Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 3 (2007): 465–494

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Harmonizing Plato and Aristotle on Esse:
Thomas Aquinas and the De hebdomadibus
S TEPHEN L. B ROCK
Pontifical University of the Holy Cross
Rome, Italy

Introduction
I T WAS in his second commentary on Aristotle’s Peri hermeneias that
Boethius announced the famous project of translating and commenting
on all the works of both Plato and Aristotle.What the effect on the subsequent history of thought might have been, had he lived to carry out more
than a small fraction of the project, we can only guess. But even the
announcement may have had some impact. For it endorses a decided view
of the relation between the two great philosophers. “In doing these
things,” Boethius declared,“I would not disdain to bring the positions of
Aristotle and Plato into a certain harmony, and to show that they are not
at odds about everything, as many hold, but that on most things in philosophy they are quite in agreement.”1
As is well-known, the assertion of a substantial agreement between
Plato and Aristotle was typical with the neo-Platonist thinkers, among
whom Boethius is usually numbered.The classification seems undeniable.
Medieval readers too knew the “Platoni vehementer assentior” of the De
consolatione philosophiae.2
An earlier version of this paper was published in Italian:“La ‘conciliazione’ di Platone
e Aristotele nel commento di Tommaso d’Aquino al De hebdomadibus,” Acta Philosophica 14 (2005): 11–34.
1 Boethius, In Librum De interpretatione editio secunda, lib. 2 (Patrologia Latina 64,
433D):“His peractis non equidem contempserim Aristotelis Platonisque sententias, in unam quodammodo revocare concordiam, et in his eos non ut plerique
dissentire in omnibus, sed in plerisque quae sunt in philosophia maxime consentire demonstrem.”
2 Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, III, pr. 12, 1.

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This makes it interesting to observe a certain feature—or rather, the lack
of a certain feature—in St.Thomas Aquinas’s way of treating Boethius.This
is the practically complete absence of places in which Thomas draws attention to Platonizing tendencies in Boethius’s thought.3 Thomas does not
seem to feel the need to signal contrasts, resulting from Platonic influences,
between Boethius’s teaching and Aristotelian philosophy, as he does, for
instance, with the Liber de causis, pseudo-Dionysius, and even St. Augustine.4 We might very well wonder whether, in Thomas’s view, Boethius did
not in fact achieve in his own thought that harmony that he never had the
chance to put on display in the projected commentaries.
In any case, and however we might wish to classify Thomas himself, it
is clear that he too sees a deep harmony between Plato and Aristotle.To
be sure, he often dwells on the divergences between the two; and when
he must judge, it is nearly always in favor of the “Philosopher.” Nevertheless, on a very fundamental point—perhaps we can even say the most
fundamental of all—he holds that the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle
are in perfect agreement. This is the doctrine of the universal participation in being or existence, esse.
Especially insistent upon this agreement is a passage from one of
Thomas’s most mature writings, the De substantiis separatis.5 Over and
above the mode of coming into being that is by the transformation of
matter, he says,
[I]t is necessary, in the judgment of Plato and Aristotle, to posit another,
higher one. For since the first principle must be most simple, it must
not be posited to exist as a participant in existence, but as an existence
itself. And since there can only be one subsistent existence, as has
already been shown, all the other things, which are below it, must exist
thus: as participants in existence. Hence in all things of this sort there
must come about a certain common resolution, according to which
each of them is resolved by the intellect into that which exists [id quod
est] and its existence [suum esse].Therefore, above the mode of becoming
3 I say “practically” in view of De potentia, q. 9, a. 1, ad 5, where Thomas says that

Boethius, in affirming that genera and species “subsist,” is speaking “according to
the opinion of Plato.” Note however that later, in the Summa theologiae (I, q. 29,
a. 2, ad 4),Thomas urges an Aristotelian interpretation of the affirmation.
4 On Augustine, see De spiritualibus creaturis, a. 10, ad 8; ST I, q. 84, a. 5.
5 Thomas also mentions the agreement in De potentia, q. 3, a. 5; and ST I, q. 44, a.
1. On the composition of the De substantiis separatis, with references to works
discussing its importance for Thomas’s metaphysics and for his view of Plato, see
Jean-Pierre Torrell, Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires/Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1993), 321–23.

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by which something comes to be through the arrival of form to matter,
another origin of things must be pre-understood, according to which
existence is conferred upon the whole universe of things by the first
existent [a primo ente], which is its own existence.6

In the present essay I want to look at a much earlier work of Thomas’s,
his commentary on Boethius’s De hebdomadibus.7 Anyone who has studied
Thomas on participation knows that the theme plays a very conspicuous
role in this work. My aim here is to bring out a rather inconspicuous facet
of his handling of participation in esse. There are several places in the
commentary where I think we can discern an effort, muted but serious,
to “harmonize” Plato and Aristotle on this topic. I examine these in the
third and chief section of the essay.
In the first section I briefly look over some of the circumstances of the
commentary’s composition and certain somewhat unusual features of its
content.Taken together, I believe, these indicate a desire on Thomas’s part
to stay quite close to Boethius’s way of thinking.This I think lends plausibility to the idea that he would have in mind the “harmonization”
concern. In the second section, I trace various attributions of “Platonism”
and “Aristotelianism” that have emerged in the course of what is surely
the most prominent debate among the commentary’s interpreters: the
debate over the relation between Thomas and Boethius on the very
meaning of the distinction between esse and id quod est. I shall not attempt
to resolve this debate, but I do think the teachings that I explore in the
third section will be seen to have a significant bearing on it.

6 De substantiis separatis, c. 9: “Sed ultra hunc modum fiendi necesse est, secundum

sententiam Platonis et Aristotelis, ponere alium altiorem. Cum enim necesse sit
primum principium simplicissimum esse, necesse est quod non hoc modo esse
ponatur quasi esse participans, sed quasi ipsum esse existens. Quia vero esse subsistens non potest esse nisi unum, sicut supra habitum est, necesse est omnia alia quae
sub ipso sunt, sic esse quasi esse participantia. Oportet igitur communem quamdam resolutionem in omnibus huiusmodi fieri, secundum quod unumquodque
eorum intellectu resolvitur in id quod est, et in suum esse. Oportet igitur supra
modum fiendi quo aliquid fit, forma materiae adveniente, praeintelligere aliam
rerum originem, secundum quod esse attribuitur toti universitati rerum a primo
ente, quod est suum esse.”
7 On its dating, see section I below. For passages from the De hebdomadibus and
Thomas’s commentary, I shall generally use the text of the Leonine edition, as
presented in St. Thomas Aquinas, An Exposition of the On the Hebdomads of
Boethius, trans. Janice L. Schultz and Edward A. Synan (Washington, DC:
Catholic University of America Press, 2001).Translations are mine.

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The Purpose and the Spirit of the
De hebdomadibus Commentary
The De hebdomadibus is one of Boethius’s so-called theological opuscula.8
In the Middle Ages, starting in the Carolingian Renaissance, the opuscula
were widely used in the study of theology.9 In the twelfth century several
commentaries on them appeared.10 However, in the thirteenth century,
even though theologians continued to draw upon the opuscula,11 the
only commentaries are those of Thomas on the De trinitate and the De
hebdomadibus.12 The very existence of Thomas’s commentaries, then, is an
indication that he assigned rather special importance to the two opuscula.
Other factors also give this impression. According to the evidence
gathered by the Leonine editors, the two commentaries were composed
between 1257 and 1259, that is, during Thomas’s first period in Paris as
master of theology. So if we set aside the commentary on Lombard’s
Sentences, which was an obligatory exercise, Boethius would be the first noncanonical author upon whom Thomas chose to comment. His commentaries on De divinis nominibus, the Liber de causis, and Aristotle appear much
later.13 Moreover, there is no evidence that the Boethian commentaries
were connected with his teaching activities, either at the University of Paris
or in the convent of Saint-Jacques. They seem to be simply the fruit of a
personal labor of study and reflection.14
On the other hand, there is no particular reason to regard them as
single project. In fact there are very few internal connections between
them, and there are also considerable differences. For example, the De
trinitate commentary, which includes not only exposition of the text but
8 The others are De trinitate, Utrum Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus de divinitate

substantialiter praedicentur, De fide catholica, and Contra Eutychen et Nestorium (known
in the Middle Ages as De duabus naturis).
9 See Margaret Gibson, “The Opuscula Sacra in the Middle Ages,” in Boethius: His
Life,Thought and Influence, ed. idem (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1981), 214–34. On the
reception of De hebdomadibus in the Middle Ages, see Gangolf Schrimpf, Die
Axiomenschrift des Boethius (de hebdomadibus) als Philosophisches Lehrbuch des Mittelalters (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966).
10 Besides Schrimpf, Die Axiomenschrift, see also Nikolaus M. Häring, Life and Works
of Clarembald of Arras (Toronto: PIMS, 1965); idem, The Commentaries on Boethius
of Gilbert of Poitiers (Toronto: PIMS, 1966); idem, Commentaries on Boethius by
Thierry of Chartres and His School (Toronto: PIMS, 1971).
11 For example, William of Auxerre, Alexander of Hales, Hugh of Saint Cher, and
Albert the Great.
12 After Thomas, there are three anonymous commentaries from the fifteenth
century; see Schrimpf, Die Axiomenschrift, 147–48.
13 See Torrell, Initiation, 498–505.
14 See ibid., 98–99.

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also quaestiones, is more like the youthful Sentences commentary, whereas
the De hebdomadibus commentary is solely exposition of the text and, in
this respect, more like Thomas’s later commentaries.
This last point is one of the factors leading the Leonine editors to
conjecture that the De hebdomadibus commentary was the second of the
two.15 However, it does not seem to have been written much later.Among
other things, in the Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, which are dated
between 1256 and 1259,Thomas draws heavily on the De hebdomadibus. He
mentions it by name no less than fourteen times—considerably more than
in any previous or subsequent work.The opusculum seems to be especially
on his mind.
What was Thomas aiming at in commenting on the De hebdomadibus?
The fact that he only expounds the text suggests that his chief aim was
simply to understand the work better. Other aspects of the commentary
suggest the same thing. For example, one of its most singular features—
distinguishing it also from the De trinitate commentary—is the scarcity of
references to other authors. Apart from Boethius himself and the Scriptures,Thomas mentions only two:Aristotle, four times, and Plato, twice.16
(Boethius mentions neither.) Moreover, Fr. Louis Bataillon finds no trace
of influence from the commentaries of the preceding century, despite the
fact that Thomas must have known of at least two or three of them. Nor
does Thomas seem to have drawn upon any of the thirteenth-century
readings of the opusculum.17
With respect to the question of the harmony between Plato and Aristotle, another singular feature stands out: Nowhere in the commentary
does Thomas criticize Plato or the Platonists. It is true that in the two
places where he mentions Plato,Thomas reminds us of certain differences
between the Platonic and Aristotelian positions. But he does so only to
15 Louis J. Bataillon and Carlo A. Grassi, preface, in Expositio Libri Boetii De ebdo-

madibus (Roma: Commissio Leonina/Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992), 263–64.
16 The references to Aristotle (or to the Philosopher) are found at Aquinas, Exposi-

tion of the On the Hebdomads, 26 (ch. 2), 32 (ch. 3), 34 (ch. 3), and 44 (ch. 4);
those to Plato, at 26 (ch. 2) and 34 (ch. 3).
17 See Bataillon and Grassi, preface, 259–60. Thomas probably did not know the
Fragmentum Admontense or the commentaries of Thierry of Chartres and Clarembald of Arras; but those of Remigius of Auxerre and Gilbert of Poitiers were
widely diffused, and the latter is frequently cited in the Summa fratris Alexandri.
However, regarding Gilbert’s commentary, see below, notes 23 and 73. There is
no trace in Thomas of Albert the Great’s discussion of the De hebdomadibus.
Albertus Magnus, De bono, tr. 1, q. 1, a. 7, in Alberti Magni Opera Omnia, t.
XXVIII, ed. H. Kühle et al. (Aschendorff: Monasterii Westfalorum, 1951), nos.
22–26, pp. 12b–15a.

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set them aside as irrelevant.That is, in his opinion, Boethius’s teaching is
compatible with both.
I will present these passages further on. What I am trying to convey
here is simply the extent to which the De hebdomadibus commentary
seems almost a kind of tête-à-tête between Thomas and Boethius. The
Boethian spirit is very present. I think this consideration is of no little
help in understanding the way in which the theme of participation in esse
is handled in the commentary. But before getting into that, let us glance
at the status quaestionis on Thomas’s treatment of Boethius’s distinction
between esse and id quod est.
The Question of Boethian and Thomistic Esse
The De hebdomadibus is entirely devoted to the resolution of a single
question: How it is that substances are good “insofar as they are,” and that
nevertheless they are not “substantial” goods. Before even explaining the
question, Boethius lays down a series of axioms that will be needed for
resolving it.The first axiom is:“Diuersum est esse et id quod est” (To be
is diverse from that which is). He glosses this briefly. “Ipsum enim esse
nondum est. At uero quod est accepta essendi forma est atque consistit”
(To be, itself, is not yet. But that which is, having received the form of
being, is and subsists).18
In chapter 2 of his commentary,Thomas says that Boethius is not here
referring to a “real” diversity between esse and id quod est.19 It is only a
matter of diverse intentiones, diverse significations. Esse signifies in an
abstract way, whereas id quod est signifies in a concrete way.As he goes on
to say, id quod est signifies as a subject of esse, or in other words, as that
which “participates” in an actus essendi.20 And so, he explains, the expres18 Aquinas, Exposition of the On the Hebdomads, 14.
19 “Dicit ergo primo, quod ‘diuersum est esse, et id quod est,’ que quidem diuersi-

tas non est hic referenda ad res de quibus adhuc non loquitur, set ad ipsas rationes
seu intentiones.Aliud autem significamus per hoc quod dicimus esse et aliud per
id quod dicimus id quod est; sicut et aliud significamus cum dicimus currere et
aliud per hoc quod dicitur currens. Nam currere et esse significatur in abstracto
sicut et albedo; set quod est, id est ens et currens, significatur in concreto uelud
album.” Aquinas, Exposition of the On the Hebdomads, 16.
20 “Deinde cum dicit, ‘Ipsum enim esse’ etc., manifestat predictam diuersitatem
tribus modis. Quorum primus est quia ipsum esse non significatur sicut subiectum essendi, sicut nec currere significatur sicut subiectum cursus.Vnde sicut non
possumus dicere quod ipsum currere currat, ita non possumus dicere quod ipsum
esse sit; set id quod est significatur sicut subiectum essendi, uelud id quod currit
significatur sicut subiectum currendi; et ideo sicut possumus dicere de eo quod
currit siue de currente quod currat in quantum subicitur cursui et participat
ipsum, ita possumus dicere quod ens siue id quod est sit in quantum participat

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sion “having received the form of being” refers to the reception, in a
subject, of an actus essendi.
It will be when Boethius addresses the difference between composite
and simple things that, according to Thomas, a real diversity is established,
in some cases, between esse and id quod est.21 What is especially controversial about Thomas’s reading, however, is how he has already interpreted the very terms of the diversity; especially the term esse. Is it really
true that when Boethius speaks of esse and of forma essendi, he means
precisely actus essendi? The discord among scholars on this question is
almost amazing. This issue has much to do with that of the respective
roles of Platonism and Aristotelianism in the ontologies of Boethius and
St.Thomas. Here is a sketch of the situation.22
Already in the Middle Ages Thomas’s reading had its opponents.
Henry of Ghent held that by esse Boethius means God.23 Peter Olivi held
actum essendi. Et hoc est quod dicit quod ‘ipsum esse nondum est’ quia non
attribuitur sibi esse sicut subiecto essendi, set id ‘quod est, accepta essendi forma,’
scilicet suscipiendo ipsum actum essendi, ‘est atque consistit,’ id est in se ipso
subsistit. Non enim dicitur ens proprie et per se nisi de substancia cuius est
subsistere; accidencia enim non dicuntur encia quasi ipsa sint, set in quantum eis
substancia est aliquid ut post dicetur.” Aquinas, Exposition of the On the Hebdomads, 16, 18.
21 See below, sec. III.A.
22 For this sketch I am drawing partly on Ralph McInerny, Boethius and Aquinas
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 161–98. For bibliography on the interpretations of Boethius’s distinction between esse and id quod est,
see Tommaso d’Aquino, Commenti a Boezio, trans. Pasquale Porro (Milano: Rusconi,
1997), 47, note 30. A survey of the principal views up to 1945 is found in James
Collins, “Progress and Problems in the Reassessment of Boethius,” The Modern
Schoolman 23 (1945): 16–19.
23 Henrici de Gandavo, Quodlibet I, ed. R. Macken, O.F.M. (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1979), q. 9, pp. 57–62. To support his interpretation, Henry cites
portions of a passage from the commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers (57–58). For the
passage in full, see Häring, The Commentaries on Boethius of Gilbert of Poitiers, I,
§27–37, 193–95 (= PL 64, 1317D–1318D). The interpretation that Henry takes
from Gilbert is remarkably similar to a position that Thomas criticizes the “Porretanians” for holding (see below, note 73). Actually this interpretation is only one
of two offered in Gilbert’s passage. The other one takes esse to refer to a thing’s
subsistentia, which evidently means its essence. Gilbert develops this at some
length, but Henry feels justified in dismissing it as nihil ad propositum (p. 58, ll.
86–88). Thomas shows no awareness of it at all. This is not the place to go into
the matter, but one should note the serious discrepancy between what we read in
Häring’s edition at §34, ll. 86–88, and the quotation given by Henry on p. 58, ll.
81–83. Oddly, although drawing upon a large number of manuscripts, Häring’s
edition presents no variants that are even close to Henry’s version of these lines.

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that he means form.24 A judgment similar to Olivi’s was rendered by the
first modern interpreter to address the question, Pierre Duhem, at the
beginning of the twentieth century.25 According to the French scholar,
Boethius’s distinction is not between actus essendi and essence, but
between a universal nature and a concrete or particular instance of it.
Duhem attributed Thomas’s reading to the influence of Avicenna.
Duhem’s interpretation was seconded by M-D. Roland-Gosselin;26
and it quickly became the standard one, even among Thomists. RolandGosselin suggested that the Avicennian influence was mediated by
William of Auvergne (~1180–1249).William seems to have been the first
of the theologians to adopt Avicenna’s distinction between essentia,
understood as possibile esse, and esse, understood as an “accident,” something that “happens” to a thing.27
Over the course of the twentieth century, as the study of Thomas’s
metaphysics proceeded, the difference between his conception of esse —
especially as presented in the more mature writings—and Avicenna’s
became clearer.28 In particular, it came to be recognized that Thomas
rejects the idea that actus essendi is something that “happens” to an essence,
something accidental to it.29 The esse that is an accidental predicate is only
esse ut verum, the esse that consists in the truth of a proposition.30 At the
same time, most of the Thomists continued to hold that Boethius has no
notion of actus essendi. On their view, although Boethius’s language is neoPlatonic, on this point his thought would not go much beyond Aristotle’s.
For example, in the reading of Cornelio Fabro, Boethius stays in the
domain of what Fabro calls “formal” esse, the esse that is divided according to the categories: substantial and accidental esse.31 Thomas’s actus
essendi would be something else; and in order to arrive at it, Boethius did
24 Petrus Iohannis Olivi, Quaestiones in Secundum Librum Sententiarum, ed. Bernar-

dus Jansen (Quaracchi, 1922), q.VIII, p. 154.
25 Pierre Duhem, Le système du monde, vol. 5 (Paris: Hermann, 1917), 285–316; see

the discussion in McInerny, Boethius and Aquinas, 163–68.
26 M.-D. Roland-Gosselin, O.P., Le De ente et essentia de S.Thomas d’Aquin (Kain:

Le Saulchoir, 1926), 142–45, 185–99; see the discussion in McInerny, Boethius
and Aquinas, 168–76.
27 See William of Auvergne, De trinitate, ed. Bruno Switalski (Toronto: PIMS, 1976),
c. I, p. 18.
28 The first to notice this seems to have been De Raeymaker; see Rudi te Velde,
Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 68, note 5.
29 See, e.g., In IV Metaphysicorum, lect. ii, §556, §558; also De potentia, q. 5, a. 4, ad 3.
30 See In V Metaphysicorum, lect. ix, §896.
31 Cornelio Fabro, La nozione metafisica di partecipazione (Torino: Sei, 1963), 30; see also
Cornelio Fabro, “Intorno al fondamento della metafisica tomistica,” Aquinas 3

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not suffice. Also needed was the help of the pseudo-Dionysius and the
Liber de causis. A similar judgment, though more along the “existential”
line of Etienne Gilson, can be found in the recent bilingual edition of the
De hebdomadibus commentary produced by Janice Schultz and Edward
Synan. Here Thomas’s reading of Boethius is dubbed “creative.”32
Also important is a work published in 1996 by the Dutch scholar
Rudi te Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas. In comparison with the readings of Fabro and Gilson, te Velde finds in Thomas’s
ontology a much tighter relation between essence and esse, and a much
stronger causal role of form with respect to esse. In his view, Thomas
posits no esse in things other than substantial and accidental esse.These are
distinct from, but also intimately associated with, substantial and accidental form. However, te Velde continues to maintain that the esse of Boethius
is nothing but form.33
Now, in a rather surprising development outside the various currents of
Thomism, the studies of neo-Platonism carried out in the last three or four
decades have led some scholars to the conclusion that Thomas’s actus essendi
is actually quite close to Boethius’s esse. The chief figure in this development is Pierre Hadot. Starting with a study published in 1963, Hadot has
interpreted the Boethian distinction between id quod est and esse in the light
of a neo-Platonic commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, which Hadot attributes to Porphyry.34 Its doctrine would perhaps have reached Boethius by
way of Marius Victorinus. In this commentary, the first principle of all realΔ
ity is characterized as a pure e’imai,
a pure esse, which would be a pure and
infinite activity, beyond all form.Then, according to a typical neo-Platonic
scheme of participation, esse descends from the first principle and is
received in the lower beings. In these, esse is contracted and determined to
one species or another, according to the diverse forms.
Thus, for Hadot, very far from a substantially Aristotelian notion,
Boethius’s distinction would in fact be solidly neo-Platonic. Its only
(1960): 103–6; reprinted in Cornelio Fabro, Tomismo e Pensiero Moderno (Roma:
Libreria editrice della Pontificia Università Lateranense, 1969), 187–90.
32 Schultz and Synan, introduction, in Aquinas, Exposition of the On the Hebdomads, xxxix.
33 Te Velde, Participation, 81.
34 See Pierre Hadot,“La distinction de l’être et de l’étant dans le De hebdomadibus
de Boèce,” in Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter, ed. P.Wilpert and W. Eckert (Berlin:
De Gruyter, 1963), 147–53; idem,“Forma essendi. Interprétation philologique et
interprétation philosophique d’une formule di Boèce,” Les Études Classiques 38
(1970): 143–56; idem, Porphyre et Victorinus, 2 vols. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes,
1968), esp. vol. 1, 489–92. For discussion, see D. Bradshaw,“Neoplatonic Origins
of the Act of Being,” The Review of Metaphysics 53 (1999): 383–401.

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peculiarity, according to Hadot, would be that Boethius’s id quod est does
not signify the “second hypostasis” posited by many neo-Platonic
thinkers. Instead of standing for a single reality, it would be a general
expression applicable to all substances. On this reading,Thomas’s distinction would lie very close to Boethius’s, perhaps especially in the interpretation of Thomas proposed by Fabro.35
Bruno Maioli reads Boethius in a way similar to Hadot: Esse signifies
an act distinct from form.36 However, Maioli departs from Hadot’s view
that Boethius’s esse is first received in the beings and only in a second
moment contracted or determined according to their forms.37 For
Maioli, Boethius would hold a conception of form that is closer to Aristotle’s: A thing’s form would be not only a principle determining esse to
a particular species, but also a principle or cause through which it has esse
at all.38 Without referring explicitly to Thomas, Maioli contrasts this
notion of form as cause of esse with what he calls the “scholastic” distinction between “possible essence” and esse. He seems to be thinking of the
Avicennian distinction. In reality, however, his reading would put the
Boethian doctrine rather close to the interpretation of Thomas offered by
te Velde.
The panorama of interpreters would not be complete without reference to Ralph McInerny.39 As far as I know, McInerny is the only
Thomistic scholar in recent times to hold that Thomas’s reading of the
De hebdomadibus does not depart significantly from Boethius’s thought.
On McInerny’s account, which is along Aristotelian lines, both Boethius
and Thomas distinguish between form and esse in creatures, and for both
the distinction is very subtle. Esse is not form; it is rather the actual inher-

35 See Hadot, “La distinction de l’être et de l’étant,” 152; idem, “Forma essendi,”

151–52. Hadot suggests that Boethius’s expression forma essendi does not signify
esse itself, as Thomas takes it, but rather the form that determines the thing’s
mode of being (idem, “La distinction de l’être et de l’étant,” 152; idem, “Forma
essendi,” 154). But this would be a secondary point. Thomas’s reading of
Boethius’s esse as an act distinct from form would still be correct.
36 Bruno Maioli, Teoria dell’essere e dell’esistente e classificazione delle scienze in M. S.
Boezio (Rome: Bulzoni, 1978).
37 Hadot rejects the idea that for Boethius form is a “principle” of the participation
in esse. Hadot, “Forma essendi,” 153–54.
38 Maioli, Teoria dell’essere, 21–27. In De trinitate, Boethius says that “omne namque
esse ex forma est”; Boethius, De trinitate, in The Theological Tractates:The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester, new ed.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), II, p. 8, line 21.
39 McInerny, Boethius and Aquinas, 161–231.

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ence of form in matter.40 McInerny does not explain how the distinction
between esse and form should be understood in immaterial creatures.
The situation is certainly curious, in various ways, perhaps especially
with regard to the question of the roles of Platonism and Aristotelianism
in our two thinkers’ ontologies. Nearly all of the possible permutations
have been proposed. There is a substantially Aristotelian Boethius, a
solidly neo-Platonic Boethius, and a neo-Platonic Boethius with important Aristotelian elements.There is an Avicennian Thomas, a neo-Platonic
Thomas along the lines of the pseudo-Dionysius and the Liber de causis,
and a fundamentally Aristotelian Thomas. In some cases Boethius is
judged more Aristotelian,Thomas more neo-Platonic; in others, they are
judged more or less equally neo-Platonic; in still others, more or less
equally Aristotelian.The only possibility that does not seem to be represented is the one that we would perhaps most expect: a more neoPlatonic Boethius and a more Aristotelian Thomas.
Participation in Esse
It is not my intention to pronounce directly on the various interpretations
of Boethius, of Thomas, and of Thomas’s reading of the De hebdomadibus,
with respect to the distinction between esse and id quod est. Instead I now
wish to return to Thomas’s own concerns in the De hebdomadibus
commentary. Even though the distinction between esse and id quod est is
of obvious importance in the commentary, it cannot really be considered
one of the principal targets of reflection. In comparison with other works,
the explanations of the distinction that are offered here are very reduced.
For example, not even once does Thomas mention the doctrine, so fundamental in his own thought, that esse stands to essence as act to potency.
What Thomas dwells upon much more in the commentary is Boethius’s
teaching that id quod est “participates” in esse. Indeed, if there is any single
notion that dominates Thomas’s concerns in this writing, it is surely that of
participation.The origin of this notion is of course Platonic. It seems to me
that here we see Thomas making a concerted effort to master the doctrine
of participation in esse and, at the same time, to interpret it in a way that
would be coherent with Aristotelian principles, and even with Aristotle’s
own criticism of Platonic participation. It is this aspect of the commentary
that I will try to bring out in the rest of this essay. I hope that the bearing
of this matter on the issue of Thomas’s reading of Boethius’s esse will emerge
clearly enough along the way.

40 Ibid., 252.

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It has long been recognized that the De hebdomadibus commentary is
of capital importance for Thomas’s conception of participation.41 Its
treatment of the theme is far and away the longest and most systematic
of any to be found in Thomas’s works. Moreover, assuming the dating
indicated above, in the writings prior to the commentary the language of
participation plays only a minor role, and there is little effort to clarify its
meaning.42 It is with the De hebdomadibus commentary that participation
becomes a truly fundamental element in Thomas’s metaphysics.
Obviously this is not the place to present the commentary’s entire
treatment of participation or to consider all of its implications for
Thomas’s doctrine of esse. (Here too, however, significant divergences
among the interpreters could be noted.) I only wish to bring out his
concern to avoid possible connotations that would be problematic from
an Aristotelian point of view. It is not that Thomas ever expresses this
concern as explicitly as I have just done. On the contrary, he could hardly
be quieter about it. But there are at least five places in the brief work
where I think we can see it operating, especially if we consider them
alongside related passages from other writings.The order in which I shall
present the texts is not that in which they appear in the commentary, but
I think it better reflects the doctrinal relations among them and makes
for a more linear exposition.
There Can Be Participation With or Without Platonic Ideas
The first text, from chapter 2, is one of the passages in which Thomas
mentions Plato. He is explaining the axiom about composites and simples:
“Omni composito aliud est esse, aliud ipsum est. Omne simplex esse suum
et id quod est unum habet” (In every composite, one thing is to be, and
another is the composite itself. Every simple thing has as one its to be and
that which is).43 Thomas explains that in composite things, esse and id quod
est differ not only in signification, but also in reality. This is because esse
cannot itself be composite. Any composite thing will therefore be something other than its esse, something that only participates in esse.44 Thomas
41 Both Geiger and te Velde begin their investigations of participation in Thomas with

studies of the commentary. See L.-B. Geiger, O.P., La participation dans la philosophie
de S.Thomas d’Aquin (Paris:Vrin, 1942), 36–47; te Velde, Participation, 8–20.
42 See te Velde, Participation, 3–5.
43 Aquinas, Exposition of the On the Hebdomads, 14.
44 “Est ergo primo considerandum quod sicut esse et quod est differunt secundum
intentiones, ita in compositis differunt realiter. Quod quidem manifestum est ex
praemissis. Dictum est enim supra quod ipsum esse neque participat aliquid ut
eius ratio constituatur ex multis, neque habet aliquid extrinsecum admixtum ut
sit in eo compositio accidentalis; et ideo ipsum esse non est compositum; res ergo

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then dwells at some length on the identity of esse and id quod est in “every
simple thing.” He wants to make it clear that really there can only be one
absolutely simple reality, and hence only one being in which esse and id
quod est are one and the same. This is God. If there were many, then esse
itself would have to be composite, containing something other than itself
by which to diversify and multiply it.45
In the course of this discussion, Thomas has us consider the fact that
things are sometimes called simple, not because they are entirely so, but
because they are lacking in some particular sort of composition. Such
things are only simple in a certain respect, secundum quid. He mentions
this in view of the possibility of a multiplicity of pure forms, beings without hylomorphic composition.
If therefore any forms are found not in matter, each of them is indeed
simple as to its lacking matter, and hence quantity, which is a disposition
of matter. But because every form is determinative of esse itself, none of
them is esse itself, but is something having esse; for instance if, following
the opinion of Plato, we posit that an immaterial form subsists which is
the idea and ratio of material men, and another form which is the idea
and ratio of horses, it will be clear that the immaterial subsistent form
itself, being something determined to a species, is not common esse
itself, but rather participates that. And it makes no difference, in this
regard, if we make those immaterial forms to be of a higher grade than
are the rationes of these sensible things, as Aristotle had it; for each of
them, insofar as it is distinguished from another, is a certain special form
participating esse itself, and so none of them will be truly simple.46
composita non est suum esse; et ideo dicit quod in ‘omni composito aliud est
esse’ ens, et ‘aliud ipsum’ compositum quod est participando ipsum esse. Deinde
cum dicit: ‘Omne simplex’ etc., ostendit qualiter se habeat in simplicibus in
quibus necesse est quod ‘ipsum esse et id quod est’ sit ‘unum’ et idem realiter. Si
enim esset aliud realiter id quod est et ipsum esse, iam non esset simplex set
compositum.” Ibid., 24.
45 “Id autem erit solum uere simplex quod non participat esse, non quidem
inherens set subsistens. Hoc autem non potest esse nisi unum, quia, si ipsum esse
nichil aliud habet admixtum preter id quod est esse, ut dictum est impossibile est
id quod est ipsum esse multiplicari per aliquid diuersificans, et, quia nichil aliud
preter se habet adiunctum, consequens est quod nullius accidentis sit susceptiuum. Hoc autem simplex, unum et sublime est ipse Deus.” Ibid., 26.
46 “Si ergo inueniantur alique forme non in materia, unaqueque earum est quidem
simplex quantum ad hoc quod caret materia, et per consequens quantitate que
est dispositio materie. Quia tamen quelibet forma est determinatiua ipsius esse,
nulla earum est ipsum esse, set est habens esse; puta secundum opinionem Platonis, ponamus formam immaterialem subsistere que sit ydea et ratio hominum
materialium, et aliam formam que sit ydea et ratio equorum, manifestum erit
quod ipsa forma immaterialis subsistens, cum sit quiddam determinatum ad

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In short, even if there are subsistents other than God that are not composed
of form and matter, other subsistent forms, these will still be only participants in esse. Such forms will not be identical with their esse, but rather
“determinative” of esse. This is true, Thomas insists, whether they be
conceived as Platonic Ideas—that is, as the separate rationes of the species
of material things—or in Aristotelian fashion, as rationes of a higher grade.
Thomas does not decide here between the two conceptions.
Elsewhere, of course, Thomas pronounces in favor of the Aristotelian
way of conceiving immaterial beings.The species of things without matter
cannot be of the same nature as are the species of material things, for the
simple reason that the latter include matter in their nature. In the proemium
to the De divinis nominibus commentary, he says flatly that the Platonists
erred in holding that physical things have their species by participation in
separate species. They were right only as regards the participation of all
beings in a first principle that is essentially good, and one, and esse.47
But here, in the De hebdomadibus commentary, the accent is much more
conciliatory. Thomas wants to underscore the possibility of a correct use
of the notion of participation in the sphere of esse.To this end, it suffices
to set aside the difference between Plato and Aristotle as to the relation
between material and immaterial beings.
Esse Itself Participates, in a Cause
The second text that I wish to consider, also from chapter 2, concerns
another of Boethius’s axioms: “Quod est participare aliquo potest, set
ipsum esse nullo modo aliquo participat” (That which is can participate
speciem, non est ipsum esse commune, set participat illud. Et nichil differt quantum ad hoc si ponamus illas formas immateriales altioris gradus quam sint
rationes horum sensibilium ut Aristotiles uoluit: unaqueque enim illarum, in
quantum distinguitur ab alia, quedam specialis forma est participans ipsum esse,
et sic nulla earum erit uere simplex.” Ibid., 24, 26.
47 “Platonici enim omnia composita vel materialia, volentes reducere in principia
simplicia et abstracta, posuerunt species rerum separatas, dicentes quod est homo
extra materiam, et similiter equus, et sic de aliis speciebus naturalium rerum.
Dicebant, ergo, quod hic homo singularis sensibilis non est hoc ipsum quod est
homo, sed dicitur homo participatione illius hominis separati. . . . Nec solum
huiusmodi abstractione platonici considerabant circa ultimas species rerum naturalium, sed etiam circa maxime communia, quae sunt bonum, unum et ens.
Ponebant, enim, unum primum quod est ipsa essentia bonitatis et unitatis et esse,
quod dicimus deum et quod omnia alia dicuntur bona vel una vel entia per
derivationem ab illo primo. . . . Haec igitur platonicorum ratio fidei non
consonat nec veritati, quantum ad hoc quod continet de speciebus naturalibus
separatis, sed quantum ad id quod dicebant de primo rerum principio, verissima
est eorum opinio et fidei christianae consona.” In De divinis nominibus, proem.

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in something, but esse itself in no way participates in anything).48 It is in
commenting on this axiom that Thomas dwells at greatest length on the
nature of participation.
Participare, he says, is as though partem capere: to take part. He then distinguishes various ways of taking part in something. In one way, the participant receives in particular fashion that which belongs to another in a more
universal or common fashion.This is how a species participates in a genus.
Man, for instance, does not have the ratio of animal according to its entire
community; man is only part of the genus of animal.This is also how an
individual participates in a species, as Socrates in man. A second way to
participate is that of subject in accident and of matter in form. Note that
Thomas treats these two as examples of a single type of participation. His
thought is that any form, whether accidental or substantial, considered solely
according to its own ratio, is something common; and that what receives it,
whether an already constituted substance or prime matter, “determines it
to this or that subject.”That is, the recipient contracts the form to a particular instance.Yet a third way is the participation of an effect in its cause;
especially, he says, when the effect is not proportioned to the power of the
cause, as in the case of the light received in the air, which does not have
the full luminosity of the light in the sun.We might say that the effect is
only a partial expression or influence of the cause.49
A little further on,Thomas reminds us that there is still another mode
of participation, the one that he already alluded to in discussing the distinction between esse and id quod est:50 the participation of the concrete in
the abstract.51 Here I suppose that the “taking part” refers not to the fact
that the participant has only a part of what is participated, but to the fact
that what is participated is signified as a part of the participant. Concrete
terms signify in the manner of wholes, while abstract terms signify in the
manner of certain parts.
48 Aquinas, Exposition of the On the Hebdomads, 14.
49 “Est autem participare quasi partem capere. Et ideo quando aliquid particulariter

recipit id quod ad alterum pertinet uniuersaliter, dicitur participare illud, sicut
homo dicitur participare animal quia non habet rationem animalis secundum
totam communitatem; et eadem ratione Sortes participat hominem. Similiter
etiam subiectum participat accidens et materia formam, quia forma substancialis
uel accidentalis, que de sui ratione communis est, determinatur ad hoc uel illud
subiectum. Et similiter etiam effectus dicitur participare suam causam, et
precipue quando non adequat uirtutem sue cause, puta si dicamus quod aer
participat lucem solis quia non recipit eam in claritate qua est in sole.” Ibid., 18.
50 See above, note 20.
51 See below, note 52.

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If we put this mode at the beginning of the list, I think we can see a
clear order among the various modes of participation, according to the
lesser or greater distance between the nature of the participant and the
nature participated by it. In the participation of the concrete in the
abstract, the distance is minimal. It is not a question of diverse natures,
but only of diverse modes in which the same nature is signified. In the
participation of the particular in the universal, the nature of the participant is diverse from that of what is participated, but it also includes it.The
nature of the genus, for example, is included in the nature of the species.
Then, in the participation of subject in accident and matter in form, the
participated nature is not included in the nature of the participant at all.
However, it does somehow inhere in the participant. Finally, in the last
mode of participation, that of an effect in a cause, the participated nature
remains entirely separate from the participant. For instance, the nature of
the sun remains separate from the illuminated air.
Thomas will use these distinctions among ways of participating at
various points in the commentary. Here he only wants to determine the
sense of Boethius’s axiom.The first part of the axiom says that ens,“what
is,” can participate in something. Taking ens in all of its universality,
Thomas refers this statement to the participation of the concrete in the
abstract.52 In this way, ens, despite having the greatest possible community, participates in esse itself.
Now, presumably ens can also participate in something in the third way,
that of an effect in its cause.Thomas does not make this explicit, but it is
implicit in his gloss on the second part of the axiom, the part that says that
esse itself cannot participate in any way.To uphold this,Thomas sets aside
the last mode, the participation of an effect in its cause.The implication is
that according to the last mode, even esse itself could be said to participate
in something. And if esse itself can participate in something in this way—
if it can have a cause in which it participates—then clearly so can ens.
Here then is Thomas’s explanation of “esse itself in no way participates
in anything.”
Setting aside this third mode [the participation of an effect in its cause],
it is impossible that esse itself participate in something according to the
two prior modes. For it cannot participate in something in the manner
in which matter or subject participates in form or accident, because, as
52 “Set id quod est siue ens, quamuis sit communissimum, tamen concretiue dici-

tur, et ideo participat ipsum esse, non per modum quo magis commune participatur a minus communi, set participat ipsum esse per modum quo concretum
participat abstractum.” Aquinas, Exposition of the On the Hebdomads, 18.

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was said, esse itself signifies as something abstract. Likewise neither can
it participate in something in the manner in which the particular
participates the universal; in this way, things said in the abstract can
indeed participate in something, as whiteness in color; but esse itself is
most common, whence it is indeed participated in other things, but it
does not participate in anything else.53

Esse cannot participate in something as matter in form or subject in accident because, as we saw earlier, it already signifies as something abstract—
and hence, it is understood, as something formal.54 Nor can it participate
in something as the particular in the universal, because there is nothing
more common or universal than esse.
At first glance this second thesis might seem untrue. Cannot more
common terms, that is, terms that are also predicable of other items, be
predicated of esse? For example, Thomas often predicates the terms “act”
and “perfection” not only of esse but also of forms and operations. The
“entire community” of these terms does not seem confined to esse itself.
However, in contrast to what happens in the case of a genus vis-à-vis one
of its species, or of a species vis-à-vis one of its individuals, the entire
community of these terms still depends on or “flows” from esse itself. Thus,
even if, in addition to esse, there are also other realities that are perfections
and acts, they are so only to the extent that through them, something somehow is.55 By contrast, esse does not derive its status as “act” and “perfection”
from its relation to something else. It is the “act of all acts, and therefore the
perfection of all perfections.”56 In other words, the natures signified by these
other terms are not related to the nature of esse in the way that items that
are more “absolute” and “broader” are related to those that are more “conditioned” or “narrower,” for example, as genus is related to species.They are
not more formal.57 There is nothing more formal than esse.58
53 “Pretermisso autem hoc tercio modo participandi, impossibile est quod secundum

duos primos modos ipsum esse participet aliquid. Non enim potest participare
aliquid per modum quo materia uel subiectum participat formam uel accidens
quia ut dictum est ipsum esse significatur ut quiddam abstractum. Similiter autem
nec potest aliquid participare per modum quo particulare participat uniuersale; sic
enim etiam ea quae in abstracto dicuntur participare aliquid possunt sicut albedo
colorem, set ipsum esse est communissimum, unde ipsum quidem participatur in
aliis, non autem participat aliquid aliud.” Ibid., 18.
54 See ST I, q. 7, a. 1.
55 See Summa contra Gentiles, I, c. 28, §2.
56 De potentia, q. 7, a. 2, ad 9.
57 For this language as applied to the genus in relation to the species, see ST I-II,
q. 18, a. 7, ad 3; cf. ST I, q. 7, a. 1; and I, q. 82, a. 3.
58 See De potentia, q. 7, a. 2, ad 9; ST I, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3; q. 7, a. 1; q. 8, a. 1.

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But let us go back for a moment to the fact that Thomas wants to
admit—though without dwelling upon it—a way in which esse itself can
participate in something. To repeat, this is the way in which an effect
participates in its cause, especially when the effect is not proportioned to
the power of the cause. In the case of esse, what the cause must be is clear:
It must be the very first cause, the divinity.
Having in mind the neo-Platonic doctrine of participation in esse, I
think we should be struck by this idea that esse itself participates in a cause
that transcends it. What is striking is that not only in the neo-Platonic
doctrine, but also in Thomas’s own, the cause itself is characterized by esse.
God is an esse itself, ipsum esse subsistens. How then are we to understand
that esse itself is an effect of this cause, and in fact one that participates in it
in such a way as not even to be proportioned to its power?59
One answer might be that we should think of esse as already received
in some particular subject, in something “determinative” of it. It is easy
to see that such esse will be limited and reduced in comparison with the
first cause. But as we noted a moment ago, Thomas is talking about the
esse than which there is nothing more common. He is speaking of ipsum
esse in an absolute way, in all of its universality and perfection.60
Elsewhere Thomas explains how we can understand this “participation” of esse itself in the divine cause. Even taken universally, esse itself
turns out to be “deficient” in comparison with God, because it is still
something “determined.” It is determined “according to its own ratio”:
that is, according to the very ratio of “esse.” 61 The divinity certainly contains
the whole perfection falling under the ratio of esse. But it also transcends
this perfection. Although utterly simple, the divinity contains all of the
perfections found in things, and esse is not the only perfection.62 Esse is
formal with respect to all other perfections, and so it perfects them all;
but it does not contain them all. It is distinct from them; and in a way it
is even dependent upon them, as an act is dependent upon its correlative
59 Very

helpful on this question is Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “St. Thomas and
Creation: Does God Create ‘Reality’?”Science et Esprit 51 (1999): 5–25.
60 Cf. ST I-II, q. 2, a. 5, ad 2.
61 “Ipsum esse creatum non est finitum si comparetur ad creaturas, quia ad omnia
se extendit; si tamen comparetur ad esse increatum, invenitur deficiens et ex
praecogitatione divinae mentis, propriae rationis determinationem habens.” In
De divinis nominibus, c. XIII, lect. iii, §989.
62 “Divina essentia est aliquod incircumscriptum, continens in se supereminenter
quidquid potest significari vel intelligi ab intellectu creato. Et hoc nullo modo
per aliquam speciem creatam repraesentari potest, quia omnis forma creata est
determinata secundum aliquam rationem, vel sapientiae, vel virtutis, vel ipsius esse,
vel aliquid huiusmodi.” ST I, q. 12, a. 2. Cf. ST I, q. 4, a. 2.

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potency. The divine essence, then, must not be conceived as identical
with esse itself. It is indeed identical with its own esse, the esse that is
divine; and in this it is unique, since no other subsistent has an essence
that is identical with its own esse. But the reality of the divine esse is not
“circumscribed” according to the ratio of esse.
In other words, the divine esse cannot be conceived as the merely separate version of esse commune. The nature or essence of the divine esse is
“beyond” the essence of esse itself.63 Esse itself “participates” in the divinity in the sense of being a partial likeness of it. This of course does not
mean that it is a part of the divinity, or that it has a part of the divinity’s
ratio. Neither the divinity nor its ratio has any parts. It means that esse
resembles God imperfectly. We can perhaps see that if we consider the
fact that esse does not have a monopoly on resemblance to him. Other
created perfections also display God’s power and reflect his nature.
Granted, they do so only insofar as they exist. In the creaturely representations of God, esse is once again what is most formal. But it is not the
whole picture.
In the De hebdomadibus commentary, this teaching is not explicit.Yet it
seems to me that the small qualification that Thomas introduces carries a
very important implication: His esse subsistens is not to be understood as
a Platonic Idea of esse. Its own nature is not the same as the nature of esse
itself. If it were, it could not be cause of esse itself, especially a cause that
transcends the effect; for esse itself would be just what it is. Nor is its own
nature the same as that of some even simpler, more formal component of
esse itself.There is no such thing.
We reach esse itself by a kind of resolution or analysis of the things we
experience.This points us to the first, most universal cause. But I think it
is clear that for Thomas it would be a mistake to conceive the highest
cause as nothing other than esse itself “pulled out” of things and posited
as subsisting on its own.64 To do that would be, willy-nilly, to conceive the
63 That it is legitimate to speak of the “essence of esse itself ” is confirmed in this very

chapter of the commentary: “set ipsum esse nichil aliud habet ammixtum preter
suam essenciam.”Aquinas, Exposition of the On the Hebdomads, 20, emphasis added.
64 This would be the method of e
’´jheriy typical of the “Platonists” (whether or not
justly ascribed to Plato); see Enrico Berti, Il problema della sostanzialità dell’essere e
dell’uno nella Metafisica di Aristotele, in E. Berti, Studi Aristotelici (L’Aquila: Japadre
Editore, 1975), 181–208 (on e´jheriy, 183–84).Thomas refers to the method in
De veritate, q. 21, a. 4: “Plato ea quae possunt separari secundum intellectum,
ponebat etiam secundum esse separata; et ideo, sicut homo potest intelligi praeter
Socratem et Platonem, ita ponebat hominem esse praeter Socratem et Platonem,
quem dicebat per se hominem, et ideam hominis, cuius participatione Socrates et
Plato homines dicebantur.”That for Thomas himself there is a role for analysis or

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subsistent esse as univocal with the esse inherent in things, in the same way
in which the Platonic Ideas of the species of things are conceived as univocal with those species. It would run afoul both of Aristotle’s general criticisms of the Ideas, and of his special insistence that being cannot be
univocal.65 This is why, it seems to me, that Thomas’s identification of a
mode of participation in which the nature of what is participated remains
separate from the participant, together with his indication that esse itself can
participate in something in this mode, constitutes a quiet nod to Aristotle.
The next passages have to do with the way in which esse itself is
composed with things.
Esse Is Not Participated as a Genus,Yet It Inheres in Things
The other place where Thomas mentions Plato is in the third chapter. It
concerns Boethius’s formulation of the problem that the opusculum is
aimed at resolving. In synthesis the problem is this: If things are good only
by participation, then it seems that they will not be good per se; but on
the other hand, if they are substantially good—if goodness is in their very
essence—then they will be indistinguishable from God.Thomas observes
that in this division it is supposed that being something by participation
is opposed to being something substantially or essentially. He recalls the
type of participation according to which a species participates in a genus.
Concerning this, he notes that, according to Plato, the Idea of the genus
is other than the Ideas of the differentia and the species. By contrast,
according to Aristotle, the genus belongs to the essence of the species,
such that its existence is one with that of the differentia. If we take the
Aristotelian view, then being something by participation is not always
opposed to being something essentially. Here is the passage in full.
resolution in the process of arriving at the first cause is clearly indicated in the
passage from the De substantiis separatis quoted above (note 6). But the resolution’s
own term is only the cause’s proper effect, not its very nature.The cause so far transcends the effect that whereas the nature of the effect is something that a created
intellect can naturally understand, the nature of the cause is not: ST I, q. 12, a. 4,
ad 3. For a fuller discussion of this and some of the other ideas presented in
section III.B, see Stephen L. Brock,“On Whether Aquinas’s Ipsum Esse Is ‘Platonism,’ ” The Review of Metaphysics 60 (2006): 723–57.
65 Along this line, notice Thomas’s final reason for rejecting the Platonic method
(see note 64 above) as a way of reaching an Idea of the good: “Sed haec opinio
a Philosopho improbatur multipliciter: tum ex hoc quod quidditates et formae
rerum insunt ipsis rebus particularibus, et non sunt ab eis separatae, ut probatur
multipliciter in VII Metaphysicorum; tum etiam suppositis ideis: quod specialiter
ista positio non habeat locum in bono, quia bonum non univoce dicitur de
bonis, et in talibus non assignabatur una idea secundum Platonem, per quam
viam procedit contra eum Philosophus in I Ethic.” De veritate, q. 21, a. 4.

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So the question is whether beings are good by essence or by participation. To understand this question, it should be considered that it is
supposed in this question that to be something by essence and to be
something by participation are opposed. And this is plainly true in one
of the aforesaid modes of participation, namely that by which a subject
is said to participate in an accident, and matter in a form. For an accident is outside the substance of the subject, and a form is outside the
very substance of matter. But in another mode of participation, namely
that by which a species participates in a genus, this will also be true in
the opinion of Plato, who posited the idea of animal to be other than
that of biped and of man; but according to the opinion of Aristotle, who
posited that a man truly is what an animal is, such that the essence of
animal does not exist apart from the difference of man, nothing prevents
that which is said by participation from being predicated substantially as
well. However, as is clear from the examples that he subsequently
adduces, Boethius is speaking here of the mode by which a subject
participates in an accident; and so he distinguishes as opposites what is
predicated substantially and what is predicated by participation.66

Once again, in other works Thomas expresses his agreement with Aristotle:The genus belongs to the essence of the species.67 But here, as in the
other passage in which he mentions Plato, he simply calls the question
irrelevant. Boethius is not talking about the participation of a species in a
genus. He is talking about the type of participation according to which
matter participates in form and subject participates in accident. With
respect to this type of participation, the Platonic and Aristotelian doctrines
agree that what is participated is outside the essence of the participant.And
this,Thomas holds, is how substances participate in their substantial esse.68
66 Aquinas, Exposition of the On the Hebdomads, 32, 34: “Est ergo questio utrum

encia sint bona per essenciam, uel per participationem.Ad intellectum huius questionis considerandum est quod in ista questione supponitur quod aliquid esse per
essenciam et per participationem sunt opposita. Et in uno quidem supradictorum
participationis modorum manifeste hoc uerum est, scilicet secundum illum
modum quo subiectum dicitur participare accidens uel materia formam. Est enim
accidens preter substanciam subiecti et forma preter ipsam substanciam materie. Set
in alio participationis modo, quo scilicet species participat genus, hoc etiam uerum
est secundum sententiam Platonis qui posuit aliam esse ydeam animalis et bipedis
et hominis; set secundum Aristotilis sententiam qui posuit quod homo uere est id
quod est animal, quasi essencia animalis non existente preter differenciam hominis,
nichil prohibet, id quod per participationem dicitur etiam substancialiter praedicari. Boetius autem hic loquitur secundum illum participationis modum quo
subiectum participat accidens, et ideo ex opposito diuidit id quod substancialiter et
participatiue praedicatur, ut patet per exempla que subsequenter inducit.”
67 See In VII Metaphysicorum, lect. 3, §1328; ST I, q. 3, a. 5.
68 Cf. ST I, q. 6, a. 3 (esp. sc. and ad 3).

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This is a delicate matter. As John Wippel explains in detail, Thomas
does not view the participation of substances in (substantial) esse as identical in every respect, either with the participation of matter in form or
with that of subject in accident.69 However, I think it is also important
to keep in mind that here Thomas is taking the participation of matter in
form and of subject in accident as one single type of participation, not
two. Wippel judges that since participation in esse differs from each of
those, it does not fall under this type. But it seems to me that if Thomas
can treat those two as one, this is because there are aspects common to
them. And in fact these aspects also belong to the participation of
substances in esse.
First of all, there is the aspect that Thomas signaled when he introduced this type of participation: “[A] subject participates in an accident,
and matter in a form, because a substantial or accidental form, which by
its ratio is common, is determined to this or that subject.”70 Esse too is
something which by its own ratio is common, and which gets determined
to this or that subject.71 Another aspect is the relation of potency to act
that obtains between participant and participated. Still another is the
participated nature’s inherence in the participant.
This last aspect would in fact be crucial for Thomas in relation to what
he considers yet another problematic tendency in “Platonism.” I am
referring to a concern that comes out very clearly in De veritate, question
21, article 4. This is a text that, in addition to being more or less contemporary with the De hebdomadibus commentary, addresses an issue very
close to the opusculum’s theme.The issue is whether all things are good
“by the first good.”
In the body of the De veritate article,Thomas presents a long and very
critical discussion of a teaching that he ascribes to “the Platonists.”72
69 John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to

Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000),
103–10.
70 For the Latin text see note 49 above.
71 See note 90 below.
72 After the passage quoted above, note 64,Thomas says:“sicut autem [Plato] inveniebat hominem communem Socrati et Platoni, et omnibus huiusmodi; ita etiam
inveniebat bonum esse commune omnibus bonis, et posse intelligi bonum non
intelligendo hoc vel illud bonum; unde et ponebat bonum esse separatum praeter
omnia bona particularia: et hoc ponebat esse per se bonum, sive ideam boni,
cuius participatione omnia bona dicerentur; ut patet per Philosophum in I Ethic.
Sed hoc differebat inter ideam boni et ideam hominis: quod idea hominis non
se extendebat ad omnia; idea autem boni se extendit ad omnia etiam ad ideas.
Nam etiam ipsa idea boni est quoddam particulare bonum. Et ideo oportebat

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According to this teaching, things are good by the first good, which is
God, in a “formal” way; yet not in virtue of a conjoined or inherent form,
but rather in virtue of “participating” in a separate form by which they
are “denominated.”Thomas also notes that this position was held by the
“Porretanians.” They said that when a creature is called good simpliciter,
this is not by an inherent goodness, but by the first goodness,“as though
common and unqualified goodness were the divine goodness.”73
The article goes on to tell us that this position was refuted by Aristotle in many ways:74 in general, because the forms of things are in the
things, not separate;75 and in particular, with respect to the good, because
the good is not said univocally of things.76 Thomas also provides another
argument, based on the fact that the first good is the agent of all good
things. Every agent produces its like. Hence, the first good must impress
its likeness in all things. So each thing is called good as by a form inhering in it, which is a likeness of the first good; and also by the first good,
as by an exemplar and an agent.And thus,Thomas concludes, Plato’s view
would be partly right, insofar as things are indeed formally good by the
dicere, quod ipsum per se bonum esset universale omnium rerum principium,
quod Deus est. Unde sequitur secundum hanc opinionem, quod omnia denominentur bona ipsa bonitate prima, quae Deus est, sicut Socrates et Plato secundum
Platonem dicebantur homines participatione hominis separati, non per humanitatem eis inhaerentem.” De veritate, q. 21, a. 4.
73 “Et hanc opinionem aliquo modo Porretani secuti sunt. Dicebant enim, quod de
creatura praedicamus bonum simpliciter, ut cum dicitur: homo est bonus; et
bonum aliquo addito, ut cum dicimus: Socrates est bonus homo. Dicebant igitur,
quod creatura dicitur bona simpliciter non aliqua bonitate inhaerente, sed bonitate prima, quasi ipsa bonitas absoluta et communis esset bonitas divina; sed cum
dicitur creatura bonum hoc vel illud, denominatur a bonitate creata; quia particulares bonitates creatae, sunt sicut et ideae particulares secundum Platonem” (De
veritate, q. 21, a. 4). For the reference to the Porretanians, the Leonine edition of
the De veritate sends us to a discussion in the Summa fratris Alexandri of a quotation from Gilbert of Poitier’s commentary on the De hebdomadibus: Alexandri de
Hales, Summa theologica, vol. I (Quaracchi, 1924), pars I, inq. 1, tract. iii, quaest. 3,
cap. 2, resp., 165. The passage quoted is that of Häring, The Commentaries on
Boethius of Gilbert of Poitiers, I, §27–33, 193–94 (= PL 64, 1317D–1318B). I find
it doubtful that Thomas was looking at this discussion. The quotation presents
both of the meanings of esse that I mentioned above in connection with Henry
of Ghent (note 23 above).The second of these is something inhering in things.
The Summa fratris Alexandri asserts corresponding meanings for bonitas. This
hardly provides grounds for Thomas’s claim that the Porretanians denied any
inherent goodness in things.
74 See the passage quoted above, note 65.
75 Thomas refers us to Metaphysics VII; see ch. 3–14, 1038b1–1039b19.
76 Thomas refers us to Ethica Nicomachea I; see ch. 4, 1096a12–b29.

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uncreated goodness, as by an exemplar. But they are also formally good
by a created goodness that is an inherent form.77
In his answer to the article’s seventh objection Thomas applies this
same doctrine to esse.The objection invokes a quotation from St. Hilary,
according to which esse is proper to God, and hence is not inherent in
other things. Thomas replies that esse is not proper to God in the sense
that there is no esse other than the uncreated esse. It is proper to God only
in the sense that God alone is his esse. Other things only have their esse.
But the esse that they have is truly their own, inhering in them; and it is
not the divine esse.78
Esse Is Participated According to the Categories,
and Esse Simpliciter Is Substantial Esse
There can be no doubt that Boethius understands esse as something
inherent in things. Also, he is explicit about the fact that, as Aristotle
insisted against Plato with regard to the good, esse is diversified in things
according to substance and accident, that is, according to the categories.
Thus, another Boethian axiom says: “Diuersum est tamen esse aliquid et
esse aliquid in eo quod est. Illic enim accidens, hic substancia significatur.
Omne quod est participat eo quod est esse ut sit. Alio uero participat ut
aliquid sit” (To be something, and to be something insofar as one is, are
diverse. The former signifies accident, the latter substance. Everything
that is, participates in esse, so that it be. But it participates in something
else so that it be something).79
One might think that Boethius is talking only about substantial and
accidental form, not about any “act of being.” But Thomas reads esse here,
77 “Specialiter tamen quantum ad propositum pertinet, apparet falsitas praedictae

positionis ex hoc quod omne agens invenitur sibi simile agere; unde si prima
bonitas sit effectiva omnium bonorum, oportet quod similitudinem suam imprimat in rebus effectis; et sic unumquodque dicetur bonum sicut forma inhaerente
per similitudinem summi boni sibi inditam, et ulterius per bonitatem primam,
sicut per exemplar et effectivum omnis bonitatis creatae. Et quantum ad hoc
opinio Platonis sustineri potest. Sic igitur dicimus secundum communem opinionem, quod omnia sunt bona creata bonitate formaliter sicut forma inhaerente,
bonitate vero increata sicut forma exemplari.” De veritate, q. 21, a. 4.
78 “Cum dicitur: Esse est proprium Deo; non est intelligendum quod nullum aliud
esse sit nisi increatum; sed quod solum illud esse proprie dicitur esse, in quantum
ratione suae immutabilitatis non novit fuisse vel futurum esse. Esse autem creaturae dicitur esse per quamdam similitudinem ad illud primum esse, cum habeat
permixtionem eius quod est futurum esse vel fuisse, ratione mutabilitatis creaturae.Vel potest dici, quod esse est proprium Deo, quia solus Deus est suum esse;
quamvis alia esse habeant, quod esse non est esse divinum.” Ibid., q. 21, a. 4, ad 7.
79 Aquinas, Exposition of the On the Hebdomads, 14.

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the very esse that he had previously glossed as actus essendi. What I wish
to stress is the significance that this reading has with respect to Thomas’s
own conceptions of esse and of participation in esse.
To explain the axiom,Thomas observes that every form is a principle
of esse.80 Through every form, something is somehow rendered a habens
esse. If the form is outside the thing’s essence—if it is an accidental form—
the result is what Boethius calls “being something.” If on the other hand
the form is constitutive of the thing’s essence, the result is “being something insofar as one is.”This is the subject’s proper esse. According to such
a form,Thomas says, something has esse simpliciter. And hence
“there,” that is, where it is said that a thing is something and not that it
simply is, “accident is signified,” because the form that makes for such
esse is outside the thing’s essence. But “here,” that is, when it is said to
be something insofar as it is, “substance is signified,” because the form
making for such esse constitutes the essence of the thing.81

Later on in the commentary (chapter 4), esse in eo quod est is called esse
essenciale. The context is a passage in which Boethius says that the esse of
things is diverse from their goodness.Thomas explains that things are not
called good simpliciter according to their esse essenciale; they are called good
simpliciter insofar as they are perfect not only in esse but also in agere. Such
perfection requires something added to their esse essenciale, some “virtue.”82
80 “Circa primum considerandum est quod ex quo id quod est potest aliquid

habere preter suam essenciam, necesse est quod in eo consideretur duplex esse:
quia enim forma est principium essendi, necesse est quod secundum quamlibet
formam habitam habens aliqualiter esse dicatur. Si ergo forma illa non sit preter
essenciam habentis, set constituat eius essenciam, ex eo quod habet talem
formam dicetur habens esse simpliciter, sicut homo ex hoc quod habet animam
rationalem. Si uero sit talis forma que sit extranea ab essencia habentis eam,
secundum illam formam non dicitur esse simpliciter, set esse aliquid, sicut secundum albedinem homo dicitur esse albus. Et hoc est quod dicit quod diuersum
est esse aliquid quod non est esse simpliciter et quod aliquid sit in eo quod est,
quod est proprium esse subiecti.” Ibid., 22.
81 “ ‘Illic,’ ide est ubi dicitur de re quod sit aliquid et non quod sit simpliciter,‘significatur accidens,’ quia forma que facit huiusmodi esse est preter essenciam rei.
‘Hic’ autem cum dicitur aliquid esse in eo quod est,‘significatur substancia,’ quia
scilicet forma faciens hoc esse constituit essenciam rei.” Ibid.
82 “Alia uero bonitas consideratur in eis [scil. in bonis creatis] absolute, prout scilicet unumquodque dicitur bonum in quantum est perfectum in esse et in operari, et hec quidem perfectio non competit bonis creatis secundum ipsum esse
essenciale eorum, set secundum aliquid superadditum quod dicitur uirtus
eorum.” Ibid., 48.

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This is a teaching to which Thomas returns, not only in question 21 of
the De veritate,83 but also in his fundamental account of the nature of the
good in Summa theologiae I, question 5. Here, in the very first article,Thomas
explains Boethius’s distinction between the esse of things and the goodness
of things by the fact that good simpliciter does not coincide with being
simpliciter. In my opinion, the subsequent discussion constitutes one of his
most illuminating formulations of the nature of being and of esse itself.
For since “a being” properly signifies that something is in act, and act
bespeaks order to potency, something is called a being simpliciter on
account of that through which it is first divided from what is merely in
potency. And this is the substantial esse of each thing. Hence a thing is
called a being simpliciter through its substantial esse. But through additional
acts, a thing is called a being only in a qualified sense [secundum quid].84

Besides substantial and accidental esse, there is no other esse in things.
Participation in esse does not establish another “order,” superimposed on
the “formal” or “categorial” order. Participated esse is itself configured
according to the scheme of the categories. And esse in the unqualified
sense, esse simpliciter, is nothing other than substantial esse or esse essenciale.
Δ
Obviously this esse simpliciter is not the same as Porphyry’s pure e’imai.
It
is a participated esse. Moreover, the reason it is called esse simpliciter is not
that it excludes any qualifying predicate. It is always “being something”—
“being something insofar as one is.” For example, the substantial esse of a
83 “Sicut multiplicatur esse per substantiale et accidentale, sic etiam et bonitas

multiplicatur; hoc tamen inter utrumque differt, quod aliquid dicitur esse ens
absolute propter suum esse substantiale, sed propter esse accidentale non dicitur
esse absolute: unde cum generatio sit motus ad esse; cum aliquis accipit esse
substantiale, dicitur generari simpliciter; cum vero accipit esse accidentale, dicitur generari secundum quid. Et similiter est de corruptione, per quam esse amittitur. De bono autem est e converso. Nam secundum substantialem bonitatem
dicitur aliquid bonum secundum quid; secundum vero accidentalem dicitur aliquid bonum simpliciter. Unde hominem iniustum non dicimus bonum
simpliciter, sed secundum quid, in quantum est homo; hominem vero iustum
dicimus simpliciter bonum.” De veritate, q. 21, a. 5.
84 “Cum ens dicat aliquid proprie esse in actu; actus autem proprie ordinem habeat
ad potentiam; secundum hoc simpliciter aliquid dicitur ens, secundum quod
primo discernitur ab eo quod est in potentia tantum. Hoc autem est esse substantiale rei uniuscuiusque; unde per suum esse substantiale dicitur unumquodque
ens simpliciter. Per actus autem superadditos, dicitur aliquid esse secundum quid,
sicut esse album significat esse secundum quid, non enim esse album aufert esse
in potentia simpliciter, cum adveniat rei iam praeexistenti in actu.” ST I, q. 5, a.
1, ad 1.

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man is precisely “being a man,” the being that he has through his rational
soul.85 Esse simpliciter is not, so to speak, an “absolute” reality, something
with an autonomous constitution, to which a form is somehow attached
merely so as to limit it. The form by which a thing’s substantial esse is
limited is also a constitutive principle of that esse.86 It is called esse simpliciter
because it is the act through which its subject is first divided from that
which is merely in potency. And it has this role because the form on which
it depends is found in the subject’s essence, that is, in that which constitutes
its very identity.The esse simpliciter of the subject, I think we can say, is nothing other than its act of being itself.
Naturally the question remains whether Thomas is right to read the
act of being in Boethius where so many others read only form. But if for
Thomas it is so easy to read Boethius in this way, perhaps at least part of
the reason lies in the fact that his way of conceiving the distinction
between esse and form also differs from that of many others.The distinction is there, certainly, but it goes hand in hand with an extremely close
affinity. As Thomas puts it in De veritate, it is the sort of distinction that
obtains between “man” and “being a man,” or between “knowledge” and
“being knowledgeable.”87
Participated Esse Belongs Per Se
The last passage that I wish to consider, from chapter 3, is a clarification
that Thomas offers concerning the participation of subject in accident. In
the formulation of the opusculum’s question, Boethius says that if things
are only good by participation, then they are not good per se. Thomas
says that this is true if we take “per se” in the sense in which that which
enters into a thing’s definition, or belongs to its essence, is predicated of
it per se.This, he says, is the sense intended by Boethius. But Thomas goes
on to remind us that there are also other senses of “per se.” He is of course
referring to a teaching of Aristotle.88 One of the other senses of “per se”
is that according to which a proper accident is predicated per se of its
subject. In this case it is the subject that enters into the definition of the

85 See the quotation above, note 80.
86 “Esse enim rei quamvis sit aliud ab eius essentia, non tamen est intelligendum

quod sit aliquod superadditum ad modum accidentis, sed quasi constituitur per
principia essentiae. Et ideo hoc nomen ens quod imponitur ab ipso esse, significat idem cum nomine quod imponitur ab ipsa essentia.” In IV Metaphysicorum,
lect. 2, §558.
87 De veritate, q. 2, a. 11.
88 See In I Post. an., lect. x; In V Metaphysicorum, lect. xix, §1054.

