeciones,” 64, note 1.
167 Ibid.
168 He would not have been wrong to be mindful of Garrigou-Lagrange! The latter
saw not only the likeness between Maritain’s views and those of González
d’Albeda and Guillermin, but that Maritain had gone “much further” (“beaucoup plus loin”) than they, precisely in allowing that the initial defect in sin does not
infallibly follow a divine permission (my emphasis). He tells Maritain that such an
admission will lead “much further than he thinks,” and he expresses his “deep
regret” that he had published these pages: See vol. 3, letter no. 957 (April 18,
1948), 639. Maritain replies, briefly defending his position, and again without
mentioning Marín-Sola.
169 Francisco Muñiz, OP, Suma teologica de santo Tomas de Aquino, vol. 1 (Madrid:
Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1947), appendix 2, 979–1055.That Muñiz’s views
were those of Marín-Sola did not go unnoticed; see José Sagües, SJ, “Reflexiones
teológicas: Crisis en el Bañecianismo?” Estudios Eclesiásticos 22 (1948): 699–749.

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when he later supplied the notes to the volume on God’s grace.170 Given
that he was a younger colleague of Garrigou-Lagrange at the Angelicum,
his behavior is not altogether surprising: The latter was still a powerful
figure in Rome. Maritain may likewise have felt that it was wise for him
to distance himself from this “Dominican quarrel.”
If so, he was not entirely successful. To begin with, his position gave
rise to a series of articles in the Revue Thomiste, with many Dominicans
“weighing in” (mostly favorably) on the ideas he had presented in Existence and the Existent.171 And then Jean-Hervé Nicolas, OP, wrote a
sustained article that was pointedly critical of his views.172 During this
period, Maritain had continued to meditate on ideas related to this
matter.173 He was thus prepared to reply to Nicolas, clarifying his views
170 Francisco

Muñiz, OP, Suma, vol. 5 (1956), appendix 1, esp. 757–81. Jesus
Valabuena, OP, likewise followed Marín-Sola, and acknowledged as much, in his
appendix 2, in vol. 3b of the Suma (1959), “El influjo de la causa primera en el
obrar de las causas segundas,” 1117–1183.
171 See M.-J. Nicolas, OP, “La liberté humaine et le problème du mal,” Revue
Thomiste 48 (1948): 191–217; C. J. Geffré, “La possibilité du péché,” Revue
Thomiste 57 (1957): 214–45; G. Bavaud, “La doctrine du Père Marín-Sola sur la
grâce: est-il une concession au Molinisme?” Revue Thomiste 58 (1958): 473–83;
and M.-J. Nicolas,“Simples réflexions sur la doctrine thomiste de la grâce,” Revue
Thomiste 58 (1958): 645–53.
172 J.-H. Nicolas, “La permission du mal”: For the full reference, see note 3, above.
This gave rise to further articles in the Revue Thomiste, mostly supportive of
Maritain. See G. Bavaud, “Comment Dieu permit-il et connaît-il le péché?”
Revue Thomiste 61 (1961): 226–40; M. Corvez,“Où commence le péché?” Revue
Thomiste 64 (1964): 53–62; L. M. Antoniotti, “La volonté antécédente et
conséquent selon S. Jean Damascène et S. Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue Thomiste 65
(1965): 52–77; J. P.Arfeuil,“Le dessein sauveur de Dieu, le doctrine de la prédestination selon S.Thomas d’Aquin, Revue Thomiste 74 (1974): 591–641; and M. L.
Guérard des Lauriers, “Le péché et la causalité,” in the Bulletin Thomiste 11
(1960–1962): 553–637. It is ironic that J.-H. Nicolas defended the same line as
Garrigou-Lagrange . . . but while at Fribourg; whereas Muñiz defended MarínSola’s views . . . while he was at the Angelicum! (And Maritain also developed
his “defense” of Marín-Sola while he was in Rome!)
173 In “Le péché de l’ange, essai de ré-interpretation des positions thomistes,” Revue
Thomiste 56 (1956): 197–239, English: The Sin of the Angel (Westminster, MA:
Newman, 1959), esp. 5–15, Maritain applied the structure of the free fallible act
to the angel. And, in Neuf leçons sur les notions premières de la philosophie morale
(Paris:Tequi, 1951), 174–76, English: An Introduction to the Basic Problems of Moral
Philosophy (New York: Magi, 1990), 195–97, he begins to reflect on what in God
is resisted by our sin, reflections that would later reach their culmination in one
of his last essays,“Réflexions sur le savoir théologique,” Revue Thomiste 69 (1969):
5–27, esp. 14–26; English, “For an Existential Epistemology II: Reflections on
Theological Knowledge,” in Untrammeled Approaches.

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and giving his final and definitive position, in Dieu et la permission du
mal.174 In this work, he returns to Marín-Sola’s position, affirming that a
“shatterable” motion infallibly effects a tendency toward a good act, yet
“can non-attain the final object to which it tends.”175 These are just
different words for what Marín-Sola had earlier taught: that the divine
motion infallibly effects the beginning of the good act, but that it may
not reach its final term (due to an impediment). And Maritain further
follows Marín-Sola in holding that the divine motion continues to the
act of sin, but now as deformed by the defect: “[A]ll ordination to the
moral good being suppressed by the fact of nihilation of the creature, the
shatterable motion towards the moral good gives way to a simple premotion to all that there is of the ontological in the act of election.”176
Again, the difference between them is only verbal, not conceptual or real.
It is even more remarkable that Maritain does not mention Marín-Sola
in his reply to Nicolas, since the latter had distinguished his view from that
of Marín-Sola. Here was the perfect opportunity to “set the record straight”!
Yet he does not do this.This unfortunately allowed Nicolas’s characterization to stand.Thomists had to await the Journet–Maritain correspondence
to see the degree to which it was inaccurate. (Nicolas, of course, had no
access to that correspondence when he wrote. It was only published thirtyfive years later.) Maritain does here refer to Garrigou-Lagrange precisely as
one who had “advanced” the traditional Dominican position in the right
direction!177 This remark becomes a little less puzzling if one remembers
that Maritain then goes on to criticize this position in no uncertain terms.
Nevertheless, it does not clarify the parentage of his own views. Perhaps he
felt that certain of his distinctions importantly distinguished his views from
those of Marín-Sola. For he suggests that he may have made an “effective
contribution” to philosophy more on this matter than anywhere else in his
work.178 He does engage in certain “baroque” reflections on some of the
finer points involved in the theory,179 and he was fond of such points, such
as were often made by his favorite commentator, John of St.Thomas.
Specifically, as I noted earlier, Maritain had called attention to the fact
that Thomas describes the voluntary non-consideration of the rule as a
174 Maritain: in English, God and the Permission of Evil (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1966).
175 Ibid., 56.
176 Ibid., 57–58.
177 Ibid., 19.
178 Ibid., foreword, viii.
179 Specifically, see his “schemas” no. 2 and no. 3 in chapter II/II, regarding the “ulti-

mate time” of deliberation and the “moments of nature” involved in the sinful
act: God and the Permission of Evil, 47–54.

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“negatio pura.” This term suggests that Thomas is thinking of a nonconsideration during the time of deliberation. In fact, when we deliberate about what we should do, we may consider many things. While we
are considering, for example, the pleasure that might come from acting a
certain way, we are then not considering the moral rule that should
govern all our action (and that may prohibit our acting for this pleasure).
Yet this non-consideration is clearly no fault, nor is it even connected to
sin, as its defective cause, since we can go on to consider that rule before
we act, and can choose in accordance with it (rejecting the pleasure
considered). Thus, prior to the final judgment that terminates deliberation, any non-consideration is clearly nothing more than a negation, an
absence that is not due; for we need only consider the rule when we
proceed to make our choice. However, from the viewpoint of a faulty
final practical judgment, we can and should rightly say, “this judgment
was my fault, because I did not consider the rule (that should govern my
action), as I could have.”Thus, we can and should also say,“that voluntary
non-consideration was prior to and the cause of this judgment being
defective”; as Thomas says, we can “pre-consider” the non-consideration
in the intellect (and we can likewise pre-consider the voluntary non-use
of the intellect by the will).
Maritain, in noting that the voluntary non-consideration is a “negatio
pura,” emphasizes the time of deliberation that precedes the final practical
judgment. In this, as earlier noted, he is original. Marín-Sola, on the other
hand, emphasizes the final practical judgment itself that establishes the
connection between the non-consideration of deliberation and the subsequent inconsiderate and sinful election.180 Yet these emphases are in truth
perfectly complementary:They are mutually related aspects of an identical theory. Perhaps Maritain felt that his own speculations helped explicate and defend a theory he had come to regard as deeply important, and
that his “effective contribution” lay chiefly in its defense.Whether he did
or not, it was through Maritain that Marín-Sola’s position was to affect
French and English Thomists181 (as it was to affect Spanish Thomists
through the work of Muñiz and Valabuena). Marín-Sola, as he himself said,
180 Maritain speaks of this, without identifying it as the final practical judgment. In

his analysis, this is the first “moment of nature” involved in sin, a moment subsequent to the time of deliberation and prior to the sinful choice itself: a moment
in which the prior “negatio pura” (non-consideration) now is sin’s negative
cause.
181 To take only one instance, I myself came to take an interest in Marín-Sola’s view
after having first become acquainted with it through the work of Maritain (and
the critique of J.-H. Nicolas to which he makes reference).

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Michael Torre

had a real “veneration” for Maritain; he had “thought constantly” of him
as he presented his doctrine; and he was obviously very much concerned
to know how he had received his last articles.There is something fitting,
then, that it was through Maritain (a far more famous figure than he) that
his doctrine was to have a worldwide impact and to receive the attention
it so clearly deserved. I think it must please him that God in his providence arranged matters this way.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 4, No. 1 (2006): 95–200

95

Book Symposium
The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship:
A Constructive Conversation
by Luke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, SJ
(Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002)

The Future of Christian Biblical Scholarship
R ICHARD B. H AYS
The Divinity School, Duke University
Durham, North Carolina

I AM PLEASED that Nova et Vetera has invited me, as a Protestant biblical scholar, to join the “constructive conversation” that Luke Timothy
Johnson and William S. Kurz seek to initiate, a conversation about future
directions for biblical interpretation. While their book addresses itself
explicitly to the future of Catholic biblical scholarship, its preface implies
the hope that their proposals might be of more general relevance.1 Their
diagnosis of the present situation is indeed pertinent for other ecclesial
communities, and many features of their constructive program will prove
instructive for interpreters outside the Roman Catholic Church. I want to
begin this response, therefore, by emphasizing the substantial common
ground between this book and my own perspective.
Finding Common Ground
Johnson’s diagnosis of the problems that we face hits the mark at numerous points.2 I concur with him that biblical scholarship within the
1 “Others can help us discover whether what we say on these things . . . applies

also to other spheres.” Luke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, SJ, The Future
of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), viii.
2 I refer here particularly to the book’s opening chapter, written by Johnson,
“What’s Catholic about Catholic Biblical Scholarship? An Opening Statement,”
in ibid., 3–34.

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professional guilds has frequently been overdetermined by certain postEnlightenment tendencies: a distaste for theology; a predisposition for
highlighting disunity among the biblical witnesses; a hankering to reconstruct hypothetical layers, sources, and origins “behind” the biblical texts
(even where there is no real evidence) and to assign privileged authority to
these hypothetical earlier materials over the canonical witnesses; and an
assumption that the Church’s history of interpretation is chiefly a history
of misreading the original (and therefore “real”) meaning of the texts.
Johnson’s description accurately characterizes the state of affairs in many
sectors of the New Testament guild: “In short, the study of the Bible (not
understood as “Scripture”) is increasingly an academic activity that is not
merely secular but often actively antireligious in character” (26).3
Johnson correctly observes that this Tendenz of scholarship has had its
impact even on interpreters who teach in seminaries and church-related
colleges: While they may privately hold to traditions of Christian faith
and piety, their actual teaching of the Bible is constrained by professional
allegiance to illusory ideals of scientific objectivity and intellectual
neutrality, and their understanding of the historical data may be shaped
by critical paradigms that are implicitly anti-ecclesial.Thus, for example,
courses on the Old Testament—even in seminaries—may teach students
to eschew Christological interpretations of Isaiah or the Psalms and may
insist that “Hebrew Bible” texts must be understood only within their
hypothetically reconstructed historical context in ancient Israel. Or, to
take a couple of New Testament examples, the hypothetical “Q” may be
regarded as a more reliable source for understanding Jesus than the
Gospel of John; and the Pastoral Epistles and Catholic Epistles may be
treated as having lesser value than the seven undisputedly authentic
Pauline letters.4 Such tendencies are widespread in Protestant scholarship
no less than in the Catholic scene that Johnson describes; indeed, one of
his claims is that these tendencies infected Catholic scholarship because
“second generation” Catholic biblical scholars uncritically reproduced
characteristics of the Protestant historical criticism that they sought to
emulate. The result has been that biblical scholarship—Catholic and
Protestant alike—finds itself alienated from theology and distanced from
the prayer and practice of the Church.
As I shall suggest below, Johnson’s portrayal of the situation is selectively and unsympathetically drawn. Nonetheless, the difficulties to which
3 Ibid., 26. Subsequent parenthetical page numbers in this essay, unless otherwise

noted, refer to Johnson and Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship.
4 These examples are mine, not Johnson’s, but I think they fairly illustrate the point

he seeks to make.

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he points are not imaginary.Anyone who surveys the field of professional
biblical scholarship at the beginning of the twenty-first century will
readily recognize that Johnson has identified tendencies and forces that
do in fact exercise powerful influence in the academic world.
In light of this diagnosis of the problem, Johnson and Kurz offer a
number of prescriptive proposals, all of which are to be welcomed.They
call for a recovery of biblical interpretation as a properly ecclesial activity
that seeks not merely the acquisition of knowledge (scientia) but also the
formation of wisdom (sapientia). Interpretation so conceived must conduct
its business in open and sympathetic conversation with the Church’s
liturgy, with theology, and above all with the history of interpretation, in
the expectation that interpreters today stand to learn much from skilled
Christian readers in the past. As Johnson and Kurz rightly indicate, such
an approach to interpretation will necessarily open itself to figurative
senses of Scripture, as well as literal ones, recognizing that a text’s meaning is not exhausted by its initial historical reference. Both authors are
careful to stipulate that “the doing of history must remain a permanent
aspect of biblical study” (18).Their chief concern, however, is to summon
biblical scholars to a new and edifying dialogue with the Church’s rich
tradition of scriptural interpretation.
To their credit, Johnson and Kurz offer us not merely prescriptive
declarations but actual examples of the sort of interpretation they advocate: Kurz through several chapters expounding passages from the Gospel
of John, and Johnson through two incisive chapters on Origen and
Augustine as biblical interpreters.These two chapters in particular are so
strong that this reader finds himself wishing for more; perhaps Johnson
will favor us in the future with further studies of patristic exegesis. One
fears that the fine insights of Johnson’s treatment of Origen and Augustine may not receive the attention they deserve, since they are tucked
away within a book that is chiefly a programmatic manifesto.
As I read The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, I was immediately
struck by the intellectual and spiritual convergence between this book
and several other recent scholarly proposals. One thinks, for example, of
the pioneering efforts of Brevard Childs to recover the history of exegesis, including premodern exegesis, as an integral element of biblical interpretation.5 Or one recalls Hans Frei’s influential argument, in The Eclipse
5 See, for example, Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological

Commentary (Philadelphia:Westminster Press, 1974); idem, Biblical Theology of the
Old and New Testaments:Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1993); idem, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture
(Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004).

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of Biblical Narrative, that biblical interpretation in the German academy
during the Enlightenment and afterward lost its bearings by its inability
to read biblical texts as coherent narratives that must be read figurally.6 To
cite more recent examples, one thinks of the work of New Testament
scholars, such as Francis Watson and Stephen Fowl, who have sharply
challenged some of the same aspects of the prevailing historical-critical
paradigm that Johnson and Kurz identify; in different ways, each calls for
a robust recovery of theological exegesis.7 Or, to mention one particularly striking instance, one thinks of David Steinmetz’s widely cited 1980
essay, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” which concludes with
the following provocative assessment:
The medieval theory of levels of meaning in the biblical texts, with all
its undoubted defects, flourished because it is true, while the modern
theory of a single meaning, with all its demonstrable virtues, is false.
Until the historical-critical method becomes critical of its own theoretical foundations and develops a hermeneutical theory adequate to
the nature of the text which it is interpreting, it will remain
restricted—as it deserves to be—to the guild and the academy, where
the question of truth can be endlessly deferred.8

Certainly Steinmetz’s view of things ought to be profoundly congenial
to Johnson and Kurz’s program.
Finally, as a participant in an initiative called the Scripture Project,
sponsored during the years 1998–2002 by the Center of Theological
Inquiry in Princeton, I am impressed by the very substantial convergence
of Johnson and Kurz’s agenda with the findings of our research group,
published in a collection of essays called The Art of Reading Scripture.9 The
members of the Scripture Project—a group of fifteen scholars, both
Protestant and Catholic, spanning the disciplines of Old Testament, New
Testament, theology, Church history, and the practice of ministry—articulated their agreement in a set of “Nine Theses on the Interpretation of
Scripture” that envision a future for biblical interpretation that closely
6 Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative:A Study in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-

Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1974).
7 Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T.

Clark, 1997); Stephen Fowl, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).
8 David C. Steinmetz,“The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” in The Theological
Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. S. Fowl (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1997), 26–38.The quotation is found on p. 37.
9 E. F. Davis and R. B. Hays, eds., The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003).

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parallels Johnson’s five “Premises of Premodern Interpretation” (47–60)
and four “essential elements in recovering a scriptural imagination”
(131–42). The Scripture Project’s nine theses insist that Scripture is
chiefly about the triune God and call for, inter alia, reading Scripture in
and for the Church, in light of the Church’s rule of faith and the
hermeneutical example of the saints.10
Thus, a good case can be made that Johnson and Kurz are speaking in
chorus with an impressive cloud of witnesses, not only in the Church’s
past but also in the present moment. They are not lonely voices in the
wilderness; rather, they stand within the ranks of a widespread reforming
movement in biblical studies.
Questions and Puzzlements
And yet, despite my appreciation for the work of Johnson and Kurz, and
despite my fundamental agreement with key aspects of their program, I
come to the end of their book with certain nagging questions and puzzlements.These may be enumerated briefly as follows: (1) Why is their proposal formulated in a way that seems unnecessarily uncharitable toward
Protestant interpreters? (2) What, if any, criteria enable us to decide when
it might be appropriate to disagree with interpretations that have become
traditional within the Church? and (3) Are Johnson and Kurz proposing a
common vision, or do their distinct sections of the book embody materially different prescriptions for biblical interpretation? In the following
remarks, I shall address each of these questions in turn.
Polemic Against Protestantism
First, is it really necessary for Catholic biblical scholarship, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to define its task in polemical opposition
to Protestantism? Throughout The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship,
one stumbles over careless caricatures of Protestantism and a puzzling
tendency to conflate Protestant biblical interpretation with Enlightenment worldviews. We read that the deleterious aspects of the historicalcritical paradigm are a result of certain “mental reflexes” of “the Protestant
form of Christianity from which the model derived” (15).The “reflexes”
to which Johnson refers are then explained as follows: “In contrast to the
conjunctive ‘both/and’ that I have suggested expresses the spirit of
Catholicism, the Protestant ethos is expressed in terms of the disjunctive
‘either/or’ ” (15–16).The Lutheran slogan Sola Scriptura is said to entail the
consequences that Scripture and Tradition can never be in dialectical
10 For the nine theses, see Davis and Hays, Art of Reading Scripture, 1–5.

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harmony, that “the development of Christianity must be regarded as
opposed to the spirit of its origins,” and that “the literal sense of Scripture
must be opposed to figurative interpretations” (16).
It must be admitted that Johnson’s sweeping caricature of Protestantism has some basis in historical reality—as caricatures usually do—
and that some Protestant scholarship has exhibited the tendencies that
Johnson deplores. Nonetheless, Lutheran interpreters would surely reply
that Luther’s own understanding of the relationship between Scripture
and Tradition was far more nuanced than Johnson’s bumper-sticker
dichotomies would allow: Luther believed that authentic Christian tradition was in fact harmonious with Scripture, while Scripture provides the
criteria whereby one can identify inauthentic and abusive developments
of tradition, such as the selling of indulgences.11
The simplistic polemic against Protestant interpretation reaches its
climax in Kurz’s chapter, “Voices in the Church: Preunderstandings in
Applying Scripture” (182–202), which mounts a critique of the chapter
on abortion in my book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament.12 The
difference between Kurz’s position and my own is said to present a
contrast between Protestant and Catholic hermeneutical preunderstandings, in which my argument allegedly reflects “a Sola Scriptura insistence
that something has to be expressly treated in Scripture to be binding,”
whereas Kurz’s argument represents a Catholic way of interpreting Scripture “within our broader Catholic context of Revelation” (187). I shall
return later in this essay to reply specifically to Kurz’s assessment, which
I believe represents an unfortunate misreading of my book—a misreading seemingly fostered by his reading of my work through the lens of this
Protestant/Catholic dichotomy. For now, I simply register the question
whether “the future of Catholic biblical scholarship” requires this kind of
aggressive posture toward Protestant interpreters. It seems to me that it is
Johnson and Kurz who are pressing a disjunctive “either/or” mentality that
disregards the complexity of hermeneutical debates within Protestantism
and threatens to undermine some of the goodwill built up during the
past forty years of ecumenical conversation.13 ( Johnson notes in a humor11 See D. C. Steinmetz, Luther in Context, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Acad-

emic, 2002).
12 Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New

Creation (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 444–61.
13 One notes with gratitude in the book’s concluding chapter a brief affirmation of

the importance of ecumenical conversation in biblical interpretation (267).
While welcoming this affirmation, I find it somewhat dissonant with the features
of the book noted above.

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ous aside [5] that his own dichotomous characterization of Protestantism
and Catholicism embodies precisely the disjunctive reflex against which
he is polemicizing, but he excuses this disconcerting fact by observing
that “Catholics also have a high tolerance for paradox!”)
The antagonistic stance of The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship
toward Protestant biblical interpretation is particularly strange in light of
the developments I described above: Some very influential Protestant interpreters have for the past generation been engaged in sustained efforts to
reclaim precisely the hermeneutical approach that Johnson and Kurz advocate: respect for the history of premodern exegesis, openness to figural
readings, the recovery of theological interpretation, and efforts to inhabit
Scripture’s imaginative world.14 (Has anyone achieved the last of these aims
more impressively than Karl Barth?) It is perhaps worth remarking that the
publisher of The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship is not one of the traditional Roman Catholic publishing houses but rather William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, a publisher traditionally identified with the Reformed
branch of Protestantism.This is surely a fact worth pondering.
Johnson describes himself as “a Catholic whose professional training as
a New Testament scholar took place at Yale, the very belly of the Enlightenment beast” (4–5). Presumably this is another attempt at humor. I, for
one, find the humor in dubious taste; it gratuitously dishonors the work
of Christian scholars such as Childs, Frei, and George Lindbeck, all of
whom were members of the Yale faculty during Johnson’s years as a
student and junior faculty member there.15 Surely Johnson’s characteristic emphases on narrative hermeneutics and recovery of the history of
tradition must have been encouraged by his Yale environment more than
he acknowledges in this book.
14 I note, for example, that twelve of the fifteen scholars who participated in the

Scripture Project were Protestants, who found much common ground with—
and were richly instructed by—the three Catholic participants: Gary Anderson,
Brian Daley, and Robin Darling Young (all three of whom are now members of
the faculty at Notre Dame). I think it would be fair to observe that The Art of
Reading Scripture is free of the “Catholic vs. Protestant” polemic that appears in
The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship.
15 Admittedly, none of these scholars taught specifically in the field of New Testament, Johnson’s own discipline. Perhaps there is a more complex story to be told
here; some clues may be detected through reading Wayne Meeks’s stringently
anti-theological presidential address to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas
in Barcelona in 2004 (now published as “Why Study the New Testament?” New
Testament Studies 51 [2005]: 155–70). But even in the field of New Testament,
one can hardly avoid recalling the work, in an earlier generation, of Yale’s Paul
Minear, a scholar whose life work might aptly be summed up in Johnson’s
phrase, “imagining the world that Scripture imagines.”

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In short, one of my first impulses after reading The Future of Catholic
Biblical Scholarship was to pick up the phone, call the authors, and say,
“Hey, Luke and Bill, hold your fire; we’re on the same side!” I did not do
that. But this essay represents my attempt to re-establish diplomatic relations between interpretive forces that ought to be allies.The real enemy
of Johnson and Kurz’s hermeneutical project is not Protestantism but
Enlightenment secularism and its strange postmodern derivatives. My
point here can be made simply: I would find their book more generous,
and wiser, if they had chosen to imagine and write about The Future of
Christian Biblical Scholarship.16
A corollary of The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship’s antagonism
toward Protestantism is Johnson’s searing indictment of “biblical theology.” In Johnson’s view, the enterprise of “biblical theology” seeks to
impose “a false harmony” on the diverse witnesses of Scripture “by means
of some extrinsic category.” (Would it be fair to ask how such procedures
might differ from Augustine’s insistence on the unity of Scripture, his
explicit attempts to harmonize the Gospels, and his use of “charity” as the
material hermeneutical norm for all scriptural interpretation?) Or, to
state a different accusation, biblical theology seeks “to close the gap
between historical criticism and the Bible” simply through “the use of
more history.” But this attempt is doomed, because “Biblical theology
manages to keep the world of Scripture firmly in the past.” Biblical theology, according to Johnson’s account, “derives neither inspiration nor
authority from the life of the Church, and it does not address itself to the
transformation of human existence within a community that imagines
itself living within the world imagined by Scripture” (129–30).This is an
astonishing charge.
I am at a loss to identify the actual targets of Johnson’s polemic against
biblical theology. Perhaps Johnson’s harsh judgments are, to some limited
extent, true of the exponents of the “Biblical Theology Movement” of
the 1950s and 1960s, but it is very difficult to see how such charges can
be sustained against the interpreters I have listed above, including Watson,
the most articulate recent advocate of “biblical theology.” (Consider the
concluding sentence of Childs’s most recent book: “By reviewing the
16 I might also raise the question of whether Johnson’s polemic does justice to the

Christian motivations and contributions of the Catholic biblical scholars of what
he calls the “second generation.” Kurz is characteristically more cautious on this
point and more appreciative of the positive pastoral contributions of the “second
generation” (see, for example, 146). I am sure, however, that this question has
already been vigorously debated within the Catholic Biblical Association, and
perhaps it would be wiser for me to stay out of this family dispute.

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history of the Church’s biblical interpretation, we can derive new confidence in confessing with the creed: I believe in the one holy catholic and
apostolic Church.”)17 It is simply baffling that Johnson seeks to document his case by referring in a footnote to Wayne Meeks’s The Origins of
Christian Morality as an illustration of the alleged tendency of biblical
theology to devolve into “an exercise in the history of ideas, or an
ethnography of ancient culture.” (130, note 21) In fact, there is no more
adamant foe of biblical theology than Wayne Meeks.18 Johnson is once
again firing at the wrong target.19
This is perhaps the place to state my puzzlement about a powerful
ambivalence that runs through Johnson’s discussion. Does he or does he
not see himself living within the world imagined by Scripture? Or to use
Johnson’s own metaphor, is Scripture for him a lost city or a living city?
On the one hand, he is fiercely critical of biblical theologians and historical critics who no longer inhabit the scriptural world and who must
therefore “approach” Scripture from “somewhere else” (127–28). On the
other hand, within the very same chapter, he can describe himself as a
postmodern person who is “estranged from the world of Scripture, but . . .
not contemptuous of it.” He can declare that “the greatest difficulty our
17 Childs, Struggle to Understand Isaiah, 323.
18 “[W]e should start by erasing from our vocabulary the terms ‘biblical theology’

and, even more urgently,‘New Testament theology.’ Whatever positive contributions these concepts may have made in the conversation since Gabler, we have
come to a time when they can only blinker our understanding” (Meeks, “Why
Study the New Testament?” 167–68).
19 Equally strange is Johnson’s complaint (129, note 19) that my book The Moral
Vision of the New Testament makes “ ‘the historical Jesus’ a key element of New
Testament theology.” As even the casual reader of my book will see, the problem
of the historical Jesus is treated in a ten-page excursus following a much more
extensive discussion of the individual Gospel witnesses. This excursus begins
with a lengthy explanation of my decision not to make the historical Jesus central:
“the historian’s re-imagining of Jesus, however informative and interesting, can
never claim the same normative theological status as the four diverse canonical
accounts” (Moral Vision, 160). Further, the excursus leads to this judgment in the
final paragraph: “Thus, in one sense, the reconstruction of the historical Jesus
adds nothing new to New Testament ethics. If it adds anything at all, it is merely
what Luke calls asphaleia, a confidence in the truth of the things about which we
have been instructed by the storytellers who wrote the Gospels” (167).When my
book moves in its last section to the treatment of specific ethical problems (Moral
Vision, 313–470), “the historical Jesus” plays virtually no role at all. Johnson has
elsewhere articulated other criticisms of Moral Vision that are more substantive,
but on this point his critique is misplaced. It appears that my book has simply
gotten caught in the crossfire of Johnson’s indiscriminate assault on Protestant
biblical theology.

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Book Symposium

generation has in doing theology is our distance from the imaginative
world of Scripture, which means, our distance from the God revealed by
the world as imagined by Scripture” (122). And he can describe his own
hermeneutical project in the following language:“I argue that the peculiar challenge to faith today is to oscillate creatively between worlds
constructed by secular analyses and the world constructed by Scripture”
(132, note 24). Is that not precisely what Rudolf Bultmann did in his day?
And is it not very much the same thing attempted by the “biblical
theologians” for whom Johnson expresses such dismissive contempt? The
dizzying rhetorical reversals enacted within these few pages rival the
dialectical self-accusations performed by that master of theological
dialectics, the Apostle Paul, in Romans 7: “I do not understand my own
actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” At
the very least, in light of this complex hermeneutical situation, Johnson
ought to consider adopting a more charitable posture toward other interpreters who grapple with very similar problems.
Criteria for Discernment
We turn now to a different issue. On what basis might we as interpreters
of Scripture take positions that differ from the received traditions of the
Catholic Church? Johnson explicitly indicates that respectful and receptive reading of the tradition does not necessitate agreement with it:
“Closer examination of these ancient interpreters will reveal the ways in
which we can and should disagree with them” (61).20 But on what
grounds? Johnson never offers an explicit, focused answer to this question, but as the discussion unfolds, several examples of such disagreement—or development—come to the surface.
First, Johnson evidently believes that late modernity has developed an
understanding of narrative meaning that is more sophisticated than, and at
least in some respects superior to, the hermeneutical theories accessible
to patristic interpreters. This point emerges particularly in Johnson’s
critique of Augustine:“Augustine lacked a theory of language that would
enable him to find a place between allegory and literal-as-referential as a
mode of truth-telling in Scripture.” This theoretical deficiency left
Augustine caught in a bind in his attempts to respond to Faustus the
Manichaean: In order to defend the truth of the Gospels’ witness to Jesus,
he was forced to fall back on literalistic attempts at harmonization.
“Trying to prove too much, he falls into the danger of the very vice he
20 One looks in vain for any such suggestion in Kurz’s contributions to the book.

This is one of the significant differences to which we shall return below.

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despises, namely of manipulating the evidence in order to achieve the
desired result” (104–6). Johnson’s critique—a critique surrounded by much
appreciative exposition of Augustine’s underlying concerns—is exactly
correct:“His anxiety concerning the historicity of the Gospels . . . led him
to downplay the very real critical problems presented by their differences” (108). Indeed, Augustine’s Harmony of the Gospels is replete with
strained and unpersuasive attempts to explain away these differences,
while at the same time remarkably oblivious—from our point of view—
to the literary and theological distinctiveness of each of the four witnesses.
Augustine’s literalistic harmonizing, which finds its modernist counterpart in fundamentalist apologetics, offers no real solution.
Scholars in modernity who did recognize “the very real critical problems” presented by the differences among the Gospels, however, plunged
almost inescapably into the realm of historical speculation that so absorbed
Johnson’s “second generation” of Catholic scholars, as they attempted to
reconstruct the historical events behind the Gospels and the processes of
composition and editing that yielded the texts as we now have them. Johnson also regards this sort of explanatory effort as a hermeneutical dead end.
The alternative, in Johnson’s view, is a “theory of ‘narrative truth’ ”
(106) that allows us to escape from the conundrum posed by Augustinian literalism on one hand and historical criticism on the other. He articulates this constructive approach to narrative in a couple of brief
paragraphs near the end of the book, in his “Response to Bill Kurz”:
Patristic and medieval interpreters rarely if ever saw compositions
whole. The premise of contemporary literary criticism, that narratives
bear meaning immanently in and through the composition as such and
as a whole, is only rarely spotted in antiquity. Patristic and medieval
interpreters had much more of an atomistic approach to narratives,
seeing them in more oracular terms.
The development of literary criticism within biblical scholarship is
. . . to be applauded because it enables us to ask the question about the truth
of narratives in ways that are more creative and flexible than were available,
for example, to Augustine.We can think of the Gospels as rendering the
figure of Jesus truly even if they disagree in their telling and cannot be
harmonized as historical sources. They speak truth precisely as witnesses
and interpretations, in and through the form of narrative (250–51).

Once again, I find myself, broadly speaking, in agreement with Johnson at
this point.21 The problem, however, is that The Future of Catholic Biblical
21 Here again Johnson’s work is strikingly convergent with the proposals of The Art

of Reading Scripture.

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Scholarship offers very little explicit development of this extremely important claim.What precisely does it mean to say that the Gospels render the
identity of Jesus “truly” even if they are not referentially factual? Is the
correspondence between narrative and history a matter of complete indifference for theological interpretation? If not, how do we understand the
relationship between them? And why is Johnson’s literary-critical theory
of narrative truth preferable to Augustine’s?
These are not novel questions, and—to be fair—Johnson has addressed
them to some extent in other books.22 Nonetheless, one comes away
from The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship with the slightly uneasy
sense that Johnson and Kurz are tying the future of Catholic biblical
scholarship to a particular hermeneutical proposal about narrative that is
decidedly underdeveloped in the present volume. If they hope to rally
Catholic (or, as I would prefer, Christian) scholars around their proposal,
they owe us a more expansive account of these matters.
The closest Johnson comes in The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship
to addressing these questions is in his final substantive chapter, “Imagining the World That Scripture Imagines” (119–42). Here he sketches the
outlines of a sapientia that will enable us to interpret the Bible more faithfully. His proposal, in brief, has four components: (1) We must learn to
apprehend Scripture not as a descriptive or propositional text but as a
fountainhead of imaginative vision,“as a vast collection of interconnected
and internally coherent images” (133). (2) We must read Scripture
together in “communities of practice” (134), small reading communities
dedicated to Christian discipleship. (3) We must learn anew to read Scripture imaginatively, moving beyond the literal/historical to grasp “the rich
world of image and metaphor within Scripture’s compositions” (136).23
(4) We must read Scripture in dialogical interaction with “close and
obedient attention to actual human experience in the world” (141).
The last of these “four essential elements in recovering a scriptural imagination” (131), though it receives the briefest development (141–42), seems
to be singled out as particularly important. (Note that in contrast to the first
three elements, it receives a new bold heading in the text.) Johnson wants
us to attend, precisely in our reading of Scripture, to “the work of the
22 L. T. Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the

Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996); idem,
Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
1999); idem, The Gospel of Luke (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991).
23 The difference between Johnson’s first and third points here is not immediately
evident; clearly, they are closely related. In any case, I eagerly endorse at least the
first three of Johnson’s four desiderata.