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predicate. In this sense, although it is predicated per se, an accident is
nevertheless predicated of its subject participative, by participation.89
Thomas does not explain why he mentions this point. However, it will
certainly play an important role in his own doctrine of the participation
in esse.The esse of a thing is not included in the thing’s definition. But it
does belong to the thing per se, in the sense that the thing is included in
its definition.Thus, in the De potentia (~1265),Thomas uses the fact that
the definitions of forms include their subjects to explain the way in
which the esse of one thing is distinguished from that of another.90
I think it is very important to keep in mind that just as “per se” is not
always equivalent to “per essentiam,” so in Thomas’s lexicon “per participationem” is not always equivalent to “per accidens.” The very esse that
things have by participation belongs to them per se. Indeed, it is even
more immediate to them than are their proper accidents. As Thomas also
says in the De potentia, against Avicenna, a thing’s substantial esse is not in
a genus of accident. It is nothing other than the actus essentiae.91
Conclusion
To sum up the implications that I see in the passages surveyed: (1) to
accept participation in esse does not require thinking that the species of
things subsist outside the things; (2) esse itself participates in a cause, to
whose power it is not proportioned, and whose essence does not enter
into composition with it or with anything else; (3) esse itself inheres in
things, though not in the fashion of a genus; (4) esse is configured accord89 “Dicit ergo primo, quod si omnia sunt bona per participationem, sequitur quod

'nullo modo' sint 'bona per se'; et hoc quidem uerum est si per se accipiatur inesse
quod ponitur in diffinitione eius de quo dicitur, sicut homo per se est animal.
Quod enim ponitur in diffinitione alicuius pertinet ad essenciam eius, et ita non
dicitur de eo per participationem de qua nunc loquimur. Si uero accipiatur per se
secundum alium modum, prout scilicet subiectum ponitur in diffinitione predicati, sic esset falsum quod hic dicitur, nam proprium accidens secundum hunc
modum per se inest subiecto, et tamen participatiue de eo predicatur. Sic igitur
Boetius hic accipit participationem prout subiectum participat accidens, per se
autem quod ponitur in diffinitione subiecti.” Aquinas, Exposition of the On the
Hebdomads, 34.
90 “Nam et in definitione formarum ponuntur propriae materiae loco differentiae,
sicut cum dicitur quod anima est actus corporis physici organici. Et per hunc
modum, hoc esse ab illo esse distinguitur, in quantum est talis vel talis naturae.”
De potentia, q. 7, a. 2, ad 9.
91 De potentia, q. 5, a. 4, ad 3. See also In I Sent. d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, ad 2; d. 19, q. 5, a. 1,
obj. 1; d. 33, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1; d. 37, q. 1, ad 2; De veritate, q. 10, a. 1, obj. 3; De spiritualibus creaturis, a. 11; ST I, q. 54, a. 1; Expositio Peryermeneias, lib. I, lect. 5, §22.
Cf. De potentia, q. 9, a. 5, ad 19.

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ing to the categories, and in such a way that esse simpliciter is nothing
other than substantial esse or esse essentiae; (5) participated esse belongs to
its proper subject per se, not per accidens.
I think it is clear that the drift of these points is to integrate participation in esse into the framework of Aristotle’s ontology. Their bearing
upon the debate concerning Thomas’s interpretation of Boethius’s esse
should also be fairly clear. Obviously the teaching of the De hebdomadibus
commentary on participation in esse cannot be reduced to these points
alone. Nor has the aim been to suggest that on the whole, the commentary should be qualified as “Aristotelian,” especially if that means “rather
than Platonic.”What I think we should be struck by is simply the degree
N&V
to which it is, or at least wants to be, Boethian.

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The Bishop and Consecrated Life:
A Necessary Link?
B ASIL C OLE , OP
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC

L AST YEAR , I attended a lecture by a prominent bishop who spoke
on the “New Evangelization.” While he did not think there was much
that was “new” in the concept of evangelization, he did wax eloquent
about the importance of the apostolate of the laity and its special place
in bringing Christ to the marketplace. During the question- and- answer
period, however, someone posed an interesting challenge to the bishop.
The Problem Posed
While we are familiar with the image of the two lungs of the Church
(East and West), so necessary for her, could we not say that for the apostolate or ministry in the Church there are not only two lungs, but three:
members in Holy Orders, lay ministry, and the apostolate of the consecrated person, ordained or not? Further, the questioner wondered out
loud why the American bishops spoke boldly for the right to life and
against the culture of death, when before their very eyes they can also see
that the consecrated life of sisters and brothers is dying in this country.
Why do they not do more to promote this “culture of supernatural life”
other than saying nice things about sisters and brothers? Should not the
bishops, above all, be doing something to stave off the clear and evident
decomposition of religious orders, congregations, and societies?
The Bishop’s Response
Oddly enough, the bishop responded by saying that bishops do not
understand consecrated life. The bishops are happy when sisters and
brothers teach in their schools and work in their hospitals or rest homes,

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Basil Cole, OP

but feel incapable of doing or saying anything significant with regard to
the religious life, since they do not live it themselves.
Be that as it may, John Paul II wrote an entire apostolic exhortation on
the consecrated life (Vita consecrata) in 1996, which flowed from the
discussions of a synod of bishops held in Rome on the subject.And while
I am certain that the bishop’s remarks were innocent enough, they do
reflect a certain superficiality with regard to the life of consecrated
persons. For the vocation of religious is vastly more than the works they
do, just as the ministry of the bishop is beyond the sum of his scheduled
appointments. The bishop’s facile remarks bespeak an deeper confusion
of the nature of the religious life and the episcopacy, both of which St.
Thomas Aquinas called “states of perfection.”
St. Thomas Aquinas: Not Yet Outdated
Although the Church’s documents no longer cite St. Thomas on the
“state of perfection,” or what it means to grow in divine love, his treatment is still relevant in many ways, applies to the episcopal ministry, and
also helps in understanding Vita consecrata.
In the Summa theologiae,Thomas states that the order of the episcopate
pertains to the state of perfection, not as one being perfected as in religious
life, but as one perfecting others, especially dioceses;1 and so the bishop
should possess a certain plentitude of Christian virtue. Instead of professing
vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience for his own salvation, the bishop
receives ordination or a consecration for the salvation of the souls under his
care. Speaking about infused charity, Aquinas writes the following:
He [Paul] says, therefore: I say that whether we be beside ourselves, it
is for God; or whether we be sober, it is for you, that is, for your benefit.The reason for this is that the love of Christ controls (presses) us to
this. He says “presses” because it is the same as stimulates. As if to say:
the love of God, as goad, stimulates us to do what charity commands,
namely, to procure the salvation of our neighbor: “those who are led,”
that is, stirred, “by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Rom 8:14); Its
flashes are flashes of fire (Song 8:6).2
Charity, therefore, has liberty as to its moving cause, because it
works of itself: “The charity of Christ presseth us” spontaneously, to

1 St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II–II, q. 184, a. 5; cf. q. 185, a. 1, ad 2.
2 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, trans.

Fabian Larcher, O.P., no. 181, www.aquinas.avemaria.edu/Aquinas-CorinthiansSec2.pdf.

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work (2 Cor 5:14). But it is a servant when, putting one’s own interests aside, it devotes itself to things beneficial to the neighbor.3

Before looking at the teaching of the Church on the evangelical counsels for bishops, in order to situate the reality and efficacy of the counsels, it is necessary to look at some important texts of Thomas concerning
the call to activate divine love or infused charity in one’s life, in order
better to understand his teaching on the counsels.
The great commandment of the spiritual life is to love God with one’s
whole heart, soul, mind, and body and love one’s neighbor as one’s self. But
what does this mean? We find Thomas answers in many places, but especially in a little- known tract on charity where the Common Doctor says:
[It] must be said that when it is written, Love the Lord thy God with thy
whole heart, this is understood to be a precept according to which the
totality excludes everything that prevents a perfect adherence to God;
and this is not a precept, but the end of a precept. For us this does not
mean that we should do it, but rather that we should tend toward it, as
Augustine says. (ad 1)
In this life, however, God cannot even be wholly seen or loved
according to the first or second way [that is, beatific vision or loved
consciously each moment of our life here on earth], for He is not seen
through his essence, nor is it possible for man living in this life that his
affective power be perfectly directed toward God without interruption.
Nevertheless, God is wholly loved in some way by man in this life
according as there is nothing in his affective power contrary to the
divine love. (ad 5)4

This however is a bare minimum. As one grows in ever greater adherence
to God, one lives more and more under the influence of the indwelling
presence of the Holy Spirit, urging one to better choices. As Aquinas says:
If by the perfect you mean religious or bishops who, as such, are called
perfect by reason of their external state of perfection then it must be
denied that these are bound to the better good simply on account of
their external state. For as such they are bound only to those things
which the vows and care of souls demand. But if you refer to those
Christians who are perfect on account of their interior perfection of
charity, then it must be admitted that the perfect of this category are
bound to the better good by an interior law which urge after the
3 Aquinas, In Gal, v. 13–15, lect. 3, in idem., Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the

Galatians, trans. F. R. Larcher, O.P. (Albany, NY: Magi Press, 1966).
4 Aquinas, De caritate, 10, ad 1 and 5, in Aquinas, On Charity, trans. Lottie. H.

Kendzierski (Milwaukee,WI: Marquette University Press, 1960).

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manner of an inclination; so to those better goods which they can fulfill
according to the measure of their perfection, they are bound.5

Furthermore, as one becomes more open to the inspirations that come
from the presence of the Holy Spirit, then better goods are inspired and are
inclined to be instantiated:
It is, then, the distinguishing mark of the sons of God, to be carried
forward by grace to better things, without waiting for counsel. This
impulse of grace is alluded to in the Prophet Isaiah (59:59), “When he
shall come as a violent stream, which the spirit of the Lord driveth on.”
St. Paul teaches us that this impulse of grace is to be obeyed. “Walk in
the Spirit,” he says, (Gal 5:16), and again, “If you are led by the Spirit,
you are not under the law” (Gal 5:18). . . . Now, the Holy Spirit gives
his revelations, not only by teaching man what he ought to speak, but
by suggesting to him what he ought to do. When, therefore, a man is
inspired by this Holy Spirit to enter religious life, it is his duty to follow
the inspiration at once, without waiting to take counsel of human
advisers. This is shown us by the words of the Prophet Ezekiel (1:20),
“Whithersoever the spirit went, thither, as the spirit went, the wheels
also were lifted up withal, and followed it.”6

One notices how the role of the Holy Spirit goes beyond what is merely
reasonable. He continues to develop this idea:
Interior inspiration has efficacy to enable those to whom it is vouchsafed
to accomplish great deeds.We read in the Acts of the Apostles, that when
the disciples were gathered together the Holy Ghost, coming upon them,
made them to speak of the wonders of God. The Gloss, says, on this
passage, “The grace of the Holy Spirit of God knows no obstacles.” . . .
He who hesitates to obey the impulse of the Holy Spirit for the sake of
taking counsel, either knows not this impulse, or else resists it.7

Just as nature has its inclinations towards certain goods, goals, or ends, St.
Thomas teaches that infused charity and grace have their inclinations
toward supernatural goods, that is, the love of God directly and our neighbor. The law of love is such that one must never stifle authentic inspirations, especially inspirations suggesting acts or ways that are not strictly
matters of precept, but matters of supererogation, or the achievement of
better moral goods. Sometimes, one forgoes doing what is abstractly taken
as a better good because prudence dictates that in actuality, a greater good
5 Aquinas, I Quodlib. 14, 2.
6 Aquinas, Apology for Religious Orders, pt. 2, ch. 9, p. 427.
7 Ibid., pt. 2, ch. 9, p. 429.

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will not emerge but only insufferable problems or difficulties. Nonetheless,
prudential choices based solely on reason and faith can be unduly influenced by one’s weaknesses and the dregs of past sin, thus making it difficult to be fully objective about what is best here and now. As such, many
acts of supererogation are omitted when they should not be. Often these
occasions of “stifling the spirit” come about because of the entanglements
of material possessions, anxieties in marriage, pigheadedness, or willfulness.
These choices consequently make it difficult to listen to the quiet inspirations of the Holy Spirit.This is why Jesus gave us the counsels in the first
place: if lived, to produce the ready spirit of listening to the Word of God
echoing in one’s being. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it:
The evangelical counsels manifest the living fullness of charity, which
is never satisfied with not giving more. They attest its vitality and call
forth our spiritual readiness. The perfection of the New Law consists
essentially in the precepts of love of God and neighbor. The counsels
point out the more direct ways, the readier means, and are to be practiced in keeping with the vocation of each:
[God] does not want each person to keep all the counsels, but only
those appropriate to the diversity of persons, times, opportunities, and
strengths, as charity requires; for it is charity, as queen of all virtues, all
commandments, all counsels, and, in short, of all laws and all Christian actions that gives to all of them their rank, order, time, and value.8

The evangelical counsels are helpful because they facilitate a readier
spirit to follow the gospel of charity. In Aquinas’s work, Reasons for the
Faith Against Muslim Objections, he summarizes reasons of fittingness for
the Incarnation, giving us a glimpse into the problems of growing in
virtue when he states in chapter seven:
First of all, we must observe that Christ assumed a human nature to
repair the fall of man, as we have said.Therefore, according to his human
nature, Christ should have suffered and done whatever would serve as a
remedy for sin.The sin of man consists in cleaving to bodily things and
neglecting spiritual goods. Therefore the Son of God in his human
nature fittingly showed by what he did and suffered that men should
consider temporal goods or evils as nothing, lest a disordered love for
them impede them from being dedicated to spiritual things.Thus Christ
chose poor parents, although perfect in virtue, lest anyone glory in mere
nobility of flesh and in the wealth of his parents. He led a poor life to
8 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1974, quoting St. Francis de Sales, Love of

God, 8, 6.

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teach us to despise riches. He lived without titles or office so as to withdraw men from a disordered desire for these things. He underwent
labor, thirst, hunger, and bodily afflictions so that men would not be
fixed on pleasure and delights and be drawn away from the good of
virtue because of the hardships of this life. In the end he underwent
death, so that no one would desert the truth because of fear of death.
And lest anyone fear a shameful death for the sake of the truth, he chose
the most horrible kind of death, that of the cross.Thus it was fitting that
the Son of God made man should suffer and by his example provoke
men to virtue, so as to verify what Peter said (1 Pet 2:21): “Christ
suffered for you, and left an example for you to follow in his steps.”9

The goods that we absolutely need are supernatural, the bodily goods
we need are relatively necessary and means for helping us, however, they
can become disproportionate, unreasonable, or absolutized due to the
effects of original sin influencing decisions for the worse. Here enters the
counsels which that can aid us temporarily or permanently if we vow and
live them and make spiritual goods predominant in daily life.
A Review of Pope John Paul II’s Teaching
on Consecrated Life
At this point, I will compare what the papal Mmagisterium teaches about
religious life and then what the late pope taught about the bishops to
make an important linkage.
Vita consecrata is very clear concerning the nature of the consecrated life.
It has a certain mysterious way of bringing the kingdom of heaven down
to earth:
As a way of showing forth the Church’s holiness, it is to be recognized that
the consecrated life, [original emphasis] which mirrors Christ’s own way of
life, [emphasis added] has an objective superiority [original emphasis].
Precisely for this reason, it is an especially rich manifestation of Gospel
values and a more complete expression of the Church’s purpose, which
is the sanctification of humanity.The consecrated life proclaims and in
a certain way anticipates the future age, when the fullness of the Kingdom of Heaven, already present in its first fruits and in mystery, will be
achieved, and when the children of the resurrection will take neither
wife nor husband, but will be like the angels of God (cf. Mt 22:30).The
Church has always taught the pre-eminence of perfect chastity for the
sake of the Kingdom, and rightly considers it the “door” of the whole
consecrated life. (no. 32)
9 St. Thomas Aquinas, Reasons for the Faith Against Muslim Objections, trans. Joseph

Kenny, O.P., www.diafrica.org/nigeriaop/kenny/rationes.htm.

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Furthermore, each institute possesses its own charisms, which are of great
benefit to the particular diocese in which they live, and without them the
particular Church is lacking in fullness or completion:
The Church can in no way renounce the consecrated life, for it
eloquently expresses her inmost nature as “Bride.” In the consecrated life,
the proclamation of the Gospel to the whole world finds fresh enthusiasm and power. There is a need for people able to show the fatherly
face of God and the motherly face of the Church, people who spend
their lives so that others can have life and hope. The Church needs
consecrated persons who, even before committing themselves to the
service of this or that noble cause, allow themselves to be transformed
by God’s grace and conform themselves fully to the Gospel.The whole
Church finds in her hands this great gift and gratefully devotes herself
to promoting it with respect, with prayer, and with the explicit invitation to accept it. It is important that bishops, priests, and deacons,
convinced of the evangelical superiority of this kind of life, should
strive to discover and encourage the seeds of vocation through preaching, discernment, and wise spiritual guidance. All the faithful are asked
to pray constantly for consecrated persons, that their fervor and their
capacity to love may grow continually and thus contribute to spreading in today’s society of the fragrance of Christ (cf. 2 Cor 2:15). The
whole Christian community—pastors, laity, and consecrated persons—
is responsible for the consecrated life, and for welcoming and supporting new vocations. (no. 105, original emphasis)

Vita consecrata, in asserting that the consecrated life is founded upon
the very life of Jesus Christ, awakens religious to see that divine love must
be made tangible so that others can see Christ in them proportionately:
The consecrated life, deeply rooted in the example and teaching of
Christ the Lord, is a gift of God the Father to his Church through the
Holy Spirit. By the profession of the evangelical counsels, the characteristic
features of Jesus—the chaste, poor, and obedient one—are made constantly
“visible” in the midst of the world and the eyes of the faithful are directed
towards the mystery of the Kingdom of God already at work in history,
even as it awaits its full realization in heaven. (no. 1, original emphasis)

The Counsels Are Not the Ends but the Means of Growing
Towards the Ultimate End, Union with God
St. Thomas reminds us that the purpose of the evangelical counsels is to
facilitate growth in faith, hope, and charity, together with the moral virtues
of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance (ST I–II, q. 108, a. 4).

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Vowing to live these counsels is not an end in itself, but also pertains to
another counsel as well. Everyone, however, is summoned to live the spirit
of the counsels although without necessarily assuming the responsibilities
in fact as vowed religious. As the Catechism puts it:
Christ proposes the evangelical counsels, in their great variety, to every
disciple.The perfection of charity, to which all the faithful are called, entails,
for those who freely follow the call to consecrated life, the obligation
of practicing chastity in celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom, poverty,
and obedience. It is the profession of these counsels, within a permanent state of life recognized by the Church, that characterizes the life
consecrated to God.10
From the very beginning of the Church there were men and
women who set out to follow Christ with greater liberty, and to imitate
him more closely, by practicing the evangelical counsels.They led lives
dedicated to God, each in his own way. Many of them, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, became hermits or founded religious families. These the Church, by virtue of her authority, gladly accepted and
approved. (no. 918, emphasis added)

What is understood here is that these counsels, while not obligatory in
themselves, aid the growth in charity when practiced either for a time or
for life. They help overcome obstacles that can arise from the use of
certain human goods: self-determination, material things, marriage, and
family life. As great as they are, these natural goods can occasion a lessening of the desire for God, prayer, and affective love of God and neighbor, because weakened human nature can pursue them too ardently or
unreasonably. And the disordered desire can get in the way of striving to
love Jesus Christ above all other loves (although not to the detriment of
reasonable lesser loves). Correcting this, the Catechism teaches:
Besides its precepts, the New Law also includes the evangelical counsels.
The traditional distinction between God’s commandments and the
evangelical counsels is drawn in relation to charity, the perfection of
Christian life.The precepts are intended to remove whatever is incompatible with charity.The aim of the counsels is to remove whatever might
hinder the development of charity, even if it is not contrary to it.11

This succinct treatment of the counsels needs to be concluded by looking at the spirit of poverty, again taking our cue from the Catechism:
10 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 915, emphasis added; cf. Lumen gentium, nos.

42–43; Perfectae caritatis, no. 1.
of the Catholic Church, no. 1973, emphasis added; cf. St. Thomas
Aquinas, ST II–II, q. 184, a. 3.

11 Catechism

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Jesus enjoins his disciples to prefer him to everything and everyone, and
bids them “renounce all that [they have]” for his sake and that of the
Gospel. Shortly before his passion, he gave them the example of the
poor widow of Jerusalem who, out of her poverty, gave all that she had
to live on. The precept of detachment from riches is obligatory for
entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.
All Christ’s faithful are to “direct their affections rightly, lest they
be hindered in their pursuit of perfect charity by the use of worldly
things and by an adherence to riches which is contrary to the spirit of
evangelical poverty.”12

Clearly these paragraphs of the Catechism do not dictate that everyone to
make a vow of poverty and renounce property. Rather, they require that
everyone has a spirit of poverty, which is a detachment or freedom from
the unruly desire for material things in themselves or as ends in themselves. Finally it demands a willingness to alleviate the sufferings of others
with one’s own goods, as occasion arises.
Vita consecrata gives another clear summary of the ultimate goal of
consecrated life from which it is easy to understand why there are struggles to live the Gospel as fully as possible even with the aid of the evangelical counsels:
It is the duty of the consecrated life to show that the Incarnate Son of God
is the eschatological goal towards which all things tend, the splendor before
which every other light pales, and the infinite beauty which alone can
fully satisfy the human heart. In the consecrated life, then, it is not only
a matter of following Christ with one’s whole heart, of loving him “more
than father or mother, more than son or daughter” (cf. Mt 10:37)—for
this is required of every disciple—but of living and expressing this by
conforming one’s whole existence to Christ in an all-encompassing commitment which foreshadows the eschatological perfection, to the extent that
this is possible in time and in accordance with the different charisms.
(no. 16, original emphasis)

Thus the consecrated life involves a total self-donation to God for the
future, not by mere episodic choices, but by vows to be exercised continuously until death.
The three vows whether lived in a community or as a consecrated
virgin give a certain stability to the process of conforming one’s whole
being to Christ with a serious commitment that binds in the future as
well as the present:
12 Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2544–45, quoting Lumen gentium, no. 42.

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By professing the evangelical counsels, consecrated persons not only
make Christ the whole meaning of their lives but strive to reproduce
in themselves, as far as possible, “that form of life which he, as the Son
of God, accepted in entering this world. “By embracing chastity, they
make their own the pure love of Christ and proclaim to the world that
he is the Only-Begotten Son who is one with the Father (cf. Jn 10:30,
14:11). By imitating Christ’s poverty, they profess that he is the Son who
receives everything from the Father, and gives everything back to the
Father in love (cf. Jn 17:7, 10). By accepting, through the sacrifice of
their own freedom, the mystery of Christ’s filial obedience, they profess
that he is infinitely beloved and loving, as the One who delights only
in the will of the Father (cf. Jn 4:34), to whom he is perfectly united
and on whom he depends for everything. By this profound “configuration” to the mystery of Christ, the consecrated life brings about in a
special way that confessio Trinitatis which is the mark of all Christian life;
it acknowledges with wonder the sublime beauty of God, Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, and bears joyful witness to his loving concern for
every human being. (no. 16, original emphasis).

John Paul fleshes out these commitments in greater detail, and teaches
that the life of the evangelical counsels bypasses the goods of marriage
and family life, and embraces a greater good allowing the consecrated
person more freedom for prayer, self-denial, and surrender to the providence of God in the little details of life.
The Counsels and the Bishop
With this understanding of evangelical counsels, we can now turn to the
question of the bishop’s role vis-á-vis the counsels. Vita consecrata again
provides some directions:“Sacred ministers, for their part, are living images
of Christ the Head and Shepherd who guides his people during this time
of ‘already and not yet,’ as they await his coming in glory” (no. 16).
In the apostolic exhortation, written by John Paul on the ministry of
bishops (Pastores Gregis, 2003), he further instructs bishops on their
responsibilities to the Church, and also on who they are and on those
responsibilities fostering perfection in their special vocation.We find the
following sober statement about their ordination in Pastores Gregis:
For bishops the call to holiness is inherent in the sacramental event that
stands at the origin of their ministry, that is, their episcopal ordination.
The ancient Euchology of Serapion formulates the ritual invocation of the
consecration thus:“God of truth, make thy servant a living bishop, a holy
bishop in the succession of the holy Apostles.” Since episcopal ordination
does not infuse the perfection of the virtues, “the bishop is called to pursue

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his path of perfection with greater intensity so as to attain to the stature
of Christ, the perfect Man.” (no. 13, emphasis added)

Here the pope teaches that episcopal ordination does not make one holy
automatically, rather the bishop must actually pursue the perfection of
charity with greater intensity than others. The supernatural dignity of
episcopal ordination is one reality; deep intimacy with God coupled with
moral uprightness is another. While they should go together, because of
human weakness they do not always coalesce. Hence the same Pastores
Gregis goes on to say:
Mindful, therefore, of his human weaknesses and sins, each bishop,
along with his priests, personally experiences the sacrament of Reconciliation as a profound need and as a grace to be received ever anew,
and thus renews his own commitment to holiness in the exercise of his
ministry. In this way he also gives visible expression to the mystery of
a Church which is constitutively holy, yet also made up of sinners in
need of forgiveness. (no. 13)

Holiness, therefore, does not necessarily mean that a person is rendered
impeccable or incapable of sinning. For impeccability comes either with
the beatific vision or mystical marriage, the highest degree of union with
God in this life according to Sts.Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.
The Special Calling of the Bishop
Nevertheless, the bishop has a very high calling beyond the ordinary:
The specific spirituality of the bishop, as the synod fathers repeatedly
emphasized, is further enriched by the bestowal of that grace inherent
in the fullness of the priesthood which is given to him at the moment
of his ordination. As a pastor of the flock and servant of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ in hope, the bishop must become as it were a transparent reflection of the very person of Christ, the Supreme Pastor. In the Roman
Pontifical this requirement is explicitly mentioned:“Receive the miter,
and may the splendor of holiness shine forth in you, so that when the
Chief Shepherd appears, you may deserve to receive from him an
unfading crown of glory.” (Pastores Gregis, no. 13, emphasis added)

This image of Christ is a goal of the bishop; it may not be realized at the
beginning of his ministry but should be ever more fully realized as he
grows in the grace of his consecration. It is not easy to change one’s life
from being a parish priest to being a bishop of a diocese.The lack of experience, however, should challenge the bishop to rely more on the grace of
God and not his natural talents. Pastores Gregis challenges him even more:

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The faithful ought to be able to contemplate on the face of their bishop
the grace-given qualities which in the various Beatitudes make up the selfportrait of Christ: the face of poverty, meekness, and the thirst for righteousness; the merciful face of the Father and of the peaceful and
peace-giving man; the pure face of one who constantly looks to God
alone.The faithful should also be able to see in their bishop the face of
one who relives Jesus’ own compassion for the afflicted and, today as
much as in the past, the face filled with strength and interior joy of one
persecuted for the truth of the Gospel. (no. 18, emphasis added)

If such a goal does not frighten those who yearn to become bishops, then
the next paragraphs should cause some kind of trembling:
To all his disciples, and especially to those who while still on this earth
wish to follow him more closely like the Apostles, the Lord proposes the
way of the evangelical counsels. In addition to being a gift of the Holy
Trinity to the Church, the counsels are a reflection of the life of the
Trinity in each believer.This is especially the case in the bishop, who, as
a successor of the Apostles, is called to follow Christ along the path leading to the perfection of charity. For this reason he is consecrated, even
as Jesus was consecrated. The bishop’s life is radically dependent on
Christ and a completely transparent image of Christ before the Church and the
world. The life of the bishop must radiate the life of Christ and consequently Christ’s own obedience to the Father, even unto death, death on
a Cross (cf. Phil 2:8), his chaste and virginal love, and his poverty which
is absolute detachment from all earthly goods. (no. 18, emphasis added)

Here in this passage, one can see why St.Thomas says that the bishop is
in the state of perfection as perfecting others by reason of his consecration. He perfects others by his teaching, preaching, and writing as well as
his decision- making or governance. He gives example by his public
witness to the Eucharistic adoration, standing up against immoral teachings and the like. Finally he shepherds his priests by his encouragement,
correction, and educational guidance through on-going formation.
Continuing in the same article, Pastores Gregis shows the bishop how
important the counsels are to his life:
In this way the bishops can lead by their example not only those
members of the Church who are called to follow Christ in the consecrated life but also priests, to whom the radicalism of holiness in accordance with the spirit of the evangelical counsels is also proposed. Indeed, this
radicalism is incumbent on all the faithful, including lay people, for it is
“a fundamental, undeniable demand flowing from the call of Christ to
follow and imitate him by virtue of the intimate communion of life

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with him brought about by the Spirit.” (no. 18, emphasis added)

The Bishop’s Obedience to the Successor of Peter
In this reading of Vita consecrata and Pastores Gregis, it becomes clear that if a
bishop does not understand the role and purpose of the consecrated life of
religious, then he will likely not understand the role of the evangelical
counsels in his own life. He becomes simply a minister, a functionary, a
CEO rather than the mirror image of Christ.To avoid such a desecration of
the nature of the episcopacy he is called to, Pastores Gregis teaches about the
relationship of the counsels to the bishop. Concerning obedience, it states:
By taking on these very human features of Jesus, the bishop also
becomes the model and promoter of a spirituality of communion, carefully and vigilantly working to build up the Church, so that all that he
says and does will reflect a common filial submission in Christ and in the
Spirit to the loving plan of the Father. As a teacher of holiness and
minister of the sanctification of his people, the bishop is called to carry
out faithfully the will of the Father.The bishop’s obedience must be lived
according to the example—for it could hardly be otherwise—of the
obedience of Christ himself, who said that he came down from heaven
not to do his own will, but rather the will of the One who sent him
(cf. Jn 6:38,; 8:29; Phil 2:7–8). (no. 19, emphasis added)

The reader should notice that obedience as submission is the basis for
promoting communion. Continuing in the same article, the divine plan
is also at the root of communion:
Walking in the footsteps of Christ, the bishop is obedient to the Gospel
and the Church’s Tradition; he is able to read the signs of the times and
to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit in the Petrine ministry and in
episcopal collegiality. . . . The fullness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders
which he has received puts him in a special relationship with the Successor of Peter, with the members of the college of bishops and with his
own particular Church. He must feel committed to living intensely this
relationship with the pope and his brother bishops in a close bond of
unity and cooperation, and thus conforming to the divine plan which willed
to unite the Apostles inseparably around Peter. This hierarchical
communion of the bishop with the Supreme Pontiff strengthens his
ability to make present, by virtue of the Order he has received, Jesus
Christ, the invisible Head of the whole Church. (no. 19, emphasis added)

Yet the bishop does not simply wait for his “marching orders” from the
pope; he must also take initiative for his own diocese from the Holy
Spirit’s inspirations. For this reason, obedience implies listening:

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As a model of attentive listening, the bishop will also strive to understand, through prayer and discernment, the will of God in what the
Spirit is saying to the Church. Through the evangelical exercise of his
authority, he will be ready to dialogue with his co-workers and the
faithful in order to build effective mutual understanding. This will
enable him to show a pastoral appreciation of the dignity and responsibility of each member of the People of God, fostering in a balanced
and serene way their spirit of initiative. The faithful should be helped
to grow towards a responsible obedience which will enable them to be
actively engaged on the pastoral plane. Here the exhortation which
Saint Ignatius of Antioch addressed to Polycarp remains timely: “Let
nothing be done without your consent, but do nothing yourself without the consent of God.” (no. 19)

The Bishop’s Poverty
Pastores Gregis proceeds to a treatment of poverty and the life of the bishop,
exhorting him to poverty in spirit and in fact. By use of the phrase vir pauper,
Pastores Gregis dares the bishop to follow in the spirit of Francis of Assisi:
The synod fathers, as a sign of collegial unity, responded to the appeal
which I made at the opening Mass of the synod that the evangelical Beatitude of poverty should be considered an indispensable condition for a
fruitful episcopal ministry in present-day circumstances. Here too, amid
the assembly of bishops there stood out the figure of Christ the Lord,
“who carried out the work of redemption in poverty and under oppression,” and who invites the Church, and above all her pastors,“to follow
the same path in communicating to humanity the fruits of salvation.”
Consequently, the bishop who wishes to be an authentic witness
and minister of the Gospel of hope must be a vir pauper.This is demanded
by the witness he is called to bear to Christ, who was himself poor. It
is also demanded by the Church’s concern for the poor, who must be
the object of a preferential option. The bishop’s decision to carry out
his ministry in poverty contributes decisively to making the Church
the “home of the poor.13

Living a life marked by poverty of spirit and fact, the bishop is not ruled
by the opinion of others, and he is freed from an over-dependence upon
being esteemed by others. Pastores Gregis, article 20, explains why:
On the bishop’s part, this calls for complete trust in the providence of the
heavenly Father, an open-hearted communion of goods, an austere way of
life, and continuous personal conversion. Only in this way will he be able
13 John Paul II, Pastores Gregis, no. 20, quoting Vatican Council II, Dogmatic Consti-

tution on the Church Lumen gentium, no. 8.

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509

to share in the struggles and sufferings of the People of God, whom he is
called not only to lead and nourish but with whom he must show fraternal solidarity, sharing their problems and helping to build their hope.

He will carry out this service effectively if his own life is simple,
sober, and at the same time active and generous, and if it places those
considered least important in our society not on the fringes but rather at
the center of the Christian community. . . . In this perspective of sharing and of simplicity of life, the bishop will administer the goods of the
Church like the “good head of a household,” and be careful to ensure
that they are used for the Church’s own specific ends: the worship of
God, the support of her ministers, the works of the apostolate and
initiatives of charity towards the poor. (emphasis added)

The Bishop’s Life of Chastity
Finally, the bishop is reminded that through the counsel of chastity, he
too must become filled with affective love for the Church, both particular and universal, and for all consecrated persons:
“Receive this ring, the seal of fidelity: adorned with undefiled faith,
preserve unblemished the Bride of God, the holy Church.”These words
of the Roman Pontifical urge the bishop to realize that he is committed to mirroring the virginal love of Christ for all his faithful ones. He is
called above all to foster relationships inspired by the respect and esteem
befitting a family where love flourishes, in accordance with the exhortation of the Apostle Peter:“Love one another deeply, from the heart, for
you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable,
through the living and enduring word of God (1 Pet 1:22–23).”
While exhorting Christians by his example and words to offer
their bodies as a living and holy sacrifice pleasing to God (cf. Rom
12:1), the bishop must remind everyone that “the form of this world is
passing away” (1 Cor 7:31), and that it is our duty to “wait in joyful
hope” for Christ’s return in glory (cf.Tit 2:13). In his pastoral concern
he should be especially close with paternal affection to all who have embraced
the religious life in the profession of the evangelical counsels and who offer
their valuable service to the Church. He will support and encourage
priests, who, called by God’s grace, have freely assumed the commitment of celibacy for the Kingdom of Heaven, and remind himself and
them of the evangelical and spiritual grounds of this choice, so important for
the service of the People of God. In the reality of the Church and the
world today, the witness of chaste love is, on the one hand, a form of
spiritual therapy for humanity and, on the other, a form of protest
against the idolatry of instinct. (no. 21, emphasis added)

As the virtue of chastity grows, this counsel fills the bishop with a merciful and patient generosity towards all the people who are under his care.

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Like a father of a family and a husband with his wife, this man looks to
his flock not only as a businessman or a builder, but as a man deeply
convicted about the salvation of souls. With warmth and certainty, he
leads people away from the idols of power, riches, and pleasure to seek
the supernatural goods of God with vigor and to use the natural goods
of this world according to reason and faith.The call to holiness preached
by the bishop absolutely requires the help of the evangelical counsels
known and lived from the depths of his being.
The counsels serve as remedies from the threefold concupiscence of
avarice, lust, and pride because they check these desires from becoming the
dominant motives of the spiritual life and they enslave the human person.
Celibacy equates to liberty from sexual desire in order to cleave to a Person,
Jesus Christ.The bishop’s life lived in this counsel makes him live as a person
for others, pointing them to rise beyond the created goods of this life to the
divine life. Even for the married, chastity enables them to rise above sexual
pleasure either as an end in itself or an addiction, to become integrated with
a graced friendship of self-giving to the spouse.The spirit of poverty withdraws the bishop from the excessive preoccupation with material goods and
worries about them for love of God. In this way, it allows him to teach his
flock to lead lives of greater detachment from worldly goods and to worry
less about tomorrow’s needs.This in turn enables them to find the real treasure of life, a deep trust in God’s providence, without neglecting life’s necessities. Obedience for its part is the highest counsel because it imitates
Christ’s obedience to the Father.As the bishop obeys the laws of the Church
and teaches the orthodox faith in accord with the papal Mmagisterium, he
submits his will to another sacred source, leading him to grow in humility
of mind and heart. Here too, the bishop acts as an example for the faithful
to live lives of obedience and faithful assent to the Church’s teaching.
Together, the three counsels ready everyone, the bishop, clerics, the laity, the
religious, for living a very intense divine love as inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Conclusion
Therefore, the bishop would do well to study and understand the life of
vowed consecrated persons to aid him in living the counsels. In this way
he will more readily grow in holiness himself and lead the faithful to that
same holiness with and under his guidance.The truth of the evangelical
counsels, when at least lived in spirit and in fact, when called for in the
lay state of life, will set each and all free from selfishness, illusion, and
mediocrity. Jesus was truly a great friend to reveal and teach us about
these three counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 3 (2007): 511–520

511

The Perplexed Conscience:
Aquinas, Conscience, and Intrinsic Evil
B ENEDICT M. G UEVIN, OSB
Saint Anselm College
Manchester, New Hampshire

D OES AQUINAS assert that one may, in conscience, be obliged to
perform intrinsically evil acts? Such seems to be the position of Mary C.
Geach. In an essay titled “Rescuing Frozen Embryos,”1 Geach argues
against the position of Dr. Helen Watt who is in favor of adopting frozen
embryos.2 Watt reasons that a woman who has conceived by IVF and has
produced extra embryos should bear them.3 Drawing out the consequences of Watt’s position, Geach writes,
what we are obliged to do, we are necessarily permitted to do; but we are
never permitted to do what is evil in itself; therefore it must be alright to
be made pregnant by having embryos put inside one; therefore it must
be alright to do this for orphaned embryos to save their lives.4

Geach, of course, believes that this is a doubtful premise.Whether or not
one is for or against the rescuing of frozen embryos is not the purpose of
I wish to thank Rev. Dr. John Fortin, O.S.B., for reading a draft of this paper and for
his helpful comments and insights.
1 Mary C. Geach, “Rescuing Frozen Embryos,” in What Is Man, O Lord? The
Human Person in a Biotech Age (Boston:The National Catholic Bioethics Center,
2002), 217–30.
2 Cf. Helen Watt, “Are There Any Circumstances in Which It Would Be Morally
Admirable for a Woman to Seek to Have an Orphan Embryo Implanted in her
Womb?” in Issues for a Catholic Bioethic, ed. Luke Gormally (London:The Linacre
Centre, 1999), 347–52.
3 Cf. ibid., 348.
4 Geach, “Rescuing Frozen Embryos,” 226.

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this essay.What is interesting is Geach’s comment on the phrase “but we
are never permitted to do what is evil in itself.” She writes,
a point which can be made against this argument is that sometimes our
conscience commands us to do what is evil in itself. It follows from this
that either we are not always obliged to follow our conscience (an
unacceptable position), or we can be permitted to do what is evil in
itself, or (as Aquinas concluded) we may be, through our own fault,
obliged to perform impermissible actions.5

Does Geach accurately reflect Aquinas’s position? William E. May is
not so sure.“The problem with this reply,” he writes,“is that if that were
Aquinas’s view, it would be one of those rare instances in which he made
a bad mistake. However, in fact, the texts cited can be understood otherwise than Geach interprets them.”6 The texts to which both Geach and
May refer are the following: De veritate, q. 17, a. 4, ad 8 and Summa theologiae I–II, q. 19, a. 6, ad 3; II–II, q. 62, a. 2, obj. 2; III, q. 64, a. 6, ad 3. May
does not expound any further on his observation.Again, is Geach’s interpretation correct? And, therefore, did Aquinas make a rare, but bad,
mistake? Or is Geach’s interpretation wanting, as May suggests? After
examining each one of Aquinas’s texts, we will be in a better position to
answer these questions.
As I said, these questions will be answered from the perspective of the
Angelic Doctor. There is a subsequent history to the role of conscience
in the moral life that goes beyond both Thomas and the scope of this
essay and becomes part of the casuist morality of the manualist tradition.7
De veritate, Question 17, Article 4, Reply 8
The earliest treatment of the question facing us is found in Quaestiones
disputatae de veritate. These so-called “disputed questions” were Thomas’s
first teaching assignment in Paris as a “master” and were presented over
three academic years (1256–59).8 Question 17 treats the question of
conscience. Having established that the conscience is an act, namely, the
5 Ibid., 226, n. 12.
6 William E. May, “On ‘Rescuing’ Frozen Embryos,” National Catholic Bioethics

Quarterly 5 (2005): 55.
7 For a more complete account of the role of conscience in the modern era of the

manualist tradition, see Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics,
trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University
of America Press, 1995), 271–74; T. Deman, “Probablisme,” in Dictionnaire de la
théologie catholique, vol. 13 (Paris: Letouzey, 1936), cols. 417–619.
8 Cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin: Sa personne et son
oeuvre (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1993), 87–97, 488.

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application of knowledge to some special act (article 1); that the conscience
can be mistaken in its application either because that which is applied has
error within it or because the application is faulty (article 2); and that the
conscience is binding (article 3), Aquinas turns his attention in article 4
to the question: Does a false conscience bind?
Before analyzing Aquinas’s position, we need to make a distinction
between conscience per se and the judgment of conscience. In his encyclical Veritatis splendor, Pope John Paul II writes that “the relationship between
man’s freedom and God’s law is most deeply lived out in the ‘heart’ of the
person, in his moral conscience.”9 Conscience, in other words, is not a
thing; rather, it is the place deep in the human heart where we meet God
and respond in freedom to his law. God’s law is seen in the natural law, a
law that is written in the human heart.10 Human freedom bears witness
to this law, a law that either accuses or excuses. Conscience is expressed in
the activity of judging.The Church teaches that “conscience is a judgment
of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a
concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing,
or has already completed.”11 This activity is the judgment of conscience.
As it is this activity to which Aquinas is really referring when he discusses
the conscience, I will use this phrase “judgment of conscience” in the pages
that follow.
Generally speaking, the judgment of conscience is binding for Aquinas.
A correct judgment of conscience binds absolutely, without qualification,
and in all circumstances.12 No one, it seems, would disagree with this.
Different opinions arise, however, when it comes to the binding quality of
a mistaken judgment of conscience. St. Bonaventure argued that one’s judgment can be mistaken both with regard to things that are intrinsically evil
and to things that are indifferent. A mistaken judgment of conscience, he
says, does not bind in things that are intrinsically evil, only in things that are
indifferent.13 This opinion, in Aquinas’s view, is faulty for it fails to recognize in what sense the judgment of conscience imposes an obligation. A
correct judgment of conscience and a mistaken judgment of conscience
bind in different ways:The former binds absolutely, as we have said, and for
intrinsic reasons; the latter binds in a qualified way and for extrinsic reasons.
Let us consider first the correct judgment of conscience. For instance,
if your judgment of conscience tells you to avoid adultery, then you must
9 John Paul II, Veritatis splendor, no. 54.
10 Cf. Rom 2:14–15.
11 CCC, no. 1778. Cf. Veritatis splendor, no. 59.
12 Cf. Aquinas, De veritate, q. 17, a. 4, reply.
13 Cf. St. Bonaventure, In Sent., II, 39, 1, 3.

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avoid it.To change your judgment is, in Aquinas’s words, seriously sinful
in the very error of changing such a judgment.As long as your conscience
judges that you not commit adultery, it cannot be set aside without sin.
A correct judgment of conscience, then, which tells you not to commit
adultery, binds absolutely and in all circumstances and events.
A mistaken judgment of conscience, on the other hand, binds only in
a qualified sense, since it binds conditionally. For example, if you judge
that it is permissible to fornicate, you are obliged to follow its dictate to
commit fornication while such a judgment remains.To act otherwise, that
is, against your judgment, would entail sin. But for Aquinas, a mistaken
judgment of conscience does not obligate in every event and circumstance: For you may change your judgment and, when this occurs, you
are no longer bound.
To render the binding force of these two types of judgment of conscience more concretely, let us consider the following scenario. Suppose
you live on an island where you were brought up to believe that hospitality is expressed, among other ways, by fornicating with guests. Fornication is objectively wrong; but if you believe it to be right and you judge
it to be so, then you are obliged to that judgment. Not to do so would
entail sin. But supposing some missionaries visited the island and instructed
you differently and you accepted their teaching, thereby changing your
judgment on fornication as an expression of hospitality. Then you are no
longer obliged to follow your previous judgment. But you are obliged, in
all events and circumstances, to follow your now correct judgment.You
can no longer use the excuse of conscience to do what, previously, you
had thought to be right.
But does a mistaken judgment of conscience excuse from sin? In other
words, is the hospitable islander, by following the dictates of conscience
to fornicate, completely guiltless? It seems so. For God, who is more
merciful than a temporal lord (who does not accuse a man of sin in
something that he did by mistake), will also not accuse of sin one who
acts out of a mistaken conscience.14 But Aquinas replies that this is true
only if the mistake is one of fact (for example, a man who has intercourse
with a woman whom he believes to be his wife is not guilty of the sin
of fornication—recall the example of Jacob and Leah), but not so if it is
mistaken about the law. Ignorance of the law itself is a sin.15
Regarding mistakes in things that are intrinsically evil: Aquinas states
that a false judgment of conscience commands an action that is contrary
14 Cf. De veritate, q. 17, a. 4, difficulty 5.
15 Cf. ibid.

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to God’s law.Yet, because you believe it to be the law of God to fornicate,
not to do so would be acting contrary—but mistakenly—to God’s law,
making you a transgressor. Still, to act according to your mistaken judgment of conscience and fornicate would also entail acting against God’s
law, an act that would be mortally sinful for Aquinas.Why is this? Because,
he argues, there was sin in the error itself, since it happened out of ignorance of what should have been known.16 This brings us to the reply
under consideration, namely, reply 8. From what Aquinas has just said, we
can already begin to appreciate the difficulty it poses. To act against a
mistaken judgment of conscience regarding what one believes to be the
law of God entails sin. But so acting against the law of God, even mistakenly, is also sinful. To state this more colloquially: “You’re damned if you
do and damned if you don’t.”Therefore, one would be so perplexed that
it would be impossible to avoid sin.Yet Augustine says, “No one sins in
that which he cannot avoid.”17 Therefore, a false judgment of conscience
does not bind.18 How does Aquinas respond to this difficulty?
He replies by saying that someone whose judgment tells him to
commit fornication is not entirely perplexed. For that person can do
something to change this judgment, thereby avoiding sin. Perplexity
remains only as long as the false judgment remains unchanged. Perplexity disappears along with the changed judgment. But while that perplexity remains, one cannot, in fact, avoid sin.
Aquinas will not address this issue again until the writing of the
Summa (1268–73). Will a decade or so of reflection on Aquinas’s part
bring greater clarity to the question of the perplexed conscience? Let us
examine the three passages of the Summa to see if this will be the case.
Summa theologiae I–II, Question 19, Article 6, Reply 3
In this first passage from the Summa, the discussion about conscience is set
within the larger framework of the morality of inner acts, one that takes up
all of question 19. Aquinas is not concerned here with the psychology of
conscience as an intellectual power or in the development of human acts;19
nor is he concerned with the moral formation of conscience.20 Rather, he
focuses his attention here on the moral standing of conscience.The same
16 Cf. De veritate, q. 17, a. 4, reply 3. On the face of it, this would leave the forni-

cating islander in a difficult position. But, as we will see, Aquinas will provide
greater clarity on this issue in Summa theologiae.
17 St. Augustine, Retract., I, 9. Cf. St. Augustine, De libero arbitrio, III, 18.
18 Cf. De veritate, q. 17, a. 4, difficulty 8.
19 Cf. Summa theologiae I, q. 79, aa. 11–13; I–II, qq. 6–17.
20 Cf. ST II–II, qq. 47–56.

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principles that we saw operative in De veritate obtain in question 19 as well,
namely, to act against one’s judgment of conscience is always wrong, even
if that judgment is mistaken; if one’s judgment is mistaken through no fault
of one’s own, there is no moral blame attached to it.21
Article 6 deals with the following question: “Is an act of the will bad
when it is against God’s law though following a mistaken conscience?” In
article 5,Aquinas had dealt with and answered the question “Is a mistaken
conscience binding?” His response, as we have already noted, was that a
mistaken judgment of conscience is binding. In article 6, he is dealing with
a different, but related, question. If it is true that a mistaken judgment of
conscience is binding, does it also excuse (that is, from moral culpability)?
The answer to this question turns on the issue of ignorance.22 Ignorance can be of different sorts.23
First, there is antecedent ignorance (ignorantia antecedens), that is, ignorance that precedes an act of the will and is, therefore, unwilled. As long
as such ignorance remains, one is not responsible. For example, let us
suppose that person X is target practicing. Unbeknown to him, person Y
is standing near the target. Person X shoots at the target, misses, and the
bullet strikes person Y, killing her. Because person X was ignorant of the
presence of person Y near the target, he is not morally responsible for the
death of person Y.
Second, there is ignorance that is consequent to an act of the will (ignorantia consequens), whether positive or permissive.The act of the will in this
case is voluntary, and so is the action proceeding from it.There may be a
greater or lesser element of the involuntary in this kind of action if, at the
last minute or before, you would not have performed the action had you
had full knowledge. Consequent ignorance, itself, is of different types. One
may deliberately choose to remain ignorant (ignorantia affectata). One may
operate out of inattention (ignorantia malae electionis). Finally, one may
exhibit crass ignorance about obtaining information on matters of fact
(ignorantia supina) or of law (ignorantia universalium iuris).
Aquinas assesses moral responsibility on the basis of these various kinds
of ignorance. If a judgment of conscience is mistaken through voluntary
error, whether directly or through negligence regarding a matter that
should have been known, then the will is not excused from evil. For
example, college students (or anyone for that matter!) who drink alcohol
21 Cf. Summa theologiae, vol. 17 (London: Blackfriars, 1966), app. 15, “Conscience,”

182. Cf. ST I–II, q. 19, aa. 5 and 6.
22 Cf. ST I–II, q. 6, a. 8.
23 I have taken these distinctions from Summa theologiae, vol. 17, app. 15, “Con-

science,” 182–83.

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517

simply to get drunk are morally responsible for their choice either
because they should know that such behavior is wrong and choose to
ignore it, or because they pretend that they do not know that such
behavior is wrong. A mistaken judgment of conscience that leads one to
drink simply to get drunk proceeds from this inexcusable kind of ignorance. But, as we saw in De veritate, these college students could go back
on their error since their ignorance is voluntary and can be overcome.
Their conscience, now correct on the question of drinking merely to get
drunk, must be followed in all events and circumstances.
In article 6, we have already seen a marked refinement in Aquinas’s
thinking on the question of the perplexed conscience, especially with
Aquinas’s development of the different kinds of ignorance. Let us see if
further refinements await us in the next two questions.
Summa theologiae II–II, Question 62, Article 2, Objection 2
One would not expect to find a discussion of the perplexed conscience
under the rubric of “justice” and yet we do find it in Aquinas’s treatment
of “restitution.” Restitution is an act of commutative justice24 whereby
one reestablishes a person in possession of or dominion over something
which is his or hers.25 The more specific question addressed in article 2
is whether or not restitution for what has been taken is necessary for
salvation. At first glance, it does not seem so, for sometimes it is impossible to restore what has been taken (for example, a life or a limb). Doing
the impossible is not necessary for salvation. Therefore, restoring what
was taken or lost is not necessary for salvation.26
In fact, it may even be impossible to make restitution without
committing a sin (for example, when someone’s good name has been
taken away by telling the truth). Ironically, to do so would make sin
necessary for salvation.Therefore, once again, restitution is not necessary
for salvation. How does Aquinas respond to this second dilemma in
which we see, once again, the perplexed conscience at work?
Aquinas argues that there are three ways that one may take away the
good name of another.The first is by telling the truth.An example of this
would be telling the truth about a crime someone has committed
according to the due process of law. In this instance, one is not bound to
make restitution. The second is by telling a lie unjustly. For this, one is
bound to make restitution.The third is by telling the truth, but unjustly.
Today, we would call this detraction. In this case, one is bound to restore
24 Cf. ST II–II, q. 61.
25 Cf. ST II–II, q. 62, a. 1, c.
26 Cf. ST II–II, q. 62, a. 2.

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the person’s good name insofar as one can (but without resorting to lies).
Rather, one should confess that one spoke in an ill-advised manner or
defamed the person unjustly. If restitution is not possible, recompense
must still be paid in other ways, for example, by apologizing.
In short, commutative justice requires restitution of some sort. Moreover, restitution, according to Aquinas, can be made without sin. So the
conscience should not be perplexed.
Summa theologiae III, Question 64, Article 6, Reply 3
The Council of Trent declared that a wicked man sins when he administers the sacraments.27 So what is the wicked minister of the sacrament
to do if it would be sinful not to administer the sacraments? Does the
minister find himself in an insoluble situation? It seems so. For sometimes
the minister is obliged out of necessity to administer the sacraments: “If
I preach the gospel, this is no reason to boast, for an obligation has been
imposed on me, and woe to me if I do not preach it!”28 Or, in addition
to the obligation, it may be that the sacraments must be administered if
some danger is present, for example, when a child on the point of death
is given into the hands of some sinner to be baptized.Therefore, it cannot
be that a wicked man sins when he administers the sacraments.
This is not the opinion of Dionysius, however.29 It is wrong, he says,
for the wicked so much as to touch the sacramental signs,30 and
presumptuous to lay hands on things pertaining to the priesthood.31
Aquinas is in full accord with Dionysius.32 He invokes both Aristotle
and Scripture to support his position. For Aristotle, virtue is doing something at the right time, with reference to the right objects, toward the
right people, with the right motive, and in the right way.33 Leviticus
reminds us to “be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.”34 And Sirach
states that “as the people judge, so are his ministers.”35 Therefore, a
wicked man who puts himself forward as a minister of God and the
Church in conferring the sacraments commits the mortal sin of irreverence toward God and the contamination of holy things.What, then, is the
now perplexed wicked minister to do?
27 Cf. Council of Trent, De sacramentis, no. 8.
28 1 Cor 9:16 (NAB).
29 Cf. ST III, q. 64, a. 6, c.
30 Cf. Dionysius, De eccl. hier. I.
31 Cf. Dionysius, Epistola 8, ad Demophilium.
32 Cf. ST III, q. 64, a. 6, ad 1.
33 Cf. Aristotle, Ethics II, 3 and 6, 1104b21 and 1106b20.
34 Cf. Lev 19:2.
35 Cf. Sir 10:2.

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One who is in a state of mortal sin, upon whom it becomes incumbent by virtue of his office to confer the sacraments, may repent of his
sin and thereafter lawfully confer the sacraments. Of him, Aquinas says
that he is “perplexus simplicter.”36 Perplexed he may be, but he can undo
his confusion by repentance. But if he chooses not to repent, then it is
fitting that he should remain insolubly perplexed. Only in one case of
necessity can he administer a sacrament without sinning, that is, he may
baptize. Why does the wicked and unrepentant minister not sin when
administering the sacrament of baptism? Aquinas’s response here is interesting. Baptism, he argues, can be administered by anyone, including a
layperson. So if the wicked minister presents himself to baptize, he is not
doing so as a minister of the Church, but rather as someone who, like
anyone else, can baptize. In so doing, he is responding to the necessity of
the sufferer. But the same cannot be said regarding the administration of
the other sacraments; those he confers by virtue of his office. To do so
would be sinful unless he repents.
Conclusion
Now that we have examined Aquinas’s texts dealing with the perplexed
conscience, we are in a better position to determine whether Geach or
May were correct in their assessments of Thomas’s position.
Geach is right to claim that, for Aquinas, a judgment of conscience
sometimes commands us to do what is evil, whence the perplexity. But
this is so when it is mistaken.This does not mean that we are not obliged
to follow our mistaken conscience. On the contrary, Geach rightly notes
that it is an unacceptable position to say that we should not follow a judgment of conscience even if it commands us to do what is evil. We must
follow it at least until we are shown that it is mistaken, after which the
perplexity disappears. Once we have determined that a judgment has been
mistaken we are obliged in all circumstances to follow the corrected one.
Geach is also correct when she says that Aquinas concluded that we may,
through our own fault, be obliged to do what is evil. But in doing so, we
may also commit sin.We commit no sin only if we act out of invincible
ignorance. In other words, a mistaken judgment of conscience does not
make right what we do, nor does following a mistaken judgment of
conscience automatically exonerate us from committing serious sin.
These are Aquinas’s views, according to this author’s reading of the
texts. It is also this author’s position, pace May, that these texts do not
represent rare instances in which Thomas has made a bad mistake. Nor
36 Cf. ST III, q. 64, a. 6, ad 3.

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Benedict M. Guevin, OSB

can I agree with May that these texts can be read other than as Geach has
interpreted them. In spite of increasing refinement and broader application, Aquinas remains consistent in his interpretation of the perplexed
conscience.The perplexed conscience remains so by our own choice. In
no wise are we constrained to commit evil from some source outside
ourselves.According to Aquinas, then, the perplexed conscience remains,
N&V
generally speaking, because of our unwillingness to repent.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 3 (2007): 521–554

521

St. Thomas on Grace and Free Will
in the Initium Fidei:
The Surpassing Augustinian Synthesis
R EINHARD H ÜTTER
Duke University Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina

Introduction
F OR MANY contemporary theologians, those who dare to treat the
topic of grace and free will with a measure of conviction, however minimal, resemble fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. And I am
indeed painfully aware that I might at least indulge in the vice of
presumption with what I attempt to cover in the following pages. But I
would submit that nothing less than the ensuing tour d’horizon will suffice
to get to the core of the topic, as well as its contemporary relevance.1 I
Dedicated to Fr. Matthew Lamb on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Earlier
versions of this essay were delivered as a conference paper at the international conference on “Aquinas the Augustinian” at Ave Maria University, Naples, FL, February
3–5, 2005, and as public lectures at the Institute of Medieval Philosophy and Theology of Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, October 17, 2005, and at the Catholic
University of America, Washington, D.C., March 12, 2007. My special thanks go to
an anonymous reviewer whose critical observations and remarks saved me from
some egregious mistakes and allowed me to clarify a number of aspects, as salient as
they are subtle, pertaining to St.Thomas’s theology of grace.
1 In the following, I am writing as neither a doctrinal nor a Church historian.
Rather, I am writing as a theologian. Hence, my brief remarks about St.Augustine
and St.Thomas, as well as those about Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther,
will all be painted with far too broad a brush. But this is the privilege of the theologian. Moreover, I am not interested in being original by offering some new insight.
Rather, I am interested in remembering and holding on to a most profound insight
put forth by St. Augustine and, more explicitly, St. Thomas, in the hope that this
insight might again become fruitful in the present theological conversation.

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will begin with the usual three apposite remarks of introduction, the last
of which will be the thesis I wish to submit.
First, in the following when I speak of “grace and free will,” I refer
specifically to the question of how God and human interrelate in the first
and fundamental act of salvation, the initium fidei—the beginning of faith,
also referred to as the act of conversion. Conversion, most fundamentally,
is the turning from sin to God, a turning that is nothing else than God
gratuitously as well as efficaciously turning us to himself as our ultimate,
supernatural end to be consummated only in the beatific vision.The question of how divine grace and human free will interrelate in the act of
conversion—of how God is able to move the human’s will infallibly yet
freely—is not simply a complex problem, eventually to be resolved; it is
an unfathomable mystery, to be discerned ever more deeply. Mystery,
understood aright, will always invite new theological efforts at interpretation.2 Thus when I argue in the concluding section that St. Thomas has
offered the most satisfying Augustinian interpretation to date of this
mystery, I emphatically do not claim that his interpretation has thereby
resolved once and for all a conceptual problem. Rather, I propose that in
all his precision and profundity, St.Thomas has deepened our understanding of—and thereby preserved the very character of—the mystery itself.
Second, with the interrelationship of grace and free will, we step into
the very heart of Augustinianism and its debates, debates that gave rise to
ecclesiastical and political developments that culminated in the cataclysmic religious and political upheavals of sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury Europe. Hence, the relationship between divine grace and human
free will is a question of the greatest ecumenical importance.The mystery
of grace and free will is most acutely present in the act of conversion.
Here Western Christianity is irreversibly shaped by Augustine and Augustinianism—and rightly so. “Freedom,” however, is a notoriously multivalent notion. Therefore, it will be imperative to keep in mind the
fundamental distinction between what I will call in the following “natu2 I am drawing here upon a most helpful distinction employed by Gabriel Marcel,

Jacques Maritain, and Thomas G.Weinandy: “Maritain states that where there is
mystery ‘the intellect has to penetrate more and more deeply the same object.’
The mystery, by the necessity of its subject matter, remains. . . . Many theologians
today, having embraced the Enlightenment presupposition and the scientific
method that it fostered, approach theological issues as if they were scientific
problems to be solved rather than mysteries to be discerned and clarified.
However, the true goal of theological inquiry is not the resolution of theological problems, but the discernment of what the mystery of faith is.” Thomas G.
Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2000), 31–32 [original emphasis].

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523

ral,” or “created,” freedom on the one hand and “acquired” freedom on
the other.3 Natural, or created, freedom is the liberum arbitrium, the “free
will” to choose between alternatives and to decide for or against a course
of action.Acquired freedom, on the contrary, is the freedom to live as one
ought. It is the freedom for which Christ has set us free (Gal 5:1), or, as
St.Thomas would put it by drawing upon the Gospel of John, the freedom to live as God’s friends by sharing inchoately through charity the
very life of the triune God.4
Finally, let me submit, in the form of a thesis, the rough contours of my
modest proposal, which eventually requires a more nuanced elaboration
than I can offer in these pages. St. Augustine developed a profound
account of the mystery of grace and free will. However, his account, with
its ontology of participation remaining largely implicit, remained notoriously open to a variety of conflicting interpretations.The best example of
such conflict, ostensibly based solely on the meaning of Scripture5—but
with a philosophical background profoundly incompatible with Augustinian and Thomist forms of thought—is seen in the famous (or infamous)
early sixteenth-century debate on free versus enslaved will (liberum arbitrium versus servum arbitrium) between Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
and Martin Luther. In light of this epochal debate,6 I would submit that
3 See, comprehensively, Mortimer Adler, The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Exami-

nation of the Conceptions of Freedom, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1958–61).
4 On this topic, see Michael Sherwin, O.P., “Christ the Teacher in St. Thomas’s

Commentary on the Gospel of John,” in Reading John with St.Thomas Aquinas:Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew
Levering (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005),
173–93, esp. 190–91.
5 Erasmus: “De sensu scripturae pugna est” (Our battle is about the meaning of
Scripture). Erasmus von Rotterdam, Ausgewählte Werke, vol. 4 (Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), 26.
6 I call the exchange between Erasmus and Luther epochal because, for a significant segment of Protestant as well as Roman Catholic theologians, it is still
regarded as paradigmatic, to the effect that not a few Protestant theologians
continue to hold Catholicism under suspicion of (Semi-)Pelagianism, while not a
few Catholic theologians continue to charge Luther with theological determinism and even Manichaeism. It took several generations of intense ecumenical
effort up to and including the recent Lutheran World Federation and Catholic
Church’s Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) to begin officially to
bury the mutual misconceptions on this crucial point. Now, I should add, there is
an important way to construe Luther’s theology differently, that is, by quite intentionally not making De servo arbitrio the sole hinge on which the rest of Luther’s
theology hangs.The new Finnish school of Luther research (see Carl E. Braaten
and Robert W. Jenson, eds., Union with Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of
Luther [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998];

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(1) St. Thomas’s account remains the most satisfying Augustinian way of
interpreting and deepening St. Augustine’s own account—an approach,
for complex historical and intellectual reasons, that was either not available or not desirable to Erasmus and Luther. Moreover, (2) St. Thomas’s
particular way of antecedently avoiding erroneous Augustinianisms shows
us that an anti-speculative (and hence anti-Scholastic) debate, purportedly
solely on the grounds of Scripture, allows unarticulated philosophical
presuppositions to rule. Furthermore, (3) I should like to propose that by
way of the pivotal Thomist axiom that grace presupposes as well as perfects
nature—as substantiated by St. Thomas’s metaphysics of being, which
climaxes in the surpassing beauty of divine transcendental causality—we
can successfully avert the reductive alternatives of Erasmus’s theologically
as well as Luther’s philosophically erroneous Augustinianism.
Hence, I will turn first to the epochal debate between Erasmus and
Luther on free will; next, to the complex position of St. Augustine; and
finally, to the profound account of St.Thomas.
Erasmus and Luther: Two Reductive
Augustinianisms post-Occam
Martin Luther was brought up philosophically and theologically in the via
moderna, that is, the school of William of Occam, also called nominalism.
As Étienne Gilson in his magisterial Philosophy in the Middle Ages argues:7
The essential characteristic of Occam’s thought, and of nominalism in
general, [is] a radical empiricism, reducing all being to what is perceived,
which empties out, with the idea of substance, all possibility of real relations between beings, as well as the stable subsistence of any of them,
and ends by denying to the real any intelligibility, conceiving God
Himself only as a Protean figure impossible to apprehend.8
and esp. Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s View of Justification
[Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005]), as well as the interpretations of Luther
by George Lindbeck and his students David Yeago and Bruce Marshall, would be
its most recent preeminent representatives.These reconstructions, to a large degree,
bracket De servo arbitrio (as an unfortunate product of Luther’s getting sidetracked
by Erasmus’s deficient attack) and focus on Luther’s Christocentric work, his
commentaries on Romans and Galatians, his sermons on the Gospel of John, and
his two catechisms.
7 La philosophie au moyen âge (Paris: Payot, 1944), 638 ff. I cite Gilson because I
think that his characterization of nominalism in its basic contours still obtains,
pace recent attempts at philosophical as well as theological rehabilitation of
nominalism in general and Occam in particular.
8 I am quoting here Louis Bouyer’s apt summary of Gilson’s account in Bouyer,The
Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1956), 153.

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525

Louis Bouyer aptly observes that in this kind of conceptual system “a
grace which produces a real change in us, while remaining purely the
grace of God, becomes inconceivable. If some change is effected in us,
then it comes from us, and to suppose it could come also and primarily
from God amounts to confusing God with the creature.”9 Thus, the first
move of turning to God has to come either from God or from the
human. And if, as the nominalist theologians were inclined to think, the
human is to merit grace prior to any reception of grace, the human
under the condition of sin must have the power to turn to God freely.10
Consequently, the human’s natural, or created, freedom must be understood as just this power, a power essentially unaffected by original sin.
This, in a nutshell, is the position of the dominant theological school
in Germany in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries11—a position
with which also many humanists, not least Erasmus, sympathized.12
Martin Luther received his philosophical and theological training in this
school. However, under the influence of his intense study of the Apostle
Paul and of the late Augustine,13 he began to reject, branch and root, his
school’s theological account of grace and free will, rightly understanding its
position to be incompatible with the teaching of St. Paul. But never

9 Ibid.
10 The nominalist theologians held that one has to merit the first grace de congruo;

after this initial merit on the basis of facere quod in se est, God on the basis of his
own liberality infuses first grace, thereby making condign merit possible. The
strictness comes in that the initial move must lie completely with the human (sub
conditione peccati); it can be a quite imperfect move, but it has to be the first move
on the way to condign merit. See, in detail, Leif Grane, Contra Gabrielem: Luthers
Auseinandersetzung mit Gabriel Biel in der Disputatio Contra Scholasticam Theologiam
(Gyldendal, 1962), 214–22.
11 The leading German theologian of late medieval nominalism was Gabriel Biel.
Still indispensable for a study of Biel’s theology is Heiko A. Oberman,The Harvest
of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Academic, 1963, 2000). Most decisive for our present concerns, according
to Biel,“the impact of original sin and its consequences leaves the freedom of the
will intact.” Ibid., 131.
12 For Erasmus’s relationship to Scholasticism in general and nominalism in particular, see Christian Dolfen, Die Stellung des Erasmus von Rotterdam zur scholastischen
Methode (Osnabrück, 1936); and John B. Payne, Erasmus: His Theology of the Sacraments (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1970), esp. 228–29, where Payne points out
how Erasmus draws support for his position from Gerson, Durandus, and Biel.
13 Shortly before Luther delivered his Lectures on the Epistle to the Romans (1515–16),
he had discovered Augustine’s anti-Pelagian writings in volume eight of the
Amorbach edition of Augustine’s works from 1506.

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rejecting the philosophical tenets of nominalism,14 Luther’s corrective move
veered to the opposite extreme: God is not merely the first but the sole
agent of the act of conversion, with the human in a state of utter passivity. For, according to Luther, the human free will is not simply held captive
by sin, as St.Augustine would maintain (liberum arbitrium captivatum). Rather,
after the fall, “free will”—understood as the power to turn to God—
becomes an “empty word.” According to Luther, we continue to use this
empty word only because the human being once had it, before the fall,
and through grace can have it again.15
In the heat of polemic, in his response to the bull Exsurge Domine,16
Luther pushed this position one step further by claiming that free will—
that is, now any form of natural, or created, freedom—is simply a fiction,
because all things happen by absolute necessity.17 Lest we do grave injustice to Luther, however, it is important to remember the context in and
against which he formulated these extreme claims, as Harry McSorley
rightly emphasizes:
14 On the complex discussion of this matter in Luther research, see Grane, Contra

Gabrielem, 9–42; and more recently, Graham White, Luther as Nominalist:A Study
of the Logical Methods Used in Martin Luther’s Disputations in the Light of Their
Medieval Background (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Society, 1994).
15 See Martin Luther, Contra malignum Iohannis Eccii iudicium super aliquot articulis
quibusdam ei suppositis Martini Lutheri defensio, in idem, D. Martin Luthers Werke:
Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. J. F. K. Knaake et al., vol. 2 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883 ff),
647, lines 10–13. As we will see later, even already in the Second Council of
Orange (529) we can find the admittedly singular description of the liberum arbitrium after the fall as amissum,“lost.”And in his De servo arbitrio, Luther avers:“Lost
liberty, according to my grammar, is no liberty at all, and to give the name of liberty
to something that has no liberty, is to employ an empty phrase.” Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, ed. E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S.Watson (Philadelphia:Westminster, 1969), 181; cf. Luther, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 18, 670.
16 Bulla “Exsurge Domine,” June 15, 1520, in Heinrich Denzinger and Adolf Schönmetzer, eds., Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei
et Morum, 36th ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1976), nos. 1451–92. Canon 36:“Liberum
arbitrium post peccatum est res de solo titulo; et dum facit, quod in se est, peccat
mortaliter.” Denzinger and Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 1486.
17 Assertio omnium articulorum M. Lutheri per bullam Leonis X novissimam damnatorum
(December 1520), Luther, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 7, 146, lines 3–12:“Unde
et hunc articulum necesse est revocare. Male enim dixi, quod liberum arbitrium
ante gratiam sit res de solo titulo, sed simpliciter debui dicere ‘liberum arbitrium
est figmentum in rebus seu titulus sine re.’ Quia nulli est in manu sua quippiam
cogitare mali aut boni, sed omnia (ut Viglephi articulus Constantiae damnatus
recte docet) de necessitate absoluta eveniunt. Quod et Poeta voluit, quando dixit
‘certa stant omnia lege,’ Et Christus Matth. x ‘Folium arboris non cadit in terram
sine voluntate patris vestri qui in celis est et capilli capitis vestri omnes numerati
sunt.’ Et Esa. xli. eis insultat dicens ‘Bene quoque aut male si potestis facite.’ ”

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527

Luther’s concern here was surely not to propagate a doctrine of
absolute necessitarianism. His unquestionable concern was to refute
and to destroy the exaggerated Neo-Semi-Pelagian view of free will
that found its expression in the Ockham-Biel interpretation of the
Scholastic axiom: facienti quod in se est, etc. From the beginning to the
end of the Assertio, Luther attacks the Bielian doctrine “that free will is
able to prepare itself to enter into grace.”18

But with the extreme formulation of the Assertio—echoing and indeed
at that point supporting a position held by Wyclif and condemned at the
Council of Constance19—Luther made himself vulnerable to the charge of
theological determinism. It is precisely this determinism, or necessitarianism, that Erasmus intended to attack in his 1524 treatise On the Freedom of
the Will (De libero arbitrio)—emulating in title as well as intention an early
treatise of St. Augustine.20 While rhetorically elegant, Erasmus’s treatise
18 Harry J. McSorley, C.S.P., Luther: Right or Wrong? An Ecumenical–Theological Study of

Luther’s Major Work The Bondage of the Will (New York: Newman; Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1969), 262. Oberman characterizes this central tenet of Biel’s teaching
thus: “Biel’s explanation of the possibility of this facere quod in se est makes it clear
that, though the facere quod in se est means different things for different people, everyone is by nature in a position to discharge this first duty. For God, however, the facere
quod in se est means only one thing: He is obliged, because he has placed the obligation on himself, to infuse his grace in everyone who has done his very best”
(Oberman, Harvest of Medieval Theology, 132). Because Biel appealed to the authority of St.Thomas in order to substantiate his own Semi-Pelagian theology of grace,
Luther came to think that not only the doctores moderni but also the doctores antiqui
were Pelagians. For a highly instructive study of this matter, see John L. Farthing,
Thomas Aquinas and Gabriel Biel: Interpretations of St.Thomas Aquinas in German Nominalism on the Eve of the Reformation (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 1988).
19 Sessio VIII on February 22, 1418; among the errors of Wyclif listed is canon 27:
“Omnia de necessitate absoluta eveniunt.” Denzinger and Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 1177.
20 See Rupp and Watson, Luther and Erasmus, 41, 43, and esp. 63–64, where he refers
explicitly to Luther’s Assertio:“What is the point of praising obedience if in doing
good or evil works we are the kind of instrument for God that an ax is to a carpenter? But such a tool are we all if Wyclif is right. All things before and after grace,
good equally with ill, yes even things indifferent, are done by sheer necessity.Which
opinion Luther approves.” Cf. Erasmus, Ausgewählte Werke, 88.We will see later that
St. Thomas could use the example of the carpenter and the ax, however, with a
dramatically different result, since he was able to conceive of divine causality as
truly transcendent causality, a causality that includes the genuine contingency of
the human liberum arbitrium! On Erasmus’s life and thought, see the informative as
well as sympathetic accounts by Cornelius Augustijn, “Erasmus, Desiderius
(1466/69–1536),” Theologische Realenzyklopädie, 10:1–18; and Louis Dupré, Passage
to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1993), 194 ff.

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Reinhard Hütter

lacked the precise conceptual organization of the Scholastic discourse that
his humanist tastes loathed. Even more fateful was the definition he offered
of “free will,” or “natural freedom”:“By free choice . . . we mean a power
of the human will by which a man can apply himself to the things which
lead to eternal salvation, or turn away from them.”21 In light of the theological issue at stake and of St. Augustine’s own mature position, this definition was shockingly deficient, for it seemed simply to underwrite the
nominalist Semi-Pelagianism Luther so vigorously opposed.We might not
go completely wrong in assuming that Luther stopped reading Erasmus’s
treatise at this very point, seeing his worst fears come true. It did not matter
that later in the treatise Erasmus allowed grace to make an appearance in
aiding the human will and offered a tentative nod in the direction of the
late Augustine and the Thomists as positions possible to hold.22
In his 1525 response On the Bondage of the Will (De servo arbitrio),
Luther painted a picture of Erasmus as a humanist skeptic23 who disingenuously offered a “probable” opinion about what for Luther was most
central to the Christian faith and—worse—submitted a blatantly SemiPelagian definition of the free will, and this based on the alleged evidence
of Scripture. Luther reacted most forcefully, and his theological intentions
21 Rupp and Watson, Luther and Erasmus, 47. “Porro liberum arbitrium hoc loco

sentimus vim humanae voluntatis, qua se possit homo applicare ad ea, quae
perducunt ad aeternam salutem, aut ab iisdem avertere.” Erasmus, Ausgewählte
Werke, 36. Cf. Luther’s analysis of this definition, Rupp and Watson, Luther and
Erasmus, 169 ff; Luther, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 8, 662 ff.
22 Rupp and Watson, Luther and Erasmus, 51 ff; cf. Erasmus, Ausgewählte Werke, 50 ff.
Erasmus’s eventual rejoinder to Luther’s De servo arbitrio, a two-volume work with
the title Hyperaspistes (liber I, 1526; liber II, 1527) in which he greatly clarified and
nuanced his position—albeit without ever fully grasping Augustine’s insistence on
the primacy of God’s agency in the act of faith—was largely ignored.
23 Erasmus had his critics also on the Catholic side. (For the long history of portrayals of Erasmus, see Augustijn,“Erasmus, Desiderius,” 12 ff.) For a rather devastating account of him, see the spiritus rector of modern Catholic Reformation
history, Joseph Lortz, The Reformation in Germany, vol. 1, trans. Ronald Walls
(New York: Herder, 1939, 1968), 144–56. “That is Erasmus’s basic attitude—his
vagueness. In theology, however, vagueness means to be a-dogmatic or undogmatic. In theology, Erasmus was a born relativist” (ibid., 150). More recent
research on Erasmus, however, has brought the picture of the comprehensive
skeptic into serious question. At least in light of his late work against Luther
Hyperaspistes I and II, it seems indisputable that Erasmus preferred a reticence of
theological assertion in questions where the Church had not promulgated a
binding teaching and opposed the declaration of premature definitions (definire),
but he allowed the making of theological assertions (asserere). Cf. Erasmus, Hyperaspistes I, in Ausgewählte Werke, 248–54.

Grace and Free Will

529

were undoubtedly Augustinian:24 “Rapt” (rapi) into communion by God,
the human receives genuine freedom.25 But in an effort to set the record
straight once and for all, Luther went too far: God is not merely the first
and final agent of human salvation but its sole agent, with the human
remaining purely passive (mere passive).
We can observe this radical passivity in relationship to God in a central—
albeit rhetorically overcharged—passage from Luther’s text, which has given
rise to the (false) charge of Manichean tendencies in Luther’s thought:
In short, if we are under the god of this world, away from the work and
Spirit of the true God, we are held captive to his will, as Paul says to Timothy (2 Tm 2:26), so that we cannot will anything but what he wills. . . .
And this we do readily and willingly, according to the nature of the will,
which would not be a will if it were compelled; for compulsion is rather
(so to say) “unwill” [noluntas]. But if a Stronger One comes who overcomes him and takes us as his spoil, then through his Spirit we are again
slaves and captives—though this is royal freedom—so that we readily will
and do what He wills.Thus the human will is placed between the two like
a beast of burden. If God rides it, it wills and goes where God wills. . . . If
Satan rides it, it wills and goes where Satan wills; nor can it choose to run
to either of the two riders or to seek him out, but the riders themselves
contend for the possession and control of it.26

One might want to question the Satanology implied in this passage and
also ask how any sensible account of personal responsibility for sin can be
maintained under these proposed conditions.27 However, much more
24 See Rupp and Watson, Luther and Erasmus, 174; Luther, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol.

8, 665. Here Luther drew upon the second book of Augustine’s late Contra
Iulianum, where Augustine used, for the only time, the notion “servum arbitrium”:
“Utinam Dei dono, et non libero, vel potius servo proprie voluntatis arbitrio”
(Contra Iulianum 2.8.23; PL 44:689). For the important differences between Augustine and Luther regarding the meaning of this concept, see Harry McSorley’s pertinent excursus “The Meaning of ‘Servum Arbitrium’ in Augustine,” in his Luther:
Right or Wrong? 90–93.
25 For the best recent interpretation of this undervalued but crucial aspect of Luther’s
De servo arbitrio, see Robert W. Jenson, “An Ontology of Freedom in the De servo
arbitrio of Luther,” Modern Theology 10 (1994): 247–52; and idem, Systematic Theology, vol. 2, The Works of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 105–8.
26 Rupp and Watson, Luther and Erasmus, 140; Luther, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 8,
635.
27 Cf. the nuanced and detailed discussion of the question “Does the devil cause
sin?” in Aquinas, De Malo, q. 3, a. 3, c., in which St. Thomas rightly concludes
that “the will’s movement directly comes from the will and God, who causes the
will, who alone acts within the will and can incline the will to whatever He
should will. But God cannot cause sin, as I have shown before. Therefore, we

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central to our present concern is the fact that the ontological link between
natural, or created, freedom and the acquired Christian freedom in the act
of conversion is severed. Luther’s legitimate Augustinian concern of rebutting even the subtlest form of (Semi-)Pelagianism is hampered by the
burden of what looks all too similar to the formulation in the Assertio and
hence all too much like theological determinism.28
The Erasmus–Luther exchange shows in a paradigmatic way that the
twin problems of Semi-Pelagianism and theological determinism arise
whenever theologians fail to uphold or straightforwardly deny the notion
that divine providence operates infallibly by way of both necessity and
contingency. The classical Thomist form of maintaining this notion was
to insist on the real distinction between necessitas consequentis and necessitas consequentiae. In his De servo arbitrio, Luther explicitly dismissed this
distinction as a sophistic wordplay; and this I regard as the most consequential philosophical error in Luther’s treatise.
The classical illustration for this distinction is that of Socrates sitting or
standing.When Socrates sits, he sits necessarily, as long as he is sitting (this
by necessitas consequentiae, or suppositionis), the reason being that it is
impossible for him to sit and not sit at the same time. However, Socrates
sits contingently, or freely (that is, not by necessitas consequentis), because it
is always possible for him to stand. On the other hand, consider a puppet
sitting on a chair. Unlike Socrates, the puppet must remain sitting on the
chair until it is removed by another force (necessitas consequentis). Hence
the crucial difference between the two types of necessity: Contingency is
excluded only by absolute necessity, not by conditional necessity.
conclude that only the will directly causes human sin. Therefore, it is clear that
the devil does not, properly speaking, directly cause sin but causes sin only as a
persuader.” Aquinas, De Malo, in The De Malo of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Brian
Davies, trans. Richard Regan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 247. All
subsequent quotations of De Malo will be taken from this edition.
28 I agree with McSorley’s judgment that “Luther’s necessitarian argument can be
interpreted in the sense of Thomas Aquinas, namely, that all things happen necessarily (ex suppositione) in view of God’s immutable will, but not by an absolute
necessity which would exclude free or contingent actions.We hold, further, that
Luther’s argument must be so interpreted if we are to avoid accusing Luther of
that type of glaring contradiction which one rarely finds in thinkers of Luther’s
stature” (Luther: Right or Wrong? 329, original emphasis). The most important
reason McSorley advances to support this judgment is that Luther indeed
“explicitly and repeatedly affirms that man has liberum arbitrium ‘in the realm of
things below him’ or ‘in respect of what is below him’ or ‘in his own kingdom’
where man ‘is led by his own will and not by the precepts of another’ and where
God ‘has granted him a free use of things at his own will’ ” (ibid., 327).

Grace and Free Will

531

St.Thomas offered a version of this example in De Malo and concluded:
“And so as we most certainly see that Socrates is sitting when he is sitting,
although it be not absolutely necessary on that account that he be sitting,
so also the contingency of things is not taken away because God sees
everything in itself that happens.” Most instructively, St. Thomas’s next
point anticipates the thrust of the third and final part of our essay:
And regarding God’s will, we should note that God’s will universally
causes being and every consequence of being, and so both necessity and
contingency. And his will is above the ordination of the necessary and
the contingent, as it is above the whole of created existing. And so we
distinguish the necessity and contingency in things in relation to
created causes, which the divine will has ordained in relation to their
effects, namely, that there be immutable causes of necessary effects and
mutable causes of contingent effects, not by the relationship of things
to God’s will, which is their universal cause.29

I will argue later that it is precisely St.Thomas’s metaphysics of being that
allows for the real distinction between necessitas consequentis and necessitas
consequentiae.
Because Luther rejected this crucial distinction as a “playing with
words,” he could not regard genuine contingency as the result of God’s
will.30 Rather, he saw it as
fundamentally necessary and salutary for a Christian, to know that God
foreknows nothing contingently, but that He foresees and purposes and
does all things by his immutable, eternal, and infallible will. . . . From
this it follows irrefutably that everything we do, everything that
happens, even if it seems to us to happen mutably and contingently,
happens in fact nonetheless necessarily and immutably, if you have
regard to the will of God.31

Clearly, Luther had to exclude genuine contingency from consideration,
because in his conceptual framework genuine contingency turns into a
potential competitor with God’s creative power. Only by embracing the
distinction between necessitas consequentis and necessitas consequentiae and
hence the kind of metaphysics of being that was put aside by nominalism
would he have been able to conceive of God’s creative power as genuinely
29 De Malo, q. 16, a. 7, ad 15; Davies, The De Malo of Thomas Aquinas, 911.
30 Rupp and Watson, Luther and Erasmus, 120; Luther, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol.

8, 617: “Quid autem istis ludibriis verborum efficiunt?”
31 Rupp and Watson, Luther and Erasmus, 118–19; Luther, Kritische Gesamtausgabe,

vol. 8, 615.

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Reinhard Hütter

transcendent, as a power that can operate through necessity as well as
contingency and thus can very well effect even the free choices of humans.
In his eagerness to undercut the Semi-Pelagian error once and for all, by
likening the human to a beast of burden with either God or Satan as its
rider, Luther seems to have accepted the price that in the act of conversion the human being has to be less than a human person, less than the
creature to whom God has granted the gift of created freedom. McSorley
rightly states that “a personal, free decision of faith is explicitly excluded
by Luther’s over-extended concept of servum arbitrium.”32
Both Erasmus and Luther seem to have operated under the de facto
influence of a new and increasingly dominant notion of human freedom
promoted by intellectual forces as substantively different and internally
diverse as nominalism and humanism.33 At the root of this new notion lay
a libertarian account of spontaneity based on a concept of contingency
operative on the same ontological plane as divine causality and hence in
a competitive relationship with it. Erasmus seems to have entertained this
notion of freedom in the human’s relationship to God, while Luther—in
a vigorous (hyper-) Augustinian reaction—regarded it strictly as a divine
attribute.The question of grace and freedom in the act of conversion thus
became a strict “either-or.” Either the human turns to God freely, that
is, by way of an act of spontaneous, self-determining freedom, and God

32 McSorley, Luther: Right or Wrong? 332. At the same time, McSorley rightly

discerns in the normative doctrinal teachings of Lutheranism, most expressly in
the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, a subtle yet significant modification of Luther’s position in De servo arbitrio: “The clear implication of article II,
18 is that the free will, illuminated and ruled by the Holy Spirit (“spiritu Dei
illuminatum et rectum”) can cooperate in man’s conversion, justice, and salvation
and can ‘believe and give assent when the Holy Spirit offers the grace of God.’
Such a doctrine is in full harmony with the teaching of the Council of Trent that
man’s free will, activated by God, cooperates by assenting to God in order to obtain
the grace of justification. The Lutheran confessional statements thus overcome
one of the chief objections against DSA [De servo arbitrio], namely, that it leaves
no place for man’s free decision in faith. The doctrine of man’s ‘unfreedom’
which is contained in the Lutheran confessional writings, especially in the
Formula of Concord, corresponds closely to the biblical-Catholic doctrine that the
free will of fallen man is totally incapable of doing anything that is truly good
coram Deo or of freeing itself from its sinful situation. It must be freed by the grace
of Christ. Then it becomes, in a formula reminiscent of Augustine, a liberated
will (arbitrium liberatum).The Holy Spirit begins the work of conversion in us; we
are able to cooperate with him because of the new powers and the gifts he gives
us” McSorley, Luther: Right or Wrong? 361–62 [original emphasis].
33 See Dupré, Passage to Modernity, 120–44.

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533

subsequently comes to the human’s aid; or God irresistibly turns the
human in an act in which the human remains completely passive.Thus the
following picture emerges: For both Erasmus and Luther, to say that God
and man act together in justification must mean that their joint action is
analogous to that of two men drawing the same load. Consequently, the
more one does, the less the other; whence, for Luther, realizing anew that
grace does everything in salvation, it follows of necessity that man does
nothing. But Erasmus desired to uphold the other aspect of tradition; that
salvation is truly ours implies that we are ourselves active.34
Should one wonder what the impact of Occam’s razor—entities are not
to be multiplied beyond necessity—might have been in the centuries in
which the via moderna unfolded?35 A rigorous nominalist conception of
liberum arbitrium just does not fit well with the notion of divine operative
grace. If both agents are to act, the first cause of any form of cooperation
must lie with one or the other. Luther took the one side and, in good
Augustinian but equally good nominalist fashion, deleted the unnecessary
factor, the “empty word,” liberum arbitrium. Erasmus took the other side and,
in good humanist but equally good nominalist fashion, defined liberum arbitrium competitively, as the sufficient first cause of its proper agency, God
then joining as an auxiliary cause strengthening and eventually securing the
human effort. Hence, what became unavailable to both Erasmus and
Luther was the radical, non-competitive transcendent causality of God as
upheld explicitly by St. Thomas and implicitly in the late works of St.
Augustine—a causality that allowed genuine contingency to fall utterly
under the infallible divine providence and hence illuminate the real

34 Bouyer, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, 156–57.
35 Rega Wood insists that Occam refrained from using the principle of parsimony,

that is, the razor, in the economy of salvation. See Rega Wood,“Ockham’s Repudiation of Pelagianism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, ed. Paul Vincent
Spade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 350–74, 358. Even so, that
would not have prevented his students in the via moderna from applying the rule.
Indeed, they might eventually have asked whether one would not want to be a
bit more consistent across the board, especially if there are no overarching metaphysical reasons not also to economize the economy of salvation. An indication
that this in fact was precisely the case in dismissing the distinction between necessitas consequentis and necessitas consequentiae can be found in the instructive study by
Martin Seils, Der Gedanke vom Zusammenwirken Gottes und des Menschen in Luthers
Theologie (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1962), 98, where Seils
points to Johannes Altenstaig’s nominalist Lexicon theologicum (Leiden, 1580).
Oberman, in the nominalist glossary at the end of his Harvest of Medieval Theology,
refers to an earlier version, Altenstaig’s Vocabularius theologie (Hagenau, 1517).

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Reinhard Hütter

distinction between the necessitas consequentis and the necessitas consequentiae,
or suppositionis.
When we characterize Erasmus’s and Luther’s positions as two reductive
Augustinianisms post-Occam, it would be false to assume that their respective accounts simply mirrored each other. The Erasmus of the De libero
arbitrio, while capturing the early Augustine and displaying remarkable
familiarity with Origen’s account of human freedom, missed the central
tenets of the late Augustine and remained disturbingly hospitable to the
kind of Semi-Pelagianism that found a home among Occamist theologians
as well as leading humanists. In other words, Erasmus’s Augustinianism was
erroneous primarily in matters theological. Conversely, Luther’s account,
while remaining fundamentally in accord with the central theological tenet
of the late Augustine (and the St. Thomas of the second Parisian period)
regarding the initium fidei, was erroneous primarily in matters philosophical.
The epochal Erasmus–Luther exchange offers exemplary evidence of the
fact that it is deeply problematic to discern the mystery of grace and free
will ostensibly on the grounds of Scripture alone while leaving the implied
philosophical conceptualities unaddressed.As we will see, both Erasmus and
Luther could claim with some legitimacy to be Augustinians of sorts, Erasmus drawing exclusively upon the early Augustine up to and including De
libero arbitrio and Luther relying completely on the Augustine of the late
Pelagian controversies. But how was it possible for both to see themselves as
apologists of Augustine, especially on the matter of grace and free will?
St. Augustine’s Complex Position36
It is notoriously difficult to get a full grasp of the vast corpus produced by
the preeminent “Doctor of Grace” during his long life. In his prolificacy he
might be rivaled only by St.Thomas and Martin Luther.Throughout his life,
St. Augustine maintained most of what he argued for in his relatively early
work On Free Will (De libero arbitrio).37 However, on one single—albeit
theologically decisive—point, he corrected his position. In a nutshell: The
early Augustine, prior to his elevation to the episcopate in 395, taught the
same error he later refuted most vigorously, namely, the Semi-Pelagian error,
36 For a concise introduction to the complex controversy in which Augustine was

involved toward the end of his life, see Marianne Djuth,“Initium fidei,” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, O.S.A. (Grand
Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 447–51, and for a
detailed historical reconstruction of Augustine’s teaching on operative grace, see
J. Patout Burns, The Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative Grace (Paris:
Études Augustiniennes, 1980).
37 St.Augustine began to compose this work in 388, one year after his baptism, and
completed it in 395.

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535

which attributed the beginning of salvation (initium fidei) to the human’s free
will.This claim is precisely what St.Thomas, by the time he was composing
Summa theologiae I–II, identified as the error of the early St. Augustine,38
what Erasmus submitted as his definition of “free will” in his De libero arbitrio, and what Luther most intensely attacked in his De servo arbitrio.
St. Augustine’s mature position emerged in a complex process. Around
the year 418, his doctrine of the divine operation of conversion, that is, of
the interior operative grace, seems to have been in place. It was only around
426, when he began to compose his treatise On Grace and Free Will that
he defended a second operative grace completing the first—the grace of
perseverance.39 For our purpose, three aspects of his mature position,
handily available in On Grace and Free Will, are most pertinent. First, he
continued to hold that God has revealed to us through his Holy Scriptures that there exists free will, liberum arbitrium, in the human being.40
After settling the abundant scriptural evidence for this truth, he emphasized, second, that for an action of the free will to be genuinely good, the
grace of God must precede and accompany it.41 Third, and most important, he argued that only after humans have received God’s grace do they
begin to have good merits.42 It might be safe to say that St. Augustine’s
theology of grace reaches its very peak in the axiom that these merits are
themselves God’s gifts. And here we find the core of a theology of merit,
sadly absent in the German pre-Reformation and early Reformation
period:“If therefore your good merits are gifts of God, then God does not
crown your merits insofar as they are your merits, but insofar as they are
his gifts.”43 At the very core of this teaching of merit stands St.Augustine’s
crucial distinction between two moments, or types, of grace: first, operative grace (gratia operans), through which God gives the good will itself to
perform good acts; and second, cooperative grace (gratia cooperans), through
which God cooperates with the human free will in the actual performance
38 Summa theologiae I–II, q. 114, a. 5, ad 1. Cf. Augustine, Retractationes, 1.23.
39 For a more detailed description, see the nuanced account in Burns, Development

of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative Grace, 141–82.
40 De gratia et libero arbitrio, 2.2: “Revelavit autem nobis per Scripturas suas sanctas,

esse in homine liberum voluntatis arbitrium” (PL 44:880).
41 Ibid., 4.6.
42 Ibid., 6.13.
43 Ibid., 6.15:“Si ergo Dei dona sunt bona merita tua, non Deus coronat merita tua

tanquam merita tua, sed tanquam dona sua” (PL 44:891). In a somewhat abbreviated form, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in the section on merit, quotes
from a sermon of Augustine: “Grace has gone before us; now we are given what
is due. . . . Our merits are God’s gifts” (Ante gratia donabatur, modo debitum
redditur. . . . Dona Ipsius sunt merita tua). Catechismus Catholicae Ecclesiae, no. 2009.

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of the good act. Hence, St. Augustine would maintain that God operates
the good will in human beings without their assent, but when human
beings will and do what is good, God cooperates with them. Put negatively,
without God’s operative and cooperative grace, neither faith, hope, and
love nor good works are possible.44
Lest Augustine’s teaching on the beginning of faith be dismissed as the
bygone position of an all too dominant theological figure, and just that—
the teaching of one theologian in the Church’s long tradition—consider
the fact that St. Augustine’s teaching on the initium fidei became the
Church’s teaching, at the Second Council of Orange.
An Augustinian Excursus: The Second Council of Orange
In 529, after a lengthy period of complex disputes between Augustinians
and Semi-Pelagians in the Gallic Church, the Second Council of Orange,
arguably one of the most important provincial Church councils in the
history of the Latin Church, declared Augustine’s teaching on the initium
fidei to be de fide—indispensable to the Christian faith.To cite, in only the
briefest form the teachings from Orange II most relevant for our
concerns:45
CANON III:“That the grace of God is not given at man’s call, but itself
makes man call for it.”46
CANON IV: “That God, to cleanse us from sin, does not wait for, but
prepares our will.”47
CANON V: “That the beginning of faith is not of ourselves, but of the
grace of God.”48
CANON VI: “That without the grace of God mercy is not bestowed
upon us when we believe and seek for it; rather, it is grace itself which
causes us to believe and seek for it.”49
44 Augustine draws upon Phil 2:13 and Rm 8:28 in order to support his notions of

gratia operans and cooperans, respectively.
45 The full text of the Latin original and an English translation can be found in

F. H.Woods, Canons of the Second Council of Orange, A.D. 529:Text, with an Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Oxford: James Thornton, 1882). Except where
noted otherwise, all quotations of the council text are taken from this edition.
46 “Quod gratia Dei non ad invocationem detur, sed ipsa faciat ut invocetur.” Cf.
Denzinger and Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 373.
47 “Quod Deus, ut a peccato purgemur, voluntatem nostram non expectet, sed
praeparet.” Cf. ibid., no. 374.
48 “Quod initium fidei non ex nobis, sed ex gratia Dei sit.” Cf. ibid., no. 375.
49 Quod sine gratia Dei credentibus et petentibus misericordia non conferatur, cum
gratia ipsa faciat ut credamus et petamus.” Cf. ibid., no. 376.

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537

CANON VII: “That by the powers of nature without grace we are not
able to think or choose any good thing pertaining to our salvation.”50
CANON IX: “Of the help of God, by which we do good works—It is
of God’s gift when we think rightly, and keep our steps from falsehood
and unrighteousness; for as often as we do good, God works in us and
with us that we may work.”51
CANON XXII: “Of the things which properly belong to men—No
man has anything of his own but falsehood and sin.”52 Which sounds
like a quotation from Martin Luther, who would say: “Free will prior
to grace is capable only of sinning.”53

The Second Council of Orange maintains time and again that liberum
arbitrium exists; it was not annihilated by original sin. At the same time,
“through the sin of the first man, free choice was so biased and weakened
that no one can afterwards either love God as he ought or believe in God
or work for God’s sake what is good, unless the grace of divine mercy
prevents [e.g., goes before or precedes: R.H.] him.”54 These canons and
definitions surely lack the conceptual sophistication and rhetorical brilliance
of Augustine’s own theology; nonetheless, they constitute the normative
50 “Quod viribus naturae bonum aliquid quod ad salutem pertineat, cogitare aut

eligere sine gratia non possimus.” Cf. ibid., no. 377.
51 “De adjutorio Dei, per quod bona operamur. Divini est muneris, cum et recte

cogitamus, et pedes nostros a falsitate et injustitia continemus; quoties enim bona
agimus, Deus in nobis atque nobiscum ut operemur operatur.” Cf. ibid., no. 379.
52 “De his quae hominum propria sunt. Nemo habet de suo nisi mendacium et
peccatum.” Cf. ibid., no. 392.
53 Luther, Contra malignum I. eccii iudicium, idem, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. 2, 647,
lines 3 ff: “Eccius Lipsiae concessit, liberum arbitrium ante gratiam non valere
nisi ad peccandum: ergo non valet ad bonum sed tantum ad malum. Ubi ergo
libertas eius?”
54 Woods, Canons of the Second Council of Orange, 45. “Quod per peccatum primi
hominis inclinatum et attenuatum fuerit liberum arbitrium, ut nullus postea aut
diligere Deum sicut oportuit, aut credere in Deum, aut operari propter Deum
quod bonum est possit, nisi eum gratia misericordiae divinae praevenerit” (44).
Canon 1 refers to the soul injured (“laesa”) by the sin of the first human. Canon
8 refers to the liberum arbitrium as weakened (“infirmatum”) and injured (“laesum”)
by it. In canon 13 we find an even stronger formulation. Not only is the choice
of the will weakened in the first human (“in primo homine infirmatum”); it is
also described as “lost” (“amissum”). Might this one word offer the key for an
ecumenically constructive understanding of what Martin Luther was pursuing
by way of rhetorical overkill in his De servo arbitrio in order to unmask and
confront a pervasive Semi-Pelagianism in a theological landscape dominated by
nominalism and humanism?

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inscription of fundamental tenets of Augustinian theology into the tradition
of the Latin Church.55
The fate of the Second Council of Orange, however, was a curious
one. As Henri Bouillard has convincingly argued, until about the eighth
century its decrees were held in high esteem.Yet from the tenth to the
middle of the sixteenth century, theologians seem to have been utterly
unaware of the fact that there had been a Second Council of Orange and
that it had produced these normative teachings, to the effect that Augustine’s late struggle against what was much later dubbed “Semi-Pelagianism” was lost on virtually all medieval theologians.56 Only at the Council
of Trent were these decrees rediscovered and reaffirmed.57 Following
Bouillard, Max Seckler and Joseph Wawrykow are inclined to think that
St.Thomas probably did not have access during his Roman period to the
acts of the Second Council of Orange, but quite likely did have access to
the full text of such important treatises of the late Augustine as De gratia
et libero arbitrio, De correptione et gratia, De dono perseverantiae, and De
praedestinatione sanctorum—texts that were otherwise either unavailable to
most medieval theologians or, at best, selectively available in the form of
various collections of Augustinian dicta.58 Hence, we should assume that
St.Thomas, in his later life and antecedent to his second Parisian period,
became a rare exception to the virtually collective medieval amnesia
about St. Augustine’s late theology of grace.59
55 One important tenet of the late Augustine’s theology, embraced by Luther and

Calvin, was expressly rejected by the council: “Aliquos vero ad malum divina
potestate praedestinatos esse, non solum non credimus, sed etiam si sunt qui
tantum malum credere velint, cum omni detestatione illis anathema dicimus.”
Woods, Canons of the Second Council of Orange, 46.
56 Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez S.Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Aubier, 1944),
97–102. Notable exceptions are the Lombard, Gregor of Rimini, and students of
St. Thomas Aquinas such as John Capreolus and Henry of Gorkum. For an
instructive study on this matter, see Denis R. Janz, Luther and Late Medieval
Thomism: A Study in Theological Anthropology (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983), esp. 43–91.
57 Denzinger and Schönmetzer’s Enchiridion symbolorum, 36th ed., puts it the
following way: “Hoc concilium, utpote solummodo provinciale plurimis ignotum et mox per saecula oblivioni traditum, disputationibus demum Concilii
Tridentini memoriae redditum est” (131).
58 Consider the fact that Luther “discovered” the late Augustine only shortly before
1517 in the relatively recent (1506) Amorbach edition of Augustine’s works.
59 See Max Seckler, Instinkt und Glaubenswille nach Thomas von Aquin (Mainz: MatthiasGrünewald, 1961), 90–98; and Joseph P. Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human
Action: “Merit” in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1995), 266–76.

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539

In a day and age when not a few post-Vatican II theologians are eager
to dilute or even jettison the Church’s teaching on original sin, as well as
prevenient grace, for the sake of an easier—but thereby misunderstood—
evangelization, it is crucial to remember and reappropriate the canons of
this council. Orange II’s unwavering insistence on prevenient grace, as well
as the arrant impotence of the liberum arbitrium in matters of salvation,
constitutes a small but critical bridge across the Reformation divide.To put
the matter differently, had the canons of the Second Council of Orange
been alive and well in late medieval theology, Luther would not have been
in need of “rediscovering” Augustine against the nominalist theologians of
the via moderna by rigorously appropriating, albeit in a new key, central
tenets of Augustine’s late theology. But alas, only at the Council of Trent
were the canons of Orange II fully reclaimed and reinstated, and this by
way of a thorough retrieval of the theology of the doctor communis.
Divine Transcendental Causality: St. Thomas’s
Surpassing Augustinian Synthesis
I shall conclude our tour d’horizon by turning finally and explicitly to the
doctor communis himself. I should like to propose that by way of the pivotal
Thomist axiom that grace presupposes as well as perfects nature 60—as
60 Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2:“Cum enim gratia non tollat naturam, sed perfi-

ciat, oportet quod naturalis ratio subserviat fidei; sicut et naturalis inclinatio
voluntatis obsequitur caritati.” ST I, q. 2, a. 2, ad 1: “Sic enim fides praesupponit
cognitionem naturalem, sicut gratia naturam, et ut perfectio perfectibile.” All
citations from the Summa theologiae are taken from Sancti Thomae de Aquino,
Summa theologiae, 3rd ed. (Turin: Edizioni San Paolo, 1999); the English citations
are taken from the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province,
originally published in 1911, revised in 1920, and reissued in 1948.
For an instructive account of the emergence of the axiom “gratia supponit
naturam” in the Patristic theologians to its full development in St. Bonaventure
and St.Thomas, see J. B. Beumer, S.J.,“Gratia supponit naturam: Zur Geschichte
eines theologischen Prinzips,” Gregorianum 20 (1939): 381–406. I would emphasize that in the subsequent discussion of St. Thomas I shall consider exclusively
his mature views on the initium fidei from his second period of teaching at Paris
(1268–72). On his biography, see exhaustively Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., St.Thomas
Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC:
The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), esp. 197–223; on the development of St. Thomas’s thought on the initium fidei, see the definitive account by
Bernard Lonergan, The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 1, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St.Thomas Aquinas, ed. Frederick E. Crowe
and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 21–43,
98–104; and on the related topic of merit, see Wawrykow, God’s Grace and Human
Action. In the following, I am especially indebted to Lonergan’s penetrating
analysis of operative grace in St.Thomas’s theology.

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substantiated by St.Thomas’s metaphysics of being, which climaxes in the
surpassing beauty of divine transcendental causality—can we successfully
avert the reductive alternatives of Erasmus’s theologically erroneous as
well as Luther’s philosophically erroneous Augustinianism.
Undoubtedly, St. Thomas’s salient axiom serves first and foremost to
illuminate the supernatural end of humanity, the beatific vision, and the
way God moves us to this end. Nevertheless, the same axiom also serves
as a premier aid in understanding that the root of the mystery of divine
and human operation in the act of conversion lies in the very nature of
created freedom itself. For human free will, in its very natural structure,
is a created reality all the way down. Hence, not only does it fall without
remainder under the purview of divine providence,61 but even more
important, natural freedom as created reality is constituted and sustained
by God’s first gratuitous act ad extra, namely, his act of creation, which is
to give being (dare esse).62 It is precisely in this regard that St.Thomas is
most faithful to St. Augustine’s mature intentions by developing a metaphysics of being that accounts for the ontological difference, that is, the
principal difference between Creator and creature and, simultaneously,
for utter creaturely dependence upon the Creator.63 In the dare esse, the
first and fundamental act of divine gratuity, God is the sole agent, such
that ipsum esse is God’s first effect.64 This effect, however, does not subsist
by itself but only in the plenitude of beings.65 The latter we might conve-

61 On this topic, see Stephen A. Long,“Divine Providence and John 15:5,” in Read-

ing John with St.Thomas Aquinas, eds. Dauphinais and Levering, 140–52.
62 I Sent., 37.1.1c.: “Creare . . . est dare esse.” In elucidating divine transcendental

causality primarily by way of St.Thomas’s metaphysics of being, the subsequent
modest and rather preliminary sketch does by no means claim to offer a sufficiently elaborated analysis of the human act in the initium fidei. Rather, a full
account of the act of conversion would need to attend in much greater detail
than the scope of the present essay allows to St.Thomas’s metaphysical psychology, which is as precise as it is compelling in its analytic rigor.
63 For a comprehensive and detailed recent historical reconstruction of St.Thomas’s
metaphysics of being, see John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2000); and for attempts at reconstructing the metaphysics of being strictly ad mentem Sancti Thomae, see the numerous instructive
and penetrating articles by Lawrence Dewan, O.P.
64 Quaestiones disputatae de anima, 6, ad 2. “Ipsum esse est actus ultimus qui participabilis est ab omnibus; ipsum autem nihil participat.”
65 Sententia libri Metaphysicae, 12.1 (Marietti 2419): “Ens dicitur quasi esse habens,
hoc autem solum est substantia, quae subsistit”; cf. ST I, q. 45, a. 4, c.

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niently abbreviate with the notion “nature.”66 Hence, in and through the
act of being, God is always already closer to the creature than the creature to itself.67
Since quite obviously for St.Thomas, free will must be part and parcel
of creation all the way down, the substantiation of his theology of
creation by his metaphysics of being obtains also, for our purposes most
relevantly, for the reality of natural freedom. Consider his reasoning:
The movement of the will is from within, as also is the movement of
nature. Now although it is possible for something to move a natural
thing, without being the cause of the thing moved, yet that alone,
which is in some way the cause of a thing’s nature, can cause a natural
movement in that thing. . . . Accordingly man endowed with a will is
sometimes moved by something that is not his cause; but that his
voluntary movement be from an exterior principle that is not the cause
of his will, is impossible.
Now the cause of the will can be none other than God. And this
is evident for two reasons. First, because the will is a power of the
rational soul, which is caused by God alone, by creation, as was stated
in the first part (q. 90, a. 2). Secondly, it is evident from the fact that the
will is ordained to the universal good. Wherefore nothing else can be
the cause of the will, except God Himself,Who is the universal good:
while every other good is good by participation, and is some particular
good, and a particular cause does not give a universal inclination. (ST
I–II, q. 9, a. 6, c.)

Bernard Lonergan offers a succinct interpretation of St. Thomas’s argument:“Because God creates the soul, He alone can operate within the will;
again, because the will tends to the bonum universale, this tendency cannot
be the effect of any particular cause but only of the universal cause, God.”68
God causes the will—which is just one particular faculty of the soul,
together with the soul itself—to be according to its own particular nature,
that is, to tend to the bonum universale, whereby “inclinations of the will
remain indeterminately disposed to many things”69 depending on what
66 St.Thomas uses the notion of “nature” in numerous analogous ways. I refer here

to his use of “nature” in the general sense of the whole order of creation (“Ipse
est conditor et ordinator naturae.” De potentia, q. 1, a. 3, ad 1) and subsequently,
also to his use of “nature” as the essence of a thing, that is, that by virtue of which
it is what it is, under the aspect of its characteristic action. See De ente et essentia,
1, 45.
67 ST I, q. 8, a. 1, c.:“Esse autem est illud quod est magis intimum cuilibet, et quod
profundius omnibus inest, cum sit formale respectu omnium quae in re sunt.”
68 Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 103.
69 Aquinas, De Malo, q. 6, c.; Davies, The De Malo of Thomas Aquinas, 457.

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the intellect proposes to the will as a good to tend to. Hence, the will in
its particular nature is a function of God’s dare esse:
What first moves the intellect and the will is something superior to
them, namely, God.And since He moves every kind of thing according
to the nature of the moveable thing, . . . He also moves the will according to its condition, as indeterminately disposed to many things, not in
a necessary way.Therefore, if we should consider the movement of the
will regarding the performance of an act, the will is evidently not
moved in a necessary way.70

So also the external acts that result from deliberation (consilium) and
choice (electio)—from the interplay between intellect and will71—that is,
acts of genuine contingency, do not fall outside the divine giving of being
and hence remain fully under the purview of divine providence:“And so
it is not contrary to freedom that God cause acts of free choice.”72
What we have considered thus far pertains to nature, the effect of the
dare esse, God’s first and fundamental gratuity ad extra.The initium fidei does
not, however, belong to this effect; rather, it is the distinctive effect of
grace. Grace in the precise sense must be understood as a second, unfathomable, surpassing gratuity (always already presupposing the gratuity of
the dare esse) and, in that, fundamentally different from nature by (1) being
contingent in relationship to nature, and (2) efficaciously turning human
beings from sin to God, directing, and moving them to their supernatural
end. Lest the fundamentally and exclusively Christological and pneumatological character of grace be lost, let me stress that for St.Thomas “the
mystery of Christ’s Incarnation and Passion is the way by which men
obtain beatitude” (ST II–II, q. 2, a. 7, c.); specifically, “men become
receivers of this grace through God’s Son made man, whose humanity
grace filled first, and thence flowed forth to us” through the action of the
Holy Spirit (ST I–II, q. 108, a. 1, c.). Consequently, grace is most intrinsically and hence constitutively the created effect in the human being of the
Son’s and the Spirit’s saving mission (ST I, q. 43, a. 3).
70 Davies, The De Malo of Thomas Aquinas, 459.
71 For a more detailed account of the intellect’s and the will’s interaction, see my

chapter in Reason and the Reasons of Faith, ed. Paul J. Griffiths and Reinhard
Hütter (London/New York: T&T Clark International, 2005), 160–93, esp.
174–78; and most recently, Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., By Knowledge & By Love:
Charity and Knowledge in the Moral Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Washington,
DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 18–62.
72 Aquinas, De Malo, q. 3, a. 2, ad 4; Davies, The De Malo of Thomas Aquinas, 239.“Et
sic <non> repugnat libertati quod Deus est causa actus liberi arbitrii.” Ibid., 238.

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Grace works by the logic of convenientia—a very Augustinian category—that is, by the logic of an unfathomable fittingness, calling forth
praise and delight. But because nature is the “way of being,” grace always
comes “on the way of being.”73 For everything is included in the act of
being.74 Yet what does this mean for grace? Is grace to be understood as
an intensification of being (esse), on the same scale as nature, just infinitely
more? No. For if it were so, the act of being would not be perfect in and
of itself but would require grace for its perfection. Is grace then extrinsic
to the act of being, a second act, foreign to and superimposed upon the
first? Grace cannot be that either, since everything is contained in the act
of being, the actus ultimus. Rather, the instantaneous unfolding of the actus
essendi into the order and hierarchy of beings entails that everything is
generally ordered to God, who is the universal good.This ordering comes
about by way of the ordering of each being to its own proper ends.As we
will see, grace is the created effect of the gratuitous divine act—always
coming on the way of being—that directs human beings to their supernatural end, that is, to God as their overarching specific end. But we are
getting ahead of ourselves.
Remember that at present we are concerned exclusively with the
initial conversion of the human being sub conditione peccati to God, an act
that does not involve an infusion of habitual grace but solely the original
and fundamental operation of God converting the soul to himself—in
short, operative grace. Hence, it should not surprise that the initium fidei
is not the total conversion St.Thomas envisages but rather the very beginning of a comprehensive conversion in which the human—on the basis
of habitual grace—increasingly takes part:
Every movement of the will towards God can be termed a conversion
to God. And so there is a threefold turning to God.The first is by the
perfect love of God; this belongs to the creature enjoying the possession of God; and for such conversion, consummate grace is required.
The next turning to God is that which merits beatitude; and for this
there is required habitual grace, which is the principle of merit. The
third conversion is that whereby a man disposes himself so that he may
have grace; for this no habitual grace is required; but the operation of
God,Who draws the soul towards Himself, according to Lamentations
5:21: “Convert us, O Lord, to Thee, and we shall be converted.” (ST I,
q. 62, a. 2, ad 3)
73 Ferdinand Ulrich, Homo Abyssus: Das Wagnis der Seinsfrage, 2nd ed., ed. Martin

Bieler and Florian Pitschl (Freiburg: Johannes Verlag, 1998), 333.
74 De potentia, 1.1, c.:“Esse significat aliquid completum et simplex sed non subsis-

tens.”

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The conversion identified by St.Thomas in the third place is indeed the
first and fundamental one, and the only one considered here.
Operative grace denotes the special act of God by which the human
being is efficaciously ordered to God as his or her supernatural end, that
is, his or her overarching particular end. Put differently, operative grace is
nothing other than the divine initium of the second gratuity by which
God brings about the returning to God of the actus essendi, as it comes to
subsist as human being, a returning that comes about by way of a gratuitous elevation of the human faculties of intellect and will. In order to
understand the operation of grace correctly, we need to consider five
distinctive, albeit closely interrelated, aspects of operative grace.
1. The orientation of the will. First, we need to call attention to the fact that
in operative grace God acts on the will and not on the intellect. As
Lonergan rightly avers: “The first act does not presuppose any object
apprehended by the intellect; God acts directly on the radical orientation of the will.”75 Because the will is the efficient cause of all human
acts and because it moves all the other powers of the soul to their acts,
the will is the first principle of sin (ST I–II, q. 74, a. 1). And consequently, of all the powers of the soul, the will has been most fundamentally infected by original sin (ST I–II, q. 83, a. 3; De Malo, q. 4, a.
2, c.). For this reason, it is the will that first and foremost needs to be
restored. However, operative grace does not merely restore the will but
orients the will such that God becomes the overarching specific end
to which the will tends. It is on the basis of this gratuitous reorientation that the will commands the intellect to the act of faith.76
2. The special motion of operative grace. Next we need to emphasize that
St. Thomas distinguishes the special motion of operative grace very
clearly from the will’s universal motion to the bonum universale:

75 Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 128. Lonergan’s insight does not contradict the fact

that every free act of the will is informed by the intellect (ST I–II, q. 77, a. 2, c.).
Concrete sin is in the act of the liberum arbitrium and hence is the product of the
will as well as the intellect: “Dicendum quod peccatum essentialiter consistit in
actu liberi arbitrii, quod est facultas voluntatis et rationis.” ST I–II, q. 77, a. 6
[emphasis added].
76 ST II–II, q. 2, a. 9, c.: “Now the act of believing is an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth at the command of the will moved by the grace of God”;
and ST II–II, q. 6, a. 1, c.: “Faith, as regards the assent which is the chief act of
faith, is from God moving man inwardly by grace.” For a detailed and nuanced
account, see Sherwin, By Knowledge & By Love, 119–46.

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God moves man’s will, as the Universal Mover, to the universal
object of the will, which is good. And without this universal
motion, man cannot will anything. But man determines himself by
his reason to will this or that, which is true or apparent good.
Nevertheless, sometimes God moves some specially [specialiter] to
the willing of something determinate, which is good; as in the case
of those whom He moves by grace. (ST I–II, q. 9, a. 6, ad 3)

Lonergan rightly points out that while this grace may be a habitual grace, “it may also be an actual grace that is a change of will.”77
In order to substantiate this claim, Lonergan refers to De Malo, where
St.Thomas states: “And an external cause alters free choice, as when
God by grace changes the will of a human being from evil to good,
as Proverbs 21:1 says: ‘The heart of the king is in God’s hands, and
God will turn it whithersoever He willed.’ ”78 This changing of the
will from evil to good comes always on the way of being and consequently does not violate or contradict the will’s proper operation. For
“the will advanced to its first movement in virtue of the instigation
[instinctus] of some exterior mover [exterior movens]” (ST I–II, q. 9, a.
4, c.), who is God himself (ST I–II, q. 9, a. 6, c.).Thanks to the divine
instinctus,79 the appetitive inclination of the will tends to God himself
as the overarching specific good.
3. God’s external, transcendental causality operating internally. St.Thomas uses
the notion of an external cause to refer to God’s alteration of free
choice. “External” is here distinguished from “internal,” where the
latter is the proximate cause in the order of secondary causality. God
as external cause is in no way extrinsic to the creature’s nature or existence but external only to the creature’s proximate causality. It is
precisely the metaphysics of being that prevents this “externality”
from being understood in the modern sense of a “first cause,” issued
by a “highest” or “perfect” being—that is, infinitely superior to all
other causes and beings but still on an ontic continuum and hence in
a competitive relationship with them because it cannot transcend the
ontological level of secondary causality. For St.Thomas, God’s external causality remains transcendent causality all the way down and
77 Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 104.
78 De Malo, q. 16, a. 5, c.; Davies, The De Malo of Thomas Aquinas, 877.
79 At this point I can only stress the pivotal role the term “instinctus” plays in the

development of St. Thomas’s thoroughly anti-Semi-Pelagian theology of grace.
For a full account, see Seckler, Instinkt und Glaubenswille ; and more recently and
accessibly, Sherwin, By Knowledge & By Love, 139–44.

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hence is not competitive with the internal proximate causality of the
will—whose first universal mover is also God.
Lonergan, in his interpretation of St.Thomas’s theology of operative grace, overcomes this nocuous modernist misunderstanding thanks
to the “theorem of divine transcendence,” which he sees at work in St.
Thomas: “The Thomist higher synthesis was to place God above and
beyond the created orders of necessity and contingence: because God
is universal cause, his providence must be certain; but because He is a
transcendent cause, there can be no incompatibility between terrestrial
contingence and the causal certitude of providence.”80
It would be a mistake, however, to create a competitive relationship between what Lonergan describes as a theorem and St.Thomas’s
metaphysics of being.81 Rather, the theorem is consequent upon the
cosmic emanation scheme operative in St. Thomas’s metaphysics so
that the former presupposes the latter: “For an instrument is a lower
cause moved by a higher so as to produce an effect within the category proportionate to the higher; but in the cosmic hierarchy all
causes are moved except the highest, and every effect is at least in the
category of being; therefore, all causes except the highest are instruments.”82 David Burrell brings Lonergan’s insistence upon God’s
transcendent causality (that is, transcending necessity as well as
contingency) succinctly to the point when he states:
So what freely comes forth from God in its very being can be
brought to act freely by that same One who keeps it in existence.
The how escapes us in both cases, of course, but using the language
of “theorems” links us expressly to the originating activity, and so

80 Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 81–82.
81 Lonergan characterizes a theorem as “something known by understanding the

data already apprehended and not something known by adding a new datum to
the apprehension, something like the principle of work and not something like
another lever, something like the discovery of gravitation and not something like
the discovery of America” (idem, Grace and Freedom, 147). David Burrell rightly
points out that “we must speak here of theorems and of their corollaries, . . . because
we cannot determine anything in the creature which indicates that it is an instrument. . . .That is, we know that the hammer did not build the house, yet that the
carpenters who did are themselves instruments as well—that we cannot see.Yet
we must assert it, although we can only assert it as a theorem.” David B. Burrell,
C.S.C., “Jacques Maritain and Bernard Lonergan on Divine and Human Freedom,” in The Future of Thomism, ed. Deal W. Hudson and Dennis W. Moran (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 165 [original emphasis].
82 Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 83.

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reminds us that just as the how of creation escapes us (it is not a
motion), so does the manner in which God causes agents to cause
by “applying causes to effects.”83

To summarize: Under the category of God as transcendent cause, operative grace is identical with the very act of the will willing God as
supernatural end. Again quoting Lonergan:“God as external principle
moves the will to the end, and in special cases He moves it by grace to
a special end. Conspicuous among the latter is conversion, which is
expressed entirely in terms of willing the end.”84
4. Divine instrumentality: The external cause moving internally. When St.
Thomas responds to the question whether human beings can prepare
themselves for grace without the external aid of grace, he emphasizes
that the gift of habitual grace is the precondition for right operation
and enjoyment of God. In other words, the very medium for right
operation and enjoyment of God is the acquired Christian freedom.
But what is the first cause of this acquired freedom? Remember that
it is precisely in this context that St.Thomas introduces the concept of
the divine instinctus. Is the first cause of this freedom internal, intrinsic
to its own proper causality—leading to an infinite regress of causes? Or
is it external—violating the very nature of free choice itself? We must
conclude that the first cause moves internally, interior to the will itself,
but as external cause—the divine instinctus. Clearly, it is only a genuinely
transcendent mode of causality that can fulfill these conditions. Hence,
the divine instinctus cannot be simply the first in a chain of secondary
causality. Rather, the whole sequence of secondary causality must
relate instrumentally to the transcendent first cause.
Let us attend to St.Thomas’s response at length:
Now in order that man prepare himself to receive this gift, it is not
necessary to presuppose any further habitual gift in the soul, otherwise we should go on to infinity. But we must presuppose a gratuitous gift of God,Who moves the soul inwardly or inspires the good
wish. For in these two ways do we need the Divine assistance, as
stated above (aa. 2, 3). Now that we need the help of God to move
us, is manifest. For since every agent acts for an end, every cause must
direct its effect to its end, and hence since the order of ends is
according to the order of agents or movers, man must be directed to

83 Burrell, “Jacques Maritain and Bernard Lonergan on Divine and Human Free-

dom,” 166.
84 Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 125.

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the last end by the motion of the first mover, and to the proximate
end by the motion of any of the subordinate movers; . . . And thus
since God is the first Mover simply, it is by His motion that everything seeks Him under the common notion of good, whereby
everything seeks to be likened to God in its own way. Hence Dionysius says (De Divinis Nominibus, IV) that “God turns all to Himself.”
But He directs righteous men to Himself as to a special end [ad
specialem finem], which they seek, and to which they wish to cling,
according to Psalm 72:28,“it is good for me to adhere to my God.”
And that they are turned to God can only spring from God’s having
turned them. Now to prepare oneself for grace is, as it were, to be
turned to God; just as, whoever has his eyes turned away from the
light of the sun, prepares himself to receive the sun’s light, by turning his eyes towards the sun. Hence it is clear that man cannot
prepare himself to receive the light of grace except by the gratuitous
help of God moving him inwardly.85

Note the crucial sentence: “Now to prepare oneself for grace is, as it
were, to be turned to God” (Hoc autem est praeparare se ad gratiam,
quasi ad Deum converti). To prepare oneself for the gift of habitual
grace, for acquired freedom, is to be turned to God. Such is the grammatical instantiation of understanding God as transcendent cause to
move interiorly as a genuinely external cause. In other words, one’s own
act of preparation is caused by God without that act’s losing its integrity
as the will’s proper operation, being drawn toward its end—but now
being the special end of adhering to God. If this indeed obtains, there
is no ontological difference between operative and cooperative grace;
rather, they are to be understood as two moments of God’s actual grace
simply differentiated according to their different effects.86
85 ST I–II, q. 109, a. 6, c. [original emphasis]: “Sic igitur, cum Deus sit primum

movens simpliciter, ex eius motione est quod omnia in ipsum convertantur
secundum communem intentionem boni, per quam unumquodque intendit
assimilari Deo secundum suum modum. Unde et Dionysius, in libro De Divinis
Nominibus [c. 4 §10], dicit quod Deus ‘convertit omnia ad seipsum.’ Sed homines
iustos convertit ad seipsum sicut ad specialem finem, quem intendunt, et cui
cupiunt adhaerere sicut bono proprio; secundum illud Psalmi 72 [28]: ‘Mihi
adhaerere Deo bonum est.’ Et ideo quod homo convertatur ad Deum, hoc non
potest esse nisi Deo ipsum convertente. Hoc autem est praeparare se ad gratiam,
quasi ad Deum converti: sicut ille qui habet oculum aversum a lumine solis, per
hoc se praeparat ad recipiendum lumen solis, quod oculos suos convertit versus
solem. Unde patet quod homo non potest se praeparare ad lumen gratiae suscipiendum, nisi per auxilium gratuitum Dei interius moventis.”
86 ST I–II, q. 111, a. 2, ad 4:“Operating and cooperating grace are the same grace;
but are distinguished by their different effects.”

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5. Operative and cooperative grace: “voluntas mota et non movens and voluntas mota et movens.” Let us now attend more specifically to the particular distinction between operative and cooperative grace. In order to
appreciate this distinction, we need to grasp that it presupposes a
pivotal distinction in the voluntary action itself:
Now, in a voluntary action, there is a twofold action, namely, the
interior action of the will, and the external action: and each of
these actions has its object. The end is properly the object of the
interior act of the will: while the object of the external action, is
that on which the action is brought to bear. (ST I–II, q. 18, a. 6, c.)

While the interior action is concerned solely with the end itself, the
external action pertains to the means that lead to the end, means that
can entail proper proximate ends of their own, which are respectively
objects of interior acts of the will.
This distinction is put to work as St.Thomas considers how God
converts the soul to himself by giving himself to the will as a special
good to be desired:
Now there is a double act in us. First, there is the interior act of the
will, and with regard to this act the will is a thing moved, and God is
the mover [istum actum, voluntas se habet ut mota, Deus autem ut movens];
and especially when the will, which hitherto willed evil, begins to
will good. And hence, inasmuch as God moves the human mind to
this act, we speak of operating grace. (ST I–II, q. 111, a. 2, c.)

Hence, the operative grace of conversion is the very act of the will
willing God as the overarching special good to be desired, that is, as
willing God as the supernatural end.87 Lonergan explains:
The voluntas mota et non movens is the reception of divine action in
the creature antecedent to any operation on the creature’s part. So far
from being a free act, it lies entirely outside the creature’s power. But
87 Though not irresistibly: “God does not cause grace not to be supplied to some-

one; rather, those not supplied with grace offer an obstacle to grace insofar as they
turn themselves away from the light that does not turn itself away, as Dionysius
says” (De Malo, q. 3, a. 1, ad 8; Davies, The De Malo of Thomas Aquinas, 233).
However, if God so wishes, God can move the will infallibly by inclining the
person to good unto the end. Hence, “perseverance of the wayfarer does not fall
under merit, since it depends solely on the divine motion, which is the principle
of all merit. Now God freely bestows the good of perseverance, on whomsoever
He bestows it.” ST I–II, q. 114, a. 9, c.

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though not a free act in itself, it is the first principle of free acts, even
internal free acts such as faith, fear, hope, sorrow, and repentance.88

Accordingly, the internal act of faith, arising from the new principle,
is a free act, an act of liberum arbitrium: “Now the act of believing is
an act of the intellect assenting to the divine truth at the command
of the will moved by the grace of God, so that it is subject to the free
will [liberum arbitrium] in relation to God; and consequently the act
of faith can be meritorious” (ST II–II, q. 2, a. 9, c.).
How does St. Thomas account for the second aspect of the
“twofold action,” the exterior acts by which the human person
chooses (on the basis of the will’s consent with the intellect’s consilium) the means to attain the end?
Since [the exterior act] is commanded by the will, . . . the operation of this act is attributed to the will. And because God assists us
in this act, both by strengthening our will interiorly so as to attain
to the act, and by granting outwardly the capability of operating,
it is with respect to this that we speak of cooperating grace. (ST
I–II, q. 111, a. 2, c.)

Consequently, as St. Thomas emphasizes: “God does not justify us
without ourselves, because whilst we are being justified we consent
to God’s justification [ justitiae] by a movement of our free will.
Nevertheless this movement is not the cause of grace, but the effect;
hence the whole operation pertains to grace.”89 The difference
between voluntas mota et non movens and voluntas mota et movens is the
difference between willing the end and willing the means leading to
this end. Voluntas mota et movens simply renders the actualization of
acquired freedom in the efficacious choice of means, as the will’s
proximate causality is now directed to its special end, God himself.90
88 Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 424.
89 ST I–II, q. 111, a. 2, ad 2: “Deus non sine nobis nos iustificat, quia per motum

liberi arbitrii, dum iustificamur, Dei iustitiae consentimus. Ille tamen motus non
est causa gratiae, sed effectus. Unde tota operatio pertinet ad gratiam.”
90 In his commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans—another of his late
works—St.Thomas applies this actualization of the acquired freedom to the reality
of the spiritual person, that is, the person who is moved by the higher prompting
[superiori instinctu] of the Holy Spirit:“Homo spiritualis non quasi ex motu propriae
voluntatis principaliter, sed ex instinctu Spiritus Sancti inclinatur ad aliquid agendum. . . . Non tamen per hoc excluditur quin viri spirituales, per voluntatem et
liberum arbitrium operentur, quia ipsum motum voluntatis et liberi arbitrii Spiritus
Sanctus in eis causat, secundum illud Phil. II: Deus est qui operatur in nobis velle et

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Thus, cooperative grace is nothing but the grace of conversion, the
willing of the supernatural end, but now as moving the will to will
the means leading to this end.
What remained ontologically implicit in St. Augustine’s controversial concerns becomes explicit by way of St.Thomas’s metaphysics
of being. Lonergan stresses rightly that
in both cases the same theory of instrumentality and of freedom is
in evidence: the will has its strip of autonomy, yet beyond this there
is the ground from which free acts spring; and that ground God
holds and moves as a fencer moves his whole rapier by grasping only
the hilt.When the will is mota et non movens, solus autem Deus movens,
dicitur gratia operans. On the other hand, when the will is et mota et
movens, dicitur gratia cooperans. . . . In actual grace, divine operation
effects the will of the end to become cooperation when this will of
the end leads to an efficacious choice of means.91

Because it comes on the way of being (esse), operative grace, by way
of the divine instinctus, is closer to the human will than the will to
itself. Consequently, operative grace neither competes nor conflicts
with the exercise of created freedom, or electio humana, as St.Thomas
calls it. Rather, divine instrumentality and created freedom are the
two sides of one and the same reality.
Now we have reached the apposite point to revisit the topic of
necessity and contingency that drove the debate between Erasmus and
Luther. Recall that Erasmus understood Wyclif ’s and Luther’s “necessitarianism” to imply that humans are only instruments in God’s hand,
with their liberum arbitrium reduced to nothing and therefore their very
humanity reduced to a subhuman form of existence. In an important
sense, Luther agreed with Erasmus’s judgment, except that he regarded
such a humiliation as the most appropriate medicine to destroy the
worst pathogen of original sin, superbia. Neither Erasmus nor Luther
was able conceptually to conceive divine transcendent causality in the
way St.Thomas did.Thus the possibility of understanding instrumentality in a way that would encompass necessity as well as contingency
was lost on them. While Erasmus even referred to the Scholastic
distinction between necessitas consequentis and necessitas consequentiae in
order to score a point against Luther’s position, he did not have the
slightest clue how to put this crucial distinction to work conceptually.
perficere.” Super romanos, 8.3; S.Thomae Aquinitatis Doctoris Angelici in Omnes S. Pauli
Apostoli Epistolas Commentarii, vol. 1, 7th ed. (Turin: Marietti, 1929), 111.
91 Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 147.

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Had he not despised the discipline of Scholastic argumentation and
been thoroughly uninformed with regard to St.Thomas’s metaphysics
of being, he might have been able to respond differently to Luther’s
alleged necessitarianism. Luther, as we have noted, rejected the distinction itself on clearly nominalist grounds and therefore faced the problem of a potential account of contingency that would be inherently
competitive with the infallibility of the divine will and thus had to be
rejected as well.
We have seen that an account of divine causality that transcends
as well as encompasses both necessity and contingency depends on a
metaphysics of being concordant with the notion that “God’s will
universally causes being and every consequence of being, and so both
necessity and contingency.”92 Moreover, created freedom, the capacity to choose between alternatives and decide for or against a course
of action, remains always intact, even sub conditione peccati, because the
free will pertains solely to the interior act of deliberation in regard to
the end(s), along with the electio of the external means to move
toward the end(s). Regarding the end to which it is drawn, it is
“wired” to the bonum universale. Under the condition of sin, this can
take the form of whatever seems to be a good, even to a person fully
habituated into malice.93 Only when the will’s inclination is reoriented by God’s particular operation of grace, the divine instinctus, to
the special overarching end, indeed, the supernatural end per se—
God himself—does the quality of the human’s electio fundamentally
change. Nonetheless, because God as transcendent, external cause, by
way of operative grace, moves internally, the ensuing change is the
person’s own preparation.
So, my modest proposal is simply this: By way of his metaphysics
of being, as it accounts for divine transcendental causality “all the way
down,” St. Thomas offers a salutary way of preserving St. Augustine’s
fundamental insight that grace and free will do not need to come into
a conflictual competition in the mystery of the initium fidei. On matters
of grace and free will in the initium fidei, St. Thomas is a profoundly
Augustinian theologian. This is obvious. What is less obvious and in
92 De Malo, q. 16, a. 7, ad 15; Davies, The De Malo of Thomas Aquinas, 911.
93 De Malo, q. 3, a. 12, c.: “And a habit sometimes inclines the will, when custom-

ary behavior has, as it were, turned the inclination to such a good into a habit or
natural disposition for the transient good, and then the will of itself is inclined
to the good by its own motion apart from any emotion. And this is to sin by
choice, that is, deliberately or purposely or even maliciously.” Davies, The De
Malo of Thomas Aquinas, 301.

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need of recovery is the fact that even his metaphysics of being, rightly
understood, ultimately serves none but proper Augustinian ends and
that by way of his metaphysics of being St.Thomas is capable of achieving a surpassing Augustinian synthesis of unparalleled depth and beauty.
The ongoing evangelical and hence ecumenical significance of this
synthesis is that it offers a potent prophylactic against the pathogens of
(semi-) Pelagian as well as (quasi-) necessitarian accounts of the initium
N&V
fidei, numerously afloat in contemporary theology.94

94 Unfortunately, the important and original work by Dom M. John Farrelly,

O.S.B., Predestination, Grace, and Free Will (Westminster, MD: Newman Press,
1964), came to my attention only after the completion of this essay. In this noteworthy book—in good Benedictine fashion deeply immersed in the study of
Scripture and the patristic tradition—Farrelly, not unlike Lonergan in the end,
but by way of other means—argues for the surpassing superiority of St.Thomas’s
position in comparison to those advanced by the contestants in the (in)famous
“De auxiliis” controversy.Anyone wishing to return to the speculative intricacies
of this greatly instructive controversy cannot afford to bypass Farrelly’s book, for
the latter demonstrates convincingly that speculative theology can only afford to
ignore at its own peril the rich wisdom accrued by positive theology’s surpassing attention to Scripture and the patristic tradition. Contrary to some later
scholastics, St. Thomas never committed this mistake, nor for that matter the
opposite one we had the occasion to witness in Luther and Erasmus.This is one
of the reasons why St.Thomas’s work remains the single most important source
for a proper theological ressourcement in the Latin tradition of the Church.