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Living God in the world” as it is encountered through “human stories.”
Johnson suggests (remarkably) that contemporary theology has been inattentive to human experience24 and argues that “the human drama of idolatry and sin, grace and faith” can be “if properly heard, revelatory.”
Johnson’s recommendation at this point is strongly reminiscent of a
powerful strain of Protestant liberalism, running from Schleiermacher to
Bultmann to some contemporary feminist theologies. It would be illuminating for Johnson to clarify how his program parallels or differs from
these sorts of experientially centered theologies—whose besetting weakness is a tendency to turn theology into anthropology. One worries
slightly about Johnson’s mandate that we give “obedient attention” to
human experience.What might it mean to owe “obedience” to the many
and varied narratives of human subjectivity? (I confess that, upon
encountering this phrase, I could not get out of my mind the advertising
slogan for the soft drink 7-Up: “Obey your thirst!”)
Of course, much hinges on the qualifier:“if properly heard.” Experience
is hardly an unambiguous teacher.25 I believe that Johnson must have in
mind—as Kurz certainly does in his chapters—a way of interpreting experience that is given normative guidance by the Rule of Faith, by the
Church’s historic creeds, and by the Church’s liturgy. But—at least in his
chapter on “Imagining the World that Scripture Imagines”—Johnson does
not clearly say so.To the contrary, “experience” seems to be revelatory in
its own right; indeed, it becomes—alongside a modern theory of narrative
truth—a second sort of criterion that might provide leverage for critique
or revision of Christian tradition—as Johnson has elsewhere proposed.26
If I am reading Johnson rightly at this point, what response would he
give to those interpreters, whose voices have grown more insistent in the
24 I can only assume that Johnson means to refer here to certain types of Roman

Catholic theology. Protestant theology, both in its liberal and evangelical forms,
has been awash in the seas of human experience for the past two hundred years.
This would be particularly true of my own Wesleyan tradition.
25 Interestingly, in his “Response to Bill Kurz,” Johnson reacts warily to Kurz’s
argument that the experience of repentant postabortion women supports the
Catholic teaching against abortion, because the counterargument made by
proponents of abortion also “uses the criterion of experience to make the exact
opposite point.” Consequently, Johnson reminds both his colleague and himself
that the criterion of experience “is as slippery as Scripture itself and must be
discerned as carefully” (254). It is a salutary reminder. The question of criteria for
discernment looms, unresolved.
26 For the outworking of this revisionary function of “experience” with regard to
the Church’s teaching on human sexuality, see L. T. Johnson, Scripture and Discernment (Nashville,TN: Abingdon Press, 1996).

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academy, who read “human experience” as the definitive evidence that
the Bible and the Christian gospel are inherently violent and oppressive?
How are such experientially based claims to be evaluated? One of the
surprising features of Johnson’s chapters is that he expends so much
energy in his polemic against the historical criticism of a generation that
is passing away, while mostly ignoring the much more pressing challenges
posed by the postmodern hermeneutics of suspicion and the polarizing
hermeneutics of various identity-group theologies.27 Surely the future of
Catholic biblical scholarship depends much more on how it will answer
these challenges faithfully than on how successfully it fights rear-guard
battles against the generation of Raymond Brown and Joseph Fitzmyer.28
Kurz does devote about two pages to the hermeneutics of suspicion,
in which he concludes flatly that, whatever its value for “the domain of
history and sociology,” it has no value for discovering the spiritual sense
of Scripture (226–28). Johnson addresses the issue briefly in his response
to Kurz, with a wise cautionary remark that the concerns of “those who
have been hurt badly by readings of Scripture . . . that justify intolerance
or oppression of humans” cannot be so lightly dismissed. His prescription
for response to this situation is the formation of a community of reading
that “empowers all readers” (254). If I may be permitted to speculate, it
seems to me that Johnson is relatively uncritical of experientially based
theologies because they are methodologically congenial, at least in crucial
aspects, to his own program: They are indeed giving obedient attention
to human experience and expecting to find a revelation of the Living
God there, precisely within the messy human drama.
I do not doubt that we stand to learn much that is theologically valuable
by careful listening to human stories, and I join Johnson in affirming that
human experience provides significant input for theological reflection.The
crucial question, once again, is how one processes and evaluates the reports
of human experience.What criteria enable us to distinguish the work of the
Living God from the claims of idols and the self-deceptive desires of the
27 The topic is not entirely absent from Johnson’s field of vision: on p. 130, he offers

a couple of sentences sharply critical of “ideological criticism within the academy that only makes more explicit the assumed moral superiority of the
contemporary reader to the world imagined by Scripture.” On this issue, see my
essay, “A Hermeneutic of Trust,” in R. B. Hays, The Conversion of the Imagination
(Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 190–201.
28 At recent meetings of the AAR/SBL, one is hard-put to find papers doing the
sort of old-fashioned reconstructive historical work that Johnson frets about;
however, one finds numerous papers about reading the text from particular social
locations, or through the eyes of various marginalized groups.

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human heart? With regard to these questions, I find Kurz’s more forthrightly tradition-bound position far clearer than Johnson’s—even while I
find Johnson the more hermeneutically subtle of the two authors.
A Common Vision?
This comparison between Johnson and Kurz can serve as a transition to
the third big question I have about The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: To what extent are these two authors really advocating the same
program of interpretation? To what extent do they share a common
vision? To be sure, Johnson and Kurz share many common concerns, as I
indicated in my initial outline of the book’s key programmatic emphases.
The more closely one reads their constructive discussions, however, the
more one wonders whether they may be on divergent paths.
Kurz is, from start to finish, committed to performing biblical interpretation within the framework of Catholic teaching, as mediated through the
Church’s magisterium. He champions the Catechism of the Catholic Church as
an appropriate guide to reading Scripture, and his sample exegetical probes
unfailingly support contemporary Catholic doctrine and practice, whether
the issue is Christology, abortion, Eucharist, or the sacrament of reconciliation.At no point does he entertain the notion that Scripture might play a
critical role in relation to tradition, or that received ecclesiastical interpretations might be in need of some correction. He comes across, in these
chapters at least, as a good company man, who strongly believes that the
institution of the Catholic Church provides comprehensive and satisfying
guidelines for interpreting Scripture. This gives his chapters the virtue of
clarity and consistency, but one never has the sense that Kurz is actually
learning anything through his exegesis or that Scripture might have the
capacity to surprise the Catholic reader. Rather, his exegesis consistently
reinforces preestablished beliefs and practices—and vice-versa.
Many of the examples that he chooses to illustrate the value of reading Scripture from a Catholic perspective are obvious and unilluminating.
For instance, it is not exactly a hermeneutical breakthrough to show that
the prologue of John’s Gospel is consonant with the Nicene Creed
(178–81). Kurz could hardly have chosen a less illuminating text to show
how Catholic interpretation goes “Beyond Historical Criticism” (the title
of his chapter on the Johannine prologue).29 A more interesting challenge
29 Kurz states: “Recently, under the unexamined influence of historical criticism,

teachers and preachers have often seemed to go out of their way to minimize
connections between this biblical prologue which Christians read and the Creed
which they recite and doctrines which they believe. Consequently, many
Catholics seem intimidated into not allowing themselves to recognize their

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would have been to show how, for example, the Gospel of Luke—which
is often thought to manifest a “low” or “prophetic” Christology—
expresses a Christology consistent with the Church’s creedal traditions.30
Johnson, by contrast, is edgier and more hermeneutically adventurous.
He shares Kurz’s commitment to read within Catholic tradition, but for
him that seems to mean engaging in direct conversation with patristic
primary sources, not with contemporary official ecclesial documents and
structures. He believes that to read within the tradition is to be inspired to
“imagine the world” afresh in the way that earlier readers did.As we have
seen, such reading may lead to unexpected conclusions, even to a posture
that is directly critical of the present Church’s teachings and practices.
The contrast between the two is elegantly illustrated by one instance
where these two colleagues permit themselves a relatively clear expression of difference: the interpretation of John 20:19–23 and its application
to the practice of forgiveness of sins within the Church. This is the
passage in John’s Gospel in which the risen Jesus appears to the disciples
in Jerusalem on the evening of the day he was raised from the dead. Jesus
shows them his hands and his side, pronounces peace upon them, and
tells them that he is sending them just as he was sent by the Father.Then,
the narrator tells us,“he breathed on them and said to them,‘Receive the
Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you
retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ ”
Kurz discusses this text as a test case for “applying Scripture with the
Catechism” (237–48). First he notes that the Catechism of the Catholic
Church replaces John’s reference to “disciples” with the statement that
Jesus conferred this authority on the “apostles.” Kurz describes this terminological substitution as an “actualization” of the text. This “actualization” is hermeneutically crucial for what follows. The fourth Gospel’s
generic “disciples” are read as ciphers for ordained clergy who alone are
authorized to pronounce forgiveness. Kurz writes:
Trinitarian and Christological beliefs as being expressed in this prologue” (165).
Because Kurz offers no citations in support of this claim, I find myself at a loss
to know what he is talking about. In fact, there is really nothing in Kurz’s own
reading of the prologue that is not supported, as Kurz’s own footnotes indicate,
by Raymond Brown’s commentary—generally acknowledged for the past forty
years as the preeminent historical-critical commentary on the fourth gospel in
the English language. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John I–XII
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).
30 For an important engagement of this issue, see C. Kavin Rowe, “Luke and the
Trinity: An Essay in Ecclesial Biblical Theology,” Scottish Journal of Theology 56
(2003): 1–26. I cannot resist observing that Rowe is (a) a Protestant; and (b) a
strong advocate of biblical theology.

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in John 20, the recipients of Jesus’ commission to judge sins are undoubtedly the group of “official” disciples who would later be the Church leaders. . . . This kind of judgment can obviously not be entrusted to every
individual believer or private member of the Church but necessarily only to
its leaders, whose authority to judge sins of Catholics furthers their
mission to lead and direct the Catholic Church. [242–43, emphasis added]

The italicized words and phrases highlight the several ways in which
Kurz has superimposed a hierarchical, institutionalized understanding of
Church and ordination on a text that notably lacks such an ecclesiology.31 The foil against which Kurz sets his reading is some unidentified
group of “Bible Christians [that is, Protestants?] who do not believe in
confession to a human minister” (240).
My copy of The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship is strewn, on these
pages, with numerous marginal question marks, exclamation points, and
other more vivid expressions of dismay. Not only as a historical critic but
also as a reader formed by a “believers’ church” tradition that strongly
encourages all Christians to see themselves as recipients of the Holy
Spirit and as commissioned by the Risen Lord to confess their sins to one
another and to proclaim God’s forgiveness, I found Kurz’s reading
tendentious and unpersuasive. I was therefore delighted to discover, a few
pages later, that Luke Johnson found Kurz’s treatment of this material
nearly as problematical as I did. Johnson suggests, in an artfully interrogative sentence, that by confining the authority to forgive sins to ordained
clergy, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has “achieved an institutional
shrinkage of the scriptural witness.” Rather than directly challenging
Kurz’s exegesis of John 20, Johnson cites a counter-text, James 5:14–20,
which calls the whole community to “mutual confession of sins and
mutual prayer within the community, as well as mutual correction of
wrong doing.” Thus, Johnson finds within the New Testament itself “a
richer understanding of an ecclesial practice of forgiveness and healing
than that presented by the Catechism of the Catholic Church” (258). I would
add that Johnson’s side of this argument could be supported also by more
careful critical exegesis of the Fourth Gospel itself, in which the disciples
are not Church authorities but representative figures for all believers who
in subsequent generations find themselves in union with Jesus.
31 On this point, see particularly the helpful remarks of Raymond E. Brown, The

Churches the Apostles Left Behind (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), who comments
on the “egalitarianism” of Johannine ecclesiology and finds no sign in the text
that the Johannine community had an ordained priesthood, or even clearly
established structures of authority (99–101).

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The issue here is larger than the exegesis of one text or the justification of one sacramental practice. As Johnson rightly frames the matter,
there is a “necessarily dialectical relation between tradition and Scripture.” Not only on this point but also more generally in his contributions
to The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, “Father Kurz has properly
emphasized the positive pole of that dialectic, the way in which tradition
can be seen as legitimately developing and deepening the sense of Scripture,” but he has unfortunately “given less attention to the negative pole
of the dialectic, which is the way in which Scripture also must challenge
the tradition” (257). And with these words, near the end of the book,
Johnson suddenly sounds—dare I say it?—like a Protestant. Or, rather,
more precisely, he articulates a hermeneutical stance that I take to be
healthy and necessary for Protestant and Catholic Christians alike.
Perhaps Johnson and Kurz would say that their differences represent
complementary viewpoints within a cordial conversation between
colleagues engaged in a common project. Perhaps each requires the
balancing influence of the other in order to represent the scope of
Catholic hermeneutics faithfully. Perhaps it is so. But surely “the future of
Catholic biblical scholarship” will have to choose to some extent
between the options represented by their different assessments of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church’s handling of John 20:19–23. Is the task
of Catholic biblical scholarship chiefly to show how the Bible authorizes
the Church’s “official” practices and pronouncements? Or is the task of
biblical scholarship to bring Scripture and Church into a conversation
that is mutually edifying, mutually critical, and open-ended? Johnson
clearly advocates the latter, while Kurz, at least for the most part, represents the former. In my judgment, the future of the Church lies with
Johnson’s approach. The ninth and final thesis of the Scripture Project
reads as follows:“We live in the tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not
yet’ of the kingdom of God; consequently, Scripture calls the Church to
ongoing discernment, to continually fresh re-readings of the text in light
of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work in the world.”32 This kind of eschatologically chastened hermeneutics is profoundly consonant with Johnson’s
proposals about how to read Scripture.
Preunderstandings and the Issue of Abortion
William Kurz devotes one entire chapter of the book, as I have noted, to
elucidating his Catholic hermeneutical perspective by setting it in
contrast to my chapter on abortion in The Moral Vision of the New Testa32 Davis and Hays, The Art of Reading Scripture, 5.

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ment. Readers will perhaps therefore forgive me if I bring this review
essay to a close by responding briefly to Kurz’s critique of my position. I
hope that this response will serve not merely as an exercise in self-defense
but also as a further clarification of the issues that The Future of Catholic
Biblical Scholarship seeks to raise.
I must begin by emphasizing that on this particular issue—as on the
wider issue of the appropriate agenda for biblical scholarship—there is
extensive agreement between Kurz and me. Kurz and I agree that the Bible
contains no explicit prohibition of abortion. We agree that it is therefore
necessary to address the question by looking for a broader biblical framework: as I described it in Moral Vision,“placing the problem in the broader
context of the New Testament’s symbolic world.”33 In view of this broader
biblical framework, we agree that “[t]hough the New Testament gives no
explicit prohibition, its portrayal of God as the author and giver of life
creates a general presumption against any human decision to terminate
life.”34 We agree that “the New Testament example and words of Jesus lead
to a much more radical and complete rejection of killing” than is to be
found in the Old Testament (197).We agree, further, that “Christians are to
obey the commandments, even to a heroic degree, in imitation of Christ’s
self-sacrificing obedience and supported by the Church” in caring for the
weak and helpless (198).We agree that the evidence of Christian tradition
speaks strongly against the practice of abortion—even to the extent of
citing precisely the same texts from the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas. And finally, we agree that Christians ought not to choose to abort
unborn children, even in a society where such practices are legal. As I
concluded, “My own judgment in this case is that the New Testament
summons the community to eschew abortion. . . . The New Testament
envisions a more excellent way.”35
In view of this wide-ranging agreement, I must register my own sense
of saddened puzzlement that Kurz has singled out my book to illustrate
what is wrong with contemporary biblical interpretation and how
Catholic biblical interpretation overcomes the “ ‘either/or’ mentality”
that afflicts Protestantism (183). Perhaps, though, the basic similarity
between our positions may serve, as Kurz intends, to shed even brighter
light on important hermeneutical questions where we diverge. Let us
then, attend more carefully to Kurz’s bill of complaints against my work
and seek to identify where in fact we do differ.
33 Hays, Moral Vision, 450.
34 Ibid., 455–56.
35 Ibid., 457.

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First of all, to get this matter out of the way in the beginning, it seems
to me that Kurz has misread my chapter in a way that causes him to overlook many of the fundamental agreements I have listed above. A reader
unacquainted with my book who learned of it only through Kurz’s
account would never know how significant the areas of agreement are.
Kurz makes one passing remark that my treatment “shares several pro-life
sympathies” (188), but otherwise his references create the impression that
my chapter on the topic is driven by a narrow, fundamentalist logic that
looks for specific prohibitions of abortion, finds none, and therefore
functions as “a kind of Sola Scriptura justification, in an argument from
silence, for treating abortion as something much more contingent on
circumstances” (190). I can only protest that this is a serious misrepresentation of my position.
The purpose of my chapter on abortion, within the larger argument
of my book, is precisely to show how the New Testament can be understood to provide moral guidance on a question on which it offers no
explicit teaching.36 In short, it is exactly the opposite of the “Sola Scriptura insistence that something has to be expressly treated in Scripture to
be binding” (187)—the caricature with which Kurz associates my
work.37 As I have indicated above, my method for doing this bears
important similarities to Kurz’s discussion; particularly striking is the fact
that both of us appeal to “a more inclusive canonical horizon” (191) to
address the issue—to say nothing of the fact that both of us conclude that
the force of the New Testament’s teaching is to call Christians to bear
witness against abortion. Kurz, however, seems to ignore this. It is almost
as though he read the first five pages of my chapter, in which I survey a
few biblical passages sometimes wrongly used as proof texts38 and then
stopped, without reading my constructive argument against abortion.39
Having lodged that protest against Kurz’s disappointing misconstrual of
my book, I turn now to three issues on which there really is a serious
difference between us, three points at which Kurz helpfully identifies how
his Roman Catholic preunderstanding (his term) shapes his response to
the question of abortion and his reading of the biblical evidence in relation to it.The three issues are: (1) whether it is appropriate to speak of a
“right to life”; (2) the role of the Roman Catholic magisterium in provid36 Ibid., 313–15, 455–57.
37 I am grateful at least for the paragraph on p. 183 in which Kurz recognizes some-

thing of the larger purpose of my book, before he opines that my chapter on
abortion represents an unconscious slippage into a different viewpoint.
38 Hays, Moral Vision, 444–48.
39 Ibid., 449–61.

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ing moral and hermeneutical guidance; and (3) whether abortion belongs
to a class of actions prohibited by an absolute divine command to which
there can be no exceptions.We take these points in turn.
Is There a “Right to Life”?
Kurz correctly observes that “Hays categorically denies the notions of the
sacredness of human life and the biblical relevance of rights language”
(189). My position here is based not only on the fact that “human rights”
language is absent from the Bible and emerged in Western intellectual
history only at the time of the Enlightenment,40 but also on a more
fundamental theological point: Life is always a gift of God. From a theological perspective, we have no inalienable right to life; we possess life only
as a contingent gift from our Creator. Kurz of course does not deny this,
but he argues that “once God has freely given the gift of life to a human,
that particular human as God’s image now has a right to life which other
humans must respect” (189). In explicating this right, Kurz is willing to
speak of the “sacredness” or “sanctity” of life. My concern is that such
language often is used to speak of human life as an end in itself, as the
source and center of autonomous meaning, quite apart from the Jewish
and Christian conception of human beings as created in the image of
God. I continue, therefore, to agree with my colleague Stanley Hauerwas
that “[t]he Christian prohibition of abortion derives not from any assumption of the inherent value of life, but rather from the understanding that
as God’s creatures we have no basis to claim sovereignty over life.”41 It is
simply a matter of getting the theological accent in the right place.
Underlying this difference of opinion, there probably is, as Kurz
suggests, a difference between Catholic and Protestant sensibilities. I would
suggest, though, that the issue here may be related to differing theological
judgments about “natural law,” a concept long embraced in Catholic/
Thomist circles and regarded with wariness by many Protestant theologians. I do not suppose that I can settle that argument in a paragraph or
two, so I merely name the difference as one background element in the
hermeneutical argument. To the extent that this is so, Kurz is correct to
highlight different “preunderstandings” as a factor in our dispute.
Patient theological conversation might ultimately show this dispute to
be more a matter of rhetoric than substance. Kurz and I agree that God
40 For the best defense known to me of “human rights” in biblical perspective, see

C. D. Marshall, Crowned with Glory and Honor: Human Rights in the Biblical Tradition (Telford, PA: Pandora, 2001).
41 Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character:Toward a Constructive Christian Social
Ethic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 225.

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is the giver of life and that human beings do not have a “right” to take it
away.We also agree that human beings have distinctive value and dignity
in God’s eyes, though I hesitate to use the word “sacredness” to describe
this divinely given status.
The Magisterium as Hermeneutical Guide
Another central difference between us, unsurprisingly, hinges on the
authority of the teaching office of the Roman Church. I quote at length
from an important paragraph that expresses Kurz’s view:
Further, when we read the Scriptures as Catholics, the Church’s rich
moral tradition (handily summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic
Church and Vatican II) and explicit magisterial treatments of abortion
(such as The Gospel of Life [Evangelium vitae] ) can be used as a “rule of
faith” analogously to how the early patristic authors used the creeds as
criteria for whether a biblical interpretation was acceptable or heretical. . . . Although one should not claim that all of these are explicitly
biblical teachings, for Catholics they are legitimate traditional helps in
interpreting and applying the evidence which Scripture does provide
about the meaning of human life in relation to our creator God.
[197–98]

This paragraph clearly articulates one of the admirable strengths of
traditional Catholic biblical hermeneutics: There is not only a strong
tradition of teaching but there is actually an institutionally embodied
magisterium that can resolve disputes and provide authoritative guidance
for the community. Protestantism, on the other hand, always faces the
danger of radical individualism and communal incoherence, of having
every interpreter of the Bible do “what is right in his own eyes.”
Kurz is careful to state that the magisterial statements “can be used” in
a way that is analogous—not equivalent—to the early Church’s rule of
faith and the ecumenical creeds. I applaud the caution of this formulation, and I am quite glad to acknowledge the status of such sources as
“legitimate traditional helps” in biblical interpretation. If that is all that
Kurz really means to assert, then the difference between his position and
mine is insignificant. I might say, for my part, that the rich moral tradition of Luther, Calvin,Wesley, and Barth informs my moral reflection in
a similar way. Indeed, I would gladly include in this list of sources key
theological voices of the Catholic tradition. Surely my treatment of abortion in Moral Vision would have been richer had I included Evangelium
vitae as one of the “legitimate helps” to my interpretation of the biblical
witness on this issue. With the wisdom of ten years’ hindsight, I wish I

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had done exactly that. In point of fact, however, my book’s treatment of
abortion gives only the briefest attention to the Church’s tradition, and
it looks very Protestant in its concentration on direct interpretation of
the biblical texts.
Two of the Scripture Project’s nine theses speak to these matters, affirming that “faithful interpretation of Scripture invites and presupposes participation in the community brought into being by God’s redemptive
action—the Church” and that “The saints of the Church provide guidance
in how to interpret and perform Scripture.”42 These affirmations are meant
to counteract the dangers of individualistic interpretation, and to emphasize the importance of reading Scripture from within ecclesial tradition.
The key question, however, is whether the statements of the Catholic
magisterium are more than “helps.” Do they have a binding claim on the
work of subsequent biblical interpreters? Kurz never quite puts it so
baldly, but as I noted earlier, his position is unlike Johnson’s in that he
never offers any example of a question on which he would disagree with
Catholic tradition or argue for its correction. And, if I understand him
correctly, he regards the magisterium’s prohibition of abortion as a definitive application of “moral absolutes” to a particular ethical issue. This
would seem to foreclose any possibility for biblical interpreters to challenge the magisterium or to undertake fresh, corrective readings that
appeal directly to exegesis of the Bible to open up room for what I call
“humility about our claims and convictions concerning abortion.”43
Once again, this difference of opinion on the weight of magisterial
teaching would seem to be a traditional Catholic-Protestant dispute. On
this point, however, I note that Johnson seems to be, in principle, on my
side! As he puts it later in the book,“Catholic biblical scholarship, therefore, should be critically loyal to the teaching of the hierarchy but also
loyally critical” (277). Would Kurz accept that formulation? If so, the
difference between us is perhaps not insurmountable.
Is the Prohibition of Abortion a Moral Absolute?
Finally, Kurz writes disapprovingly of “Hays’s refusal to allow any moral
absolutes that may be applicable to the treatment of abortion” (190, original emphasis). Because of my willingness to treat “hard cases” as at least
morally debatable, Kurz offers this judgment: “His approach does not
sound like a question of discovering what God commands in this case,
nor like an application of an absolute divine command or an absolute
42 Davis and Hays, Art of Reading Scripture, 3–4.
43 Hays, Moral Vision, 445.

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moral principle to this decision” (190). In one respect Kurz is quite right.
The central argument of Moral Vision of the New Testament is that the New
Testament should not be read chiefly as a source of moral rules or
absolute principles; rather it should be read as a source of narrative paradigms that shape the Church’s moral action analogically or metaphorically. (Kurz makes an argument of this type also, when he points to the
self-sacrificial example of Jesus as part of his argument against abortion
[197–98].) The rhetorical pressure in Kurz’s chapter toward the quest for
“absolutes” clearly indicates his discomfort with the greater flexibility
and contingency of my approach to New Testament ethics and hermeneutics. There is no doubt that on that point the difference between us is
both real and significant.
I do think it is unfair, however, for him to say that my approach is not
interested in discovering what God commands. I am urgently interested
in discovering precisely that, but I approach the question in a different
way. I will leave it to readers of my book to adjudicate this disputed point
for themselves.
The basic problem with Kurz’s argument, as I see it, is the considerable
slippage between his desire for absolute moral commands about abortion
and the rather fuzzy way that he derives his knowledge of such commands.
At several points in the chapter, he describes his discernment of such
matters as “instinctive.” For example, after admitting that “the commandment ‘you shall not kill’ does not answer the question whether abortion is
included in the prohibition of killing,” he goes on to assert that “the step
to including abortion as a species of killing which is forbidden by the fifth
commandment is a rather instinctive one” (200–201). Indeed! But surely
Kurz’s “instinct” on this matter has been tutored, as he affirms, by his
particular ecclesial community. He rightly describes his own methodology
when he says, “if one reads the Bible as a convinced member of the
Catholic Church, one will spontaneously fill in biblical silences and gaps such as
the non-mention of abortion with fundamental Catholic moral principles and
the historical tradition of Catholic practice” (200, emphasis added). In the
concluding summation of his chapter, he describes such acts of filling
silences and gaps as a way to “actualize” and “apply” biblical passages to
“new and different situations, like abortion, which are admittedly beyond
those original concerns and situations discovered by historical-critical
exegesis” (202). This description is a precisely accurate account of Kurz’s
hermeneutical procedure.
But if Kurz’s Catholic position on abortion is derived through such
intuitive acts of filling gaps and silences, of imaginatively actualizing texts

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by applying them to questions and situations unimaginable to the original authors (a necessary process that I call “Moral Judgment as MetaphorMaking”),44 how is it possible to claim absolute moral certainty for his
findings? It seems to me that Kurz simply refuses to face the epistemological problem raised by his own description of his process of moral reasoning. Surely any process of intuitive “actualization” is fallible and not
capable of yielding absolute knowledge of God’s will.
If, then, we cannot attain absolute certainty about such matters, surely
we must at least entertain the possibility that our conviction about the
wrongness of abortion—a conviction, I repeat, that I share with Kurz—
might be open to certain qualifications.We might, for example, have a serious argument among Christians about whether there can be exceptional
circumstances that allow for abortion as a tragic but justifiable option.
Such an argument, of course, would require us to explore carefully the
contingent circumstances of particular human lives—that is to say, to take
human experience into account as a factor in moral deliberation. It is a
final irony that Kurz castigates me for giving “so much weight to economic
and social considerations, which are more closely related to historical and
social-scientific than to theological approaches, in an abortion decision”
(183). This is, I am sure, the first time I have ever been criticized by a
Catholic interpreter for paying too much attention to concrete human
experience in the process of ethical discernment—the very thing that
Johnson highlights as the climactic essential element in the Catholic project of imagining the world that Scripture imagines (141–42).This is one
of many indications that the deeper issue to which The Future of Catholic
Biblical Scholarship points may not be a dispute between Catholics and
Protestants, but between the substantially different hermeneutical perspectives represented by Kurz and Johnson themselves.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship places me
in a very unusual position.This is a book that caricatures and gratuitously
attacks my own ecclesial community as the source of mischief and error
in modern biblical interpretation. It also contains a chapter that singles
me out as a polemical target and seriously misrepresents what I wrote on
a topic of urgent moral concern in our time. And yet I find myself in
enthusiastic agreement with nearly all of its fundamental concerns and
constructive proposals. I therefore warmly commend the book to the
community of Catholic theologians and biblical scholars.
44 Ibid., 298–306.

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My commendation is subject, however, to the substantial qualifications
expressed in this rather lengthy critical review. Johnson and Kurz’s work
should be read alongside The Art of Reading Scripture and some of the
other recent hermeneutical works mentioned at the beginning of this
essay.When it is so contextualized, it can be seen as a stimulating contribution to the revitalization of biblical interpretation as an ecclesial practice
that offers both intellectual challenge and spiritual nourishment.
I want to reiterate that the fundamental purpose of this essay is to join
the “constructive conversation” that Johnson and Kurz propose and to
seek to bridge the gulf they seem to perceive between Catholic and
Protestant interpreters of the Bible. In our time, it is urgently important
that we make common cause and see one another as brothers and sisters
within the Church of Jesus Christ, seeking to read Scripture carefully,
faithfully, and imaginatively for the sake of the Church’s mission. If I have
responded to their sharp criticisms with serious criticisms of my own, it
is in the hope that truthful conversation will enable us all in the end to
N&V
glorify God with one voice.

The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship:
Balance and Proportion
F RANK J. M ATERA
The Catholic University of America
Washington, DC

Introductory Remarks
T HE TITLE OF THIS ESSAY presents a minor semantical problem since it might seem that I am trying to prognosticate. Or it may
appear that I am dictating what the future of Catholic biblical scholarship should be. My purpose, however, is more modest. I have adopted the
title from the work of Luke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, The
Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, in order to suggest some ways in
which Catholic biblical scholarship can become even more fruitful.1 Like
Johnson and Kurz, I do this in a spirit of entering into “a constructive
conversation” about the future of our discipline.
According to Luke Timothy Johnson the future of Catholic biblical
scholarship is to rejoin a long conversation with our patristic and
medieval ancestors, not so much to do what they did as to learn how they
1 Luke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, SJ, The Future of Catholic Biblical

Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2002).

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approached and appropriated the sacred text.2 Johnson’s suggestion has a
great deal of merit, for even if we disagree with the exegesis of patristic
and medieval writers on particular points, we cannot but admire the
reverence and awe with which they approached the sacred text and the
manner in which they conceived of Scripture as a unified word of God.
Thus, there is a paradoxical sense in which the way forward is to retrace
our steps and discover anew where we have been. It must be acknowledged, however, that the riches of patristic and medieval exegesis do not
belong solely to Catholics. Orthodox and Protestants can and do lay
claim to these treasures as well.
According to William S. Kurz, the future of Catholic biblical scholarship is to make greater use of our Catholic preunderstanding.3 Since
modern hermeneutics has taught us that we always approach texts with
a certain preunderstanding and social location, Catholic biblical scholarship should make more explicit use of its own preunderstanding and
social location in its interpretation of texts.This point is well taken, and
to his credit Kurz provides several essays that exemplify this approach.
There are times, however, when our preunderstanding can mislead us, a
point made by the Pontifical Biblical Commission.
All preunderstanding, however, brings dangers with it. As regards
Catholic exegesis, the risk is that of attributing to biblical texts a meaning that they do not contain but which is the product of a later development within the tradition.The exegete must beware of such a danger.4

This said, I agree with the general direction Kurz provides for Catholic
biblical scholarship:There is no need to be embarrassed by our Catholic
preunderstanding of the text, provided we remain critically aware of how
we are employing that understanding.
Unlike Kurz and Johnson, I do not have a single formula that points
the way forward for Catholic biblical scholarship. Perhaps this is due to
2 Johnson makes this point in chapter 2,“Rejoining a Long Conversation,” 35–63.
3 Kurz makes this point in all of his essays. See especially pages 159–66 in the essay

titled, “Beyond Historical Criticism: Reading John’s Prologue as Catholics.”
4 The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, 4th ed. (Washington, DC:The United

States Catholic Conference, 1994, 2001), 24.The text, with commentary, can also
be found in Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Biblical Commission’s Document “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church”:Text and Commentary (Rome: Editrice Pontificio
Istituto Biblico, 1995), 133. For a recent commentary on the text that tries to
identify the Catholic principles for interpreting Scripture that this text presupposes, see Peter S. Williamson, Catholic Principles for Interpreting Scripture: A Study
of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church
(Rome: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2001).

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my social location. I teach at a Catholic university where the university’s
Catholic identity is discussed, but, in my view, not seriously in jeopardy.
I work within a vibrant Catholic tradition and find no need to justify my
scholarship to the wider university community.Thus, my social location
may make me naïve as to what is happening elsewhere and more sanguine
about the present situation of Catholic biblical scholarship.
This said, I would like to take up a point that Johnson and Kurz make
about the inclusive nature of the Catholic spirit, what they call the
“both/and” emphasis of Catholicism and what Johnson identifies more
specifically as “a spirit of inclusion and generosity.” 5 Here, I heartily
agree. When most true to itself, Catholicism is a big tent that embraces
diverse points of view. In this sense, Jesus’ image of the kingdom applies
to Catholicism: “But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the
largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky
can dwell in its shade” (Mk 4:32).6 Because it is inclusive, Catholic biblical scholarship can and should embrace a variety of methods without
claiming any particular one as distinctively its own. There is room for
patristic and medieval exegesis, and a variety of modern approaches to
the text—provided we maintain a sense of balance and proportion. As
Kurz and Johnson remind us, it is not “either/or” but “both/and.” The
following statement of the Pontifical Biblical Commission is apropos:
Catholic exegesis does not claim any particular scientific method as its
own. . . . What characterizes Catholic exegesis is that it deliberately
places itself within the living tradition of the Church, whose first
concern is fidelity to the revelation attested by the Bible.7

There are moments, however, when Catholic biblical scholarship can lose
its sense of balance and proportion by focusing on one method to the
exclusion of others, or by emphasizing one aspect of a question to the
detriment of another. In what follows, I discuss four areas where it will
be helpful for Catholic biblical scholarship to maintain a sense of balance
and proportion: (1) The role of history and theology in exegesis; (2) the
relationship between the theology and the theologies of the Bible; (3) the
relationship between the Old and the New Testaments; and (4) the ecclesial and academic dimensions of exegesis.

5 The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, 265.
6 Scriptural quotations are taken from The New American Bible.
7 The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, 24; Fitzmyer, The Biblical Commis-

sion’s Document, 132.