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555

Jesus’ Cry on the Cross and His Beatific Vision
T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , OP
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

M ODERN THEOLOGY has focused upon the last words of Christ
in the Gospel of St. Mark (15:34)—“My God, My God, why have you
abandoned me?”—as a key locus of Christological dispute and interpretation.1 Revisionist, enlightenment historians such as Samuel Reimarus
have perceived in this verse an “authentic saying” of Jesus that predates
the redaction of the Gospels. For him it is the indication of the Nazarene’s
disillusioned apocalypticism.2 Protestant theologians, meanwhile, have
found warrant in this scriptural text for a theology of Christ’s “godforsakenness,” experienced for us as a dimension of redemption. For John
Calvin it indicates Christ’s state of abandonment as an “experience of the
dread of damnation” incurred for us.3 For Karl Barth it shows that “our sin
is no longer our own. It is his sin, the sin of Jesus Christ. God—he himself
as the obedient Son of the Father—has made it his own. And in this way
he has judged it and judged us as those who committed it.”4 This has led
others to reflect on the agony of Christ as a mode of separation in the
1 Biblical citations are taken from The Revised Standard Version, which I have occa-

sionally slightly modified.
2 The theory originates with Samuel Reimarus in his “On the Intentions of Jesus

and His Disciples” (published by Lessing in 1778), and was reappropriated by
theorists such as Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer.
3 Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. F. Battles (Philadelphia: The Westminster
Press, 1960), vol. 2, c. 16, no. 10–12, with explicit reference to Mk 15:34.
4 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.1 (London:T&T Clark, 2004), no. 59, 238.This
interpretation of the death cry is placed in rapport with Mk 15:34 on pp. 215
and 239. In the text cited above, Barth appeals to Luther’s expression of this idea
in On Gal. 3:13;WA 40, 435, 17. It is noteworthy that he also refuses to see in
this cry any form of “separation” in the Godhead itself (185ff.).

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Trinity itself, or as an indication of suffering transpiring within the divine
nature itself.5 It is sometimes seen (in kenosis Christologies) as incompatible with the “omnipotent” presence of his divine nature.6 At the very least,
the cry of dereliction is often interpreted as an indication of spiritual darkness in the soul of Christ that is incompatible with any notion of a “beatific
vision” in the heights of his soul. In the words of Jean Galot:“how can we
attribute to a Savior who is filled with heavenly beatitude these words:‘My
God, My God, why have you abandoned me?’ . . .The cry of Jesus on the
cross makes manifest the depths of a suffering that is incompatible with the
beatitude of the vision.”7 Versions of these views, meanwhile, have become
ensconced in exegetical research as now standard elements of Christological commentary.8
All of this stands in potential contrast to the traditional Catholic affirmation (found, for example, in Thomas Aquinas) that Christ possessed the
“immediate vision” of God (or “beatific vision”) in the heights of his soul
during his earthly life.9 According to this theory, far from knowing
himself and the Father uniquely by faith, Christ in his human intellect
possessed direct, intuitive knowledge of his own divine identity and will
5 For evidence of the former idea in the thought of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, see

Mysterium Pascale, trans. A. Nichols (Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 1990), 34, 101, 209;
idem, Theodrama, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990–96), vol.
3, 237; vol. 4, 334; and the analysis of John Yocum in his “A Cry of Dereliction?
Reconsidering a Recent Theological Commonplace,” International Journal of
Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 72–80.Versions of the latter idea can be found in
thinkers such as Jürgen Moltmann, Sergei Bulgakov, and Eberhard Jüngel.
6 See Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (San Francisco: Harper and Row,
1974), 205. Moltmann finds a basis for his interpretation in the above-mentioned
text of Barth (ibid., 202–3).
7 Jean Galot,“Le Christ terrestre et la vision,” Gregorianum 67 (1986): 434. He also
says: “A Jesus whose soul would have been continually immersed in the beatific
vision would have only assumed the exterior appearances of our human life. . . .
His resemblance to us would only have been a facade. . . .What would become
of the sufferings of the passion? . . . Not only does [the doctrine of the vision]
put at risk the reality of the Incarnation, but also that of the redemptive sacrifice” [my translation].
8 See, for example, Ulrich Luz, Matthew:A Commentary, vol. 3 (Minneapolis:Augsburg Fortress Press, 1989), 541–59; and Ben Witherington III, John’s Wisdom
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 315–16, both of whom appeal
to Moltmann’s The Crucified God to interpret the cry of dereliction as an expression of suffering in the divine nature itself.
9 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae III, q. 9, a. 2; q. 10, aa. 1–4. Interpreting
St.Thomas, I have recently proposed a theological argument in favor of Christ’s
beatific vision throughout his earthly life in “The Voluntary Action of the Earthly
Christ and the Necessity of the Beatific Vision,” The Thomist 69 (2005): 497–534.

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at all times, even during the most agonizing moments of the passion. In
this way, Jesus could not undergo any “alienation” from the divine
wisdom and will he shared in as God. Rather, his temporal obedience to
the Father was the purposeful expression (in human intellectual and
voluntary terms) of the unity of will he shared with the Father from all
eternity. And yet, one can rightfully ask: Could Jesus have uttered the socalled cry of dereliction from the cross and simultaneously possessed such
knowledge? Could the agonizing Christ have had the beatific vision in
the heights of his soul?
In this essay I would like to draw some theological and biblical parameters for thinking rightly about the death cry of Christ and its theological significance. In the first part of the essay, I will appeal to theological
reflections from Aquinas to argue that the final cry of Christ on the cross
cannot be interpreted as either a cry of despair or of spiritual separation
from God. By contrast, it ought to be understood theologically as a prayer
of desire related to Christ’s abandonment to the Father and his hope to
introduce humanity into the eschatological gift of redemption. In the
second part of the essay (drawing on the exegetical work of M. J.
Lagrange, Rudolph Schnackenburg, and Raymond Brown among others)
I will compare the final words of Christ in Mark with the “cry of thirst”
that is its equivalent in John’s Gospel (19:28). In doing so, I will explore
three theological parallels that exist in both traditions and will argue that
these reveal a common theological core present in the very different
perspectives of the two evangelists. I will argue that the cry of Christ as
portrayed in each of these traditions implies the presence of both expectation and agony, and has explicitly eschatological overtones. It is seen to
usher in a new age of redemption that has already begun at Golgotha. In
the third part of the essay I will return to Aquinas, and his theory of the
“economic mode” of the beatific vision of the earthly Christ. Here I will
argue that the “mixed state” of expectation and suffering previously
discussed is entirely compatible with (and in fact complementary to) the
teaching of St.Thomas concerning Christ’s knowledge of both the Father
and sinful humanity in and through his crucifixion.
I.
In the first section of this essay, I will argue that (1) despair and separation from God, if strictly defined, entail sin.They ought not to be attributed to Christ, in light of the Biblical affirmation of his sinlessness.They
are also counterfactual to the reports present in all four Gospels of his
praying at the cross. If this is the case, however, (2) a broader “analogical”
understanding of “damnation” and “despair” cannot be attributed to Christ

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either, because these terms can only be predicated of his loving obedience equivocally rather than analogically. Therefore, (3) the “cause” of
Christ’s agonizing death cry in Mark 15:34 must be sought elsewhere.
This cause must be understood in some way that respects the plenitude
of love that informs his acts. Following Aquinas, the best recourse is to a
theory of “theological hope.”The cry of Jesus on the cross stems from the
eschatological desire and expectation that reside in his will in and through
his suffering.
Hope and Desire in Christ’s Death Cry
There can be no question that, for the Gospel writer, the cry of agony of
Mark 15:34 denotes the existence of tremendous suffering and agony
within the soul of Christ at the moment of his death.What can this mean
theologically? Here much depends upon one’s definition of terms. Some
commentators seem to suggest that Christ who was without sin experienced pains of spiritual agony and deprivation of the presence and consolations of God analogous to that of persons in a state of sinful (permanent)
separation from God.10 The suggestion is important and I will return to
it below.
In the meantime, however, it must be admitted that strictly speaking,
theological terms such as “despair” and “damnation” refer to spiritual states
that result from terrible voluntary choices, which human beings must be
enjoined to avoid. The modest presupposition here is that there exist in
the human soul temptations to actions which entail serious privations of
grace and can lead to permanent separation from God. As Aquinas notes,
“despair,” understood in this theologically pejorative sense, signifies the
voluntary refusal to hope in God’s promises and the means God provides
to obtain the ends which are promised.11 Such despair is a real temptation
10 See, in particular, John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. 2, ch. 16, no.

10: “It was expedient for him to undergo the severity of God’s vengeance, to
appease his wrath and satisfy his just judgment. For this reason, he must also grapple with the . . . dread of everlasting death. . . . Christ was put in place of evildoers as surety and pledge—submitting himself even as the accused—to bear and
suffer all the punishments that they ought to have sustained. . . . He suffered the death
that God in his wrath inflicted upon the wicked. . . . He paid a greater and more
excellent price in suffering in his soul the terrible torments of a condemned and forsaken
man” [emphasis added]. Calvin argues rightly (ibid., no. 12) that Luke’s depiction
of Jesus sweating blood (Lk 22:44) suggests something more than the natural fear
of death. But is Calvin’s explanation of this mysterious agony appropriate?
11 See ST II–II, q. 20, a. 3:“Despair consists in a man ceasing to hope for a share in
God’s goodness.”All translations of the ST are taken from Summa theologica (New
York: Benzinger Brothers, 1947).

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for the human person precisely because it contrasts with the hope of perseverance.The person who despairs no longer counts upon God to provide
him or her with a concrete means toward salvation.12
Damnation, meanwhile, presupposes the absence of hope in and love
for God, but also entails (1) the pain of definitive privation of the grace,
knowledge, and vision of God; (2) by a personal aversion to the will of God.13
The latter point is most important. Damnation as a form of suffering
stems from malice toward the divine will. It is brought on by a voluntary
desire to privilege the egotistical desires of one’s own will to the goodness and will of God in a definitive and all-encompassing way.The greatest “punishment” incurred by this disposition, therefore, is self-inflicted. It
is the deprivation of the vision of God, and knowledge that this self-inflicted
loss is eternal.14
Defined in these terms, it is evident that from a biblical perspective, one
must say that there was neither despair nor the experience of damnation
in the soul of Christ at Golgotha due to the fact that Christ is sinless.15
On the contrary, the perfect human obedience of the Son in his human
acts is the eloquent testimony of a love for the will of the Father and is
the necessary condition of possibility for human salvation.16 Yet this still
leaves open the possibility that the non-biblical perspective of Reimarus
12 In In II Cor., cap. 4, lec. 3, Aquinas comments on 2 Cor 4:8 (“We are afflicted in

every way . . . but not driven to despair”) interpreting hope and despair as opposing responses to temporal misfortune: “But we are not abandoned by God. . . .
Persons who are without hope and [therefore] without the help of God . . . are
left destitute.Yet those who trust and hope in God alone, however much they
lack, are not abandoned” [my translation; emphasis added].
13 ST II–II, q. 34, a. 1:“God may be the object of hatred for some, in so far as they
look upon Him as forbidding sin, and inflicting punishment”; ST II–II, q. 34, a.
2, s.c.: “But hatred of God is contrary to the love of God, wherein man’s best
consists”; and ST II–II, q. 34, a. 2, c.: “The defect in sin consists in its aversion
from God, and this aversion would not have the character of guilt, were it not
voluntary. . . . Now this voluntary aversion from God is directly implied in the
hatred of God.”
14 Aquinas teaches these ideas in ST I, q. 63, a. 1; q. 64, aa. 2 and 3, c. and ad 3. In
ST I–II, q. 87, a. 4, he notes that the “infinite” punishment of sin is the selfinflicted “pain of loss” of the vision of God, whereas the punishments inflicted
by God as a result of sin are finite.
15 On the sinlessness of Christ, see 2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15; 1 Pet 2:21–22; 1 Jn 3:5.
There is no indication that Mark thought differently from the rest of the early
Christian community on this matter.
16 This perspective is already found in the pre-New Testament Christology of Phil
2:8–9. Presumably an analogous doctrine is expressed by Mk 10:45 and 14:36.
See the argument to this effect by Ben Witherington III, The Many Faces of the
Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1998), 78–90, 128–38.

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is essentially correct, and that the historical Jesus of Nazareth in fact died
in an act of disillusioned despair. Could it be said, for example, that the cry
of Mark 15:34 denotes a bewildered accusation rendered against God due
to a conviction about the absence of divine intervention?17
In response to this suggestion, two ideas must be kept in mind. First of
all, it is impossible to prove by historical reason alone what Christ said on
the cross prior to the New Testament presentation of this event. However,
if we employ the “criterion of dissimilarity” it seems probable that Mark
has transmitted an accurate historical memory.18 As Douglas Hare points
out, in Mark’s narrative the cry is misunderstood by onlookers due to a
linguistic resemblance in the Aramaic language.They interpret it as a call
to Elijah. Both the linguistic and theological interpretations of the cry
given by its hearers make no sense from within an early Christian
(Greek-speaking) theological perspective. Furthermore, the statement
“why have you forsaken me” clearly raised theological difficulties for
some members of the earliest Christian community, as denoted by Luke’s
purposeful omission of it from his Gospel.Therefore one can reasonably
posit the cry as a pre-New Testament event correctly reported by a
community that did not fully understand it.19
Second, however, the death cry of Mark 15:34 is also a citation of
Psalm 22:2. As Justin Martyr first noted, therefore, it suggests on Christ’s
part the purposeful invocation of a psalm, denoting an act of prayer and
17 Close to Reimarus is the theological position of Luz (ibid., 554) who claims that

the disillusionment of Jesus on the cross in fact denotes a rupture, or suffering,
in the life of God himself. “Jesus is depicted [in Mt 27:46–50] in the colors of a
biblical righteous man who suffers, who struggles with his God, and who even
accuses Him. In this sense, the two-natures doctrine [of Chalcedon], to the
degree that in its classical orthodox form it tended to assume for Jesus a divine
self incapable of suffering, is a poor guide for interpreting this text.”
18 As interpreted by Ernst Käsemann and others, the “criterion of dissimilarity” can
be employed as a principle for discerning the likelihood that a saying in the
Gospel should be attributed to Christ when it helps one discern a simultaneous
dissimilarity between a saying attributed to Christ and (1) aspects of the Judaism
of the time of Jesus as well as (2) the later ideas of the early Church. However,
for N.T.Wright, the principle should also invoke the theory of a “double similarity”—between the sayings of Christ and the Judaism of first-century Palestine,
as well as between the words of the historical Jesus and the teachings of the early
Church. In this sense, the principle points toward both the Judaic origins of
Christ’s teaching as well as its originality in the context of Second Temple
Judaism. It also points toward the way this teaching is the origin of (but not
strictly identical with) the teaching of the later Christian movement. For this
interpretation of the principle, see N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 131–33.
19 See Douglas Hare, Matthew (Louisville:Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 322.

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implying a claim to prophetic fulfillment.20 This line of thinking raises
the question of whether the invocation of the psalm by the historical
Jesus implied that he was expressing a messianic hope even during his
crucifixion. Indeed, the Psalter was classically associated with the prophecies of David. In this case, the hope of vindication by God (such as that
which occurs at the end of the psalm) could well be intended even in
citing its opening line.21 What is certain is that the references to the
psalms present in Christ’s last words in all four Gospels were interpreted
in messianic fashion in the earliest Church. The entire early Christian
community seems to have believed that Christ in fact died in prayer and
that his citation of the psalms had prophetic overtones.22 If this is the
case, however, it becomes absurd to presume the existence of an experience of radical disillusionment, despair, or accusation underlying Christ’s
last words. On the contrary, the early Christian interpretation of Christ’s
last words may simply be the best historical understanding of what Jesus
intended them to signify.23 Therefore, even from the perspective of
20 Justin Martyr, Dial.Tryp. c. 97–99.This exegesis was to become widespread in the

ancient Church. See for example, Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III, 19, 2; IV, 20, 8;
IV, 33, 12;V, 7, 1; Athanasius, Contra Arian., II, 66; IV, 28; Jerome, In Matt. IV, on
27:46; Hilary, De Trin., XI, 15.
21 For extensive argumentation concerning the messianic significance of Ps 22 in
the New Testament, see Gregory Vall, “Psalm 22: Vox Christi or Israelite Temple
Liturgy?” The Thomist 66 (2002): 175–200. On the question of the “messianic”
use of the psalm at Qumran and in early rabbinic literature, see Gilles Dorival,
“L’Interpretation Ancienne du Psaume 21 (TM 22),” in David, Jésus et la Reine
Esther, ed. G. Dorival (Paris-Louvain: Peeters, 2002), 225–314. N.T.Wright (Jesus
and the Victory of God, 600–1) situates the citation of Ps 22 by Jesus within the
larger context of his prophetic appropriation of the Davidic Psalter, and his
messianic intention to “act out” the drama of Israel so as to initiate through the
events of his life the eschatological coming of God’s kingdom. In this sense,
Wright speculates that Jesus’ citation of the first line of the psalm may well have
indicated a messianic interpretation of the “victory” of the afflicted one discussed
at the end of the psalm (v. 22ff.).
22 In Mt 27:46, Jesus appeals to the same verse. In Lk 23:46, he cites Ps 31:5 (c.f.
Acts 7:59 and 1 Pet 4:19). Jn 19:28 (“I thirst”) seems to refer to Ps 69:21,
although some scholars point to a possible parallel with Ps 22: 15. All of these
uses imply messianic claims by the New Testament authors: Christ’s death
fulfilled prophecy. On the development of this exegesis in the earliest post-New
Testament Christian writers, see the study of Jean Danielou, Études d’exégèse
judéo-chrétienne (les Testimonia) (Paris: Beauchesne, 1966), 28–41.
23 This is essentially the “apologetical” argumentation of R. Brown in his The Death
of the Messiah, vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 1085–88.While he is sympathetic to the claim that Mk 15:34 represents an authentic historical memory, he
notes that it is also recounted within an entirely theological context (1044–48).
To claim as Reimarus did, that the cry necessarily denotes a historical event of

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“historical reason alone,” the interpretation of biblical faith remains an
open possibility.Yet, theologically speaking, if it need not be seen as an act
of abandoning God through hopelessness, Christ’s cry to God must be
considered as a cry of hope to God for deliverance. More precisely, it is a
cry of desire.
Christ’s Love and Our Alienation
These statements do not exclude the above-mentioned theological
hypothesis: that Christ experienced something analogous to damnation
and despair in the sufferings and agony he underwent in the passion, and
that he did so due to his identification with our state of alienation from
God out of love for us.There is no doubt that the biblical teaching of St.
Paul on Christ’s passion suggests some kind of theology of a “reversal of
roles” in which Christ takes upon himself effects of our sinfulness
precisely in order to liberate us from them.24 But two unavoidable qualifications need to be kept in mind in this regard. The first is that (as all
Christian theologians agree) Christ did this by love for us and out of
loving obedience to God the Father.25 Therefore, theologically speaking,
the spiritual agony he underwent was an effect of his love for human
beings, an agony he endured precisely to manifest more radically that
love. It in no way stemmed, then, from the same root cause as the spiritual
sufferings of the despairing and the damned (these causes being the
refusal of the demands of divine love and the aversion to God’s will).
Second, as I have noted above, the pains of damnation are principally
the regret of the loss of God through one’s own refusal of divine life.They
come from within the personal agent due to aversion for God.Therefore,
there is a radical difference of causality in acts stemming from love versus
those associated with the refusal of love. Because of this radical difference
of causalities, the two states that derive from them can rightfully be said
to be essentially dissimilar. If this is the case, then they cannot be compared
“analogically” and the attribution of a “state of damnation” to the sufferings of Christ implies a pure equivocation. True, the respective effects of
despair that Christian theology cannot account for is absurd, since Mark shows
us in a following verse (v. 39) that precisely the way in which Christ died was
(according to Mark) the cause for the recognition by the gentile centurion that
he was the Son of God. Brown speculates that the historical Christ probably died
with both a hope expressed through prayer as well as the feeling of forsakenness
which he offered to God (1048–51), and that this was accurately reported by the
early Christian community.
24 See esp. 2 Cor 5:14–15, 21.
25 See the emphasis on this idea by Calvin in Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk.
II, ch. 16, no. 12.

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563

sin and love in the two cases under consideration may resemble each
other. However, it only follows from this that the two states may be predicated of one another in a merely metaphorical fashion, and need not
entail any kind of real analogy.
To clarify this perspective, one may consider that for Aquinas metaphorical expressions (“he is as dumb as an ox”) depend on a similitude
of effects derived from two realities that share no common “ratio” or
common essence and are in no way the cause of one another.26 By
contrast, strictly analogical predication requires something that is essentially common to the two terms that are compared. To take an example
from Aristotelian ontology, diverse facets of reality are said to “be” in
diverse ways—as substances, qualities, quantities, and so on. Despite their
real differences, all of these categorical modes of being can be said to “be”
in some common sense. This analogical attribution of “being” must be
contrasted, however, with the “attribution” of damnation to the terms we
are considering. The reason for this is that the absence of love for God
and the presence of love are not diverse modes of participation in a wider
spectrum of analogical modes of existence or goodness. On the contrary,
sin is the absence of goodness in the appetitive will. It entails a voluntary
privation of love. Therefore, sin is also the negative contrary of love,
which it necessarily excludes. If we employ the so-called “analogy of
proper proportionality” (A is to C1 as B is to C2), which Thomists characteristically apply to creatures to compare them, goodness can be said to
reside analogically (as C1 and C2) in both the qualities (A) and the quantity (B) of a human person because they have “existence” in common and
all existence is good. It does not reside analogically in both the love for
God and the refusal to love God, because one is the privation of the
other.27 True, Christ’s passion is like an experience of damnation or
despair in certain respects because the agony he undergoes bears certain
resemblances to the agony of the despairing. He can be said to suffer the
pains of deprivation of the psychologically felt presence of God in a way
that is metaphorically similar to that of the damned (through the absence
of effects of joy, consolation, etc.).Yet this similarity contains nothing that
is essentially the same as the latter state because Christ’s suffering does not
26 On metaphorical as opposed to properly analogical predication, see ST I, q. 13,

a. 6. I am using “essence” here broadly to denote what Thomists mean by the
“ratio entis,” the “intelligibility” common to diverse members of an analogically
united “set.”
27 On the analogy of proportionality and the use of metaphorical similitudes, especially as applied to Christ, see M.T.-L. Penido, Le rôle d’analogie en théologie dogmatique (Paris: J.Vrin, 1931), 42–46, 397–404.

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stem from an absence of or resistance to divine love. These latter faults,
by contrast, contribute to the essence of despair and damnation.
Calvin suggests that the “pains of hell” experienced by Christ consist
principally in his dread, sorrow, and fear of being forsaken by God as well as
his experience of the wrath of God against human sin. Here what defines
the state at essence is the judgment and wrath of God.28 I am suggesting,
by contrast, that the pains of damnation stem, instead, from the voluntary
refusal to embrace God’s loving will, and the deprivation of the vision of
God that results.The pain comes first and foremost from the subject who is
averse to God and himself forsakes God, and only secondarily from God’s
punishment, which follows as a consequence.29 The essence of Christ’s
agony, therefore, stems from something entirely different from such aversion to God (divine love) and therefore, strictly speaking, is not analogous
to the state of the damned. In fact, at heart it is entirely dis-analogous.
Christ’s Suffering Hope
In conclusion, it can be said that Christ in his crucifixion must be said to
have experienced terrible agony, both spiritual and physical.Yet, he did
not despair of the promises of God or experience the “separation” from
28 On Mt 27:46, Calvin writes:“There is nothing more dreadful than to feel God as

Judge, whose wrath is worse than all deaths.” Calvin’s Commentaries, vol. 3, ed. David
Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1971), 207
[emphasis added].
29 For John Damascene and for Aquinas, God “antecedently” wills to save each
person, but he permits the refusal of his grace and consequently sentences a person
who perseveres in sin by his justice. (See De Fide Orth., II, c. 29, as cited by
Aquinas in ST I, q. 19, a. 6, ad 1.) Calvin explicitly refuses the theological validity of the distinction between the antecedent and consequent will of God (Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. III, ch. 23, no. 8). Consequently, damnation for
him stems primarily from a positive will of God, rather than a divine permission.
It follows logically that Christ’s experience of damnation stems also from the
positive will of God, which substitutes Christ as a subject of wrath for us, in
order that we might be justified (Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. II, ch. 16,
nos. 5 and 10). Calvin does stipulate that this “substitution” occurs in and
through the Father’s love for us, and not as a condition for the latter (Institutes of
the Christian Religion, bk. II, ch. 16, nos. 3–4). Aquinas, meanwhile, holds that
Christ did subject himself to our fallen state for our sake and, in this sense, took
our punishments upon himself for our redemption. But he also notes that it is
impossible for an innocent man to submit to a penal substitution for the guilt
due to another, as if he were to assume the sins of the other (ST I–II, q. 87, aa.
7–8). Instead, Christ “substitutes” his obedience for our disobedience so as to
repair in our human nature the injustice done to God’s loving wisdom by human
sin. For a helpful Thomistic critique of Calvin’s penal substitution theory, see
Philippe de La Trinité, What is Redemption? (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1961).

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God that is characteristic of the damned. Despair or separation is impossible because a plenitude of love and obedience informs all of the human
actions of Christ and is incompatible with human sin.Yet, if we exclude
such despair and separation as causes, then how might we explain his cry
of want, denoted by Mark 15:34?
It must be borne in mind that this cry denotes not only love but also
privation. The state of Christ on the cross is a “mixed” state, simultaneously implying both expectation and suffering, presence and absence.
What I would propose is that Aquinas’s understanding of the theological
virtue of hope in the heart of Christ helps us take account precisely of
such a mixed state.The latter “theological virtue,” according to Aquinas,
is both a source of expectation (and therefore desire implying nonpossession) as well as of dissatisfaction.30 It is an expression of the “tension”
of a personal love seeking a good as yet possessed only imperfectly. In
Christ, a deeper knowledge of his own final end, as well as that of those
he came to save, would certainly have meant that such a love existed in
an especially radical way. Could it also have meant that he experienced a
deeper desire and dissatisfaction than others, precisely because of this
same love? For Aquinas, loving hope in the heart of Christ was a source
of intense desire that could no doubt have co-existed with torment and
even profound spiritual and emotional sadness. Aquinas claims that
during his passion Christ hoped both for his own glorification by the
Father and for the salvation of all human beings.31 Yet, hope is a complex
virtue, according to Aquinas, precisely because within it expectation/desire
can and do co-exist with the non-possession of that which is hoped for.
This means that in hope, desire and sadness, deprivation, and agony can
and often do co-exist.32 Pushing the question one step further we can
ask if this desire was itself the “cause” of an increased suffering and agony?
If so, then this inner tension of desire (as both hope and suffering) is a
possible explanation for the inner meaning of the death cry of the crucified Christ. To explore this possibility further, I will now turn to a
comparison of the thinking of Mark and John on this subject.
II.
In the second part of this essay I would like to briefly note three parallels that exist between the theology of Christ’s crucifixion in Mark as it
30 ST II–II, q. 17, a. 1: “The object of hope is a future good, difficult but possible

to obtain.”
31 ST III, q. 21, a. 3, c., ad 2 and 3. See also III, q. 7, a. 4.
32 In ST III, q. 46, aa. 7 and 8,Aquinas insists on this fact.This is a point I will return

to below.

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relates to that of John. In particular I will be concerned to compare Mark
15:34 with John 19:28 as they exist within the larger context of the two
respective theological visions of the Evangelists. My central claim will be
this: Despite (and not withstanding) the reality of the differences in
perspective between the two Gospel writers, the death cry that precedes
the “offering of vinegar” in either narration is a cry contextualized by
both desire and agony, which has immediate eschatological overtones.
Christ’s Expectation of Exaltation
In both Mark and John, the death cry of Christ is contextualized by
desire.We are given to understand by a previously stated expectation that
the death of Christ will be redemptive and will be the occasion for the
“exaltation” of the Son of Man. In John’s Gospel this theme is evident:
The narrative informs us from the beginning of the public ministry of
Jesus that his death is an event foreseen and willed by God for our salvation. It is precisely because the suffering of Christ in love is the chosen
means for our salvation that this event is itself the “exaltation” of the Son
of Man.33 This perspective is a “precondition,” then, for the right interpretation of the cross as a saving event. Consequently, the final words of
Christ (“I thirst”;“It is accomplished”) must be understood in light of his
earlier foretelling of his suffering and death on behalf of all.34 For John
these words manifest something of the profound peace that underlies the
act of self-offering that characterizes the soul of Christ in his passion.
Of course, at first this may seem simply at odds with the “cry of dereliction” according to Mark. In fact, as scholars commonly note, there are
some signs that John wished precisely to counteract the impression that
Jesus was somehow “abandoned” by God in his experience of death.35 Yet
33 Cf. Jn 3:14:“So must the Son of Man must be lifted up”; Jn 8:28:“When you lift

up the Son of Man then you will know that I am”; Jn 12:32: “When I am lifted
up from the earth, then I will draw all men to myself.” As C. H. Dodd, Brown,
Schnackenburg, C. K. Barrett, and others have shown, the author of the fourth
Gospel systematically transfers the characteristics and functions assigned by the
Synoptic authors to the glorified Son of Man from the exalted state of the resurrection to the crucifixion event itself. See in particular, C. H. Dodd, The Fourth
Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 432–43.
34 A point made by R. Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John, vol. 3 (New
York: Herder & Herder, 1968), 283.
35 See Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 1073. In Mk 14:35 Jesus asks the Father that
“if it be possible, this hour might pass from him.” As if to contradict the impression that Jesus is abandoned, Jn 12:27–28 has Jesus stating: “And what should I
say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose have I come to this
hour. Father, glorify your name.” In contrast to Mk 15:34, Brown notes that in
Jn 16:32 we read: “I am not alone, for the Father is with me.”

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if we place the cry of Mark 15:34 in its broader narrative context, we may
note two important facts that moderate this sense of discontinuity. First, it
is evident that the cry in Mark comes after a theological narrative in which
there are three prophetic announcements of the crucifixion and resurrection of the Son of Man.36 This means that the expectation of both the crucifixion as a mode of dying and a subsequent exaltation by God through
resurrection must be seen as central theological motifs that structure the
Markan narrative. This same theological expectation of both death and
subsequent vindication seems to be borne out in the words of Jesus before
the high priest in Mark 14:62, just prior to the crucifixion, where he
explicitly foretells of his exaltation as “the Son of Man.”37 Second, as
Schnackenburg has noted, many of the “Son of Man” sayings in Mark
denote the reality of an eschatological figure already rendered present in
Jesus’ ministry (in ways analogous to the perspective of John). Consequently, this presence must be presumed as present and active on the cross.38
If we keep these two ideas in mind, then we must see the “death cry” of
Mark’s Gospel as a “moment” theologically contextualized by the reader’s
expectation of the cross, foreseen and embraced by Jesus “as a ransom for
many” (Mk 10:45, cf. 14:24), and in view of his exaltation “to the right
hand of Power” (Mk 14:62).The Gospel taken on its own, then, as a theological interpretation of the life of Christ, should be seen as positing an expectant
(if agonizing) prayer present within the cry of Christ on the cross.The Jesus
of Mark knew he was suffering for us and had in view his own exaltation
by the Father.Whether or not the cry of Christ in Mark should be seen to
denote not only agony, but also “dereliction” (that is to say, an inner experience of abandonment) can therefore be disputed. M. J. Lagrange argues
that Jesus’ citation of Psalm 22:2 in Mark 15:34 must be interpreted in light
of contemporary Jewish tradition. Understood in this way, Mark the theologian sees it referring to the rest of the psalm and thus looks forward to the
triumph of the subject in verse 25. In this case the citation of it by Christ
is meant to denote an expectation of vindication by God.39 In any case,
36 Mk 8:31: “The Son of Man must suffer many things . . . and be killed, and after

three days rise again.” See likewise, Mk 9:31; 10:33f.
37 On this eschatological narrative in Mark, especially as it underlies the use of Ps

22, see Joel Marcus, The Way of the Lord: Christological Exegesis of the Old Testament
in the Gospel of Mark (Louisville, KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 177–82.
38 See R. Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John, vol. 1, 535–38, on Mk
1:7, 2:10, 2:28, 8:38, 10:37, 14:62.
39 M. J. Lagrange, L’Evangile Selon Saint Marc (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1921), 433–34. For
complementary reflections, see George Beasley-Murray, John (Waco, TX: Word
Books, 1989), 350–52. If one were to consider Christ subject to despair from

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what is certain is that it is seen by Mark as the expression of a desire that is
immediately efficacious. Shortly after his cry of Psalm 22:2, and a final
wordless exclamation (Mk 15:37), Christ dies and the eschatological world
of God begins to become manifest.This is a point I will return to below.
The Reality of Christ’s Suffering
The second parallel concerns the dimension of agony that surrounds the
death of Christ in both Gospels. In the Gospel of John, this is to be seen
particularly in the cry of thirst that precedes the offer of the sponge with
vinegar and, therefore, “takes the place” of what would be the cry of
agony in Mark. I have noted above that it communicates a sense of the
desire of Christ in a solemn way, in view of a portrait of the suffering
Christ as sovereignly free and victorious in love. Certainly this observation is consistent with the work of modern exegesis, which has drawn
attention to the eschatological character of Christ’s work already effectively “realized” at the cross.
At the same time, the narrative structure of John conveys to us not
only that Christ can suffer sadness and emotional distress, but also that he
has begun to experience an inner agony precisely because of his “hour.”40
Mark’s perspective, this would contrast notably with the portrayal of the “hope of
the martyrs” found in texts such as 2 Mac 6 and 7, where faithful Jews are seen
to have died under persecution with firm confidence in God’s resurrection of
the just from the dead.The ideal expressed in such texts indicates an eschatological view common to many Jews of Jesus’ time, which finds numerous echoes in
Mark’s Gospel (6:14–16, 9:9f., 10:29–31, 12:18–27, 14:58). Are we to attribute,
then, to the dying Christ of Mark’s Gospel a less resolute hope in the resurrection than to these others whose hopes characterized the Jewish beliefs of that
period? . . . especially when Mark portrays Jesus as sharing in such beliefs? See
on this topic N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2003), 150–53, 401–29.
40 John’s Christology emphasizes at various points the real human fatigue, sadness,
and suffering of Jesus ( Jn 4:6, 11:35–38). Jn 12:27 clearly denotes the actual presence of agony in the soul of Christ:“Now is my soul troubled. . . .” Yet Jesus lives
out this agony freely, with the recognition that “for this purpose [he] has come
to this hour.” John makes it clear, then, that Christ both suffers and that his suffering does not cause him to forfeit the prerogatives of the wisdom of God present
in his person. Contrast this with the apocryphal Gospel of Peter, in which Christ
is said on the one hand to be “as having no pain” during his crucifixion (4:10),
but simultaneously cries out in 5:19—“My power, O power, you have forsaken
me.” The former text seems to confuse the humanity and divinity of Christ,
whereas the latter separates them. Brown (The Death of the Messiah, 1337–38)
does not think the text is docetic. But one can rightfully say that the interplay
of Christ’s humanity and his divinity is distorted in this text, whereas John’s
Gospel holds them in perfect accord.

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Something is radically “incomplete” in the experience of Christ leading
up to the passion. As Beasley-Murray has noted, Jesus’ citation of Psalm
69:21 in John 19:28:“for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink” is seen
by John as the “fulfillment of Scripture.” But it is simultaneously a reference to a psalm that in its broader context denotes both suffering and
inner desolation: “This saying is part of the lengthy description of the
desolation, isolation, and scorn experienced by the Righteous Sufferer,
and in the psalm the giving of the drink appears to be part of the torment
inflicted upon the sufferer.”41
This fact can be coupled with the observation that throughout the
Gospel we are given successive indications that Christian redemption
more generally is “not yet fully complete” even after the occurrence of
the Paschal mystery.Although Christ is the presence of eternal life already
made manifest ( Jn 11:25), the effect of that presence is not yet fully realized ( Jn 5:28–29).42 Given these elements in the background theological context, what difference does this make for our interpretation of the
cry of thirst? The particular point we should make here is that John 19:28
is illustrative of a self-conscious tension that exists in John’s theology
between what is actually being accomplished on the cross and what is as
yet desired. In a sense it is the most paradoxical manifestation of this
tension: By it we are told that Christ “fulfills” Scripture, thus accomplishing everything. At the same time, this fulfillment itself is expressed as a
thirst, an incomplete desire, and one that, as we have seen, clearly includes
dimensions of agony.
Given this context of suffering, what does Christ’s “thirst” of unfulfillment cry out for? Some commentators detect a note of Johannine
irony reflected by the cry.43 Christ is “thirsting” for our human salvation
41 Beasley-Murray, John, 351. He goes on to add: “One may no more assume that

John’s emphasis on the cross as the exaltation of Jesus excludes his desolation of
spirit than his emphasis on the deity of the Son excludes the Son’s true humanity.That Jesus hung on the cross as King was not in spite of his agony, epitomized
in the thirst of crucifixion, but through his agony endured in obedience and love
to the glory of God.”
42 C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (Philadelphia: The Westminster
Press, 1978), 67–69, notes that, on the one hand according to John, the eschaton
is present already in the apostolic life of Jesus ( Jn 4:23, 5:25), and the Church
lives in quasi-eschatological terms (cf. Jn 14:23 on parousia ). Yet, on the other
hand, other statements ( Jn 5:29; 6:39, 40, 44, 54) clearly refer to the last day, the
final judgment and the general resurrection that have yet to be realized. It cannot
be claimed, then, that the Gospel of John departs essentially from the broader
eschatological viewpoint that is common to the New Testament writings.
43 See in particular Barnabas Lindars, The Gospel of John (London: Oliphants Press,
1957), 582; R. H. Lightfoot, St. John’s Gospel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 318;

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Thomas Joseph White, OP

( Jn 4:7–9), even while it is he himself (we have already been told) who
gives the “living water” and it is we who “had [we] known, should have
asked him to drink” ( Jn 4:10). In fact, “from his heart will flow rivers of
living water” ( Jn 7:38), from which believers may live. However, this
living water will only come forth once the Spirit is given, that is to say, once
Christ is glorified ( Jn 7:39). If this reading is correct, then the “thirst” of
Christ, placed in a broader Johannine context, denotes his desire for the
sending of the Holy Spirit, the “Paraclete,” who can only be given once
Jesus has “gone to the Father” ( Jn 14:2,. 16:7, 17:11).This result is in fact
obtained in John 20:22 where the risen Christ communicates the Holy
Spirit to his disciples on the evening of Easter. Consequently, the cry of
thirst at the time it is uttered denotes a state of “as yet unachieved” suffering, even as it claims to be the “fulfillment” of the Hebrew Scriptures,
that is, the condition of possibility for the sending of the Spirit.44
What conclusion should be derived from these observations? My claim
at this point is that both John and Mark presuppose a soteriological expectation or desire that informs the suffering of Christ in his crucifixion.
Both of them see this desire as tending toward a later, postresurrection
state of fulfillment, and both of them see this desire as accompanied (to a
greater and lesser degree, respectively) by agony and suffering. In other
words, both of them attribute to Christ characteristics of what we have
denoted as “theological hope”: the expectation of salvation from God and
the actual non-possession of that salvation (accompanied by actual suffering). In my final point in this section I would like to insist on the equally
eschatological dimension of the death cry of Christ in both Gospels.

and more recently, Gail O’Day, John Commentary, in The New Interpreter’s Bible IX
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 832–33.
44 In contrast to Lindars and Lightfoot, Brown (The Death of the Messiah, 1074)
thinks that the “I thirst” of Jn 19:28 refers directly to the words of Jesus in 18:11:
“Shall I not drink the cup which the Father has given me?”This “thirst,” therefore, refers to the cup of suffering that Christ wishes to drink in order to accomplish the Father’s will (cf. Jn 4:34, 5:36, 17:4). Such an interpretation must still
affirm that Jesus “thirsts” to accomplish the Father’s will and bears the suffering
of the cross in order to eventually give the Spirit to humanity. See on this point,
Francis Moloney, The Gospel of John (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press,
1998), 504–5. In the end, however, the discernment is literary. It seems to me that
the symbols of water, thirst, and rebirth in the Spirit are too important in the
main body of the text to be entirely separated from the reference to thirst in Jn
19:28. This is all the more clear when we consider the symbolic paradox that
water (which we know is associated with life in the Spirit) flows forth from
Christ’s side almost immediately after his cry.

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The Final Redemption of the World
My final claim is that for both authors, the theological results of the cry
of Christ are eschatological. Yet, for both Mark and John, respectively,
how did the suffering and agonizing exclamation of Christ effectuate a
change in the soteriological order of reality?
John’s Gospel offers us a clear answer in the shape of the aforementioned “realized eschatology” of the sending of the Spirit.The activity of
the post-Paschal Spirit of Christ is articulated clearly in John 16:8 in
overtly eschatological terms. Because Christ has died, the Holy Spirit can
now demonstrate to the world God’s eschatological judgment.45 As Yves
Congar has noted, there are multiple parallels in Johannine thought
between Christ and the Spirit in their promised roles of mediating judgment from God now (prior to the final resurrection).46 Consequently, we
can say that the thirst of Christ (his suffering and agony) lived out in
expectation of the sending of the Spirit has for its immediate effect the offer
of eschatological (eternal) life for us in the present in the Spirit.This offer
is seemingly already manifest in the blood and water poured out at the
cross, which foreshadow the “new birth” of baptism in the Holy Spirit
(cf. Jn 19:34 in relation to 3:5). By the Spirit we enter into an eschatological continuum with the event of the Paschal mystery itself.47 The cry
of thirst finds its response, therefore, in our acceptation of the living water:
the Spirit and the saving agape of Christ. By remaining in the latter ( Jn
15:4), we receive the capacity Jesus offers in the Paraclete to accomplish
the Father’s will ( Jn 15:10, 26) and therefore to grow in the vocation of
filial adoption ( Jn 1:12–13).
Is Mark’s death cry equally “eschatological,” even if in a somewhat
dissimilar way? We must answer affirmatively if we consider the key
evidence of the biblical symbolism of the cry itself. As Raymond Brown
has noted, an important motif in the New Testament sees “the cry”
generally as a symbol of the initiation of the eschaton.
45 See Jn 16:8–15.
46 Y. Congar, Je Crois en l’Esprit Saint, vol. 1 (Paris: Cerf, 1979), 82–86. For exam-

ple, both Jesus and the Spirit are given by the Father ( Jn 3:16, 14:16) and will
remain with the disciples from now on ( Jn 14:20; 14:16, 26). Both will be
known to the them alone ( Jn 14:19, 14:17), and will lead them into the fullness
of truth ( Jn 1:17, 18:37, 16:13).
47 As C. K. Barrett notes (The Gospel According to St. John, 90):“The Spirit places the
world in the position it will occupy at the last judgment. . . .The Spirit’s work is
to bear witness ( Jn 15:26) to Christ, to make operative what Christ had already
effected. The Spirit is thus the eschatological continuum in which the work of
Christ, initiated in his ministry and awaiting its termination at his return, is
wrought out.”

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In John 5:28 the cry of the Son of Man causes all those who are in the
tombs to hear; and in 11:43 the clamor and loud cry of Jesus help to call
forth Lazarus from the tomb. In 1 Thessalonians 4:16, the cry of the
archangel accompanies the coming of the Lord to raise the dead, while
in 4 Ezra 13:12–13 the Man from the Sea calls the multitude to him.
In judgment the Lord speaks, roars, and cries out, at times producing
earthquakes, in Amos 1:2; Joel 4:16 (3:16); Jeremiah 25:30; and Psalm
46:7, even as in Revelation 10:3 the angel shouts with a loud voice as
he reveals the seven thunders.48

In the Gospel of Matthew the cry of agony from the cross (Mt 27:46) is
immediately accompanied by such eschatological signs:The sun darkens,
the temple rock is split open and its curtain is torn, the earth trembles,
the dead are raised, and the gentiles begin to recognize Christ (Mt 27:45,
51–54). In Mark’s Gospel, the eschatological effects are more discrete but
are still present. Darkness covers the earth, the temple veil is rent, and
(most importantly) the centurion is converted to a recognition of Jesus as
“the Son of God” (Mk 15:33, 38–39). As Schnackenburg has noted, this
last event shows us that the death of Christ (and particularly his cry of
agony) is seen by Mark as the first occasion for a fully lucent recognition
of who Christ has been all along (Mk 1:1, 11, 24; 4:41; 9:7–8; 10:45), the
Son of God who came to serve and to offer his life for our sake:
If we look over the picture of Jesus emerging [in Mark’s Gospel] from
the predication as the Son of God, we see majestic traits, namely, in the
overcoming of Satan and in the power over demons, but also other
assertions that reflect his path of suffering and death. He is the servant
of God who obediently goes his way as the beloved Son of God. He is
the Son of God who becomes apparent in death and who in the deepest distress of his humanity reveals his hidden majesty and divinity.The
prayer of godforsakenness turns into the certainty that he is accepted
by God.The dominant impression of the Son of God conveyed by the
Gospel of Mark is the nearness of Jesus to God, which is not suspended
even in death.49

Consequently, the narrative leaves us to conclude that the immediate
result of Christ’s death in agony, and his abandonment to the Father, is
the redemption of the world. A new era has begun in which Christ’s
“kingdom” is made available to those who believe in his mysterious identity and soteriological action.
48 Brown, The Death of the Messiah, 1045.
49 See R. Schnackenburg, Jesus in the Gospels, A Biblical Christology (Louisville, KY:

Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 50–51.

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III.
I have argued above that the cry of Christ from the cross should be interpreted theologically as a prayer of desire related to his hope to introduce
humanity into the eschatological gift of redemption. Hope implies an
incomplete state in which both loving desire and painful deprivation can
be simultaneously present. In examining the last words of Christ according to John and Mark, I have claimed that the cry from the cross is
presented by each as a desire-in-agony (with more emphasis on agony in
Mark and more on desire in John). Therefore, both the Gospel writers
affirm the existence of such a “mixed state” in the soul of Christ during
his crucifixion. Furthermore, this cry has explicitly eschatological overtones for both, since it is seen to usher in a new age of redemption that
begins at Golgotha.
In the final section of this paper, I would like to reflect theologically
upon the relation of this desire-in-agony in Christ to the Thomistic affirmation of the beatific vision in the “heights” of Christ’s soul.Are the two
compatible? Might they even be complementary? I will seek to answer
this question in three parts. First, I will discuss Aquinas’s theory of how
the immediate vision of God and intense agony could co-exist in the
soul of Christ during his passion. Second, I will note what I think are
three dimensions of this agony. Third, I will examine the effects of the
vision on both Christ’s desire and his agony for each of these dimensions.
I will claim that for two of these, the vision would intensify the desire of
Christ and mitigate but not alleviate his suffering. For the third, however,
it would intensify both his desire and his agony simultaneously. It is this
last form of agony above all that should be seen to characterize the suffering expressed by his death cry.
The Beatific Vision and Agony of Christ
Is the beatific vision in the heights of Christ’s soul compatible with any
form of agony in the soul of Christ during his crucifixion? After all, one
might reasonably object that the bliss of the vision excludes any real
capacity for suffering.To respond to this difficulty we must first note that
according to Aquinas, the “economic mode” or “dispensation” of Christ’s
vision during his earthly life is understood to be very different from that
of his vision in the exalted state of glory.50 In the latter state, his body and
50 On the economic mode of Christ’s immediate knowledge of God in his earthly

life, see ST III, q. 14, a. 1, ad 2; q. 15, a. 5, ad 3; q. 45, a. 2; q. 46, a. 8.This point
has been studied by Jean-Pierre Torrell, “S. Thomas d’Aquin et la science du
Christ,” in Saint Thomas au XXe siècle, ed. S. Bonino (Paris: Éditions St. Paul, 1994),
394–409, esp. 400–401; and Edouard-Henri Weber, Le Christ selon Saint Thomas

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Thomas Joseph White, OP

emotional psychology participate each in their own way directly in the
glory of his resurrected life. As a dimension of this glory, the joy and
consolation of the spiritual presence of God in the “heights” of the soul
of Christ “overflow” into the whole of his humanity. His “lower faculties” and in particular his psychological life participate intensively in the
contemplative bliss of his spiritual soul.51
In the former state, however, this vision is not the source of any such
experience. It does assure his soul of a continual knowledge of his own
divine identity and will as the Son of God, but it in no way alleviates his
“ordinary” states of human consciousness and sensation.52 This means
that Christ, for Aquinas, can experience suffering in a typically human
way in both its corporeal and psychological-spiritual dimensions. Consequently, the vision is entirely compatible with the intense human suffering that accompanies the kind of death that Jesus endured.
This having been said, Aquinas does not think the suffering of Christ
and his knowledge of God simply co-exist on separate but unrelated
“levels” of his soul. Rather, he distinguishes between the objects and
subject of the various faculties of Christ’s soul, so as to make clear in what
way the suffering and spiritual consolation of Christ occur simultaneously
in the same human experience. On the one hand, he notes that the “faculties” of the human soul of Jesus experience irreducibly diverse objects
during the crucifixion as either consolations or pains. So, just as Christ
could suffer terrible pain in his physical body or sorrow in his sensible
feelings (as the “objects” of his bodily sensation and inner emotional life,
respectively), so he could also enjoy the immediate knowledge of God as
the “object” of his intellectual activity.53 The objects experienced remain
entirely distinct.Yet the same and identical subject (the Son as man) is the
one in whom these various experiences occur simultaneously, and in this
way, Christ could suffer in the “entirety of his soul,” since the agony
D’Aquin (Paris: Desclée, 1988), 179–98.Torrell ultimately parts from Aquinas on
the question of the beatific vision of the earthly Jesus, but he notes that Aquinas’s
doctrine of the economic mode of the vision offers important responses to the
aforementioned objections of Galot.
51 See on these ideas, ST III, q. 54, a. 2.
52 ST III, q. 14, a. 1, ad 2:“From the natural relationship which is between the soul
and the body, glory flows into the body from the soul’s glory.Yet this natural relationship in Christ was subject to the will of his Godhead, and thereby it came to
pass that the beatitude remained in the soul and did not flow into the body; but
the flesh suffered what belongs to a passible nature.” ST III, q. 15, aa. 4–6, make
clear that Aquinas understands “the body” or “the flesh” of Christ to include the
passions and human psychology of the man Jesus.
53 ST q. 46, aa. 7–8.

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extends to all of his human nature. Likewise, he could experience the
consolation of the Father’s presence in the “entirety of his soul,” since Jesus
in his humanity was the subject of this consolation.54 In this way, the
happiness of being united in will with the Father could co-exist with
extreme agony in Christ, such that the two experiences were objectively
distinct but subjectively (and therefore experientially) inseparable. While
one was a source of extreme trial and distress, the other could be a source
of consolation and moral stability.55 This contrast (without contradiction)
in the life of Jesus would necessarily result in a complex spiritual experience: of confident expectation of deliverance on the one hand, and the
presence of intense agony on the other. The inevitable result in the soul
of Christ would be a unique form of intense soteriological desire, or what
the Thomist tradition terms “theological hope.”
Three Dimensions of Christ’s Agony
Having clarified the above points, we can clearly distinguish (but not separate) three distinct dimensions of the agony of Christ. The first of these
concerns his human nature as related to the form of his execution: public
crucifixion.This is the physical and spiritual suffering of the human being
who is betrayed, abandoned, judged unfairly, humiliated, rejected, beaten,
and crucified. It would be common to any innocent person sentenced to
such a death.Yet, as Aquinas points out, Jesus must also have felt physical
and psychological pain with a greater acuity than other persons, due to the
perfection of his human nature, the nobility of his soul, and the sensitivity
of what we might call his cognitive psychology.56 Indeed, because of the
54 ST III, q. 46, a. 7: “It is evident that Christ’s whole soul suffered. . . . Christ’s

‘higher reason’ did not suffer thereby on the part of its object, which is God, who
was the cause, not of grief, but rather of delight and joy, to the soul of Christ.
Nevertheless, all the powers of Christ’s soul did suffer according as any faculty is
said to be affected as regards its subject, because all the faculties of Christ’s soul
were rooted in its essence, to which suffering extended while the body, whose act it
is, suffered” [emphasis added].
55 In ST III, q. 14, a. 1; q. 15, aa. 4–7 and q. 46, a. 6, ad 2 Aquinas argues that the
sensible pain, sorrow, and fear of Christ were not directly affected by the vision,
but only indirectly through the mediation of his reason.The vision stabilized the
moral activity of Jesus, in and through his intense suffering, such that these
passions were not permitted to overturn the rational desires of the mind of
Christ. By a distant but real analogy, one could compare this to someone suffering in a hospital bed who is genuinely consoled by the presence and conversation of a friend.
56 ST III, q. 46, a. 6: “The magnitude of his suffering may be considered from the
susceptibility of the sufferer as to both soul and body. For his body was endowed
with the most perfect constitution. . . .And consequently, Christ’s sense of touch,

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refinement of his sensibility and the purity of his moral innocence, Christ
must have experienced such suffering in an especially poignant way.
Second, there is the mysterious agony more particular to Christ in his
role as redeemer, which is a dimension of his “exchange” with a sinful
humanity. This role entails an acceptance upon himself of some of the
consequences of sin in our fallen humanity (including the fear of mortality,
deep sadness, a loss of the sense of the consoling presence of God) without an experience of that sin itself.57 While one may discuss this state in
varying terms, I have insisted that, theologically speaking, it should not
be equated with an experience of “separation from God” (the pain of
damnation), nor be equated with an experience of the “wrath of God.”58
Such experiences are despair-ridden and derive essentially from a refusal
of God as one’s own final good. From the point of view of Pauline and
Johannine theology, by contrast, it is necessary to affirm that Christ freely
embraced some of the states of our fallen human nature precisely because
of his more fundamental embrace of the Father’s will. He did this so as
to infuse them with loving obedience on our behalf. In this way, he
demonstrates to us a greater love for and unity with the Father than
might be manifest otherwise.59
Third, there is the agony of Christ that results from his love for us.This
form of anguish stems above all from his extraordinary awareness of our
the sensitiveness of which is the reason for our feeling pain, was most acute. His
soul, likewise, from its interior powers, apprehended most vehemently all the
causes of sadness.”
57 On this state of profound sadness that was permitted to occur in the soul of
Christ despite the presence of the vision, see ST III, q. 46, aa. 3 and 6, c., and ad
2. Following Damascene (De Fide Orth., bk. III, ch. 19), Aquinas insists that the
divine will suspended some of the experiences of consolation in the soul of
Christ which would normally be present even in the suffering of a virtuous man.
The point of such unique suffering is to manifest more profoundly the gravity
of human sin as well as the unique love of Christ for human beings.
58 In discussing Paul’s claim that “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who
knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor
5:21), Aquinas (In II Cor. V, lec. 5, no. 201 [Marietti]) purposefully excludes any
idea of a penal substitution (in which Christ would be himself representative of
the sinner and suffer a vicarious punishment for guilt on our behalf). Instead, he
refers this verse to Christ’s assumption out of love for us of a human nature capable of death and suffering (states that are consequences of sin). One sees consistent evidence of this exegetical tendency in his interpretations of Rom 3:25–6
(In Rom. III, lec. 3, nos. 310–312); Rom 8:3 (In Rom. VIII, lec. 1, no. 608); Gal.
3:13 (In Gal. III, lec. 5, nos. 148–49); Col 2:13–14 (In Col. II, lec. 3, no. 115); and
Heb 2:17 (In Heb. II, lec. 4, no. 139).
59 Aquinas makes these points in ST III, q. 46, aa. 1 and 4, commenting upon Jn
3:14 and Phil 2:8.

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577

human sinfulness, distance from God, and refusal of God. The object of
his suffering in this case is not found in himself, but in us.60 Therefore, it
depends upon and stems from Christ’s possession of an extraordinary
knowledge of the real spiritual state of human beings before God, and a
corresponding desire to save them from eternal separation from God.
This is the agony due to which Christ “loved [us] and gave his life for
[us]” (Gal 2:20) throughout the duration of his passion, desiring to
communicate a new life in God to human beings by means of the gift of
the Holy Spirit (Gal 4:6, 5:25). Precisely in order to save human beings,
Jesus is obliged to consciously confront and willingly vanquish the reality of their complicity with evil.61
The Inauguration of the Kingdom of God
We have established that there is a theoretical possibility of the simultaneous co-existence of profound illumination and great suffering in the
soul of Christ during his passion. Furthermore, as I have already noted,
Aquinas thinks the state of “vision” in the earthly Christ is compatible
with the existence of “theological hope” within his soul. It is precisely
because he “knows” of his mission as the Son, shared with the Father, that
Jesus can intensely desire to see it accomplished, both in himself (psychologically and corporeally) and in his “members.”Therefore, the question
can be raised of how the extraordinary knowledge of Christ relates to the
desires he has for the realization of redemption. More particularly, how
does it relate to the desires he would have as regards each of the three
above-mentioned sources of agony?
As regards the first dimension of agony (the natural experience of the
terrible sufferings of Roman crucifixion), the Gospels tell us that Christ
experienced a desire for deliverance for himself. In fact, it is reasonable to
see this as an essential component of the cry/prayer of Mark 15:34/Psalm
22:2: “Why have you abandoned me?” Here the vision of God in the
heights of Christ’s soul as an object of knowledge would in no way alleviate the reality of his physical and spiritual agony, experienced violently
60 ST III, q. 46, a. 6, c.:“The cause of the interior pain [of the passion] was, first of

all, all the sins of the human race”; and ST III, q. 46, a. 6, ad 2: “In truth some
sadness is praiseworthy . . . namely, when it flows from holy love, as, for instance,
when a man is saddened over his own or other’s sins. . . . And so to atone for the
sins of all men, Christ accepted sadness, the greatest in absolute quantity, yet not
exceeding the rule of reason.”
61 It is here that I would locate the origins of extraordinary suffering such as that
related by Lk 22:44 (the sweating of blood), and not in Christ’s awareness of “the
Father’s wrath” and “the dread of hell,” where Calvin places them. See Institutes
of the Christian Religion, bk. II, ch. 16, no. 12.

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in both his body and psyche. Indeed, it may have intensified his desire for
release from this state uniquely in and through an extreme abandonment
to the Father’s will. However, it would also simultaneously have mitigated
the effects of this experience of suffering by permitting Christ in his
human consciousness to know that he was accomplishing the Father’s
will, which he shared in as Son.62 It would have given him (in the heights
of his soul) certain knowledge of his future exaltation as the Son of Man
and a corresponding prayerful expectation, lived out in hope despite his
terrible suffering, of this vindication received from the Father.63 In this
case, the suffering of Christ was mitigated by his certainty of the Father’s
will and his unshakable hope for final deliverance.
Similar comments can be made regarding the second dimension of
Christ’s agony: his mysterious experience of certain spiritual and moral
consequences of our fallen state. Christ’s crucifixion seen in this light
may have entailed the sentiment of divine abandonment and a subjection
to the deep sadness that results from the non-experience of God. His
corresponding desire would then have been for the “eschatological presence” of God, fully experienced in both body and soul. If such a state is
compatible with the beatific vision (as Aquinas’s theology would, I think,
allow), then two points must be made. On the one hand, in his earthly
life Christ must have possessed the vision in such a way that his ordinary
psychological consciousness could effectively function without felt
consolations from his extraordinary knowledge of God. On the other
hand, Christ’s vision played an essential role in permitting him as man to
adhere to the will of the Father at all times, precisely so as to save us
despite his suffering.64 Agony in Christ without transcendent wisdom
and salvific obedience would be of little use to others. In this sense, we
62 The will of the Father is that same will that Christ as God the Son receives eter-

nally from the Father in his divine nature. Jesus’ human acceptation of the
Father’s will in the crucifixion need not entail an “alienation” from the divine
will he shares in as God. On the contrary, it is the temporal, finite expression of
this shared, divine love, expressed in and through his human acts. See on this
point,White, “The Voluntary Action of the Earthly Christ,” 523–33.
63 On the consoling effects of such knowledge during the passion of Christ, see ST
III, q. 46, a. 8, c. and ad 1: The consolation occurs in Jesus as a human subject
through the medium of his extraordinary knowledge, despite the ongoing reality of his pain and inhuman treatment.
64 Perhaps interpreting Thomas Aquinas in his own way, John of the Cross, in his
Ascent of Mount Carmel, II, ch. 7, discusses the idea that throughout the passion
Christ experienced “desolation” with respect to the internal and external senses,
as well as intense spiritual aridity in the “lower part of his nature” (that is to say,
his human psychology). Yet, simultaneously he gave his life for humanity in a
knowing, affective union of will with the Father.

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579

must again affirm that the vision of God in the soul of Christ increased
his desire for deliverance but it also mitigated his anguish.
What about the third form of agony? Here (unlike in the previous two
examples) we are not speaking of suffering in Christ stemming from
sensible experience and objective knowledge of his own deprivations, but
due to an extraordinary awareness of the spiritual ills of others. In this
case, as Aquinas points out, knowledge can be a cause of suffering rather
than a source of consolation.65 By his vision, during the passion and
crucifixion, Christ knew our human hearts better than we do; and in
human actions he was able to perceive sin not only as a direct refusal of
love, but also in all its subsequent consequences.This is to say that he saw
our rejection of love as the initiative toward a permanent separation from
God. In the words of Matthew Levering:
Christ’s suffering has the intensity, then, of a “dark night,” in which the
horror of the darkness of sin is finally and perfectly exposed in Christ’s soul
by contrast to the glorious light of the divine Goodness, which Christ also
knows. It is only by contrast to this light that “darkness” is intelligible.
Christ bears interiorly the darkness in his anguish over the sins of each
one of us, but it is crucial to note that he can only bear this darkness fully
because of his simultaneous “light” by which he knows God.66

The immediate vision in the soul of Christ, then, gave him a profound
spiritual and psychological awareness of his confrontation with moral evil,
and of his rejection by sinners.The conclusion I wish to draw here is that
this knowledge necessarily augmented desire for our salvation even as it
simultaneously augmented his agony.The two are inseparable, and both result
from the presence in the soul of Christ of the beatific vision. In fact, in a
certain sense we may even say that the desire for the salvation of human
beings was itself the cause of suffering. At any rate, this unity of his vision
and his agony together can be seen as an inevitable consequence of the
intellectual grace he received for the sake of his mission as savior of the
65 ST III, q. 46, a. 6, ad 4: “Christ grieved not only over the loss of his own bodily

life, but also over the sins of all others. And this grief in Christ surpassed all grief
of every contrite heart, both because it flowed from a greater wisdom and charity, by
which the pang of contrition is intensified, and because He grieved at the one time for all
sins, according to Isaiah 53:4: ‘Surely He has borne our sorrows.’ ”This idea has
been insightfully discussed by Charles Journet, Les Septs Paroles du Christ au Croix
(Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1954), 88–90; and more recently by Matthew Lamb in
“The Eschatology of St Thomas Aquinas,” in Aquinas on Doctrine, ed.T.Weinandy,
D. Keating, and J. Yocum (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 225–40; and Matthew
Levering, Sacrifice and Community (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 80–81.
66 Levering, Sacrifice and Community, 80.

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Thomas Joseph White, OP

human race. The real potential “despair” and “separation from God” that Christ
perceived on Golgotha were not in himself but were in us. These attributes of
humanity as known in the clarity of his vision became, for him, the source
of terrible agony.
Is it this agonizing, soteriological desire on our behalf that characterizes
above all the cry of Christ from the cross? This would seem a likely interpretation for the “cry of thirst” of Christ in John 19:28, especially if we
understand it as a plea for the gift of the Spirit. Christ “thirsts” for the
salvation of all human persons and consequently implores the Father for
the coming of the Paraclete ( Jn 16:7–11). But could this kind of desire
rightly be said to inform the cry of Mark 15:34? If we understand Christ’s
“dereliction” as a confrontation with our sin by which he is humanly overwhelmed, and if we understand the eschatological importance of that cry
in Mark’s gospel, then the answer is yes.67 This cry is an exclamation of
suffering due to the presence of evil, but it simultaneously marks an end
to the reign of that evil.Through his cry of agony and desire, Jesus intends
(through his consciousness of himself as the eschatological Son of Man)
to inaugurate the kingdom of God (Mk 14:62). This being the case, we
may speak (at least on one level) of Christ’s last words as an act of abandonment to God lived out in trust not only for himself individually, but
also for us.Yet, we might also add that the eschaton can be said to begin
by his own divine prerogative precisely with the final vocal cry that follows
the cry of dereliction and immediately precedes his death (Mk 15:37; Mt
27:50). By this visceral but efficacious protest against the powers of sin,
Jesus signals an accomplishment of the mission the Father has given him,
and divinely initiates the end-times.
In light of these reflections, we might conclude that the beatific vision
in the soul of Christ as Aquinas presents it is certainly compatible with a
spiritual realism concerning the agony of Christ on the cross.This is particularly the case if we conceive of this agony as an expression of desire. Just
as the Gospels of Mark and John can be seen to harmonize theologically
in their respective forms of emphasis on agony and desire, so the account
of Christ’s passion that we give theologically may do the same in terms of
suffering and knowledge. Both poles of his experience must be respected
67 A patristic parallel to this idea is found in Origen’s Commen. Series In Matt., no.

135.There he understands Christ’s cry of agony in Mt 27:46 to be the result of
his comprehension of human sin, simultaneously compared with his knowledge
of the glory of the Father from which human beings had alienated themselves.
Although he attributes faith to Christ,Vincent Taylor (The Gospel According to St.
Mark [London: Macmillan, 1966], 594) offers similar views as to the origins of
Christ’s sufferings.

Jesus’ Cry on the Cross

581

in some integral fashion, no matter how much a particular account may
wish to emphasize one aspect with respect to the other.
Conclusion
I have argued that the death cry of Christ is a cry of both desire and agony,
and that this cry is compatible with the simultaneous presence in Christ’s
soul of both extraordinary knowledge and intense suffering. Fundamentally, the desire that informs this exclamation should be interpreted as a
beseeching by Jesus of both his own deliverance/exaltation and our salvation in one inseparable act. In praying for these objects, Christ’s words on
the cross are eschatological in nature. His cry tends toward the final possession of a gift of redemption for humanity that is not yet fully possessed.
Furthermore, the theological affirmation of such a “mixed state” of expectation and suffering in the soul of Christ is entirely compatible with (and
in fact complementary to) the teaching of St.Thomas concerning Christ’s
knowledge of both the Father and sinful humanity in and through his
crucifixion. The knowledge of the Father’s will afforded by the beatific
vision is not the cause of suffering in itself, but of confidence and consolation. Yet, because this same vision gives Christ intense knowledge of
human evil in the world, it is also the source of both profound redemptive
desire and intense agony. Jesus experiences in his ordinary consciousness as
man a deeper suffering on our behalf because of this grace.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 3 (2007): 583–618

583

What’s the Difference? On the Metaphysics
of Participation in Plato, Plotinus, and Aquinas
D. C. S CHINDLER
Villanova University
Villanova, Pennsylvania

Introduction: A Reason to Be Different?
F ROM OUT of its origins, the word “participation,” léheniy bespeaks
plurality, similarity, relation, and asymmetry all at once.1 The root of the
term, ’é vx generally “to have,” when used with a genitive object indicates
in its earliest instances a “having of,” in the sense of “sharing in [a whole]”
rather than “taking [a part].”2 The prefix lesá originally meant “amid,
among” (and is thus related to the German “mit,” or the English “mid,”
as in the word “midwife”), and therefore found its proper use only with
plurals or collectives.3 In compositional words, however, it means “after”
A version of this paper was delivered as the main address at the Metaphysics Colloquium sponsored by the Institute for Saint Anselm Studies, held in Manchester, NH,
June 15–16, 2005, and appeared in The Saint Anselm Journal 3 (2005). I am grateful
for the discussion among the participants and for the comments and questions from
the respondents Merold Westphal and Christopher Malloy. I wish to thank Timothy
Mahoney in particular for his extensive written comments on the paper.
1 Note that a reference to “parts” is not an ingredient in the Greek term as it is in
the Latin, which Aquinas explicates etymologically thus: “Participare est quasi
partem capere” (to participate is, as it were, to take a part [of something]): In 2
de Caelo. 18g; De hebdom. 2.24.We ought not to let this root lead us to envision
the participatum as having discrete parts, an interpretation that is clearly excluded
by the metaphysical use of the concept, that is, the sharing in a (metaphysically)
simple quality; in any event such a view has no part, so to speak, in the Greek
understanding wherein the metaphysical notion was born and raised.
2 See Fritz-Gregor Hermann, “leséveim, lesakalb ámeim and the Problem of
Participation in Plato’s Ontology,” Philosophical Inquiry 25 (2003): 22–25.
3 Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar, rev. Gordon Messing (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1984), no. 1691.

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D. C. Schindler

or “behind” in a successive sense, but also, more dynamically, “in pursuit
of ” (for example, léhodoy “following or pursuing the path”). To speak
of metaphysical participation is to say that one thing has what it is with,
and indeed after and in pursuit of, another: It has its reality, in other words,
by virtue of something other than itself. We associate the metaphysical
notion of participation, of course, most immediately with Plato,4 for
whom the term served, if not to explain, at least to give expression to the
way in which many things can warrant the same name.5 Insofar as the
so-called “problem of the One and the Many” lies at the very heart of
philosophical thought and moreover bears on what Heidegger calls the
most profound philosophical question, “Why is there something rather
than nothing?,” it would be only a slight exaggeration to call participation, for good or ill, the metaphysical idea par excellence, and to agree with
Cornelio Fabro that what to a certain extent specifies a philosophy—any
philosophy at all—is the position it takes with respect to this idea.6
Now, the position Christian thought has taken with respect to the
notion of participation is fairly complex. On the one hand, and most obviously, the reference that the notion of participation implies a transcendent
principle as the ultimate source of what exists in time and as sensibly
manifest makes the notion quite suitable to Christian thinking. We thus
have Augustine affirming that Christians need nothing from philosophy

4 Plato was the first to use the term philosophically: Sr. M. Annice, “Historical

Sketch of the Theory of Participation,” New Scholaticism 26 (1952): 51. Evangelos
Moutropoulos supplies some key references to Plato’s use of the term in “L’Idée
de participation: Cosmos et praxis,” Philosophia 32 (2002): 17–21: Protagoras 322a;
Symposium 208b; Republic VI 486a; Parmenides 132d, 151e; Sophist 256b, 259a;
Timaeus 77b; Laws IX 859e.We ought to note, however, that the term was not a
technical term for Plato (indeed, he explicitly forbids its being taken in a technical sense, Phaedo 100d). In addition to léheniy, Plato uses a host of other terms
to express generally the same idea. See Cornelio Fabro, La Nozione Metafisica di
Partecipazione Secondo S.Tommaso d’Aquino, 2nd ed. (Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1950), 47.
5 Republic X, 596a6–7.
6 Fabro, La Nozione Metafisica di Particepazione, 1. Indeed, Gilson observes that “the
whole philosophy of the Middle Ages was little more than an obstinate endeavor
to solve one problem—the problem of the Universals” (Étienne Gilson, The
Unity of Philosophical Experience [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950], 3),
which is of course the problem Plato introduced. It is clearly the same problem
that divided the rationalists and empiricists in the early modern period, and the
radical revision of the meaning of truth in late modern and postmodern thought
is largely a dialogue with Plato. In this respect, Alfred North Whitehead is quite
right to call all of Western philosophy “footnotes to Plato.”

Participation: Plato, Plotinus, and Aquinas

585

that they cannot find in the Platonists,7 and Bonaventure preferring Plato
to Aristotle because Aristotelianism
arises from a thinking that seeks the reason for things in the things
themselves, detaching and separating the world from God, . . . while
Plato’s philosophy was, and most fundamentally sought to be, a philosophy of the beyond, placing the reason for things outside of the things
themselves, to the point of denying them, sometimes excessively, any of
their own subsistence.8

Though Aquinas was long thought to represent a contrast to Bonaventure
with respect to this particular preference, the fundamental significance of
participation in Aquinas’s thought, first “discovered” by L.-B. Geiger and
Fabro, has now become generally accepted.9 On the other hand, however,
the notion of participation bears a logic that seems to lead away from a
Christian view of the world in at least two respects. First, insofar as the
reference to the “beyond,” implied in the structure of participation, constitutes the very identity of things, the notion seems to tend toward pantheism.10 Second, as the passage cited above already suggests, the notion of
7 “What need is there to examine other philosophers? There are none who come

nearer to us than the Platonists,” City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (New York:
Penguin Books, 1984), bk. 8, no. 5, p. 304. Clement of Alexandria had written,
“What, after all, is Plato but Moses in Attic Greek,” Strom., 1.21.
8 Étienne Gilson, La philosophie de S. Bonaventure (Paris: J.Vrin, 1925), 98–99, cited
in André Hayens, L’Intentionnel selon saint Thomas (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer,
1954), 55–56.
9 Fabro, La Nozione Metafisica di Particepazione; L.-B. Geiger, La participation dans la
philosophie de saint Thomas d’Aquin, 2nd ed. (Paris:Vrin, 1953); see also Joseph de
Finance, Être et agir (Paris: P.U.F., 1945). N. D. O’Donough’s judgment that “the
time has gone when participation was seen as the key to Aquinas” (“Creation
and Participation,” in Creation, Christ, and Culture Studies in Honor of T. F.Torrance,
ed. Richard W. A. McKinney [Edinburgh: Clark, 1976], 136–37) was certainly
over-hasty. See Klaus Kremer, Die Neuplatonische Seinsphilosophie und ihre Wirkung
auf Thomas von Aquin (Leiden: Brill, 1971); Rudi A. Te Velde, Participation and
Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1995); Agustin Basarre, “La Doctrina Metafisica de la Participación en Santo Tomás de Aquino,” Giornale di
metafisica 30 (1975): 257–66;W. Norris Clarke,“The Meaning of Participation in
St. Thomas,” in Explorations in Metaphysics: Being–God–Person (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1994): 89–101; John F.Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington,
DC:The Catholic University Press of America, 2000).
10 See Annice, “Historical Sketch,” 60. Aimé Forrest affirms that “it is the spirit of
Platonism to relate the being of things to the being of God, perhaps even to
identify them.This assimilation is impossible for Christian thought.” Forrest, La
structure métaphysique du concret selon Saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris:Vrin, 1956), 27.

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participation by the very same token seems to deprive the finite, temporal, and physical world of any reality of its own.11 We do not need to accept
Aristotle’s dismissal of participation as a poetic and merely metaphorical
term to see that he has a point in rejecting the “separate” existence of
forms and insisting on individually existing things as the primary meaning of being.12 However problematic its implications might be, the notion
of haecceitas that Duns Scotus introduces at the turn of the thirteenth
century stems from a deeply Christian intuition.13 Creation is ultimately
good, and we encounter that goodness not merely in looking past things
to their source, but also in looking at them, in celebrating their intrinsic
solidity and their irreducible uniqueness.14 If the Neo-Platonic tradition
is correct to say that the form is, as it were, infinitely higher than any
particular instance of that form because that instance will always express
merely a partial reflection of the whole idea, Kierkegaard is also right to
affirm that the individual is infinitely higher than the universal, because
the individual alone exhibits the ineluctable seriousness of existence.
From a Christian perspective, an adequate notion of participation must
somehow have room for both affirmations.
In order to enter into the various aspects of the problem of participation, let us focus them around a single question: What accounts for the
difference between image and reality, participans and participatum? As we saw
above, Plato conceived the notion of participation primarily as a means
of accounting for the unity among things. How is it, in other words, that
I can call this, this, and this a chair? But resolving this problem by pointing to a shared form gives rise immediately to the problem of explaining
why there are in fact these chairs if there is indeed Chair itself. In order
to avoid thinking of the images as simply unreal, or affirming their multiplicity as a fall from unity and just so far as imperfect, we need to discover
a positive principle for their difference.The tendency in Platonic thought
11 Te Velde formulates this problem as one of the guiding questions of his study on

participation in Aquinas (that is, how it can be reconciled with the fact that creatures or substances have their own nature): Participation and Substantiality, xii.
12 Aristotle, Metaphysics I, 9, 991a20–25: “And to say [forms] are patterns and the
other things share in them is to use empty words and poetical metaphors.” But
´
one can just as well ask whether Aristotle’s preferred explanans, as’ ia—which
originally means “charge” or “accusation,” and which later takes on the philosophical sense of “cause,” that is, that which is responsible for something—is any
less metaphorical.
13 See Hans Urs von Balthasar’s beautiful exposition of the importance of Scotus
in this regard for the Catholic poetic vision of Gerard Manley Hopkins, The
Glory of the Lord, vol. 3, Lay Styles (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 355ff.
14 Forrest, La structure métaphysique, 25–27.

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is to explain the multiplicity, not by any positive principle, but by the
relative absence of a principle.This approach has a clear advantage, in that
it provides, as we will see below, a way of affirming the paradoxical identity of transcendence and immanence of forms in relation to images, which
allows us to avoid both a pantheistic monism and a problematic dualism.
But, as we will also see, this solution will ultimately remain insufficient
insofar as the difference of the form from the image cannot be sustained
without a corresponding difference of the image from the form, that is,
without the image being as well both transcendent and immanent with
respect to the form.
Let us try to bring out more clearly the difficulty latent here. Aquinas,
following the classical philosophical tradition, affirms that “that which is
the principle of unity cannot be the principle of difference.”15 If this axiom
is simply true, we can find a principle for the difference of the image from
the form—and ultimately of the world from God—only by positing a
second principle for difference. But we then face the problem of articulating the relationship between these two principles. Is there an ultimate unity
between them? If yes, then what accounts for their difference? The alternatives would seem to be to affirm the Gnostic ultimacy of two principles,
which is ultimately irrational, or to affirm difference as an “unjustifiable”
fall from unity. In other words, either difference has no explanation, and
thus has no “good reason,” or it has an explanation, that is, a second positive principle of its own, which becomes thus the opposite of the good
principle. In either case, it has no intelligible justification. The only real
alternative to these alternatives would seem to be either to refuse to raise
the question, and simply begin from the obvious existence of a unified
multiplicity, that is, to presuppose that this problem has nothing to offer to
thinking, and then to turn one’s attention to other details—but here we fall
into the wonderlessness of positivism and ultimately to the loss of philosophy. Or, we refuse to seek an answer and simply abide within the question
in a Heideggerian fashion—but if we decide a priori that the question
cannot find an answer, we have indeed already de facto answered the question, and specifically given it the same negative answer we considered first
above.Thus, the question of accounting for difference in the structure of participation seems in the end to yield four possible outcomes: either nihilism,
nihilism, nihilism, or nihilism.To borrow from Woody Allen, let us pray that
we have the wisdom to make the right choice.
It would be vain to seek to solve, once and for all, a problem that remains,
thankfully, inexhaustibly rich.What we intend to do in the present essay is
15 De veritate, 8.8, sc 3.

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to trace out the dimensions of the problem through a reflection on representative texts in Plato, Plotinus, and Aquinas, to see how the question of
difference itself gets deepened and differentiated, and eventually leads us to
the necessity of affirming the equiprimordiality of unity and difference. In
the end, without deducing the content of Christian revelation, we will
nevertheless see how the doctrine of the Trinity presents a “fitting” fulfillment of what the metaphysical structure of participation itself requires.
Plato on Participation as the Immanence
of the Transcendent
Perhaps Plato’s clearest expression of participation occurs in the Phaedo,
during Socrates’ endeavor to present, as it were, his intellectual autobiography, his progressive attempt to come to an understanding of the way things
are. After confessing the vanity of seeking corporeal causes for things in
the manner of the early philosophers, the so-called naturalists, Socrates
“hypothesizes” (Phaedo, 100b6–7) the existence of “beauty itself by itself,
goodness, greatness, and all the rest,” and then explains:“It seems to me that
if anything is beautiful besides beauty itself, it is beautiful for no other
reason than because it shares in (lesévei) that beauty: and I say that all
things are like this. Do you agree with this sort of cause?” (100c4–8).
Socrates goes on to insist that, though the precise details remain mysterious, we can find no better explanation for the sensible experience of
something such as beauty other than “either the presence (paqotría) or
the communion (joimxmía), whatever you may call it, of that Beauty in
things, however it may come to be” (100d5–7).
This brief passage expresses one of the key insights of Plato’s metaphysics:
The presence of identifiable qualities in sensible things presupposes the reality of that quality in its own right. In relation to our specific question, let us
note that he characterizes this reality by pointing to its difference from sensible things.There cannot be many beautiful things unless beauty is somehow
distinct from each and all of them, for if beauty existed only as a quality
inhering in a thing, it could do so only in one thing, and it would be impossible for many things to be beautiful.Thus, beauty must exist in some sense
apart from all possible sensible manifestations of beauty; it must exist, as Plato
’ ò jah’ a t’ sò), which means in fact as tranputs it here,“itself by itself ” (ats
scending all manifest expressions of beauty whatsoever. It is for this reason
that Plato elsewhere depicts Beauty, like all the other forms, as existing
absolutely—that is, not reducible to anything outside of itself 16—and therefore without any sensible qualities. Beauty itself
16 Although Plato does affirm an “interweaving,” otlpkovǵ, of the forms in the

Sophist (259c), for example, he nevertheless says that their interrelation also

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is not beautiful in this way and ugly that way, nor beautiful at one time
and ugly at another, nor beautiful in relation to one thing and ugly in
relation to another; nor is it beautiful here but ugly there, as it would
be if it were beautiful for some people and ugly for others. Nor will the
beautiful appear to him in the guise of a face or hands or anything else
that belongs to the body. It will not appear to him as one idea or one
kind of knowledge. It is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal,
or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with
itself, it is always one in form; and all the other beautiful things share in
that. (Symposium, 211a–b)

The lack of manifest qualities that Plato attributes to the forms—which
he says are “colorless, shapeless, and intangible”17—is not accidental to
them, but is a necessary function of their absoluteness, which is in turn
logically entailed in their difference from every relative participation. It is
just this that renders them properly intelligible.
Such a total transcendence of the forms, such as Beauty, from the world
of sense experience—the “separation” (vxqirlóy) of the forms from
individually existing things, o t’ ríai, that disturbed Aristotle—would seem
to give rise to two distinct worlds, the intelligible and the sensible, with
no possible intercourse between them. It is just this problem, in fact, that
Plato wrestles with in the Parmenides, a dialogue that takes a remarkably
clear-eyed view of the difficulties such a separation might entail. But in
the Phaedo, Plato simply affirms the “presence” of the absolutely transcendent form in its sensible image.While it is often assumed that Plato gradually came to attenuate the radical difference in the notion of participation
he expressed in the so-called middle dialogues, a reflection on the logic of
transcendence suggests that he does not need to: Radical difference does
not imply dualism, but is precisely what prevents it.18 The transcendence
of forms in relation to the sensible images that participate in them would
exclude their immanence in sensible things only if forms and images were
presupposes their independent “self-being.” In the Republic, he makes all the
forms in some sense relative to, that is, dependent on, the Good, but he does so,
arguably, because the Good in fact gives them their self-identity insofar as it is
ultimately what is responsible for their being so many intrinsic, and thus nonreducible, “goods.”
17 Phaedrus 247c: “a
’ vqx́lasóy se jaì a
’ rvglásoy jaì a
’ maug̀y.” It is significant
that Plato describes the transcendence of being precisely by negating any sensible predication to it.
18 For a more thorough presentation of the argument that follows, see Eric Perl,
“The Presence of the Paradigm: Immanence and Transcendence in Plato’s
Theory of Forms,” Review of Metaphysics 53 (1999): 339–62; and idem, “SensePerception and Intellect in Plato,” Revue de Philosophie Ancienne 15 (1997): 15–34.

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relative to one another within the same order of reality. If one corporeal thing
is separate from another corporeal thing, it obviously cannot be present in
it—indeed, corporeal things ultimately cannot, as corporeal, be immanent
to one another. By contrast, it is precisely because the form transcends not
only a particular sensible image, but in fact the very mode of existence of
that image, that it can be present to it—and to every other image of it. In
other words, only partial transcendence—that is, mere separation within
the same order of reality—excludes immanence; true transcendence is
coincident with immanence. Because a form is not a physical thing, and
therefore not localizable in any particular time and space, it is free, as it
were, to be anywhere, at any time. It turns out that all of the problems
Plato raises concerning the forms in the Parmenides presuppose not too
much transcendence, but not enough:We may thus suppose that he was criticizing there, not his own theory in the middle dialogues, as often assumed,
but the misinterpretation of this theory.19
Does the non-corporeality of the forms mean that they are not really
real? To the contrary. When Plato distinguishes between the modes of
existence of forms and images, he accords real reality—or in fact “really
real reality” (ot’ oía ’ómsxy ot’ Δ ra, Phaedrus, 247c)—to forms alone,20 he
does so for a host of reasons: They are eternal and unchangeable,21 the
original source of the content of all we experience through the senses,22
and the objects of the highest part of the soul.23 Here, again, there is no
dualism between forms and images because these are not two competing
realities set against each other. Instead, forms are the only things in fact
that are real. To say this does not mean, however, that the sensible world
is ultimately a non-existent illusion, as the historical Parmenides seems to
have thought. Plato clearly distinguishes images from non-being. As he says
19 See Perl, “Sense-Perception,” 28. Fritz-Gregor Hermann has shown that the

terminology of the Parmenides points back to the Phaedo, and demonstrates that
the reading the character Parmenides gives to the verbs leséveim and
lesakalb ámeim in his critique of the forms betrays the very same confusions
that Socrates criticizes Anaxagoras for in the Phaedo, namely, to think of separation in corporeal terms and thus to interpret participation wrongly as “taking a
physical part” of something. The dualism of orders thus necessarily follows.
Hermann concludes that “There may well have been those who read the Phaedo
in just that manner and confronted Plato with similar objections,” Hermann,
“leséveim, lesakalb ámeim,” 47–48.
20 See Republic V, 475e–480a.
21 Phaedo, 78c.
22 Republic V, 476b–c. In the Phaedo, 110b–111c, Plato presents a mythological tale
that depicts the true world of ideas as more vivid and real “versions” of the things
we perceive in the world.
23 Phaedrus, 248c; cf., Republic, 490b.

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in the Republic, likeness comes between being and nothing.24 It is not that
sensibles do not exist, it is only that their existence is wholly derived from
the truly existent forms.25 Sensibles are, in a word, “something” rather
than nothing, but that something is their being nothing but forms as sensibly manifest. This is, indeed, what it means to call them likenesses or
participations.26 To put it another way, sensibles are forms, but they are
forms in a certain respect, namely, as present to the senses.To say anything
else would be to pit their reality over against the forms. But if they cannot
be set over against the forms, then it must be said that they add nothing to
the forms. As Eric Perl puts it, “Since the form is the universal determination by which the instances are such, the instances can do nothing for
the form, while the form does everything for the instances.”27
Now, for all the beautiful paradox of this simultaneity of transcendence
and immanence that this view of participation implies, it nevertheless
gives rise to a certain problem. Granted that the transcendence of forms
in relation to images is precisely what allows forms to be in some respect
identical to them—or, perhaps better, allows images to be identical to
forms28—we must nevertheless ask what it is that is responsible for the
multiplicity of the sensible images. Participation explains how the many
can in fact be one, but it does not account for the fact of multiplicity. In
the Republic, Plato says that it is “by communion with actions, bodies, and
one another” that unique forms appear as many (476a5–7). But Perl is
right to insist we not read the intercourse with bodies as causing the
24 Republic, 477a.
25 C. J. de Vogel expresses this point well:“We are in full metaphysics here: physical

being is a kind of reality, but a kind of reality which can neither exist by itself
nor be known or explained from itself. It is found to be dependent on that other,
superior kind of being.There proves to be a ‘difference of level’ in such a sense
that, after all, there appear to be not two realities, the one next to or opposite the
other, realities of basically the same order and thus independent the one of the
other—which would be dualism—but one kind of reality which symbolically
should be indicated by a capital, a Reality which in the ontological order must
be called ‘basic’ and in the qualitative order ‘supreme,’ a Reality which does not
surpass the other in degree, in the way we saw of things surrounding us that one
of them is ‘superior’ to another, but a’ pkxΔ y; and another kind of reality which
does ‘exist,’ but in its very existence is found to be dependent on the first,”
Rethinking Plato and Platonism (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 162.
26 Republic, 476c–d.
27 Perl, “The Presence of the Paradigm,” 352.
28 “The doctrine of participation makes the sensible identical with the intelligible,
except that in sensible things the forms appear to us as a manifold instead of in
their unity,” J. Burnet, Greek Philosophy, pt. 1, Thales to Plato (London: Macmillan, 1914), 166.

D. C. Schindler

592

multiplicity of forms, for such an interpretation would assume a causal
reciprocity between forms and corporeal images that would undermine
the genuine transcendence of the forms.29 If sensibles are indeed wholly
derivative of the forms, or as J. N. Findlay puts it,“parasitic upon them,”30
while the forms are true being, then the images’ not being forms cannot
be due to some reality outside of the forms. Instead, it would have to arise
from something strictly unreal:This is just what Plato affirms in the cosmological account of the Timaeus, the only dialogue to address this question
directly. Here, Plato explains that it is the absolutely negative “existence”
of the receptacle, or “space,” that allows the forms to appear, as it were,
“outside” of themselves, and thus in the physical realm of becoming.31
We must understand why it is absolutely crucial for Plato to insist that this
“space” be devoid of any qualities or characteristics whatever, or in other
words, that it not exist in any way at all (for to have a quality of any sort
is to participate in a form and therefore in reality): If the space in which
forms were to be received had any reality of its own, it would first of all
be just so far incapable of receiving form (the space would be, as it were,
already occupied), and second of all it would introduce a positive reality
apart from the forms. But this, as we saw above, would give rise to just the
dualism that Plato’s doctrine of participation succeeds in overcoming.
Can Plato tell us where this absolute nothing comes from that makes all
relative nothings, that is, the multiplicity of the sense world of becoming,
possible? Logically, he cannot: It does not “come from” anywhere, and in
fact absolutely does not and cannot exist. If there is a principle for reality,
there cannot be an additional principle for what is “other” than the really
real; there can be only the absence of a principle.32 Though this “explanation” is consistent, we cannot help but feel uneasy with it. If there is no
positive ground for the multiplicity of images, they have no justification as

29 Perl, “Sense-Perception,” 17, n. 3.
30 J. N. Findlay, “Towards a Neo-Neo-Platonism,” in idem, Ascent to the Absolute:

Metaphysical Papers and Lectures (New York: Allen and Unwin, 1970), 251.
31 Timaeus, 50b–52b.
32 Perl argues that the manifestation of forms in sensibles is simply part of the

nature of forms (“The Presence of the Paradigm,” 352–53). He compares forms
to objects in sunlight, which cannot fail to produce a shadow, and yet are wholly
independent of those shadows. While this interpretation is a brilliant way of
explaining the nature of participation in Plato, it does not wholly remove the
problem we are addressing.There is something outside the objects, in this analogy, that “allows” them to cast their shadow, namely, the earth upon which it falls.
But outside the forms is, strictly speaking, nothing at all.We are thus still left to
reckon with the status of the “receptacle.”

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images.33 The radical difference of forms from images necessary to Plato’s
notion of participation is had at the cost of being unable to affirm any real
difference of images from forms.The closest Plato comes to a response to
this question is his reference to the goodness of the divine craftsman, who,
in his goodness, and thus his “freedom from jealousy,” desired that “everything become as much like himself as was possible.”34 In other words, to
be good is to share oneself, and to share oneself requires others. For a deepening of what Plato merely hints at here, it is best to turn to Plotinus.
Plotinus on Goodness as Productive Cause
In relation to our question concerning the provenance of difference, we find
two insights introduced by Plotinus that, though they may be arguably
implied in Plato, are worked out much more explicitly by this later disciple:
first, the identification of perfection with productive power;35 second, the
related notion that the existence of the physical images of reality arises as a
fruit of a logos or rational principle, namely, Nature’s mediated contemplation of unity.36 Let us explore the connection between these points.
One of Plotinus’s most common descriptive names for the One is
dt́maliy p ámsxm, the “potency” or perhaps “productive power of all
things.”What Plotinus intends by p ámsa is not merely the things of the
intelligible realm, but absolutely all things whatsoever, in heaven and on
earth. Now, there seem to be two reasons for his linking of absolute perfection and absolute productivity.37 Looking at the world, we see that, not only
33 One might object that Plato does in fact propose a ground for difference precisely

in relation to the question of multiplicity in the Sophist, insofar as, there, he posits
motion and difference as two of the greatest forms (254c ff.). However, this resolution fails on two counts: First, there is still a need, in this case, to account for
the multiplicity of the greatest forms in the first place; second, and more decisively, the form of difference accounts as it were only for formal difference, and
does not explain the “vertical” difference, which we might call the “real” difference, of images from forms. To put it concretely, the form of motion does not
itself move. It tells us what motion is, but it does not account for the simple fact
that things move.
34 Timaeus, 29e. It is worth pondering the fact that Plato accounts for the creation
of the world through a mythological “personification” of the principle of things.
35 “How then could the most perfect, the first Good, remain in itself as if it
grudged to give of itself or was impotent, when it is the productive power of all
things?” EnneadV.4.1. Plotinus is referring to Plato’s Timaeus here with his use of
the verb “to grudge,” uhomeiΔm. Cf., Phaedrus, 247a9–10.
36 See esp. III.8.5–6.
37 Heinz Robert Schlette is correct to observe that the “reasons” Plotinus affirms
for the production of the many out of the One are intended, not to prove
(beweisen), but to explain (verdeutlichen). See Schlette, Das Eine und das Andere:

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rational beings, but all living creatures, and indeed elements as well, tend to
produce some likeness of themselves as they become most fully what they
are: By being fire, for example, fire gives off heat; similarly, living creatures
reproduce themselves when they reach maturity, that is, their proper perfection.38 If this fruitfulness is a result of their perfection, how can we fail to
ascribe perfect fruitfulness to what is most completely perfect, that is, to the
One itself? Indeed, we seem also to have a more conceptual reason for doing
so: If a failure to give generously is a result of self-seeking need, that which
is absolutely transcendent and thus “independent,” that which therefore has
no trace of need, cannot fail to be absolutely generous.This inference leads
to a certain paradox, which one must nevertheless admit glows with intelligibility:The One can be the principle of all things only by transcending
them all, which means, to give being, it must be in some sense “beyond
being.”39 There is a link, then, between transcendence and generosity, and
the difference we saw in Plato’s notion of participation becomes explicitly in
Plotinus a productive principle.As Plotinus puts it,
It is because there is nothing in [the One] that all things come from it:
in order that being may exist, the One is not being, but the generator
of being (cemmgsg̀y dè at’ sotΔ ). This, we may say, is the first act of
generation: the One, perfect because it seeks nothing, has nothing, and
needs nothing, overflows, as it were, and its superabundance makes
‘
something other than itself (sò tpeqpkgΔ
qey at’ sotΔ pepoígjem ’á kko).40

The Platonic notion of participation thus gets radicalized in Plotinus: It
accounts not only for the way things are, that is, their intelligible qualities, but also for the very fact that they are.This radicalization requires a
principle that not only transcends physical things, but is itself transcendence pure and simple.
Studien zur Problematik des Negativen in der Metaphysik Plotins (Munich: Max
Huebner Verlag, 1966), 72–73.That which is most original, of course, cannot be
deduced from anything else.
38 V.4.1:“If the First is perfect, the most perfect of all, and the primal power, it must
be the most powerful of all beings and the other powers must imitate it as far as they
are able. Now when anything else comes to perfection we see that it produces, and
does not endure to remain by itself, but makes something else [ ’akk’ e‘´seqom
poiotΔ m].” See also III.8.3:“Making, for [Nature], means being what it is, and its
making power is coextensive with what it is.”
39 V.4.2.
40 Ibid.,V.2.1 [emphasis added]. Note that Plotinus actually uses the present perfect
tense, that is,“has made something other,” not in order to indicate an action that
took place in the past, as the literal English rendering would imply, but to indicate, as the Greek does, an action’s being completed in the present.

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It is well-known that, for Plotinus, things are by being one, that is, by
participating severally in unity: “It is by the One that all beings are
beings.”41 On the other hand, and less often recognized, to be literally the
productive power of all things, the One must be equally a principle—in
some respect at least—of diversity, insofar as the One gives this unity
precisely to what is other than itself. Or, better: to the other that it itself
gives.As the originating principle, the One is simultaneously unifying and,
so to speak, “otherifying.”42 If this were not the case, the One would be
afflicted with a sterility incompatible with its perfection. But its sheer
generosity makes manifest that its “poverty,” that is, its not “being” anything
at all, is at the same time an inconceivable wealth, because its utter absence
of any determinate content in itself is just what accounts for its being the
source of all content, that is, for its absolutely incomparable “magnanimity.”
A comparison with Hegel is helpful here: While Hegel begins with the
concept of Being that is empty because of its universality, and thus must
externalize itself in order to attain in reality the universality it already is
logically, Plotinus begins with a principle that, as always-already prior to the
distinction between poverty and fullness,43 externalizes itself (so to speak)
not because it needs to, but precisely because it does not need to. Necessity
implies a kind of heteronomy that makes no sense in relation to the One,
to which of course nothing can ultimately be in fact heteros, and we must
therefore affirm the production of all things by the One that is just as much
an act of free will as an act of (inner) necessity.44 Plotinus, in this respect,
would seem to stand closer to the Christian notion of creatio ex nihilo than
is generally acknowledged.45 However that may be, we ought to see that
the pure transcendence, and therefore the generosity, of the first principle
offers a surer ground for the positivity of difference, the “justification” of
the otherness due to production, than one can find in Hegelian dialectics.46
41 Ibid.,VI.9.1. In this passage, Plotinus goes on to show that things exist insofar as

they are unified, and that dissolution—the loss of unity—is the loss of being.
42 Cristina D’Ancona Costa speaks of the “two different kinds of causality” of the

One: “Plotinus and Later Platonic Philosophers on the Causality of the First
Principle,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Lloyd Gerson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 368–75. Costa presents the issue as a problem left unresolved by Plotinus to the later tradition.
43 See V.3.15: The One “has nothing,” but may also be said to “possess all things
beforehand,” because it is all of them principally (as non-passive potency) without
distinction.
44 Ibid.,VI.8.18–20.
45 See, for example, Kremer, Die Neuplatonische Seinsphilosophie, 12–13.
46 Of course, one might point to the logic of the dialectical Aufhebung that not only
eliminates (tollere) but simultaneously preserves (conservare) the difference in the

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The One’s pure generosity is reflected in everything that exists in the
world, to the degree that corresponds to its degree of being.47 The first
“hypostasis” to proceed from the One, Plotinus calls motΔ y, though he also
refers to this hypostasis as ’óm or e’ímai, insofar as the Intellect is ultimately
the same as its essential object, being.48 The Intellect is an image of the
One.49 Indeed, since it follows immediately (lesant̀ ot’ dém) upon the One,
it is the most perfect possible image of the One. In fact, Plotinus describes
it as the One itself insofar as it thinks itself:“How then does [the One] generate Intellect? Because by its return to it, it sees:And this seeing is Intellect.”50
Thus, where the One is absolutely undifferentiated unity, the Intellect is that
same unity mediated by thought; in other words, it is the absolute identity
of thought and its object, an identity than which, quite literally, nothing
greater can be thought.The only difference between the One and Intellect
is that what the One essentially is, the Intellect essentially has by participation. Since this “pure participation,” as we may call it, constitutes the very
identity of the Intellect, and because participation implies the “not” of
secondarity, Plotinus affirms difference as intrinsic to the Intellect, a difference
that is co-extensive with its self-identity: “For there could not be thinking
without otherness, and also sameness.”51 The implications of the otherness
between the Intellect and the One that the Intellect appropriates in the act
of participation, or better, as the act of participation—which Plotinus likes
to refer to as the act of contemplation (hexqía)—are many:Whereas the
One is beyond being, the Intellect is identical to being; while the One is the
productive power of all things by being none of them, the Intellect is the
reality of all things;52 while the One is utterly without difference, the Intellect is essentially a “One-Many”; 53 while the One is the absolute stillness
beyond need and its alleviation, the Intellect is the simultaneity of pure
desire and pure satisfaction,“always desiring and always attaining.”54 Finally,
sublation (elevare): In the end, it is true that Hegel’s identity is not the proverbial
“night in which all cows are black,” but is a thoroughly mediated identity, that is,
the identity of identity and difference. Nevertheless, the point for Hegel is never
difference as such, but the ever-greater expansion of identity; difference is
affirmed only because and insofar as it offers a means to more comprehensive unity.
47 See V.2.
48 Ibid.,V.9.8: Intellect and being “have one active actuality, or rather both are one
thing. Being and Intellect are therefore one nature.”
49 Ibid.,V.1.7.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.,V.1.4.
52 Ibid.,VI.9.2.
53 Ibid.,VI.7.14.
54 Ibid., III.8.11.The One is “before movement and rest,” ibid.,VI.9.3.

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while the Intellect constitutes itself through an act of contemplative participation, a love that is its very being, the One is not constituted at all. It does
not, cannot, contemplate, and likewise cannot love.55
Note that we said the Intellect “constitutes itself.” Here, we touch on
the second point mentioned above.The “act” of production cannot strictly
speaking be an act belonging to the One because action implies the difference of potentiality, which is “external” to the One.56 The production of
the Intellect is therefore not something that the One “does,” but something that the Intellect “does.” But this means that the difference between
the One and the Intellect, which is a difference in the Intellect, arises
through the active pursuit of goodness, that is, the One. In other words, the
difference of participation is not so much a fall from unity, as it is a function of the ascent toward unity, which ascent is identical to the One’s
“downward” generosity.We would lose the paradox of true productivity if
we viewed it in a mere one-sided way as diminution.To think of the One’s
“super-active” production coming before the Intellect’s own act of reception would be to introduce an inappropriate temporality.The gift and the
reception are, so to speak, one and the same. At the same time, this ascent
of the Intellect, because it is the contemplative reception and therefore
imitation of the productive generosity of the One, is simultaneously the
Intellect’s own productive descent, that is, its generation of a new hypostasis that imitates, in its turn, the simultaneous activity and receptivity of the
Intellect. Plotinus calls this the Soul: “Soul is an expression and a kind of
activity of Intellect, just as Intellect is of the One.”57 Just as Intellect is an
image of the One, so too is the Soul an image of the Intellect,58 a fruit of
its productive reception of Goodness.59
The procession of multiplicity out of unity thus appears, in one respect,
as a cascading waterfall, in another as an ecstatic ascent; in any event, as
following from the intrinsic creative energy of unity, it presents in a dynamic
55 Plotinus does speak of the One as “love of himself ” (ibid., VI.8.15), but he is

surely speaking metaphorically here insofar as he takes love to be essentially an
“aspiration toward the higher and the good” (ibid., III.5.9), and there cannot be
anything for the One to aspire to. The One itself “must not look or aspire to
something else, but stay quiet and be the ‘spring and origin’ of natural activities”
(ibid., I.7.1). In a word, love is associated with participation:What the One is, all
other things love to be.
56 “Potentiality” is meant, here, in contrast to actuality. Plotinus uses the word
dynamis quite often to speak of the One, but in this case he means a perfect
potency that has no need to be actualized.
57 Ibid.,V.1.6.
58 Ibid.,V.1.3.
59 Ibid.,V.1.7.

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way the progressive multiplication of difference, not simply quantitatively,
but first of all in a qualitative sense.The Soul’s participation in the Intellect
is the addition of a difference to the difference that constitutes Intellect.
Just as Intellect is the One, but the One as thinking itself “intellectually,”
the Soul is the Intellect (and therefore also the One), but as thinking
itself, so to speak, “soulfully.” What was the purely formal distinction of
eternal ideas, each thinking the whole at once in thinking itself, becomes
the discursive thinking of those ideas, dis-cursive reason being the thinking
that “runs through” its objects successively: Here, we have thus the introduction of temporal difference.60 Finally, Nature in its turn contemplates
the discursive ideas of the Soul, and from this contemplation emerges the
new difference of space. Nature’s contemplation, thus, brings forth the
sensible cosmos.61 Neo-Platonism is often thought to harbor a certain
contempt for the body and the corporeal world accessible to the senses;
one might perhaps expect such a contempt to follow from the logic of
participation, which makes the participant nothing but a degraded modality
of that in which it participates. But the deepest impulse of Plotinus’s interpretation of participation is to affirm the participant in the first place as a
positive expression of the participatum, the fruit of its love of unity, and ultimately as a beautiful expression of unity itself.62 One of the most passion60 See Ibid., III.7.11. Cf., ibid.,V.1.4. Plotinus describes time as an imitation of eter-

nity, the former being the soul’s thinking of reality in its distinct aspects, one after
the other, while the latter is the “intuition,” as it were, of all things at once.
61 We see in this context the significance of the argument Jonathon Scott Lee
makes in his essay,“The Doctrine of Reception According to the Capacity of the
Recipient in Ennead VI.4–5,” Dionysius 3 (1979): 79–97, regarding matter as a
“limitation” of form in Plotinus. If matter could limit form, we would have a
positive reality outside of Intellect, which entails all of the problems of dualism.
For Plotinus, according to the brief sketch we have presented, the difference of
limitation arises, strangely, from above:The limit of space is the fruit of Nature’s
contemplation of Soul; it is not imposed on Nature from below, nor does the
activity of Nature have to “accommodate” itself to matter. On the other hand,
Nature’s spatially limited formation of matter is in some sense a constriction of
the Soul above it, just as the Soul is a constriction of Intellect, and the Intellect,
the One. Nevertheless, the causal principle of this constriction is itself a fruit
from above. There is no causal force in the Plotinian cosmos that is not an
expression of the first principle.
62 “Two points of great importance for the understanding of Plotinus’s philosophy
are, first that the production of each lower stage of being from the higher is not
the result of any conscious act on the part of the latter, but is a necessary, unconscious reflex of its primary activity of contemplation; and, second, that every level
of real being, even the lowest, is good. Plotinus may speak of matter, which is
absolute non-existence, as evil, but he is intensely anxious to demonstrate the
complete goodness of the material world, the glorious image of its still more

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ately written of Plotinus’s treatises is his work “Against the Gnostics,” II.9,
which condemns contempt for the physical world as blasphemy.
Nevertheless, one may still ask whether Plotinus’s schema ultimately
valorizes difference, or perhaps better, provides the grounds finally to
sustain the difference he clearly does valorize in some manner. Although
the sensible images that populate the natural cosmos are altogether good
as manifestations of the Divine Intelligence and Unity, is it possible to say
that they are good also, and simply, in themselves? One hesitates here: It
cannot be forgotten that the multiplicity of the world is an effect of the
Good, and is good as such an effect, and also that the “in-itself ” character of things is not to be juxtaposed to their participation in the One
because it is that participation at bottom; and yet, it is equally the case
that, for Plotinus, unity alone is perfect, and all other things are perfect
precisely to the extent that they relate to this unity, which means that
their imperfection, conversely, is measured by their difference or distance
from it. Speaking of Intellect, Plotinus writes, for example:
Now what comes from [the One] could not be the same as himself. If
then it is not the same, it cannot of course be better: for what could be
better than the One or in any way transcend him? It must then be
worse; and this means more deficient.What then is more deficient than
the One? That which is not one; it is therefore many. (Ennead V.3.15)

Or again:“But beginning as one it [Intellect] did not stay as it began, but,
without noticing it, became many, as if heavy [with drunken sleep], and
unrolled itself because it wanted to possess everything—how much better
it would have been for it not to want this, for it became the second!”63
Of course, the One, as Plotinus never tires of repeating, is immediately
present to all things; but that presence is limited by the capacity to receive
it, the expanse of which depends on the thing’s “level” of reality. Not,
again, that the lower ever “measures” the higher, but that the higher
constricts itself or becomes diluted in its going forth and thus, in its selfdiffusion, becomes its own measure. Though Plotinus marvels at the
beauty of the sensible cosmos, he nevertheless thinks of matter itself, qua
matter, as “evil.”64 For all of the positivity of generation, which necessarily entails difference, a certain shadow hangs over the “self-being” of what
is other than the One; Plotinus often uses the charged word sókla,
glorious archetype, the world of NotΔ y .” A. H. Armstrong, The Architecture of the
Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), 111–12.
63 III.8.8.
64 See ibid., I.8.3; and II.4.16.

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“audacity,” in its regard.65 Moreover, while Plotinus, as we have seen, celebrates diversity of a particular kind in certain contexts—above all, in the
realm of the Intellect—what he seems to celebrate most is the unity that
comprehends the whole and finds expression in it and in each of its parts.
We see this emphasis, for example, in his treatise on beauty, the very first
he wrote: Beauty is not above all the unity of a multiplicity and therefore in
some respect the multiplicity of unity, but is unity tout court; it “rests upon
the material thing when it has been brought into unity, and gives itself to
parts and wholes alike.”66 In other words, though a complex thing can
manifest beauty, the beauty that it shows forth is due solely to its unity,
and not at all to its complexity. The difference of multiplicity does not
itself, that is, contribute causally in the beauty of the manifestation.
The question of the status of difference in the metaphysical structure
of participation in Plotinus’s thought is an extremely delicate matter, but
perhaps we may formulate it, finally, thus: By virtue of the essential
generativity of the first principle, Plotinus affirms the goodness of difference, but he seems to do so insofar as it serves to “multiply” unity, and not
because difference is simply good as such. In order to be able to affirm the
goodness of difference as difference, there would have to be some sense in
which, to put it crudely, things also get better the more multiple, and
indeed the more external or physical, they become. In other words, to
look at the issue in connection with the structure of participation, there
has to be some sense in which the participans exceeds the participatum,
however paradoxical that may seem. More concretely, it means, for example, that the sensible world would have to exceed the intelligible world
in some positive way, and not simply by virtue of a progressive dilution.
Plotinus claims that whatever one “adds” to the Good makes it that much
less.67 Thus, there is according to Plotinus ultimately nothing new under
the One. The problem is excruciating: On the one hand, it seems we
cannot affirm the “excess” of the participans in relation to the participatum
without simply exploding the structure of participation (if x receives all
65 Ibid., V.1.1. Referring to individual souls, he says: “The beginning of evil for

them was audacity and coming to birth and the first otherness and the wishing
to belong to themselves.” Naguib Baladi in fact interprets the whole of Plotinus
around this word, insofar as it alone serves, he believes, to explain the possibility
of the various levels of difference in a cosmos ultimately rooted in pure Unity:
La pensée de Plotin (Paris: P.U.F., 1970). Armstrong, similarly, describes the
progressive multiplication of diversity and externality in the Plotinian cosmos in
terms of the increase of self-isolation: Architecture, 89–90.
66 Ibid., I.6.2.
67 Ibid., III.8.11.

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it has from y, how can it end up with more than y?). On the other hand,
if we deny the excess then we will ultimately be without a ground for
the genuine and good difference of the participans.We are thus tempted to
look for some second principle, next to the One, to justify the excess, and
we thereby fall into the dead-end nihilism of Gnosticism. Our only way
out would be to affirm a first principle that, while absolutely simple, is
not mere unity. For this, we turn to Aquinas.
Aquinas and Participation as Reciprocal Causality
It is a curious fact that, while participation is today generally accepted as
forming a significant part of Aquinas’s view of reality,68 the works that first
pointed out its role to twentieth-century Thomism—Fabro (1939) and
Geiger (1942)—were received as groundbreaking studies. Indeed, Étienne
Gilson’s classic exposition of Aquinas’s philosophy gives only passing
mention to the theme.69 If it is the case that the idea of participation leads
one to seek reality not in individual things themselves, but reductively in
their transcendent causes, it is not surprising that the theme of participation would not have been as immediately apparent in Aquinas. For him,
perhaps even more than for Aristotle, the primary sense of reality, metaphysically speaking, is composite substance. But this is just the novelty that
he introduces with respect to the Neo-Platonic tradition: As we will see,
Aquinas’s notion of participation includes an affirmation of the difference
of that which participates, and thus opens the world to its transcendent
source without thereby making the world something “insubstantial.”70
68 In addition to the works cited above in note 9, we may add André Hayens’ argu-

ment that, while the Aristotelian theme dominates in Aquinas’s epistemology, his
metaphysics is basically Platonic: See L’Intentionnel selon saint Thomas.
69 See Gilson, The Philosophy of St.Thomas Aquinas, 3rd ed. (New York: Dorset Press,
n.d.), 189–240. Gilson immediately leads the notion of participation to that of
analogy: see 164, note 18, where he enters a “caution” regarding participation.
There seems to be a tension between the “existentialist” interpretation of
Aquinas and that which emphasizes the Neo-Platonic element of participation
(for example, Kremer), as we will show below. George Lindbeck exaggerates the
tension into a “contradiction” in Aquinas’s thought:“Participation and Existence
in the Interpretation of St.Thomas Aquinas,” Franciscan Studies 17 (1957): 1–22,
107–25.The contradiction, however, appears only if one fails to see the transformation of the structure of participation, as we will attempt to show. It bears
remarking, however, that our interpretation does not claim to be an exegesis of
texts in Aquinas and a tracing of any historical development, but simply a reflective reading of certain representative texts.
70 Much of the following argument regarding Aquinas is owed to Nicholas Healy. See
his excellent treatment of the question of the positivity of difference in The Eschatology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 39–52.

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Aquinas shares with Neo-Platonism the notion that all beings are essentially unities, and at the same time that no beings in the world are simply
identical with their being:Whatever does not exist by eternal necessity can
exist only by sharing in, that is, participating in, being; and participation
implies a certain difference, or “not,” for one cannot simply be what one has
only through participation.There is a difference, Aquinas says, between existence and that which is.71 A particular being or existing thing cannot be said
to be being, but is rather said to “have” it: Ens simpliciter est quod habet esse.72
Where Aquinas distances himself from the Neo-Platonic tradition in which
he participates, as it were, is his affirmation of a composition at the heart of
beings that (to speak loosely for a moment) “results” from their participation: “Therefore every substance which comes after the first simple
substance participates in esse. But every participant is composed [componitur]
of that which participates and that in which it participates, and the participant is in potency to that in which it participates.”73 As straightforward as
this passage may seem, it contains a profound mystery: Composition implies
multiplicity, and thus, being can enter into composition only with something that is other than it. But Aquinas is quite clear that nothing is extrinsic
to being except nothing, non-ens.74 With what can being be composed, or
more specifically, how can it be composed with what is literally nothing?75
We must enter more deeply into the terms in question. As is wellknown, Aquinas affirms a notion of being radically different from that
which we find in the Greek philosophical world:While being was previously taken to be identical to intelligible form, Aquinas says that the
primary sense of being is act tout court. It is esse, rather than ens, essentia,
or forma.76 The general word for being, ens, is, according to Aquinas, itself
71 In de hebd., lecture 2, n. 22: Boethius “dicit ergo . . . quod diversum est esse, et id

quod est.”
72 Summa theologiae I–II, q. 26, a. 4.
73 In Phys. VIII, 21, 1153.
74 De potentia Dei, 7.2.9.
75 Geiger, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, insists that there are two

modes of participation in Aquinas: The participation by composition, by which
the act of existence, infinite in se, is limited by the receptive capacity of the
particular essence (on this, see Clarke, “The Meaning of Participation in St.
Thomas”), and participation by similitude, that is, the formal participation,
according to diverse and limited degrees, of the essence in the Divine Essence:
Geiger, La participation, 67–71.Te Velde is right to point to the problems that this
double-participation leaves unresolved, in particular the unity of being (Te Velde,
Participation and Substantiality, 88–91). But we will address a different problem,
namely, what accounts for the formal diversity in the participation by similitude.
76 To be sure, Plotinus sometimes refers to being as sò e’´
imai. Nevertheless, he does
not mean by this any “transformal” act, but invariably insists that being is identical

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derived “from the very act of existing.”77 Though he does not deny that
intelligible form is indeed act, he nevertheless insists that intelligible form
alone does not suffice to account for the actual existence of things. If it
were, concretely subsisting forms would be identical with their existence,
which would mean that they exist necessarily and eternally (as they do in
fact for both Plato and Plotinus). If existing substances, however, are not
responsible for their own being, there must be some act beyond the act
designated by form, in other words, a “trans-formal” actuality. Aquinas
thus refers to esse as the “actuality of all acts,”78 and the “actuality of every
form or nature.”79 It is a kind of act, therefore, that causally transcends
the acts that specify beings in diverse ways.
Moreover, since act is what perfects, Aquinas infers that, as the actuality of all acts, esse is also what is most perfect: “Existence is the most
perfect of all things, for it is compared to all things as that by which they
are made actual; for nothing has actuality except so far as it exists. Hence,
existence is that which actuates all things, even their forms.”80 Because
nothing can be added to esse from outside of it, there is no perfection
anywhere in the world that does not have esse as its cause; indeed, all
perfections are nothing but specified modes of esse, which, in itself, is
“superior to life and to all other perfections.”81 It is “among all principles the most perfect.”82 If it is true that causality, as the communication
of act, implies similitude,83 then the essential act designated by form will
be a certain imitation of the act of being (esse, actus essendi) tout court.84
to its intelligible content. Kevin Corrigan has argued that there is something like
the scholastic essence-existence distinction in Plotinus, though Plotinus does not
make it explicitly thematic:“Essence and Existence in the Enneads,” in Gerson, The
Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, 105–29. Indeed, the nature of the One, which is
an “activity” radically distinct from that of Being, would seem to point naturally in
this direction.
77 I Sent 8, 1, 1.
78 De potentia Dei, 7, 2, ad 9.
79 ST I, q. 3, a. 4.
80 ST I, q. 4, a. 2, ad 3.
81 ST I–II, q. 2, a. 5, ad 2.
82 De potentia Dei, 7, 2, ad 9 (see also ST I, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3).
83 Summa contra Gentiles II, c. 11 (3), c. 53 (5).
84 Te Velde claims that “An essence as such is totally different from existence and
cannot be thought to derive from it.Therefore, in my opinion, it simply makes no
sense to say that an essence participates in existence” (Te Velde, Participation and
Substantiality, 110, n. 36). He is here disputing the translation of esse by “existence.”
While it is true that esse as actus essendi is not exactly the same as esse interpreted as
existentia—that is, as the mere “fact” of existence added to the essence as an independent possible—Te Velde need not, it seems to me, exaggerate the difference

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It is Gilson with whom we most immediately associate this theme of the
“trans-formal” actuality of esse.85
Once we acknowledge esse as the actuating ground, in some sense, of
all perfections, it is quite tempting to interpret the participation of things
in esse according to a certain aspect we have noted in the general NeoPlatonic schema.All existing perfections, we might say, are “nothing but”
manifestations of esse; as particular, and thus limited modes of esse, their
own reality is derived from first to last from that in which they participate. But then we face, once again, our familiar question:What is it that
accounts for the particularity of these modes, the “limitation” of perfect
actuality? What, in other words, accounts for the difference between individually existing substances and the esse in which they participate? Aquinas
regularly insists that act is necessarily infinite within its own order,86 and
if act is found to be limited, this is due, not to the act itself, but to the
potency of that in which the act is received. In the case of the participation in esse, it is thus the potentiality of the essence that limits, and thus
specifically determines, the sheer actuality of esse.What, then, is the status
of this essence that receives esse? It may be act in relation to matter in the
order of natures, but it is potency in relation to esse, and indeed even the
act it possesses in the essential order is its own only as received from the
“actuality of all acts.” We may thus be led to say that essence does not
itself determine esse in any sense, it does not “add” a specific determination to esse, but only “adds” a limitation to esse’s determining actuality.
But in saying this we would already be saying too much: Insofar as
potency is always derivative of act,87 we cannot even say that the essence
adds a limitation to esse, because its very limiting capacity derives from
esse. Again, if it is true, as Aquinas says, that “nothing can be added to esse
between the actuality of factual existence and the formal actuality of essence:
Though they are, indeed, of radically different orders, we cannot deny an analogy
between them without undermining altogether any intrinsic causal relation.
85 Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Medieval Studies, 1952), 154–89. See also Fabro, La Nozione Metafisica di Particepazione, 338–162; and idem, Participation et Causalité (Louvain: Publications
Universitaires de Louvain, 1961), 179–244; de Finance, Être et Agir dans la philosophie de saint Thomas (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1965); Friedrich Wilhelmson, The Paradoxical Structure of Existence (Irving, TX: University of Dallas Press,
1970).
86 See, among the texts cited in Clarke, 86–87, note 48, the following: SCG I, ch.
43; II, ch. 52–54; De potentia Dei, 1, 2; 7, 2 ad 9; ST I, q. 7, aa. 1–2; q. 50, a. 2, ad
4; q. 75, a. 5, ad 1 and 4.
87 Aquinas affirms that there cannot be a reciprocal relation between act and
potency, but we can refer act to potency only in reason. SCG II, c.12 (3–4).

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from the outside, because outside of esse there is nothing,” then it would
seem necessary to say that it is precisely nothing that limits esse, to think
of potency primarily as a relative nothing—relative, that is, to the actuality of all acts to which it sets limits.This, we recall, was the inference to
which Plato was led. According to this interpretation, we would thus be
compelled to say that essence, as a principle of limitation within the existential order, is wholly negative with respect to esse, since to accord any
“positivity” to it in this relation would be to contradict the notion that
esse is the “perfection of all perfections” or indeed to posit the reality of
something that lies, as it were, outside of reality.There would seem to be
no alternative, along these lines of reflection, then, but to affirm, with
William Carlo, the “ultimate reducibility of essence to existence.”88 As
Carlo sees it, we ought not even to imagine essences as “empty vessels”
that are subsequently filled by the ocean of esse, for this accords them too
much independent reality. Instead, it is best to think of esse as water being
poured out on an impossibly cold day, so that it freezes into, say, a particular form by virtue of its own inward nature and not because of something being extrinsically imposed on it.89
But Fabro is perfectly right to point out, in relation to the interpretation of esse as the perfectly actual “store” of absolutely all possible perfections from which all essences are drawn, that such a view not only entails
the validity of the ontological argument, but also eliminates the notion
of created being as “composed”—that is, it undermines the “real distinction” that constitutes the createdness of created being.90 Let us dwell for
a moment on the implications of Carlo’s interpretation: If it is the case that
the limitation of esse that accounts for the distinction of creatures is wholly
negative, we run into the problem that has, as we have seen, haunted the
notion of participation, namely, the inability to give ultimate justification for
the difference of the participant. The participant becomes, from this
perspective, defined specifically by a lack.Act is infinite and perfect; potency
must therefore be imperfect precisely because of its limitation and the finitude such a limitation implies. Here we have a straightforward example of
what Derrida would have criticized as a simple “binary opposition.” If it is
88 William Carlo, The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence to Existence in Existential Meta-

physics (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966).
89 Ibid., 103–4.
90 Fabro criticizes this view, not specifically in Carlo, but in Kremer (Die Neupla-

tonische Seinsphilosophie). He claims that Kremer’s interpretation of esse as the
total content of all perfection, which would include actual existence with it,
would ultimately make God identical to this sum of all perfections (ideas): See
Fabro,“Platonism, Neo-Platonism, and Thomism: Convergencies and Divergencies,” New Scholasticism 44 (1970): 80–82.

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true, we cannot but think of creation as a kind of fall from true perfection.
Such an interpretation, however, fails to grasp the extraordinarily paradoxical character of esse as St.Thomas conceives it.
Although it is true that esse, as act, is in some sense infinite, it is equally
true that the act of existence in the created order—that is, esse creatum—is,
for Aquinas, at the same time radically finite. In the first question of the De
potentia Dei, Aquinas presents a characterization of esse that has vast implications in relation to our question: “Esse significat aliquid completum et simplex
sed non subsistens.” 91 On the one hand, being, as the act of existence, is
complete and simple; it is perfect, which echoes what we have presented
above. On the other hand and at the very same time, however,Aquinas also
affirms here that being . . . doesn’t exist!92 Esse, in other words, is not simply
actuality, but is the actuality of all acts, it is an actuality—reading the genitive as subjective—that belongs in some sense to what is other than itself,
namely, the substance that it makes actual. Aquinas speaks of substances as
possessing their own act of existence,93 and defines ens as “quasi esse habens,
hoc autem solum est substantia, quae subsistet.” 94 While esse is in a certain
respect what makes all things be, it itself is nothing in the sense that it does
not subsist in itself, but only inheres in that which exists.
The German philosopher Ferdinand Ulrich, who has unfolded the
significance of this phrase from the De potentia at length in his extraordinary book, Homo Abyssus: Das Wagnis der Seinsfrage,95 describes esse as “pure
mediation,”96 and interprets it in terms similar to the sheer generosity
that characterizes Plotinus’s One. Esse, according to Ulrich, is the “likeness of God’s goodness,” and “bonum,” in its turn, “dicitur diffusivum sui
esse.” 97 One is tempted to read Aquinas’s statement from the De potentia as
a contradiction, insofar as it affirms both complete perfection, which
implies that it needs nothing outside of itself, and at the same time the radical incompleteness of non-subsistence. But Ulrich helpfully points out that
we fall into this contradiction only if, forgetting its thoroughly “self-diffusing” character, we think of being apart from the things it makes be, and thus
only when we juxtapose it to them as a thing subsisting in itself in contrast
to those things which alone subsist. When we do so, however, we in fact
91 De potentia Dei, 1, 1, ad 1.
92 Cf., De hebd., n. 23.
93 “Unumquodque est per suum esse,” SCG I, 22.
94 Met. 12.1.
95 Ferdinand Ulrich, Homo Abyssus: Das Wagnis der Seinsfrage, 2nd ed. (Freiburg:

Johannes Verlag Einsiedeln, 1998).
96 Ibid., 27.
97 ST I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 2.

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essentialize what is radically other than essence. To essentialize esse in this
manner would bring us into something like the dialectic of Hegel, who
begins with Being in itself as the emptiest and most universal of all concepts,
and thus as pure contradiction, the resolution of which is an act of despair
rather than generosity. Instead of “essentializing” the act of being, we ought
to follow rationally the movement of esse itself, the purely “fluid” movement Ulrich calls at different places the “Subsistenzbewegung” or the “Verendlichungsbewegung,” and thus to think of esse as the sheer act of giving oneself
away, or letting be.98 In this respect, esse is indeed perfect, but it, so to speak,
has its perfection only in that which is other than itself, that is, in the beings
it makes be. Its own perfection is always already given away, or more
adequately, possessed as having been given away.Thus, the perfect wealth of
esse is coincident with a complete poverty.
As Dionysius the Areopagite affirms, following Plotinus, Being is the
first of all creatures. Receiving this affirmation with approbation from the
Neo-Platonic text Liber de causis,Aquinas nevertheless adds a crucial qualification: Esse is not what is created, it is not the subject of creation; instead,
the terminus of the act of creation is the concretely subsisting ens.99 To say
that esse is primary in creation does not mean it is created first, as a thing
in itself, and then the variety of essences are so to speak drawn out of it,
but that when we speak of things as created, we refer first of all to their
existence rather than to the particular modality of that existence.Thus, if
Plotinus makes Intellect-Being the first hypostasis to proceed from the
divine One,100 Aquinas makes the sheer multiplicity of beings in the
world the “first” to proceed from God’s creative act, though the primary
perfection of these things remains first of all their simple existence.
Once we recognize the radical finitude of being in the created order,
its non-subsistence, we see why we cannot think of it as a content-rich
ocean of perfection, from which the partial perfection of the essence can
be “scooped out,” and to which for that very reason it can ultimately be
reduced once more. In this respect, the essence cannot simply represent
a negative with respect to esse, which would in this case be affirmed as
total positivity—and therefore as subsistent! We are thus tempted to fall
into the opposite extreme, and to think of the essence as positive, that is,
98 To follow this movement intellectually is to imitate esse’s own refusal to hold

onto itself, and thus to resist, in one’s thinking, the temptation to allow one’s
thoughts (of being) to congeal into fixed concepts.
99 ST I, q. 45, a. 4, ad 1.
100 To be sure, Plotinus affirms that the Intellect is always-already all possible beings.
But, for him, these are the transcendent forms, while the material instantiations
of these forms are strictly speaking posterior to reality.

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as possessing its own perfection, to which esse is added as the sheer, and
thus content-poor, fact of existing.101 Here we have the problematic
notion of creation as the free addition of existence (through an act of the
divine will) to essences that, as so many logical “possibles,” already exist
“separately,” as it were, in the mind of God.102 In a much more subtle
form, the danger of conceiving esse as super-added to essence (and vice
versa) hovers over talk of the “real distinction” between essence and existence.103 However non-subsistent esse may be “in itself,” it remains the
case that, outside esse, there is nothing, not even the purely intentional
existence of abstract essence. Creation is ex nihilo: From nothing comes
first the already subsisting ens, which is nevertheless not identical with
being but participates it, even while esse does not simply subsist in itself.104
If, then, essence cannot simply be derived from esse non subsistens, which
would make it simply negative, it cannot have its ground simply in esse
creatum alone. Its ultimate source is rather God himself. As Ulrich has
shown, we cannot make esse the cause of beings without turning it into
something subsistent, and so must say instead that things exist by participating in being, but their participation in being is itself caused by God:
“Therefore it must be that all things which are diversified by the diverse
participation of being . . . are caused by one First Being, Who possesses
being most perfectly.”105 This affirmation implies, first of all, that things
do not participate directly in God in the sense that would make God in
fact the being of things,106 but that creatures’ relation to God is mediated
101 Fabro explains what he calls the “anti-Thomistic origin” of the interpretation of

being as esse existentiae, rather than as the actus essendi: “Platonism,” 86–90.
102 See Te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 108.
103 Carlo shows how the “real distinction,” as Giles of Rome interprets it, entails a

problematic extrinsicism in the relation between esse and essence in subsisting
things: The Ultimate Reducibility of Essence, 18–86. But the rejection of the extrinsicism does not necessarily mean the rejection of the distinction.
104 Of course, non-subsistent esse presupposes Ipsum Esse Subsistens, as we shall see in
a moment.
105 ST I, q. 44, a. 1. See Homo abyssus, 122–27. Ulrich cites, among others, the
following text:“Res . . . fit participativa ipsius esse Deo” (De sub. sep., 8), and God
is “sufficientissima et dignissima et perfectissima causa totius esse, a quo omnia
quae sunt participant esse” (Sup. Ev. Joan. Prol.)
106 As Martin Bieler puts it in his introduction to Homo Abyssus,“The creature participates in God through being,” Einleitung, ix.We have here an even more paradoxical sense of the simultaneous immanence and transcendence of God than in
Neo-Platonism. Plotinus makes the divine Intellect the being of all things by being
nothing in any of them (an affirmation taken up into the Christian tradition
through Dionysius the Areopagite). In this view, God is in fact the reality of things
because he is the sole reality. For Aquinas, God is not the essence of things, but he

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by esse; and at the same time, because esse, as non-subsistent, is pure mediation, we nevertheless can and must say that God’s relation to creatures is
immediate: no thing between God and creatures.107 Because God is the
ultimate principle of things, essences can have a positivity that is distinct
from that of esse without however having that positivity except from
within their sharing in esse. Aquinas thus conceives of creation essentially
in terms of participation even though he does not view it solely in the
terms presented by the Platonic tradition. However overly subtle and
abstract this distinction may seem, it has crucial implications in relation
to our question: As we shall see, it allows us to affirm that things possess
their own existence, even while that existence is not simply different from
God himself; it allows us therefore to affirm the difference of creatures as
ultimately and essentially good; and it allows us to affirm the overcoming
of dualism as Plato does with his notion of participation, without depriving the material cosmos of any reality of its own.
Let us first consider how Aquinas’s notion of creation transforms the
metaphysical dynamic of participation found in the Platonic tradition even
while integrating it. For Plato, to say that beautiful things participate in
Beauty itself is to say that Beauty alone is real, and that the reality of beauty
in beautiful things is nothing but Beauty itself as present to them.Theirs is
a wholly derived beauty. Plato’s view expresses the paradigm for NeoPlatonism more generally:The relative “existence” of instances of any quality implies the perfectly subsistent reality of that quality as absolutely
distinct from them.There is a unilateral dynamic here:The form is real, and
the image has reality only insofar as it has form, and in fact never truly
“has” either, strictly speaking, but rather displays reality by displaying the
form:“Instances, then, have no reality of their own, but must be understood
as images in the sense of appearances of the forms.”108 That the orientation
in participation is unilateral comes perhaps most clearly to light in the fact
that form, then, is turned wholly to itself.109 Its “production” of images is
is still nevertheless “in all things, and innermostly” (ST I, q. 8, a. 1). God is being,
and things have being, but if the being in which things participate is non-subsistent esse, rather than Ipsum Esse Subsistens, we would have to say that things share
in God's being as always-already completely given away.The mediation of esse creatum in the structure of participation thus allows us to affirm the total immediacy
of God to creatures and yet affirms that they own their own reality-and the more
perfectly they possess this reality, the more profoundly do they reflect the presence
of the Giver of that reality itself.
107 De veritate, 8, 17: “non potest aliquid esse medium inter creatum et increatum.”
108 Perl, “Sense-Perception and Intellect,” 32.
109 As we recall, Plato characterizes the form precisely as a reality existing at
’ sò
jah’ at’ sòm. Plotinus puts the point somewhat differently. For him, the Intellect

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not so much a giving to them as it is a more indifferent “giving off,” while
the activity resides wholly on the side of the image, which so to speak
chases after its reality.110 Aristotle’s description of the relation between
principles comes to mind here: “What desires the form is matter, as the
female desires the male and the ugly the beautiful.”111 Aquinas’s view of
participation in being introduces a radically new element:The purely vertical relation gets turned, as it were, on its side (without, for all that, losing
its asymmetry).While that in which beings participate is indeed the perfection of all perfections, and therefore what is noblest of all, that perfection
does not subsist in itself, as it necessarily does in Neo-Platonism. Instead, it
subsists only in its other, which is not therefore merely a negative derivation of esse, but has something positive, so to speak, to contribute to the
very act that lets it be. But if it is positive in some respect and not merely
derived, the essence must represent a kind of novum with respect to esse—
as if to say (to speak perhaps inexcusably loosely) that esse, for all its perfection, is surprised to discover what can be brought forth from it in God’s
creative act.112 The ens or substance is in some sense more real than esse,
because it alone subsists, even while its reality is due wholly to the act of
existence, which is the actuality of whatever reality it has. Here, we affirm
a reciprocal causality between two co-principles that are inseparable from
each other and yet also irreducible to one another:“As a consequence, the
two distinct causalities, that of form and that of esse, reciprocally and correlatively realize each other: causae ad invicem sunt causae.”113 What results is a
is turned wholly upward (to the One), which is perfectly coincident with being
turned wholly inward. In other words, the theoretical act is identical to being
oneself. See III.8.4 and 8. The last words of Plotinus's concluding Ennead,
VI.9.11, are “u tcg̀ lomotΔ pqòy lómom” (the flight of the alone to the Alone).
110 Plato speaks of the instance “wanting” to be the reality, and “striving to reach it,”
in Phaedo, 74e and 75b.
111 Aristotle, Physics I, 192a20–25.
112 Adrian Walker expresses this insight in Ulrich nicely:“Thus, esse does not generate substances out of itself, but is sheer availability to be the act of being of and
for whatever substance God wishes to posit in existence.” “Personal Simplicity
and the Communio Personarum: A Creative Development of Thomas Aquinas's
Doctrine of Esse Commune,” Communio 31 (Fall 2004): 468, n. 11.
113 Jean-Dominique Robert, “Note sur le dilemme: limitation par composition ou
limitation par hiérarchie formelle des essences,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et
théologiques 49 (1965): 65. Cf., de Finance, Être et agir, 118: “In concrete being,
essence and esse condition each other reciprocally; each one is a principle in a
different order.” Robert supports his affirmation through a reference to the twofold
participation in God's mind and will, which is precisely the view of creation Te Velde
persuasively criticizes: See Te Velde, Participation and Substantiality, 114, note 46.
Nevertheless, it is possible to affirm an irreducibly complex notion of being that

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611

pervasive and inexorable polarity in the core of worldly being, which we
might say represents its deepest truth.
While the type of participation we have been considering in Aquinas
is the participation of things in their being, Plato’s theory of participation
concerned, for the most part, what scholastics would later call the participation of substances in their accidents. Though Aquinas himself, to my
knowledge, does not apply this transformed view of participation to the
substance-accidents relation, it seems to me that this would be a fruitful
way of viewing that relation: On the one hand, it offers a way of reconciling nominalism and realism without any unsatisfying compromise, and
on the other hand it definitively undercuts the “third man argument”
critique of participation.That a transposition of this view of participation
to the substance-accidents relation is possible in the first place stems from
the similarity that effects necessarily have to their causes. It follows that
formal act cannot be without some analogy to existential act.114 We
would expect, then, that as form is actuated by esse, it would reflect the
self-diffusive character of esse within the order proper to it. Indeed,
Aquinas affirms that “it is the nature of every actuality to communicate
itself as far as possible.”115 In the light of this analogy to existential act, we
can read the determinate perfection of form as a determining perfection,
that is, as an inherently self-donative forming principle.Thus, for example,
whiteness does not subsist in itself any more than esse does, but subsists
only within the substance in which it inheres. But to say this does not
require us to draw the nominalist conclusion that universals are therefore
merely rational, as opposed to real, beings. Instead, we can say that they are
in some sense perfect and simple, insofar as they are act, analogous to the
actus essendi. And if they, again like esse, do not subsist in themselves, they
nevertheless do subsist: In the substances that share in them. In other
words, they possess their own perfection, but as having always-already
given that perfection away. Nominalism is right to deny the reality of the
forms considered in themselves, and realism is right to insist that the
forms nevertheless exist. Both aspects are true: Humanity is “nothing” in
comparison to a particular human being, but this does not invalidate the
complementary affirmation that the totality of existing human beings will

results from the single participation in God's creative act if there is some sense in
which God's own absolute simplicity is itself complex in some fashion, as we will
propose it is below.
114 To suggest that there is an analogy between these two modes of act does not
remove, but in fact implies, a radical difference between them.
115 De potentia Dei, 2, 1.