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The Role of History and Theology in Exegesis
One of the most vexing issues in contemporary biblical scholarship is the
relationship between history and theology in exegesis. Is exegesis a form of
historical study, or is it a theological discipline? Is it faith seeking understanding, or is it history looking to reconstruct the past? Can one be true
to both the historical method and theological truth, or must one choose
between the two? It is possible, of course, to conceive of exegesis as a purely
theological discipline in which history plays little or no role, just as it is
possible to conceive of exegesis as a purely historical discipline from which
theology is excluded.The future of Catholic biblical scholarship, however,
does not belong to such extremes that would compel exegetes to choose
between interpreting the text apart from history or apart from theology.
Consider for a moment how dangerous it could be to read the Gospel
of John with its multiple references to “the Jews”—many of which are
quite hostile—without some understanding of the historical situation that
occasioned that writing.To be more specific, consider the fierce polemic
between Jesus and “the Jews” in John 8 that comes to a highpoint when
Jesus says to them,“You belong to your father the devil and you willingly
carry out your father’s desires” ( Jn 8:44). Or, consider the cry of the
people in Matthew’s Gospel (and only in Matthew’s Gospel) at Jesus’ trial,
“His blood be upon us and upon our children” (Mt 27:25). The reader
who is unaware of the historical context that gave rise to these texts might
think that the Jewish people are indeed the progeny of the devil, a people
eternally guilty of the Messiah’s death. By taking into consideration the
historical circumstances that gave rise to these texts, however, contemporary exegesis has shown that these statements derive from the redactional
work of the Evangelists and echo the polemics of a debate between synagogue and church in a period after Jesus’ death, a debate in which we can
no longer participate.8 Read apart from their historical contexts, texts
such as these can foster sentiments of anti-Jewishness, if not outright antiSemitism. Read in light of their historical setting, it becomes apparent that
they must be interpreted in light of their historical background.
8 Contemporary Johannine scholarship has shown that the fourth Evangelist often

employs the expression “the Jews” to signify the unbelief of “the world.” It argues
that the particularly harsh episode in chapter 8 reflects the debates between the
Johannine community and the synagogue of its day rather than the actual debates
between Jesus and the Jewish people of his day. Similarly, contemporary
Matthean scholarship, which accepts the priority of Mark, attributes the cry of
the people in the Matthean Passion narrative to Matthew’s redactional work. It
is a comment that reflects the struggle between the Matthean congregation and
the synagogue rather than an historical account of what the people actually said.

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Conversely, consider the results of reading the infancy narratives for
the sole purpose of determining the historical events surrounding Jesus’
birth. Although the task is legitimate, the final result would surely miss
the theological richness of the Matthean and Lukan narratives.The historian might well conclude that the infancy narratives are of little historical value since Matthew and Luke apparently contradict each other at
several points. For example, according to Luke, Joseph and Mary must
travel to Bethlehem because they are residents of Galilee (Lk 2:4) but
according to Matthew they already reside in Bethlehem where they
appear to have a home (Mt 2:11). Only later do they move to Galilee in
order to escape Herod’s son, Archelaus (Mt 2:22–23). A purely historical
approach might be correct in its historical conclusions, but it would miss
the theological depth of the Matthean and Lukan infancy narratives,
which provide rich theological commentary on the person of Jesus,
presenting him as the climax of his people’s history and his birth as the
fulfillment of the promises made to David.
My point is simply this: We are no longer in a position—if ever we
were—to do exegesis apart from history. But this does not mean that
exegesis is merely an historical discipline. Exegesis is also an act of theology. Exegesis is faith seeking understanding, and this act of theology
requires the assistance of historical investigation. For example, when
contemporary Catholic exegetes come to the texts of John 8:44 and
Matthew 27:25 mentioned above, they are faced with a problem. In its
Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, the
Second Vatican Council declared:
Even though the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead
pressed for the death of Christ (see Jn 19:6) neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes
committed during his passion. It is true that the church is the new
people of God, yet the Jews should not be spoken of as rejected or
accused as if this followed from holy scripture.9

How, then, should the exegete interpret Jesus’ words to “the Jews” that
the devil is their father and the cry of the people who call guilt upon
themselves and their children? This is a case where historical research into
the background of the Johannine community and an understanding of
9 Nostra Aetate, no. 4.The translation is taken from The Basic Sixteen Documents:Vati-

can Council II: Constitutions Decrees Declarations:A Completely Revised Translation in
Inclusive Language, ed. Austin Flannery, OP (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing
Company, 1996), 573.

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how Matthew edited his Markan source in the Passion narrative can assist
exegetes to interpret what they believe about Jesus and God’s faithfulness
to Israel.
If Catholic biblical scholarship is to nourish the Church, it must be
concerned with theology as well as with history, and with history as well
as with theology—history in order to clarify the meaning of the text in
its historical setting; theology to understand the text in light of the
Church’s faith. Exegesis, then, is a discipline that involves both history and
theology. To be sure, there will be moments when scholars will emphasize one more than the other, but at some point both must come into
play.Theology must listen and learn from history, and history must leave
room for theology to interpret.
The Relationship between the Theology
and Theologies of the Bible
Catholic biblical scholarship has long been aware of the different theologies in the Bible. For example, the canonical text of the Old Testament
includes diverse strains of tradition such as the Priestly document and the
Deuteronomistic history, which represent differing and sometimes
competing theological voices. More importantly, the canonical writings
themselves testify to God’s revelation in a multiplicity of ways. Consider,
for example, the distinctive manners in which the Book of Proverbs and
the Book of Job present God. In the former, there is a rhyme and reason
to God’s ways in the world; in the latter, God’s ways are puzzling and
disturbing. The same phenomenon occurs in the New Testament, even
though its writings were composed within sixty to seventy years after Jesus’
death. New Testament specialists speak of the theologies of the Synoptic
Gospels, the Johannine writings, the Pauline and the deuteropauline letters,
not to mention Hebrews, James, Revelation, 1 and 2 Peter.
The recognition of the diverse theologies of, and in, the biblical writings has led to a deeper appreciation of the biblical witness to God’s revelation. It reminds believers that God’s self-revelation is a profound
mystery that cannot be captured in a single formula.This is why the biblical writings portray God and the salvation God brings in diverse ways. It
is why Genesis offers two accounts of creation, and why the Book of Job
takes up the question of suffering and evil in a new way. It is why John
begins with the incarnation and Paul with Christ’s death and resurrection. It is why the Synoptic Gospels focus on Jesus’ proclamation of the
kingdom of God, whereas the fourth Evangelist speaks of the Son’s revelation of the Father. It is only by listening to the diverse voices of the
biblical writings that exegesis hears the full richness of God’s revelation.

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The presence of so many voices, however, presents biblical scholarship
with a vexing question.What is the relationship between these different
theologies? Are the many theological witnesses of the Old Testament
related to each other in any way? Can the variety of theologies in the
New Testament be brought together in a coherent way? In other words,
can we speak of the theology of the Old Testament or the theology of the
New Testament, as well as the theologies within the Old and the New
Testament?10 The answer to this question depends, in large measure, upon
how one approaches the text.
The historian of Israelite religion or of early Christianity approaches
the Bible as a diverse collection of writings that provide a window into
the past. Consequently, the question of whether or not there is a unifying principle that justifies collecting these writings into what is now
called the Old and the New Testament is an historical problem that needs
to be solved.The historian does not and should not begin by positing the
unity of the biblical witness. Whether or not there is a principle that
unites these diverse writings is a problem to be resolved by careful historical analysis.At the end of this analysis, the historian may even decide that
there is no unifying principle apart from historical development.
The situation is, and it ought to be, quite different for the exegete who
works within the living tradition of the Church. The very concept of
revelation presupposes unity, unless the God who discloses himself
purposely seeks to conceal himself—in which case it would be better to
speak of concealment than of revelation. Put another way, it would be
strange for a believing community to affirm on the one hand that its
Scriptures witness to God’s revelation but on the other hand to be
unconcerned about the inner unity of that revelation. Consequently,
whereas the historian need not and should not begin by positing unity,
the believer can and must.
Although faith posits unity because it believes in the truth and unity
of God’s self-revelation to which the writings of Scripture testify,
Catholic exegesis must continually seek out that unity, first within each
of the Testaments, and then between the Testaments, a point I will
consider below. The purpose of seeking the unity in the Old and the
New Testaments, however, is not to do away with the diversity of theologies in each, or to find a principle to control and tame the biblical
witnesses. The purpose is more profound because the subject matter of
exegesis is so profound. Searching for the unity of Scripture is another
10 This question is examined by James Barr, The Concept of Biblical Theology:An Old

Testament Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999).

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way of searching for God. Who is the God to whom the law, the
prophets, and the writings testify in such diverse ways? Who is the God
to whom the Synoptics, John, Paul, Hebrews, James, Peter, and Revelation witness in a multiplicity of ways? For the believer, this diverse
witness paradoxically points to the unity of the mystery, and the unity of
the mystery paradoxically requires a multiplicity of witnesses.
At the present moment in Catholic biblical scholarship, the goal of
most studies is to investigate the diverse witnesses of both the Old and
New Testaments. This is quite understandable. Having emerged from a
period when any suggestion of diversity was suspect, Catholic biblical
scholarship turned to a neglected area of research: diversity within the
Bible. Catholic exegesis is now aware that before one can grasp the
whole, it is necessary to understand its parts. But there should also be a
moment when some seek the inner unity of this diverse witness. There
should be a moment when some scholars address the question of the
theology of the Old Testament and the theology of the New Testament,
asking what is the unity of the diverse witnesses to God’s revelation in
Israel and Jesus. Given the mystery of the God whom biblical scholarship
confronts, no scholar can present the definitive answer to this question.
But the question needs to be addressed again and again by those who
appreciate the rich diversity of the biblical witness.
The Relationship between the Old and New Testaments
The relationship of the Old and the New Testaments is analogous to the
question of the relationship between the theology and theologies of the
Bible. Ultimately, however, it is a question about the faithfulness of God.
For, if the two Testaments are not related to each other in a meaningful
way—if the New Testament does not illuminate the Old, or if the Old
Testament does not foreshadow and prepare for the New—then the God
and Father of Jesus Christ is not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Furthermore, to the extent that the Old Testament is the Scripture of the
Jewish people, the question of the relationship between the testaments is
a question about the Church’s relationship to the Jewish people.The relationship between the testaments then is the most vexing of all questions,
and how Catholic biblical scholarship addresses it reveals a great deal
about its understanding of God and the covenant people of Israel.
Although most Catholic scholars, like their Protestant colleagues, tend
to work in either the Old or New Testament, there is a growing sense
that the relationship of the testaments needs to be addressed anew. In this
country, Brevard Childs has engaged the issue, and in Germany, Peter
Stuhlmacher, Ferdinand Hahn, and Hans Hübner have done the same,

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though in different ways.11 Moreover, the Pontifical Biblical Commission
has recently considered the issue in its 2002 publication The Jewish People
and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible.12 That document notes that
“the Christian Bible is not composed of one ‘Testament,’ but of two
‘Testaments,’ the Old and the New, which have a complex dialectical
relationships between them” (42). It goes on to say, “This relationship is
also reciprocal: on the one hand, the New Testament demands to be read
in the light of the Old, but it also invites a ‘re-reading’ of the Old in the
light of Jesus Christ” (43).
There are a number of reasons why it has become difficult for
contemporary biblical scholars to address the issue of the unity of the
testaments. First, most scholars are specialists in one testament or the
other, and they rarely venture outside their discipline except when the
exegesis of a particular text requires it. Second, a lack of familiarity with
the early Church’s Bible, the Septuagint, means that some New Testament
scholars do not read the same Bible the authors of the New Testament
did. Consequently, the linguistic unity between the Old and New Testament is not always as apparent to them as it might be if they were working from the Greek as well as from the Hebrew text of the Old
Testament.The question of how the testaments are related to each other,
however, is of vital importance since it is ultimately a question about God
and the faithfulness of God to his covenant people.
The first Christians were already aware of the problem raised above,
though they framed it in another way since the New Testament did not
yet exist. For the authors of what would eventually be the New Testament, the crucial question was the relationship between what God did in
Jesus of Nazareth and God’s covenant promises to Israel. If Jesus was the
Messiah, in what sense was he the Messiah? How did Jesus fulfill the
covenant promises God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? How was his
life and ministry related to God’s will as revealed in the Mosaic law?
Because those who first confessed Jesus as the Messiah belonged to the
people of Israel, or were closely related to the chosen people, they answered
these questions by re-reading Israel’s Scriptures in light of Christ’s life, death,
11 Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testament:Theological Reflec-

tion on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). Peter Stuhlmacher, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 2 vols. (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1992, 1999). Ferdinand Hahn, Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 2 vols. (Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, 2003); Hans Hübner, Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments, 3
vols. (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990, 1993, 1995).
12 Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in The
Christian Bible (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002).

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and resurrection. It is not surprising, then, that Matthew begins his Gospel
with a genealogy that portrays Jesus as the culmination of Israel’s history,
that the fourth Evangelist sees Jesus as the Son who reveals the Father to
the world, that Paul argues that Christ is the singular descendant of Abraham, and that the author of Hebrews portrays Christ as a high priest who
entered into the true holy of holies, the sanctuary of heaven, when he died
on the cross.The New Testament struggles again and again to make a single
point in a variety of ways: God’s revelation in Christ is in continuity with
God’s revelation to Israel. Jesus’ death brings a new creation not a rupture
with the past. The God whom Jesus reveals in a new and striking way as
his Father is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Because the mystery is profound, the answers the New Testament
writers provide are sometimes in tension with each other. For example,
Matthew certainly has a greater sense of the enduring validity of the law
than does Paul (compare Mt 5:17 and Rom 10:4), and Luke is more
concerned to show that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah than is Mark
(compare Lk 1:32–33 and Mk 12:35–37). But all agree that Jesus is the
Messiah—even though the nature of his messiahship requires massive
redefinition in light of his death and resurrection.And all concur that the
law has found its fulfillment in Jesus, even when there are varying views
about its enduring validity.
In effect, each of the New Testament writers tries to “inscribe” the
story of Jesus into the story of Israel. Indeed, one could say that the major
narrative writings of the New Testament (the four Gospels and the Acts of
the Apostles) seek to bring Israel’s story, as recorded in the Scriptures, to
closure by telling the story of Jesus and, in the case of Acts, the story of
the Church.This is most apparent in Luke-Acts, which comprises nearly
one-fourth of the New Testament. In this work, which begins as if it were
an Old Testament narrative, Luke shows how the events that have recently
transpired among those who believe are, in fact, the culmination of Israel’s
history. In Stephen’s speech (Acts 7:1–53) and in Paul’s inaugural sermon
in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:16–41), Luke recounts the
story of Israel in such a way as to show that Israel’s history finds its climax
in the coming of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. For Luke, there is continuity between old and new, and God has been faithful to Israel.
The point I am making is quite simple. Before there was a New Testament, those who composed the writings of what would eventually
constitute the New Testament already affirmed the continuity between
God’s revelation to Israel and God’s revelation in Jesus of Nazareth. It was
inconceivable to these writers that it could be otherwise since God is
faithful. From the perspective of the New Testament, the two testaments

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are intimately related to each other, and their unity is apparent. A fruitful
direction for Catholic biblical scholarship, then, would be to examine
anew the relationship between Old and New Testaments.
The relationship between the testaments is analogous to the relationship between the theology and theologies of the Bible. Just as faith posits
that there is a unity to God’s revelation, so it posits that there is an inner
unity between the testaments, even if scholarship cannot perfectly express
that unity in a single formula upon which all agree.This unity, however,
should be second nature to Catholics nurtured by the Church’s liturgy in
which texts from Old and New Testaments are regularly juxtaposed in
order to mutually illumine each other. Consider, for example, the
Church’s Liturgy of the Hours, which moves so easily between the texts
of Old and New Testaments to show the believing community the intimate relationship between its story and the story of Israel. Here, as Kurz
notes, the Church’s life of faith flows from its life of prayer.13 There is, of
course, a difference between scholarship and prayer, but they are not
mutually exclusive. Those who live in a liturgical world that moves so
easily between Old and New Testaments understand, at least at the level
of worship and faith, that it is not a matter of Old or New Testament but
both: the Old in the New and the New in the Old.
Ecclesial and Academic Dimensions of Exegesis
There has been a subtext to this essay that can be stated in a question:
Can Catholic biblical scholarship be ecclesial and academic? The answer
depends, in large measure, upon how one defines the terms. By ecclesial,
I mean scholarship that is done within the context of the Catholic tradition for the sake of the Church. By academic, I mean scholarship that can
receive a hearing within the university because it makes a significant
contribution to human knowledge.
The proper starting point for understanding what is “Catholic” about
Catholic biblical scholarship is the statement of the Pontifical Biblical
Commission:“What characterizes Catholic exegesis is that it deliberately
places itself within the living tradition of the Church, whose first concern
is fidelity to the revelation attested by the Bible” (24). Catholic exegesis
does not depend upon a particular exegetical method, nor does it require
one to teach in a specifically Catholic environment. The determining
factor is that exegetes place themselves within the living tradition of the
Church, a tradition whose first concern is to remain faithful to the revelation to which the sacred writings testify. Such an exegetical stance
13 The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, 264–265.

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accepts the biblical writings as the Church’s Scripture, which is intended
to nourish and strengthen the community of believers. It believes that
these writings witness to God’s revelation, first to Israel, then in Jesus
Christ. Consequently, it approaches the writings as the Word of God from
a stance of faith seeking understanding.
This said, Catholic biblical scholarship is also academic because God’s
Word is clothed in human words, thereby mirroring the mystery of the
incarnation. John Paul II noted this in his address on the occasion of the
publication of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s document, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church:
The strict relationship uniting the inspired biblical texts with the
mystery of the incarnation was expressed by the encyclical Divino
afflante Spiritu in the following terms: “Just as the substantial Word of
God became like men in every respect except sin, so too the words of
God, expressed in human languages, became like human language in
every respect except error” (EB, 559). Repeated almost literally by the
conciliar constitution Dei Verbum (no. 13), this statement sheds light on
a parallelism rich in meaning.14

It is not surprising then that the Biblical Commission’s document reserves
its harshest critique for biblical Fundamentalism stating:“The basic problem with fundamentalist interpretation of this kind is that, refusing to take
into account the historical character of biblical revelation, it makes itself
incapable of accepting the full truth of the incarnation itself ” (19).
A rigorous academic approach to the text, then, is not alien to
Catholic biblical scholarship that remains within the living tradition of
the Church. Anything less would be unacceptable.Within the context of
the university, Catholic scholars should work with the same academic
standards required of their colleagues in other disciplines of learning,
thereby establishing a fruitful dialogue between the academy and the
Church. This, of course, does not mean that biblical study belongs only
to the professional exegete, or that only the professional exegete can
understand the text. It simply indicates that Catholic biblical scholarship
can and should be both ecclesial and academic.
To summarize, Catholic biblical scholarship will discover its identity by
finding its place “in the mainstream of the great Tradition,”15 not by withdrawing from the academy or ecumenical dialogue.The future of Catholic
biblical scholarship will be found in the present as well as in the past: in the
14 Pope John Paul II, address, “On the Interpretation of the Bible in the Church,”

in Fitzmyer, The Biblical Commission’s Document, 4.
15 Ibid., 7.

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past inasmuch as it must rejoin a long conversation as Johnson maintains,
in the present inasmuch as it must live within the liturgical life of the
Church as Kurz reminds us. Catholic biblical scholarship, however, will not
find its identity by retreating behind closed walls.
Conclusion
Luke Timothy Johnson and William Kurz have invited us to enter into a
constructive conversation about the future of Catholic biblical scholarship. Following their lead, I have tried to do this in a way that takes into
account four aspects of the discipline, arguing that it is not a matter of
history or theology but both. Nor is it a question of the theology of the
Bible or the theologies in the Bible but both. The Old and the New
Testaments are not to be read in isolation from each other but together.
It is not a choice between ecclesial or academic exegesis but both. This
Catholic spirit is found in the great Tradition we share, a Tradition that
embraces many methods and approaches to Scripture and in which
Catholic exegesis has its home.The future of Catholic biblical scholarship
belongs to those who live in and out of this Tradition, within and for the
N&V
sake of the Church.

The Text of the Bible and
Catholic Biblical Scholarship
S TEPHEN D. RYAN, OP
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

L UKE T IMOTHY J OHNSON and William S. Kurz, SJ, have written a timely book, one that delves deeply into the past in order to assess
the current state of Catholic biblical scholarship in the United States.1
Since the book has already been reviewed appreciatively by my colleague
Jody Vaccaro Lewis in the pages of this journal, and since its import has
been assessed elsewhere, I will address myself to the “future” featured in
the book’s title, specifically to the future of the text of the Old Testament.
I will seek to relate a rather specific discussion about the form of the text
of the Old Testament to larger questions this discussion raises for
ecumenism, for the doctrine of biblical inspiration, and for the future of
1 Luke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, SJ, The Future of Catholic Biblical

Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2002).

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Catholic biblical scholarship. It is my hope that these remarks will add
both an Old Testament complement to the work of Johnson and Kurz,
both of whom are New Testament scholars, and a new dimension to the
larger discussion about the future of Catholic biblical scholarship.
The text of Scripture is generally regarded as fixed and stable and we
are seldom tempted to add to or subtract from it. But establishing the text
of Scripture has become slightly more complicated in the last fifty years.
For example, when the New Revised Standard Version was published in
1989, one can imagine that relatively few readers noticed that the translation of the Old Testament was slightly longer than that found in the
Revised Standard Version of 1952. The reason for this change had nothing to do with new theories of translation or even with the use of inclusive language, but can be traced rather to the momentous textual
discoveries at the Dead Sea some fifty years ago. In the books of Samuel,
for instance, the New Revised Standard Version restored four sentences to
1 Samuel 10:27 on the basis of new Hebrew evidence from Qumran. In
the book of Tobit, the New Revised Standard Version chose to translate
the longer and more original textual form of the book, again on the basis
of evidence from Qumran, adding some seventeen hundred words to the
Revised Standard Version translation, which had used the shorter Greek
text.And this is only the tip of the iceberg.The quiet and generally unnoticed revolution in textual studies generated by the Dead Sea Scrolls has
revealed that for several books of the Old Testament the traditional
Masoretic Hebrew text represents only one of several textual forms that
have a claim to representing the earliest recoverable or “original” form of
the book. Jeremiah is a case in point. Here the Greek text, which in several
chapters differs significantly from the Hebrew, arguably represents in
certain chapters a different and earlier literary form of the book. Similar
examples could be added.Adrian Schenker has argued recently, for example, that in large sections of the book of Kings, the Old Greek text represents an earlier form of the text than that preserved in the Masoretic text.2
This raises several related questions about the goals of textual criticism and
how one determines the textual form to be translated.
Johnson and Kurz discuss the question of the textual form of the Bible
only in passing. Johnson notes that authors like James, Paul, and Luke “read
2 A. Schenker, OP, Älteste Textgeschichte der Königsbücher, Die hebräische Vorlage der

ursprünglichen Septuaginta als älteste Textform der Königsbücher (Fribourg: Academic
Press, 2004); see also the theoretical discussion in Schenker’s earlier article, “Was
übersetzen wir? Fragen zur Textbasis, die sich aus der Textkritik ergeben,” in Die
Übersetzung der Bibel-Aufgabe der Theologie, eds. J. Gnilka and H. P. Rüger (Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1985), 65–80.

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and interpreted the Greek translation of Torah called the Septuagint
(LXX)” (47), and goes on to observe that some Hellenistic Jews regarded
the Greek text to be divinely inspired (48). Later, having observed that
Kurz signals the importance of the Septuagint as the intertext for New
Testament authors (167–69, 215–16), Johnson writes,
The richness of this exposition presses the issue of the status of the
Septuagint for Catholic biblical interpretation. Everyone acknowledges
that the New Testament itself is unintelligible without reference to the
Septuagint. But this recognition has no effect on anything else.
Catholics who do not have Greek have no sense of these interconnections. But even when they are pointed out by scholars, ordinary
Catholics cannot find them in their Bibles, or hear them in the liturgy,
for all modern translations are from the Hebrew (256).

Without doing so explicitly, Johnson seems to argue in favor of facilitating wider popular access to the form of the Old Testament used by many
of the writers of the New Testament, namely the Septuagint. While this
is in itself a laudable goal, recent developments in the field of Old Testament textual criticism raise even broader issues about the early biblical
versions and their status. Below I will briefly raise four questions dealing
with the text of the Bible that I should like to propose for the future
agenda of Catholic biblical scholarship.
1. Multiple literary editions. Eugene Ulrich has written recently about
the phenomenon of multiple literary editions of some books of the
Old Testament.3 The discoveries at the Dead Sea have helped scholars like Ulrich to recognize more clearly that several books of the
Old Testament circulated in more than one literary form. Examples
of this phenomenon are found in certain chapters of the books of
Exodus, 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, Jeremiah, and Daniel. In some cases
two Hebrew forms are preserved, while in other cases one form is
preserved in Greek and another in Hebrew.Textual criticism itself is
not always equipped to determine which of these forms was earlier.
In the beginning, it seems, there was multiplicity. And this multiplicity seems to have continued long past what scholars used to refer to
3 E. Ulrich, “Double Literary Editions of Biblical Narratives and Reflections on

Determining the Form to be Translated,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Origins
of the Bible, ed. E. Ulrich (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 34–50.Angela Kim Harkins explores some of the
theological implications of textual pluriformity in a forthcoming article titled,
“Theological Attitudes towards the Scriptural Text: Lessons from the Syriac
Exegetical Tradition and Qumran.”

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as the period of the stabilization of the biblical text.4 The editors of
a new critical edition of the Hebrew Bible known as the Oxford
Hebrew Bible have correctly decided in such cases to print two
Hebrew texts in parallel synoptic columns.5 It will not be long
before popular translations follow suit, printing translations of both
Hebrew texts side by side.
In addition to the questions such plurality might elicit from lay
readers, Catholic biblical scholars will no doubt be forced to consider
more closely the editorial decisions underlying popular diplomatic
editions of the Masoretic text such as the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia.This editio minor, which prints one of the best complete Masoretic
manuscripts and adds a modern, critical apparatus, is often cited as if
it represented “the Bible” in some pristine and normative form.While
the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, its text and critical apparatus, represented the best standards of scholarship of its day and continues to
provide convenient access to one early form of the Masoretic text, the
manner in which the texts have been chosen, edited, and presented,
and the readings proposed in the critical apparatus, give evidence of
unarticulated historical and theological presuppositions. The result is
that editions such as the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, though useful,
can hardly be assumed to give us the definitive text of the Old Testament. The Oxford Hebrew Bible critical edition will undoubtedly
likewise contain very provisional and personal scholarly interpretations. In effect it will approximate an original that should have been
but never was. But the simple fact that this edition will make occasional use of synoptic parallel columns will help to awaken greater
awareness of the limitations of textual criticism and of the difficulties
in the seemingly simple task of establishing the text of the Bible.6
4 For a different view, one that would see textual uniformity associated with the

Jerusalem temple alongside of textual pluriformity elsewhere, see A. S. van der
Woude, “Pluriformity and Uniformity, Reflections on the Transmission of the
Text of the Old Testament,” in Sacred History and Sacred Texts in Early Judaism, ed.
J. N. Bremmer and F. García Martínez (Kampen: Pharos, 1992), 151–69.
5 Similarly T. Nicklas and C.Wagner (“Thesen zur Textlichen Vielfalt im Tobitbuch,”
Journal for the Study of Judaism 34 [2003]: 141–59), who have argued that it is impossible to reconstruct an Urtext of the book of Tobit and call for a synoptic presentation of the extant texts, suggesting that only such plurality can do justice to the
“riches of the reception and interpretation history of the book of Tobit” (159).
6 See the important reflections on the task and limits of textual criticism in James
A. Sanders, “Stability and Fluidity in Text and Canon,” in Tradition of the Text,
Studies offered to Dominique Barthélemy in Celebration of his 70th Birthday, eds. G.
Norton, OP, and S. Pisano, SJ (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1991), 203–17; and

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2. The ancient versions. One of the major trends in Old Testament
studies in the past twenty years has been a growth of interest in and
appreciation of the major biblical versions (LXX, Peshitta,Vulgate).
While the versions have traditionally been used by text critics as
resources for reconstructing the original Hebrew text, increasingly
they are studied and appreciated as precious literary and theological
texts in their own right. The Spanish textual critic N. Fernández
Marcos, demonstrating a Catholic preference for the “both/and,” has
observed: “The procedure adopted by the Polyglot Bibles has something to teach us today: to edit the different ancient texts that circulated among the distinct communities and which constitute sensu
pleno the Books, ta biblia.”7
The Septuagint in particular has been increasingly recognized to
have played an instrumental role in the formation of Christian
culture. The late Dominique Barthélemy, OP, who devoted most of
his scholarly life to the establishment of the critical Hebrew text of
the Old Testament, called repeatedly for the recognition of a Christian Old Testament in two columns: one containing the Septuagint of
the first centuries of our era, the second the Hebrew text canonized
by the scribes of Israel.8 A preliminary step in this direction has been
taken already in the case of the translation of the book of Esther. A
1969 agreement between the United Bible Societies and the Vatican
Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity allows for this book to be
translated twice, based on both the Hebrew (in the Hebrew canon
idem,“The Task of Text Criticism,” in Problems in Biblical Theology, Essays in Honor
of Rolf Knierim, eds. H. T. Sun and K. L. Eades (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), 315–27; for a popular discussion of the
differing approaches to textual critcism underlying forthcoming editions of the
Hebrew Bible, see James A. Sanders,“Keep Each Tradition Separate,” Bible Review
16 (2000): 40–49, 58.
7 Fernández Marcos, “The Use of the Septuagint in the Criticism of the Hebrew
Bible,” Sef 47 (1987): 59–72.
8 Dominique Barthélemy, OP, “La place de la Septante dans l’Église,” reprinted in
D. Barthélemy, Études d’histoire du texte de l’Ancien Testament (Fribourg: Editions
Universitaires, 1978), 126; see also Adrian Schenker, OP, “L’Ecriture Sainte
subsiste en plusieurs formes canoniques simultanées,” in L’interpretazione della
Bibbia nella Chiesa, Atti del Simposio promosso dalla Congregazione per la Dottrina
della Fede (Città del Vaticano: Libraria Editrice Vaticana, 2001), 178–86; and the
expanded German version of Schenker’s article, “Die Heilige Schrift subsistiert
gleichzeitig in mehreren kanonischen Formen,” in Studien zu Propheten und Religionsgeschichte, ed. A. Schenker, OP (Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk,
2003), 192–200.

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section) and the Greek (in the deuterocanonical section).9 This practice has been adopted by the NEB, REB, New Revised Standard
Version, GN, and the French TOB translations. It is to be hoped that
in the future consideration will be given to printing both versions
synoptically in parallel columns.
Several major international projects are now underway to
provide not only translations but also commentaries on the Septuagint and the Syriac Peshitta.10 This is a welcome development and
one that will make the rich heritage of the Eastern churches accessible to Western audiences. As Brian Daley, SJ, has recently noted,
“Christian exegesis must not only become more theological but
more theologically ecumenical, if it is to nourish the Church.”11 The
inter-faith (Christian-Jewish) and ecumenical gains involved with
the use of a critical Hebrew text based on the work of the Masoretes
have been significant, especially with regard to the increasing convergence of lectionary practice in North America. One might anticipate
similar ecumenical gains to be had with a greater accessibility of the
Greek and Syriac Bibles in English translation, though the widespread use of these versions in the Western liturgies is not likely.12
The Catholic Church, with its supra-national organizational structure, long history of utilizing non-Hebrew versions of the Old Testament, and its theoretically multi-cultural and multi-lingual nature, is
the Church best equipped to foster the use of the versions alongside
of critical and scholarly editions based on the earliest recoverable
texts. As the pioneering Catholic biblical scholar Richard Simon
9 United Bible Societies Executive Committee and the Vatican Secretariat for

Promoting Christian Unity, “Guiding Principles for Interconfessional Cooperation in Translating the Bible,” The Bible Translator 19 (1968): 103.
10 The three Septuagint projects are known as the New English Translation of the
Septuagint; La Bible d’Alexandrie, and Septuaginta Deutsch. The New English
Annotated Translation of the Syriac Bible is sponsored by the Peshitta Institute
in Leiden.
11 Brian E. Daley, SJ,“Is Patristic Exegesis Still Usable?: Reflections on Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms,” Communio 29 (2002): 213.
12 At a conference on the interpretation of the Bible held in Romania in 1998,
Orthodox and Western scholars identified the questions of the status of the
Septuagint and of Christological reading of the Old Testament as related questions and as open issues remaining to be resolved; see the editor’s comments in
“Konvergenzen und offene Fragen,” in Auslegung der Bibel in orthodoxer und westlicher Perspektive, Akten des west-östlichen Neutestamentler/innen-Symposiums von
Neamt vom 4.–11. September 1998, eds. J. D. G. Dunn, H. Klein, U. Luz, and V.
Mihoc (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 219.

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noted long ago, “L’Église Romaine reçoit toutes ces nations avec
leurs Bibles.”13 The preservation of an ecclesial role for the Septuagint, Vulgate, and Peshitta, and perhaps for other important early
translations as well, would manifest in a clear way that the Bible of
the whole Church, East and West, has been inspired by the Holy
Spirit in radically rich and diverse ways. Though the Catholic
Church clearly calls for modern biblical translations to be based on
the original scriptural languages, there is a growing body of official
teaching on the role the biblical versions are to play alongside the
original Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew texts. Dei Verbum, number 22,
for example, refers to the honor with which the Church holds these
versions, even while going on in the next sentence to call for translations to be based on the original texts:“For this reason the Church,
from the very beginning, made her own the ancient translation of the
Old Testament called the Septuagint; she honors also the other Eastern translations, and the Latin translations, especially that which is
called the Vulgate.”14 The recent instruction Liturgiam authenticam
suggests a similar concern for preserving the riches of the biblical
versions when preparing liturgical translations:
[O]ther ancient versions of the Sacred Scriptures should also be
consulted, such as the Greek version of the Old Testament
commonly known as the ‘Septuagint,’ which has been used by the
Christian faithful from the earliest days of the Church. . . . Finally,
translators are strongly encouraged to pay close attention to the
history of interpretation that may be drawn from citations of biblical texts in the writings of the Fathers of the Church.15

This official ecclesial sanction for the use of the versions may be
understood as another expression of a Catholic predilection for
“both/and” inclusivity.
13 R. Simon, Réponse au livre intitulé Défense des Sentiments de quelques Theologiens de

Hollande sur l’Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament (Rotterdam: 1699), as quoted in
D. Barthélemy, “L’enchevêtrement de l’histoire textuelle et de l’histoire littéraire
dans les relations entre la Septante et le texte massorétique,” in De Septuaginta,
Studies in Honor of John William Wevers on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, eds.A. Pietersma
and C. Cox (Mississauga, ON, Canada: Benben, 1984), 37.
14 Dei Verbum, in Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed.
Austin Flannery, OP (Northport, NY: Costello, 1987), no. 22.
15 Congregatio de Cultu Divino et Disciplina Sacramentorum, Liturgiam authenticam, March 28, 2001 (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, 2001), no. 41.