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612

never fully exhaust what it means to be human, that is, that the universal
remains in some sense “higher” than the particular.116
The same principle that rejects the alternatives of nominalism or realism answers the famous “third man argument” that Aristotle raises against
Plato’s theory of the forms, and which Plato himself had already articulated.117 If the form of Large possesses the quality of largeness, like the
various instances of large, there will have to be another form of largeness
in which they all share, and so on into infinity. But if forms possess their
perfection in their images, and nowhere else, the infinite regress of selfpredication never occurs.The form cannot be predicated of itself because
it has always already given itself away.Though it is not possible to pursue
the issue here, it is worth observing that the notion of being as non-subsistent opens up a fascinating way of conceiving the relation between form
and matter more generally: We can say that matter participates in form
without making matter a mere privation, that is, a negative, in relation to
form (and, by implication, an evil, insofar as form is good).What allowed
us to view essence as a positive principle even as wholly subordinate to
esse was the divine causality distinct from both. Similarly, because esse
introduces an actuality distinct from that of form, we can posit matter as
having its ground not merely in form but in the trans-formal actuality of
being, which would grant matter a positivity—dare I say also its own
(receptive) mode of activity—which is strictly speaking non-formal.118
In a word, the Thomistic insight into the non-subsistence of being allows
a full integration of the metaphysics of participation while at the same time
“leaving room” for the genuine positivity of difference: of the variety of
essences within the existential order, and of the variety of material instances
within the essential order. In Aquinas’s words,“the cause of being insofar as
it is being must be the cause of all the differences of being and consequently
of the whole multitude of beings.”119 Moreover, “the very difference by
reason of which beings are distinguished from one another is a certain
116 On this, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theologic, vol. 1, The Truth of the World (San

Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 155–56.
117 See Parmenides, 132a-c.
118 Aquinas-in clear contrast to the Platonic tradition-affirms God as the principle, not

only of the determinate whatness of things, but of the whole of their substance,
which includes, of course, their matter: ST I, q. 44, a. 2.And insofar as there is nothing outside of esse, we can include matter within its embrace without making
matter a kind of form. Though this is not a typical way of interpreting matter, I
suggest that unless we affirm some sort of non-formal activity as the basis of
matter, we will ultimately have no way at all of distinguishing matter from evil. On
this, compare the similar point made by Dionysius, Divine Names, IV, 18 and 28.
119 De potentia Dei, 3, 16, ad 4.

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being.”120 As Gunther Pöltner has shown, the non-subsistence of being not
only unifies (that is, because all things whatsoever outside of God participate in being), but at the very same time liberates multiplicity.121
But we have yet to take what may be the most decisive step of all in
the argument, and it is admittedly a step beyond usual interpretations of
Aquinas, a speculative inching out on the proverbial limb.The structure of
participation we have been developing compels us to raise the question
concerning difference in God, though doing so we must keep in mind
that we are thus reflecting on what is essentially a mystery, indeed, is
Mystery itself. On the one hand, it is undeniably true that God is absolute
simplicity.122 This is a point that, in their own ways,Aquinas, Plotinus, and
arguably Plato, too, all share. A consideration of the structure of participation itself points to this truth:The participation of all things in being, and
thus the composition in all things of essence and existence, presupposes
Ipsum Esse Subsistens, a “being” who is his existence, in whom essence and
existence are identical.123 Generally, one distinguishes between the being
of God and that of creatures precisely in reference to creatures’ ontological composition; the absence of any such distinction in God is what most
decisively marks the difference between God and the world. On the other
hand, however, if it is precisely the difference between being and beings
that enables us to affirm the goodness of multiplicity, then to define
complete perfection simply, so to speak, as the opposite of the difference
implied in participation would not only raise the question of onto-theologism in a certain respect,124 but it would also threaten to make difference once again a sign of imperfection in the sense of defect. Unless we
have some way of affirming the absolute simplicity of God without eliminating the ultimate positivity of difference, then our interpretation of the
meaning of being in Aquinas, I suggest, will in the end fall back into the
ambiguity we noted in Plotinus.
In God, essence and existence are identical. But notice:This identity itself
permits two distinct interpretations, namely, that God’s essence is identical
to, and in this respect reducible to, existence, and that existence is identical
to, and thus reducible to, God’s essence—and these two identities are not
in fact the same thing, however much they coincide in truth. The former
120 Ibid., 3, 16, ad 3.
121 Gunther Pöltner,“Pluralismo y unidad: La relevancia práctica de la idea metafísica

de participación,” Anuario filosofico 36 (2003): 212–13.
122 ST I, q. 3, a. 7.
123 ST I, q. 3, a. 4.
124 Because we would thus group God and creatures together within a single spec-

trum, as it were, of reality: from imperfect to perfect being.

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interpretation is the one typically followed. Because, the reasoning goes,
essence represents a restricted mode of esse, in order to understand God’s infinite, unrestricted Esse, we must eliminate the limitation imposed on esse in
creatures by the essence, that is, we negate the negation. Though this
reasoning is true to a certain extent, the moment we take it to represent the
whole truth, we once again lose the capacity to affirm the goodness of the
difference of creatures.We move from the polarity in created being to the
identity of divine being not by integrating the poles, but by eliminating one
of them—therefore by making only one the expression of perfection and
so denying the true polarity of created being (that is, the co-incidence of
non-reducible perfections). However, as Hans Urs von Balthasar puts it, the
divine identity cannot be deduced from created, composite (and therefore
polar) unity by subtracting the imperfections therein and adding the
remainder.125 It is better, therefore, to think of the divine Esse not only as
esse, as it were, prior to its “restriction” in a particular being, but at the very
same time as wholly given over to “particular” being, that is, as subsisting
perfectly. God is not only Ipsum Esse, but Ipsum Esse Subsistens. In this
respect, the absolute perfection of divine Esse contains the perfection of
both poles, without reducing either one to the other, and in this way “sanctions” the difference between them, which constitutes the endless and
glorious array of differences in the world. Once we recognize this positivity
of difference in the ultimate principle of all things, we have a generous
ground of the difference in the structure of participation; all of the things
we associate with difference, even in their apparently negative aspects, can
become surprising reflections of God himself.
But the affirmation of this identity of identity both prior to and posterior to difference leads philosophical reflection further than it is accustomed, perhaps, to go, and in some sense leads it in fact beyond itself.The
absolute identity of God cannot be the absence of difference but must
somehow be simultaneous with it.While this simultaneity cannot simply
be deduced from natural evidences, we find it, as it were, surprisingly
revealed in the doctrine of the Trinity. Looking at this mystery from a
metaphysical perspective, as for example Gustav Siewerth does,126 we have
the perfect coincidence of act and subsistence, that is, being as pure act,
125 Balthasar, Epilogue (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 49, 91–93.Thomas Prufer

does just this in his dissertation,“Sein und Wort Nach Thomas von Aquin” (Ph.D.
diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 1959), 48–53, by resolving the
contradiction of esse non subsistens in God thus: God, as ipsum esse simplex ET
subsistens = esse simplex SED NON subsistens + ens subsistens SED NON simplex.
126 See the presentation of Siewerth in Balthasar, Theologic, vol. 2, Truth of God (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 179–86.

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which nonetheless subsists perfectly in the hypostases of the Persons.
Though there is an identity between the divine nature and the hypostases,
they are at the same time not simply the same. Looking at the mystery
more explicitly theologically, we may attend specifically to the “not” that
distinguishes the Persons in their shared identity. If we try to preserve the
simplicity of God by imagining this “not” to be so slight as to be ultimately negligible, we will invariably end up betraying God’s unity precisely
to the extent that we hold onto this “not” at all, or betraying the incommunicability of Personhood precisely to the extent that we do not hold
on to it. In other words, we pit unity and difference against one another
dialectically, which is just what the doctrine of the Trinity forbids.We do
more justice to the mystery to think of the “not” as infinite, and only thus
as sufficiently vast, as it were, for the Father to unfold himself generously
and generatingly to the Son without remainder, so that they can be perfectly
one in being, as a mystery of love, and thus as perfectly united in the
Person of the Spirit. It is this Trinitarian mystery that finally justifies the
infinite variety of structures of participation within the created order, for
here we have an Other, the Son, who participates, so to speak, in the
Father’s being, not at all as a defective copy, but as Perfect Image, and thus
as an Other to the Father who, as “not” the Father and in this sense as
more than just the Father alone, is by that very token also perfectly equal
to him, an expression not of himself but of the Father’s love. Participation, and the difference that lies within it, thus becomes not simply a
figure of created being in opposition to the first principle, but the very
reality of the first principle itself. In other words, participation, being an
image and therefore not one’s own source, is no longer simply that which
marks the difference between the creature and God, as it necessarily
seems to in religions and philosophies outside of Trinitarian Christianity,
because now God, too, “participates” in God: The Son and the Spirit
“share” in God’s being! “Image,” in Christianity, is not posterior to the
divine, but belongs to the divine mystery itself.127 With this we have a
rich and fruitful way to understand Aquinas’s affirmation that creation is
rooted in the procession of the Persons,128 and that we cannot understand it adequately without reference to the Trinity.129
In conclusion, we might say that if the metaphysics of participation is
essential to Christianity, Christianity is in turn essential to the metaphysics
127 ST I, q. 35, a. 1.
128 “The processions of the divine Persons are the cause of creation,” ST I, q. 45, a.

6, ad 1.
129 ST I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 3.

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of participation. The difference Christianity makes to this notion is just
that: difference. In other words, the difference in God quite literally makes
all the difference in the world. It is because the difference in created being
is not simply the dialectical opposite of the divine identity that metaphysical reflection within the Christian difference can say not only with Plotinus that God gives precisely what is other than himself,130 but also that
God gives a share in what he is.The otherness that God gives in the gift
of esse is not outside of God but is somehow paradoxically “part” of who
God is.131 Thus, however much the being of God is beyond worldly
being, it remains the case that God exists, and indeed that being is in some
sense his most proper name.132
This last point illuminates the significance of a final difference from
Plotinus, and indeed from any philosophy that refuses the name of being
to God. If God gives what is absolutely other than himself, or simply what
He is not, namely, being, then no matter how perfectly generous we may
conceive that originating gift, I submit that we will never be able fully to
eradicate a sense of regret from the roots of things, even though of course
that regret is never, in Plotinus or Plato, without an accent of wonder and
gratitude. The ultimate and prevailing “mood” of Neo-Platonic metaphysics is nevertheless nostalgia. In Christianity, by contrast, participation
is first and foremost pervaded by joy, which includes but surpasses metaphysical nostalgia:133 The things that share in being are set free in the
present,134 and open, in hope, to what is to come.

130 V.3.15.
131 Not, of course, in the sense that God has parts, but that the being different from

God does not simply make the creature God's dialectical opposite: According to
the doctrine of the Trinity, otherness from God is paradoxically intrinsic to the
meaning of God.Thus, the creature can be genuinely different from God (which
denies pantheism) without being extrinsic to God (which denies deism).
132 See I Sent.,VIII, 1, 3. Again, the name of being does not identify God with the
being of creatures; the radical difference of analogy, as defined by Lateran Council IV, is never eliminated.
133 Kierkegaard contrasts his modern (Christian) concept of “repetition” to the
Greek notion of recollection, in just these terms: “Repetition and recollection
are the same movement, except in opposite directions, for what is recollected has
been, is repeated backward, whereas genuine repetition is recollected forwards.
Repetition, therefore, if it is possible, makes a person happy, whereas recollection
makes him unhappy,” Fear and Trembling—Repetition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 131.
134 On the connection between freedom and the present, see Ferdinand Ulrich,
Gegenwart der Freiheit (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1974).

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Coda: A Brief Response to Christopher Malloy
Rather than address each comment and suggestion Dr. Malloy made in
his generous and thoughtful response to my essay, I will simply make a
brief remark on the two points I believe are most important. First, the
reduction of imperfection to evil Malloy regularly referred to I take to be
a consequence of the Platonic logic that has no room for the positivity
of (radical) difference.The point of the essay was to overcome this logic
by means of principles in Thomistic metaphysics and theology, precisely
in order to secure the goodness of all the descending degrees of perfection from God, and thus to allow a generous ground for the hierarchy of
being that Malloy describes so well in his paper. Second, the perfection
of limitation I ascribe to God in the essay (and more explicitly in the
book) is not the limitation implied in creaturely composition, which is
necessarily bound up with the act-potency polarity. Instead, it is the limitation of the Divine Persons, who are according to Aquinas really distinct
from one another, but are distinct in a way that does not compromise the
absolute simplicity of the Divine Nature.We must recognize that, though
perfect, this distinction remains a limitation (the Son is not the Father,
etc.).The proposal, then, is that this perfect limitation, which is arguably
essential for the plurality without which love is inconceivable,135 may be
seen as the principle for an analogy that grants a new sense to the limitation implied in the real distinction that constitutes creaturely being. A
second essay would be necessary to argue out all the details of this
proposal, of course, but let me simply end with a concrete example of the
difference this approach might make in our appreciation of the world:An
Aristotelian is compelled by his metaphysics to see a child simply as an
imperfect man; in the light of the metaphysics inspired by the Trinity
offered above, we can see the child (with Charles Péguy) as possessing a
perfection in his own right precisely as a child—a perfection that the man
no longer has—in spite of, or in fact because of, the limitations that are
N&V
part of being a child.

135 On this point, one might consult book 3 of Richard of St.Victor's De Trinitate.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 3 (2007): 619–646

619

Participation and Theology: A Response
to Schindler’s “What’s the Difference?”
C HRISTOPHER J. M ALLOY
University of Dallas
Irving,Texas

S CHINDLER RAISES an intriguing question: How can we uphold
the goodness of creatures as creatures, the goodness of difference as difference, in a monotheistic context? Specifically, Christian philosophy asks
whether in God there may be difference, so that the difference of creatures from God might receive ultimate justification. In this paper, I note
the strengths of Schindler’s proposal, attempt to further his core concern
by reference to Christ’s theandric action, and present four suggestions/
criticisms. Chiefly, I ask whether Schindler observes with sufficient care
the distinction between analogy and metaphor and whether, in the end,
his solution begs the question.1
In the Scriptures we read, “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to thy
name give glory” (Ps 115:1 RSV). As Kenneth Branagh portrays it, the
men of England hymned the glory of God with these words from Psalm
115 after triumphantly destroying the French.Yet, what of English valor?
Was it nothing indeed? A newer revelation includes the anguish of Paul:
“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of
death?” (Rom 7:24).
The history of the effects of these texts among Christians is, in part,
agonizing. The eclectic Gnostics found choice portions with which to
defend their thesis that the creator God was fallen.The Manicheans called
the creator of flesh evil. Ancient and medieval Christians worked mightily to fight off these and recurring anti-Semitic forms of “Christianity.”
1 David C. Schindler,“What’s the Difference? On the Metaphysics of Participation

in a Christian Context.” Both articles first appeared in The Saint Anselm Journal 3
(2005); www.anselm.edu/library/SAJ/Vol3No1.html.

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The image of Thomas Aquinas slamming his heavy fist on the King’s table
is particularly evocative. Sadly, corruption among the members of the
Catholic Church provoked a return to dismal readings of Paul’s groaning.
John Calvin proclaimed, “Their [that is, infants’] whole nature is a seed
of sin . . . [which is] only hateful and abhorrent to God.”2
Enlightenment thinkers were, quite understandably, not happy with this
ante-proclamation of the Good News. Ludwig Feuerbach says it well in
The Christian Faith:“What faith denies on earth it affirms in heaven; what
it renounces here it recovers a hundred-fold there.”3 His criticism is not
that Christianity is simply delayed gratification; it is rather that Christianity calls man “other” than God, thus giving God all the glory and man all
the guilt and wretchedness of a sinner. If we are to bring the fire of our
native eros back to Christianity, we would do well in assenting to the
Enlightenment critique, yet not without a difference. Indeed, those who
confess the thrice-holy God cannot join hands with Schleiermacher in his
rereading of the Trinity as merely a way of speaking about individual and
ecclesiastical experience of a mono-personal God. Today, we do well to
attend to postmodernity’s “valorization” of difference or alterity.
On this score, Professor Schindler has admirably striven, in Christian
fashion, to engage postmodernity’s concern to preserve difference in his
remarkably broad and deep paper. It is well-researched, speculatively original, and carefully articulated and argued. I am honored and also humbled
to be a respondent to my colleague, with whom I have had a number of
vigorous conversations since graduate school.
My response is divided into three main parts: (1) a concise recapitulation of some of Schindler’s key contributions; (2) a proposed application
of these contributions to the theandric action of Christ; and (3) suggestions and concerns.
Recapitulation of Some Key Contributions
I can hardly hope to be exhaustive here. First, Schindler puts his finger on
the pulse of creaturely angst in identifying what I will call the excruciating
dilemma or conundrum. Philosophically, a most perplexing question must
be asked, a twist on Heidegger’s “Why should there be anything?” The
2 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 20,

The Library of Christian Classics, ed. John Baillie, John McNeill, and Henry Von
Dusen (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 251. The Latin reads, “Imo
tota eorum natura, quoddam est peccati semen: ideo non odiosa et abominabilis
Deo esse non potest,” bk. 2, ch. 1, no. 8.
3 Ludwig Feuerbach, The Christian Faith, trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1957), appendix, no. 17, p. 316.

Response to Schindler on Participation

621

question is,“What accounts for difference?”The possible answers are unappetizing. As Schindler notes,“The alternatives would seem to be to affirm
the Gnostic ultimacy of two principles, which is inherently irrational, or to
affirm difference as an ‘unjustifiable’ fall from unity.”4 Thomas would
concur that, even if we were to entertain a “benign” Gnosticism, we would
still be left with a chaotic heap of juxtaposed created beings.Any harmony
in the dissonance would result purely from chance.5 But, both fall and fate
falter as answers to the question.Yet, we are even more hard-pressed by a
Jewish-Christian exigency, for the Scriptures affirm the goodness of creatures as creatures:“For though lovest all things that exist, and hast loathing
for none of the things which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have
made anything if thou hadst hated it” (Wis 11:24). So, we can put the question differently:What accounts for the goodness of difference as difference?
Schindler’s lucid identification of this question and of the excruciating
dilemma that faces those who face it is most intriguing and merits perusal.
Second, Schindler presents a serious defense of the goodness of created
being. It is one thing to affirm that creatures are good, but it is as we have
seen an arduous undertaking to exhibit this intelligibly to those who
confess (or conclude to) one ultimate source of all that is. Schindler has
striven mightily to do this. Key to his effort is affirming the goodness of
difference as difference. An appropriate illustration of this contention
might be the difference between the sensitivity of a dog and the knowledge of an angel.A dog can know and an angel can know, but they do so
in different ways. However, the fact that a dog’s mode of knowing is
different from the angel’s does not eo ipso mean that the dog’s mode is a
sheer fall from that of the angel. By rejecting a sheer fall in the hierarchy
of beings, Schindler means (I believe) to reject the notion that things
“higher” sufficiently contain that which things “lower” contain in a
simply lower manner. Such would be the case if the angel had everything
the dog has and more. Such a notion of the hierarchy of beings participating makes us wonder why there ought to be “lesser” things rather than
no-things. Schindler rejects participation as fall; he wishes to say the
opposite:The dog’s mode is different and as different is good.Therefore,
the dog’s mode of knowing somehow exceeds that of the angel.The dog’s
mode of knowing adds to, rather than subtracts from, the manifestation
of being. Of course, by stressing the “excess” of the participant, Schindler
is not discountenancing the fact that the participant is also, in another
respect, certainly less than the participated. Schindler’s task—to defend
4 Schindler, “What’s the Difference,” 587.
5 See Thomas’s critique of Avicenna, Summa theologiae I, q. 47, a. 1. This critique

would apply a fortiori to any form of polytheism.

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Christopher J. Malloy

the goodness of finite beings—leads him to stress one side of this reciprocity, although he clearly clarifies that the reciprocity between participant and participated is “asymmetrical.”
Third, Schindler’s affirmation of the goodness of difference as difference implies a positive stance in the debate about the “real” distinction
between existence (esse) and essence. As Schindler notes, the rediscovery
of “esse” in Thomistic thought led some philosophers to reduce essence
to existence, thereby dissolving the distinction between them. As understandable as such dissolution may be—for there is nothing outside of
being—it nonetheless deprives essence of its determining character; it
leaves unintelligible the fact that being actually is restricted in beings.6
Schindler is concerned that such a line of thinking ultimately implies the
imperfection of finite being as finite.
Fourth, the second and third contributions come together nicely in
Schindler’s account of creation. Although there is a distinction between a
creature and its esse, the creature is not simply “fallen” from the perfection
of esse. How? The essence principle, not identical to the esse in which it
participates, nonetheless contributes something positive without being in
itself actual. Essence can make this contribution because it derives its
perfection from God through the act of creation.7 Creaturely essence is a
way in which God’s being can be imitated. God himself renders creatures
actual by constituting them as existent and as existent in certain ways.
Thus, the positivity of the difference of essence need not be reduced to
non-subsistent esse in such a way as to void the real distinction, since God
himself is the source of both esse and essence. Therefore, the affirmation
of the goodness of difference as difference does not entail the demolition
of the structure of participation: X receives its reality from or after Y.
Fifth, there are many theological riches in Schindler’s argument. He carefully follows out the path of philosophical inquiry to the wonder: Might
there be difference in God? Trinitarian revelation supplies an affirmative
response. At this point, Schindler is in the good company of numerous
contemporary theologians who are returning to the riches latent within the
Trinitarian doctrine, rebelling against Schleiermacher’s mono-personalism.8
6 On this note, Schindler’s thought accords with Wippel’s defense of the real

distinction.Wippel contends that essence as non-being is not “absolute nothing”
but relative non-being. See John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas
Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2000), 187–90.
7 Schindler, “What’s the Difference,” 608–9.
8 For a fine example of retrieval of patristic thought, relevant in this regard, see
Khaled Anatolios, “The Immediately Triune God: A Patristic Response to
Schleiermacher,” Pro Ecclesia 10 (2001): 159–78. See also the moving work of

Response to Schindler on Participation

623

A Possible Theological Implication
Leaving the realm of contemporary theology aside, I would suggest that
Schindler’s insights harmonize well with significant elements of many
Christian traditions, especially Catholic and Orthodox traditions. These
elements have a common note: the reality of secondary causality. Schindler
provides a metaphysical articulation that supports the Catholic and
Orthodox conviction that created beings can and do exercise genuine
secondary causality.
My basis for drawing out this implication of Schindler’s thought is the
following axiom: operare sequitur esse.The “esse” in this axiom stands rather
for the concrete, subsisting ens than non-subsistent esse.Thus, to operate
or to act follows upon the thing that is. This axiom enables us, if we
accept Schindler’s argument, to ground the claim that created beings
genuinely act to bring about certain effects. Further, the contribution
created beings make to their effects is not that which mere puppets make
by the manipulation of puppeteers. If limited beings are not simply “deficient” and therefore “fallen” participants of the participated, so too, their
actions are not simply “deficient” manifestations of a putatively solitary
source of action, the participated.
I will now, all-too-briefly, touch upon one area in which this general
implication bears out: the theandric action of Christ and, within this, the
sacramental dispensation of divine grace. At a certain point in the Christian tradition (though this development emerged from disparate and
ancient seeds), some theologians came to distinguish the actions of Christ
into three categories: properly divine, properly human, and theandric
(precisely understood). I wish to focus on the third category, but first a
word on the other two.
Actions properly divine are those that are accomplished by the Incarnate Son of God through his divine nature without the cooperation of
his human nature. Such actions might include his “having coming forth”
Romanian Orthodox theologian Dumitru Staniloae, “The Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love,” in The Experience of God (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross
Orthodox Press, 1994), 245–80. I would only note that Staniloae does not
exhibit sufficient appreciation of the Western understanding of the Trinity. He
also fails to cite Richard of St.Victor (from the Middle Ages) and to acknowledge any breadth of Western thought in the twentieth century. Support for a
richer reading of even standard Western treatments can be found in the following remarkable essay on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, generally impugned as
neglecting the persons of the Trinity: Gilles Emery, “Essentialism or Personalism
in the Treatise on God in Saint Thomas Aquinas?” trans. Matthew Levering, The
Thomist 64 (2000): 521–63.This essay may be found with other excellent essays
in a collection titled Trinity in Aquinas (Ypsilanti, MI: Sapientia Press, 2003).

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Christopher J. Malloy

(“coming forth” eternally) from the Father9 or his being “begotten” of
the Father.10 Turning to the realm of the Son’s creative action, one can
think of all things being created “through him” ( Jn 1:3; Col 1:16; Heb
1:2). “To create” is an a-temporal action (Heb 1:3) not predicable of the
Son with respect to his human nature.11 Of course, some might dispute
the very category of “properly” divine actions, arguing that I am being a
bit Nestorian. Yet, this category has a strong place in tradition, a place
thought to have been safely guarded from such a heresy.12
Actions “properly” human are those that require no advertence to the
divine nature to explain or account for the production of the effect. Such
9 exêlthon ( Jn 8:42). Jerome renders both this and ekporeuetai ( Jn 15:26) with

forms of the Latin “procedere.”This was unfortunate even if inevitable; it continues to cause difficulties between East (from the Father through the Son, or [as
Photius would have it] from the Father “alone”) and West (filioque: from the
Father and from the Son). Nevertheless, despite the need for distinction here, if
the two “comings forth” from the Father are not to be absolutely equivocal—in
no way analogical—then one cannot simply be faulted for naming them both
with the Latin “procedere” in theological reflection. Scriptural translation and
creedal issues are other matters.
10 Whether the New Testament reveals the Son’s eternal generation is sometimes
disputed. There are no indisputable “proof texts.” Nevertheless, systematic
theologians can approach the scriptural witness in terms of Newman’s analysis of
inference by “convergent probabilities.”The very names “Son” and “Father” are
suggestive of generation. The divinity of the Son in the overall witness would
require that this generation be eternal.There are also texts identifying the Son as
“Only-Begotten” with the Greek “monogenês” (see Jn 1:14, 3:16; and 1 Jn
4:19).We even see “monogenês theos” in Jn 1:18. On text-critical issues pertaining to “monogenês theos,” see Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek
New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1994), 169–70. Finally,
the monotheism ineliminable from Christianity requires that one hypostasis be
source without source, radically first; the East expresses this by the doctrine of
the monarchy of the Father.
11 Aquinas held, against Avicenna, that no created thing can be given power to
create (see Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 45, a. 5). I would contend that the hymn in
Col 1:16—“in him all things were created”—must be read in reference to exemplar causality or to the order of finality and not in reference to either material or
instrumental efficient causality. Otherwise, from whence does the Son derive his
human nature?
12 Pope Agatho hints at this category in his “suggestion,” writing, “Jesus . . . in his
holy Gospels shews forth in some instances human things, in others divine, and
still in others both together, making a manifestation concerning himself in order
that he might instruct his faithful to believe and preach that he is both true God
and true man.” Pope St. Agatho, “The Letter of Agatho, Pope of Old Rome, to
the Emperor,” in The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church, ed. Henry
Percival, vol. 14, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., ed. Philip Schaff and
Henry Wace (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1994), 333a.

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625

actions might include Jesus’ being hungry, sleeping, digesting, and the
like. These actions are sufficiently accounted for by advertence to Jesus’
human nature. I must make a significant qualification with respect to this
category. Jesus’ human nature is not autonomous with respect to his
divine nature. I would thus distance myself from what I think is problematic in Karl Rahner’s reflections on Christ as mediator.13 All of his
human actions are directed, ultimately, by the efficacy of the divine
nature.This is true not simply because all created effects are in the hands
of divine providence. Ineffably more forcefully, this is true because Jesus’
actions are those of the divine Son of God.Two points are in order. First,
by his divine nature the Son infallibly directs his human actions, without
excluding his human freedom. Further, his human actions are actions of
the divine Son.14 Therefore, every human action is in fact an action of
the Son of God. Any human action of Christ can, therefore, be called
“theandric.” Nevertheless, this term has in certain theological traditions
come to be used with greater precision, as we shall see. Notwithstanding
this qualification, “properly human actions” demand no recourse to the
divine nature in terms of the sufficient explanation of the proximate
causes of their effects. Thus, they fall under the category “properly”
human, to be understood in light of this qualification.
Finally, we come to the third category, theandric actions. The term
“theandric” appears to have first been employed in the fifth century by
13 Rahner writes, “The real initiative, in some true sense, of the man Jesus with

regard to God [should be] given its genuine (anti-monothelite) meaning.” The
bracketed verb “should be” is my interpretation of Rahner’s meaning in context.
At first sight, Rahner’s reasoning appears to mirror the core concern Schindler
presents in his paper: Rahner warns that Christ must not be made into “a mere
‘manifestation’ of God himself and ultimately of him alone, such that the ‘appearance’ has no independent validity at all with respect to the one who appears”
(Karl Rahner, “Current Problems in Christology,” in God, Christ, Mary, Grace,
trans. Cornelius Ernst, vol. 1 of Theological Investigations [New York: Crossroad,
1982], 156). Rahner’s desire to defend against docetism is laudable, but his introduction of an “independent ‘I–center’ ” (ibid., 159) into the humanated Word
leaves something to be desired. Most problematic is his suggestion—in tension
with the sixth of Cyril’s twelve canons, upheld as a test of orthodoxy by
Constantinople II—that Jesus the man faces the eternal Son in adoration:
Rahner attributes to Jesus “a genuine, spontaneous, free, spiritual, active center, a
human selfconsciousness, which as creaturely faces the eternal Word in a
genuinely human attitude of adoration, obedience, a most radical sense of creaturehood” (ibid., 158).
14 The communication of idioms demands at least the following: First, that nothing
said of one nature can be predicated of the other nature abstractly; second, that
whatever is said of either nature must be predicated of the one divine person.

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Dionysius the (pseudo-) Areopagite, in his epistle to the monk, Gaius.15
The term has meant different things to different theologians. It came to
be employed by those supportive of the heresy called monoenergism
(solely one divine-human operation in Christ) and was condemned as
such by Pope St. Martin I in a synod at the Lateran in A.D. 649. It was
there that Maximus defended Martin against the imperial heresy.16 Yet,
the orthodoxy of Dionysius was not to be lost, and Damascene read him
in a manner that supported the two operations, distinct but inseparable.
John of Damascene thus rescued Dionysius from the abuse of heretics.17
Later in certain traditions, the term came to be used to stand for those
actions by which the Son produces effects that, according to their very
character, can be produced only by divine power but which are in fact
produced through the cooperation of the human nature.18 Two criteria
are involved in isolating theandric actions: The effect can be sufficiently
accounted for only by recourse to the divine nature; yet, the effect is in
fact worked out through the mediation of the human nature.
The theo-logic behind this category is as follows. On the one hand,
every nature has its proper operation; on the other hand, the human
nature is truly divinized and (it may safely be added) divinizing. Agatho
supplies the logic for the first premise and explicitly holds the second. As
to the first, he contends, “No nature can have anything or any motion
which pertains to another nature but only that which is naturally given by
creation.”19 Thus, the divine nature cannot have a human motion, nor can
the human nature have a properly divine motion. Notwithstanding, this
important axiom does not prevent the “deification” of the human nature
of Jesus. Thus, Jesus’ human nature is “transfigured” without being
destroyed or altered (made essentially other).20 Jesus’ “being deified” in his
15 For a brief history of the term, see David Coffey,“The Theandric Nature of Christ,”

Theological Studies 60 (1999): 407. See also A. Michel, “Théandrique [opération],”
Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris:Ané, 1946), vol. 15.1, col. 205–16.
16 See Coffey, “The Theandric Nature of Christ,” 407.
17 See ibid., 407f.
18 Spanish theologians Fernando Ocáriz et al. state in sober fashion: “The conservation in existence of all creation (cf. Heb 1:3) is a divine action of Jesus; his
speaking, walking etc. are human actions; his theandric actions are the miracles,
in which through his human action (speaking, etc.), his divinity produces an
effect which only God can bring about (for example, raising a dead person to
life).” F. Ocáriz, L. F. Mateo Seco, and J. A. Riestra, The Mystery of Jesus Christ: A
Christology and Soteriology Textbook, trans. Michael Adams and James Gavigan
(Portland, OR: Four Courts Press, 1994), 102.
19 Pope Agatho, “The Letter of Agatho,” 334b.
20 Ibid., 334a, 334b, and 335b.

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627

human nature is not an action. Nevertheless, when he is considered to
“redeem” us through his cross, to “forgive” us by his words of consolation,
to “deify” us through his life-giving flesh, he produces through his human
activity effects that can be accounted for only by the divine energy.
Supporting this reading is Constantinople II’s condemnation of the chief
hero of the neo-Chalcedonians,Theodore of Mopsuestia. Constantinople
II rejected Theodore’s reading of John 20:22–23, the scene in which Jesus
breathes on his disciples, pours forth the Spirit, and endows them with
authority to forgive sins. According to the council, Theodore read the
scene thus:“When after the resurrection the Lord breathed upon his disciples, saying, ‘Receive the Holy Ghost,’ he did not really give them the
Holy Spirit, but . . . he breathed upon them only as a sign.”21 One sees
implicitly contained in this condemnation both Christological and sacramental implications. Jesus’ action in this passage is not to be divided into
two separate actions, each achieved by a distinct hypostasis. Clearly, the
breathing is “properly” human (with the due qualification). Clearly, too,
“sending the Spirit” is properly divine. However, the council suggests that
the two actions form a unity, so that the sending is accomplished through
the breathing and the words said humanly. In short, the human action is
not merely significant of a separate divine action; rather, through the
human action the divine effect is accomplished.
Theandric actions thus involve a special participation of the human
nature in the divine activity. As Thomas Aquinas describes such actions,
they involve the employment of the human nature as special instrument
of the divine power.22 The human nature enjoys the influx of divine
energy so that what are properly divine effects are accomplished through
the instrumentality of the human nature. Thus, the human nature is a
special instrument of the divine energy; it is not merely the sign and
guarantee that the deed stated humanly will be accomplished (is being
accomplished) by the separate action of the divinity. Thomas states, “By
21 Constantinople II, in Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils, 315.
22 See disputed question De unione verbi incarnati, art. 5, esp. ad 1, 2.Ad 1 introduces

the category of “instrument” to articulate Jesus’ accomplishing our salvation
through his human nature. Ad 2 speaks of a healing miracle: “Puta quod divina
virtus sanabat leprosum coexistente tactu humani corporis, qui sortiebatur efficaciam ex virtute divina.”This treatise was written around Easter, 1272 (see JeanPierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert
Royal [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996], 336f).To
be sure, Thomas will speak of any of Christ’s human actions as “instrumental”
with respect to the divine person; however, he also speaks of certain human
actions as “instrumental” in a special way, as sharing the power to achieve something surpassing the capacity of Jesus’ human nature.

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way of efficiency . . . Christ’s flesh, wherein he endured the Passion, is the
instrument of the Godhead, so that his sufferings and actions operate
with Divine power for expelling sin.”23
The term “instrument” calls to our twenty-first-century minds something quite utilitarian and un-free. To appreciate Thomas’s claim that
Christ’s human nature participates in the power of the divine causality,
we should turn to the characteristics he associates with a usefully
employed instrument.There are three: (1) It cannot bring about the effect
on its own; (2) it does have the necessary characteristics to contribute
dispositively to its effect; and (3) in light of these characteristics, aspects
of its effect are due to its proper operation.24 Let us take a saw as an
initially helpful example: (1) A saw cannot cut by itself, for it must be
wielded by another; (2) but a saw is jagged, sharp, and hard enough to
contribute to the effect of cutting wood; and (3) cutting wood is its
proper operation. A saw is thus a usefully employed “instrument” of
cutting. When an instrument is wielded, it participates in the power of
the primary agent to achieve an effect. Now, Jesus’ human nature is not
inert, as is the saw. Thus, the category “instrument” is analogously
employed, for Jesus in his human nature freely cooperates in the redemption of sinful man.
Thomas links Jesus’ free cooperation with sacramental action in an
extraordinary way. As he hung upon the cross and was raised from the
dead, Jesus intended the salvation of every human person. More, Jesus
intended this not in some vague manner; rather, he intended this for
every human being who was and is and is to come; he intended, further,
every distinct application of the sacraments. Jesus did this not simply as
divine but also as human.25 Such was Thomas’s opinion, although it
sounds incredible to many today.Thomas locates the fittingness for such
claims in Jesus’ headship or kingship (1 Cor 15:27; Eph 1:20–23).26 He
finds the condition for the possibility of Jesus efficiently causing the
23 ST III, q. 49, a. 1 (trans. Benzinger; see Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, trans.

Fathers of the English Dominican Province [Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1948]). When stated, the translation is from the Benzinger edition. Otherwise, translations are mine.
24 See Rudi A.Te Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas, trans. with
the help of Anthony P. Runia, vol. 46, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte
des Mittelalters, ed. Jan Aersten, Tzotcho Boiadjief, Mark Jordan, and Andreas
Speer (New York: E. J. Brill, 1995), 170–75. See also, Aquinas, ST I, q. 45, a. 5.
25 See Colman O’Neill, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, rev. ed. (New York: Alba
House, 1991), 56.
26 See ST III, q. 8.

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salvation of every human being in Jesus’ having the beatific vision of God
even while a wayfarer.27
Thomas calls the Son’s humanity the “conjoined instrument” of the
divinity, in distinction from the sacramental action itself, which is a “separated instrument.” Thus, the Son of God, the primary agent, brings about
certain effects in virtue of his divine nature through (1) the mediation of his
human nature, and (2) the mediation of a creaturely event (a sacrament). For
Thomas, precisely through sacraments, and not merely at their occasion, the
Holy Trinity—the second Person of whom is incarnate—produces the
divine effect, grace.28 The sacramental action can be an instrument because
it is endowed transiently with created power to accomplish certain effects,
chiefly, the remission of sins and the infusion or the increase of sanctifying
grace.Thomas’s claim about sacramental efficiency may well hardly impress
contemporary Catholics. Thomas’s audacity can only be seen in contrast
with Bonaventure’s favored opinion—a cautious denial of such efficiency
and of the efficiency of Christ’s very death and resurrection.29 Against
this backdrop, one can appreciate all the more Thomas’s reading of some
of Christ’s actions as theandric (in the way specified above). I believe
Schindler’s thesis points in favor of Thomas’s opinions on these matters. I
turn now to some suggestions and concerns about Schindler’s argument.
Suggestions and Concerns
Hierarchy as Fall or as Ordered Whole
of Irreducibly Different Parts?
I suggest that one can better ground Schindler’s core concern—to affirm
the goodness of creatures as creatures—by examining difference relationally and by attending to the hierarchical structure of created being. Before
offering a brief sketch in this direction, I wish to draw several distinctions
regarding the terms “imperfection” and “evil.”
27 See ST III, q. 10, esp. a. 2. For a recent article questioning the validity of attempts

to downplay or deny Jesus’ beatific vision, especially on the cross, see Matthew
Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology
(Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 120–32.
28 See ST III, q. 62, a. 4.
29 Bonaventure held that Christ’s death and resurrection caused our justification by
way of merit and finality but not by way of efficiency (see Bonaventure, Liber III
sententiarum, dist. 19, art. 1, q. 1, resp., in vol. 3, Opera theologica selecta [Florence:
Quaracchi, 1941], p. 393a). For his view of the sacraments, to be praised for its
openness of mind but criticized for its insufficient appreciation of the category
“instrumental efficient cause,” see Bonaventure, Liber IV sententiarum, dist. 1, p. 1,
a. 1, q. 4, in Opera theologica selecta, vol. 4 (Florence: Quaracchi, 1949), 12b–18a.
Bonaventure closes on a salutary note: He is not certain of his own opinion.

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Schindler engagingly protests the “fallout” of both Plato’s and Plotinus’s schemes of participation. Insofar as one is not the Good, one is not
good. Difference from the Good renders one un-like the Good, the more
so the more one differs from the Good.As we “descend” from the Good,
we stumble upon a progressive dilution in the hierarchy of things fallen
from the Good to a greater and greater degree. Schindler observes that
since the Good is perfect, to be not good is to be imperfect. He
concludes:To be imperfect is to be defective; to be defective is to be fallen
or evil. Although I concur with Schindler’s insistence that creatures as
creatures are good, I suggest that the slide from imperfection to evil calls
for qualification.30
Thomas describes imperfection with respect to its contrary, perfection.
Imperfection is simply the lack of some perfection. Imperfection is
removed by the advent of the perfection.31 Although evil is necessarily
imperfection, imperfection is not necessarily evil. Evil is a species of
imperfection: It is lack of a due perfection.32 Now, there are two types of
“due perfection,” physical and volitional. Lack of a good due to one’s
physical makeup constitutes physical evil: the loss of an arm, blindness,
and so on. Lack of proper volitional order to the divine good will is
moral evil.33 Physical and moral evil are radically different. Moral evil
implies fault and sin, whereas physical evil implies neither.34 Therefore,
physical evil and moral evil are both “evil” only in a generic sense.
Now, there are imperfections that properly accompany the state of
certain things.Take, for example, things that develop toward their perfec30 Schindler presupposes this slide in his assessment of the Platonic heritage (586–87,

599–600), even though a Christian may accept that heritage (the lower is imperfect) without taking the final step (the imperfect is evil). Schindler manifests the
slide in his own thought on being (605; 606; 612; 613; 614; and 615). If as Schindler
argues, “our only way out” (601) is Trinitarian doctrine, then, even prescinding
from Adam’s fall, philosophy becomes per se pessimistic, and human nature, corrupt.
31 “Perfectio adveniens tollit imperfectionem sibi oppositam.” ST I, q. 62, a. 7, ad 1.
32 ST I, q. 49, a. 1.
33 In every evil act, there is some un-intelligible disconnect between the factum and
the divine order.Although one may correlate the physical elements of an evil act
(for example, hijackers and a plane, or soldiers and a nation) and even many of its
intentional elements (motives, habits, circumstances, etc.), one cannot correlate the
moral defect itself with the divine truth and goodness in any way whatsoever. See
Bernard Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St.Thomas
Aquinas, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, vol. 1, Collected Works of
Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 113–16 and 331–32.
34 Except if we consider the fact of human suffering as necessarily tied with the
primal human transgression, with Rom 5:12.

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tions.35 That some things do “not yet” have the perfections to which they
are ordained does not render them evil, only mobile.To be mobile, in the
most general sense of the term, is to be able to change. Following Thomas
and Aristotle, I would define motion as follows: the act of something
potential insofar as it is potential.36 Potency is related to act as imperfection to perfection.Thus, intrinsic to the nature of motion is imperfection,
but this imperfection is not an evil.
Finally, things can be considered imperfect relative to one another in
that one attains a higher end than another or in that one attains the same
end more excellently than another.Those that attain a lesser end can be
considered “imperfect” in comparison to those that attain a higher end,
since the former lack the end the latter have.There are grades of being—
the more perfect and the less perfect—but this “hierarchical differentiation” does not imply that any “level” is evil.37 My conviction is that
attention to the hierarchy of created being in the thought of Thomas
Aquinas might further ground Schindler’s core concern.Thomas’s thought
on hierarchy is intimately linked with his relational understanding of
difference, which I link with Thomas’s term “division.”
Since division is a transcendental, I turn to the work of Jan Aertsen,
who has supplied a lucid analysis of Thomas’s deduction of the transcendentals. The transcendentals—certain of our concepts about the real—
follow upon being and thus belong to all things that are. However, we do
not comprehend all transcendentals at once, according to Thomas. Rather,
we arrive at them in a determinate order, in accordance with the way we
know. Aertsen sums up:We arrive first at “being”; second at “non-being”
(simple negation); third at “division” (this being is not that being); fourth
at “one” (this being is not divided in itself); and fifth at “multitude” (a transcendental concept, not reducible to number/plurality).38 Aertsen
observes that the movement from step 1 to step 2 is readily acceptable, but
35 See ST I, q. 95, a. 3.
36 See ST I–II, q. 67, a. 4; and In XI Met, lectio 9, esp. no. 2294. See also Aristotle,

Metaphysics, XI, ch. 9.According to Guy Mansini,Aristotle’s definition of motion
is the only adequate definition man has ever produced. See Guy Mansini,
“Balthasar and the Theodramatic Enrichment of the Trinity” The Thomist 64
(2000): 517–19.
37 By contrast, see Schindler,“What’s the Difference?” 599–600. Again,Thomas would
share the presupposition (the lower is imperfect) without taking the final step.
38 Multitude is to be distinguished from multiplicity, for the former is a transcendental concept not reducible to number (multiplicity), which measures material
beings. See Jan Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of
Thomas Aquinas, trans. Jan Aertsen (New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), 221. I am indebted
to John Finley, Professor at Thomas Aquinas College, for pointing out this text

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the movement from step 2 (non-being) to step 3 (division) is not readily
discernible. Aertsen supplies a compelling link: Thomas also understands
the term “thing” (res) as a transcendental, especially in his “central text,”
De veritate, 1.1.39 Thomas therein distinguishes absolute and relational
transcendentals. Absolute transcendentals do not involve relation; chief
among these is being.We can refer to that which is under the aspect of its
quiddity or essence.To do this, we employ the term “thing (res).”40 Since
essence involves, in all creatures, limitation of the act of being, there
appears to be non-being indirectly associated with the transcendental
“thing (res).”When we compare two things (res and res), we proceed relationally. We can then affirm that this being is not that being: This thing
(res) is not that thing (res).41 This affirmation is division, also a transcendental, but said relatively, not absolutely.We can use the word “something”
(aliquid or aliud quid ) to signify “this thing” as not being another thing.42
Aertsen rightly emphasizes the dependence of the term “aliquid” upon
the term “res.” Beings are not divided from each other insofar as they have
being but “insofar as they have determinate modes of being.”43 The movements from step 3 to step 4 and from step 4 to step 5 are straightforward.
Step 4,“one,” follows division as its negation:This being is not divided from
itself.With step 5, we arrive at “multitude,” which involves the affirmation
of division and indivision. It requires more than one, so that one being is
not another being: This is division or alterity. At the same time, the transcendental “multitude” implies the integrity of each being, for each being
must be undivided from itself.44 To sum up: Division, with which I would
link difference, is a relational transcendental. Given that it is relational, division is best contemplated not of things in isolation but of things in relation
to me. He and Prof. Giuseppe Butera of Providence College helped me to focus
attention on the relational character of “difference.”
39 Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy, 222.
40 “Non autem invenitur aliquid affirmative dictum absolute quod possit accipi in
omni ente, nisi essentia eius, secundum quam esse dicitur; et sic imponitur hoc
nomen res, quod in hoc differt ab ente, secundum Avicennam in principio metaphys., quod ens sumitur ab actu essendi, sed nomen rei exprimit quidditatem vel
essentiam entis. Negatio autem consequens omne ens absolute, est indivisio; et
hanc exprimit hoc nomen unum: nihil aliud enim est unum quam ens indivisum.” Aquinas, De veritate, 1.1.
41 See Aquinas, In X Met, lec. 4, no. 1997.
42 “Uno modo secundum divisionem unius ab altero; et hoc exprimit hoc nomen
aliquid: dicitur enim aliquid quasi aliud quid; unde sicut ens dicitur unum, in
quantum est indivisum in se, ita dicitur aliquid, in quantum est ab aliis divisum.”
Aquinas, De veritate, 1.1.
43 Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy, 223.
44 ST I, q. 30, a. 3.

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to one another:This thing is not that thing; this thing is none of the other
things that are (and the same applies for everything that is).
If we proceed in this way, we are led quite readily to Thomas’s conception of the universe as a hierarchically heterogeneous whole composed of
irreducibly diverse parts.45 For Thomas, a hierarchical vision of created reality is a given: “Therefore, it is necessary that all things that are diversified
according to a diverse participation of being, so that they are more perfect
or less perfect, are caused by one first being, which exists most perfectly.”46
Notwithstanding this hierarchical vision, Thomas affirms that creatures
“lower” in the hierarchy express the divine goodness in ways that creatures
“higher” in the hierarchy do not and cannot: “Because God’s goodness
cannot be sufficiently represented by one creature, he produced many and
diverse creatures, so that what is lacking to one in representing the divine
goodness may be supplied from another. For, the goodness which is in God
simply and uniformly is in creatures in a divided and multiplied manner.”47
The reason higher creatures can rightly be said to fail with respect to lower
creatures is the surpassing goodness of God. So, it is the failure of higher
creatures with respect to God that frees up lower creatures to be good in
ways higher creatures cannot. Hence,Thomas shares Schindler’s affirmation
that the “not” present in difference bespeaks an irreducible perfection, irreducible, that is, to some being higher in the created hierarchy.
Thomas thus leads his reader to contemplate created differences in their
relational totality:The difference of some being (aliquid) from another (aliquid) constitutes partially the goodness of the whole.Thomas writes,“Thus
the whole universe more perfectly participates and represents the divine
goodness than any other creature.”48 Faithful to Schindler’s concern and
45 For the affirmation of hierarchy as intrinsic to created beings, which more or less

approach the perfection of God, see, for example, ST I, q. 44, a. 1; I, q. 47, a. 2.
Thomas speaks of an ordered multitude or heterogeneous whole, the parts of
which have not the form of the whole (ST I, q. 11, a. 2, ad 2). The unity of
world-order is attributable ultimately to one principle, God (ST I, q. 11, a. 3).
46 ST I, q. 44, a. 1: “Necesse est igitur omnia quae diversificantur secundum diversam participationem essendi, ut sint perfectius vel minus perfecte, causari ab uno
primo ente, quod perfectissime est.”
47 ST I, q. 47, a. 1: “Et quia per unam creaturam sufficienter repraesentari non
potest, produxit multas creaturas et diversas, ut quod deest uni ad repraesentandam divinam bonitatem, suppleatur ex alia: nam bonitas quae in Deo est
simpliciter et uniformiter, in creaturis est multipliciter et divisim.”
48 ST I, q. 47, a. 1: “Unde perfectius participat divinam bonitatem, et repraesentat
eam, totum universum, quam alia quaecumque creatura.” So, we read in Genesis
that on the first five days God pronounced each thing “good” but on the sixth
day he pronounced all things “very good.” Thomas writes, “It is the part of the
best agent to produce an effect which is best in its entirety; but this does not

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Thomas’s opinion, we might rephrase this:Therefore, the whole as a whole
is the better for different things.As far as his vision of creation goes,Thomas
is as far from Plotinus’s reduction of beauty to unity as is possible for a
Christian.As Aertsen notes,“multitude” is anything but imperfection:“The
thesis that multitude is a sign of perfection is the complement of Thomas’s
view on the transcendentality of the ‘many,’ for transcendentals express
general perfections of being.”49 Aertsen draws attention to a particularly
startling text from Thomas, a text that explosively affirms Schindler’s core
concern: ST I, q. 50, a. 3.We hear in this text that multitude implies perfection. Since multitude is a sign of perfection, the more perfect creatures are,
the more of them there will be:“Hence it must be said that the angels, even
inasmuch as they are immaterial substances, exist in exceeding great
number, far beyond all material multitude.”50 When we think of hierarchy,
we usually picture a progressive “thinning out” at the top.Thomas turns this
“pyramidal” structure on its head, but without losing hierarchy!
I suggest that examination of Thomas’s thought on relationally whole
multitudes—whether this be the universe, the Mystical Body of Christ,
or something else—would provide grounds for furthering the core of
Schindler’s thesis. I would maintain that considering difference relationally and with respect to the whole does not annihilate difference. Rather,
it explores difference in a way that accords with its nature. Now I turn
to my second concern.
From “Excess” Vis-à-Vis esse to “Excess”
Vis-à-Vis Any Participatum?
Key to Schindler’s thesis is the claim that the one participating must
enjoy some excess vis-à-vis that in which it participates. He writes,“There
has to be some sense in which the participans exceeds the participatum,
however paradoxical that may seem. More concretely, it means, for example, that the sensible world would have to exceed the intelligible world in
some positive way, and not simply by virtue of a progressive dilution.”51
mean that He makes every part of the whole the best absolutely, but [best] in
proportion to the whole; in the case of an animal, for instance, its goodness
would be taken away if every part of it had the dignity of an eye. Thus, therefore, God also made the universe to be best as a whole, according to the mode
of a creature; whereas He did not make each single creature best, but one better
than another” (ST I, q. 47, a. 2, ad 1; trans. Benzinger). Here, before citing Genesis,Thomas is obviously hinting at 1 Cor 12. In fact,“Inequality comes from the
perfection of the whole.” Ibid., ad 3; trans. Benzinger.
49 Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy, 225.
50 ST I, q. 50, a. 3, trans. Benzinger.
51 Schindler, “What’s the Difference?” 600.

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My question is, does the excess of the subsistent image—or, likewise,
the excess of the non-subsistent essence—in relation to a non-subsistent
perfection serve as warrant to conclude to some excess of every participans in relation to its participatum? Most precisely, do Schindler’s observations on participation in esse apply also to the participation of finite beings
in the Infinite Act that is God? The answer appears to be a cautious “yes,”
for Schindler is attempting to affirm the goodness of creatures as different from God. Creatures must somehow exceed God.
This possible implication chafes against Aquinas’s thought. For
Thomas, creatures are perfect precisely by their likeness to the divine
goodness.52 Would it not seem, then, that from Thomas’s perspective one
cannot affirm that creatures are good insofar as they are different from
God? Let us recall the nature of “difference” or, rather, division. Granted,
we can and must affirm that creature X is good insofar as it is different
from creature Y.We can do so because implicit in the division “X is not
Y” is the affirmation of the being of X as a thing (res) and ofY as a thing
(res), together with the alterity that distinguishes them.Thus, X is good as
being “not Y” not simply and absolutely—for even non-being shares in
being “not Y”—but rather because of the determinate being X itself
enjoys; it is the distinctiveness of this being that is, as it were, tucked into
the goodness of its difference when we say, “X is not Y.”
But if we consider X as not-like God and Y as not-like God, how can
we affirm their being good? Do they get their goodness from some other
principle, à la benign Gnosticism? Are they good in themselves and from
themselves? But Gnosticism is to be rejected. Has Schindler, then, taken
us out of the excruciating conundrum?
Analogy vs. Metaphor: The Moment of Truth
Schindler’s Argument
Schindler tacitly anticipates the foregoing critique by arguing for the
possibility that difference itself is in God. Let us consider the argument
in brief. First, Schindler clearly recognizes that all perfections found in
52 ST I, q. 44, a. 4, ad 3: “Nothing has the character of the good and desirable,

except according as it participates in the likeness of God” (Nihil habet rationem
boni et appetibilis, nisi secundum quod participat Dei similitudinem). See also
ibid., resp. and ad 2.This “likeness” can be considered to be twofold, one in the
order of existence—every creature imitates God insofar as it is—and one in the
order of essence—every creature is an imitation of the divine exemplar (of a
divine idea). Thus, a creature is good both by its essence and by its existence,
since by each it imitates the divine goodness.This is not, of course, to reify either
of these principles of that which is.

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creatures must somehow be found in God.This insight is both Thomistic
and monotheistic. In Thomistic fashion, Schindler affirms (in a different
context) that an effect necessarily has a similarity to its cause.53 Thomas
grounds this claim in another claim: Every agent acts so as to produce its
like.54 The ultimate inference one can draw from these claims is this:“In
God are the perfections of all things.”55 So, there is no perfection in an
effect not to be found somehow in the cause.56 On this point, Thomas
and Schindler are simply monotheistic, since for monotheists there
cannot be two (or more) ultimate principles of that which is.
Second, implicit in Schindler’s thesis is a differentiation between being
“different” from God and—to use a new phrase for clarity’s sake—being
“un-like” God. If we could find difference to be in God himself, if God
were somehow different from God while remaining one ultimate principle, then a creature’s being different from God would not make the
creature un-like God. In short, if difference from God were found in
God, a creature could be good precisely as being different from God.57
Here, Schindler deftly navigates the distinction between philosophy and
theology. Philosophically, he raises an urgent question: Might there be
difference in the one ultimate principle? Christian revelation—and it
alone—responds affirmatively.
Effectively, Schindler’s proposal implies an answer to the difficulty I
noted previously: It is not that creatures provide something not found in
the divine perfection in such a way that there is more than one ultimate
principle (Gnosticism), yet it is not that creaturely difference from the
divine implies a fall from perfection in such a way that creatures are
implicitly evil. A creature’s difference from God, rather than rendering it
un-like God, actually manifests God’s being different from God. Both
Thomas’s axiom—things are good insofar as they are like God—and also
the goodness of difference are paradoxically retained.
Unpacking the Logic
Inherent in the logic is the desire not to allow limitation to be “imperfect.” That this is the inherent logic is clear from several considerations:
53 Schindler, “What’s the Difference?” 611.
54 ST I, q. 19, a. 4:“Ex habitudine effectuum ad causam. Secundum hoc enim effec-

tus procedunt a causa agente, secundum quod praeexistunt in ea: quia omne
agens agit sibi simile. Praeexistunt autem effectus in causa secundum modum
causae.”
55 ST I, q. 4, a. 2: “In Deo sunt perfectiones omnium rerum.”
56 ST I, q. 4, a. 2: “Quidquid perfectionis est in effectu, oportet inveniri in causa
effectiva.”
57 Schindler, “What’s the Difference?” 615–16.

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logic, implicit affirmation, and explicit affirmation in another text. First,
Schindler’s logic implies that limitation is not imperfection. He affirms
the goodness of difference as difference.Yet, as discussed above, creaturely
difference necessarily imports limitation.“This creature” is “not that creature” because neither of them has being to the fullest extent. Now, if
creaturely difference as difference must be wholly good, limitation itself,
inherent in creaturely difference, must not be imperfect. Second, Schindler
implicitly affirms the goodness of limitation by criticizing an interpretation of participation according to which the participant is
defined specifically by a lack. Act is infinite and perfect; potency must
therefore be imperfect precisely because of its limitation and the finitude
such a limitation implies. Here we have a straightforward example of what
Derrida would have criticized as a simple “binary opposition.” If it is true,
we cannot but think of creation as a kind of fall from true perfection.58

In short, limitation is not imperfection.Third, in his recent book, Schindler
frankly and eloquently defends this claim: “We need to ask in what way
limitation is itself a perfection.”59 As inductive proof of this, he calls to
mind that without limitation, one cannot live in accordance with what St.
Paul calls the “greatest gift,” love (1 Cor 13:13):“Thus, limitation is part of
what enables beings to come together, in freedom and spontaneity, to make
room for each other, to dwell within one another—in short, it is the
precondition for love and for . . . reciprocal self-fulfillment.”60
I propose to run the course of Schindler’s logic a bit further. If limitation is a precondition for the greatest of perfections, must it not also be said
of the divine, albeit differently? Since many creaturely perfections are
dependent upon limitations, should not these limitations, which free creatures up for perfection, also be said of God, albeit differently? Let us
consider the perfection that is motion. For mobile beings, motion is
perfection, since by it developing beings develop.Yet motion also inherently involves limitation, for it is the act of something potential insofar as
it is yet in potentiality. Schindler implies that motion must somehow be
found in God, with the limitation that makes it possible, albeit in a different way. A noteworthy thinker who makes this very suggestion with
respect to the Triune relations is Hans Urs von Balthasar:“Something like
infinite ‘duration’ and infinite ‘space’ must be attributed to the [Trinitarian]
58 Ibid., 605–6.
59 D. C. Schindler, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth:A Philo-

sophical Investigation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 68.
60 Ibid., 68–69.

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acts of reciprocal love so that the life of the communio, of fellowship, can
develop.”61 This leads to the affirmation that God in his interpersonal
triune relations is always “ever greater,” not simply than creaturely understanding of him but, more precisely, than himself.62 Schindler appears to
support the logic behind von Balthasar’s contention:“If we do not equate
the divine identity simply with one aspect of created being to the exclusion of what we see as the limitations of finitude, then we are freed to see
this ‘limitation’ in a new way.”63
Evaluation
Has the excruciating conundrum satisfactorily been resolved? The chief
question that must be asked here is the question of truth: “Is it so?” Can
limitation be said of God? The question “Is it true?” belongs to the properly scientific moment of theological discourse.64 Essential to Thomas’s
scientific manner of proceeding is his distinction between things said of
God “metaphorically” (improper analogy) and things said of him “analogically” (proper analogy). Things said metaphorically are falsifiable, while
things said analogously are not.Technical explication of this distinction is
by no means a straightforward matter.65 Although an adequate technical
account is beyond the scope of this article, I hope the following brief
sketch suffices for my purposes here.
Naming is a function of knowing, for we name as we know.66 The way
we think we name reflects the way we think we know. As is well-known,
analogous use of a name stands between univocal and purely equivocal
61 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dramatis Personae: Man in God, vol. 2 of Theo-Drama:

Theological Dramatic Theory, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1990), 257.
62 Ibid., 259.
63 Schindler, Hans Urs von Balthasar, 68.
64 I have treated the topic of the “moment of truth” more generally in a presentation
titled, “Towards a Moment of Integrated Discourse: A Query,” delivered at the
Habits of Mind Seminar, University of St.Thomas, St. Paul, MN, July 14–16, 2005.
65 This is so even if we prescind from the insights of literary critics who take a
much different approach than does Thomas Aquinas.
66 For this account of analogy, I am indebted to Ralph McInerny, both as mentor
and as author of Aquinas and Analogy (Washington, DC:The Catholic University
of America Press, 1996). Proponents of the “analogy of being,” of which I
consider myself one, will only mistakenly critique McInerny’s account as being
“purely logical.” His point is that naming is one thing while being is another. He
does not dispute that to which people refer as “the analogy of being.” He rather,
and accurately, contends that for Thomas patterns of naming are not necessarily
identical with relations among beings (see Aquinas, SCG 1.34). I must also
express my gratitude to Prof. John Finley for his keen insights on the relationship between “modi significandi” and “res significatae.”

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uses. Univocal use of a name involves identical accounts of the name in two
or more uses: Sam is a man, Dan is a man. If names were said of creatures
and of God in univocal fashion, God would be placed under a genus and
would thus be conceived as one among many, a là onto-theology. Thomas
will have none of that. Purely equivocal use of a name involves diverse and
unrelated accounts of the name in two or more uses. No valid syllogism
follows from purely equivocal naming.Take the following as an example:
A trunk is wooden or metal storage box.
Every elephant has a trunk.
Therefore, every elephant has a wooden or metal storage box.

Since no valid syllogism follows from pure equivocation, no knowledge
results either.67 Therefore, if names could be said of creatures and of God
only in purely equivocal ways, we could know nothing at all of God.
Although many may disagree, Thomas will have nothing of that either,
since, he contends, God is known through his effects not simply as the
cause without defect but also as the one who really has, in supereminent
fashion, the perfections manifest among creatures.68 Therefore, there
must be a way of naming him that falls between univocal and purely
equivocal naming: This is analogy. Analogous use of a term involves
different but related accounts of the term. Since the accounts are different, they are not univocal but equivocal. Since they are related, they are
not purely equivocal.
Now, we must distinguish between analogy and metaphor. I will do so
with an eye to their functional differentiation in discourse, though I am
aware that they may be logically seen as a sharing genus. Let us first recall
that every name signifies a thing under some aspect, just as we know
things under certain aspects. I call a man “father,” while my mother calls
him “husband,” while his employees call him “boss.” That aspect under
which we name something is the “res significata,” the thing signified, to
be distinguished from the suppositum or actual thing for which the name
concretely stands in a given utterance.69 Attention to the res significata is
crucial in the distinction between metaphor and analogy. The res significata of analogy is pliable enough that it can be signified under different
67 See SCG 1.33, no. 4.
68 See ST I, q. 12, a. 12; and I, q. 13, a. 1, and a. 2.
69 The suppositum in the utterance “father” is a human being who is my father; the

res significata is the note “male principle of biological being.” Of course, if we are
to use “Father” of God analogically, which I would argue revelation bids us do,
the note at stake here must be made more precise:“conjoined principle of being
in the same nature.” See ST I, q. 27, a. 2.

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lights (modi significandi), yielding different but related meanings. For
instance,“healthy” is pliable enough to be signified as accident of dog, as
caused by food, and as illustrated by urine. Terms that are not so pliable
make fruitful metaphors: He’s a horse! The res significata of the term
“horse” is restricted in scope, calling to mind precisely things we call
“horse.” Metaphors work by their tension rather than their pliability: The
res significata is bound up with one thing and as such implicitly compared
to another. There is indeed some similarity that allows the metaphor to
work—we get neither laughs nor insight by saying, “Silicon is an
Elephant”—yet there is the inherently restricted signifying range of the
term that provides the tension.
When it comes to naming God, only certain terms can be used of him
and of creatures in properly analogous ways. A name whose res significata
imports no imperfection whatsoever can be used to signify God and
creatures analogously. Such names are said of God primarily—in terms of
their res significatae—because all perfections are most perfectly and supereminently contained in God in simple fashion. A name whose res significata is intrinsically bound up with limitation cannot be said of God and
creatures analogously.70 Of course, every name, being a sign of our
knowledge, is inherently limited in terms of its mode of signifying. Nevertheless, according to Aquinas, some names designate perfections without
importing limitation in these designations, res significatae, but only in the
mode of signifying.
The import of the distinction between metaphor and analogy is
profound. Metaphorically grounded propositions are literally falsifiable
because the res significata is—functionally, that is—inherently limited.
When I hear it said,“God is the lion of Judah,” I indeed gain insight into
God and his power, but, in order to sift this insight in the properly scientific moment of theology, I must also say, “God is not a lion, literally
speaking. In contrast, analogical names are said of God truly and primarily. They cannot be falsified in terms of their res significatae but only in
terms of their inherently creaturely modi significandi. It was in part failure
to distinguish metaphor and analogy that kept at bay the conversion of
Augustine of Hippo, for he was greatly troubled by God’s walking in the
70 SCG 1.30: “Quia enim omnem perfectionem creaturae est in deo invenire sed

per alium modum eminentiorem, quaecumque nomina absolute perfectionem
absque defectu designant, de deo praedicantur et de aliis rebus: sicut est bonitas,
sapientia, esse, et alia huiusmodi. Quodcumque vero nomen huiusmodi perfectiones exprimit cum modo proprio creaturis, de deo dici non potest nisi per
similitudinem et metaphoram, per quam quae sunt unius rei alteri solent adaptari, sicut aliquis homo dicitur lapis propter duritiam intellectus.”

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by bodily man’s being in the divine image. Augustine could not be false
to his God-given intelligence.71 Since the very truth of theological
propositions is at stake in the distinction between metaphorical and analogous utterances, it is crucial for theology to undergo the excruciating
question, “Is it so?” But, by what criteria is one to make this judgment?
One source of criteria is reason.We can legitimately appeal to reason if
faith and reason are (1) not to involve “two truths,” and (2) not to involve
contradiction. Reason, then, can assist us in interpreting scriptural, liturgical, traditional, and theological statements about God.72 Let us examine
God’s mutability as a relevant test case.The systematic theologian encounters God’s “repentance” throughout the Old Testament (for example, Gen
6:6), just as Augustine encountered God’s bodily walking. Repentance
involves change. But change or motion is the act of something potential
insofar as it is potential. Change thus implies the following: subject of
change, really distinguishable perfection, composition of subject and perfection-being-acquired, relative imperfection of the subject, and succession.
Now, can we affirm that God is composed of subject and accident (or
worse, prime matter and ever-newly acquired substantial form)?73 Can
we affirm that God is on the way to some actuality? Can we situate him
within the eschatological “not yet” under which we groan? Is God not
really the restful End (telos and terminus) of our drama towards him? Or,
71 The force of both metaphor and analogy presupposes the similarity of creatures

to God. However, in the former case, the name signifies a necessarily restricted
scope of being. In the latter case, names do not contain any inherently restricting implication. Because similarity is present in both cases, describing analogy as
“similarity within a greater difference” is insufficient to distinguish these modes
of discourse. Lateran Council IV’s teaching that every similarity is exceeded by
an ever-greater dissimilarity remains true for both accounts and cannot help us
distinguish these modes of discourse.
72 See Ètienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1938), esp. 78–85. Gilson’s narration (on the pages that follow)
of the increasing skepticism that followed in the wake of Franciscan victories
makes one wonder whether the contemporary refusal to allow philosophy (and
necessary arguments) to propose preambles for the faith—for that, it is said,
would shackle God, and who could bend the knee to the Primum Movens?—is
leading to a similar nominalism.
73 All composed beings are greater than the sum of their parts. In composed things,
one part may be active while another is passive.Thus, some composed beings can
“move themselves” through their active part. But the active part cannot be the
cause of the whole, since the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Now, no
caused thing can be cause of itself.Therefore, all composed beings are caused by
some other. If God is composed, he is caused.Again, no composed being is identifiable with its parts.Therefore, were God composed, He would not be identifiable with part of Him.Would this part, then, be not adorable?

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on the contrary, is his life itself a drama? But can there be “drama without end”, or, to the contrary, would not any drama deprived of ultimate,
restful end, lose its via by irresolution? Would a drama without end not
seem wearying? In any case, has anyone arrived at an adequate definition
of motion that also avoids these implications, so that motion can be said
analogously of God, its res significata being freed from limitation? It would
seem, however, that Schindler is not moved by these questions, for he
presses the matter further.
Participation Within the Trinity?
Turning his attention to the structure of participation as such, Schindler
concludes with a radical proposal.The Son participates in the Father:
It is this Trinitarian mystery that finally justifies the infinite variety of
structures of participation within the created order, for here we have an
Other, the Son, who participates, so to speak, in the Father’s being, not at
all as a defective copy, but as Perfect Image, and thus as an Other to the
Father who, as “not” the Father and in this sense as more than just the
Father alone, is by that very token also perfectly equal to Him, an expression not of himself but of the Father’s love. Participation, and the difference that lies within it, thus becomes not simply a figure of created being
in opposition to the first principle but the very reality of the first principle itself. In other words, participation, being an image and therefore
not one’s own source, is no longer simply that which marks the difference between the creature and God, as it necessarily seems to in religions
and philosophies outside of Trinitarian Christianity, because now God,
too,“participates” in God: the Son and Spirit “share” in God’s being!74

The argument runs thus. The predicate “to participate” must be said of
all that participate in goodness. If “to participate” implied imperfection,
creaturely participants would necessarily lack goodness insofar as they
were not identifiable with the Good.This is not tolerable.Therefore, “to
participate” does not imply imperfection. Indeed, participation is a
perfection; it has its own positivity as such. But if it has its own positivity, surely it has this only from the ultimate, transcendent source of all
positivity, God. Therefore, in God is to be found “to participate.” This
conclusion seems to lead to the following two dilemmas.
First Dilemma
On the one hand, can we meaningfully ascribe “to participate” to the
Son? First, let us specify the meaning of the term “to participate.” I suggest
74 Schindler, “What’s the Difference?” 615.

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the following:To have in limited fashion some perfection from another, to
which it properly belongs. Implicit constituents of participation are the
following: alterity of participant and participated, derivation of perfection
from the participated, the participant’s limited enjoyment of the perfection, and some real composition in the participant. Now, if we accept this
as the meaning of participation, we can apply the term analogously of
several different types of participation, each of which designates its referent via this note (res significata)—albeit differently (with different modi
significandi ).75 One example is material substances participating in perfections properly belonging to other material substances: The iron participates in the heat of the fire. Another example is intelligent beings
participating in the light of divine truth. Yet another example is holy
creatures participating in divine sanctity. Each of these is an example of
substance-accident participation. Nevertheless, quite different kinds of
having are involved. Since in each case the mode of “having” and the
perfections had differ, so do our modes of signifying them. Still, we designate each of the participants under the note “having limitedly some
perfection from another to which it properly belongs.”This note is pliable
enough to cover a range of phenomena that exhibit the note differently,
so that we can have an analogous extension of the term “participation.”
Philosophers venture forth to stranger terrain: Every created being is not
identical with its own esse but participates in esse. Although we have
ventured forth quite far, we still find the note with which we began: having
limitedly some perfection from another to which it properly belongs.
Now, if we use the term “to participate” but fail to wield it under this
note, do we not risk falling into an uniformative equivocation?
My question is, how is Schindler predicting “to participate” of the
Son? If he is to retain analogy, he ought to retain in his predication the
note by which things said to participate are signified.This note connotes
alterity, derivation, limitation, and composition. Clearly, the Son is other
than the Father. Clearly, too, the Son derives his subsistence from the
Father. However, can one affirm that the Son is limited or that the Son
is composed? Schindler would certainly agree, with Athanasius contra
mundum, that the Son is not “less” than God the Father. But, Thomas
insists that we must say even more. For Thomas, each person is the whole
God! There is no real distinction whatsoever between any hypostasis and
75 Note that mode of signifying does not merely play a part in differentiating the

way in which the res significata is enjoyed; it also “comes along with” signification, even in unintended ways, as, for example, when one says “good” of God the
mode of signifying imports something concreted, whereas God is simple.

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the divine being. The distinction is purely notional.76 I believe that this
contention is a matter of faith.77 Now, if we employ the term participation to signify “having limitedly some perfection from another, to which
it properly belongs” how can we avoid subordinationism?
A related question is, How we can avoid importing some kind of
composition into the person participating, some kind of differentiation
between the being he receives and the person receiving? Perhaps suggestive of such a differentiation is the following citation from Schindler’s
paper: “Though there is an identity between the divine nature and the
hypostases, they are at the same time not simply the same.”78 What are the
terms of the “they” that are being differentiated here? One wants to read
here “Father” as differentiated from “Son,” etc. However, if that is the
case, why the wording “not simply the same”? Father and Son are,
according to Thomas, relatively opposed subsisting relations. They are
wholly other. Schindler agrees with Thomas emphatically here. So, the
wording “not simply the same” is understated. For this reason, I wonder
whether Schindler is rather somehow really differentiating the Father
from the divine being and the Son from the divine being. Such a differentiation seems to be the purport of the following text from his book:
“As Siewerth describes it, the ultimate difference in God is between
Being and Subsistence, or Being and Persons.” Schindler continues,“The
76 ST I, q. 28, a. 2:“Sic igitur ex ea parte qua relatio in rebus creatis habet esse acci-

dentale in subiecto, relatio realiter existens in Deo habet esse essentiae divinae,
idem omnino ei existens” [emphasis added].
77 I would draw attention to two ecclesial statements, by no means isolated expressions. First, the Eleventh Council of Toledo teaches: “Therefore, we confess
[confitetur] and believe [creditor] that, taken singly, each person is the whole God
and that all three persons are one God. In them there is one, undivided and equal
deity, majesty, or power; it is neither reduced in any one singly nor increased in
the three” (Singulariter ergo, et unaquaeque persona plenus Deus et totae tres
personae unus Deus confitetur [sic!] et creditur: una illis vel indivisa atque
aequalis Deitas, maiestas sive potestas, nec minoratur in singulis, nec augetur in
tribus), DS, no. 529 {279}. This synod, which took place in the year 675, has
produced the magisterium’s single best scientific “treatise” on the Triune God.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church cites this synod as authoritative, even though
it is not an ecumenical council.
Second, in its Decree for the Jacobites, the Ecumenical Council of Florence
stated: “These three persons are one God and not three gods. The reason is that
there is one substance of the three, one essence, one nature, one divinity, one
immensity, one eternity, and all things are one where the opposition of relation does
not impose itself ” (Hae tres personae sunt unus Deus, et non tres dii: quia trium est
una substantia, una essentia, una natura, una divinitas, una immensitas, una aeternitas, omniaque sunt unum, ubi non obviat relationis oppositio), DS no. 1330 {703}.
78 Schindler, “What’s the Difference?” 615, emphasis added.

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mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of the relation between Being
(Substance) and Persons (Hypostases).”79 Composition in the Son and
differentiation between hypostasis and divine being appear to me to be
problematic. Both of these appear to be included ineluctably as things
signified when we say, “The Son participates in the Father.” This is the
first side of the first dilemma.
On the other hand, if we attempt to evade the foregoing, does not the
excruciating conundrum come back to haunt us? Let us suppose that we
can preserve the analogy of participation, and thus clarity of meaning, by
eliminating those two troublesome notes, limitation and composition.We
are left with derivation and alterity. Let derivation and alterity be what
we mean by “participation.” Now that we have eliminated the two troublesome notes, we ought to face the question of the difference of a creature’s participation from that of the Son. Let us ask, “What accounts for
every creature’s inherently limited reception of being?” To answer, we
cannot appeal to our new rendering of “participation”: but, if “not participation,” then something else. Let us call it Q. Q accounts for the limited
reception of being and implies real composition. Now, a difficulty arises.
If Q differentiates between a creature’s reception of being and the Son’s
reception of being, then Q is predicable only of creatures. If Q is predicable only of creatures, then Q inherently implies limitation with respect
to the first principle.We find no “Q” in the Triune Godhead.Therefore,
Q—that which establishes the difference of creatures from the Son—is
imperfect: since imperfect, therefore defective, therefore evil. The initial
conundrum comes home to roost. I turn now to the second dilemma.
Second Dilemma
How does the creature, precisely as different from the Triune Creator,
have its “excess” vis-à-vis its Trinitarian Creator? In order to pursue this
question, I must lay aside the first dilemma. Let us presume, then, that it
is possible to speak analogically of “participation” of the Son and of creatures, without (1) the problematic implications of restriction and composition, and without (2) the avoidance of the regrettable return of the
initial conundrum. I ask, whence comes the creaturely excess?
On the one hand, if the creature has its excess, its difference, not from
the Trinitarian Creator, then not all perfections are traced back to the ultimate principle.We seem to end in a benign Gnosticism. But this is fatuous.
On the other hand, we can avoid Gnosticism by affirming that the
creature’s difference from God lies somehow “within” the difference
79 Schindler, Hans Urs von Balthasar, 72.

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found in God. In this way, the creature offers nothing that it has not
received; yet, since God is different from God, the creature, too, can be
different from God without thereby being imperfect. The creature
derives its finite difference from God from the infinite difference of God
from God, Light from Light. The problem, as I see it, is this: In suggesting that the creature derives its difference from the Trinitarian difference,
in suggesting that the creature lies “within” the Trinitarian difference, are
we not implying that the creature is a “mere participation,” a “merely
partial” manifestation of the Trinitarian difference? But if a merely partial
manifestation, then the creature does not really contribute an excess not
always already to be found in God.The creature still is “not” the Triune
unity-in-difference. So far, the creature is imperfect: but, if imperfect,
then evil. Are we not left with the excruciating dilemma with which we
began: Creaturely difference makes no difference?
Conclusion
I am not certain that Schindler can find a consistent way out of these
dilemmas. Still, his quest to find some way to articulate the goodness of
creatures as creatures is intriguing and praiseworthy. It may well be that
the ultimate problem is identifying the following two claims: (1) creatures
as creatures are good; (2) difference as difference is good.80 In any case,
we must respond to Feuerbach and others who rightly criticize what
they wrongly mistake to be Christian. No creature is goodness itself, yet
creatures are admitted into real albeit partial shares of the divine goodness. At the end of our labors, though we—feeling Paul’s anguish and
falling silent about things we thought we once knew—may protest,“We
are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty” (Lk
17:10), yet another may say, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you
have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much; enter into the
N&V
joy of your master” (Mt 25:21).

80 I reached this insight in conversation with my colleagues, Prof.William Browns-

berger of The University of Dallas and Prof. John Finley.

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Discussion
Truth-Makers: On Robert Miner’s
Genealogy of the Genealogists
A NSELM R AMELOW, OP
Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
Berkeley, California

The Problem
M ODERN PHILOSOPHY is haunted by the thought that what we
claim to know is nothing but the construction of our mind. This is
haunting, because instinctively we say that construction and knowing are
opposed to each other. Knowing leads us to reality, whereas construction
fashions mere fiction. Knowledge leads us into an open space that is accessible to everyone, while construction produces only private fantasies.
With Husserl, truth can be defined as intersubjective, whereas that which
is “true” only for us is by definition false. Therefore, that truth would be
made, not found, seems to be counterintuitive.
However, modern “genealogists” like Foucault have claimed that truth
claims are generally the construction of those who dominate the
discourse. It is the discourse that determines what is true, and discourse
is shaped by self-promoting narratives, whether it be collective or individual, conscious or unconscious. Therefore truth is made, and the
genealogist tells the story of its making.
But what saves this genealogical narrative from the accusation that the
genealogist himself is just making up his own truth? Is not this genealogy merely another narrative that constructs rather than finds truth? And
how can this genealogy then be the formulation of a critique of truthclaims? The claim of telling the real story seems to imply a notion of

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truth, a truth that is not made, but discovered. In short: It presupposes a
realistic concept of truth, that is, a metaphysics of truth.
Can there be a genealogy that tells this story? A genealogy that unmasks
not only false truth claims in general, but also false genealogies in particular, without falling into same trap? Can there be a genealogy that both
affirms that truth is made and also retains a metaphysics of truth?
The Thesis
Robert Miner claims that Giambattista Vico’s (1668–1744) Scienza nuova
does precisely this, for it articulates a model of genealogy that is consistent
with its own truth claims. Thus it is a genealogy that is not relativistic or
antimetaphysical. In contrast to the genealogies of Nietzsche and Foucault,
Vico’s genealogy even comes to the defense of classic Christian metaphysics. By its nature this genealogy criticizes as well as accepts the modern
idea of truth as “making.” It criticizes various makings as distortions, but
accepts the idea of a truth that is made in its own form of a genealogical
narrative, one that can claim to be a new science—Scienza nuova.
If Miner is correct, epistemological realists would have reason to be
interested in Vico. The argument between them and much of modern
relativism would have to be recast.We no longer have to choose between
realism or genealogy, truth or making, but rather we can integrate truth in
the making, realism as genealogy.Vico would have answered modernity
ahead of time and needs to be rediscovered from this perspective.
We have to thank Robert C. Miner for having paved the way for this
rediscovery in his first book and dissertation, Vico, Genealogist of Modernity.1 In a careful reading of the texts, he reconstructs this new genealogical science of Vico. In a second book, Truth in the Making,2 he takes a step
further and tries to write something like a genealogy of Vico’s genealogy
itself, by tracing its roots back to the Trinitarian theology of Saint Thomas
Aquinas himself.
What Miner accomplishes—taking the modern ideas of genealogy
and deconstruction and turning them against their practitioners—is in
the tradition of his teacher John Milbank and “Radical Orthodoxy.” By
unearthing the voices that the modern narratives silence, he turns the
modern hermeneutics of suspicion against the modern discourse itself.
He writes a subversive history from the vantage point of theology, the
1 Robert C. Miner, Vico, Genealogist of Modernity (Notre Dame, IN: The Univer-

sity of Notre Dame Press, 2002).
2 Robert C. Miner, Truth in the Making: Creative Knowledge in Theology and Philoso-

phy (New York and London: Routledge, 2004).

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blind spot of modernity, thus uncovering the suppressed memory of
modernity’s roots. In this case, what is subject to this reversal is not just
some assumption but one of the very methods of that discourse itself. In
this way, it becomes clear that the modern antimetaphysical idea of “truth
in the making” has actual theological and metaphysical roots.
To know the truth by making it is characteristic of the divine mind.As
Aquinas points out against Origen: scientia Dei est causa rerum, and not vice
versa.With Henri de Lubac, we could say that this is part of the “drama of
atheist humanism” of Feuerbach and others.This humanism claims divine
predicates for human beings, attributes that have allegedly been alienated
from them by projecting them onto God. Unlike the nineteenth century,
however, the twentieth century does not seem to be aware of its theological roots. Robert Miner therefore provides an important anamnesis.
With the help of Vico, Miner does not hesitate to challenge as many
people as possible. His book is also an implicit criticism of those who
argue against the notion of truth as making, that is, of modern antimodernism.The latter have unwittingly accepted a distorted, non-theological
version of knowing by making. Those, therefore, who are afraid of this
principle have already subscribed to modern secularism.
The fear of this principle is of course understandable, because it has
been used to create a purely secular space, independent from a theological framework of creation or even a metaphysical idea of an independent
reality. Miner’s Radical Orthodoxy denies that there is such a purely secular space, that is that reality and truth can be understood independently
from theology, precisely because truth is in the making. Truth is in the
making insofar as it is either a theological construct or not truth at all.
Though Radical Orthodoxy may sound rather Barthian, it does not deny
the possibility of fides quaerens intellectum, especially the fides quaerens intellectum historicum. The kind of reason that this theology seeks is primarily
historical reason or genealogy, which is akin to the new science of Vico.
As it turns out, knowledge and truth by making is at its best a metaphysical participation in God’s own making, occasionally even ecstatically
so. It is literally part of God’s indwelling in us. Miner quotes John 3:21:
“he who does the truth, comes to the light” (Truth in the Making, 126).
This theological version of knowledge by making is an even more
exalted creativity than its secular version, which rather pales in comparison.With this, Miner gives indirectly a proof for de Lubac’s observations
on atheist humanism. Atheism does not strengthen the dignity of man as
it expected. Since man is made in the image and likeness of God, the
disappearance of God rather weakens the dignity of man, sometimes to the
point of extinction. Human beings find their highest dignity as co-creators

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with God himself.Turning truth as making against the theological tradition is self-defeating.
The Narrative Examined
This appears to be the general thesis of Robert Miner’s books. Is it true?
The argument that he gives lies in the plausibility of the story that he
tells. Testing the validity of his thesis is testing the plausibility and accuracy of the genealogy or narrative that it proposes. For this purpose, we
are going to follow his historical analysis, which culminates in Vico’s
explicit statement of truth in the making: verum et factum convertuntur.
As genealogy, Miner’s is a critical history, attempting to show that the
secular space that is opened up by disconnecting our making from God’s
making is a disastrous chasm.
Aquinas
With Aquinas, however, everything is still in balance.This is true particularly for the relation between three different kinds of production: technical making, creation, and generation.
Modern knowing as making has understood making on the model of
technical fabrication. Pace Heidegger, this is precisely not true of metaphysics. It is precisely without metaphysics and without a notion of creation
(rather than technical fabrication), that construction ends up in nihilism
(Truth in the Making, xii f.). Our technical making depends on God’s creating, and though they are fundamentally different, they are also analogical.
Both creation and technical making imply that we know what we are
doing, that is, we have an idea of our work. And both involve an act of
the will: They are voluntary. Yet, following R. G. Collingwood, Miner
points out that creation is not a technical production for several reasons.
The most important is that there is (1) no given matter or raw material
that the creator works on; nor are there (2) given ideas that would be
extrinsic to him. In other words, God is not a demiurge.
This difference between fabrication and creation affects the ways we
know. First with regard to (1) the raw material. Both God and man know
through making, though the range of making is different. According to
Aquinas, God knows particulars, precisely because he also makes the
matter of things. Conversely human artists create only the form, and that
is therefore the only thing we know.Thomas does not yet draw out the
implications of this: Our knowledge remains at the fringes of things, and
nature would be more opaque to our knowledge than our own artifacts.
Even with regard to the form of things, we are not entirely their maker;
the artist arrives at the form only by abstraction.

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With regard to (2) the ideas and exemplars of creation, unlike for a
demiurge, these are not outside of God—that would make God subject
to necessity; yet they are not created either—that would make creation
the product of blind chance. Creation is an intentional act, free, and motivated by love, not need.
But neither are they without derivation; they do derive from a form
of production as well. This third form of production is generation:3 the
Divine Word is begotten, not made.As an exemplar of creation, the word
is at the same time a form of self-knowledge of God.This is not true of
the ordinary human craftsman. But there might be analogies. As Jacques
Maritain has pointed out, God is more like a poet than a craftsman.
Poetic knowledge is born from connaturality, that is, from the Schleiermacherian spiritual unconscious that precedes the split into subject and
object, where we are primordially acquainted with ourselves. So while
God’s artistic knowledge in the Divine Word is different from that of the
craftsman, one could find an additional analogy by pointing with Maritain to poetic knowledge.
With regard to artificial things, we can therefore also make and know
the form of what we are making. We, too, conceive a plan of the work,
rather than create it, as Miner points out against Collingwood. Hence
there is a genuine way in which we can participate in divine creativity
and be co-creators—not acting by necessity or chance, but through a
preconception that is analogous to divine conception.This is true for the
craftsman, as well as for the legislator, who conceives of the natural law
as participating in the eternal law (Truth in the Making, 9f.).
This participation also is the paradigm for understanding the analogy
of being. Miner discusses the various forms (especially analogia attributionis and analogia proportionalitatis) and their problems, and finds the solution in the notion of a participation of the esse of creatures in the esse of
God as their efficient, exemplary, and final cause. It is not entirely clear
to me how Miner wants to develop this topic. His digression into Trinitarian theology in Olivi and Duns Scotus suggests that he wants to
contrast an analogical communication of being as well as the divine
generation with a philosophy of production of divine persons.The latter
would attempt to derive univocally an epistemology of representation
from divine knowing, a theory that anticipates modern theories of
knowing as mirroring. This is interesting, and one would have liked to
know more about it.
3 We tend to distinguish between creation and emanation, but Miner finds that

Thomas uses emanatio for both generation and creation, and so he stresses the
continuity between them. See Miner, Truth in the Making, 7f.

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Communicating being (or making in general) is a relation. For any
relation one would assume that the terms of the relation are ontologically
prior to the relation. Miner tends to downplay this implication. For the
side of the made, he stresses the continuing creaturely dependence on its
maker (Truth in the Making, 16). But for the side of the maker, at least for
the human maker, he tends to make the idea of the artist dependent on
the actual work. The idea is not supposed to be a representation or
picture of the work; rather, it is something like a spiritual matrix (perhaps
a Kantian schema?) that finds its reality only in the act of making. Here
we would know something indeed only after we have made it, or in the
making. It is seeing through making (Truth in the Making, 8, 10). This
might be plausible for Maritain’s poetic production, but I doubt that one
can carry this very far in the context of Thomas.
Miner also makes maximum capital out of a passage in Thomas that
affirms that knowing the Trinity is necessary in order to understand
creation (ST I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 3). Without knowledge of the Trinity, we
would have to assume that God creates out of necessity and not out of
love.4 This Thomas says in an article in which he denies that the Trinity
can be known by natural reason.Thus, it would confirm Radical Orthodoxy’s claim that purely secular reason and pure philosophy will necessarily go astray.
This might be true, but by emphasizing this, Miner does not address a
whole field that might have confirmed his theory of “truth in the
making” even further. However, this would have been a confirmation on
merely secular and pagan grounds: the theory of the intellectus agens; in
Aristotle, the nous poietikos. Its very name implies that the mind is making
something in knowing. Moreover, it is precisely here that the human
mind is connected to the divine: Aristotle sees the nous poietikos as divine
and coming thyraten from the outside. It is a pagan philosopher who
makes this connection strong; and it is the Christian theologian Aquinas
who has to argue against making this connection too tight, lest we lose
the individual, immortal human soul. This does not necessarily undermine the whole genealogy of Miner, but it might allow for more room
for secular, pagan reason—even Vico might have allowed for this.

4 Someone who would want to think further on these lines would find food for

thought in Leo Cardinal Scheffczyk, “Die Trinität—das christliche Tremendum
und Fascinosum Gottes,” in Die Normativität des Wirklichen. Über die Grenze zwischen Sein und Sollen, Festschrift for R. Spaemann, ed.T. Buchheim et al. (Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 2002), 362–80.

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Cusanus
Nicolaus Cusanus’s vis assimilativa (in the dialogue Idiota de mente) looks
more conventional against this background as well. Cusanus wants to be
in the middle between Plato and Aristotle: Knowledge neither starts just
from the senses (Aristotle) nor from the intellect (Plato). Genera and
species are not just entia rationis, nor are they eternal exemplars. With
Aristotle, we do know “in the making,” but what we make has an exemplar.Yet this exemplar is not in a platonic realm of forms or ideas, but in
the one simple and “infinite form,” which is God (Truth in the Making,
24f.). Hence, Cusanus explains the agent intellect in platonic terms. It is
a power that makes us to be in the image and likeness of God. Here
Cusanus makes a word play on making (facere) and the face of God (facies
absoluta). The making of the vis assimilativa assimilates us to the face of
God. And it is able to do so because it shares in the divine simplicity.This
vis speculativa stems from the mind’s simplicity by which it is the measure
(mens est mensura) of things, that is, it is a capacity for unity and for synthesis or complicatio.Therefore the ten Aristotelian categories are also brought
together in a higher unity, even though they are not reduced to a
common genus.5 While the mind is the mirror of things (vis specularis),
this does not imply passivity: It is a power, a vis.
The mind understood as a capacity for synthesis: Here we might
suspect a predecessor of Kant, where the synthetical judgments a priori
are derived from the unity of the transcendental apperception.This is true
especially since the model seems to be the mathematical construction of
space. Miner accordingly points to Ernst Cassirer’s interpretation as an
example for this reading, and he himself seems to understand knowing as
making in a similar sense (Truth in the Making, 34f.). In this perspective,
it could seem as if Cusanus has thought of the world as mere unshaped
“solidity” that is formed into geometrical forms by the mind; the actual
reality would be disappearing as a noumenon behind the mental making
(Truth in the Making, 32). I doubt, however, that Cusanus is really that
modern.That the mind is measuring things does not mean that it is shaping them (even though measuring is an activity of the mind).The facere of
the mind is less about synthesizing the world than it is about finding the
original synthesis or simplicity in all things and ourselves.“Solidity” only
means three-dimensionality, and the facere that explicates this threedimensionality is abstraction by subtraction, not by construction.
Therefore it is not really about constructing space by going from point
to line to surface either. It seems rather that Cusanus is reversing the
5 This seems to be the problem, in the discussion, not the facere.

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Euclidian process: The facere of this mind is not merely the explicatio of
retracing the extension that is there by measurement. More importantly,
it is the ability of complication, not explication. It is not unfolding but
enfolding, for example, when the line is enfolded in the point, which is
“its totality and perfection” (Truth in the Making, 32). It is about enfolding, because the goal is simplicity. It is geared toward knowing the simple
self and the simple God, whose first image is the mind.6 It is very modern
to think about knowing as having its goal in knowing things.That indeed,
I would claim, will be the case from Bacon onward, but not in Cusanus.
It might be that Miner is projecting this onto Cusanus in his desire to
find a more modern notion of knowing as making. On the other hand,
Miner himself points out that indeed the telos of knowing as making in
Cusanus is an asymptotic theosis (Truth in the Making, 38)!
Another parallel with Kant might be that in the making of knowledge
Cusanus sees us as going beyond the contingent world and its connections to necessary connections and, ultimately, beyond to the absolute
necessity.This necessity is without alterity and is the source of all connection; it is the unity of the multiplicity, which is God. While this is
described as facere, it is not a making without God. Our mind is not the
source of unity; rather, we find the unity because we are made in its
image and likeness.The human knowing through facere is a making indeed,
but only in the mode of assimilation, not creation.
As Miner points out himself in various ways (Truth in the Making, 25,
38), Cusanus’s aspirations to unity and synthesis are not so much Kantian, but rather an expression of “Leibnizian” irenic wisdom that wants to
combine the good in all, as the layman in the dialogue combines Plato
and Aristotle, philosophy and theology or rhetoric. And this wisdom has
its origin in a making that is a participation in divine wisdom and unity.
In this regard therefore Cusanus is a strong contrast rather than an ancestor to the following act of the genealogy.
Francis Bacon
For Francis Bacon the makings of the mind are separated from its divine
and metaphysical ground in whose image and likeness they are made.
Bacon does not receive the light of knowledge; he makes it in the form
of the axioms of science (Truth in the Making, 43f.)—just as God has made
light on the first day of creation. The light of the axioms is like God’s
word, informing the matter of creation (Truth in the Making, 46), and it is
made by us. We make the light by which we discover things; it is artifi6 Cf. also the quotes in Miner, Truth in the Making, 34.

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cial light. It is also with this light therefore that we bridge the chasm
between the knowing mind and the things to be known, a task that is
ever difficult after the fall.
How do we arrive at these axioms? The most clever and sharp tool for
dissecting and analyzing nature is induction rather than dialectic, syllogism, or abstraction (Truth in the Making, 40–43). Beginning with an
empirical stage, recorded in the written form of tabulation, it arrives at
its own form of abstraction. Ultimately this produces axioms, which are
in turn tested in experiment (they have to resist a falsification test).They
also have to show their value in predicting particulars, that is, in their
fruitfulness of implied results. Against Karl Popper’s own more empiricist
interpretation of Bacon, they guide the research along a Popperian road.
In this regard, knowing through making seems to take a Promethean
turn.At the same time, the goal of science and knowledge is to know the
world, not God. And knowing the world is a way of controlling it, of
increasing our power.
On the other hand, Miner finds some indications that ultimately
Bacon’s goal is not practical, but contemplative. Miner points to passages
where Bacon both tempers action with the value of contemplation and
is tempered in his Promethean inclinations by charity (Truth in the
Making, 43f.). It seems to me, however, that charity in Bacon is understood as pragmatic usefulness, and is meant precisely against the separation of contemplation and action. It rather reinforces a pragmatistic turn,
in opposition to the alleged sterility of scholasticism.
Likewise, while Miner’s more contemplative reading views Bacon’s
goal as finding the most general axioms, it seems to me that this still
describes Bacon’s method only. For Bacon’s goal is (and remains) pragmatic. Even atomism as metaphysical theory, though maybe akin to
Bacon’s purposes, is of no interest to Bacon.As Miner himself points out,
the dissection that leads to it is interesting only for pragmatic purposes; a
general atomistic theory is a useless abstraction (Truth in the Making, 50).
Nevertheless, there seems to be a tension, if not contradiction in
Bacon, insofar as charity remains inspired by theology. Thus theology
would play the role of a guide in natural science.Yet, on the other hand
natural science should (against Paracelsus) not be influenced by theology
(the book of God’s work is not to be read through the book of God’s
Word).The latter side of Bacon is the modern side, a side that creates the
purely secular space of modern science.
The notoriously obscure notion of “forms” in Bacon also finds a
deeper analysis in Miner. They cannot mean final causes that Bacon
famously rejects as sterile and that have use only for the analysis of human

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action. Nor are they formal causes in the sense of substantial form. In
Miner’s reading they are akin to “laws which govern the motions of natural bodies.” Combined with mathematics (which, according to Miner,
Bacon does not reject), they might look like the mathematical laws of
modern science. In other passages, however, (for example, aphorism 2.5),
they look more like the sense qualities of later empiricism (yellow, heavy,
fluid, etc.). It is not clear to me how Miner puts these notions together in
one notion of “form.” From my perspective, they look like the sense
impressions of empiricism.These impressions, although defined as sensual,
are actually something like Platonic ideas. For Bacon, for example, they
are eternal and immutable; one might compare this with Thomas
Hobbes, for whom these are the most simple and universal elements (that
is, the nature of things), which are arrived at by analysis.7
Although eternal and immutable, Bacon views these forms through
the pragmatic lens, namely as the basis for recipes for successful action. It
seems to me, that this kind of action still has an alchemistic ring to it.
They are the foundation of a science of material and efficient causes that
shape Bacon’s mechanics, of which he says that it “is nothing less than
magic.” It seems that there is a strange amalgamation of modern mechanics and alchemy (Bacon talks about gold) at work behind the disparate
notion of form.
If I had to write this genealogy, I probably would track its development
along slightly different lines. Bacon’s emphasis on analysis and dissection—
as opposed to abstraction or platonic synthesis—makes him appear not as
the continuation of Cusanus but as his very opposite. The genealogy
might not be as linear as it seems. The shift from synthesis to analysis
implies also a shift in direction: Not knowing God is the telos, but knowing the world, and this for the purpose of domination and usefulness.
What is the reason for this shift? To my mind it is the heritage of late
medieval nominalism and the Reformation that found God to be a Deus
absconditus. Bacon finds it to be God’s glory and very nature to hide
himself.8 Revelation seems to be the only access to God, but does not
enlighten creation at all. The revelata are mere posita/placita of God and
they are informative only for knowing primary and not secondary causes.
Science is about secondary causes, and it must make its own light for
knowing them. This creates the secular space that Radical Orthodoxy
abhors. An open question might be whether nominalism is the cause or
the effect of this turn to knowledge as power in a secular space.
7 Ibid., 83.
8 Ibid., 44.

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This turn to a secular space might be motivated by a theology rooted
in despair and anger over God’s absence.This, in turn, can lead to a desire
to take things in one’s own hands. One could see this as the motivation
behind much of modern technological developments, and in Bacon we
do find a theological expression of it.We find ourselves in the ignorance
and the suffering that are the result of the fall of Adam. The question is
how we find a replacement for Eden without depending on God’s grace,
and instead relying on our own powers, that is, on technology.9 (Today
we might see this especially in the development of medical and genetic
technology.) It is a secular Eden. Bacon uses the language of mysticism in
order to describe the union of subject and object that is achieved in
scientific knowledge: It is spousal imagery, and his desire for a knowledge
that is fruitful is directly correlated with it. The new mystical unions
happen in the bridal chamber of the laboratory, where fruitful technologies are begotten.The guiding paradigm of life is not the monk, but the
scientist. Thus contemplating God or final causes would be rather the
paradigm of the fruitlessness of religious life (“the research into final
causes, like a virgin dedicated to God, is barren and produces nothing”);
this is not where Eden is to be sought.
If, therefore, Miner points out that truth as making can be, in its correct
form, an almost ecstatic participation in God’s making, then this tie is
clearly severed in Bacon. Reversing Bacon, we could say that it is indeed
in the ecstatic or contemplative making and knowing of final causes that
we participate in God’s knowledge. Final causes are the intelligibility of
the world itself, because they mirror the mind of the Creator, who gave
them a purpose and who is the ultimate final cause of all things.The world
is intelligible without the making-torture of Baconian experiments. The
making that is involved in the knowledge of final causes is probably not
so much construction, but an “active listening.” If this is the model of
metaphysics, then Bacon’s image of the spider does not really fit: It is not
spinning its concept out of itself. Rationalistic construction is rather the
mark of a degenerate metaphysics.True metaphysics merely reconstructs and
preserves the condition of the possibility that there is something intelligible for induction to induce in the first place.
Baconian induction, on the other hand, does not allow nature to speak,
but rather “presses down on nature,” tortures it, and is “closely bound up
with works,” that is, with pragmatic concerns and making.10 While it
9 In footnote 29, Miner says that this is not satanic, even though making one’s own

light has been related to something “luciferian”; it is rather about going back to
a prelapsarian state. However, this does not appear to be mutually exclusive.
10 Cf. Miner’s exposition 40ff.

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wants to know the nature of things, it is actually not interested so much
in the things themselves, but in how they can be constructed in a useful
manner.11 Forms and natures of things are not facta of the human mind
for Bacon, but our knowledge of them is pragmatic knowledge.
For Cusanus, the knowledge to be attained includes also self-knowledge which does not seem to be of great concern to Bacon either.This
will be different for René Descartes. But both Bacon and Descartes similarly want to make man the master and owner of nature. If the Cogito is
the mark of an egocentric inversion, it might not be alien to Bacon
either. It is this inversion that could be understood as the original fall that
opened the gap between subject and object, a gap that Bacon’s method
wants to bridge.With Hans-Georg Gadamer, one could point out that, at
the same time, it is this scientific method itself that cements the gap,
because it implies a self-stabilized subject over against the object from
which it therefore is alienated. The need to dominate the object comes
from an insecurity that is self-inflicted.
René Descartes
It seems that René Descartes with his introspective Cogito is more interested in self-knowledge than Bacon, but in Miner’s reading, this appears
to be only the prelude and groundwork for Descartes’s mathematical
science. This science is again about knowledge as power and control
through construction, not about contemplation of the truth for its own
sake. Miner makes a very strong and convincing point that Descartes is
the opposite of what Richard Rorty (or Charles Taylor) thinks of him.
His mind and knowledge is not the “mirror of nature.” Miner shows that
Descartes can rather be understood as a pragmatist and therefore in basic
agreement with Rorty himself. Descartes’s mathematical science is not
about mirroring, but about mastering nature. Even a mirror could be a
tool for mastering nature (Truth in the Making, 143 note 28), but for
Descartes it goes beyond this: Knowledge and understanding is achieved
by constructing reality. His cosmology, for example, is “the fable of le
monde,” constructing the world from light as its principle.We cannot rely
on our “adventitious ideas,” our empirical impressions of the sun, because
they would deceive us about the sun’s size. True knowledge is gained
through scientific, astronomic, and mathematical construction of this
object, that is, through what would fall under the category of “invented
ideas” (Truth in the Making, xxx).We could compare this to the model of
11 Bacon’s philosophy sounds empiricist and pragmatist at once; that is a tension

that only later is split into two ways, for example, by Dewey and Russell.

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modern science, where we assume that we have understood something,
if we can simulate, that is, reconstruct it as a computer program.
This is true not only for the particular scientific ideas, but also for the
whole method itself. (And this method is universal, not differentiated
according to the subject matter, as in Aristotle. Only this allows for a coherent construction of reality.) Descartes points out that we understand reality in the way a craftsman understands his tools and what they produce.
And so we construct the very method itself, as a craftsman constructs his
tools, and what the tools make are representations of reality. These representations in turn are therefore not mere mirror images, but (mathematical) constructions. They are that in which knowledge terminates, not
reality. The representation is literally a factum, reality is a construct. His
physics is pure geometry, it does not describe real matter, but what scholastic terminology would call materia intelligibilis. His physics is imaginary
rather than real and solid; the latter according to Descartes would not really
serve our understanding. Understanding therefore is derived from
construction, truth from making.
In other words, Rorty mistakes Descartes for an enemy, while in fact
he is an ally in his pragmatism. Miner undermines the typical opposition
between pragmatism and Descartes as the searcher for objective certitude. In his reading, Descartes is precisely this: a pragmatist, and even
more so than Bacon.There is nothing “given” as foundation of certitude.
With the exception of God (and maybe the human mind) everything is
made. Properly speaking, only these two instances could count as innate
ideas, everything else is our construct (and even God as causa sui, or the
Cogito as the product of thought could possibly be considered to be
facta).12 This includes mathematical truths: They are given, but they are
constructed by God arbitrarily.Thus they do not have an inner intelligibility, they are facta in the sense of a factum brutum. Therefore, our use of
mathematics does not make things intelligible, but only operable.
According to Descartes’s Regulae, we understand complex things and
natures by being able to (re-)construct them and their effects from their
simple parts.13 Mere perception as in a mirror is not what understanding
is; that would be rather like “imitating others without knowing why, like
monkeys.” The envisioned construction also proceeds from the simple
12 Miner tends to assimilate even innate ideas to the fictitious/invented. Cf. Miner’s

rendering of innate ideas as “born from within” rather than “inborn.” Miner,
Truth in the Making, 62.
13 For example, the magnet; Miner, Truth in the Making, 66. One could make it a
point to say that this anticipates even the pragmatist Peirce: we make our
concepts clear by including their effects in their definition.

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parts as deduction, rather than mere conjecture and impulse. It is a
concatenation in an ordered series, intuiting14 the necessary connections
between the simple parts (Truth in the Making, 65f.).
This seems to imply that at least the simple parts are not constructed,
but that they are that out of which the construction is made.Yet Miner
interestingly points out that even the “simples,” the basic building blocks
of nature, are the product of construction for Descartes. This is necessary because only a homogenous nature can be put into a series for the
sake of construction (which will also be the motivation behind the
calculus). An Aristotelian nature that falls apart into ten disparate categories is not helpful.
Thus the basic units of nature are themselves a construct that depends
on the ars that is to be performed. What is understood to be simple is
dependent on the problem or question that has been constructed beforehand. Simplicity is a function of the order to be pursued. Descartes
compares it to playing a game. (Miner could have made the point that
what we have here is not only a pragmatist Descartes, but an anticipation
of the later Wittgenstein’s idea that, against physicalistic atomism, simplicity is relative to a language game!) In this game, simples are not the starting point, but the result, as Miner points out with Jean-Luc Marion.And
the result is to be evaluated not against the actual reality, but by the clarity it generates (Truth in the Making, 67f.).
Even mathematical and geometrical terms such as extension, number,
and duration are constructions.What Descartes calls “dimensions” (including weight and speed) are our pragmatic constructs (Truth in the Making, 72).
Miner might have made this point even stronger, because, in the third Meditation, Descartes seems to argue that we can construct everything except the
Cogito and God. Unlike Locke, he includes even colors in this. David
Hume’s “missing shade of blue” would have been no problem for him.
All of these constructions are therefore relative to a problem or question. And these questions are themselves constructions. They are
constructed like a mathematical problem, which is taken as the relation
between something known and something unknown, just as in an equation. The unknown is related to the known by way of a mathematical
proportion and depends therefore on the reduction of everything to
homogenous magnitude (including the “secondary qualities,” which can
only be compared as magnitudes). For this purpose, Cartesian science
abstracts from the particular subject matter (which in turn enables
14 Intuition itself becomes a form of construction, that is, constructing! In contrast

to the Aristotelian nous; Miner, Truth in the Making, 68.

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Descartes’s universal method as mathesis).The use of formal languages and
symbolization, furthermore, makes this process smoother. This is the
purpose of analytical geometry.
Miner points out that, for Descartes, number and similar concepts are
not distinct from that which is numbered. This sounds like a nominalist
position. I am not sure, however, whether Descartes does not deny the
reality of things rather than the reality of mathematics.At least it is not clear
if Descartes assumes that there is something like things in themselves as
noumena behind the mathematical construction, or if reality is just that:
the geometrical space, res extensa. The critique of his physics by later
authors seems to indicate this latter position.
Descartes’s method is not purely intellectual. As Miner points out, it
relies on a combination of intellect and imagination.This should not be
surprising, since it is a mathematical method. In scholastic terminology,
unlike metaphysics, mathematics does not abstract from matter altogether, but rather, retains a materia intelligibilis.
A fortiori the universal science of Descartes cannot include God (who
is immaterial and not subject to imagination).Theology and metaphysics
in the traditional sense are not part of this science. We see confirmed
what we have stated above:This is not about knowing God and the self,
but about knowing things in the world. Descartes’s “metaphysics” or
prima philosophia is mere epistemology; if God appears in this context,
then it is only as a function of epistemology.The only thing of interest is
the “secular space.”
However, Miner rightly points out that Descartes is not entirely
consistent. Since all (including mathematics) depends on God’s creative
will, there does not seem to be the genuine secular space of rationality
that we are used to associate with Descartes.The space that he opened up
(in spite of his presuppositions) is genuinely inconsistent. And indeed,
Descartes’s first Meditation asserts that the certainty of mathematics
depends on God’s goodness, a genius malignus could deceive us even in
this.The same seems to be true for the Cogito.
Yet I think that Descartes’ voluntaristic God is another form of Bacon’s
Deus absconditus; it is precisely God’s seemingly arbitrary decisions that
make us turn away from him to stick with the secular space that we can
construct for ourselves. On the other hand, it might be that in Descartes
there is still a tension that will open up among later Cartesians; that is, there
is the self-preservation against the hidden God and the forces of nature by
way of knowledge as power. But there is also the self-effacement vis-à-vis
God as it will come out in Blaise Pascal and Malebranche. In Malebranche,
knowledge is not making; in Malebranche, it is direct reception from and

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in God. Baruch Spinoza combines both strands and constructs self-preservation as self-effacement. Miner sees Spinoza as someone in whom there
is no factum anymore, because his pantheism excludes creation. But in fact,
in Spinoza, everything is factum (in the sense of geometrical construction),
and it is precisely by intellectual participation in this construction that we
achieve self-preservation in the amor intellectualis Dei.
In Leibniz, we find another combination of both strands. Miner
prefers Leibniz because he preserves the freedom and goodness of God’s
making. This makes us somehow more dependent on God and on the
theological rather than secular understanding of his doings. Further, it
allows us to understand our own participation in this as a participation in
freedom and goodness rather than in Spinoza’s geometrical necessity.
Leibniz’s physics is superior as well, because he thinks theologically: From
the goodness of God, he can allow final causality a heuristic and real role
in physics. The factum does not have to imply an unintelligible factum
brutum as it does in Descartes with his blindly contingent creation. Nor
do geometrical necessity and the abolishment of creation in Spinoza
make the world more intelligible or less “brute” of a fact.
Thomas Hobbes
In contrast with Descartes,Thomas Hobbes looks surprisingly non-arbitrary, non-nominalistic.This is at least the point that Miner tries to make
against Leo Strauss and Oakshott. Hobbes indeed is a representative of
the coincidence of truth and construction.The definitions of science are
clearly something made. This sounds rather nominalistic, and that is the
way it is usually understood. But Miner tries to show that the making of
definitions in Hobbes is not arbitrary, because there are certain requirements for definitions, especially the requirement that they generate their
subject matter.They must not be “sterile” and “inactive” because knowledge is knowledge from causes: As the principles of science, definitions
must therefore be able to function as causes.
It seems to me, however, that this requirement could be fulfilled by
arbitrary definitions as well, as we can see from non-Euclidian geometries. If they are not to be arbitrary, then we need a further grounding of
these definitions in the nature of those things that they define, that is, the
simple parts of nature. In Descartes they were a matter of construction as
well.According to Miner, in Hobbes they are not. For Hobbes, we arrive
at the most simple and universal parts by analysis (Truth in the Making, 83).
Since they are simple, they themselves cannot be understood by analysis.
But against Strauss’s reading, this does not imply their unintelligibility.
The first principles of nature are indemonstrable ; otherwise they would not

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be the first, that is, those from which everything else is demonstrated.Yet
they are not unintelligible, but rather “manifest of themselves,” or
“known to nature” (Truth in the Making, 84).
The first principles are body, matter, quantity, and extension; all of
these are in turn caused by motion. Motion is the very first principle; it is
the only unmoved mover, because motion cannot have any other mover
but motion.15 Motion is even the cause of geometry, since the motion of
the point creates the line and the motion of the line creates the surface,
and so on. Hence, geometry is not made ex nihilo, but from motion.
If first things are indemonstrable, then their definitions will be affected
by this as well. If definitions include causes, then universal and ultimate
causes themselves can have a definition only by explication.These explications have their own kind of requirements: They must not be selfcontradictory or equivocal, and they must be faithful to the name that they
have in “normal discourse.” This sounds nominalistic. If Hobbes is not a
nominalist, then what is meant by “names in ordinary discourse” must be
more than mere convention. This however is less clear to me. There
appears to be a certain assumption that ordinary language is in tune with
the real nature of things, since Hobbes talks about it as the explication of
passions and thoughts common to all men. This seems to exceed mere
convention—but is it because our minds are wired in this way or because
this is the way things are outside of our minds as well? Hobbes indeed
takes it to be the explication of material that is not made by us.Yet he
understands this explication in terms of creation, that is, the mind hovers
over the deep, over the dark waters, to speak the word.While we are not
creating the matter of things that we name, it seems that we are not finding but creating the form of things, in the mode of a demiurge.
In the context of the Leviathan, which proceeds to construct the
commonwealth through its definitions, the creation metaphor seems to
embrace even the matter: In this case the material is we ourselves. The
raw material is our passions, and the Leviathan-construct is an artificial
man (Truth in the Making, 92). Yet this would not make a difference if
there actually was something like a human nature (including the nature
of our passions) and the material was not all that raw; then it would be
given, not made.To my mind, Hobbes still is a nominalist.
This is confirmed by the pragmatist motivations of Hobbes: “the end
of knowledge is power,” and thus the end of philosophy is essentially practical. Hence the truth of the “indemonstrables” is not so much a proof by
15 One could wonder, however, if motion does not presuppose space, or something

that is moved.

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self-evidence, but a proof by an increase in power. This is true even for
the postulates in geometry:They enable the construction of problems and
show their fruitfulness in finding and deriving properties. Social science
goes beyond this only insofar as it includes not only the effects in its definitions, but also the final cause: peace and protection. This is actually
necessary, because otherwise we would not arrive at the properties that
Hobbes wants to deduce. In other words, the properties are relative to the
practical purpose.They are not necessarily what nature is in itself. Nominalism and pragmatism go together. Miner interestingly points out,
however, that this is also a limitation of the principle of knowledge
through making. The goals of this science, even though they are part of
the science and its definitions, do not obey its method, because they are
not facta.Thus they are not constructed but assumed and therefore do not
have to be accepted (Truth in the Making, 94).To my mind, in Hobbes and
Spinoza the goal is the conatus sese preservandi—which indeed is assumed
and not deduced. It therefore contains a rest of teleology that does not fit
into a geometrical-constructive model of reality, even though it seems to
underlie even the theory of physical motion, at least in Spinoza (but likewise in Hobbes, where this motion is the first principle).
Miner sees the problem that Hobbes’s “ideal” lacks content (Truth in
the Making, 94), but is it not lacking intelligibility? It is unintelligible in
this theory how one can derive “ought” from “is.”Yet this derivation is
crucial, if the goal of science is practical and not contemplation. Even if
the goal were a factum, it could still be a factum brutum, that is, nothing
normative. Hobbes might see human nature as universal, but it seems to
be a non-normative nature. It might be a normative point of reference
for knowledge, but not for action—not as a final cause.
Ultimately Miner does give us the answer:To be normative, the factum
has to be of divine making.This answer he gets from Vico.
Vico: The Verum-Factum Principle
With this, we arrive at the culmination of Miner’s genealogical narrative:
Giambattista Vico. He has been guiding the story line all along, because
it is Vico who for the first time formulates its principle: verum et factum
convertuntur.While this in some way claims to be a self-evident principle,
it really is far from being obvious.Would it not seem to be far more selfevident to say the opposite, that is, falsum et factum convertuntur ? Insofar as
something is the mere fabrication of our mind it is false.
Indeed, this is what Vico says about much of pagan and contemporary
philosophy. Clearly, this principle has a critical function, and serves a
hermeneutics of suspicion, as all genealogy. But, as the adage says, abusus not

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tollit usum.The abuse of this principle still preserves and is built on a deeper
meaning. It is this meaning that Miner wants to propose to us as well.
The deeper truth of this principle, however, cannot become evident in
a merely secular or pagan context.Vico is the genealogist of the attempts
of early and modern societies to construct truth without God.They fail
because, while truth is always made, making is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for truth.The making makes truth only if it is a genuine
participation in God’s making. It is an analogical participation in divine
making, which by its nature implies divine providence. We presuppose
that our mind is guided by divine providence, and this guarantees that
our making is not just our own. In other words, where there is truth in
the making, it is a creative participation in divine providence. (In some
way, it requires the trust in providence that Bacon lacked.)
In contrast, the making becomes false if providence is denied. Philosophies that deny providence will deviate by their nature from the truth.
They will distort the verum/factum principle. They can do so by falling
into two opposite extremes: philosophies of fate and philosophies of
chance.Vico likes to exemplify the first by Stoicism, the second by the
philosophy of Epicure.
Somehow in anticipation of Hegel, these forms of thought have their
historical instantiation and development. History has at once the critical
function of showing the origin and genesis of error and distortion, as well
as showing the universal features that are characteristic of all of humanity. History, therefore, must be guided by divine providence, in order to
display this intelligibility. History becomes—maybe for the first time—a
science, a genealogical science, namely Vico’s Scienza nuova, which itself
wants to be the highest exemplification of the principle of truth as making.
Prior to Vico, history was not seen as capable of science, while nature
was scientifically intelligible.Vico reverses this. Following Hobbes, he sees
the social and human world as capable of conceptual reconstruction
(Truth in the Making, 114); we are fundamentally more acquainted with
the human world than with nature, because we are its makers.16 Nature
by contrast is not made by us, but by God; we can understand it only
from the fringes, not from the inside out. History is also the coincidence
of truth and certainty. In science, the more certain something is, the more
unreal and merely constructed it is. The more true—and in this sense
real—it is, the more uncertain it will also be. But in the case of history,
16 We could wonder, whether it is from here that nature, too, will become part of

history—in some way in Hegel as well as in evolution theory. In Hegel, this has
idealist presuppositions (our ultimate identity with the Weltgeist), whereas in
evolution theory it is reductionist, yet maybe dependent on theological premises.

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which is of our own making, the object coincides with the construction
(Truth in the Making, 105). It is almost anticipating an idealist notion of
science as identity between subject and object, especially in its Hegelian,
that is, historical form.
Vico’s new science is archeological. It explores particularly the origins,
that is, the cultural beginnings, because knowledge is always knowledge
from causes. The origins will display certain commonalities and actual
agreements, which are preserved in the “common sense” of all peoples.
They are discovered by combining empirical erudition with synthetic, but
somehow intuitive, ingenium (Vico, 71ff., also for the following). This ingenium presupposes the teleology and economy of history, that is, providence.
The new science will employ a hermeneutics of suspicion against
previous historiography and the nationalistic pride of the “conceit of
scholars and the conceit of nations.”
Vico’s genealogy is also normative, that is, like Nietzsche’s genealogy,
it is not value-free, but critical—only in the reverse. It does not elevate
paganism over Christianity, but vice versa.
The new science will be linguistic. Etymology is an important tool for
Vico, because he assumes that “ideas and languages accelerate at the same
rate” and that the “order of thoughts and things and language is the same.”
Implied is the linguisticality of experience. Language is the substance of
thought; it brings thought into being (Vico, 91). In mythical language, for
example, people are experiencing fear only once they are able to express
it by naming it “Jove.” The historical origins of ideas and of language
therefore go together. Implied is a view of language in which, according
to Vico, nomen and natura originate from the same word, just as logos means
both idea and word. Intelligere is analogized with reading as the colligere of
elements (letters) into words (Vico, 91 and 27f.).This would be in contrast
to an instrumentalist view of language, where thought and experience
precede their expression. With regard to this critique,Vico is himself the
starting point of a new genealogy that goes through Collingwood to
Gadamer (with influence from Heidegger).
There is an anti-Cartesian point in this anti-instrumentalist view of
language: We do not know ourselves by a Cartesian reflection that
produces the Cogito as a starting point. Rather, we know ourselves only
in and through our external expressions in history. It is therefore false
pedagogy to start with the mere internal reflection of the Cogito, rather
than with a humanist training of the imagination in art and rhetoric.Vico
does not fail to point out that Descartes himself has learned from the very
tradition that he discourages others to read (Vico, 18).Vico also prefers the
empirical approach of Galileo and Bacon to Descartes (even though the

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Promethean Bacon lacks the necessary sense of human finitude) (Vico, 5).
Yet, critical reflection is important as well, and it needs both ars topica
and ars critica, that is, both the piling up of information and the sorting
through into genera (Vico, 4f.). Reflection on its own, however, will be
practically inept. Just as Gadamer will do later,Vico emphasizes the virtue
of prudence, which is needed for the application of general principles.
This application cannot be achieved by mere reflection and antecedent
casuistry. The latter would only produce a doctus imprudens, who is slow
in decision or suddenly erupts into action “both astonishing and arrogant.” He lacks the sensus communis, which is the rule for both prudence
and eloquence and which helps in urgent decision making through the
ars topica. Eloquence moves to action; it motivates and transforms desire
to the point where the utile and honestum are perceived as identical—a
process that, after the fall, can be only asymptotical (Vico, 7–12).
Cartesian reflection is not only impractical, it is even theoretically
ineffective in persuading the skeptic (Vico, 13ff.) (one could compare
here Gadamer’s points against reflection arguments). Vico does not
believe in Descartes’s argument for or from the Cogito. He is suspicious
of the first-person perspective; for unlike Descartes’s first-person meditations, he writes his autobiography from the third-person perspective
(Vico, 18). Only this can provide scientia, that is, knowledge from causes,
whereas reflection only leads to empty con-scientia.17 The conscientia of the
Cogito fails to know the causes of its thought.18 According to Vico, the
only things that we can know are those that we cause. Hence we could
know ourselves only if we were our own makers. But our thinking is not
the cause of our being (Truth in the Making, 104).
Knowledge of causes does not come from introspection but from
production:We know ourselves only after the fact. Because he is the first
cause, only God can know everything from introspection. Thus, making
and being are identical in him (Truth in the Making, 104).We could therefore say that Descartes’s Cogito is an illegitimate divinization. It would be
part of our necessary humility, which is the root of all knowledge, to
acknowledge that we cannot be God, and that we cannot even know
God in the sense that we could prove him from prior elements. With
17 Here one could ask Vico critically: How is it possible to recognize ourselves in

our expressions? We can recognize ourselves only, if we are already acquainted
with ourselves, prior to our expression.Vico might say that this acquaintance is
what is provided by “conscienzia,” but that is about all that conscienzia does.
18 This is also why the connection of the mind-body causality has to remain
unclear for more principal reasons: If we do not know the causes of our thought,
we know even less how our thought can itself, in turn, be a cause.

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that, and because all knowing is making, we would be the maker of our
God, that is, the god of our God. For Vico, on the other hand, God seems
to be the object not of demonstrative or abstractive science, but of moral
philosophy.This is because God is the goal of all morality and virtue, and
the governing virtue that might lead us to this goal is prudence (Truth in
the Making, 104).Theology is accessible only to practical reason.
Having said this, it is curious that Vico derives his verum/factum principle from a Cartesian strategy of radical doubt.Yet this doubt does not
lead to the Cogito, but to the verum/factum principle, which is its direct
competitor.Vico argues that if we doubt everything that we can know
about the historical origins of humanity, then what remains is precisely
this principle. Historical origins are manmade, and therefore their principles can be found in the modifications of our own mind (Vico, 87ff.).
Vico: The Genealogy
Applying this principle to history, we find something that looks Hegelian
in its threefold schema: the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of
men.Yet it is not so much a Hegelian model as a Trinitarian one, as we
will see.This underlines that there is no “secular space.” In other words,
we understand pagan history only if we understand God and participate
in his Trinitarian making of things.This is all the more interesting because
Vico’s history is essentially the history of the pagan world. Miner shows
convincingly that Judeo-Christian salvation history is the model on
which Vico reads and evaluates pagan history. It is a theology of pagan
history. Salvation history is not, as we could say, the material object of his
new science, but the formal object, that is, the lens through which pagan
history is seen.
Divine providence would be common to both gentiles and Hebrews.
Yet, because, after the fall, only the Hebrews preserve the memory of
divine providence, the pagans substitute it with other things.They produce
their knowledge by a making that is idolatrous and violent.This is the critical aspect of Vico’s genealogy. It is his intention to make a new argument
for Augustine’s thesis that all pagan virtues are nothing but splendid vices.
On the other hand, just as Augustine is himself, he is also positive about
the pagans. After all, they are still under God’s providence (for example,
Vico, 64).
The Age of Gods
The first stage of human history (after the fall) is the age of gods.This age
is theocentric, but the names of the gods originate as reification of
human needs. It is childlike in that it is not capable of intentional decep-

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tion or irony (insofar it is a narratio vera ).Although this worldview is false,
it does preserve two important truths: (1) divine providence and (2) free
will. These two important truths are retained in popular wisdom, the
sapienza volgare.
The worldview is false, however, insofar as these early people are, out
of fear, creating images in their own likeness. For example, they give the
sky a body and a mind and name it “Jove.” Unlike Augustine,Vico does
not presume that these gods are necessarily demons, but rather poetic
imaginations.The gods are facta ; they are (attempted) knowledge by some
form of mytho-poetic making, made not by reason, but by imagination.
The character of these gods is ethically doubtful: Goodness is power,
might is right. The form of its religion is idolatry, because it identifies
God with a part of nature (for example, the sky). The corresponding
divination19 obtained by sacrifice is not only the result of the vice of
curiosity, but also of ignorance of God’s transcendence over nature.They
do not know that God cannot be identified with the physical course of
nature and its signs.
Jove is the “savior” only because he did not destroy them. He is also
the founder of local stability and communal living under governance.
Socially, the first human fathers are also priests and the theological poets
of this age.They are in charge of divination and jurisprudence alike (both
understood as reading the signs of the gods), yet they mistake their own
activity for that of the gods.
This is also the beginning of marriage, a bond that binds the early
nomadic giants into a social existence.Their bestial lust is now tamed to
be performed not publicly, under the sky, but in caves. There is a new
element in this:This taming is not just out of mere ignorance or fear, but
also out of shame, projecting moral indignation on the gods as well.
Marriage comes about as the ratification of the pact between god and
man (Truth in the Making, 117 and 120f.).
The origin of monogamy leads to the acknowledgment of personal
children by their fathers as well and, with that, the reinforcement of
personal identity as defined through family relations. Other men who do
not achieve this status join them as famoli—that is where the term family
is derived from.The new family culture includes the establishment of the
institution of promise keeping (especially as opposed to adultery) and
property rights (derived from burial rites), as well as the establishment of
19 According to Vico, there is a relative superiority of Chaldean astrology which

comes from Shem, while the Western forms are from Ham and Japheth. The
Hebrews have no astrology at all.

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a hierarchy (fathers as priests). It also establishes selfhood: The self is the
result of the taming of a bundle of desires through violence, fear, and
shame. It is the cultural creation of a moral agent.
For the first time in history, the goods of the noble, useful, and pleasant are achieved in a human institution. At the same time, this society is
still based on falsehood and violence (including that of sacrifice).20
The Heroic Age
The following heroic age sees a gradual development from mytho-poetical thought to rational thought. It occurs in comparable ways both in
Greece and in Rome. It is not only the development from Achilles to
Socrates, but it is also reflected in the struggle between Patricians and
Plebeians. Political and social relations start out as relations between
classes, not between individuals. Law is based on strength and power, but
this does not come about by the conceit of the ruler, as Hobbes might
have it, but by providence. In Rome, it is an aristocratic republic with
chosen kings (against Bodin).Yet, this power is still based in violence.And
it is based on language. This linguistic character of power is a quite
modern insight of Vico.
In the beginning, this language is poetic, the language of myth.
Universals can be conceived of only in the poetic form of gods and their
origins, that is, in terms of theogony. This is reflected in the class structure, namely the beastly and divine origins of the plebs and patricians,
respectively. These myths therefore legitimize the existing structure and
conceal the actual source of law in violence. They are protected by the
secrecy of the law and the priests, who interpret it by divination.
Given the linguisticality of thought, the liberation from this form of
thought likewise takes place in the form of language.There are the fables
of Aesop, not a heroic aristocrat, but an ugly slave who undermines existing patterns through ironic comparisons.The still imaginative form of the
fables (as opposed to intellectual articulations) shows them to be an early
form of thought. A step further are the maxims of Solon, who exhorts
the plebs to realize their humanity, particularly in the maxim “Know
thyself!” Language also takes a turn to more vulgar or human (as opposed
to heroic) language. It is not sung, and it is composed of the genera of
which the gods of heroic language are the particulars. At the same time,
it is reflected in law (Solon) and, only after this, will it result in philosophy. It is only with Socrates’s reflection that universals and ideas become
20 It could be an interesting endeavor to compare Vico’s and R. Girard’s scapegoat

notion of sacrifice.

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explicit and actual in language. Reflection is the basis of abstraction; it
leads to conceptual universals rather than metaphors. Unlike Gadamer
and Rorty,Vico sees this reflection still as a welcome step toward liberation. But also he sees it as important that rational philosophy remains
bound to the soil of myth and fable, religion and law. Reflection is parasitic on the pre-existing narrative, while at the same time it is the philosopher’s task to purify (and strengthen!) popular myth (Vico, 132).
The Human Age
It is precisely this grounding in myth and fable that seems to get lost in
the age of barbarism or the human age, which is an age of nihilistic reflection. The development that goes from the crude (divine stage) to the
severe (heroic) to the benign (Solon) now arrives at the delicate and
finally dissolute (human). The “delicate” is dominated by pleasure and
demagogues, hedonism and power. It is followed by the remedy of an
ineffective monarch (for example, Tiberius) and finally ends in dissolution (Caligula and Nero). After this, there are only two remedies: the
conquest by another nation (since they cannot govern themselves
anymore) or a regression to beastlike individualism, solitude even in the
midst of the crowd. “They shall turn their cities into forests and the
forests into dens and lairs of men.”This will be more barbarian than the
beginnings, but it can lead to a new beginning.
Philosophy contributes to barbarism as well, because it is now developing the esoteric wisdom of solitary individuals and forgetting the truth
of “vulgar wisdom,” especially the notion of providence that has been
preserved in it.We can see this particularly in the two opposite extremes
of Stoics and Epicureans, that is, fatalism (Stoa) and chance (Epicure),
rationalist certitude (Stoa) and skepticism (Epicure). Stoics also deny
human freedom as another part of the “vulgar wisdom” that preserves
some truth. Both are idle solitaries: the Epicureans in their garden, the
Stoics as contemplatives, isolated against passions as well as other people
(autarkeia). Reflection leads to individualism. Both destroy Roman
jurisprudence: Epicurean ethics is all prudence, and no ius ; Stoic ethics,
all ius without prudence (Vico, 75f.).
Among the Greeks, Plato begins similar things. Socrates still integrates
vulgar and esoteric wisdom, practical and theoretical knowledge, narrative and reflection. But Plato deduces his ideal republic in an antihistorical way, that is, he denies divine providence in actual history. It is
therefore no surprise that he destroys the sensus communis by introducing
sexual communism in his ideal republic.

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The Hebrews
These are the typical three stages of pagan history. It might be surprising
that Vico does not thematize Judeo-Christian salvation history as well,
since we would expect to find God’s providence established here more
than elsewhere. It is Miner’s insight that Vico does not mention this
history (and increasingly less in the development of his work), not
because it is unimportant, but because it is the ever-present but nonthematic lens through which pagan history is seen. It is not the material
object, but the formal object. It is part of the explanans rather than the
explanandum.Antireligious readings of Vico will necessarily miss this point
(Vico, 110).
Hebrew history also is the measuring rod of other histories. This is so,
according to Vico, because the Hebrews preserved the more accurate
history of the origins in their scriptures. In other words, they simply have
the better memory. Unlike Greek historiography, they even preserve
Egyptian and Assyrian history. But, as Miner points out, in order for it to
be the lens there must be something not only different but also similar.
And indeed, both have a common origin: It is only after the flood that
some sons of Noah regressed into the woods, back to feral origins.They
abandoned civilization, as well as their offspring, who grew up in dirt and
feces, developing into giants (Vico, 111). From these, their “feral and fecal
beginnings,” they find some remedy from the fall of Adam by sacrifice
and by giving honor to God. They also attempted to put together the
broken pieces of Adam’s sapientia integra, but only in self-made laws,
which are constructions of their own making.
In contrast, the Hebrews preserved the pure contemplation of Adam,
a purity of the mind rather than the pagan purity of the body. Accordingly, pagan contemplation (from caelis templum ) is the observation of
heavenly bodies only, a form of idolatry, identifying parts or the whole of
nature with God rather than acknowledging the transcendence and freedom of the creator.21 The Hebrews, on the other hand, still had the
“knowledge of good and evil” and therefore did not need practices of
divination, which were forbidden.The revelation of God could take the
place of the false makings of projecting one’s own nature on the sky
(“Jove”) (Vico, 112).To the Hebrews, God revealed himself as elusive: I am
who I am.While the Hebrews’ original language was also more poetic and
imaginative, and not yet one of conceptual universals, they did not substitute gods for universals. Neither did they conceal the origin of their
21 As Miner says, the Jew Spinoza also will do precisely this, after deconstructing

the Hebrew revelation; Miner, Vico, 112.