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3. The history of interpretation based on non-Hebrew versions of the
Old Testament.Attention to the various early translations of the Bible
can have a pastoral impact in that it can facilitate access to the history
of biblical interpretation in the Church. Johnson (256) notes that
even when readings and interpretations based on the versions are
pointed out by scholars, people cannot find them in their own
Bibles. A fine example of how the treasures of the biblical versions
and the patristic tradition can be exploited in popular commentary
can be seen in Pope John Paul’s recent commentaries on the psalms
and canticles of Morning Prayer. There the pope occasionally cites
interpretations of the Psalter based on the text of the Vulgate and the
Septuagint alongside of his comments on the Hebrew text.16 In this
way the pluriform nature of the Word of God is highlighted and the
richness of the history of interpretation in both the Western and the
Eastern traditions, particularly spiritual and Christological interpretation, is made accessible to a new generation.17
4. Textual pluriformity and biblical inspiration. Finally I would suggest
that the developments in textual criticism outlined above make even
more urgent the call for a renewal of the study of biblical inspiration
by Catholic biblical scholars and theologians.18 The fundamental idea
behind the doctrine of inspiration is the secure link between God’s
words as delivered by the prophets and sacred authors and the Scripture preserved by the Church. In the not too distant past prominent
Catholic biblical scholars have suggested that inspiration is to be
located at the level of particular textual forms of Scripture. George
16 I have consulted an English translation of the pope’s commentaries on the psalms

and canticles of morning prayer titled, Psalms & Canticles, Meditations and Catechesis on the Psalms and Canticles of Morning Prayer (Chicago: LTP, 2004). In this
edition examples of the pope’s use of the Vulgate and Septuagint alongside rather
than in place of the Hebrew can be found on p. 94 (Ps 150:1), p. 108 (Ps 43:4),
p. 177 (Ps 96:10), and p. 189 (Ps 86:2). The pope’s practice is similar to that of
Jerome, who likewise commented on both Greek and Hebrew lemmas in his
Old Testament commentaries; on Jerome’s practice see Adrian Schenker, OP,
“Septuaginta und christliche Bibel,” Theologische Revue 91 (1995): 461.
17 One might also note in this context that the first volume of the Church’s Bible
(The Song of Songs, Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, ed.
R. A. Norris [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
2003]) prints complete translations of the Vulgate and Septuagint at the beginning of each unit of commentary.
18 D. Janthial (“Livre et révélation: le cas d’Isaie,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 126
[2004]: 16–32) has suggested that recent developments in biblical research
require a new articulation of the Church’s teaching on biblical inspiration.

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Montague, SM, for example, has referred in the case of Judith to “the
superiority of the Greek text in determining the Word of God to the
Church.”19 In this particular case, Montague’s position is defensible,
given the textual history of this particular book. But one wonders if the
recovered Semitic texts of Ben Sira would require H. Duesberg, OSB,
and P. Auvray, who argued in 1958 that it is specifically the Greek text
of Ben Sira that enjoys inspiration, to revise their opinion.20 L. Hartman, CSSR, specifically identified the inspired biblical text with “the
original manuscript of the inspired author.”21 P. Benoit, OP, and other
Catholic scholars went so far in the opposite direction as to argue
explicitly for the inspiration of the entire Septuagint, an argument made
particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, but one that seems to have been
largely abandoned.22 I would suggest that these arguments could be
included in a more general theory of a multiform inspired Bible.
It seems more prudent, and more in keeping with the textual
evidence, to locate inspiration at either the level of the book or of the
Bible as a whole, rather than at the level of particular textual forms,
particular manuscripts, or particular authors. E. Ulrich has preferred to
speak of canonicity at the level of the book.With regard specifically to
canonicity, Ulrich notes, “Both in Judaism and in Christianity it is
books, not the textual form of the books, that are canonical.”23 Since
canonicity and inspiration are related, one might infer that Ulrich
would locate inspiration at this level as well. It is not clear that this
particular formulation is entirely a happy one, for books, of course,
have content; they are not empty shells. The question of the textual
form remains. In Judaism there is clear evidence that it is specifically
the Masoretic text itself that has a sacred status not shared by the textual
forms of books in the early biblical translations such as the Septuagint.
Other scholars, such as Norbert Lohfink, SJ, argue that inspiration
should be located at the level of the Bible as a whole.24 Lohfink bases
his argument on the function of the canon.When an individual book
19 G. Montague, SM, The Book of Judith (NY: Paulist, 1973), 13.
20 H. Duesberg, OSB, and P.Auvray, La livre de l’Ecclesiastique, La Sainte Bible, 2nd ed.

(Paris: Cerf, 1958), 22.
21 L. Hartman, CSSR, “Sirach in Hebrew and Greek,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 23

(1961): 444.
22 For a recent discussion, see M. Müller, The First Bible of the Church:A Plea for the

Septuagint (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996).
23 E. Ulrich,“The Canonical Process,Textual Criticism, and the Latter Stages in the

Composition of the Bible,” in Ulrich, The Dead Sea Scrolls, 57.
24 N. Lohfink, SJ,“The Inerrancy of Scripture,” in The Inerrancy of Scripture and Other

Essays (Berkeley: BILBAL, 1992), 24–51.

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is taken into the canon its context is radically reshaped and its meaning
necessarily modified.This reception into the canon that gives a book its
final form can be understood as a new act of authorship, and Lohfink
would locate the final act of authorship, and inspiration, here at this
level. The many individual books, as part of the canon, become one
inspired book, the Bible.As Hugh of St.Victor put it:“The whole divine
Scripture is one book, and this one book is Christ.” While Lohfink’s
interpretation of inspiration is not without problems, it nicely emphasizes the formative role of the Church in shaping the biblical text and
avoids speaking of inspired textual forms of individual books.
Throughout their book both Johnson and Kurz demonstrate a
concern that Catholic biblical scholarship maintain the highest
academic standards while also building up the Body of Christ. Scholarly reflection on the pluriformity of the text of the Word of God
may contribute to these goals in two ways. Firstly, such reflection
may help the Church’s teaching on biblical inspiration to mature and
to avoid the seductive certainties of enlightenment forms of biblical
literalism. Secondly, maintaining a role for the early biblical versions
alongside the original texts in the liturgical and intellectual life of the
Church may also help safeguard the ecumenical catholicity of the
Church and provide it with greater access to the rich tradition of the
saints and scholars who have gone before us.25
N&V

25 I am grateful to Angela Kim Harkins, Jody Vaccaro Lewis, Francis Martin, James

A. Sanders, Adrian Schenker, OP, and Gregory Tatum, OP, for reading earlier
drafts of this paper.

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“La Bible en ses Traditions”
The New Project of the École biblique
et archéologique française de Jérusalem
Presented as a “Fourth-Generation” Enterprise
O LIVIER -T HOMAS V ENARD, OP
École Biblique
Jerusalem, Israel
“We might do a number of creative things.”
—L. T. Johnson1

S UCH A REFRESHING approach to biblical scholarship as Johnson and Kurz’s has, of course, struck us here in Jerusalem at the École
biblique. For a long time indeed several of us have been involved in a
reflection on a recasting of the Bible de Jérusalem, taking into account the
requirements of a comprehensive exegetical agenda that has been emerging since 1956, the date of the first one-volume edition.2 It should
include: the discovery of the irreducibility of several versions of the same
book (or of the same passages of a book); the new importance given to
the history of the reception in literary studies, that matches up with the
rediscovery of patristic commentaries in exegesis; a greater awareness of
the literary aspect of biblical texts, besides their plain historical or doctrinal meaning. In brief, we aim at producing an edition of the Catholic
Bible presenting the texts themselves in their diversity, framed by an
enriched annotation divided into three main registers.
The first, “Text,” will include all the notes dealing with the linguistic
and literary description of the text, from points in textual criticism to
more literary remarks. “Background” will group notes dealing with
archaeology, history, geography, realia or texts of the ancient worlds and
cultures, relevant to the production of biblical texts. “Reception” will be
the largest zone of annotation; it is to comprise the most important readings of the text throughout history, starting from possible intertextual
1 L. T. Johnson, in Luke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz The Future of

Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2002), 90.
2 La sainte Bible, traduite en français sous la direction de l’École biblique de Jérusalem
(Paris: Cerf, 1956), later called by the public La Bible de Jérusalem. For the history of
its making, since the first sketches of 1943, see our “Cultural Backgrounds and
Challenges of La Bible de Jérusalem,” in Essays in Honour of Dom Henry Wansbrough
OSB, ed. P. McCosker (Oxford: Continuum, forthcoming 2006).

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Reception

Header

Header

Translations of

the biblical texts

Meaningful
variant

Cross references

Proposed reading

Cross references

Variable height

Pattern of two pages of the opened Bible en ses Traditions

main version
(e.g. MT)

other version
(e.g. LXX)

Proposed reading

Reception
Biblical intertextuality
Jewish traditions
Christian traditions
Theology, dogmas
Liturgy
Iconography
Art and literature

Background
Text

Text
Key-words

Key-words

…

Textual criticism
Philology
Literary devices

Background
History and geography
Social background
Ancient texts

Fixed width

echoes in parallel texts (in the canonical Bible, in Jewish tradition, or in
apocryphal works), and continuing to some of the most important
modern readings, including the Church Fathers and medieval theologians.The top corner of each page will present the reading proposed by
the exegetes in charge of the book as a result of all preceding notes.
In this contribution, in gratitude to our lucid authors and in thanks to
our clear-minded colleagues, I would like to describe our project as a
possible answer to some of their most challenging propositions.3 It gives
me the opportunity to share with English-speaking exegetes and theologians some aspects of the “scientific project” we worked out two years
ago to serve as a vade mecum for our scholarly undertakings in the years
(or decades) to come.4 Permit me to insist on the fact that the following
pages are not an official presentation of our project: If any of the views
proposed in the next pages shock the reader, let him/her evaluate the
project itself and eschew my opinions.
Throughout their book, our authors express judgments or make
suggestions that eventually depict what “The Future of Catholic Biblical
Scholarship” could be, granted the rise of a new awareness of what it is
3 I shall not quote many of Kurz’s proposals, as far as they are mostly concrete

examples attempting to actualize this theory by studying a series of texts with a
view to revealing how they speak to certain contemporary concerns.
4 See “La Bible en ses Traditions, projet scientifique,” available at the École biblique
de Jérusalem. See also the proceedings of one of the conferences preparing this
scientific undertaking: J.-M. Poffet, dir., L’autorité des Écritures (Paris: Cerf, 2002).

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to be a catholic exegete among the fourth (or a fifth?) generation of
biblical scholars. These would be very much postmodern scholars,5 but
according to a Christian version of postmodernity, which inverts the
general relativism of postmodern thinkers into the conscious “second
naivety” provided by an illuminated faith regarding our possibility to
know the truth.6 Indeed, postmodern relativism can be of great help for
us, to get rid of the exaggerated assumption of being “scientific”—the
adjective meaning here objective and close to fact—an assumption that
triggered the divorce between biblical exegetes and the life of the
Church. Now, we do know that penser est toujours phraser (Lyotard) and
that every discourse, scientific though it might claim to be, implies a rhetoric, a tradition, and many preconceptions.
La Bible en ses Traditions was not purposely conceived of as a postmodern undertaking. Nevertheless, it is possible to underline several aspects
of this undertaking that happen to fit best with the renewed, humble
enthusiasm allowed to biblical interpreters by the postmodern softening
of the modern “scientific” pattern.That is what I would like to do in the
next pages, by following The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship in its
both postmodern and Catholic celebrations of language, diversity, otherness, culture, and faith.
Celebration of Language
“In the beginning was the Word”: both the Bible and postmodernity
invite us to renew our literary sensitivity.To better relate to one another
the biblical text and the ways in which it was read, it is worth studying
its literary conditioning in all its dimensions: Sometimes a full theological tradition begins with a minute literary variation that might be perceptible in “original” languages, and blurred in different translations.
Annotation
That is the reason why much attention will be paid to a precise linguistic description of the actual text in the first zone of notes. These notes
should embrace the literary phenomenon on all its scales, from the smallest (that of utterances) to the largest (that of the work as a whole). From
lexicological particularities to meta-literary teachings, including the
5 As Johnson puts it, “as soon as we are able to use the term ‘modernity,’ we find

ourselves, willy-nilly, in the posture of postmodernism.”
6 On all this, see both J. Milbank’s and C. Pickstock’s works (see also Gavin

Hyman’s critical analysis of the way both authors deal with postmodernity:
Gavin Hyman, The Predicament of Postmodern Theology. Radical Orthodoxy or Nihilist
Textualism? (Louisville, London, Leiden,Westminster: John Knox Press, 2001).

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identification of literary genres or figures coming from rhetoric (either
traditional or new), narratology or semiotics, and the detection of strategies of enunciation, the main significant features relevant to the interpretation of the text should be observed.
Among the five functions that linguistics classically attributes to
language, only one—namely the referential—has been really taken into
account by exegetes, insofar as that for a long time their main aim has
been reaching “historical facts” behind their literary and theological
rendering. But there are four others: the “poetic function” related to the
signifier considered as a value in itself; the “conative” and the “phatic”
one to the pragmatic relationships surrounding utterances (language may
be used as a means to draw someone’s attention, or to sustain it); and the
“meta-linguistic” one (language may speak about itself—a phenomenon
particularly frequent in literatures coming from orality).
Once texts have been worked out in all these dimensions, some exegetical reasonings may collapse, while some traditional readings may appear to
be more relevant than expected. Indeed, form criticism was often imbued
with cultural prejudices coming from the neo-classical rhetorical mould
common to most biblical scholars of the first three generations, concerning
the “natural” way of expressing one’s thoughts or the very nature of the act
of writing.7 Redaction criticism too has very seldom tried to surpass the
wholly literary mindset inherited from the culture of the book8—which
led scholars to interpret doublets sometimes too systematically, for example,
in terms of editorial layers, without even imagining that some of them
might be remnants of the oral compositions preceding the written texts.
Interestingly enough, the sophisticated celebration of the cultural
shaping of all knowledge owed to postmodern thinkers meets with the
7 Postmodern thinkers have rightly stated that to compose or to write a text does

not mean simply to try to communicate one’s thoughts; what goes on when
human beings write is not only a sort of translation of pure preceding thought
into words. Indeed, thought is formed only once it has been worded. Moreover,
in the very act of speaking or writing lies an implicit assent to the general rules
of human communication—including its difficulties, impossibilities, and other
phenomena related to a “murkiness” of human relationships. Insofar as they are
expressed, one’s ideas are always more than one’s ideas, at least because of the very
structure of linguistic signification:The meaning of one word is determined by
that of all other words in the language in question; to speak is also to yield to
those connotations.
8 As J. Dunn stated it a few months ago: “We here are all children of Gutenberg
and Caxton. We belong to cultures shaped by the book.” J. D. G. Dunn, “Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition,” New Testament Studies 49 (2003): 142.

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teachings of patristic exegesis. The way in which ancient interpreters
dealt with texts fits well with the insistence upon textuality as productivity. For example, Johnson reminds us that
Origen seizes on the distinction between what happened in the past
and the textual character of Scripture. Scripture was inspired by the
Holy Spirit (so the Church teaches). Therefore in its language it
inevitably teaches; in the way it is stated, it is meant for our instruction,
whatever its relation to ‘what might have happened’ (Princ. 4, 1.12–13).9

Hence, according to Origen, “our contention with regard to the whole
of Scripture is that it has all a spiritual meaning, but not all a bodily
meaning; for the bodily meaning is often proved to be an impossibility”
(Princ. 4, 1.20). Moreover, Origen seems to be sometimes more critical
than modernity when the question of the relation between history and
theology is raised.10
Translation
Such a renewed interest in the literary dimension of our texts will have
consequences for the art of translating. Linguistic reflection upon truth has
taught us an operative conception of signification, instead of the resultative
one inherited from the (neo-)classical times.As far as we are now aware that
the way leading toward the meaning is itself part of the meaning, we should
no longer equate the art of translating with a technique of rendering the
same signified with other signifiers. Signification is a journey—not only
the end of a way:Translating a text should be building up in the targeted
language an analogous linguistic and literary path.The translation we would
like to propose ought not only to inform the reader of the “conceptual”
content of the biblical text, but also enable him to take an analogous literary itinerary to discover the treasure hidden in the field of the words.Translators should mobilize all sorts of literary devices and all levels of language
in order to achieve this ideal goal—which supposes poetic imagination
and, sometimes, even audacities toward any classical rhetorical canon.
9 Johnson and Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, 72, emphasis added.

Origen is here commenting on 1 Cor 10:11: “These things happened to them
typologically, but they were written for our instruction.”
10 As Johnson puts it,“Events of the past are past (see Mt 12:36).They are, like their
actors, dead. But the text is living since it is inspired by the Holy Spirit ([Origen,]
Hom. 1 Sam. 28, 4, 2)—the meaning the Spiritus wishes to teach is found
precisely in the literary shaping, whether figurative or not ( Jn 10:4). . . .To read
the text as a means of recovering the past is to prefer the dead to the living.”
Johnson and Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, 83.

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By no means should one equate this plea in favor of free literary imagination with a call for futility. On the contrary, it is deeply rooted in a
theological account of reading as such.11 The close link between the
sometimes intricate or painful (literary) way to the meaning of the text
and the preparation for God’s grace12 is the main reason why the original text ought to be scrupulously respected. Ignoratio scripturarum est ignoratio Christi,13 a kind of “physical” continuity from the body of flesh of
Jesus to the body of the biblical text,14 explains why those who believed
that, thought even of the slightest details of the written texts.15 Therefore, just as many phrases or locutions that were understood beforehand
in a purely metaphorical way came to be endowed with a proper meaning with the historical coming of Christ—in Jesus, yes, God does have
arms and legs—a human being may be sown in the world as well as a
word in the heart.
I allude here to a passage of Matthew I worked out last year in the
perspective of La Bible en ses traditions: Permit me to enlarge a little upon
it. In the so-called “explanation” of the parable of the sower, the Greek
presents a striking logical discrepancy. Whereas everything was made by
the redactor to make us identify the sower and Jesus, in the telling of the
parable itself, though such an identification held at the beginning of the
“explanation,” suddenly in the hyperbaton of verse 19 the hearer, not the
word is identified with the seed: “This is he that was sown by the way
side.”16 Because for decades the exegesis of parables has mainly consisted
in trying to recover Jesus’ words, the general trend among commentators
is to lessen the importance of the fact, for example by evoking former
11 According to the ancient theology of inspiration, “God’s Spirit is at work not

only in the ancient author, but at work also in the present reader, prodding and
guiding human reason into the wisdom that God seek to reveal here and now
about the present and future world.” Johnson and Kurz, The Future of Catholic
Biblical Scholarship, 57.
12 The traditional discipline of lectio divina rests upon this link, especially the passage
from its third to its fourth steps (oratio, contemplatio). See Guigues II le Chartreux,
Epistola de vita contemplativa (scala Claustralium), in Lettre sur la vie contemplative
(ou échelle des moines): Douze méditations, eds. and French trans. E. Colledge and J.
Walsh (Paris: Cerf, 1970). See also the context of the famous phrase divina eloquia
cum legente crescunt in Gregory the Great, Homilies On the Book of the Prophet
Ezekiel, quoted on Homélies sur Ezéchiel, t. 1, ed. and French trans. Ch. Morel
(Paris: Cerf, 1986), 244–45.
13 Saint Jerome, Commentarii in Isaiam, “Prologus,” (CCL 73), 1; or (PL 24), 17.
14 That “the Bible” as a whole and the real Jesus are in dialectic relationship might
be argued from the viewpoint of the history of canon.
15 Mt 5:18.
16 Mt 13:19 (ASV).

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(oral?) layers of composition, in which (Aramaic?) speakers used holistic
ways of expression. In French, they did it up to the point of altering the
text in the translation.17
In fact, what the text means literally is both: that the seed is the word
(and the sower is Jesus), and that the seed is the hearer of the word (and
the sower is God the Creator)—which ambiguity results in suggesting an
enigmatic relationship between Jesus and God and between Jesus and his
words.Agreeing with this supposes that not having already set one’s mind
on the literary genre of verses 18–23: As much as an explanation, it
appears as a mere retelling of the parable (neither the identity of the
sower, nor the nature of fructification are allegorically elucidated),
complicated by enigmatic features. In the narrative, Jesus does not begin
“hear, ye, the meaning, nor my explanation of the parable of the sower,”
but “Hear then ye the parable of the sower.”18
Actually, what he is doing in these verses is applying to the disciples
the general rule he gave at verse 12: “For whosoever hath, to him shall
be given, and he shall have abundance.” Indeed, by asking Jesus why he is
speaking to them in parables,19 the disciples act as if they had understood.
Therefore, although they do not really need any explanation, as far as
they “have” (a certain knowledge of what Jesus intended to mean),20 they
deserve to “be given” (more).That is what Jesus does in these verses: He
gives them more symbolic teaching (which, we shall suggest later on in
this article).
Here again, a postmodern celebration (namely, that of the signifier over
against the essentialist overvaluing of the signified) merges with ancient
practices: Did not Jerome coin a sort of new Latin language by wishing to
respect sometimes even the word order of the biblical text? 21
17 Thus, the literary feature was completely erased in the first edition of La Bible de

Jérusalem, which translated “tel est celui qui a reçu la semence au bord du chemin” (Mt
13:19b; ed. 1956).The text was restored in the second edition: “tel est celui qui a
été semé au bord du chemin” (ed. 1973), but Fr. Benoit chose to maintain in note
the following value judgment: “cette tournure étrange vient d’une certaine confusion
dans l’interprétation de la parabole etc” (note b ad loc.), rather than try to go further
in interpretation.
18 Mt 13:18 (ASV).
19 Cf. Mt 13:9–11 (ASV):“ ‘He that hath ears, let him hear.’And the disciples came,
and said unto him ‘Why speakest thou unto them in parables?’ And he answered
and said unto them: ‘unto you it is given to know.’ ”
20 In fact, more than that! cf. v. 11 (ASV): “Unto you it is given [or: it has been
given: dedotai] to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it
is not given.”
21 See A. Michel, In hymnis et canticis, culture et beauté dans l’hymnique chrétienne latine,
“Philosophes médiévaux,” vol. 20 (Paris, Louvain:Vander-Oyez, 1976), 41–43.

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Celebration of Diversity
To stress the legitimacy of the love of our generation for diversity and the
opportunity it gives to spread authentic Christianity among them, Johnson draws attention to the first 350 years of Christianity. It was, according to him, a time of religious and cultural pluralism like our age: In that
time, skeptical of received certitudes, Christianity appeared as one way
among many others.22
Texts
A similar love for diversity appears in our choice concerning the very
texts we shall translate. As regards textual criticism, this Bible will show a
preference for a diplomatic way of editing the texts. Indeed, in her
wisdom, the Catholic Church never canonized texts, but only books. As
Pope Pius XII taught some sixty years ago, the traditional primacy of the
Vulgate is a “juridical,” not a “scientific,” one. Recent discoveries in the
history of texts, especially those provided by the Dead Sea Scrolls, prevent
scholars, from now on, to be satisfied with the old stratification that
considered the Hebrew masoretic text as the oldest, the Septuagint
coming next, and the different (Latin, Syriac, Coptic, etc.) versions after.
We do know that the Greek texts reflect sometimes a Hebrew version
older than the Masoretic one. In some cases,23 one should consider each
version as an original text, sometimes with its own theological agenda,
rather than to try to elaborate an “original” text by comparing them and
mixing them up—which resulted in publishing, in modern languages,
biblical texts never read before! According to a first evaluation by Fr.
Maurice Gilbert, nearly 30 percent of the Old Testament appears in two
or three different, irreducible versions.
Rather than producing one more eclectic text, we wish to present the
different ways a same work resonated (like a bow) in the echo chambers
of the different communities and periods that transmitted it to us.
Concretely speaking, it means that the reader will be given the possibility
of reading different texts, either in synoptic columns, or in special frames
included in the text, or in notes in the register called “Text,” each time
multiple versions with significant variations of meaning occur. By restoring the polyphony of text traditions within the Old Testament itself, we
22 As Johnson puts it, “in important ways, we are closer to the earliest Christian

interpreters than we might at first imagine, and it is this closeness that enables a
conversation across centuries” (63):“we are in a post-Constantinian era”;“we live
in a world that is intensely and explicitly pluralistic” (62) in which we are “forced
to make [our] way as an intentional community” (63).
23 For example Jeremiah, or some parts of Sirach.

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shall echo the practices of Origen portrayed by Johnson.24 As regards the
New Testament, besides the Alexandrine text—epitomized at best by the
Nestlé-Aland critical edition—attention should be given to the Byzantine
text, the Vulgate, and other versions important in the history of reception.
Annotation
Giving great importance to the depiction of the literary conditioning of
biblical texts enables us better to take into account different and sometime
contradictory interpretations that were made in the history of its reception. We wish to enlarge and “open” the reading, rather than close or
restrict it on the pretext that one knows exactly what the text (or worse,
its author) means. In addition, this fits well with the “both/and” approach
to the Bible illustrated by Johnson and Kurz.25 Against a “scholarly”
either/or ethos, according to which choosing one option in interpreting
a text necessarily means rejecting the others, the analytical presentation of
the notes will greatly help to retain all the possibilities and to combine
them in the most generous way possible. It means that notes should focus
on facts, not on hypotheses (consensual though they might be among
scholars), in order to give the largest space to the description of textual
facts and to the interpretations that they actually brought about in history.
Celebration of the Otherness
In the context of La Bible en ses Traditions, such a celebration is nothing
less than a theoretical stance:The otherness characterizes the very making
of this new edition, which collaborators will have to engage other fields
of knowledge and specialists with other mindsets.
Other Fields
Obviously, the making of this new kind of Bible requires new skills from
the exegete, in comparison with the type of training delivered by present-day institutions, either secular or ecclesiastical (both are indebted to
the modern confrontations of rationalism and apologetics). Part of the
24 “Rather than seek to discard readings in favor of the quest for a simple proto-

type—the instinct of modernity—Origen uses such textual variations as a means
of honoring local textual traditions and entertaining new possibilities of meaning.” Johnson and Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, 80.
25 With respect to the relationship with pagan wisdoms, Judaism, and early Christianity as well, La Bible en ses Traditions hopes to expose “both continuity and
distinctiveness (not the same as uniqueness, please note), [which] is congenial to
Catholic historiographical and theological instincts.” Johnson and Kurz, The
Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, 22.

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exegete’s work will be the (usual) scientific one, but part of it should be
a more creative (literary, poetic) one.
The appreciation of otherness will appear in the option for more
literal translations, better attuned to the “exoticism” of biblical cultures,
especially to the oral matrix of many of our texts. Against the schoolteacher’s prejudice that condemns repetition, a prejudice more widely
spread in French than in any other language, repetitions, plays on words,
symmetries should be better preserved than in past translations, which
often simplify, in order to fit with the modern concept of clarity.
We shall become more inventive not only as translators, but also as
administrators of the general balances among the different registers of
notes—which will be, like a poetical composition, a question of ingenious wisdom as much as of science.
Other People
Hardly any scholar masters all the fields of knowledge required by the
annotation, so that the work on each book of the Bible may be an opportunity to gather several people with various viewpoints and priorities.
Indeed, among the difficulties we have to face is the fact that we belong
to different generations26 and cultural spheres. My language in this paper
26 I particularly enjoyed Johnson’s sociological analysis of the history of Catholic

biblical scholarship. Yes, at the beginning of the use of historical-critical
approaches in the Church, the catholic structure of minds was robust enough to
let the exegetes make use of these new tools without being fascinated by them.
Indeed Father Lagrange, founder and still inspirer of the École biblique, would be a
good example of the fruitful synergy of a reliable (Thomist) theology and classical training in the humanities with historical criticism.Yes, from 1943 onward,
catalyzed by authoritative invitations to make use of it, the historical-critical
pattern became omnipotent not only in biblical studies, but also in other theological fields. But it was not merely a lack of scientificity that was fortunately filled
out: Catholic biblical scholars were tempted to forget who they really were meant
to be, especially in relationship with the pastoral needs of the Church. Many
exegetes of this second generation lost the awareness that historical-critical reading was nothing but one option among others in understanding the sacred text.
Since that time the historical-critical dominion over biblical studies began to
decline, because at last no real certainty emerged, neither about ancient Israel nor
about the origins of Christianity out of two centuries of research. Those interested in reading and transmitting the Bible as Word, the believers, could not be
satisfied with this way of dealing with Scriptures.Therefore, the third generation
is now striving to recover a better sense of what it is to be a Catholic scientific
reader of the Bible: “We would like to find a way to think about biblical interpretation within the church that is not totally defined by academic conventions
yet truly has a scholarly quality.” Johnson and Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical
Scholarship, viii.The fourth one could be that of La Bible en ses Traditions!

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may surprise readers from cultures other than the “Parisian” one, either
exegetes fond of Deutsche Wissenschaft or simply exegetes from previous
generations; even among my generation, some of us are more sensitive to
the reconstruction of the historical meaning, some others to the creativity of the reception.The challenge is to work together without reducing
the biblical symphony of diverse divinely inspired voices into a cacophony of rival scholars inspired by generational conflict!27 We shall work
together and agree to debate on disputed points.
For my part, I have begun to work on the first Gospel. My assistant and
I prepare a first draft of notes for all the registers, taking special care for our
own specialties.Then we submit our work to specialists in patristics, ancient
Judaism, history of the liturgy, iconography or dogmatics.They are invited
to modify our proposals, to correct or even to suppress them, to rewrite
them in a more effective way according to the specialty, to add better references. . . .At the end of the process we shall obtain a rich annotation, both
unified (insofar as it was first planned by the very few in charge of the
book), and diverse (insofar as each register will have been reworked by a
specialist of its field according to his own discipline’s standards).
As a result, this Bible should be able to attract all kinds of readers. The
analytical annotation facilitates different sorts (hopefully complementary) of
readings. Even non-believers should be able to state that faith does not
prevent the believers from respecting the fields in which they work and does
not break up the community of those who honestly search for the Truth.28
Celebration of Culture
Fundamentally, with all thinkers of our time, we are “deeply aware of the
constructed character of human meaning, how much it is connected to faith
commitments, how profoundly it is rooted in community traditions.”29
Postmodernity, once deprived of its nihilist postulates, can help biblical
27 This paper is to be read simply as a collection of remarks on the reasons some-

one with a mindset such as mine has had to collaborate with La Bible en ses Traditions, and to promote it as something that many cultured believers as well as
biblical scholars dream about. None of my remarks are normative.
28 Here again postmodern thinkers should agree with Catholic theologians on the
“both/and” ethos. Contemporary hermeneutics has taught us that both tradition
and criticism are at work in any reading:“Loyalty is not the opposite of criticism,
but its condition,” since reading a text means always interpreting it according to
the premises and practices of a specific reading community. . . . It does not
demand the sacrifice of any critical questioning, it demands rightly, from an
hermeneutical viewpoint, “the affirmation of that Tradition as the starting point
of any inquiry.” Johnson and Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, 27.
29 Ibid., 63.

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scholars recover confidence in cultural mediation: From the outset, cultural,
social, literary, philosophical, and theological prejudices shape every thought,
and this is not fate, but fact—and should simply be taken into account.
Epistemological Shift
The stress put by La Bible en ses Traditions on the linguistic shaping and
the historical reception of our texts fits quite well with Johnson’s definite
stance against a “commitment to the notion of an original and pure good
news, a moment of revelation so uniquely untouched by human influence that it is self-evidently divine.”30
This notion is a romantic prejudice, inherent in the historical-critical
method, which would never have appeared without the classical, rationalist reduction of language to a noetic tool or a mere means of expression. In ancient oral or semi-oral civilizations language was not the scanty
instrument modern Western thought has construed: For speakers or hearers of oral circles, language reveals rather than represents. As N. Frye
beautifully showed it in his famous book,31 the linguistic practice inherent the Bible is not the objective application “signifier/signified” or
“word/thing” to which we have been accustomed by the dualist ontology of sign promoted by modern linguistics. In the world of Scripture,
events, undetectable without texts that beforehand sharpen the attention
of those who live them, come to enlighten these very texts. Inhabitants
of this world experience the mutual illuminations of being and letter.
These observations might have frightened believers at the time of
positivism, as mere excuses not to be engaged with critical historians, but
the situation is now reversed. On one side, any honest thinker of our time
should wonder if the circle of preknowledge and knowledge that is
working throughout the biblical revelation is different from the
hermeneutic circle of the most commonplace knowledge. On the other
side, traditional themes like the “fulfillment of Scriptures” now appear
first as consequences of the poetical and narrative structure of knowledge, in communities that bore, produced, and handed over the Bible,32
30 Ibid., 20.
31 N. Frye, The Great Code.The Bible and Literature (Toronto:Academic Press Canada,

1982).
32 In modern times, to quote the Scriptures means to open books and concordances

to make an erudite composition. Such was not the case in the Jewish culture of
the first century, for example. In those times, one was taught to read and sometimes to write with (and within) the Bible, so that the Bible itself became a sort
of language.The rediscovery of the Jewish art of memory could provide the real
hinging upon one another of historicity and “literarity” in the evangelical recitatives. Indeed, it could avoid reducing intertextuality to a persuasive device used a

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so that many critical arguments against historicity grounded in the literary shaping and the scriptural perspectives drawn by allusions and quotations fall short. Efforts should be made to recover at least a little of the
ancient sense of language so that historical effectiveness should be
detected no longer against, but through the cultural mediations of knowledge. Between the crisis of historical reason and the invading of literary
thought, may not fresh studies of the biblical practice of “the fulfillment
of Scriptures” open paths for new insights to theologians who do not
agree with any reduction of revelation to anything immanent, be it
historical or literary?
Theology of Inspiration
By helping to appreciate the cultural conditionings of human communication in the making of the Bible, La Bible en ses Traditions could eventually bring about a deeper comprehension of the traditional account of
oeconomia revelationis taking place “gestis verbisque intrinsece inter se connectis.” 33 The gesta in question refer as much to the bearing and shaping of
the verba throughout time, as to the very events told in texts. From the
plain lacuna to the most illogical passage, passing through all kinds of
textual corruptions and other accidents in the oral or written handing
over of the text, what French literary theorists in the 1960s and 1970s
called the “rustling” of the text34 do share in “the Word of God in its
historical communication,” to speak in the magisterial way.35 These
cultural “events,” unspectacular though they may be, belong to the historical communication of God’s Word.
Celebration of Faith
The next convergence of the project La Bible en ses Traditions with Johnson and Kurz’s wishes that might be stressed is the role devolved to faith
inside the scholarly work of exegetes.

posteriori by a writer, by granting it a concrete basis in actual practices of the
ancient times. See beautiful insights on this point in “The Tradition,” ch. 8 of
J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus remembered,“Christianity in the Making,” vol. 1 (Grand Rapids,
MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 173–254.
33 Dei Verbum, no. 2.
34 Cf. R. Barthes, The Rustle of Language, trans. R. Howard (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1989), French: Le bruissement de la langue (Paris: Seuil, 1984).
35 That is one of the greatest reasons for relativizing an overly romantic vision of
inspiration as a psychological or noetic phenomenon.

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Be it only for preparing patristic or theological notes, exegetes should
not overlook the teaching of the Church, even under “methodological”
grounds. On the contrary, it should be a key part of their agenda, as an
invitation to deepen their philological, rhetorical, or semiotic study of the
text and its reception, so as to link (the possibility of) their belief with the
very text. At least, it should enlarge one’s context of reading and provide
new challenging hypotheses. The so-called “literary methods” supply
many tools to assess the continuity or the discontinuities between the
biblical text and the traditional teachings of the faithful communities. As
Kurz shows in his essays about the prologue of John or about John 6,
some theological truths that were developed a posteriori may help the
reader notice textual facts or literary peculiarities that otherwise would
have seemed without interest.
Here again, Church fathers like Origen or Augustine may be of great
help, to appreciate that truth is not merely meaning. Beyond the historical meaning/literal sense determined by the historico-critical method, a
multifaceted approach of the text should take into account a wide variety of factors deriving from the tradition of the church centered on
Christ. Couldn’t we apply to literary richness in general what Origen
said about the inspiration?
The divine inspiration of prophetic words and the spiritual dimension
of Moses’ Law appeared in full light when Jesus came. It was not really
possible to put forward clear examples of the divine inspiration of the
ancient Scriptures before the coming of Christ. But the coming of Jesus
led all those who might have supposed the Law and the Prophets not
to be divine to state definitely that they had been written with the help
of a celestial grace.36

If one strives to detect literary links between the linguistic shaping of the
texts and the dogmatic teaching of the Church, many amazing “effects of
meaning” may be brought to light. Going back for a while to the parabolical discourse of Jesus in Matthew: Isn’t it striking to discern a rather
unified theology of the Word and of language as a medium of revelation
through the enlarging upon the theme of the Word as a seed,37 specifically
36 Origen, De Principiis, IV, 1, 6–7; quoted in Origène, Traité des Principes, eds. and

French trans. H. Crouzel and M. Simonetti (Paris: Cerf, 1978 and 1980), 252.
37 Usually considered as a theologoumenon in the earliest apostolic traditions, it might

be related to Jesus’ preaching itself, as far as no Jewish assimilation of the Word to
a seed can be found before him. Cf. M. E. Boismard, review of Siegfried Schulz,
Komposition und Herkunft der Johanneischen Reden, Revue Biblique 69 (1962): 422.

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expressed in the discourses of John38 and only hinted at in the narrative
of Matthew?39
Our stress on the fruitfulness of faith might be related to the postmodern celebration of the irrational, but it inverts its logic. For Christians, reason is not so much determined by infra-rational factors, than by
a supra-rational call to reach the very Principle of all possible reason by
faith, hope, and love. Ideally our abbreviated “talmud” is to be Christian
not only in its content, but also in its very organization: It should not
look like a compilation of pieces of information or opinions connected
by associations of ideas, as in school discussions, but like an analytical,
logical collection attuned to the religion of the Logos—logikè latréia—
which Christianity pretends to be.40 Numerous though they will be,
38 Jesus is the Word of God straight from the Prologue.To his disciples, he gives the

Word, not only through his words considered as static performances to be repeated,
but also through a competence to say even greater words. Cf. Jn 14:12: “Verily,
verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do
also; and greater [works] than these shall he do.” In the context, the works are
Jesus’s words. Cf. Jn 14:10, “the words that I say unto you I speak not from
myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works.”
39 The narratological framing of Jesus’ discourse by the only two passages where his
familial origins are put into question in Matthew (compare Mt 12:46–50 with
Mt 13:53–58) raises in the reader’s mind the question of who Jesus is. The
rhetorical discrepancy in the “explanation” of the parable (is the seed the word,
or the one who hears it?) raises the question of the identity of the sower (is he
Jesus—sower of the word—or the Creator—sower of men who might hear and
listen to the word?) and that of the relation between these two possible “sowers.”
Finally, the relationships between Jesus, his word, his disciples, and their words
implied in the concluding dialogue between Jesus and the disciples is very similar to that implied in Jn 14:12 (cf. preceding note). “ ‘Have ye understood all
these things?’ They say unto him: ‘Yea.’ And he said unto them: ‘Therefore every
scribe who hath been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven is like unto a
man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and
old.’ ” (Mt 13:51–52 [ASV], emphasis added.) This dia touto refers to the very
answer of the disciples.As far as they have understood, they shall be able to speak
in a way similar to that of Jesus, and to devise means to tell all “these things” by
combining not only new interpretations with ancient Scriptures, but also new
developments with Jesus’ words.
40 Against the growing (postmodern) defiance of reason, J. Ratzinger reiterates this
ancient pretence of worship according to the Logos. See, for example, J.
Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (Der Geist der Liturgie; Verlag: Herder, 2000),
trans. J. Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), read in the French trans.,
L’esprit de la liturgie, trans. G. Catala and G. Solari (Genève: Ad solem, 2001),
38–41. God’s Logos—both Intelligence and Word—who grants human being as
well as angels intelligence and word,“incorporated” in the Scriptures, incarnated
in Jesus of Nazareth, leads the whole humankind to resurrection in his paschal

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comments on the text will look like a verbal galaxy moving around an
invisible center which is the mystery of Christ.
Invitation
I would like to end with what I find one of the most challenging propositions of L. T. Johnson: “Catholics should be concerned not only with
the world that produced the New Testament, but as well with the world
that the New Testament itself produced.”41 To be even more challenging,
let us put the last verb in the future: Catholic scholars have to be
concerned with the world that the New Testament and the Bible in
general will produce.
Indeed, biblical scholars are cultural agents: not only because they
bring preconceptions, either linguistic/literary or philosophical or theological, from their social and intellectual milieu, but also because they
themselves take part in the ongoing process of culture. They produce
works and books, which in their turn influence that surrounding milieu.
The most fruitful relationships between the Bible and the cultures that
read it in the past were oriented from the Bible to culture.42 It is only
the spreading of the positivist historical paradigm over all fields of knowledge, which overturned the direction of this relationship by judging the
Bible only by secular standards. To reconstruct the “historical” original
context and audience of the texts, scholars tended to reduce them to
other ideas, customs, or phenomena known beforehand through other
ancient documents or scholarly studies.Thus, the creativity of the authors
or their addressees, the newness of the text, the fruitfulness of its effects
(in brief, its revelatory function) tended to be blurred.43

mystery. In the Christian rite, the human logos is reached, purified, and magnified by the eternal Logos of the Creator.
41 Johnson and Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, 23.
42 The promoters of a new French translation of the Bible three years ago badly
missed this point by contending that every generation in the past had adapted
the sacred Book to its own needs. On the contrary, past generations changed
their cultural habits-sometimes even their language to receive the Bible. Cf. O.Th.Venard,“La culture de la Bible Bayard,” Képhas 1 (2002): 129-40, esp. 138-40.
43 Therefore, it is of tremendous importance to recall that “the historical moment
does not exhaust the process of criticism.” Johnson, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, 28. “Criticism has philosophical, theological, moral and aesthetic
dimensions that are as least as legitimate and important as the historical.” Ibid.
“Historical knowledge”-especially built up as it is since the modern concept of
historical fact was invented, “plays a limited role within a complex conversation
enacted by a faith community.” Ibid.

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In fact, as a keystone of the whole Bible, the New Testament is not a
pure mnemonic device conserving the archives of the Founder and the
beginnings of his community. To describe itself, the primitive Christian
literature uses mainly two words: testimony and seed.44 Perceiving truth
as exactitude and correspondence, the first leans upon the past (and calls
for historical reconstitutions and historiographical debates). Envisaging
truth as fruitful dynamism, the second is turned toward the future (and
invites to spiritual experiment, ethical commitment, and creative engagements). Biblical texts are as much places to live nowadays as sources of
information about ancient times. Taking into better account the fecundity of the text may mean to depart from a severe “scientific” attitude
inherited from the Protestant world; but it will certainly bring us closer
to our Judaic roots.45
Once achieved—in fifteen, thirty, or sixty years46—La Bible en ses
Traditions could greatly help our contemporaries to embrace the holistic
approach to Scripture that Johnson and Kurz promote: produced by a
44 In the New Testament, sperma that may have symbolized first the Mosaic law ( Jas

1:23-25), designates the whole revelation, especially that coming from Jesus ( Jas
1:18-22; 1 Pt 1:23-25; synoptic parables of sowing), and finally Jesus himself ( Jn
1:13; Jn 12:24).Very significantly, kokkos (grain) is used only to symbolize the faith
(Mt 17:20 and par.), Jesus' body in the Easter mystery ( Jn 12:24), the believers'
bodies sowed on earth and destined to rise up again (1 Cor 15:37). Sowing and
harvesting become usual metaphors for the future fruitful mission of the disciples,
suggesting both innovation (one grain has to produce many others) and faithfulness (from one sowing to the other, the grain must hold its nature and quality).
45 “Luther was surely right when he saw Catholicism as closer to Judaism than to
Protestantism. An observant Jewish community is structured by halakah. So is
Catholicism. Jewish scholars are freed by the strong identity formation accomplished by halakah to engage Torah haggadically, that is, not only as a collection of
rules, but above all as a source of wisdom. So are the Catholic biblical scholars free
to engage Scripture in a variety of imaginative ways as a source of transforming
wisdom.” Johnson and Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, 31.At the same
time, we should not reduce text reading to elaborating moral rules. Literary imagination should retain its own value as part of a contemplative life. “By no means
every reading of the text within the church, however is for the purpose of deciding
halakah. Much reading is for wisdom and delight, for the transformation of the
mind and the conversion of the heart. In such reading both communities and individuals can enter into the imaginative world constructed . . . by the Bible.” Ibid., 32.
46 Please do not be discouraged! Like the first Bible de Jérusalem, each book of the
Bible will be released separately, both in French and in the original modern
language of scholars who will have prepared it, as soon as it is finished and
approved by the Steering Committee.Thus, it will be possible to improve them
thanks to readers' criticisms before collecting them in “the” Bible (which should
not be more than three times larger than the present-day Jerusalem Bible).

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Christianity once more facing towards its Origin, it could even “incarnate” it, as a sort of “Christian Talmud.”All biblical scholars or scholars of
other fields touched by the annotation we project will be very welcome
to share in the imagining and—Deo iuuante—realization of this future.

Re-Entering the Scriptural World
DAVID S. Y EAGO
Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary
Columbia, South Carolina

I T SHOULD BE SAID from the beginning that this book accomplishes what its title promises: It does present a genuinely “constructive”
conversation on the future of Catholic biblical scholarship by two leading
Catholic biblical scholars. It is, moreover, an important conversation, and
one that opens toward the future in a promising way, not only for Roman
Catholics. Though I am going to proceed now to raise some questions
about the conversation as it has developed so far, I should not like
anything I say to obscure my gladness that these issues are being discussed
along these lines, nor my gratitude to the authors for their work.
In their attempt to envision a distinctively Roman Catholic approach
to biblical scholarship, the authors take a path that my colleague Michael
Root has called “oppositional self-definition.”That is to say, they identify
a paradigm of biblical study that they take to be undifferentiatedly Protestant and historical-critical (more will be said later about this assumption)
and define their “Catholic” paradigm by the ways in which it would
contrast with this “Protestant” approach.The Protestant-Catholic division
is taken entirely for granted, as a fixed and unquestioned feature of the
landscape.Thus Professor Kurz writes:
Since it is intuitively obvious that Catholics differ from Christians of
other denominations in how they worship, pray, and emphasize sacraments, it stands to reason that Catholics will always have at least some
significantly different beliefs from members of other denominations or
religions, as well as from nonbelievers, no matter how ecumenical they
endeavor to be. (264)

Notice here the acceptance of the ecumenical status quo as axiomatic:“it
is intuitively obvious. . . . It stands to reason.” No awareness is displayed
of a century of ecumenical discussion that has worked with great intensity to break down the “obviousness” of many perceived differences

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between Catholics and Protestants. For example, one could not tell from
this that there is now a mutually recognized
“consensus in the basic truths” of the doctrine of justification among
Lutherans and Roman Catholics, a doctrine described by both parties
as “more than just one part of Christian doctrine, . . . an indispensable
criterion that constantly serves to reorient all the teaching and practice
of our churches to Christ.”1

It is unfortunately no surprise to ecumenists when theological scholarship in all fields and on all sides ignores the ecumenical dialogues; but one
might have hoped for more in a book calling for a more ecclesially
grounded biblical scholarship, especially given the teaching of Pope John
Paul II that ecumenism is not “some sort of appendix” added on to the
essential work of the Church, but is rather “an organic part of her life and
work, and consequently must pervade all that she is and does.”2
Notice too how in Professor Kurz’s formulation there is no recognition
of any “hierarchy of truths” or any other way of sorting out and weighing
differences among Christians. Indeed, he simply lines non-Catholic Christians up with adherents of non-Christian religions and non-believers, and
describes the relationship of Catholics to all three groups with the same
term: “significantly different beliefs.” I am quite sure that Professor Kurz
does not intend the implications of what he has written here; in the fact
that he did write it, however, we see the power of the status quo of Christian division that can make it seem natural to lump together with nonChristians those fellow Christians with whom Catholics share “some, and
even most, of significant elements and endowments which together go to
build up and give life to the Church itself.”3 Furthermore, even with
regard to intra-Christian relations, the notion of “significant differences”
is left entirely unanalyzed. Are all such differences equally significant? And
just how significant are they for biblical study in comparison with what
Catholics and other Christians believe in common?
When Professor Johnson comes to discuss ecumenism explicitly a few
pages on, the picture does not brighten appreciably. Catholic biblical
scholarship should be “ecumenical,” he says, in four ways: (1) It should
renounce triumphalism, and (2) cooperate with Protestant scholarship on
1 The Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, Joint Declara-

tion on the Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), par. 18.
2 Pope John Paul II, Ut unum sint, no. 20.
3 Second Vatican Council, Unitatis redintegratio, Decree on Ecumenism, no. 3, in Decrees of
the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2, ed. Norman Tanner (London: Sheed and Ward, 1990).

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“tasks which can be carried out in relatively neutral fashion.” Further,
Catholic scholars should (3) have “deep respect for different faith
perspectives” operative in biblical study, but also (4) “celebrate the sensibilities that are distinctively Catholic” (267). One could, I believe,
describe this as an essentially “multi-culturalist” version of ecumenism.
Difference is taken to be the bottom line; no real reconciliation or
synthesis is envisioned: “Ecumenism does not demand the removing of
differences.” Each party should rather respect the otherness of the “other”
while at the same time insisting on remaining “other,” on retaining its
own distinct “sensibilities.” This emphasis on “sensibilities” is, I fear,
revealing. Johnson does not speak of “celebrating the truths of which we
are confident” but of celebrating a set of attitudes and sympathies that
make “us” the way we are. In other words, it is the identities we have
formed in our divisions from one another that are finally sacrosanct, and
for their sake the divisions have to be maintained. We may, perhaps,
exchange gifts across the lines of divisions—Americans can learn to like
couscous without becoming Moroccans—but the other must nonetheless remain other, so that we may remain the same.
Doubtless I exaggerate unfairly, as far as either author’s intentions and
conscious attitudes go. But rhetoric has its own dynamic, and the absence
of countervailing impulses in the book makes it legitimate, I believe, to ask
in what direction the force of this rhetoric would take Catholic biblical
scholarship. Already in the book itself there are problematic indications.
Thus, in the paragraph I have been criticizing, Professor Johnson writes:
Catholics cannot find in Paul’s language about justification by faith the
same depth of significance that Lutheran scholars do. Reformed readers cannot appreciate Paul’s language about sanctification in the same
manner as Catholics. (267)

What is the force of the “cannot” in these sentences? Does it express a
normative principle: “Catholics, as Catholics, cannot be as taken with
Pauline language about justification by faith as Lutheran scholars are”? If
so, then how odd for the Catholic Church to affirm together with Lutherans that the scriptural message of justification “directs us in a special way
toward the heart of the New Testament witness to God’s saving action in
Christ”!4 Or is Professor Johnson registering this lesser appreciation on
both sides as a fact so massive that it must simply be taken for granted? That
would, it seems to me, raise difficult questions about just what defines
4 Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, Joint Declaration,

no. 17.

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“distinctively Catholic sensibilities,” for it would suggest that Professor
Johnson’s Catholic sensibilities are quite different from those of St.Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas, who show no signs of finding less “depth of
significance” in the Pauline language of justification than Lutherans do,
even though they may not always find precisely the same significance.
Likewise, if I as a Protestant “cannot” appreciate Pauline language about
sanctification as Catholics do, then it would seem that my Protestant sensibilities are vastly different from those of the Puritans or John Wesley, not
to mention (in my own tradition) untold numbers of Lutheran Pietists
over the centuries.5 Who then is the real Catholic, Augustine or Professor
Johnson’s “Catholics”? Who is the real Protestant, the “Reformed readers”
whom Professor Johnson has in mind, or the Puritans and Pietists?
The truth is that ecumenism has everything to do with the removal of
differences, not to be sure all differences, which would be insane, but those
differences that prevent us from living the life of the Church together as one visible people.6 As reading Scripture together is an integral part of the
Church’s life, it follows that ecumenism does aim at removing those differences that render Catholic and Protestant biblical scholarship separate
enterprises that converge on secular ground but remain divided theologically and spiritually. Ecumenism classically conceived certainly aims to
conserve and integrate the truths perceived by the various parties, but it is
intentionally rather hard on “sensibilities” all round, especially insofar as
those sensibilities have themselves been formed by the distorted situation
of institutionalized disunity.7 There is an aspect of being “Catholic” or
“Lutheran” that stands in the same relation to being “one in Christ” as
being “slave or free, Jew or Greek, male and female” (Gal 3:28). Not the
5 And, I would argue, different from those of Luther himself, though I cannot make

that case here. See my article “Martin Luther on Renewal and Sanctification:
Simul Justus et Peccator Revisited,” in Sapere teologico e unità della fede: Studi in
onore del Prof. Jared Wicks, eds. Carmen Aparicio Valls, Carmelo Donato, and Gianluigi Pasquale (Rome: Editrice Pontifica Università Gregoriana, 2004), 655–74.
6 See on this Michael Root, “Identity and Difference:The Ecumenical Problem”
in Theology in Dialogue: Essays in Conversation with George Lindbeck, ed. Bruce D.
Marshall (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 165–90. For
a recent attempt to restate the rationale and goals of classic visible-unity
ecumenism, see In One Body Through the Cross:The Princeton Proposal for Christian
Unity, eds. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI:William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003).
7 Recall here the statement in Unitatis redintegratio, no. 4, that in the wake of Christian divisions, “the Church herself finds it more difficult to express in actual life
her full catholicity in all its bearings.” That would seem to suggest the possibility that “Catholic sensibilities” in their present state are not necessarily adequate
to the catholicity of the Church.

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whole of being Catholic or Lutheran, not even every difference of sensibility, is called into question by unity in Christ, but convergence in Christ
will not leave us as we are, and it is most likely to be our “sensibilities” that
take the brunt of the change.
Oppositional self-definition imposes on those who adopt it an imperative to be “distinctive” at all-costs the consequences of which can be both
strange and debilitating. R. R. Reno has in a brilliant essay described the
dynamic of this debilitation with both Roman Catholic and Protestant
illustrations.8 In the Roman Catholic case, he argues that the nowlamented ecclesiological “juridicism” of the post-Reformation period is
grounded in the logic of oppositional self-definition. In order to distinguish Roman Catholicism cleanly from the Protestant “other,” it became
necessary to center Roman Catholic identity on features of Roman
Catholic life not shared with Protestants (or the Orthodox), which
turned out to be most clearly the papacy and the institutional and legal
structures that bound the Roman Catholic Church to the papacy.
Commenting on the late nineteenth-century fundamental theology of
John Brunsmann, Reno writes:
Brunsmann’s analysis shifts the focus or Roman Catholic theology and
ecclesial life away from the primary apostolic tradition (because that
which is shared is unable to identify the church), and in so doing,
greases the skids toward cultural captivity.The power of jurisdiction is
easily assimilated to the logic of modern bureaucracies: commercial,
military, and governmental.Thus at the very moment that the Roman
Catholic Church is clearly distinguished from all other churches, it
blurs into the landscape of modern life.

Reno is not suggesting that Catholics should surrender what they believe
to be true about the right order of the Church; the issue is rather the
consequences of defining Roman Catholic identity in this way rather
than, say, by reference to the faith of the Apostles’ Creed. In our present
context, juridicism is not the issue, nor is my purpose a general criticism
of post-Reformation Roman Catholic thought. Indeed, I would willingly
stipulate that the outworking of the same dynamic in Protestantism has
brought about far more abject forms of cultural captivity than Roman
juridicism. I draw attention rather to the pattern Reno describes, because
I suspect that the dynamic of oppositional self-definition has weakened
our authors’ proposal in a very different but perhaps isomorphic way.
8 R.R. Reno, “The Debilitation of the Churches,” in The Ecumenical Future, eds.

Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2004), 46–72.

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It is, at any rate, rather disappointing when “what’s Catholic about
Catholic biblical scholarship” turns out to be that “to be Catholic is to
think inclusively rather than exclusively,” to “tend toward the ‘both/and’
rather than the ‘either/or’ ” (5). Can “being Catholic” in biblical scholarship really be summed up in a formula so bland and empty of content?
Is this formula really expressive of the heart and soul of Roman Catholicism, of what makes liturgy and devotion and public witness and the lives
of the saints and martyrs tick? Or is this formula not rather drastically
overdetermined by the imperative of distinguishing Catholics from the
Protestant-historicist other, in the context of a scholarly field in which
substantive agendas very often come disguised as methodological axioms?
And could not a case be made that this “methodologism” is itself a significant cause of the theological vacuity in biblical studies, that is, of the very
problem the authors are attempting to address?
Reno suggests that in defining ourselves over against other Christians,
we lose the power of distinguishing ourselves from the world around us,
“greasing the skids toward cultural captivity.” I wonder if we cannot see
the beginnings of such a slide in Professor Johnson’s proposals, in chapter 5, for a retrieval of elements of pre-critical exegesis.Amidst much that
is insightful in that chapter, there are some jarring notes. For example:
People act on the basis of the imagined world in which they dwell. By
acting on what they imagine, they help establish their worlds as real. . . .
[T]hose who act on the basis of the world Scripture imagines . . . make
it less ‘imaginary’ and more ‘real.’ . . . Living in any of these imaginary
worlds requires a fundamental acceptance of its premises, an adjustment
of vision according to its perceptions, and a decision to act as though
these premises and perceptions were not only real but valid. Because
Scripture imagines the world in which we live and move as having its
source and meaning in an Other who enables us to move and live, we are
able to perceive the world this way and decide to live according to this
premise. So perceiving and so acting, we incrementally transform the
world imagined by Scripture into the physical world in which we live
and move. (121–22)

It is of course true that Scripture calls us to a new way of imagining the
world. But there is a great difference between an imagined world and an
imaginary one. What are we to make of the notion that we “make” the
scriptural world “less ‘imaginary’ and more ‘real’ ” when we “decide” to
act “as though its premises were not only real but valid.” Can we really
imagine any premodern exegete speaking of the Scriptures as providing
an “imaginary world” which it is our task to make “more real”? Surely the

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classic view was that of John Henry Newman,“that we are in a world of
mystery, with one bright Light before us, sufficient for our proceeding
forward through all difficulties.”
Take away this Light, and we are utterly wretched—we know not
where we are, how we are sustained, what will become of us, and of all
that is dear to us, what we are to believe, and why we are in being. But
with it we have all and abound.9

For Newman and the tradition, we do not make the scriptural world real;
Scripture sets forth to us the reality of the world to which our foolish
minds have been darkened by sin (Rom 1:21). The scriptural world is
antecedently the real world; Scripture itself is the lamp whose light shows
us the reality with which we have to do, so that we do not crash and burn
on its hard surfaces and sharp corners.
Professor Johnson himself has described this classic view quite well in
his descriptive account of premodern exegesis, one of whose premises is
“that the Bible, as the Word of God, is authoritative” (55), which means
that readers are to view Scripture as “a text that can reveal the mind of
God” (56). But surely when the mind of God is revealed to us, we are not
presented with imaginative possibilities that we are then called to “make
more real,” but with the bedrock of reality itself. Johnson describes his
talk of Scripture’s imaginary world as “postmodern,” and he is undoubtedly correct in this. But just how is postmodernism more properly
“Catholic” than modernism? Reno’s pattern begins to seem uncomfortably pertinent: By defining himself contrastively over against Protestant
modernism, has Professor Johnson “greased the skids” toward a captivity
in which “Catholic,” remarkably enough, turns out to coincide with a
now culturally acceptable soft postmodernism?10
Doubtless I am again overstating as regards Professor Johnson’s own
intentions. But again, the rhetoric has consequences. Having adopted a
9 John Henry Newman, “Mysteries in Religion,” in Parochial and Plain Sermons

(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 361.
10 “Soft” in the meritorious sense that it resists following the logic of postmod-

ernism to its violent conclusion, in which there can be only more or less regulated warfare between different ways of imagining the world. For a critique of
postmodernism, see David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite:The Aesthetics
of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
2003), part 1.An Orthodox with an uncommonly generous attitude to the Western Christian tradition, Hart offers much in this book that could be brought
fruitfully to bear on questions of biblical interpretation, if those questions are
framed at a properly theological and metaphysical level.

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postmodernist stance, is it really possible to indwell the scriptural world?
Despite its anti-metaphysical pretensions, does not postmodernism
already carry with it its own construal of the world as a “darkling plain,
where ignorant armies clash by night”? Can we genuinely live in a world
that we regard as an imaginary construct that we are to make real? Or are
we not as postmodernists always already living somewhere else, in the
implied empty space from which we look out upon the scriptural world
and decide to live “as though” it were real? Will the postmodernist starting point therefore not inevitably perpetuate “the greatest difficulty our
generation has in doing theology . . . our distance from the imaginative
world of Scripture” (122)?
Another closely related critical point needs to be made. As mentioned
at the beginning, the authors define their Catholic approach against what
they take to be a single other, made up indiscriminately of Protestantism
and historical-critical rationalism.That they would see things in this way
is rendered immediately understandable by Professor Johnson’s insightful
description of American Catholic biblical scholars as “immigrants” to a
“world of scholarship previously inhabited by Protestants” (11). Catholic
scholars entering into the mainline biblical disciplines, first after Divino
Afflante Spiritu, and then in increasing numbers after Vatican II, would of
course feel themselves to be in a “Protestant” world, where issues were
framed and professional identity defined in terms of three centuries of
conflict over historical criticism in the Protestant communions. Nevertheless, by thus collapsing Protestantism into modernism, the authors fail,
I believe, to describe clearly the cultural politics out of which the present situation in biblical studies has emerged, and therefore have not
assessed quite accurately the strategic situation in which theology, including biblical scholarship, finds itself today.
The authors tell the story of the relationship between Protestantism
and historical criticism exactly as Protestant historical critics have liked
to tell it; it is the winners’ version, the story as told by the modernist
victors in the great Protestant ecclesiastical and academic battles over the
Bible. In that narrative, there is a straight line between Luther and, say,
Wellhausen or Bultmann. Released from ecclesiastical tyranny, the study
of the Bible was liberated to become Wissenschaft; and the sola scriptura
mandates that such “scientific” study of the biblical texts become the basis
for a reconstruction of the Christian religion to which, in principle, no
limits can be set.The plausibility of this picture depends, however, upon
resolutely ignoring the period between the Reformation and the
Enlightenment, and in particular ignoring the biblical interpretation of
that period, which is, in fact, hardly ever studied, particularly from a theo-

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logical angle of interest. One could not tell from reading most standard
histories, for example, that one of the most significant biblical scholars in
Germany at the beginning of the eighteenth century was the Pietist
August Herman Francke (1662–1727), who combined philological
expertise with the lifelong hermeneutical project of a unified Christocentric reading of the whole Bible, not only in the dogmatic mode
promoted by confessional controversy, but also as a spiritually transformative enterprise.11
My point here is neither to defend nor to commend precritical
Protestant exegesis, though I do consider it a shame that it has been
allowed to fall so completely down the memory hole.The point is rather
that by accepting the standard narrative, Johnson and Kurz have not seen
clearly enough that historical-critical biblical scholarship, as it exists
today, is not simply a Protestant phenomenon, but a synthesis of Protestant motifs with something else, with the secularism that arose in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a reaction to a lamentable joint
“achievement” of Catholics and Protestants, the physical and moral
devastation of Europe by the wars of religion. Secularism, as John
Milbank and others have described it, was the cultural and political
construction of a world in which Christianity was defined as “religion,”
inward and private, and thus banished from the public realm, where it was
deemed to have proven itself incurably destructive.12 Such a project
could not succeed without breaking down the precritical tradition of
scriptural exegesis in which Scripture was read, in Ephraim Radner’s
terms, as “the providential exponent of the world’s divine order.”13
The modern secularity project was not a demonic upsurge of incomprehensible hostility to the faith; it was in large measure the attempt of
11 See August Herman Francke, Schriften und Predigten, Band 4: Schriften zur biblis-

chen Hermeneutik I, ed. Erhard Peschke (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003). For insightful
reflection on early-modern Anglican exegesis, see Ephraim Radner, Hope among
the Fragments:The Broken Church and its Engagement with Scripture (Grand Rapids,
MI: Brazos, 2004), 79–108.
12 See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford:
Blackwell’s, 1990). This book is the classic description of secular rationality as a
deliberate cultural construct, though Milbank tends to reduce history to the
history of ideas and thus misses the crucial relationship between the public fact
of ecclesial schism and the rise of modern secularism, presenting the latter as
though it were simply an organic outgrowth of late medieval voluntarism. On
the way in which this problem plays out in Milbank’s very problematic constructive proposals, see R. R. Reno,“The Radical Orthodoxy Project,” in idem, In the
Ruins of the Church: Sustaining Faith in an Age of Diminished Certitude (Grand
Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2002), 63–79.
13 Radner, Hope among the Fragments, 103.

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decent minds to cope with the chaos public Christianity had wrought in
the wake of the Reformation.The incapacity of Christians to live together
in charity in the biblical world subverted the cultural plausibility of that
world and motivated the urgency with which the secularist project strove
to get the Bible under control.14 Indeed, precisely in order to liberate their
faith from complicity in violence and murder, Christians of all ecclesiastical parties took part in the establishment of the secular culture, in which
“religion” would be private, and secular rationality firmly in charge of the
public square. The historical-critical movement cannot be understood
apart from its ideological roots in secularist thinkers like Hobbes and
Spinoza, but scholars in the churches (mostly, but not only, Protestants)
took up both the critical challenge and much of the ideological motivation of these great skeptics in the interests of producing a “purified”
Christianity, that is, one that limited its claims to the proper sphere of
“religion,” the moral and spiritual life of the inner person.15
The pertinence of these remarks to the hermeneutical enterprise of
Professors Johnson and Kurz is twofold. First, I would suggest that we
cannot re-enter the scriptural world from which we are all in various
14 This motivation is placed squarely on the table by Spinoza in chapter 7 of the

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus: “Ambition and unscrupulousness have waxed so
powerful, that religion is thought to consist, not so much in respecting the writings of the Holy Ghost, as in defending human commentaries, so that religion is
no longer identified with charity, but with spreading discord and propagating
insensate hatred disguised under the name of zeal for the Lord, and eager ardor.”
Trans. R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover Books, 1951). Such terms appearing in
1670 have very specific and bloody referents.
15 On the Catholic side, while Richard Simon’s motivations continue to be controversial, his work and its reception cannot be understood except in the politicalreligious context of the late seventeenth century. Some of the issues about Simon
are raised and a sense of his context is communicated by Justin I. A. Champion,
“ ‘Acceptable to inquisitive men’: Some Simonian contexts for Newton’s Biblical Criticism, 1680–1692” (www.rhbnc.ac.uk/~uhra026/simon1.html), and
idem, “Pere Richard Simon and English Biblical Criticism, 1680–1700”
(www.rhbnc.ac.uk/~uhra026/simon2.html).Though Professor Johnson is rather
dismissive of the role of Spinoza and Simon (15, note 16), they were in fact
important influences on the German developments to which he points. For
example, Simon’s Histoire Critique was published in German in 1776, with preface and notes by Johann Salamo Semler (1725–1791), among the most significant figures in the rise of German historical criticism. Spinoza too had a
profound influence in Germany, especially by way of the notorious Pantheism
Controversy of the 1780s. Spinoza’s apparent influence on Lessing is testimony
enough to his importance for the development of German Protestant biblical
scholarship, given Lessing’s immense role in framing the questions that dominated (and in some ways still dominate) that scholarly tradition.

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ways estranged without facing head-on the issue of secularism. Bluntly
put, are we ready to reckon straightforwardly with divine providence as
a factor shaping the real world, just as surely as we reckon with the law
of supply and demand or the force of gravity? As a recent study by R. R.
Reno and John J. O’Keefe makes abundantly clear,16 faith in divine providence is at the heart of the classical Christian engagement with Scripture, that one providence that has enfolded the whole world in an
“oikonomia for the fullness of the times, to recapitulate all things in Christ,
things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10), and has likewise
designed in the literary “economy” of the scriptural canon an unsurpassably rich representation of the Christologically centered order of reality.
Thus St. Irenaeus of Lyons, who laid out more clearly than anyone else
in the patristic period the theological contours of the common Christian exegetical tradition, writes:
Anyone who reads the Scriptures with attention will find in them a
discourse about Christ, and a prefiguration of the new calling.17 For
Christ is “the treasure hidden in the field” (Mt 13:44), that is, in this
world (for “the field is the world,” Mt 13:38), but he is also hidden in the
Scriptures, since he was signified by types and parables which could not
be understood, humanly speaking, before the consummation of those
things which were prophesied as coming, that is, the advent of Christ.18

St. Irenaeus here captures precisely the understanding of the relationship
between Scripture and reality that is operative in the whole premodern
Christian theological tradition. Christ is the treasure hidden in the world,
the world’s secret meaning, the one in whom God intends in the mystery
of his will to “recapitulate all things.” That world-ordering “economy” is
mirrored and revealed in the complex literary economy of Holy Scripture,
in the providentially designed interconnections of the whole with the parts
and of the parts with one another as they converge on the skopos, Jesus
Christ, the one toward whom both Scripture and reality move.
Professor Johnson describes quite clearly the theological premises that
led Christians of the past to treat the Bible as an utterly singular book,
taking its divine authorship as a reality with which interpreters must
reckon in very concrete and practical ways (47–60). But in his subsequent
reflection on these premises (60–63), he does not really address their challenge as truth-claims, as assertions about what is the case. By taking the
16 John J. O’Keefe and R. R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christ-

ian Interpretation of the Bible (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2005).
17 That is, of the gentiles.
18 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, IV, 26, 1.

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postmodernist route, he effectually transforms these premises into imaginative possibilities rather than claims about the real world. Ever since
Auerbach, however, it has been a commonplace of the literary study of the
Bible that the Scriptures do not present their world to us as simply an
imaginative possibility:“The Scripture stories do not, like Homer’s, court
our favor, they do not flatter us that they may please us and enchant us—
they seek to subject us, and if we refuse to be subjected we are rebels.”19
I do not therefore believe that there is any way to ease ourselves into
the scriptural world by a postmodernist side door; one does not enter that
world by deciding to act “as though” it were real, but rather by acknowledging the hand and voice of God in particular present, public phenomena. Catholics and Lutherans, at least, are familiar with the idea of
acknowledging God’s public “real presence” in worship, but we need to
think through more explicitly what would be involved, and how drastic
a break with the scholarly norms of our public culture would be
required, were we to approach Scripture with the Fathers as a divinely
authored book.20
The other issue raised by my remarks on secularism has to do with
Christian unity. The inability of European Christians to live together in
peace within the scriptural world was the most potent factor that brought
the Bible into public discredit in the early modern period. I would
suggest that we will not overcome our estrangement from the Scriptures
until we find them gathering us together from our divisions into unity in
Christ—until we submit to the power of the Holy Spirit who strives
through the Scriptures to bring us all into communion under the rule of
the one Christ. Scripture must reassert its power to order the world at the
point at which it once lost that power, by and through the reconciliation
of Christians under one Lord in one shared scriptural world.
No more than anyone else can I offer a “roadmap” to Christian unity.
I am convinced however that if we define ourselves contrastively right
from the start, if we accept our divisions as one of the premises of our
enterprise, and so construe the theological-exegetical task that our own
19 Eric Auerbach, Mimesis:The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Prince-

ton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 15.
20 Writing in a Thomist journal, I should perhaps say that while there is certainly

a metaphysical aspect of the encounter with secularism, it cannot stand alone.
Indeed, it may be that the loss of a “scriptural mind” in the modern Church is
one of the reasons Thomist philosophy has not had the culture-transforming
effects at which it has aimed. Philosophical refutations of secularism do not by
themselves teach people how to live in a non-secular universe; in the Christian
tradition, the latter was precisely the task of scriptural interpretation.