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ruling cast by myths, but rather, they gave a historical and unflattering
account of the offices of the Levites and the kings. Beginnings in general
are not seen as grounded in violence, but in acts of God’s love and his
free giving. This is also reflected in their notion of law: It remains
grounded in inner law and purity of heart, rather than external violence
and coercion.This is reflected in laws such as the Jubilee year, the treatment of foreigners in the country, and the fact that there is no right of
life and death over one’s sons.
The Hebrews therefore preserve the notions of freedom in both God
and man; they know of the benevolence of God, which is shown in his
providence, and in which we can participate through the help of Revelation. The Hebrew world still participates in divine truth. The pagan
world, on the other hand, has to find a substitute, that is, find its own
certitudes. (This might be similar to the epistemological endeavors after
the loss of the certitude of faith in today’s post-Christian world.) What it
achieves, however, will always bear the mark of violence, a forced certitude. Pagan laws and divination can achieve an intrasystematic certitude,
but not a participation in truth. In other words, they have to split certainty
from truth and replace the verum with the certum.
Christianity
This split is a perennial problem after the fall, and the purpose of the
Incarnation is precisely to heal this split. It leads us back to the transcendent truth in which we need to partake, but by means of a bodily starting point. Before that, God had revealed himself in more “mental” ways.
He himself is revealed as pure spirit, for example, talking internally to
himself at the moment of creation. Then he speaks externally to the
prophets, and finally through Jesus Christ. In Jesus, God speaks through
the apostles and the Church, which continues to heal the split between
verum and certum through her proclamation. It does so by subordinating
the human mind as finite to the infinite and uncreated first truth: a truth
that is begotten, not made. Only in this manner can the verum/factum
principle be applied without idolatry and distortion. As Miner says,
“Verum-factum is not a secular thesis, but a principle that requires the
subordination of verum to verbum and factum to genitum” (Vico, 29). It is
only this that makes Vico’s new science, that is, his genealogy, possible.
This is the reason why salvation history is the lens, not the object, of his
genealogy. With it, genealogy is not only true, it is also the most certain
science; even though it will never have the certainty of human science
and construction, because we do not really know the genera of things in
the mind of God. Human science, on the other hand, will be certain, but

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does not attain truth.The healing of the split, even with the Incarnation,
seems to happen in a continued tension (Vico, 29f.).
Hebrew historiography and the Incarnation therefore provide the
critical lens through which Vico’s genealogy can conceptualize pagan
history. By no means is he romanticizing early pagan beginnings, as
Miner can show against earlier readings of Vico.22 The reason for this
assumption might be that Vico also argues against the reflective modernity, particularly the rationalism of Descartes. But he is not therefore a
romantic traditionalist (he actually appreciates Galileo and Bacon). The
pagan origins are not the counter-model to Descartes, they are rather a
parallel, and here Vico’s genealogy unfolds its full critical potential.
Descartes
For Vico, René Descartes’s new science is a renewed distortion of the
verum/factum principle. It is the attempt to establish the certum without the
verum. It is based on the certitude of a mathematics that we can know
perfectly because it is made by our mind. And this mind operates not by
participating in divine revelation, but by relying totally on itself, having its
starting point in the Cogito.We know ourselves perfectly, because we make
ourselves in the Cogito (which could be understood as a self-knowledge
by self-production through thinking). This empowerment of the Cogitosubject reintroduces a note of pagan violence. The issue is somewhat
reverse, however, because the moderns make their mind into God’s infinite mind, whereas the old pagans, in an act of idolatry, make God’s mind
into their own finite mind (demiurge; Vico, 28). The ancients are pulling
God down; the moderns are elevating themselves (maybe in remembrance
of the element of deification in the Incarnation).
Descartes also brings back the solitary mind of the pagan philosophers,
reflecting himself out of the tradition. Descartes and Gassendi (or empiricism) could be understood as taking the place of Stoa and Epicure, just
as these rationalists and empiricists share the same presupposition, that is,
the denial of providence. They share also the need for certitude and
control, which leads to either the presumption of success or the skepticism of experienced failure. The rationalistic ethics of Descartes and
Spinoza could be understood as an ethics without God and grace that is
22 Miner argues with Mazzotta that Vico is not just an anachronistic fossil, or a

learned antiquarian, advocating the primitives or folk wisdom against modern
technology, something he would not understand (Miner, Vico, 73). Nor is he a
secular romantic (B. Croce) or a cosmopolitan relativist (I. Berlin) (Miner, Vico,
xiv); the heart of Vico is not “reconstructive imagination” (Berlin), but constructive ingenium and metaphysics; history in turn has a critical function.

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nothing more than a more sophisticated pagan virtue of self-love. Their
abandonment of the narrative tradition is tantamount to the third age’s
arrival at a new barbarism (Vico, 130f.).
Mathematics
Mathematics is the paradigm of this new philosophy. It is an exemplification of the verum/factum principle, but in a form that amounts to a selfdivinization. It is our own creation; it is the construct of our mind and
therefore remains totally under the control of the Cogito. It is human
pride especially to invent a mathematics of infinity, because being able to
construct an infinite world of forms and having control over this infinity
implies that the mind is itself infinite—a prerogative of the divine mind.
Vico likens the Cartesian analytical geometry to divination: a process that
begins from the infinite and descends to particular conclusions. It all
seems rational, but it is somehow magic (Vico, 25). For Vico, even though
analytical geometry can be useful, it actually destroys true understanding,
because (unlike synthetic geometry) it blinds the imagination and
confounds the memory (Vico, 20ff.).
Does that mean that Vico rejects mathematics? By no means. Seeing
its value, he is aware, however, that mathematics needs a metaphysical
foundation in order to lead not only to certainty, but also to truth. This
is where mathematics connects with Vico’s epistemology in principle.To
this epistemology we need to turn now.
Generally,Vico’s goal is not humanist imagination or empathy against
the role of reason (Truth in the Making, 108ff.). He is certainly not the
romantic who wants to go back toward early pagan mytho-poiesis, as
Miner shows. His new science is constructive (verum et factum convertuntur) and has geometry as its ideal, and is, as he says himself,“entirely metaphysical and abstract in conception” (Truth in the Making, 108ff.). His
ingenium is not the metaphysical fantasia of the primitive mind, which is
a form of idolatry and self-deception (Truth in the Making, 122f.). In this
way, he can appreciate the interest in mathematics.
For Vico, truth is in the making. Intelligere is understood to come from
legere/colligere, that is, assembling or composing elements into a whole
(Truth in the Making, 97), just as we would in the process of reading.
Composing is an act of making. But for us the elements that we are
making into a whole are not subject to our making. Only God knows
these elements truly because “in God knowing and making are the same
thing.” He knows the elements, and all of them, because, unlike a demiurge, he makes them. Now elements strictly speaking are not made, if
making implies composition. As simple, they cannot be composed. Yet

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they are “generated” by God as his eternal Word:They are begotten not
made. Verum creatum convertatur cum facto, verum increatum cum genito (Truth
in the Making, 99).Thus, nothing is outside the mind of God. His knowledge is not limited by anything extrinsic. Even his knowledge of things
is self-knowledge (Vico, 28). It is infinite (Truth in the Making, 97ff.). Our
mind, however, operates from the sidelines of creation and is limited by
what is given to us. It is finite.We know the elements not by generation,
but by abstraction. Our knowledge compares to God’s as a plane image
is to a three-dimensional statue. We know by composing and making,
whereas God knows by disposing and generating (Truth in the Making,
100f.). Yet, in our making and abstracting we can participate in divine
making. Otherwise we might attain the certainty of clear and distinct
ideas, but not truth.True knowledge is knowledge from causes, that is, the
genera of things.These genera the human mind cannot construct, it can
arrive at them only through abstraction.
This abstraction in Vico (as in Hobbes) is a form of division. As with
the science of history, the starting point of this division is anthropological, it is the human being.We do not make ourselves, as in the Cogito, but
we divide the different parts of our nature. Man is divided into body
(medicine) and spirit (with logic [ratio] and ethics [will] as sciences).The
body is further divided into figure (geometry) and motion (mechanics
[motion from the edge] and physics [motion from center]). From figure
and motion are derived being (metaphysics) and unity (arithmetic).This
“vivisection” of man in some way kills what in God “is life” and a unified
whole. But it is necessary because of our fallen condition (Truth in the
Making, 101).
Yet, abstraction also participates in divine creativity. It brings forth the
point that can be drawn, and the unit that can be multiplied, that is,
mathematics and geometry. But they remain precarious; they are merely
humanly useful ficta.They are no objects at all, but mere names that are
treated as things.The point as it is drawn is even a contradiction, because
it ceases to be a point.Yet it can be defined only in this way, that is, as
construction (Truth in the Making, 101).
This sounds nominalist, but it is only the consequence of mathematics understood as autonomous, and in Cartesian terms. The truth of
mathematics can be salvaged only in metaphysics. The origin of mathematical points is “metaphysical points” (a stoic notion). These are themselves not multipliable, yet they virtually contain the extension that is
necessary for mathematics and mathematical physics. Generating a line
from this point is indeed an analogy to divine making.Vico wants to be
in the middle between two extremes: (1) the dogmatic rationalism of

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Descartes (for whom physics is geometry and we the makers of nature as
we are of geometry), and (2) the skepticism for whom mathematics is a
mere figment of the mind (that is, different from physics and reality altogether).The middle ground would be to understand mathematics both as
rooted in metaphysics and as our construction, but as a construction that
participates in divine making (Truth in the Making, 107). But it is only in
this constructing and making that we touch divine transcendence.“Making
is the source of our acquaintance with eternal truths that are not of our
making” (Truth in the Making, 108).
It is also meant to be a middle between rationalist mathematical determinism and necessity and the chance of skepticism.Vico here feels akin
to the admired Leibniz’s notion of “moral necessity,” which likewise is
grounded in divine providence, freedom, and goodness (Vico, 40).23
Law
Descartes’s mathematical constructions of reality have a parallel in theories of law. These are the constructions of natural law by Hugo Grotius
and others. Grotius, in some way, combines the worst elements, that is,
the rationalist determinism and stoic denial of human freedom, as well as
the denial of divine providence. His natural law is a pure human factum,
made etsiamsi Deus non daretur (Vico, 77f.).
For Vico, on the other hand, the origin of law is neither Hobbes’s
struggle for life, nor an a priori construction, but guided by divine providence. It is based in moral virtue (not Machiavellian virtú ) and the natural sociability of man. This sociability shows not just in language, but
already in facial expressions. Unlike animals, we have a countenance and
are able to recognize distress in the face of the other. Anticipating
Levinas, Vico seems to see this as the foundation and starting point of
justice. It is a spontaneous compassion that is prior to any self-interest
(Vico, 42).
Nevertheless, natural inclinations (ius gentium) need to find the form
of law (ius naturale). This happens not by a priori construction, but as
mediated through the customs of the nations (their ius civile ), which, in
their universality, show the hand of God’s providence (rather than an
accidental diffusion). They reflect not the esoteric wisdom of solitary
philosophers, but the common sense (or “vulgar wisdom”) that still
preserves both the foundational truths of divine providence and free will
23 Miner, Vico, 92, 64. For the notion of moral necessity as mediating divine and

human knowledge in this age, cf. Sven K. Knebel, Wille,Würfel und Wahrscheinlichkeit. Das System der moralischen Notwendigkeit in der Jesuitenscholastik 1550–1700
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2000).

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as well as the three social elements: religion, marriage, and burial (Vico,
75).As a participation in God’s eternal law, natural law is unchanging and
as spiritual cannot be caused and constructed by the physical movements
of historical development.Yet, it emerges in the field of history and utility; the changing physical world is the occasion of our mental knowledge
of it.The true cause of natural law and the source of its validity, however,
is not utilitas but honestas (Vico, 44).
Natural law, eternally valid, is emerging in a historical process. This
process itself shows the hand of God’s providence. Again genealogy is
based on a theological principle. As for pagan history, where the lens and
explanans was salvation history, so for the development of law, it is the
Trinity itself.We have already seen that for Vico’s epistemology the Trinity played an important role with its generation of the divine Word. In
history, he correlates another three-step schema with the three persons of
the Trinity. History and genealogy derive their intelligibility from divine
providence, and divine providence shapes history in its own Trinitarian
image and likeness.
The first step is the ius gentium (or ius naturale primum, which is akin to
the stoic primum naturae ), which is based on the liberty of nature, selfpreservation, and procreation. It is immutable and cannot be abolished by
positive law. The second step is the ius civile, which takes the ius gentium
as its matter and selects from it in accordance with the occasions of their
particular circumstances and purposes, which is the form of this law.24
Thirdly, the ius naturale posterius takes, in turn, the ius civile as its matter
and finds the eternal ratio in it. It overcomes the self-interest of the
primum naturae in ethical and heroic virtue (Pompey’s navigare necesse est,
vivere non ). It is the fulfillment of the ius corporis in the ius veri. It is
achieved not by rationalistic deduction, but by history and providence
(Vico, 53); a derivation less certain, but more true (seeking certainty can
lead to pagan harshness and violence in law, a certainty derived from
might and authority only).The ius veri blends philology and philosophy,
narrative and reflection.
This triad can be brought together in various ways with the Trinity.
From what I gather from Miner, one could analogize the following triads:
Father/Son/Holy Spirit; nosse/velle/posse (or esse ); ius naturale/ius civile/
ius gentium ; prudence/temperance/fortitude; religion/marriage/burial;
dominion/liberty/protection; auspices/veiling of bride/show of force;
maturity/adolescence/childhood (Vico, 47–53).
24 One could compare this to Scheler’s insight that different cultures do not create

different values, but select them according to their own circumstances and occasions.

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Given the last triad, it seems that the historical process from ius gentium
to ius naturale is a process of maturing from self-assertion through
temperance (marriage) toward prudence, but it is also a process that
reverses the procession of divine persons: a return to the Father from the
Spirit through the Son. In any case, the Trinity would be the lens that
makes historical and personal development both possible and intelligible.
The result of this process is Christian humility and contemptus sui; law
receives its ultimate form from charity that originates from divine grace.
By contrast, although pagan virtue can mitigate the original violence, it
cannot get rid of the root cause of violence, namely self-love. True
jurisprudence and Christian piety therefore need to go together.There is
no good secular jurisprudence.This is so because law and the regulations
of life have to be seen in the light of the ultimate end, and this cannot be
known in pagan ways. Plato might have grasped some of it, but the Stoics
saw it in mere and impractical apatheia, driven by the vain desire to escape
suffering. Epicure’s exhortation to moderation is good, but actually inconsistent with his own materialist presuppositions: Delectatio as the goal is
neither a body nor the void—and that was supposedly all that exists.
Aristotle got closer with his idea of theoria as an act of the inner man.
Contemplation as a goal is seen correctly, but he mistakenly separates it
from the active life and assigns a different end to practical life. In fact,
however, the ethical life is a preparation for contemplation. Aristotle also
does not recapture the universal brotherhood that existed before the fall,
and that is meant to be part of the ultimate goal. While Aristotle says
himself that the end with a wider scope is more noble, he does not
expand the polis toward the universal humanity.Thus he loses part of the
goal, because true charity cannot exclude anyone. This is still the pagan
ethnocentrism that has its root in self-love and violence (Vico, 60–64).
For Christian contemplation, the mind needs to be purified by humility (Truth in the Making, 124). Only in this loss of self can we participate
in truth.This participation is the experience that it is not we who think,
but rather it is God who thinks in us.We even know our own minds, not
by a Cogito, but in God: “Deus in me cogitat; in Deo igitur meam ipsius
mentem cognosco” (Truth in the Making, 124).This is the meaning of the old
dictum “know yourself.” It means: know yourself as finite, but disposed
toward the infinite.This will enkindle God’s action in us. Participation in
divine providence culminates in ecstasy.
This is my attempt at a critical summary of Miner’s presentation of
Vico. I have striven to bring out some more of the logic behind it.While
surely much of Vico’s genealogy is historically debatable, there are many
intriguing insights in Vico. More than this, his scienza nuova would be a

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point in case for Radical Orthodoxy: There cannot be a purely secular
science that does not go astray. Secular interpretations of a verum/factum
principle without God and creation would miss the main point of Vico
(Vico, 83).
The reason for this can itself be given only in theological terms. Only
through the Trinity, through the notion of providence and salvation
history, can there be a science of history, epistemology, and possibly even
mathematics.The very principle of Vico’s science is theological in origin.
The problem with the verum/factum principle is not that the modern
world is using it, but that it is abusing it in pagan ways. Miner has made
a good case: Not only is genealogy not necessarily antimetaphysical or
anti-Christian, it is necessarily theological if it is to be self-consistent. A
pagan genealogy would share in what they usually want to fight: violence.
Violence does not stem from metaphysical hierarchies, but from their
denial.Vico, in turn, is not just a traditionalist, but he attempts to recapture the tradition through a very modern approach: one that sees truth in
the making and its construction as genealogy. If he is antimodern, he is
so in genuinely modern and original ways.
Vico’s genealogy is also more consistent than modern ones. Miner
shows this in a comparison with Nietzsche (Miner’s ever-present conversation partner). While Nietzsche seemingly needs fewer metaphysical
assumptions, only Vico can account for authorial intent, that is, for the
narrator behind the narrative of the genealogy. He is against the Cogito,
but not against selfhood or the author altogether. He might even be able
to account for the existence and historical situation of his own theory
within his own narrative. He can be fairer to his opposition, because the
errors that he criticizes still fall under God’s providence. Nietzsche himself
would find a place in Vico’s genealogy as one of those who reject providence in favor of fate:“the eternal recurrence of the same” (Vico, 141).
In many ways therefore, this genealogy (Vico’s as well as Miner’s)
recommends itself through its coherence and insights that it generates.
But is the identification of truth and making unproblematic? Vico’s
genealogy itself seems to imply the opposite. Thus we will have to
explore some further implications.
Further Considerations
Epistemologically, it seems to be possible to give the seemingly modern
verum/factum principle a rather traditional meaning. Miner has shown that
it results from theological roots.Yet, if we would look at the nous poietikos
of Aristotle, we even have a pagan ancestor. Radical Orthodoxy would be
overtaken by secular thought again. On the other hand, it is precisely in

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Aristotle that the “agent intellect” is divine in origin. It is a participation
in something that comes “from the outside.” This pagan “making intellect” is quite the opposite of modern conceptions, because here “pagan”
and “secular” do not imply an etiamsi Deus non daretur. On the other hand,
in Aristotle, the “agent intellect” seems to be the result not of an exalted
theological epistemology, but rather, the opposite: It is the result of a
rejection of Plato’s intuition of ideas. Without this direct intuition, we
need to “make” the universals because they are not directly accessible. At
the same time, the intellect is also receptive (nous pathetikos). Given this
background, the genealogy of “truth in the making” might look somewhat more ambivalent and complex.
Making in Aristotle’s sense does not imply “constituting” the object of
knowledge either. Aristotle is not Kant. It is not about construction, but
abstraction.What the agent intellect illuminates is real. It is made, not made
up. If for Aristotle scientific knowledge is knowledge from causes (or
better reasons),25 then the cause in question is not our mind, but one that
our mind discovers and reconstructs.That is the only reason there can be
falsehood.We can also make nonsense, and factum et falsum convertuntur as
well. If knowing would be only making, this difference would not exist.
Vico would not disagree with this. He would agree with Aristotle in
that we know universals only by making.This making, as a participation
in God’s making, would be also very much in harmony with Aristotle’s
idea that the agent intellect comes from the outside. On the other hand,
Vico would agree with Plato in that the ultimate correspondence that
makes for truth would not be with the things before our eyes, but with
the mind of God, that is, with his providence.
Any kind of epistemology will have to strike a balance here. Miner
points out in an interesting footnote that this is analogous also to the
question of divine grace and human agency as it was debated in this age
in the controversy De Auxiliis (Vico, 173).26
25 Reductionist philosophies of mind want to reduce intentionality to causality, in

which the mind and knowledge would be a passive product of physical processes.
The truth of the verum/factum principle could be a reconsideration of a notion
of intentionality that cannot be reduced to causality. Ultimately, causes would
have to be understood through reasons, not vice versa.
26 We should also note that in the context of this debate truth as making has been
challenged even with regard to God: God’s foreknowledge of our free acts is not
based on Thomas’s principle scientia Dei est causa rerum anymore. We do affect
God’s mind in the Molinist scientia media. We are making not only our knowledge, but God’s! This electio in mente divina might be an even more radically
modern turn than that of Descartes himself. Cf.Tilman Ramelow, Gott, Freiheit,
Weltenwahl (Leiden: Brill, 1997), for example, 94, 222.

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However, the emphasis on construction in Vico might be slightly tilting this balance. The reason for this seems theological: He inherits the
Deus absconditus of nominalism, just as Bacon does. One reason we need
construction is that the world after the fall is not as intelligible anymore.
On the other hand, some of his agnosticism with regard to the world is
already the result of the principle that truth is in the making. Nature is
not open to the agent intellect, because—unlike history—it is not our
making. Here he seems to be in harmony with what we have seen in
Bacon as well as in Descartes.The difference is that he does not want to
take refuge in human construction, but in a reconstruction of the divine
ideas and divine providence.While Descartes’s response to the perceived
unintelligibility of the world is to divinize the human mind,Vico feels
rather humbled by the situation of a Deus absconditus. Construction can
only be reconstruction with the help of revelation.
The causes and reasons for the reconstruction, the genera, forms, or
natures, are divine archetypes. Speculating beyond Vico, one could draw
attention to a ubiquitous biological paradigm in this.The divine ideas are
the cause of things as well as of our ideas about them; this is the source
of intelligibility. But they themselves are “generated” in God as the divine
Word. They are genitum, non factum. This corresponds to our ordinary
language, in which there seems to be a certain isomorphism between
thought and procreation. We “conceive” an idea and the result is a
“concept.” Hence we talk about a “fertile intellect.” That is why, in the
Trinity, the conception of the one divine idea, the divine Word, makes the
conceiver a “Father.” Even in the world, which is more a factum, non genitum, this is still reflected in the “nature” of things, that is, the incarnate
universal ideas of the divine mind or (in stoic terminology) logoi spermatikoi.The term nature comes from nasci, as Vico points out (Vico, 89).
The universals, according to Aristotle, are universal through procreation.
That is why we make biological classifications that divide things into
“genera,”27 and it is why we universalize this scheme in the arbor pophyriana : a family tree of all things.28 In other words, the generation of things
27 This

is where theological biology and natural science (including evolution
theory) intersect.
28 The knowledge by which we finally return to God is again one that is described
in terms not of making but of a spousal, mystical union. Bacon transfers that
imagery to scientific knowledge (see above). Spousal relations on the other hand,
can be characterized as a form of knowledge:“. . . and Adam knew Eve . . .” (Gen.
4:1). Spiritual fatherhood might become more intelligible on this background.
This is true in non-religious contexts: In Plato’s “Sophistes” the “Eleatic
Stranger” speaks of his “father Parmenides” (presumably not his biological
father). Socrates can talk about himself as a “midwife”—a birthing process as the

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from the divine mind is a genealogy of its own kind. Nature obeys the
same rules as history. It has the shape of genealogy, that is, of procreation,
and it is this that makes it intelligible.
Should we not conclude from this that nature is just as intelligible as
history? Furthermore, if this is true, then the first and primordial paradigm for truth is not making, but procreation. The first truth does not
obey the verum/factum principle:The divine Word as veritas Patri (Anselm)
is begotten not made. It is an instance not of creation but procreation. If
knowing is a participation in the mind of God, then we are not makers,
but conceivers.
This might also preserve the idea that making is a deliberative act that
involves the will, whereas biological conceiving (in some way) and the
acts of the intellect are not voluntary (we cannot not think). Doing (will)
could still follow knowing (intellect), rather than being involved in it from
the outset.The factum follows the genitum.
We also need to leave open the possibility that knowledge is sometimes not gained in action, but rather in “passion,” which is in its postlapsarian form: suffering.As Gadamer pointed out,“making experiences”
always means making negative experiences. Or, as we could say, making an
experience is the experience of something that is not of our making.
At the end of it all, the fulfillment of human knowing will not be a
making, but takes the form of platonic intuition again. For Christians, this
is the beatific vision. But already the pagan Aristotle knew that the ultimate goal of human life (and the perfect actualization of the nous
poietikos ) is contemplation.
Truth as making, on the other hand, seems to be the result of thinking of the world as unintelligible. Nominalism, Newtonian mechanics,
and evolution theory do not leave us with a very meaningful cosmos to
live in. Even those who, like Alasdair MacIntyre, try to rethink our life in
this cosmos in Aristotelian terms want it to be “shorn of metaphysical
biology.” Genealogy however, if understood in the above-mentioned way,
is a biological paradigm; and it extends to the whole cosmos and makes
it intelligible. Any other genealogy would just put mythological wallpaper on the cosmos we live in; it would not even matter whether it is
Christian or pagan wallpaper.Whatever we encounter would be just our
own making, a self-made prison.
Vico’s reminder that genealogy is rooted in God is an important
reminder, but not just for understanding history, but also for understanding
consequence of spiritual conception; and if someone is good at this begetting of
knowledge, we call him a “genius.” Even the language of “innate” ideas might
hearken back to this parallel of knowing and conceiving.

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nature, for the simple reason that we are part of nature. If nature is only our
construct, then this will be true for our own human nature as well.There is
no reason to make a difference here, and modern biotechnology does not
make it. If everything is unintelligible, and therefore only the product of
our own intellectual and technological making, then there is no reason to
stop with our own biological nature, which—as the result of random
mutations and factual selection—would be mere raw material for our
making.With this, the modern subject of all making has become itself the
product of its own makings. What, according to Vico, Descartes’s Cogito
attempted—a making of the self—is now becoming technological reality
as well.Vico is right that we need Christian humility against the presumptions of our own making, and his reminder of the three “common senses”
of religion, marriage, and burial are more timely than ever. But ultimately
it is only the intrinsic intelligibility of human nature, one that is not of our
making, which can set a limit to our making.
Vico points out how ethics and law have their root in the spontaneous
compassion elicited by the countenance of the other.The question might
be whether this can be reconciled with truth as making.To know the truth
about the other person does not seem to be based on construction, but rather
on an encounter.Would not this be true for any kind of knowledge? Is not
knowledge by definition an encounter with something that is not of our
making? Even Kant seems to recognize that, in the experience of the beautiful, we have to acknowledge something that is not of our making, for we
are, in a way, surprised by it. Sometimes it is being surprised by joy. Knowledge, as well as happiness, is an experience of self-transcendence, of finding
ourselves in the other, yet not because the other is the product of our
making. Conceiving truth as making can deprive us of that happiness. In
Vico, this self-transcendence might be more susceptible to self-deceit,
because it is built into the act of making. It is through humility that we are
to find that it is actually God who is doing the thinking and making in us.
In some way, the self-transcendence is in the act, not in its object. It might
be necessary to rediscover the object-pole as well, if we want to avoid the
possible atheist or pantheist reductions of this self-transcendence, which
either swallows God in the act or the act in God.
While according to Vico, the ancient pagans were making their truth,
they would have never thought of it in this way themselves. They were
doing it in some way bona fide. Modern thought, however, not only
thinks in this manner, but also states the verum/factum principle explicitly
and subscribes to it. As a distortion of an originally theological idea, it
seems to have gained its own momentum. It has found even new theological application, as for example when Pope John Paul II’s encyclical

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Laborem exercens (no. 25) speaks of work not as punishment for sin, but as
a cocreation with God. However, as we have indicated, there are also
more problematic implications of this principle, and they would make it
desirable to extend Miner’s genealogy to the present day, although the
story might become complicated, as I will indicate now.
Miner points out that the standard scheme of writing the history of
early modern philosophy by dividing it up into rationalism and empiricism might not fit anymore (Truth in the Making, xvi).Yet, he would have
to account for how someone like Hume fits into his genealogy. Is he the
reaction against the verum/factum principle? Is he the skeptic that reacts and
does not want to make truth anymore? In this case, pragmatism (insofar
as it is critical of Hume) would turn out to be just an Anglo-Saxon variation on continental rationalism. We might notice in passing that the
sense-data of empiricism are data, that is, something given. Reflection on
the subject of that giving might be what could lead the empiricist back
to divine providence. Similarly it is with our talk about facts :What we call
facts (compare the German: “Tat-sache” or “Wirk-lichkeit”) are understood by our language as facta, something made, but not made by us.
Leibniz is mentioned as someone who was admired by Vico (Vico, 40),
and indeed, he finds the truth of history and nature as well as those of
metaphysics contained in divine reason and providence. Both are derived
from God’s freedom, goodness, and benevolence.There is a single origin
of history and metaphysics in God himself, and we know it by participating in God’s wisdom and goodness.The result is neither determinism
and fate (Stoa) nor pure chance (Epicure), but rather “moral necessity.”
In some way, Kant also attempted a synthesis of necessity and contingency. But he did so not with God and providence, but rather by continuing the anthropocentric turn that starts with Descartes. It is we who make
the synthesis. While our constitution of the world remains limited, that
which lies beyond this limitation and guides our constitution is not understood as God’s providence, but as our own unavoidable regulative ideas.
Idealism goes beyond this by posing the human subject as the first
maker (insofar as everything is deduced from its activity). It is identical
with this making of the truth, with its Tathandlung (Fichte). The subject
is nothing but making itself, including the making of its own receptivity.
Knowledge of the world is self-knowledge, just as it was in Aquinas and
Vico for the scientia Dei.This is all the more so, since on the quest for a
common root of Kant’s two kinds of reason (pure and practical), Idealism
settles on practical reason. Truth is derived from making, reason and will
are identical. The implication for existentialism or pragmatism could be
drawn out further. But if there is nothing that is not made, then there is

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nothing to contemplate, no fulfillment of nature that would be given and
intelligible, and therefore no definition of what it would mean to rest in
an achieved telos.The existentialist person is a homo faber usque ad nauseam.
If there is a goal to reach, then it can be defined only as an identity of
subject and object. History itself would have to be conceived as the
fulfillment of that goal because history is what is made by man. This is
the philosophy of Hegel.The goal of history is a self-knowledge in which
all of history is contained.And since history is made by us, we have made
even the absolute truth.The truth that we make is the thought of God’s
own mind; we are the makers of God’s providence. Some of this is actually anticipated in Vico’s “new science” of history, only that it is not we
who become God, but it is God who is thinking in us.Thus, we remain
finite. Hegel’s history as “God’s walk through the world” is an anthropocentric form of Vico’s providence. Similarly, the three-step processes of
our mind and of history are not so much conceived of on the Trinitarian model as in Vico. Rather, it is the Trinity that is conceived of on the
model of the processes of our mind (which implies significant reductions).Yet,Vico could give Hegel credit for still attempting to think of the
Incarnation as the crucial point in the history of the world. It is only that
religion is “sublated” ultimately into philosophy, which is the reflection
of the absolute Spirit.This means that, as much as he manages to preserve
the role of Christianity, in the end, Hegel is a representative of the
“barbarism” of absolute reflection.
Appreciative of Vico, Gadamer has tried to overcome this teleology of
absolute reflection in his notion of historically effected consciousness
(wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewußtsein). For Gadamer, the mediations of
consciousness and its contents through history exhibit the bad infinity that
Hegel disliked: It is not going anywhere, it is just going on. If the mind is
participating in something greater, it is the tradition and Vico’s common
sense, but it is disconnected from divine providence. Vico, on the other
hand, might be a help in showing that tradition is rooted in divine providence. If it is the tradition of the Church, it even allows for a certain teleology—the development of dogma—without the necessity of postulating
that we ourselves are God’s way of becoming an absolute Spirit.
This would allow us to talk about history in the singular, rather than
just as a collection of various histories or stories. For Gadamer this unity
of history was a remnant of Hegel’s teleology of history. Everything is
headed toward this absolute goal. Yet, there are other ways of thinking
about the unity of history, and Vico gives us a model: salvation history.
History as a genealogical narrative implies a common subject about
which the story is told.This could be simply the human species as such.

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World history would be the history of humanity. And indeed, it is not
human to live in isolation, but to live in openness to all other cultures and
peoples and to acknowledge them as part of the subject of a common
history.The Stoa at least got close to conceiving the world in this way, as
a common space of men and even gods. But history is not just space, it
is time. And the first instance of conceiving of a world history as such is
tied to Christianity and the Incarnation.29 For Vico, the Incarnation was
tying together the lost unity of certum et verum. But it also is a unification
of time and eternity.Time and history is now taken up into the realm of
eternal intelligibility, and the key to its interpretation is the Incarnation,
with its prehistory and unfolding in history. Jesus Christ is divine providence incarnate.
In the Incarnation, humanity becomes a unified subject for the first
time, because it is taken up into the hypostatical union. If there is a goal
of history, then it is the unification of humanity in the mystical body of
Christ. As it was already Israel’s vocation to bring all nations to God, so,
too, the Church represents all of humanity (actually or potentially
assumed into the second person of the Trinity).
This should be of interest to Radical Orthodoxy, since world history
as such, and any genealogy that narrates it, would be unintelligible without theology. One could, on the other hand, concede that the universal
openness of human nature is, on the natural, secular level, at least open to
universal conceptions, even though this is only actualized through the
super natural redemption of human nature. In a sense, globalization would
find its true realization only in supernatural ways.
Given Vico’s critical distinction of truth-making as secular and truthmaking as our analogical participation in divine providence, one could
develop it further into a critical genealogy of the process of globalization.
A globalization of economics and technology, for example, can provide
unity only through an ideology of making, an “idolatrous” unity.The true
unity would best be derived from contemplating what divine providence
has already done in the Incarnation. The true unity of humanity would
have something to do with the Word of God, the only-begotten Son,
who assumed this humanity. In other words, a true globalization is a unity
of humanity that has to be begotten, not made. A unity that comes from
utilitarian points of view (maybe akin to Hobbes), or through manmade
perspectives (similar to Descartes’s geometry), will, on the contrary, view
Judaeo-Christianity and the Incarnation as a particularistic religious threat
29 I am indebted here to my teacher Robert Spaemann, Weltgeschichte und Heils-

glaube, Hochland 51 (1959): 201–16.

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to unity—rather than the starting point. (This is actually the reason why
Karl Marx, a Jew, embraced anti-Semitism.) This point of view will not
remain neutral with regard to the question of divine providence.30
An inner-worldly humanism, a global making of civilization that is not
anchored in God’s providence, will always become “idolatrous” in Vico’s
sense. But, as Vico saw, it will be the modern form of idolatry. Unlike the
pagan idolatry, it does not make God into something finite, but man into
something infinite. It will attempt to play God, taking over his providence: If God can bring good out of bad, then taking over his role will
assume that we, too, can do bad in order to “make” the good. Marxists,
out of a claim to a superior insight into a secularized providence (“historical materialism”), assumed that they were allowed to use any revolutionary means to bring about the classless society. Similarly, the notion of
progress can be used to justify ethically problematic measures (including
progress in human biotechnology). If there is no God, then we have an
obligation to take world history into our hands.Vico’s distinction between
true and false forms of making turn out to be even more foundational
than party lines. Carl Schmitt notes that Lenin and the capitalist have the
same goal: the electrification of the planet. Further, Max Weber’s observations on the development of a universal bureaucracy might go in the
same direction.The Antichrist of Benson, Solovyev, and others is a maker,
either of universal, global peace or of a technological Utopia.
From the viewpoint of “divine providence,” on the other hand, globalization is an event that is eschatological, that is, not of our making or
initiative. It does not even coincide with the triumph of Augustine’s civitas Dei. If anything it will resemble rather the opposite, a catastrophic
persecution of Christianity. It might be that through a “List der Vernunft”
(Hegel)—that is, through providence—the secular globalization will pave
the way for the global spread of the Gospel, just as the pagan globalization of the Roman Empire opened the way for Christianity as the
universal religion (this is how Prudentius and others interpreted divine
30 Furthermore, inner-worldly secular perspectives of globalization will only arrive

at a unity that is organized around material goals. As John Paul II pointed out
before the U.N., the material world arrives only at goods that cannot be shared
without loss, which therefore will always lead to conflict. Spiritual values, on the
other hand, can be shared without loss.True unity can therefore not be “made”
by human technology; it can only be arrived at through contemplation. Peace,
ultimately, will be a fruit of conversation between religions and cultures; it will
not be “made” by a world-police. A “project world-ethos” (Hans Küng), on the
other hand, tries to make “ethos” into a product of making, rather than accepting it as the motivation that can itself not be made, but only begotten. Precisely
as a project for which we labor it presupposes an ethos which it cannot make.

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providence).Yet, there will always be a difference between the civitas Dei
and this world with its history. Divine providence and salvation history
might serve as a lens through which to read even present history, but it
can never be directly identified with “the walk of God through history,”
as Hegel or the Messianism of his materialist successors would like.
Vico himself seems to preserve this tension. While trusting divine
providence, he is fairly sober with regard to the future and the idea of
progress, in spite of his triadic structure. There is an element of cyclical
history in his thought as well.The unfolding of salvation history happens
in the midst of this; the civitas Dei cannot be identified with any state or
secular development, because that would be a return to pagan history.
The Church transcends any state, just as providence transcends our machinations. This transcendence rather touches the world through the sacraments. They are the doings that are ours as well as God’s.The sacraments
are the ultimate paradigm and the true root of the verum/factum principle. God has guaranteed that, in this specific case, our action would be
taken up into his own making, and be part of his providence. Using this
as a prime analogate, the theologian and Christian genealogist might
hope to participate in the guidance of Revelation as it is offered to the
civitas Dei. But it is even secular genealogy that is still inspired by this light
of divine providence. Radical Orthodoxy can take its clue from Nietzsche himself. The founder of modern secular genealogy knew that we
could not rid ourselves of our theological roots. He knew:
that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—
that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless ones and antimetaphysicians still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that
is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith
of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine.31
N&V

31 “Daß auch wir Erkennenden von heute, wir Gottlosen und Antimetaphysiker,

auch unser Feuer noch von dem Brande nehmen, den ein Jahrtausende alter
Glaube entzündet hat, jener Christen-Glaube, der auch der Glaube Platos war,
daß Gott die Wahrheit ist, daß die Wahrheit göttlich ist.” Nietzsche, Die fröhliche
Wissenschaft (1887), bk.V, 344.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 3 (2007): 691–xxx

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Book Reviews
Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to the Biblical Commentaries edited by Thomas G. Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating, and John P.
Yocum (London:T&T Clark, 2005), xii + 257 pp.
F OLLOWING UP on a previous symposium titled Aquinas on Doctrine, the
editors of that volume commissioned the present set of articles on the
biblical commentaries of Thomas Aquinas. As Nicholas M. Healy points
out in his introduction, this symposium grows organically out of its predecessor because the contributors to the volume on doctrine frequently
relied on Thomas’s biblical commentaries as foundations for their doctrinal expositions.
During his entire career, Healy observes, St. Thomas never publicly
taught either the Summa contra Gentiles or the Summa theologiae, but
throughout his life he continued to lecture on Holy Scripture, thus fulfilling his primary task as magister in sacra pagina. Some of the commentaries
are rather long. The Lectures on the Gospel of St. John, for example, run to
more than one thousand pages in English translation.
In spite of Thomas’s proficiency as a biblical theologian, his commentaries are not widely read today.The majority of them have still not been
edited in critical editions, and only about half have become available in
English translations. A large number of these commentaries are not from
the hand of Thomas himself, but are “reports” (reportationes) given by
disciples or students.
The nine chapters of this book present commentaries by Aquinas on
sixteen books of the Bible: two from the Old Testament ( Job, Isaiah) and
fourteen from the New Testament.The New Testament chapters treat the
lectures on the Gospels of Matthew and John and expositions on various
Pauline writings, including the Pastoral Letters and Hebrews, all of which
Thomas ascribed to Paul. The essays are consistently concise, carefully
researched, and judicious. They inform the reader about the date and
provenance of the commentaries, the methods employed by Aquinas, and
the main points of doctrine found in each commentary.

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As a biblical commentator, St.Thomas offers something very different
from the typical historical-critical commentary that is considered standard in our day. Aquinas’s exegesis is predominantly doctrinal. In the
commentaries here examined, he focuses primarily on the literal sense,
but he does not mean by it what Pius XII and Raymond Brown understood by “literal.” Rather than the sense intended and expressed by the
sacred writer, he means what God as the true author intended to convey
by the words, thus including under the literal meaning what some
modern exegetes designate as the sensus plenior. Thomas does at times
attend to mystical or allegorical meanings, but when he does so he is
often able to refer to other texts in which these meanings are literally
affirmed. In Isaiah 7:14, for example, the virgin’s child is not literally
Jesus, but Matthew 1:23 makes the identification explicitly. The Paschal
Lamb in the Old Testament is a type of Jesus, but the identity is affirmed
in the New Testament (1 Cor 5:9). In other cases Thomas accepts the
allegorical interpretation given by the Fathers without explicit scriptural
warrant. Thus he treats the origin of Eve from the side of Adam as a
prototype of the birth of the Church from the pierced side of Christ.
The commentaries on 1 and 2 Thessalonians, presented by Francesca
Aran Murphy, show how far the Angelic Doctor is from fundamentalism.
He gives figurative interpretations to the trumpet mentioned in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 and the thousand years of Revelation 20:1–6. He refuses
to understand 1 Thessalonians 4:17 as if it meant that some who are alive
at the second coming will be “raptured” without dying.
Unlike most modern commentators,Thomas does not greatly concern
himself with the identity of the sacred writers, with their sources, or with
the literary structure of their work. Convinced that the canonical Scriptures should be read as a single book, he freely engages in cross-references
within Scripture as a whole. Thomas Weinandy, in his chapter on
Hebrews, notes the multiplicity of citations from other books of Scripture. St.Thomas also exhibits a remarkable familiarity with the commentaries of the Fathers. He regularly cites Augustine, Gregory the Great, and
Pseudo-Dionysius as authorities. Mark Edwards complains that he
neglects John Chrysostom in his interpretation of Ephesians and Colossians, but other contributors to this volume attest to his enthusiasm for
that saint. In his Lectures on the Gospels of Matthew and John,Thomas draws
heavily on the Catena aurea he had composed at the behest of Pope
Urban IV. Unlike most modern commentators, he engages in dialogue
not only with other exegetes but with philosophers of different schools,
including Aristotle and a variety of Jewish and Muslim thinkers. He does
not accord medieval commentators such as Peter Lombard the same

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reverence that he extends to the Fathers. Rather frequently, as Matthew
Levering notes, St.Thomas uses heresies as guideposts for the wrong way
of reading Scripture.
The exegesis of St.Thomas is highly doctrinal.At some points it comes
so close to his systematic works that it hardly differs except in the
arrangement of the material. As Daniel Keating explains, Thomas uses 1
Corinthians to develop his theology of the sacraments and 2 Corinthians
to expound his theology of ministry. The discussion of Hebrews by
Thomas Weinandy shows how St. Thomas uses that letter to present his
views on the primacy of Jesus Christ, on the priesthood of Christ, and
on the nature of faith.
On occasion Thomas uses Scripture apologetically. His commentary
on Job, as John Yocum explains, interprets that work as a defense of divine
providence against objections based on the sufferings of the innocent.
Job, in Thomas’s view, gives plausible reasons (probabiles rationes) to believe
that human affairs are not ruled by chance but by divine providence.
Thomas represents the speeches of the friends of Job as if they were a
medieval university disputation, with God himself as judge issuing the
final determinatio.
St.Thomas frequently inserts doctrinal disquisitions (quaestiones) as excursuses into his running commentaries. For example, as Jeremy Holmes
remarks, he discusses the properties of the risen body in connection with
Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration. John Saward’s chapter on the
Pastoral Letters provides similar material. In treating the statement that
“God will have all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the
truth” (1 Tim 2:4), the Angelic Doctor makes careful distinctions between
different types of divine will, such as the antecedent and the consequent
wills, the voluntas signi and the voluntas beneplaciti. These distinctions are
not foreign to exegesis because they assist in the proper understanding of
the passage in question. Matthew Levering, in his chapter on the Gospel
of John, shows how Aquinas uses philosophy to give a precise interpretation to the statement, “And from his fullness we have all received” ( Jn
1:16). Thomas distinguishes between fullness of sufficiency, fullness of
superabundance, and fullness of “efficiency and overflow.”These distinctions enable Thomas to differentiate between Mary’s superabundant fullness of grace and the unique causative fullness of Christ’s grace of headship
(gratia capitis).
Joseph Wawrykow, in his chapter on Isaiah, discusses reasons why even
the doctrinal theologian should wish to turn to Thomas the exegete. In
some cases familiarity with the biblical commentaries forestalls objections
that might arise from a study confined to systematic works such as the

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Summa theologiae. The commentary on Isaiah, for example, shows that
Aquinas did not, in his personal thinking, separate the gifts of the Holy
Spirit from Jesus Christ, who possessed them to an eminent degree.
Daniel Keating points out that St. Thomas’s commentaries on 1 and 2
Corinthians furnish a far richer account of the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit in the souls of the just than does the Summa theologiae.
According to Jeremy Holmes, the Lectures on Matthew give valuable
clues to the history of St. Thomas’s thought, since the treatment of the
beatitudes in these lectures serves as a first sketch of the treatment of
them in the Summa theologiae. In many cases the Lectures on Matthew are
the nearest precursor of the tertia pars.
As a commentator on Scripture, St. Thomas shows how biblical
exegetes can get beyond merely historical and literary questions, though
they should give due attention to these as well. If they really believe that
Scripture is the word of God, as Catholic faith affirms, they will turn to
it as a source of doctrine. They will want to know what Scripture entitles or obliges us to believe.
St. Thomas’s reliance on the unanimity of Scripture, tradition, and
speculative philosophy makes his exegesis inseparable from his systematic
theology. His method of using all three in convergence is in full accord
with Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, which in number 12 instructs exegetes to use
this broader context and not to restrict themselves to what the human
writers meant by their words.
Although this symposium offers an excellent introduction to the
exegesis of St. Thomas, it does not pretend to be a substitute for actual
study of the commentaries. Nor does it claim to be anything like a
complete survey.The editors have made a selection for reasons that they
judged good. In so doing they omitted many of St. Thomas’s commentaries such as those on the Psalms, Jeremiah, the Lamentations, Romans,
and Galatians. It may be hoped that this or some other team of scholars,
encouraged by the success of this pioneering exploration, will find an
occasion to introduce some of these other commentaries.
N&V
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.
Fordham University
Bronx, New York

God and the Natural Law: A Rereading of Thomas Aquinas by
Fulvio Di Blasi (South Bend, IN: St.Augustine’s Press, 2006), xxi + 264 pp.
OVER THE PAST forty years a battle has been engaged in Thomistic
circles over the relationship between “metaphysics” and ethics. One camp

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695

has contended that our knowledge of ethical principles depends upon a
prior understanding of human nature, in particular an understanding of
our natural inclinations. Others have claimed that our practical knowledge
of the human good is entirely independent of any speculative knowledge
of human nature:We cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.”The common
man, these thinkers insist, can know ethical norms without becoming a
metaphysician and without a philosophy course in human nature.
Another theater of this ongoing war has focused on the role of God
within ethics. Some Thomists have followed Dostoyevsky, supposing that
without God all things are permitted. God as a final end of human life is
essential to any Thomistic ethics, especially an account of Thomas’s natural law, which demands God as the lawgiver. Others have sided with
Grotius, claiming that even if we supposed there were no God, there
would still be a human good and evil, a moral right and wrong. Apart
from revelation, after all, our knowledge of God is limited, requiring
difficult philosophical arguments, inaccessible to the common man.
The young Sicilian scholar Fulvio Di Blasi enters the foray firmly in the
metaphysician’s camp. In his God and the Natural Law:A Rereading of Thomas
Aquinas, he delivers a commanding defense of the need for human nature
and God within a Thomistic ethics. In his earlier years Di Blasi was strongly
influenced by the “neoclassical” school of thought led by John Finnis and
Germain Grisez, but with further study he recognized that their “new
natural law” theory has problems both with “nature” and with “law,” with
nature because it denies any dependence of ethics upon our knowledge of
human nature, and with law because it leaves out the divine lawgiver,
thereby transforming the precepts of natural law into mere counsels.
Di Blasi’s thoroughly enjoyable introduction—essentially an indispensable opening chapter—dissects the elements of the neoclassical view, a
school of thought that originated with a penetrating critique of the
“conventional natural-law theory.” This conventional theory claims that
we should follow the directives imbedded in our natural inclinations.
Why? Because God wills it. In short, the morality of following our nature
becomes the morality of following an arbitrary command of God.
Di Blasi does a masterful job of portraying the dialectical problem in
terms of the contrast between heteronomy and autonomy. The conventional theory is heteronomous, that is, it—like the nominalists of the
Middle Ages—places the source of morality outside of human beings,
namely, in the arbitrary will of God.This manualist view does direct us to
follow our nature, but failing to connect that nature with our human good,
it simply stipulates that we must follow our nature because God wills it. In
the end, the conventional theory is a voluntaristic divine-command view.

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Book Reviews

The neoclassicists, like the anti-nominalists before them, attempt to make
morality autonomous, that is, arising from some internal source, which for
the neoclassicists is our intuitive grasp of basic human goods. Unfortunately, this entirely internal morality becomes a set of counsels given by
ourselves rather than a set of commands that we must follow, for the
neoclassical view fails to recognize that the binding force of morality must
arise from someone outside of ourselves, someone who directs us to the
end. Morality demands even that we sacrifice our own personal will and
preferences to the law that arises from someone else’s will. Di Blasi sums
up his criticism as follows: “If natural law is nothing more than an explanation of the dynamism of human reason oriented toward action, to
continue to call it ‘law’ may be just a source of ambiguity and misunderstanding. Natural law without God easily becomes a lex naturalis without
lex” (68). Using Suarez as his model, Di Blasi himself hopes to combine the
elements of heteronomy and autonomy, giving us a morality founded upon
the good of our nature, yet directed by the creative God who impresses his
will into our nature.
The linchpin for Di Blasi is our knowledge of God and his directive
will, for if we know the human good in our nature but do not recognize
in it the will of God, then we do not have law and moral obligation; we
have only a desirable good, not a good that we are obligated to pursue.
Consequently, Di Blasi expends much energy trying to explain what he
calls a natural knowledge of God. Unfortunately, he has difficulty distinguishing between a natural knowledge of God and self-evident knowledge. He fully recognizes that the latter is rejected by Aquinas, but it
never becomes clear what counts as “natural” short of self-evidence.
Apparently, everyone has at least an idea of God. Unfortunately, the very
text he adduces in his favor speaks of knowing God as a general good,
without necessarily knowing that this good is God. Di Blasi’s discussion
of the various proofs for the existence of God is intriguing, but its
complexity does turn one’s sympathies toward the “anti-metaphysicians.”
Does the common man—or anyone—really have to use such reasoning
to know that he has moral obligations? Perhaps Di Blasi could have fruitfully employed the idea—defended by Stephen Brock and Lawrence
Dewan—that everyone, or nearly everyone, has an understanding of God
that follows, without apodictic proof, from a general acquaintance with
the world. Does Di Blasi’s project really need proof of God or merely a
strong presumption for the existence of God?
Di Blasi convincingly links God’s will, the human good, and human
nature. First, he shows that by a natural love we love God above all else,
for our good is fulfilled in God and in God’s will. Then he argues that

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God’s will is expressed in the human nature that God has willed to create.
Consequently, we should follow the order of nature; for by so doing, we
fulfill the will of God, in which we find our good. In this manner, Di
Blasi unites the heteronomy of the conventional theory with the autonomy of the medieval anti-nominalists. Morality is heteronomous since it
involves following the will of God as expressed in our nature.At the same
time, morality is autonomous, for this divine will and human nature are
not disconnected from our human good; since by nature we love God
above all else, our good is ultimately found in following the will of God.
Nevertheless, Di Blasi’s position looks surprisingly like the conventional
theory. He adds only one uniting tether, namely, the natural love of God,
that ties the otherwise arbitrary divine command to our inherent good. Di
Blasi might have provided a stronger link between God’s will and our
nature. Take contraception, for instance. Divine-command ethics simply
states that God has forbidden contraception, not because it has anything to
do with our good, but simply because God so willed. Naturalism states
that contraceptive acts, being unnatural, are contrary to our human fulfillment. Di Blasi is dissatisfied with both accounts. The first is entirely
heteronomous, leaving no foundation for morality within the human
person.The second is entirely autonomous, providing no basis for an obligation not to contracept, which must be imposed from outside ourselves.
Di Blasi unites the two by saying that it is naturally good for us to follow
God’s command concerning contraception. In the end, it is not contraception that is inherently wrong, but disobedience. Di Blasi’s resolution is somewhat disappointing. Could not his autonomy have been more full-blooded,
allowing that contraception is both disobedient and inherently wrong? One
suspects that Di Blasi has the resources for such an account, building upon
the naturalism of his mentor Henry Veatch, but he does not provide it here.
Instead he offers intriguing analyses of the five proofs for God’s existence.
The most interesting part of God and the Natural Law is the final chapter, in which he explains the natural law in light of the treatment in the
Summa contra Gentiles, rather than by use of the more often cited Summa
theologiae. He begins with the eternal law, which is God’s providential
guidance of the universe. This divine direction is realized in creatures
through natural inclinations. God moves and directs human beings in a
special way, namely, by law. The need for law arises in human beings,
somewhat paradoxically, as a result of freedom. Because of our free will,
we must not simply be moved to the end, as a puppet is moved by a marionette, but we must move ourselves through the light of rational principles. Law is precisely the manner in which we can have freedom, because
law provides the knowledge by which we can choose God as our end.

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Our natural inclinations, and especially our natural inclination to love
God above all, lay the foundation of the natural law by providing its
impetus and driving force.Without the natural inclinations, with only the
direction that reason provides to the end, nothing requires that we follow
reason.The natural inclination to love God, however, moves us to live out
the love of God, through which we become good. Since God has willed
the natural order, and fulfilling this order is our good, it follows that
obeying the will of God coincides with our human good. We must
heteronomously pursue our own good, that is, we are obliged to pursue
it, on account of the autonomous love of God, that is, the love that arises
from within our own nature.
Are our actions good because they follow natural inclinations or
because they unite our will with God’s will? Evidently, for both reasons,
at least for the natural inclination regarding the love of God. Di Blasi,
however, consistently emphasizes the good of actions from their relation
to the will of God, for an action is good when we love God as our ultimate end. The mere material execution of natural inclinations does not
make actions good. Rather, our intentional attitude to nature determines
our attitude to God (since God has willed our nature), and only as such
is nature the standard of morality. Once again, Di Blasi narrowly escapes
the voluntarism of divine-command ethics.
God and the Natural Law, with its tight organization and clear style,
does not wander through peripheral issues but quickly delves to the heart
of the matter. Di Blasi’s portrayal of the dialectical tension between
heteronomy—finding obligation outside of ourselves—and autonomy—
finding morality in our own good—is superb. His identification of the
pitfalls of the neoclassical theory of natural law is insightful, and his
emphasis of the much overlooked natural inclination to love God above
all else is a welcome reminder of the importance of God even in
Aquinas’s natural ethics. Di Blasi has done much to restore nature and
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God to the natural law.
Steven J. Jensen
University of St.Thomas
Houston,TX

By Knowledge and By Love: Charity and Knowledge in the Moral
Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas by Michael S. Sherwin, O.P. (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 270 pp.
M ICHAEL S HERWIN ’ S book is an excellent discussion of how Thomas
Aquinas developed his understanding of the relationship between the

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intellect and the will in the moral life, and how this development influenced his view on the relationship between faith and charity. Sherwin is
responding to “theologians of moral motivation,” who think that a
morally good will is prior to moral knowledge. Some of these theologians think that Thomas in his later writings holds a view of freedom that
is a precursor to their own.
In Chapter One, Sherwin situates the debate in the context of postVatican II attempts to update moral theology. Karl Rahner distinguished
between categorical freedom, which is exercised in a particular act, and
transcendental freedom, which involves the agent’s total orientation.The
exercise of this transcendental freedom became known as the “fundamental option.” Theologians such as Joseph Fuchs held that the agent
could commit objectively moral sins and yet as a subject be in a morally
good state through the fundamental option. For instance, someone could
exercise categorical freedom through theft or blasphemy and yet be
ordered to God through transcendental freedom. Sherwin does not
clearly explain why theologians would hold this view, although he indicates that they might be influenced by the prevalence of apparently
mortal sins of weakness and ignorance among the faithful. I do not see
how the prevalence of such sin is an argument for the distinction
between transcendental and categorical freedom, unless perhaps we also
wish to hold that mortal sin is very uncommon. But Sherwin does not
discuss the arguments for this position at any great length. His concern is
not so much with the argument for their position as with James Keenan’s
interpretation of Thomas as developing the view that the exercise of
liberty can be preconceptual, and consequently that there is something
like a preconceptual fundamental option.
In Chapter Two, Sherwin argues against Keenan’s interpretation of
Thomas’s development.The issue at stake is the distinction between the
liberties of exercise and specification. As Sherwin interprets him, Keenan
holds that this distinction implies that for Thomas an agent can elicit an
act that is not specified by the intellect. There could consequently be a
liberty of exercise without a liberty of specification. These two liberties
have been much discussed in the scholarly literature. If Sherwin’s understanding of Keenan is correct, Keenan’s interpretation is an outlier that
does not have much prima facie plausibility. Nevertheless, this chapter is
important both for its presentation of Keenan’s view and for its general
summary of Thomas’s development.
In Chapter Three, Sherwin discusses how Thomas’s development on
freedom is connected to his development on the relationship between
knowledge and love. It contains a helpful discussion of the relationship

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between happiness and love, and shows that both knowledge and love
play a role in the stages of any human action. Chapters Four and Five
extend this discussion of knowledge and love to the theological virtues
of faith and charity, respectively. He traces Thomas’s development with
respect to the beginning of faith and the role of charity as the form of
the virtues. In Chapter Six, Sherwin uses the results of his research to
return to the issues raised in Chapter One, and argues that since Thomas
shows how charity is involved in acts of choice that require conceptual
knowledge, it is mistaken to interpret him as a precursor of a preconceptual fundamental option.
Sherwin’s main point is that for Thomas charity presupposes conceptual knowledge. His claim is undoubtedly correct. Moreover, he shows
that Thomas’s view is more plausible than that which is held by the
theologians of moral motivation. Although this aspect of the book is
important for theologians, it may be less interesting for philosophers,
since the distinction between transcendental freedom and categorical
freedom is not widely held in philosophical circles. Indeed, much of
Sherwin’s main argument draws its strength from the sheer implausibility of his opponents’ views. Nevertheless, both theologians and philosophers should find the book valuable both for its clear presentation of
Thomas’s development in moral psychology and as a stimulus for further
scholarship. Sherwin makes countless provocative suggestions both in the
text and in the notes. For example, he gives an at least initially reasonable
argument for an early dating of Thomas’s De caritate (199–200, note 192).
The text is rich in detail and citations from Thomas, but there are many
terminological infelicities that often sent me to the texts themselves. Many
of these mistakes do not directly affect the book’s main argument, but they
are distracting.Two such examples should suffice. In one passage Sherwin
unknowingly uses in two different ways the phrase “true” but “imperfect”
virtues (182). The first refers to those acquired virtues that are true but
imperfect because they are not connected with each other through
acquired prudence.The second refers to those acquired virtues that are so
connected but yet imperfect with respect to the infused virtues. A second
infelicity is that in a note he states that there is no difference between the
exterior act, the external act, and the commanded act (185, note 152). But
there are many commanded acts that are not external.
Such infelicities are distracting but do not substantially take away from
the book. However, he makes some that do obscure his main argument.
For instance, he uses different meanings of the word “natural” without
making clear which one is being used. Sometimes he uses the word in
opposition to “elective,” whereas at other times he uses it in opposition

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to “supernatural” (98–100). In one passage he seems to identify all natural knowledge of God with that natural knowledge of him that is
acquired through philosophical reasoning (123–24).
The lack of clarity is most serious when it affects his discussion of love.
It is often difficult to determine whether Sherwin is discussing love as a
principle of action or as an action (77, 156). His explanation of the relationships between amor naturalis, dilectio, and charity is also difficult to interpret (154–57). Does he hold that charity plays the same role on the
supernatural level that a pre-elective love plays on the natural level? What
does he think of the relationship between charity and the elicited act of
natural love for God? The problem may result from the slipperiness of the
words “natural” and “love.” It would have been helpful if he had distinguished between the natural love (dilectio) of God and charity in terms of
their objects. In general, he focuses too little on the objects of virtue, and
especially the objects of faith and charity.
One aspect of the book that calls for further study is the role of charity in the stages or components of an action (191–92). He does recognize
that virtues such as charity and faith have their own acts (230). But he
also seems to state that the virtue of charity plays the central role in those
steps of every graced action that belong to any virtue. He does not delineate the role that the other virtues play in conjunction with charity. He
does mention that charity’s relationship to the other virtues should be
understood in light of the fact that acts that belong to one virtue can be
commanded by another. For example, he explains how martyrdom,
which belongs to fortitude, can be commanded by charity (181). But he
does not successfully connect or contrast how charity commands with
the way in which the other virtues do. For example, justice can command
acts of bravery, and penance can command acts of almsgiving. Sherwin
wants to say that charity plays a more important role as the form of the
other virtues, but he does not sufficiently describe what this role is. Both
charity’s ability to command other virtues and its status as the form of the
other virtues are directly relevant to his argument, but he does not indicate whether these are separate points or how they might be involved in
the components of any graced virtuous action.
Sherwin’s book is a fine contribution to contemporary moral theology and refutes interpretations of Thomas as a herald of the theology of
moral motivation. It is also an excellent source for reflection on Thomas’s
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understanding of the relationship between knowledge and love.
Thomas Osborne
University of St.Thomas
Houston,Texas

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La papauté et le nouvel ordre mondial (1878–1903). Diplomatie
vaticane, opinion catholique et politique internationale au temps
de Leo XIII edited by Vincent Viane (Leuven: Leuven University Press,
2005), 516 pp.
AT THE START of the pontificate of Leo XIII, the diplomatic isolation
of the Holy See was almost complete.The end of the nineteenth century
saw at the same time an international mobilization of the Catholic masses
following what historically is known as the “Roman Question”: the situation of the pope within the city of Rome, which was resolved only in
1929 with the signing of the Lateran Treaties, which set up what we call
Vatican City-State.The public manifestations of support for the papacy by
Catholic masses demonstrated, according to Wladimir Czacki, the thensecretary of the Congregation for Ecclesiastical Affairs, that the future of
the papacy was that of “an immense moral power.” It has been argued that
the establishment of this new vision of the papacy replaced the Papal
States as the “body” of the pope with Catholic public opinion that became
the basis for the presence of the papacy within politics and society. The
present volume is the outcome of an international conference, organized
by the Catholic Documentation Center at the University of Louvain, on
the interaction between Vatican diplomacy and Catholic opinion during
the pontificate of Leo XIII (1878–1903), an era that saw considerable
economic, social, and political change that involved the Church directly
(mission movement, anti-slavery movement, international peace movement, etc.).“Catholic opinion” is defined by the editor as “the process by
which the Church and the Catholic social movement are reproduced as a
participant in the public sphere” encompassing all phenomena by which
Catholicism is turned into a statement on the public stage (13).
The volume contains twenty essays and an extensive bibliography
(478–508) and index (509–14).The essays are divided into four parts. Part
One offers a broad picture of Leo’s worldview. Readers of this journal
might be interested in Jean-Dominique Durand’s essay “Léon XIII, Rome
et le monde” (55–77). Leo XIII’s injunction to “leave the sacristies” and
Christianize society was intended to be firmly founded upon Thomistic
metaphysics and anthropology, favored by the 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris.
One could also refer to Fides et ratio, numbers 103–104, in which a similar
political aspect, coined by the phrase “evangelization of the culture,” is also
present.This is just one of the many similarities contemporary readers may
notice between the pontificates of Leo XIII and John Paul II.
Part Two is devoted to the position of the Holy See in European politics. Apart from the essays dealing explicitly with the Roman Question,

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703

the contribution by Karina Urbach (181–94) is most telling. It recounts
the private mission of George Errington to Rome by order of the liberal
Prime Minister William Gladstone with the goal of finding papal support
in downplaying the Home Rule Movement in Ireland.The Vatican’s hope
for a resumption of diplomatic relations proved to be futile when papal
injunctions remained without effect on Irish Catholic opinion and
English opinion toward Roman Catholicism could not be surmounted.
The reaction by Prime Minister Gladstone on the conversion of his friend
is telling in this respect: “I felt as if Manning had murdered my mother
by mistake” (184).
Part Three studies concrete elements that shaped transnational
Catholic opinion, such as congresses, the Jubilees of 1888 and 1893,
Peter’s Pence, the visual representation of the pope, and the Vatican press.
These six essays prove to be very accessible to a general audience as well.
Emiel Lamberts’s short survey, “Catholic Congresses as Amplifiers of
International Catholic Opinion (213–23), investigates the collaboration
between the Holy See and important laymen in establishing a wide range
of Catholic congresses that supported the moral-religious impact of the
Church and the papacy. Jean-Marc Ticchi tells a fascinating, detailed story
(225–48) about the “entrepreneurial organization” of Leo’s golden
jubilee in 1888, which became a worldwide “happening” and strengthened the wave of devotion to his person. Annibale Zambarbieri’s contribution, “Forms, Impulses and Iconography in Devotion to Pope Leo
XIII,” discusses the Jubilees of his pontificate in general and then illustrates his points by investigating Leo’s episcopal jubilee of 1893. A
contemporary testimony summarizes the impact as follows: “The laity,
once almost indifferent to the fate of the Church, today actively rallies
round the Throne of Peter” (262). In another interesting essay, Jan De
Maeyer investigates the way Leo XIII was imaged in art and iconography
(303–22). He shows how the dominant image of the pope-king gradually evolved toward a representation of Pope Leo as a “good father” and
a “people’s pope.”The reader will undoubtedly notice the many similarities between the two popes who led the Church into a next century.
Part Four deals with the role of the Church and the papacy of Leo
XIII during the Western expansion in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century and the humanitarian, political, and cultural problems it created.
The reading of these essays can prove to be fruitful in the face of the
current globalization. A first essay deals with the coordination of diplomatic actions and Catholic missions (351–79). The two essays dealing
with the vigorous anti-slavery campaign following Leo’s encyclical In
plurimis of 1888 highlight the success as well as the difficulties following

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this initiative. On the one hand, Gianni La Bella concludes that it represented “one of the finest examples of the new diplomacy that we now
call humanitarian, conducted by denunciation, awareness-raising, active
solidarity, and diplomatic networking” (394). The essay by Philippe
Delisle on the other hand illustrates, by way of the reaction of the French
missionaries, the reservations this campaign caused in the field. Giovanni
Miccoli describes the reaction by the Holy See to the growing antiSemitism at the end of the nineteenth century as a “calculated Roman
passivity.” Another “strategic disaster,” according to Hans de Val, was the
Holy See’s effort to gain admission to the Hague peace conference of
1899.The two final essays deal with another global problem at that time,
that of mass migration, and in particular to the United States.These essays
will be of particular interest to the American readers of this journal. In
his essay “Leo XIII and Immigrants to the Church in the United States”
(453–63), Gerald Fogarty, S.J., of the University of Virginia, developing
insights from his The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1982), traces the various initiatives
undertaken by the American hierarchy in support of Leo XIII to overcome the ethnic differences and meld “that distant church into a body
that remained ethnically pluralistic, but was united in loyalty to the Holy
See.” This however, according to Fogarty, may have led to “a loss of a
legitimate sense of autonomy and collegiality. . . . The American church
today prides itself on its ethnic and racial diversity; yet, it remains weak
in asserting its national identity in regard both to Roman congregations
and to pastoral concerns” (463). John F. Pollard, fellow of Trinity Hall
(Cambridge), investigates the consequences for Vatican diplomacy of the
emergence of the United States as a colonial and world power following
the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the occupation of former Spanish colonies. His essay is titled “Leo XIII and the United States of America, 1898–1903” (465–77). Although the mission of the future president
Howard Taft to Rome in order to settle issues in Philippine church-state
relations proved unsuccessful at first, from the perspective of the Holy See
it was seen as a success.The U.S. government de facto had recognized that
“the pacification of most of its new colonial possessions could not be
achieved without the cooperation of the Church authorities at the highest level” (475).
Reading the various topics addressed in this volume on the triangle
between Vatican diplomacy, Catholic opinion, and international politics,
one has a clear sense of Pope Leo’s program to give Catholicism in general
and papacy in particular, after being shorn of its temporal power, its own
face in the modern world and the means of communication used to do

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so. “The image of the Holy See as a moral great power firmly in charge
of millions could take hold in the minds of Catholics and non-Catholics
alike, even if reality lagged behind projection.”Apart from the specialist in
the field, this volume could also provide interesting material for a more
general audience, especially considering the many similarities between
Leo XIII and John Paul II to which also Raymond de Souza pointed out
recently (“Two Popes,” First Things [October 2003]: 36–41).
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Jörgen Vijgen
Major Seminary Willibrordhuis
Vogelenzang,The Netherlands