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identities and “sensibilities” are protected from disturbance, we will not
find our way into the real world that Scripture sets before us. I do not,
let me repeat, advocate compromises of truth; but though the truth is not
up for grabs, we ourselves must be ready to die to our present “identities”
if we are to inhabit the scriptural universe where Christ is Lord. I suspect
therefore that entering again into the scriptural world will involve for us
far greater humiliation, the experience of a far greater disorientation, the
confession of a far more profound ignorance, than anything postmodernism is equipped to imagine. It will not be a matter of deciding to
make the scriptural world real, but rather a realization in the presence of
the scriptural Christ that we are not only blind, but unreal—like the
shades in C. S. Lewis’s Great Divorce, who find that even on the distant
outskirts of the City of God, the very grass underfoot is so much more
solid than they that it hurts their feet to walk upon it.
What Christian unity would look like, what we ourselves would look
like as inhabitants of a shared scriptural universe, is impossible to say in
advance of arrival. But the starting point and road forward have been
pointed out with great clarity by the Holy Father, in words that have the
greatest relevance to the necessary reformation (if I may be permitted the
word) of theology and the study of Scripture alike:
All of us who are Christ’s followers must therefore meet and unite
around him. . . .We can and must immediately reach and display to the
world our unity in proclaiming the mystery of Christ, in revealing the
divine dimension and also the human dimension of the Redemption,
and in struggling with unwearying perseverance for the dignity that
each human being has reached and can continually reach in Christ.21

Due to limitations of space, I have not been able to balance my criticisms with due appreciation of the many excellent features of this book. I
should not however like to leave unmentioned Professor Johnson’s forthright and cogent critique of contemporary “establishment” biblical studies,
Professor Kurz’s illuminating readings of the Gospel of John, and the example both authors set of amicable discourse within a shared scriptural
universe on the part of two rather different Roman Catholics—an
ecumenical achievement in its own right. Despite my criticisms, Professors
Johnson and Kurz are moving the conversation about biblical interpretaN&V
tion in the right direction, and for that they deserve our thanks.

21 Pope John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, no. 11.

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Conversation, Conversion, and Construction
L UKE T IMOTHY J OHNSON
Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia

I T IS IN A SPIRIT of gratitude that I respond to the five essays that
colleagues have written as part of the constructive conversation concerning the future of Catholic biblical scholarship. Bill Kurz and I recognize
that the efforts of Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering have
already played a significant role in making our book a part of this conversation. We are grateful for this issue of Nova et Vetera dedicated to the
topic, as well as for the lengthy and positive review by Jody Vaccaro Lewis
already published in its pages.
The experience of this symposium also recalls for me the colloquium
on the book that Thomas Levergood and the Lumen Christi Institute
organized at the University of Chicago Divinity School on April 26, 2003.
At that session, Bill and I had a chance to “extend and amend” the positions we had taken in the book, and heard vigorous responses from Gary
Anderson, Carolyn Osiek, and Paul Griffiths.We learned on that occasion
that by no means did all Catholic scholars agree either with our diagnosis
or with our proposed remedies.The lack of unanimous praise and universal plaudit dismayed us less than it might have, for the tone of that conversation was civil, and the conversation was indeed constructive. We can
scarcely complain if readers actually respond with what we said we wanted!
The same sense of gratitude extends to the work of the five colleagues
who wrote essays for this journal. We understand the generosity it
requires to enter into projects other than one’s own, and are impressed by
the energy and seriousness of the essays. Not only do they raise important issues, they do so in the same spirit of collegial conversation that we
had hoped would mark this entire enterprise. Some respondents (as well
as reviewers) have noted the ways in which Bill and I differ on significant points, if not in substance, surely in emphasis and style. This is no
surprise to either of us, for we have genially been disagreeing in perfect
amity for many years. Indeed, we both regard such pluralism of perspective—within an even deeper commitment to common faith and practice—to be thoroughly catholic in character.
Equally important, we do not regard our individual or common
“correctness” to be at all the point.The point is rather the cultivation of
a conversation that will bear fruit for the passionate and prophetic reading of God’s Word within the church and for the world. Bill and I have

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not, therefore, consulted or collaborated in our essays of response, and
may, characteristically, go in several different directions. I will respond
individually to the essays in the order in which they reached me (this is
the “conversation” part of my title), and then add some thoughts on
“conversion and construction.”
The Text of the Bible and Catholic Biblical Scholarship
Stephen D. Ryan, OP, helpfully identifies four issues pertaining to the text
of Scripture that present significant challenges to scholarship within the
church. Three of the issues touch on the question of what we actually
regard as Scripture. What is the status of the Septuagint, of multiple
editions of the same book, of the early versions? If biblical scholarship
were simply something carried out in the academy, these complexities
would only represent the delights of literary and historical study. The
scholar can embrace them all. But if biblical scholarship is in and for and
by the church, then difficult decisions must be made, and these decisions
are of an ecclesial and theological character, rather than of a literary and
historical character.
Ryan is certainly on the right track when he suggests that the fundamental ecclesial decision is made at the level of canonization, and that
what is canonized is a book rather than a form of the text. He is also
surely correct that inspiration must be connected to the work of the
Holy Spirit in the entire process of composition, tradition, and reading,
rather than in the production of a single, putatively original, form of the
text—and that the plurality of texts and versions help the church avoid
“enlightenment forms of biblical literalism.” And it is impossible not to
agree that maintaining a role for early biblical versions safeguards the
ecumenical catholicity of the church, enabling it to sustain conversation
across the centuries with earlier saints and scholars.
Still, even more discernment is necessary, and it is my hope that
Catholic scholars will be able to encourage and participate positively in
these properly ecclesial and theological conversations. Most important, I
think, is the question of the status of the Septuagint in the life of the
church. Should it be regarded simply as another version? Here, the use of
the Septuagint by the New Testament, and by one continuous tradition
within Christianity (Orthodoxy), would seem to give it special status.
Ryan’s report on the complexity of the Old Testament textual history
only makes the issue more urgent. It is, moreover, a question that cannot
be settled by textual critics as such, for the issues are not merely textual,
but are ecclesial and theological.

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The issue, after all, is not simply whether Christians should have access
to the readings of the Septuagint as a means of enrichment; it is whether
the Septuagint should have first claim to be regarded as the Christian Old
Testament, with the authority in ecclesial and theological debates that goes
with such status. Precisely here is where a scholarship of and for the church
makes a difference. I have already applauded the sentiments expressed by
Ryan in his final paragraph. But I would like to make a distinction between
two things that he apparently treats as one. He speaks of maintaining the
versions alongside the original texts “in the liturgical and intellectual life of
the church.” Concerning the last, I am in full agreement. There is every
reason within the academy to keep diversity alive without discrimination,
because the point of such scholarship is knowledge.
When it comes to the “liturgical,” however, we are in a realm other than
the scholar’s study where parallel texts can endlessly be compared and
weighed; we are in the realm of ritual performance and spiritual transformation. In this realm, a pluralism of texts may do more harm than good.
This is why a decision about the scriptural status, inspiration, and authority of the Septuagint would make a profound difference, for a positive decision would (could? should?) lead logically to the use of a translation from
the Septuagint for the Old Testament readings in liturgical celebrations. I
do not pretend to know whether such a conclusion would be appropriate
or not, but I am convinced that conversation about the grounds even of
our present liturgical practice with respect to Scripture is necessary.
Such are the quaestiones disputatae that Ryan’s essay introduces. They
are genuine questions. They should be actively discussed and disputed
within a biblical scholarship concerned not only for the advancement of
learning but for the theological life of the church.
“La Bible en ses Traditions”
One could scarcely imagine a response to the book more positive or generous than that offered by Olivier-Thomas Venard, OP, especially since he
engages the conversation from the perspective of a project already in
process. Rather than defensively state, as he might have done, “but everything you call for, we are already doing,” he has rather entered into the spirit
of a collegial effort by presenting the recasting of the Bible de Jerusalem, in
which he is involved, as a “fourth-generation enterprise,” and one that seeks
truly to be a form of biblical scholarship in service to the life of the church.
By so doing, he and his colleagues at the École Biblique truly do walk in the
footsteps of their “founder and inspirer,” Père LaGrange.
There are many specific aspects of the project that deserve a full and
positive response. I state here only my appreciation for the way in which

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not only the “world that made the Bible” (background) finds a place in
the notes, but even more, “the world that the Bible made.” The place
given to the versions, to textual variants as part of the history of reception, and to moments in the interpretive tradition—in liturgy and
doctrine as well as in commentaries—is impressive. Both in the design of
its pages and in its contents, the project does resemble a “Christian
Talmud.” It is perhaps also worth observing that the project seeks a way
of honoring the multiple editions and versions and text traditions to
which Ryan refers in his essay.
The sensibility brought to the translation and notes on language are
also impressive. I agree that the rhetorical and poetic dimensions of the
biblical text are as important to celebrate as its historical referents. And
Venard’s example from his work on Matthew shows how a creative struggle with the original language not only opens up new possibilities of
meaning, but also deeply suggestive intertextual connections (as in the
nuances of seed/word in the Gospels of Matthew and John). I don’t know
how well it will work in practice, but Venard’s vision of a collegial effort
in annotation, with a main author receiving feedback and helpful leads
from experts in fields other than the author’s own, is an attractive ideal.
Even as I see this project as making concrete so many of the ideas
expressed in our book, I would prefer to see it as an aspect, even an
important one, of a renewed Catholic biblical scholarship rather than as
the full or necessary expression of that renewal. My caution is connected
entirely to the fact that the Bible de Jerusalem is not only a book, but a
long series of books, that will appear in full only after “15, 30, or 60
years.”The time lapse is not worrisome, but the monumental character of
the project is. Now, given the ambitious ideals of the authors, and given
the number of biblical books, and given the natural tendency of scholarship to expand, there is no avoiding the fact that the new Bible de
Jerusalem, if carried out as Venard describes, will be a “monument.” And
there are plusses and minuses attached to all such monuments.
On the positive side, a monumental publication embodies in an
impressive form the values to which it ascribes; there can be no mistaking a commitment to the history of interpretation when it forms such a
prominent feature of a multi-volume work. Such a sprawling publication
can also provide a fine framework for the study of others, placing at the
disposal of less learned readers the riches of scholarly research, in a format
that emphasizes the reciprocal and dialogical relationship among the
original text and the reception of it in the church. As such, the work can
serve to invite others into the conversation that it enables. On the negative side, such monumental ventures, simply because of their size and

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impressive erudition, might be taken as having already accomplished the
interpretive conversation and packaged it for readers. It is very difficult
to break out of the package, once it has been completed. Similarly,
anthologies devoted to “Rabbinic Tradition” and “Patristic Thought”
both have the same liability: They can seduce those who do not know
such traditions firsthand into thinking that they have actually engaged
those realms, when in fact they have only been exposed to a small
portion of it, not on its own terms, but as selected by the biblical passage
under discussion.
Despite the limitations and dangers of a publication so monumental,
it deserves recognition and support, not only for the values it espouses
and seeks to realize, but because the process of writing and publication
devoted to such values will itself have a transforming effect on the scholars who are involved, and a transforming effect on their students, and
through them have the possibility of transforming the church.
A Future of Balance and Proportion
Frank J. Matera embraces the theme of “both/and” in Catholic biblical
scholarship and develops it according to four topics. By so doing, he illustrates precisely the very balance and proportion that we would all like to
consider a distinctively, if by no means uniquely, Catholic sensibility.
Before responding to his major observations, with which I substantially
agree, I want briefly to address the possible implications of two opening
statements. First, he suggests that Bill and I each had “a single formula”
with which to address the present situation. I would resist that characterization, as I think Bill would as well. Certainly I do not think that
engagement with patristic and medieval interpreters is alone sufficient or
can stand apart from all the other dimensions of recovering a scriptural
imagination that I sketch in my first and fifth chapter. Second, Father
Matera says that his social location within a Catholic University may
make him naïve as to what is happening elsewhere and “more sanguine
about the present situation of Catholic biblical scholarship.” I can see
ways in which that can be so, but I caution against an inference that
working within a Catholic university automatically ensures the sort of
balance and proportion in scholarship that he advocates.
Each of Father Matera’s categories opens an important and difficult
arena of conversation, none more difficult or important than the relation
between history and theology, both in general and with respect to the
interpretation of Scripture. It is a topic too vast and complex to take on
in this brief response. But briefly, I agree that an understanding of the
historical circumstances giving rise to texts can be important, and in

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general subscribe to the proposition that the more history we know the
better and more responsible readers we can be. There is, to be sure, an
important distinction between doing history in order better to understand and engage the texts, and manipulating the texts in order to do
history. This is the bone I picked with the quest for the historical Jesus,
which in some versions was content to deconstruct the Gospel compositions in order to reconstruct Jesus. Although I recognize the value of
“historical correction and clarification,” I think it would be an exaggeration to say that it is always sufficient or helpful.
Rightly, then, Father Matera puts the theological element in the texts
in balance with the historical.As he points out, there is not much history
in the Gospel infancy accounts, but there is much theology. Here again,
though, we must also recognize that there are cases when the “theology”
of a text itself needs to be challenged. But most of all, I want to issue the
reminder that between history and theology is the literary texture, the
rhetoric of the text itself.The failure to take the New Testament writings
seriously enough as literary compositions, and to engage them at that
level, has tended to distort the doing both of history and theology.
The relationship between the “theologies” and “theology of the Bible”
is equally vexed. I agree with Matera that contemporary scholars have
done a better job of describing the “theological voice” (my own phrase)
of the respective biblical compositions than they have at addressing the
ways in which those voices join in a unified chorus.To describe the theological voice—or worse, the “theology,” as if it were a set thing±of a
specific writing, however, is not yet necessarily to engage that voice theologically, to struggle not only with its meaning but also with its claims to
truth. Biblical scholars have largely resisted that task, preferring the more
modest exercise of description. It is not entirely clear, moreover, how the
descriptive exercise can move to that more dialogical (even agonistic)
one. This is the real, and as yet largely unmet, challenge to those of us
who wish to read Scripture theologically.
It is in this light that I am also cautious concerning the “theology of
the New Testament” or “theology of the Bible.” My remarks here anticipate my response to Professor Hays below. I like Father Matera’s formulation,“Searching for the unity of Scripture is another way of searching for
God.” Exactly. But just as the search for God is not a matter of tying all
the elements of the world together in a final and satisfying whole, but is
rather a process of engaging each dimension of the world that is thematically given while at the deepest level also responding to the one who is
never thematically available as the world is, so the quest for the unity of
Scripture is best carried out, I think, athematically, or extra-thematically.

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I agree, therefore, that one extreme to be avoided is the fragmentation
of Scripture into a loose assemblage of ancient writings that are read, each
one, only with reference to their original historical settings. But I ask
whether we need to construct and make explicit the ways in which all
these writings, gathered into a single collection through canonization,
can converse with each other, and with all the centuries of their readers,
in a single, complex conversation that is, from beginning to end, revelatory. Does the effort to fix those points of unity—especially when it is
done in books—not tend inevitably to suppress elements of diversity
within the voices, and worse, render static what works best precisely as a
dynamic element in canonical reading?
Father Matera correctly notes that the question of the relation of Old
Testament to the New is analogous to the question of theologies/theology. He is further correct in noting that the question of the Christian
Bible is made more acute by the ecumenical recognition of the Hebrew
Bible as the Scripture of the Jewish people. On this question, I want to
make only three brief points. First, as with the question of “New Testament Theology,” I consider the best approach to be not through the
construction of a single systematic biblical theology but through enabling
and enlivening the multiple and complex conversations that can take
place among all the compositions of Scripture. The model for such
conversation, in fact, is found in creative preaching on lectionary texts.
Second, the question of the unity of the Scriptures and the character of
the “Christian Bible” once more presses us to consider the role of the
Septuagint as the Christian Old Testament. Third, as an example of
“balance and proportion,” the consideration of the two testaments must
give due consideration both to the compositional voice of the respective
Old Testament texts in the own right, and to the ways in which the
appropriation of those texts by the New Testament represents for Christians a privileged though not exhaustive reading of them.
With regard to Matera’s final category, the balance is far easier to state
than it is to realize.The kind of deep loyalty and critical engagement that
I think should characterize an ecclesial biblical scholarship has to resist,
on one side, an anti-intellectualism and suspicion of scholarship among
many in the church, including some leaders, and on the other side, an
academic environment that sometimes holds itself aloof from the
concerns of faith communities, and sometimes is even hostile to those
concerns. At the same time, those seeking that middle ground of critical
loyalty must acknowledge the partial validity of the extreme positions.
They recognize that not every reading of Scripture must be mediated
through experts, and that experts have often done little to nurture the life

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of faith, even as they also recognize that the life of the mind can legitimately have disinterested moments and that not all learning needs to have
an immediately obvious pragmatic or pastoral yield. I will try to say a few
more words on this subject in my closing subject, but I want to basically
agree with Matera that the balance (which may be collegial and reciprocal rather than necessarily located in each scholar at every moment) is the
ideal, however difficult it is to achieve.
Re-Entering the Scriptural World
Some considerable delicacy is required in my response to the essays so
generously contributed by two Protestant colleagues, just as considerable
delicacy was required of them to make those contributions to a conversation that was from the beginning a call to Catholics to consider what
they were about when they studied Scripture. Both Professor David S.
Yeago and Professor Richard B. Hays say positive things about the book,
for which I am grateful. Perhaps understandably, they are also more critical in their review of our efforts. And to some extent, they touch on the
same or very similar points. Some of my response to Yeago, therefore, will
also serve as a response to Hays.
Although Bill also used some of the same language, I clearly am the
main target for both reviewers’ criticism of what they regard as a polarizing Protestant/Catholic language. My rhetoric is regarded as hostile,
inaccurate, and an affront to a proper ecumenical spirit. Some time spent
examining if not salving this sore spot may therefore be appropriate.
First, let me hasten to admit that this sort of rhetoric, which as Professor Yeago notes, has as its goal a certain identity formation, always
involves, as Hays observes, a certain amount of stereotyping. I am as aware
as my colleagues that Luther and Calvin read Scripture within a theological framework very different than that of David Strauss and F. C. Baur.
And I know, as they do, that the difference was the way in which enlightenment principles were at work in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries in a way they were not in the sixteenth century. I am aware that
Wesley and Pietists had strong doctrines of sanctification. So let me take
their respective corrections concerning overstatement and oversimplification as read.
But having acknowledged the oversimplification of my language, I
want to point out that the intention of the contrast I drew was to have
Catholic biblical scholars look to what precious aspects of their own
tradition they may have too quickly abandoned, rather than to criticize
Protestant scholars for being consistent with their own theological principles. Professor Yeago can object to the strategy of identification by

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contrast, but in the present case, I not only think it was appropriate, I find
it hard to conceive how else the necessary points could be made.
Although I agree, furthermore, that the historical-critical approach
was, from the nineteenth century forward, a quintessential project of
modernity, driven by enlightenment premises, I do not think it a caricature (to use Professsor Hays’s term) to observe that a not inconsiderable
amount of Protestant theology—in particular the Protestant theology
most comfortable with critical biblical scholarship—over this same span
of time was equally affected by modernity. E. Brooks Holifield has
masterfully demonstrated the point in his Theology in America (Yale
University Press, 2003). Within critical NT scholarship, it is not inaccurate to observe that an insistence on the literal sense rather than the figurative, a consistent application of sachkritik—not least with regard to
those writings thought to be “catholic” in their tendencies, and a privileging of origins over development, are not derived so much from
enlightenment historiography as from specifically Protestant convictions.
By no means am I the first to point this out. In the book, I make reference to two Jewish scholars, Jon Levenson and Jonathan Z. Smith, who have
explicitly spoken of “protestant presuppositions” within critical biblical
scholarship, as a way of locating a preoccupation with history as the vehicle
of theology on one side (Levenson), and a privileging of origins over development on the other (Smith). Such designations, furthermore, are not a
matter of bias.They are derived from Protestant scholars themselves. In his
Drudgery Divine (University of Chicago Press, 1990), Smith massively documented the use of the phrase “pagano-papism” by Protestant scholars. A
superficial survey would quickly show how even recent Protestant theologians such as Paul Tillich could use the phrase “Protestant Principle”
precisely as an instrument to reject tendencies regarded as specifically
Roman Catholic (see, e.g.,Tillich, Systematic Theology I, 37, 227; III, 176).
If Professors Yeago and Hays are (understandably) sensitive to Protestant scholarship being made to appear as a foil for the positive presentation of a Catholic scholarship, I would ask them to place themselves in
the position of Roman Catholic scholars who have, from their first initiation into critical New Testament scholarship, been schooled to regard
development as a decline from the truth of the Gospel, if not its actual
distortion, and to regard “early Catholicism” as the best way to characterize such development.The reason I quoted Hans von Campenhausen
on this point in the book (20, note 21) is that he was the first author Bill
and I were assigned to read in our first month of Ph.D. study at Yale.
In short, if I stipulate that my rhetorical rendering of the Protestant
principles in historical-critical scholarship is lacking nuance, I would ask

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whether Professor Yeago would be willing to stipulate that it does not, in
fact, lack substance. Further, I would ask whether Protestant biblical
scholars might not usefully engage in a similar exercise to the one Bill
and I have suggested for Catholic scholars: If the privileging of origins—
to take one example—is not intrinsic to Protestant Christianity, then it
can be asked why it has played such a key role; if it is intrinsic and even
essential to the Protestant way of being Christian, then ought it not to be
embraced and celebrated, as this tradition’s distinctive gift within a
broader ecumenical conversation?
Having spent so much space on this question, I must too briefly respond
to a number of other provocative and important points raised by Professor
Yeago. On the issue of ecumenism, I have reread my statements on this
carefully, and think they represent exactly my position as well as my disposition. I also stand by the substantial accuracy of my statement that a
Catholic “cannot find in Paul’s language about justification by faith the
same depth of significance that Lutheran scholars do. Reformed readers
cannot appreciate Paul’s language about sanctification in the same manner
as Catholics.” Professor Yeago refers to official ecumenical treaties. I am
talking about deep cultural realities. Is my statement prescriptive? No. Is it
descriptively accurate? I think so, and have had that view strengthened over
and over in (ecumenically populated) doctoral seminars on Pauline letters,
as well as in Bible study sessions (more than I can remember) in Catholic,
Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist congregations.
Finally, Professor Yeago poses two interrelated questions concerning
my phrase “imagining the world that Scripture imagines.”With Professor
Hays, he wonders whether I inhabit that world or not. Intellectual
honesty requires me to respond that I don’t, certainly not in the manner
that patristic and medieval interpreters inhabited it, or in the manner I
once inhabited it when I was a very young Benedictine monk. Like all
my colleagues, I have passed through and am still tremendously influenced by modernity. To be postmodern in the sense I have used the
term—not as a personal affectation but as a cultural condition—requires
having been modern in some fashion. Do I wish to imagine that world
and dwell within it? The best part of me does, and seeks to embody that
world in action. Do large parts of my life not succeed in that endeavor?
Yes, on one side because of sin, and on the other side because of the ways
in which I am aware of multiple ways of imagining the world and
collude, knowingly or not, in their construction as well.
Professor Yeago also worries that speaking of “the world Scripture
imagines” might be taken to mean an “imaginary world.” He makes the
valuable point that Scripture claims that its construal of the world is real

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and true, and that Christians also take up a public position in the world
by their profession of faith that derives from that construal. I agree, and
make an extended argument to that effect in my book, The Creed:What
Christian Believe and Why it Matters (Doubleday, 2003). Furthermore, I
regard the argument in my book on the creed and the statements I have
made about the world that Scripture imagines as complementary rather
than contradictory.
The Future of Christian Biblical Scholarship
My response to Professor Richard Hays will be relatively short because, as
I noted above, he has identified some of the same issues as were raised by
Professor Yeago. I am pleased that Hays likes a number of our proposals and
even some of our diagnosis. I am delighted that he recalls the names of
Brevard Childs, Hans Frei, Francis Watson, Stephen Fowl, David Steinmetz,
and the members of the Scripture project with which he is involved (and
which included three Roman Catholics) as a reminder that Bill Kurz and
I are not—just in case we were tempted so to characterize ourselves—
“lonely voices in the wilderness,” but speak in chorus with “an impressive
cloud of witnesses” who form a “widespread reforming movement in biblical studies.” I gladly acknowledge that the footnote (129, note 19) that
caused him pain was more accurate with respect to its main referents, Caird
and Hurst, than it was with respect to his Moral Vision of the New Testament.
In my previous response to Yeago, I have tried to address what Hays
calls an “unnecessarily uncharitable” and “antagonistic stance” toward
Protestant interpreters, as well as the question of whether I really inhabited “the world imagined by Scripture,” and whether I knew there was a
difference between the scriptural sensibility of the great reformers and
the tendencies of enlightenment scholars who happened also to be
Protestant.There is no need, I think, to address the obvious fact that Bill
and I, although both Roman Catholic, have different perspectives and
emphases, since we have cheerfully acknowledged this, both in the form
and the substance of our conversation. I will leave aside entirely as deeply
uninteresting to anybody but old Yalies a discussion of whether I have
failed in piety toward my alma mater. This leaves two substantial objections to things I said in the book—I will leave to Bill a response to any
statements made about his contributions.
The first substantial issue is biblical theology. I have already touched
on this point in my response to Father Matera. I think it is important to
distinguish three distinct exercises, which are frequently, and unfortunately, lumped together under the rubric “biblical theology.” One is the
description of and (too seldom) engagement with the “theological voice”

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of the respective biblical compositions. I not only think this is important,
I have actually done more than a little of it. I think this is what Augustine did in his homilies on the First Letter of John and what Childs did
in his commentary on Isaiah.Another is the use of Scripture in the doing
of theology within the church.This also is legitimate and necessary. I have
also done some of this. In this exercise the point is less the meaning of
the text than it is the meaning of the mystery of faith.This is what Augustine did in his anti-Pelagian tractates or in De Trinitate. In distinct ways,
both Professor Hays and I have done some of this.
I therefore have no issues with these two enterprises, except concerning whether they are done well and with integrity. I do have some questions about how the first exercise might aid or hinder the second, but that
is another discussion.And I resist calling them “biblical theology” because
of the way in which that term has been connected to the third exercise.
My criticism is directed solely to the distinct intellectual exercise that
grew up precisely within the frame of the enlightenment and has called
itself since the time of Philip Gabler “New Testament Theology.” As
embodied by books with that title (including those by Brevard Childs),
this exercise suffers from the faults I have attributed to it, and should be
abandoned, precisely in the name of theology and the theological
engagement with Scripture.
The second issue is the role of experience in interpreting Scripture. I
should mention immediately that my stress on this element owes not a
little to my own immersion in a Methodist context at Candler School of
Theology. I have found the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to be a wonderful
explication of hermeneutical principles that are deeply consonant with
Catholic sensibilities. I should also note that my emphasis is not on experience of any sort but on the experience of the living God, and that I have
derived this emphasis, not from some philosophical or ideological position, but from the careful reading of the New Testament. Since Hays refers
to my book Scripture and Discernment, he must also know that I fully
acknowledge there the difficulties that accompany taking religious experience seriously, and that I devote considerable attention to the question
of criteria for discernment. By no means can the church say yes to everything claimed to be an experience of God.The church must say yes only
to what builds it in holiness. As Hays notes, moreover, my call for attention to the experience of the living God in the fabric of human existence
goes together with a call for close and disciplined practices of reading
within communities.This is far from a call for subjectivity or individualism.
Perhaps what Hays cannot grasp is the way in which Roman Catholic

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scholars always assume (and find no need constantly to reaffirm) the presence of the magisterial teaching function, the formal practices of liturgy,
the framework of the canon, the profession of the creed, the practices of
piety, the witness of the saints, the entire weight of tradition, as realities
that are massively given, and constantly serving as checks and balances to
excessive subjectivity.
It is, in fact, important to appreciate the experiential element in interpretation from a perspective other than that of the problematic. God’s Holy
Spirit, after all, works at every moment in human experience for growth in
holiness and wisdom.Without the witness of the saints—a witness that is
always based in their experience—the church does not grow in the understanding of Scripture that is, in the most proper sense, sapiential.
Conversion and Construction
As grateful as I am for this continuation of “conversation,” I want to
conclude this response by reminding my colleagues as well as myself that
the process of scholars talking among themselves, however enjoyable and
even profitable, is not by itself sufficient to enliven a future Catholic
biblical scholarship. Insofar as such conversation stays at the level of
theory and position-taking, in fact, it can come dangerously close to an
academic exercise that serves its own ends but does not necessarily build
the church. If the participants agree on most of the positive ideals that the
authors have identified in their book, the question arises how those ideals
might find embodiment and not merely intellectual agreement. It is my
conviction that those of us who espouse these convictions need to
engage a process of conversion and construction, or, to use other terms,
to apply ourselves seriously to the politics and pedagogy of scholarship.
By conversion, I mean precisely the turn from theory to practice, and
within the academy and the church, practice always involves politics.
Those of us in major graduate programs, for example, are in a position to
fundamentally affect the way Scripture is read in the church, first through
our education of ministers, and second, through our training of professors. If values are going to find embodiment, then hard curricular debates
and decisions must be made. It will not be enough to gather at conferences and workshops with like-minded folks, we must engage and try to
persuade colleagues in specific institutions whose views do not line up
with ours. In ministerial programs, how much Scripture should be studied, and how does such study serve to enrich the theological imagination
of the pastor? In Ph.D. programs, what role shall be given to the history
of interpretation, both at the level of seminars and as a necessary aspect
of dissertations? How much shall we encourage, as part of our enterprise,

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scholarship that is explicitly theological and ecclesial?
By construction, I mean pedagogy, which is closely connected to politics. Curricular decisions, after all, are, or ought to be pedagogical in character. But there is also a politics embedded in the specific pedagogy of a
course. Again we might ask how our manner of teaching the New Testament in seminary provides students with a living laboratory of ecclesial
practice. And in our training teaching associates in Ph.D. programs, we
can similarly ask how the forms of pedagogy that we communicate both
explicitly and implicitly embody the values that we espouse verbally.
It is fairly easy to criticize the manner in which others have exercised
their scholarship, and also fairly easy to imagine a utopian alternative.The
hard work comes in the way in which we must change and work for
N&V
change with others, if we want that alternative to become real.

Response to the Respondents
W ILLIAM S. K URZ , SJ
Marquette University
Milwaukee,Wisconsin

R EADING THE FIVE thoughtful responses by scholarly colleagues
to Luke Johnson’s and my book awakened a grateful experience of our
project being honored and vindicated. These responses constructively
“continue the conversation” to which our book aspired to contribute.The
three responses by Catholic scholars placed appreciative focus on the positive intent and implications of our dominant model of inclusive, generous
“both/and” Catholic approaches, and mainly disregarded possibly negative
comparisons to alternative “either/or” tendencies.The two scholars from
other denominations expressed displeasure at what they perceived as the
unfairness of our comparison. I will address their concerns, but my initial
and overall response is to emphasize the positive and important insights in
the inclusive approaches that we are recommending Catholic scholarship
continue to foster, and to withdraw focus on possibly negative comparisons, at least with the approaches of other Christians.
Frank Matera’s response was generally appreciative, especially of our
inclusive turning to tradition when interpreting Scripture and of our
declining to be embarrassed by our Catholic preunderstandings, but with
critical awareness of how we apply them. His constructive contributions
to the continuing conversation focused on “balance and proportion,” in
the inclusive “both/and” direction we had taken. He reminded us that
there is no special “Catholic method” of exegesis. What characterizes

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Catholic exegesis and interpretation is that it is consciously and forthrightly practiced within a living tradition and with the aim of fidelity to
the basic revelation of Scripture.1
His four areas in which balance and proportion in biblical interpretation are especially needed move the conversation forward by emphasizing the constructive application of Catholic exegetical predilections. In
calling for a balance between the theology and history, he reminds us that
there is even theological value in the historical approach in situating and
relativizing the implications of some sharp controversies with Judaism in
John and Matthew. I find especially helpful his characterization of
Catholic exegesis as theological, as faith seeking understanding with the
aid of historical investigation.2
Matera’s second inclusive balance and proportion between an overall
theology and the particular theologies of Scripture remind us that the
mysteries of God are too profound for any single theology and require
the multiple kinds of explanations in the various biblical books. He also
makes a helpful distinction between a historical judgment that the Bible
has many quite different theologies, and the necessity, from the perspective of belief, to posit unity to God’s revelation in Scripture. Believers, in
doing so, are in fact searching for God through the Scriptures.3
Regarding Christian balance between Old and New Testaments, Matera
recalls the instruction of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 2002 document on the Jewish people and Scriptures in the Christian Bible. Particularly pertinent to my concerns were his reminder that the Father of Jesus
is identical to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that Catholics who
pray the Liturgy of the Hours “live in a liturgical world” that seamlessly
integrates Old Testament and New Testament texts.4 His final balancing
suggestions between ecclesial and academic approaches to Catholic exegesis primarily furthered Luke Johnson’s observations in our book.
The contributions of Stephen Ryan, OP, and Olivier-Thomas Venard,
OP, mainly presupposed the many book reviews about our book. They
focused less on our book than on moving the conversation forward in
two fascinating and constructive new directions, beyond the topics we
raised. As a specialist in Old Testament, Stephen Ryan made some
intriguing observations about how the pluriformity both of variant biblical manuscripts and of the major ancient versions (particularly the Greek,
1 Matera, “The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: Balance and Proportion,”

Nova et Vetera 4:1(2006): 122.
2 Ibid., 124.
3 Ibid., 127.
4 Ibid., 130.

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Latin, and Syriac) provide a further application of the inclusive “both/
and” principle.
Ryan mentioned very encouraging developments for the future of
Catholic biblical scholarship. Current projects of providing translations and
commentaries on the Septuagint and Syriac Peshitta will make the rich
Eastern interpretive tradition accessible to the Western readers. Interfaith
cooperation between Catholics and Jews on the Hebrew Scriptures is
complementing the ecumenical gains and goals of recent interdenominational biblical scholarship.The Oxford Hebrew Bible, a new critical edition
that prints synoptic Hebrew parallels for passages that survive in more than
one significant form, will enlighten readers to the realities of the pluriformity of many Old Testament texts.A 1969 ecumenical agreement between
the United Bible Societies and the Vatican Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity allows for Esther to be translated twice, the Hebrew text in the
canon section, the Greek in the deuterocanonical section.
Ryan draws attention to the incentives that such significant pluriformity of manuscripts provides for reconceptualizing the meaning of divine
inspiration of the Bible.This in turn should provide a needed corrective
to the “seductive certainties” of post-Enlightenment literalism (that affect
both critical and fundamentalist forms of interpretation).5 Ryan celebrates the hope that the increasing ecclesial role of early biblical versions
alongside the original texts will promote the ecumenical catholicity of
the Church and better access to rich interpretive traditions of patristic
and medieval saints and scholars.6
Another fascinating further stage in the conversation is the account by
Olivier-Thomas Venard of how “fourth-generation” Catholic scholars
(successors to Johnson and my “third generation”) are at work through the
École Biblique to produce a “Christian Talmud” under the title La Bible en
ses Traditions. This complete recasting of the next version of the Bible de
Jérusalem plans to incorporate the irreducibility of several versions of the
same book or passage (which Ryan also discussed). It plans to address the
new importance of the history of reception in literary studies, which in
turn is intimately related to renewed appreciation of patristic exegesis. It
combines appreciation of the literary aspects with plain historical or doctrinal meaning of biblical texts.7
5 Ryan, “The Text of the Bible and Catholic Biblical Scholarship,” Nova et Vetera

4:1(2006): 141.
6 Ibid., 141.
7 Venard, “ ‘La Bible en ses Traditions’: The New Project of the École biblique et

archéologique française de Jérusalem. Presented as a ‘Fourth-Generation’ Enterprise,”
Nova et Vetera 4:1(2006): 142.

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I find especially promising the prospect that the new edition will be
structured analogously to the layout of the Talmud. At the center, on
facing pages will be translations of the biblical texts (in synoptic parallelism with translations of any important irreconcilable variants). The
“Text” register will supply the usual historical-critical notes on textual
criticism, philology, and literary devices. “Background” will provide
history and geography, social background, and parallel ancient texts.The
largest section of annotation will be “Reception,” on biblical intertextuality, Jewish and Christian traditions, theology, dogmas, liturgy, iconography, art, and literature. Such an ambitious project is being implemented
by a large interdisciplinary team of scholars.
Venard than illustrates exciting ways in which his “fourth-generation”
project is furthering our book’s “postmodern and Catholic celebrations
of language, diversity, otherness, culture, and faith.”8 Venard’s project will
further Origen’s insight (cited by Johnson) that it is the language of
Scripture that teaches, whatever its relation to what happened.9 The close
link between literary textual meaning and God’s revelation requires
scrupulous respect for the original text, as Venard illustrates by his work
on the parable of the sower in Matthew, in which he shows that in the
Matthaean text the seed refers to both the word sown by Jesus and the
hearer of the word sown by God the Creator.10
Diversity will be respected, for example, by consulting important
translations like the Vulgate along with the original New Testament
Greek. Otherness will be celebrated by the very interdisciplinary nature
of this project, and by adding to the usual scientific exegesis a more
creative literary one.Appreciation for otherness will also appear in choosing more literal translations more attuned to “exotic” biblical and oral
cultures.11 Venard’s work on Matthew begins with his and his assistant’s
draft of notes for all the registers, based especially on their own expertise. These drafts they submit to specialists in “patristics, ancient Judaism,
history of the liturgy, iconography, or dogmatics” to modify, correct, or
even suppress their proposals and to add better references.12
The collaborators in this Bible respect how human meaning is
constructed, connected to faith commitments, and rooted in community
traditions.They recognize in biblical interpretation the same kind of circle
of preknowledge and knowledge that characterizes most commonplace
8 Ibid., 144.
9 Ibid., 146.
10 Ibid., 147, esp. 148.
11 Ibid., 151.
12 Ibid., 152.

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knowledge.They hope that their Bible will deepen understanding of how
the “economy” of revelation occurs by means of “deeds and words intrinsically interconnected.”13
Another area of convergence between the proposals of our book and
their new Bible will be the explicit incorporation of faith into their
scholarly exegetical work.They intend to consult Church teaching as an
invitation to deepen their philological study of the text and its reception,
enlarge the context of their reading of the text, and allow truths that were
developed later to help readers notice textual facts or peculiarities.14
Finally, Venard envisages biblical scholarship as helping in the future to
produce a biblical world that is, to be an agent changing the culture, especially its irrational and nihilistic foundations.15 Venard proposes making
biblical texts places where our contemporaries can live today.
Because they came primarily in the form of challenges, the responses
of David Yeago and Richard Hays proved especially productive for my
own attempts to “continue the conversation.” When I tracked down
Yeago’s references I found some especially useful writings and suggestions
that were being written about the same time as Luke Johnson and I were
composing our book, most of them not available to us at the time of
writing. Many of my own current further steps toward reading Scripture
more theologically and spiritually are relying heavily on both Yeago’s
own articles and David Steinmetz’s analogy between reading Old and
New Testaments and reading a mystery story, which appeared after our
book in The Art of Reading Scripture co-edited by Hays.16
In fact, responses to our book have included practical guidance to excellent proposals and writings that run parallel to Johnson’s and my concerns.
Before attempting answers to particular criticisms of Yeago and Hays, I
want to acknowledge that I consider their concerns and those of many
others to be quite parallel to ours. I regard them not only as brothers in
Christ but as significant partners in the conversation toward the future of
both Catholic and Christian biblical scholarship. The following writings
exemplify contributions to the ecumenical and Catholic search for theological and
religiously helpful exegesis as an alternative to interpretation heavily indebted

13 Dei Verbum, no. 2;Venard, 154.
14 Venard, 155.
15 Ibid., 157.
16 David Steinmetz, “Uncovering a Second Narrative: Detective Fiction and the

Construction of Historical Method,” in The Art of Reading Scripture, ed. E. F. Davis
and R. B. Hays (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
2003).

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to modernism and postmodernism. Most of these publications appeared at
about the same time or after our book and were not available to us. I
recommend that many of these be read in conjunction with our book, to
supplement, complement, and at times correct some of our emphases.
Perhaps the most evidently parallel work to ours is the set of published
essays resulting from the Duke University ecumenical Scripture Project,
co-edited by Ellen Davis and Richard Hays, The Art of Reading Scripture.
Their “Nine Theses on the Interpretation of Scripture,” complement our
suggestions.17 I intend to incorporate them into my Scripture classes and
to recommend them as a fine starting point for all who share our
common desire for interpretation more attuned to the Bible as God’s
Word. For my present search for something like the patristic overarching
biblical narrative, I find particularly helpful Richard Bauckham, “Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story”18 and even more so, David C. Steinmetz, “Uncovering a Second Narrative: Detective Fiction and the
Construction of Historical Method,”19 along with Brian Daley’s essay on
“Is Patristic Exegesis Still Usable?”20
Yeago’s response alerted me to a 2005 book by John J. O’Keefe and
R. R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible.21 It provides an extraordinarily helpful introduction to
patristic interpretation.Also quite helpful is Christopher R. Seitz, Figured
Out:Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture.22
Especially productive for my search for a more theological method
have been the following essays in The Theological Interpretation of Scripture:
Classic and Contemporary Readings: Henri de Lubac, “Spiritual Understanding”; David C. Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis”; and especially David S.Yeago, “The New Testament and the Nicene
17 Davis and Hays, The Art of Reading Scripture, 1–5.
18 In Davis and Hays, The Art of Reading Scripture.
19 See note 16 above.
20 A variant of Communio 29 (2002): 185–216.
21 John J. O’Keefe and R. R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christ-

ian Interpretation of the Bible (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).
22 Christopher R. Seitz, Figured Out: Typology and Providence in Christian Scripture

(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001). A seminal book for understanding
how patristic interpretation relates to Greco-Roman rhetoric, philosophy, and
culture is Frances M.Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997, 2002). A classic development of especially
Irenaeus’s recapitulation theory that deserves more attention is Paul M. Quay,
The Mystery Hidden for Ages in God (New York: P. Lang, 1995). A short accessible
version of de Lubac’s classic four volumes on the four senses is Henri de Lubac,
Scripture in the Tradition (New York: Crossroad, 2000).

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Dogma:A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exegesis.”23 The
readily available classic St. Athanasius on the Incarnation nicely illustrates
this theological approach.24
Catholic contributions that overlap many of the concerns of our book
(perhaps more my emphases than Johnson’s) are Peter S. Williamson,
Catholic Principles for Interpreting Scripture: A Study of the Pontifical Biblical
Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church;25 and David
M.Williams, Receiving the Bible in Faith: Historical and Theological Exegesis.26
Lutheran systematic theologian David Yeago expressed misgivings about
Luke Timothy Johnson’s recommendation of “imagining the world as the
Scripture imagines it.” He was primarily concerned about Christians using
a postmodern approach without sufficient acknowledgement of how
dangerous postmodernism’s proclivities can be to Christian faith. I share
Yeago’s concerns about “the imagined world” of postmodern approaches
being equated with an “imaginary” world. From his explicit faith perspective,Yeago argues that Scripture reveals the true meaning of the world, to
which we tend to be blinded by sin. Despite rhetorical differences, I doubt
that Johnson would disagree with Yeago’s insistence that it is not merely a
matter of a postmodern (and arbitrary) choice to imagine the world in the
way the Bible does. In faith we accept the reality of that biblical world.To
this I would add that according to my own experience and study, the biblical worldview in fact makes more rational sense of reality than any modern
or postmodern alternative views of reality that I know. And Venard’s
proposal that biblicists actually help build a biblical world that we can live
in today also contributes to this topic.
On the other hand,Venard emphasizes that there can be “a Christian
version of postmodernity, which inverts the general relativism of postmodern thinkers into the conscious ‘second naivety’ provided by an illuminated
faith regarding our possibility to know the truth.”27 Postmodern relativism
23 Stephen E. Fowl, ed., The Theological Interpretation of Scripture: Classic and Contempo-

rary Readings (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997): Henri de Lubac, “Spiritual Understanding,” 3–25; David C. Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,”
26–38; and especially David S. Yeago, “The New Testament and the Nicene
Dogma: A Contribution to the Recovery of Theological Exegesis,” 87–100.
24 St.Athanasius on the Incarnation:The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei (Crestwood,
NY: St.Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, rev. ed., 1944, 1953, 1982).
25 Peter S.Williamson, Catholic Principles for Interpreting Scripture:A Study of the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (Rome:
Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 2001).
26 David M. Williams, Receiving the Bible in Faith: Historical and Theological Exegesis
(Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2004).
27 Venard, 144.

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can help dispose of an exaggerated assumption of criticism being “scientific,” which triggered the divorce of exegesis from the life of the Church.
We now appreciate with Lyotard that every discourse, including scientific,
“implies a rhetoric, a tradition, and many preconceptions.28 After removal
of its nihilist postulates, postmodernity “can help biblical scholars to recover
confidence in cultural mediation.”That is, various cultural and other “prejudices shape every thought, and this is not fate, but fact—and should be
simply taken into account.”29
Venard also celebrates the epistomological shift away from the romantic prejudice in historical criticism that there was an original, pure good
news that became progressively corrupted throughout Church history.
He argues that in ancient semi-oral civilizations language reveals, rather
than represents.30 “In the world of Scripture, events, undetectable without texts that beforehand sharpen the attention of those that live them,
come to enlighten those very texts. Inhabitants of this world experience
the mutual illuminations of being and letter.”31 One effect of this is to
render invalid many critical judgments against historicity in narratives
because of their literary shaping and intra-biblical allusion. Historical
effectiveness has to be judged “no longer against, but through the cultural
mediations of knowledge.”32
Questions remain about how one can live in a scriptural universe in
the twenty-first century. I continue to look to premodern exegesis in the
hopes that it can reintroduce some approaches and principles that would
be viable today. One productive patristic paradigm is the importance of
combining both philosophical and purely rational approaches with living
within a biblical worldview.Yeago has astutely remarked that in addition
to the philosophical alternatives of secular versus scriptural worldviews,
it is important to remember the culture-transforming effects of a scriptural mind set.33
This recalls the more fundamental and critically important need for
both faith and reason to be able to live within a biblical worldview. Faith
believes in the God revealed in Scripture, a God who both creates and
redeems and who exercises providential care for us creatures. Reason
28 Venard, 144.
29 Ibid., 152–53.
30 Ibid., 153
31 Ibid., 153.
32 Ibid., 154
33 See somewhat comparable comments by Venard mentioned above. Especially

helpful is the treatment of how rhetoric, philosophy, culture, and the biblical
vision mutually influence each other in patristic interpretation in Young, Biblical
Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture.

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applies considerations of the dignity of persons and human rights, natural law and the common good, and justice, within the pluralistic realities
among which we live.34
In addition, as Catholics and other Christians reading Scripture today,
we demonstrate the reasonableness of our faith in the loving, biblical God
who created all things good and who rescues humans from our sinful
misuse of our God-given freedom. Concern for the reasonableness of our
faith reminds us that the biblical worldview requires that we respect the
dignity and rights of the other human images of God. It requires us to
live morally and justly, in ways that use material creation wisely and avoid
mistreating or misusing it selfishly.
Yeago, Hays, and others have expressed intense ecumenical uneasiness
and some personal offense taken with what Yeago calls our “oppositional
self-definition,” and with some of our characterizations of Protestantism
(undifferentiated and often linked to Enlightenment presuppositions). I
certainly apologize for any offense I have given. In most cases, I believe
upsetting statements on my part or their implications resulted either from
my overgeneralizing from individual writings or actual pastoral or teaching experiences, or from insufficient care to specify the precise authors
or settings of statements or methods that concerned me. In some cases, I
think I was simply misunderstood. I cannot speak for Luke Johnson, but
from my personal experience of his extraordinarily friendly personality
and ecumenical openness, I think some of his rhetoric and expressions
were likewise misunderstood.
As both Yeago and Hays agree, ecumenism does not mean reducing
discussions to “least common denominator” concerns and theologies. In
fact, I characterize even what seemed to me to be their sharpest criticisms
as offered in a spirit of ecumenical dialogue and respect, and I accept
them in that spirit. As they both recognized, I have never hidden my
Catholic presuppositions and loyalties (some of which differ also from
Luke’s, as Hays especially pointed out). In turn I am happy to be
reminded of their differing personal presuppositions and loyalties.
I had already discovered some negative aspects and results of the “leastcommon-denominator” approach to dialogue as a graduate student at
Yale, from an orthodox rabbi friend who was a fellow student there. He
emphasized to me how offensive and condescending he found it when
34 Although Hays provides reasonable arguments for finding substitutes for “rights

language,” I find such terms too important components of long-standing Catholic
social teaching to surrender. Cf. Pope John Paul II, encyclical letter “Faith and
Reason” (Fides et ratio; 1998), www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/
encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html.

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Christians talked to him about Christ in reductionistic ways, as if they,
like he, were Jewish in their beliefs about Jesus. He expected me as a
Christian to believe in the divinity of Christ, and to acknowledge that
belief in conversations with him. “Least-common-denominator”
dialogue was not only not helpful, but was actually dishonest.
Still, neither Johnson nor I ever wanted to emphasize oppositional
self-definition as our program or as a desideratum. My remarks simply
began from what abundant personal, professional, pastoral, and teaching
experience indicated are noticeable differences that in fact occasion
different interpretive perceptions and approaches between Catholics and
Christians of other denominations. I believe the best ecumenical contribution I can make to any dialogue is to speak with both respect for
others’ views and a desire to learn from them, but also without apology
for my personal Catholic presuppositions and beliefs—all of them, even
those with which some other Catholics might disagree.
When I emphasized that there exist factual differences between
Catholics and other Christians, I was not ignoring ecumenical efforts or
concerns, but simply expressing my extensive experiential awareness of
how seriously such differences influence both behavior and biblical interpretation. I was referring to grassroots teaching and exegetical experience, not the level of organized ecumenical discussions. On that level of
ordinary give-and-take, I find it more productive simply to begin
ecumenical exchange by having all parties speak from their actual current
beliefs, opinions, and preferences, in which there happen to be not inconsiderable differences among them. Convergences come afterward, from
listening to and learning from the views of others.
Both Yeago and I want to remove as many differences between Christian groups as possible, but for me the most effective starting point is
honest acknowledgement of our current positions and consequently
their differences from positions of our dialogue partners. As each participant explains her or his reasons for their position, more areas of common
concern and conviction can emerge, and more differences can be either
overcome or relativized in their significance. This process may also give
promise of eventually including denominational differences alongside
social, ethnic, and sexual differences as overcome in the unity of the one
Christ (cf. Gal 3:28), as Yeago hopes.
I furthermore concur with generally wanting to find common ground
and to emphasize more fundamental points on the hierarchy of truths
where Christians and other believers can agree, rather than to focus
excessively on differences that divide us. Still, there are also important
values that are contained within our very differences.We can learn from

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the differing perspectives from other individuals and other denominations if we both listen to others’ outlooks and express our own diverging
values honestly and respectfully. Sometimes we may simply have to “agree
to disagree.” But more often we find complementarity in the differing
views and approaches that can be mutually enriching.
The extraordinary productiveness (and enjoyableness) of respectful but
open and frank ecumenical discussion, in which each participant in the
conversation speaks from her or his personal faith and differing denominational perspectives, have been amply demonstrated in my recent large
ecumenical seminars on Luke-Acts and on Johannine writings at
Marquette.As I have become more aware of how our Catholic, Lutheran,
Orthodox, Pentecostal, Episcopalian, Evangelical, Presbyterian, and other
perspectives do influence what we notice, bring to, and read in biblical
texts, I have begun testing my developing hypotheses that our differing
denominational preunderstandings bring positive contributions and not
merely limitations to our common efforts at exegesis.
I have begun encouraging students to exegete biblical passages not
only using the standard historical, critical, and literary methods, but also
acknowledging to the whole class any special emphases or insights their
particular denominational and religious background, training, and experience suggested to them. Each student was encouraged to express
honestly his or her opinion on the topic or passage as well as any particular disagreement with anyone else’s opinion, including the professor’s.
The only basic ground rule in this mutual give-and-take was that it
always be respectful of others and their suggestions, and never resort to
personal attacks or to insulting the views of others.
Both the graduate students and I found these class sessions with their
sharing and mutual critiques of exegetical papers and studies enormously
enjoyable as well as profitable. Both they and I were especially proud
when a pair of exegetical papers produced in the seminar, both of which
explicated Lukan treatments of “breaking of bread,” were accepted by a
scholarly journal for publication explicitly as a pair. They were regarded
as examples of how differing Baptist and Catholic presuppositions in
exegeting the same biblical passages can lead to varying and often
complementary emphases, in this case the Baptist stressing the communal aspects and the Catholic the Eucharistic facets of “breaking of bread”
in Luke and Acts.
Regarding the hierarchy of truths, I agree with both Yeago and Hays
that on such fundamental levels as creedal belief in central doctrines like
Trinity and Incarnation we are primarily on common ground. This
common ground extends more than I previously realized also to our

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parallel searches and converging general principles for ways of doing
biblical exegesis that are more attuned to Scripture as God’s Word. I am
happy to come to know and learn from them as brothers and allies in our
common desires and efforts for the future of biblical scholarship. I think
that both Catholics and other Christians, including Johnson and me, have
for some time been earnestly cultivating such areas of common convictions. Sometimes, however, very significant disagreements remain among
us on the level of truths that are not toward the top of the hierarchy of
truths. I suggest that the serious disagreement expressed between Hays
and me relates mostly to debated propositions that belong lower down in
this hierarchy.
I am sorry if I did not sufficiently emphasize the extensive areas of
agreement between Dr. Hays’s chapter on abortion and my chapter
critiquing his position. The main reason I chose the case history of his
chapter was to avoid setting up a “straw man.” It was to grapple with a
book, a scholar, and a position for whom I had genuine respect, and
whose overall agreement in general moral and interpretative principles
allowed me to illustrate where our remaining real differences lay.
The way that I applied the “both/and” and “either/or” contrast was
unfortunate and now regretted, but we both agree with my main point
that our differences are primarily related to differing denominational
preunderstandings and preferences when it comes to how we apply
extra-biblical reasoning to our interpretation. (As Matera had remarked,
there are no particularly Catholic methods of exegesis, but what characterizes Catholic interpretation is their doing it explicitly from within
their tradition.) Our areas of agreement extend to most of the fundamental methodological priorities for reading Scripture as the Word of
God and seeking guidance from it in areas that we both agree are not
explicitly treated in Scripture, like abortion. Our respective chapters also
agree in our strong aversion to abortion and in how the worldview and
narratives of Scripture strongly discourage it.
I also regret and apologize for not clearly enough acknowledging that
not only Hays’s fundamental approaches but also his ultimate conclusion
from his exegetical and interpretive quest for biblical guidance about abortion come to an analogous basic judgment. As he puts it, “My own judgment in this case is that the New Testament summons the community to eschew
abortion and thus to undertake the burden of assisting the parents to raise
the handicapped child.”35 Further, as someone with pastoral experience
35 Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New

Creation (San Francisco: Harper-SanFrancisco, 1996), 457, emphasis added.

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myself, I too acknowledge the difference between giving an unambiguous
ethical directive (for me it would be against abortion in any circumstances)
and dealing pastorally with the imperfect and even sinful decisions people
actually make. I also agree that the Church should assist people in keeping
difficult moral commandments, but that does not completely absolve the
actual parents from their own responsibility.
The point of clear divergence between us is that ultimately I have to
characterize the choice that this fortyish couple made to kill their
preborn baby who had Downs Syndrome as morally wrong, not merely
a tragedy. From my belief that God has a plan for every human being in
creating each human soul, I cannot see that God approves killing one’s
handicapped baby in the womb for any reason.This personal conviction
stems both from the general biblical worldview on which I think Hays
and I mostly agree and from my denominationally influenced attitudes to
using traditions such as natural law and moral absolutes. (This particular
instance does not happen to result particularly from my tendency to
show more dependence than others on magisterial teachings.) The
conclusion of my argument from Scripture and rational reflection and
reasoning is confirmed by extensive personal experience in helping
women and men who bitterly grieve over and repent of aborting their
child in even significantly worse circumstances than the example under
discussion. The key to their healing was their honestly acknowledging
their guilt and repenting of what they have done, as in the biblical pattern
exemplified in Psalms 32 and 51.
The main reason I may be seeming to belabor this difference is that I
believe such ethical concerns extend far beyond the narrow purview of
hard cases concerning abortion. I believe the churches are going to need
biblical and traditional guidance for many critical recent ethical questions
that are not mentioned in Scripture but that have enormous ethical,
economic, scientific, and cultural ramifications. I am alarmed by current
bioethical developments that seem to be headed in the direction described
in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, in which “mother” is a dirty word,
babies sorted according to genetically graded abilities are produced in
factories, and sex is reduced to trivialized pleasure.36 I believe there is an
ecumenical urgency to find in Scripture and tradition, with helping
guidance from ecclesial leaders, orientations for sorely needed ethical
principles in such financially lucrative but morally problematic biomedical areas as cloning, artificial creation of human embryos, and embryo
experimentation and harvesting for stem cells, not to mention end-of-life
36 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, c1946, 1997).

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concerns exacerbated by developing medical technologies. In these areas,
I believe Catholic scholars, tradition, and magisterium have achieved
many pioneering results that are of potential value to all Christians and
moral people of good will.
I also regret that my disagreement about discernment was experienced
as judgmental. Because Hays alluded to St. Ignatius Loyola and discernment in reference to this decision, I was merely trying to insert a necessary distinction about Ignatian practices of discernment, in which I have
been steeped throughout my Jesuit life. The misapplication of Ignatian
discernment that I was addressing is a common one, not in any special
way focused on Dr. Hays.
According to my Ignatian training and experience, ethics is in critical
ways different from discernment: Ethics seeks to know what God has
commanded as right or wrong, to be done or to be avoided. Ignatius
would tend to seek answers to these ethical questions in the commandments, Scripture, Catholic teaching, tradition, and the magisterium.Then
one would determine what to do and how to do it by applying the resulting general principles with prudence to one’s particular circumstances.
This approach would not tend to seek answers to whether something
is ethically right or wrong in prayer over one’s interior movements or
one’s options and individual circumstances. A much more common kind
of Ignatian discernment in prayer is to seek the Spirit’s guidance among
multiple choices that are evidently morally good or neutral—for example, is God guiding me to be a doctor or a teacher, to seek marriage or a
single life dedicated to extraordinary availability and service. In my Ignatian experience, a question about abortion would be an ethical question
of right or wrong, and therefore not a matter of discernment in the usual
Ignatian sense.
Ultimately, I do not think it is surprising that on some points, Hays
and I may have to “agree to disagree,” but even in these matters I believe
we can disagree respectfully. Longstanding differences and deeply held
convictions regarding natural law, moral absolutes, magisterium, and various hard ethical cases, such as those regarding abortion, are not able to be
overcome in the small space of our interchange here. These particular
disagreements need not hinder us from together searching among our
abundant common convictions, beliefs, values, and exegetical priorities
for a future for Catholic and Christian biblical scholarship that is more
explicitly addressed to the needs of the Church and of believers.
Despite the positive reception most Catholic reviewers and respondents have given to our promotion among Catholics of an inclusive
“both/and” approach to interpretation, this image also occasioned signif-

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icant objections.Yeago, Hays, and several reviewers have registered particular dismay and criticisms of Luke Johnson’s contrast, which I also used
extensively, between a more characteristically Catholic “both/and”
approach and a more typically Protestant “either/or” approach to biblical
interpretation. Probably the majority of reviewers found our fundamental contrast between “both/and” and “either/or” exegetical predilections
illuminating and corresponding to their own experience. However, I now
think that linking the latter so explicitly to a generalized Protestantism
was unfortunate. I regret any impression that our book was glorifying our
Catholic proclivities at the expense of those of other denominations, or
that it seemed to lump all denominations together as generically Protestant, or that it too closely equated Protestant predilections with those of
the Enlightenment and secularistic mindsets.
As I recall, our descriptions came about from our actual and painful
experience of this “either/or” emphasis especially in the German and
post-Bultmanian critical tendencies reigning during our graduate studies
in the early 1970s. The tendency to emphasize dichotomies, along with
some anti-Catholic nuances disguised in such standard exegetical
constructs as “early Catholicism” to exemplify decline from the pristine
Pauline-Johannine gospel, were so apparent to us that it even elicited our
protests, mere graduate students though we were. I am convinced that
such exegetical mindsets were common to most mainstream graduate
programs at the time, and perdure among some of the more secularistic
approaches to Scripture to this day. However, perhaps our linking this
legitimate contrast between dichotomizing and inclusive exegetical
approaches to a contrast between Catholic and Protestant owed too
much to our personal, painful, but now long-past experiences as a
Catholic, graduate-student minority in the face of some alienating
exegetical presuppositions.
For purposes of the ongoing constructive conversation about the
future of both Catholic and ecumenical biblical scholarship, I believe that
the three Catholic responses in this journal and the majority of book
reviews both confirm that our emphasis on inclusive exegetical and interpretive approaches has merit, and also suggest reasonable ways to implement it. Stripped of the possibility of negative implications regarding
other Christian denominations, we can pursue what is valuable in
convictions about inclusive manners of interpreting Scripture, especially
with acknowledged consultation of tradition. Cautions against eisegesis
and simply reading one’s presuppositions into the text will always be
important and necessary. We must also allow the biblical text to change
and correct our presuppositions and traditions when necessary. In these

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matters, not only our “separated brothers and sisters” but also Catholic
practitioners from earlier “generations” who continue to emphasize
mostly critical exegesis will have important contributions to make to this
N&V
ongoing conversation about biblical scholarship.

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201

Book Reviews
Trinity in Aquinas by Gilles Emery, OP (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press of
Ave Maria College, 2003), xxix + 361 pp.
C LAIMING MERE COMMONPLACES to be the teaching of Thomas
Aquinas is a frequent failing in works on the Angelic Doctor. In contrast,
Trinity in Aquinas, by Fr. Gilles Emery, OP, professor of dogmatic theology
at the University of Fribourg, is particularly adept at highlighting the
unique features of Thomas’s Trinitarian theology. Deeply versed in the
writings of Thomas’s contemporaries, Fr. Emery proves a superior guide
to the Angelic Doctor’s voluminous writings on the Trinity, from the
pertinent distinctions of the Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, to their
expansion in the Summa contra gentiles and Summa theologiae, and finally to
their exegetical flowering in the Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura. Along
the way, the reader is treated to detailed discussions of the unity and triunity of God, the relationship of the Holy Trinity to creation, the proper
account of processions, relations, and persons in the Holy Trinity, the
infamous Trinitarian “analogies,” the controversy surrounding the procession of the Holy Spirit a Filio, and the “long and vast debate” about the
relative priority of essentialism or personalism in Aquinas. Fr. Emery
explains these rather difficult topics briskly, but with unparalleled ease
and lucidity.What makes Trinity in Aquinas shine, however, is the way Fr.
Emery finds passages that illuminate the distinctive aspects of Thomas’s
Trinitarian theology.
Trinity in Aquinas, which is a collection of seven independent studies,
begins with a survey of Trinitarian theology from the twelfth through the
fourteenth centuries. After patient examinations of Roscellinus, Abelard,
Anselm, Gilbert de la Porrée, Peter Lombard, and Joachim of Fiore, Fr.
Emery turns his attention to the role of rationes necessariae in medieval
Trinitarian theology. It turns out that Thomas, for all his speculative brilliance, is more cautious than his contemporaries when assessing the
capacities of reason to investigate the mystery of the Trinity. Unlike

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Anselm, Richard of St. Victor, Bonaventure, and other Franciscans,
Thomas is particularly wary of using rationes necessariae to demonstrate
aspects of the mystery of the Trinity once it has been revealed, relying
solely upon probable arguments. In fact, the caution displayed by Thomas
in his commentary on Lombard’s Sententiae becomes the methodological
theme of the entire collection. Not satisfied with any treatment of the
Holy Trinity that threatens to diminish its mystery,Thomas will likewise
safeguard the contemplative and speculative order that wisdom alone
provides. Consequently, faith and Scripture are the only sources for the
analogies and plausible reasons that invite us to contemplate the mystery.
Such concerns allow the reader to feel the force of Thomas’s unique attribution of exemplarity to the procession of persons as a whole in his
account of the relationship of the Holy Trinity to creation, which is the
subject of the second chapter. Thus, for Thomas, the procession of the
divine persons as persons is the cause of the procession and multiplicity
of all creatures (67). One can imagine no better antidote to the common
misconception that the medieval theologians thought of creation simply
in terms of the One God!
Fr. Emery elaborates further on the methodological importance of
plausible reasons in his third chapter, which takes up the complex structure of the Trinitarian treatise in the Summa contra gentiles. Here too, Fr.
Emery treats the reader to a detailed account of Thomas’s exegesis of
Scripture and the various hermeneutic principles that shape his treatment
of the Holy Trinity (esp. 90–91). Of particular importance, too, is the fact
that Thomas abandons the theme, beloved by Augustine and the
Victorines, of the Holy Spirit as the mutual love of the Father and the
Son in the Summa contra gentiles in favor of an exploration of the essential love by which God loves himself (102, 216–17). Such a forward-looking decision allows Thomas to develop his mature position in the Summa
theologiae on the Trinitarian persons as subsistent relations in contradistinction to the generally Franciscan emphasis on the Father as fontalis
plenitudo, a teaching which Aquinas judges rather harshly: “hoc non videtur
verum” (147, although cf. 197–98). Running like a red thread through all
these essays is Thomas’s emphasis on the Trinitarian persons. By the time
that Fr. Emery addresses, in his fifth chapter, the charges of Théodore
Régnon and Karl Rahner that Latin and Greek theology lay opposed by
virtue of their alleged essentialism and personalism, he has amassed a
seemingly endless series of quotations, all expertly explained, as evidence
in favor of dismissing the charges outright. Indeed, so thoroughly does Fr.
Emery make his case, that the fifth chapter seems almost anticlimactic.
Even so, Fr. Emery does not shy away from some of Thomas’s less than

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flattering remarks about Greek theologians who denied the procession of
the Holy Spirit a Filio, nor from Thomas’s claim that procession a Filio is
“necessary for salvation’ (de necessitate salutis) (263–64, 267). Fr. Emery
crowns Trinity in Aquinas with an analysis of Aquinas’s speculative exegesis of Trinitarian passages in Thomas’s lectures on the Gospel of John.
Certain themes, such as the unity of will between the Father and the Son
and the actions of the divine persons in the world, are more developed
in Thomas’s lectures on John than elsewhere, and Fr. Emery wastes no
time explaining them in the context of Thomas’s other works. Of crucial
importance here is Emery’s claim that the doctrine of the economic
Trinity in Thomas is in no way limited to a description of the works of
the persons in Scripture. Rather, the proper understanding of the Trinitarian works ad extra requires a robust metaphysics of participation and
order not unlike the reductio so dear to St. Bonaventure (292–93).This is
a fitting place to conclude Trinity in Aquinas, since it returns to the themes
so impressively outlined in Fr. Emery’s previous work, La Trinité créatrice:
Trinité et Création dans les commentaries aux Sentences de Thomas d’Aquin et
de ses précurseurs (Paris:Vrin, 1995).
Cataloging the virtues of Trinity in Aquinas is almost as difficult as
summarizing it. Fr. Emery certainly knows his way around both medieval
and modern sources; primary and secondary sources pack his study, and
Latin quotations abound so that specialists can follow his complex arguments. As an interpreter of Thomas, Fr. Emery stands firmly in the tradition of Marie-Dominique Chenu: The exitus-reditus scheme figures
heavily in his presentation of Thomas’s thought, especially when
discussing the relationship of the Holy Trinity to creation (53–59, 65–69,
77, et al.), as does Fr. Chenu’s emphasis on rationes verisimiles (75). Like his
great predecessor, Fr. Emery also has a fine eye for rarely discussed aspects
of Thomas’s thought, such as his innovative concept of “transcendental
multitude” (multitudo secundum quod est transcendens; 30–31); his early
description of God as artist (the metaphor that so exercised Étienne
Gilson; 59); Thomas’s use of conciliar and patristic sources, which was
quite advanced for its day (111, 240, 269); and the importance of Trinitarian theology for understanding Thomas’s doctrine of participation
(42–43, 124, 288–89, 295, et al.).
With such a wealth of information, it may be unfair to criticize Fr.
Emery’s work for failing to address another aspect of Thomas’s Trinitarian
theology. Since Trinity in Aquinas addresses Rahner’s criticism of medieval
Trinitarian theology, I would have liked to see a discussion of the fifth article of the third question of the tertia pars, where the Angelic Doctor asks
whether any of the divine persons could have assumed human nature.

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When Thomas answers that the unity of the divine power would be
threatened if the Father and the Holy Spirit could not do what the Son
in fact did, he seems to imply that the unity of the divine nature is more
important than the Trinitarian taxis in deciding the question. If so, this
raises questions about many of the philosophical and theological concepts
that appear in Professor Emery’s essays. Particularly important in this
regard are the concepts of necessity and fittingness, for it appears, at least
in this article of the Summa theologiae, that the relationship between the
immanent and economic Trinities is established merely ex convenientia.This
is an issue of great historical and theological significance, since Thomas—
at least at first glance—seems to have departed from both the Greek and
earlier Latin traditions, which stressed the incompatibility of the Father’s
innascibility and his being sent. (In all fairness to Aquinas, this confusion
can be traced to Augustine’s agnosticism in De Trinitate concerning the
exegesis of Genesis 3:8: “et cum audissent vocem Domini Dei deambulantis in
paradiso ad auram post meridiem.”) This is not merely a question of the
contingency of creation and salvation—a point upon which all agree—
but rather a question of the relative priority of nature and will in God’s
revelation of himself. If all agree that God could have revealed his nature
in any number of contingent ways, no one would deny that when God
reveals his nature he does not reveal another, since were God to reveal his
nature to be other than it is, he would no longer be God. If, however, God
is Triune and his Trinity of persons consists in subsistent relations determined by their relations of origin, it would seem that the Trinitarian taxis
cannot be compromised. In any event, I think it a point of honor for
Thomists (and followers of other scholastics who shared this position) to
explain the thought of the Angelic Doctor in such a way that he sufficiently answers Rahner’s charges.
I do not raise this issue to question Fr. Emery’s findings, which are
truly edifying, but rather because I hope that he might devote his numerous talents and vast erudition to a detailed study on necessity and contingency in Thomas’s Trinitarian theology—perhaps in a study not unlike
his confrère Gilbert Narcisse’s Les raisons de Dieu. In the meantime,
anyone interested in medieval theology or contemporary discussions of
the Holy Trinity should purchase a copy of Fr. Emery’s work at his earliest convenience. A work that promises to repay diligent study with
profound insight, Trinity in Aquinas should rest close at hand for anyone
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who takes the thought of St.Thomas Aquinas seriously.
R.Trent Pomplun
Loyola College in Maryland
Baltimore, Maryland

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Denying and Disclosing God: The Ambiguous Progress of
Modern Atheism by Michael J. Buckley, SJ (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 2004)
I N D ENYING and Disclosing God, Michael Buckley builds on his earlier
work, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven, CT:Yale University
Press, 1987), that received such justly deserved acclaim.Whereas the earlier
book ran nearly four hundred pages, the current book, derived from his
D’Arcy lectures, spans less than half the length of the previous book. Despite
its comparative brevity, Denying and Disclosing God will not disappoint devotees who expect the erudition and care that marks all of Buckley’s work.
The book reads like a series of lectures insofar as each chapter, though
related, could be consumed on its own. The first two chapters recapitulate much of what the first book argued—namely, that the mechanics of
Newton first gains their independence from faith and then presumes to
give faith a more valid foundation. Theologians resorted to philosophical
apologetics that bracketed religious experience while relying on
mechanics to prove the existence of God. In their attempt to appeal
universally, theologians ceded the particular expertise of theology. This
strategy proved disastrous when Diderot and d’Holbach envisioned
dynamic matter that no longer needed any God to set things in motion.
Paradoxically, concludes Buckley,
Atheism . . . did not arise in its strength primarily from a purported
opposition of science or from the rich discoveries of that period or
from the intellectual movements skeptically antagonistic to any claim
for certainty. It arose from the contradiction immanent within . . . its
apologetic strategies. (46)

Of course, Christianity has a long history of hiding its hand. Already
when St. Paul goes to Athens, he appeals initially not to the crucified
Christ, but to the Athenians’ “unknown God.”This tradition would also
include such early apologists as Justin Martyr and the long list of Christian intellectuals who would claim a universally accessible, natural knowledge of God. Though Buckley makes a persuasive argument about
theology’s contribution to atheism, he does not explain how the fact of
this ironic contribution should or should not inform Christian use of the
spolia Aegyptorum. The hero of the book turns out to be John of the
Cross, but the reader may well ask, why not Karl Barth?
Buckley approaches some of these questions retrospectively in the
third chapter, where he defends Aquinas against the charge that the
Summa theologiae,

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with its employment of the inference of the quinque viae to demonstrate
the existence of God and to buttress philosophically the self-revelation
of God, with its reliance upon metaphysics in its treatment of the
nature of God and of the trinity itself before any consideration of the
mysteries of Christ, (47)

encourages a strategy similar to that of early modern apologists.As Buckley reads the first response to question 2, article 1 of the prima pars, the
question of the self-evidence of God’s existence is crucial for a defense
of Aquinas against such critics as Paul Tillich. For St. Thomas, God
emerges in self-consciousness like a figure in the distance.The teleological urge for authentic happiness is implanted in each person, but is
known in an “inchoate” manner. Such knowledge is not its own kind, but
instead is an early stage of what one hopes will become a richer knowledge. As Buckley puts it, “When human beings naturally long for happiness, they are actually and naturally longing for God” (54). In this sense,
as one comes to know God as the telos of one’s desire, “one cannot help
feeling that [one] has always known God” (56, quoting Gilson).
Still, this reading does not explain why Aquinas waits until the tertia pars
to treat Christ. Pace Chenu and other Thomists, Buckley argues that
Aquinas’s Christology cannot be viewed as an appendix unrelated to the
first two parts. Here the care of Buckley’s reading proves insightful: In the
prologue to the tertia pars, Aquinas writes that the consideration of Christ
serves as a “consummatio.” Buckley points out that in the Aristotelian
tradition, “one only knows something in its completion” (65). Following
J. P.Torrell, Buckley states,“Christology is the consummation of theology
because Christ is the consummation of the divine action of uniting the
world with himself.”The goodness of God manifested in creation reaches
its completion in the self-gift of Christ’s life and death. For Aquinas then,
the gradual sense of the longing for happiness that exists in each person is
only completed through a knowledge of Christ as the consummate selfrevelation of the Trinity. Rather than providing the foundation for natural theology as a separate branch of theology, Aquinas “charted a radically
different course from the one taken by the rationalist tradition traced in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” (69).
In the following chapter, “God as the Anti-Human,” Buckley untangles the militant atheism of Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud.
Echoing Henri de Lubac’s Drama of Humanistic Atheism, Buckley proposes
that nineteenth-century atheism considered God to be an imaginary
force against which humanity fought to liberate itself. Before treating
these militant atheists, Buckley argues that the stage was being set first by

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Locke and then Kant. Locke issued a shift in what Buckley calls “fundamental thinking,” which, in this case, meant shifting “foundational thinking from ‘things’—from the realities given in nature or the ideas
confronting the thinking subject—to the actual capacities of thinking
subjects themselves” (75).This epistemological shift became more widely
accepted on the Continent with Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. As Buckley puts it,
Kant did not originate this flood; he augmented and sanctioned it for
the century that was to follow. Under his blessings, these waters become
holy. Disciplines bearing such names as epistemology or criticism or
phenomenologies of spirit or cognitional theory became prevalent and
foundational in the nineteenth century. (78)

The historical narrative is skeletal compared to the work of an historian
of ideas like Frederick Beiser, but Buckley’s account of the “turn to the
subject” agrees with mainstream histories of philosophy.
Following Richard Niebuhr, Buckley labels Schleiermacher “the Kant
of modern Protestantism” for instituting a turn to the subject in theology. One can certainly trace the influence of Kant on Schleiermacher,
but here Buckley’s narrow focus leaves something to be desired. He
argues that Schleiermacher does for theology what Kant does for philosophy:“the human becomes . . . the criterion for what we know of God—
since we never know God in Himself but only what God is for us” (80).
But this pro nobis appeal links Schleiermacher to Kant only insofar as they
were both heirs to Luther. Buckley’s reading of On Religion also overlooks
the deeper thread of Spinozist monism that runs through much of the
text, a monism pervasive among the Romantic crowd to which Schleiermacher belonged, and these Romantics, though not entirely dismissive of
Kant, reappropriated monism as an alternative to Kant’s analytic tendency
to separate rather than bring together.
Though Buckley’s reading of the nineteenth century feels narrow, the
argument that the later militant atheists built on foundations laid by
Locke, Kant, and Schleiermacher manages to persuade. God and the
human become bitter enemies.Writes Buckley,“It was only a question of
time until the centrality of the human saw itself threatened by the very
God whose ex professo existence it was explicitly to sustain. . . .This inherently vicious antinomy between the divine and the human led inexorably
to the elimination of the divine” (96).
The final two chapters constitute Buckley’s suggested remedies for the
problem of disbelief. Buckley makes an interesting case that the Christian

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apophatic tradition anticipates many of the problems about religious
consciousness articulated by militant atheists. As Buckley explains,
apophatic theology is not a fuzzy agnosticism; rather, it seeks to develop
“a faith that points beyond experience and concepts, a process through
negation into the infinite mystery that is God, a reality that beggars
language” (110). Instead of throwing the search for God into reverse after
the realization that one’s consciousness of God involves a certain projection, the apophatic theology of John of the Cross and Gregory of Nyssa
implores the seeker to move toward a richer sense of a God who is, paradoxically, both accessible and beyond our grasp.
Buckley also makes the point that religious experience has been omitted from much critical theological reflection. In short, the experience of
Christian saints has not been considered viable data; Buckley laments this
fact and asks rhetorically:“Is it not a lacuna . . . that theology neither has
nor has striven to forge the intellectual devices to probe in these concrete
experiences the disclosure they offer of the reality of God and so render
them available for so universal a discipline?” (130). The experiences of
holy and good people should not be cognitively empty.
One could have hoped for a thicker book that filled in the details of
each lecture more exhaustively, but Denying and Disclosing God should still
be of interest to anyone concerned about the crisis of belief and the
history of ideas in modernity. And even the well-versed scholars will no
doubt reconsider some of their positions if they encounter the text
sincerely. Instead of offering theological cotton candy—easily consumed,
but not overly nourishing—Buckley provides the wholesome nutrients
of a coconut that one must arduously engage before its richness can be
digested. Buckley has done historians of ideas and theologians a great
favor by providing an original and compelling account of how God has
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been lost, and how we might gain a glimpse again.
Grant Kaplan
Loyola University
New Orleans, Louisiana

John Paul II and the Legacy of Dignitatis Humanae by Hermínio
Rico, SJ (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002), 273 pp.
J OHN PAUL II and the Legacy of Dignitatis Humanae is published as part
of the Moral Tradition Series of Georgetown University Press edited by
James F. Keenan, SJ. The author, Fr. Hermínio Rico, SJ, is editor of the
Jesuit cultural monthly journal Brotéria—Cristianismo e Cultura and a
guest lecturer of theology at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in

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Lisbon. In his preface, Fr. Rico reveals that the present study is “the
conclusion of a course of studies of theology at Weston Jesuit School of
Theology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Boston College.” Accordingly,
Fr. Rico expresses his particular gratitude to Fr. David Hollenbach, SJ,
who directed the research that led to the published work.
There is much impressive scholarship in this study. Rico provides
many details related to the background and composition of Vatican
Council II’s 1965 Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis humanae). Of
particular interest is the debate between the followers of the American
Jesuit, John Courtney Murray, who wanted the declaration to have a
limited juridical focus, and the followers of “the French school,” who
were convinced that the document “needed more compelling and
complete theological grounding” (29). Rico offers some valuable insights
on this tension within the document itself, and he carefully examines a
1976 study of Philippe André-Vincent, who was concerned to distinguish the teaching on religious freedom of the council from various
modern understandings of individualistic freedom.
The main heuristic framework employed by Rico for understanding
Dignitatis humanae is that of three historical moments.The first moment
he understands as the result of a doctrinal development away from the
nineteenth-century papal ideal of the Church possessing “a juridically
privileged status in a confessional state” (4). Thus, after a long period of
resistance, the Catholic Church accepted religious freedom in civil society as a human right not to be denied.
The second moment Rico describes as the “freedom of the Church
against atheistic communism” (9). It was this historical dimension that
greatly informed the interventions of Pope John Paul II (as Bishop
Wojtyla) at Vatican II with respect to religious freedom. Here, it was
primarily a concern of the freedom of the Church within politically
hostile regimes. It was also a matter of upholding the obligations of all
human beings toward the truth in settings where the freedom to articulate the truth was being suppressed.
The third moment identified by Rico is one that is still unfolding. It is
the challenge faced by the Church in democratic and pluralist societies
where there is an emerging effort “to reduce religion to a purely private
affair” and resist any efforts of the Church to influence “social and political issues” (13).The challenge, of course, is for the Church to establish credibility as a public voice in such political settings, which are becoming the
norm in Europe, North America, and, to some extent, in Latin America.
The interpretative framework of the three historical moments is helpful
in many respects. Rico, though, makes use of this framework to present

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persistent criticisms of John Paul II’s interpretation and application of the
teachings of Dignitatis humanae within his pontificate. He understands John
Paul II as being overly influenced by the second historical moment (that
is, the confrontation with communism) but lacking an effective strategy for
the third (that is, engagement with pluralistic democracies). Rico accuses
the pontiff of “rhetorical exaggerations” and “lack of nuance” (163),“a topdown obedience-to-authority approach to moral formation within and by
the Church” (169), “a biased approach to the interpretation of Dignitatis
humanae” (196, note 205), and an outlook toward the modern secular world
that may be “tendentiously pessimistic” (206).
Of all the writings of John Paul II, the encyclicals Veritatis splendor
(1993) and Evangelium vitae (1995) are signaled out for their excessively
pessimistic views of modern secular culture. Rico believes the pope is
correct to worry about the dangers of moral relativism and religious
indifferentism, but he fears that John Paul II’s overly negative estimation
of “the contemporary culture of freedom” (225) will undercut effective
efforts at dialogue and moral persuasion on the part of the Church. He
likewise is afraid that the pontiff ’s approach of “prophetic denunciation”
(226) will rekindle old fears of “attempts to impose Catholic views upon
the whole society” (234). In the final analysis, Rico believes that Dignitatis humanae was seeking a fine balance between truth and freedom. John
Paul II, however, is hindered by “a constant insistence on the priority of
truth over freedom” (221), a priority which puts the pope in “clear
tension with the view of Murray and others inspired by him” who
understand freedom as “a value to be respected always even when it
regards people in error and evil” (ibid.).
To be fair to Fr. Rico, he does not favor moral relativism or religious
indifferentism. His concern, ultimately, is to establish credibility for the
Church’s voice by means of “dialogue and search for common ground in
cultural transformation” (176). He favors efforts at persuasion with
complete respect for freedom and the building of consensus according to
the democratic model. He believes this posture is more in line with Dignitatis humanae than that of John Paul II, who evokes “echoes of paternalistic views of political power,” especially by his “direct appeals to political
authorities to heed the voice of the Church and enforce demands of the
objective moral order upon society through legislation” (222).
While Rico’s analysis will resonate with some, I find it deficient in
several ways. First, he does not seem to appreciate the gravity of abortion
as a moral evil. Indeed, he complains about the “disproportionate importance” being given “to a particular issue,” that is, abortion (180). Just as in
the nineteenth century too much importance was given to the issue of

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“religious freedom,” now abortion has become “the make or break criterion of all judgments and the focus of totally one-sided extremist positions” that can weaken the social influence of the Church and drive it
into “the isolation of dead-end doctrinal immobility” (180). At one
point, Rico indirectly suggests that John Paul II, in seeking to overturn
laws permitting abortion, is promoting Catholicism as “the one true
morality” entitled to “legal enforcement” (241, note 41) But, for Rico, to
understand the protection of unborn human life as simply a “Catholic”
issue plays into the hands of the secularists who want to isolate the prolife doctrine as simply sectarian.
Another weakness of Rico’s analysis is his failure to recognize that
John Paul II’s call for the legal protection of innocent human life is in
complete accord with Dignitaitis humanae, number 7, which teaches that
in the exercise of their freedom human beings are “bound by the moral
law” and “the rights of others” (including the unborn it would seem!).
Moreover, Dignitatis humanae, number 11, supports the pontiff ’s
“prophetic denunciation” of abortion by praising the apostles “who were
not afraid to speak out against public authority when it opposed God’s
holy will.” It should also be noted that John Paul II’s main appeal in Evangelium vitae is for Catholic legislators to work for the legal protection of
the unborn.The pontiff does not need to dialogue with members of his
own flock since he assumes that they already accept Catholic moral
teaching. For those who are not Catholic, he assumes an awareness of the
natural law that stands in stark contrast to the evil of abortion.
This leads to the last weakness of Rico’s book: his reduction of John
Paul II to simply one interpreter of Vatican II rather than its authoritative
interpreter. Fr. Rico presents many valuable details of John Paul II’s
personal involvement with the council’s discussions on religious freedom.
It would seem that the Holy Father, who was personally present for these
conciliar deliberations, should have a better understanding of what Dignitatis humanae actually taught than later commentators like Hollenbach and
Hehir. Beyond this, Rico should manifest greater deference to the teachings of the Roman pontiff, who, according to Lumen gentium, number 22,
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is “the Vicar of Christ and shepherd of the whole Church.”
Robert Fastiggi
Sacred Heart Major Seminary
Detroit, Michigan

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The Wisdom of Aristotle by Carlo Natali, translated by G. Parks
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001), xii + 259 pp.
T HIS IS A VERY GOOD translation of a book Carlo Natali published in
Italian ten years ago. The English version, appropriately, includes an afterword that is meant to fill the ten-year gap by summarizing the most recent
debate on the Nicomachean Ethics. Natali proves to be very competent, not
only in the Italian scholarship on Aristotle’s ethics, but also in the contemporary German, French, and American literature.The expert reader of Aristotle will appreciate the author’s constant and careful use of Aristotle’s
original Greek terms, and his ability to always frame the discussion of the
ethics into the overall context of Aristotle’s thought and writings. It is worth
mentioning the book’s critical apparatus, which counts many detailed and
useful footnotes, the list of “Texts Cited,” an “Index of Greek Terms,” an
“Index of Names,” an “Index of Passages Cited,” and a “Subject Index.”
The book is entirely dedicated to Aristotle’s concept of phronêsis—
which Natali identifies with practical knowledge and reasoning—and
counts four chapters, respectively, “Virtue or Science?” “Ends and
Means,” “The Practical Syllogism,” and “Aristotle’s Conception of
Happiness.” Strictly speaking, the key chapters are the first three, in which
it is explained how moral knowledge originates choice and action.
However, by concluding the book after those chapters “the reader would
have received a slightly distorted image of ” practical knowledge, running
“the risk of limiting wisdom’s field of action to individual choices, and
to particular moments of human life” (111).We might add that the fourth
chapter appears less systematic and well organized than the former, and
not perfectly integrated in the overall structure of the book; as if Natali
had originally conceived it independently on the other chapters.
The first chapter introduces and states the main theses of the book:
namely, that phronêsis is not science (epistêmê) due to its intrinsic connection with the right desire (that is, with the ethical virtues); this connection is the specific trait of practical knowledge as practical.Two other key
theses of the book, which align Natali with some recent trends in the
interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics, are: (1) the thesis that phronêsis interacts with the ethical virtues in determining the ends of the action; and
(2) the thesis that practical syllogism concludes with the actual action, but
it is only symbolically a syllogism as it involves many middle terms, and in
the last analysis, it cannot be said to have a major and a minor premise.
But let us go back to the first chapter.
Natali begins by criticizing von Arnim, who argued that Aristotle, in
the Topics, identified phronêsis and epistêmê. Natali thinks that the Topics

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does not contain a definite doctrine of phronêsis. However, it defines
phronêsis as a virtue (“the virtue of the rational part of the soul”; 2) and
outlines a conceptual difference between virtue and science—as “a
science, unlike a virtue, can also produce evil” (6). “In the Topics, Aristotle had not yet formulated the concept of aretê dianoêtikê, that is, a virtue
of the intellect, a concept applicable even to the most rigorous science”
(3). In the Magna moralia as well “it is certain that a virtue cannot be
science, but it is not certain what phronêsis is” (10). The solution comes
with the Eudemian Ethics and the Nicomachean Ethics, where phronêsis is
featured as a virtue of the rational part of the soul devoted to taking decision (logistikon), and the ethical virtues are featured as the virtues of the
irrational part of the soul. It follows that “truth is an essential aspect of
practical knowledge” (12) because truth is the function (ergon) of the
entire rational part of the soul. Truth is not enough, though, as practical
knowledge is about the good action to perform. Phronêsis, therefore,
necessarily contains within itself an element of personal and emotional
participation, of good desire; this makes it a different kind of knowledge from pure science. . . . If one possesses phronêsis, one’s desire naturally tends towards the good and cannot be directed toward anything
else, not even by accident, without causing phronêsis itself to disappear.
For this reason, of all the intellectual virtues it is the one closest to the
ethical virtues. (12–13; see also 16, 19, and 26)

We should certainly praise Natali for underlining that phronêsis is about
truth and that, as the virtue of the good moral reasoning, it must be intrinsically connected to the right desire. However, there are two things that
should raise our suspicion. One is the hasty identification of phronêsis with
practical knowledge, which might involve a reductive view of practical
knowledge that finally leaves phronêsis’s truth ungrounded.The other is the
translation of Aristotle’s “logon” and “alogon” as, respectively,“rational” and
“irrational,” which might irremediably relegate the ethical virtues to a part
of the soul that is, in our sense of the word, intrinsically irrational.The two
points are dangerously connected as Natali agrees that phronêsis is basically
about reasoning (16–19), and that, even if there is an interaction, the
primacy in giving the ends to moral action lies on the side of the ethical
virtues. The feeling is therefore strong that, notwithstanding the author’s
statements to the contrary, his account of moral action will end up being
essentially irrational.
The remaining part of chapter 1 (19–37) is devoted to a more detailed
distinction between phronêsis, on the one hand, and “science” (or
“sophia”) and “technique” (“skill, or art”), on the other (19 and 25). All

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the specific features of phronêsis are “due to the fact” that it is “linked to
a habitual state of desire” (26). Unlike teknê, phronêsis does not aim to
results that “are tools for something else” (24). Unlike episteme and sophia,
phronêsis: (a) “is not an exact science”; (b) “deals with things that can be
otherwise”; (c) in this, it is similar to physics; (d) but its end is “action, not
knowledge”; (e) therefore, “in it, particular propositions”—or the minor
premises, which deal “with particular cases”—“are more important than
universal propositions”; (f) for the same reason, it requires experience of
life; (g) it allows for predictability, as “there is a certain consistency in
human events” that permits “inferences and generalizations”; and (h) it is
different than the treatise of ethics given by the philosophers (like the
Nicomachean Ethics). Natali’s discussion is very useful but this part of the
chapter is not very systematic, and the reader needs to make an effort to
orderly identify phronêsis’s main traits. The reason is probably that the
author is always too close to an exegetical approach to Aristotle’s texts,
and sometimes the exegetical exposition prevails over a clear systematic
treatment of the relevant concepts.
It is worth mentioning the author’s emphasis on Aristotle’s theory
requiring freedom. “Practical actions do not happen of necessity” as “by
nature, man is capable of behaving in contrary ways”:“Wrong, or morally
unacceptable, behavior is thus more frequent than exceptions to the laws
of nature, which are rare and monstrous” (32–33).
At page 24 there is something of which I cannot make sense. Natali
puts together praxis and teknê by calling them both “practical knowledge,”
and by saying that “practical and technical reason require that true judgment and correct desire should be made to agree.” A few lines later he
says that “the two types of practical knowledge differ in genus”—but
how can two species of the same genus (that is, practical knowledge)
differ in genus?—and he adds that “teknê” can also be purposely distorted
and used for a bad end. Now, this last statement is definitely correct but
it clearly seems to contradict the previous line on “correct desire.”
The second chapter aims at explaining Aristotle’s thesis that, in moral
action, the ends are provided by ethical virtues (desire) and the means by
phronêsis (reason). Natali adds two main qualifications: (1) that the search
for the means requires desire, too, and this is why deliberation is different
than mere justification; and (2) that determination of the ends requires
reason, too, and this is ultimately why moral action is not irrational. For
Natali (interpreting Nicomachean Ethics, 6, 1144b1–17), ethical virtues
without logos are “blind,” as they do not know “how to achieve [the
good] in practice” (52); this is why phronêsis is essential to the determination of the ends. So far so good; but, pace Natali, this is not enough to

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make the action rational.That the ethical virtues without phronêsis do not
know “how to achieve the good in practice” does not mean, strictly
speaking, that they are “blind” with respect to the good or end.And even
if phronêsis were to ethical virtues as good glasses are to a near-sighted
person, we could not say that phronêsis provides the seen object but just
the capacity to see it.To be sure: Natali really thinks that, as far as moral
action is concerned, ethical virtues and desire are on the irrational side and
that the rational side is all about phronêsis. This is why he interprets all
Aristotle’s references to the (practical) nous (not only Nicomachean Ethics,
6, 1144b12) as related just to the grasping “of the minor premise of the
syllogism” (53); and he says that there is no such a thing as a (practical)
nous grasping the good and the first principles of practical reasoning at
the level of the major premise (see 59). Let me say that this is a strange
Aristotle, in whom a train of reasoning can start without first principles
known by the intellect.
Natali thinks that there is no vicious circle in his interpretation of
Aristotle because “phronêsis and virtue belong to two different parts of the
soul, and their collaboration poses no logical problem” (55). Does he not
see that this separation is exactly the reason why his interpretation cannot
logically work? If the ends are not known as such by the part of the soul
endowed with intellectual power, reasoning about them will never start.
As Descartes with res extensa and res cogitans, Natali, in order to give the
ends to the logos, has to create a link between rational and irrational parts
of the soul, and his solution is astounding: “Our hypothesis, then, is that,
according to Aristotle, virtue in general can, in a given situation, take
some non-practical, pre-existing doxa as a practical principle, making it
into an object of desire, and therefore, turning it into an end” (60). If this
were so, the choice of one doxa instead of another would not be a choice
at all but an instinct-like event, and our practical principles would be
radically irrational. But why should our intellect accept this event as the
principle of its own activity in the first place? Let me add that there is a
formal contradiction between maintaining: (1) that logos grounds the
rationality of desire by making the virtues see “how to achieve the good
in practice” (here logos grounds the rationality of desire); and (2) that
desire gives the start to logos by transforming a doxa into a (rational) practical principle (here desire grounds the rationality of logos). At any rate,
given this approach, we should already expect Natali to give an account
of the practical syllogism in which the major premise is substantially
deprived of any real role. Let us see.
Chapter three starts with a defense of the formal syllogistic structure of
the practical syllogism that, in turn, determines the main organization of

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the chapter itself:“The Major Premise” (section 2),“The Minor Premise”
(section 3),“The Link Between the Two Types of Premise” (section 4), and
“The Conclusion Is an Action” (section 5). As for the major premise,
Natali locates it in the calculative part of the soul (see esp. 69); this is his
basic way to reduce the major premise to the minor premise. He repeats
at length that the first principles of practical reasoning are not acquired by
“noetic intuitions” but by “habits” due to social education, rewards, and
punishments (73–75). I think Natali missed a distinction here between the
(very) first principles of practical reasoning—which depend on experience but must precede reasoning—and major premises (first principles of
the syllogisms), which depend on both experience and (scientific) reasoning (dianoia).
As for the minor premise, Natali identifies it with “deliberation” (“the
search for the middle term”). This leads him to portray three cases in
which, having no need for searching the middle term, there is supposedly
a practical syllogism without minor premise: namely, (1) in the case of
“exact and autonomous science” such as grammar, as “we are in no doubt
about how to write”; (2) when “akrasia [weakness of the will] is the result
of impetuosity,” and “one passes directly from the perception of a particular situation to action”; and (3) when “the minor premise is so obvious
it need not be formulated” (76–78). Of course, if we conceptually distinguish “middle term” from “search for the middle term,” cases 1 and 3 fall
immediately apart because case 1, to be sure about the right means, does
not make the knowledge of it (that is, the middle term) unnecessary to
the action, and case 3, not to formulate the minor premise, does not mean
that we do not know what we do while acting—as when we say “Too
late!” we know that time cannot go backward even if we do not focus on
this truth explicitly. As for case 2, it is very difficult to say that there is
anything there resembling a practical syllogism at all. In any case, the identification of minor premise and deliberation process explains why Natali
talks finally about “middle terms” in the plural (for example, 97) and
reduces the practical syllogism to be no more and no less than practical
reasoning (95–96). In the end, in Natali’s account, there is no real distinction between major and minor premises; actually, there is no minor premise at all. Practical syllogism is a reasoning process in which a practical
premise (that is, a mix of doxa and desire) is the more and more specified
until becoming so concrete that it leads automatically to action. Desire is
the engine of the whole process. Sometimes no step is required, sometimes many are:This does not change its nature. But . . . is this Aristotle?
In chapter four, Natali offers a useful survey of the dominant-vs.inclusive-end debate and an interesting comparison between Aristotle’s

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position and the positions held in Plato’s Academy (111–24). He gives
special importance to the distinction between (component) “parts” and
“necessary conditions” of happiness, because the definitions given by
Aristotle “mention only the component parts and not the necessary
conditions” (126). For Natali, “Aristotle’s theory of happiness has [a] a
formal part, which consists in the identification of happiness with” active
life and “in the distinction between the component parts and the necessary conditions”; and [b] a “substantive” part, which “provides indications
regarding what the most important of all the virtues activity is” and
“what is the most important amount of external good or necessary
conditions of happiness” (165).
Natali’s main goal, in this chapter, is to harmonize the two main definitions of happiness given by Aristotle: namely, “activity in accordance
with complete virtue” and “activity in accordance with the best and most
perfect virtue” (117). He apparently does so by reducing the first to the
second: that is, by saying that “the most perfect virtue” is “the virtue of
the most important part of the rational soul,”“it includes both sophia and
phronêsis,” and “it is not at all just theoria” (151). Is this the prelude to a
watered-down concept of ultimate end? Actually, this seems to be the
case if we just look also at pages 141 and 143, where Natali suggests that
“honor, pleasure, knowledge, and every virtue” are “chosen for their own
sake” in the sense that they can be chosen “only” for their own sake and
not necessarily “also” for happiness—here happiness ceases to be an ultimate end formally necessary to action.
Natali’s book, notwithstanding some questionable theses and interpretations, must definitely be read carefully by every scholar who works on
Aristotle’s ethics. It would have been a more pleasurable reading, though,
if it had had a little less of an exegetical approach and a little more of a
N&V
systematic approach.
Fulvio Di Blasi
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

Common Calling: The Laity and Governance of the Catholic
Church edited by Stephen J. Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 272 pp.
T HE BOOK Common Calling was put together after the scandals over a
number of priests being found to be involved in homosexual activity
(which is not referred to specifically in the book which is an interesting fact
in itself) and child abuse. There is understandable anger over the scandal,

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and in the book, this is, not unreasonably, attributed to a failure in the
governance of the Church. But what is interesting is the premise of the
book, as it is formulated by Stephen Pope in his introduction, which says:
“How the current system of ecclesial governance might be improved and
made more responsive to the needs of believers,” (1) which is actually a
different question. More about this further on.
The other authors also want to change the leadership structure in the
Church. Some of the motivations, at least as they are presented, are very
reasonable. For example, Michael J. Buckley, SJ, says of the choice of bishops by the clergy and people in the eleventh century: “I think that if we
were to follow this practice we would get better bishops in greater
numbers” (74). One would of course wonder how this logically follows
from acclamation. So there is at least the expression of a longing for
“better bishops.”Then there are the more problematic formulations, such
as those of Lisa Sowle Cahill, who claims that “the historical interpretations of Jesus that have formed official Catholic views of women participate in the sexism of centuries of cultural patriarchy” (136). These two
views illustrate the real nub of the problem with parts of the book, and
that is that the theology of history, which is being used, is itself flawed.
This is probably the most fundamental difficulty with the book.
Let me explain what I mean: Several of the authors offer “historical”
studies that are then used with various nuances to argue for changes in
the leadership structures of the Church.The studies such as the ones on
“Cyprian on the Role of the Laity in Decision Making in the Early
Church” (Francis A. Sullivan, SJ), the “Laity and the Development of
Doctrine: Perspectives from the Early Church” (Francine Cardman), and
“Resources for Reform from the First Millennium” (Buckley), and R.
Scott Appleby’s examination of the lay trusteeship issue in the U.S., raise
a web of issues, but really the fundamental question is what does history
mean? Then more specifically, what does it mean to say that the Church
is a phenomenon in history. Some of the authors are aware that the past
cannot simply be transposed into the present. For example, Sullivan says
“one cannot simply repeat history” (48). But the more radical and
extremist views, such as those of Cahill, presuppose that modern Western
authors have some special situation in history—as a radical feminist, for
example—that supersedes any other particular moment in history and
any office in the church.
Historicity is an inescapable feature of human ontology, but the
historicity of the Church is of a different order. It is a history within the
action of the Holy Spirit. According to the Second Vatican Council, the
key signs of the Church are the Scriptures and Tradition, the People of

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God, the Apostolic Succession, the hierarchy, and the sacraments. But not
every one of the other elements, such as events and practices, let me call
them historical artifacts of the Church, is simply “there” for future use.
There is a way in which the complex of the Church moves on, even as
the key elements remain. While the Church never forgets that once, for
example, bishops were appointed by acclamation, at the same time it is
the authentic practice of the Church at this point in time that bishops are
appointed by the Congregation for Bishops after surveys of a number of
different groups in the Church.This is authentic practice, which is to say
that it fits the mandate of Christ as exercised by the present day authorities in the Church.
This brief consideration brings us to the shift in project that was
alluded to above. The book starts with a totally justifiable complaint
about the occurrence of the scandal and the poor handling of the scandal. The leap is then made that the structure of the Church must be
changed.The notion of moral failure of individuals is not fully addressed.
The further leap is that, of course, laity should have more of a hand in
the leadership of the Church. I did not find any justifications for any of
these leaps of logic in the book except the prevailing presupposition that
this is obvious. What has happened is that current left-wing agendas are
being trotted out because the Church has been wounded.
Having said this, there was one chapter that, to my mind, attempted to
really identify the problem and suggest a logically consequent response.
In his chapter titled “Weathering ‘the Perfect Storm’:The contribution of
Canon Law,” John Beal, correctly in my view, identifies the convergence
of problems that one sees in the scandal.These are (1) the resentment of
the faithful and the lower clergy at the “lack of accountability, transparency, and opportunities for participation in church governance” (165);
and (2) the “allegedly arbitrary and capricious treatment of [laity and
clergy] by diocesan bishops” (166). This book itself is a product of the
convergence of these currents. However Beal does make a further positive contribution by explaining how the Catholic Church in America
developed its structures, on the one hand, to accommodate to civil
requirements and how it also resisted Vatican pressure “to impose cathedral chapters, which would have provided for genuine co-responsibility
in diocesan administration” (170). Then on the other hand, the church
also adopted “made for business models” (170) of administration.This is
a telling point and from my reading, not one that is addressed substantially elsewhere in the literature.
Whatever one finally concludes about Beal’s argument, he at least sets
up a historically and theologically coherent proposal, and that is that

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“canon law suggests that the church might begin by abandoning the
wholly uncanonical corporation sole model for diocesan organization,
and the corporation sole mentality” that goes with it (171). He has tried
to identify the historical accretion—the corporation sole structure—and
has done the more theologically valid task of returning to the kernel of
the structure of the Church. It would take a canon lawyer to analyze his
proposal further, but epistemologically his chapter is way ahead of the
others in the volume.
The other chapters are more of a patchwork of genuine expressions of
concern, of complaints about clericalism, and thoughts about changes in
structure, and these are then mixed with forlorn hopes such as Mary Jo
Bane’s:“I personally believe that a process of collective discernment, guided
by the Spirit, would come to a different position on birth control than the
one currently held officially by the Church” (187). Another example is
Terence L. Nichol’s criticism of the Conferencia Episcopal de Latino
América for not putting clerical celibacy on the agenda for the conference
(123). The authors tend to leap out of the theological framework to
embrace politically correct positions based on no more than a fond hope.
There are a number of theological problems scattered through the
text. Let me just offer a few examples. Either one claims the mandate for
completely rewriting Scripture (Cahill, above) or one demonstrates a
problematic grasp of the context of Scripture itself. Witness Pope’s trotting out the old saw that the distinction between the clergy and the laity
emerges only in the second century (4).The fact is that even though the
words “clergy” and “laity” do not appear in the Scriptures, the acts of
Jesus that gave rise to the distinction are clearly laid out in the New Testament (for example, Lk 6). Let me call Pope’s error an error in the theology of foundation. He does not grasp the completeness of the deposit of
faith in the revelation of Jesus Christ.The distinction between clergy and
laity then becomes a merely historical development. The erroneous
implication is then that what has developed can be changed.
The same lack of proper categories arises when Pope tries to shift the
clergy-laity distinction to something that he wants to base on “the equal
dignity of baptism” (5). When he looks at Vatican II, the same undifferentiated “something,” because it certainly is not the Church, is supposed
to be apparent in the Church’s description as a “mystery” and a “sacrament” (6).The same appeals to undoubted common features, which then
are presumed to override the distinctive features in the theological
complex of the Church, appear in the chapter by Appleby and his appeal
to “collegiality at every level” (105) and Nichol’s claim to a “participatory hierarchy” (111).

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This latter view apparently was the “kind of hierarchy Jesus practiced”
(115). Now, while it is clear in the Scriptures that Jesus saw that “authority is service” (117), this does not describe the whole of Jesus’ presence,
it is also clear that Jesus also said:“Teach them all that I have commanded
you” (Mt 28:20), which is an authoritative act, and it is commanding
others to act with authority since holding people to the truth is indeed
a service.
It is the slipperiness with categories that is the most disturbing feature
of the book since terms in theology have meanings, they indicate certain
relations. Without this most basic commitment, dialog is impossible. A
healthy consequence of the scandals should be a serious reflection on the
Church and how it operates, but serious reflection requires taking the
epistemological categories seriously!
N&V
Bevil Bramwell, OMI
Ave Maria University
Naples, Florida