Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 4 (2007): 707–724

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Holy Scripture
by Hans Urs von Balthasar
translated and introduced by
J EREMY H OLMES
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida

Translator’s Introduction
I N THE WORLD of hermetically sealed university departments, the
theology department itself is subdivided by barriers of convention and
practical necessity.Those who specialize in biblical studies are expected to
know ancient history and languages, but may be excused if they are not
thoroughly versed in Karl Rahner’s theology. Those who specialize in
systematic theology must know Rahner and Karl Barth, but depend on
the historical theologians for their assessment of Peter Lombard and on
the biblical experts for what is safe to say about Paul’s letters.Within this
world of elaborate symbiotic relationships, Hans Urs von Balthasar is read
in courses that fall under the umbrella of “systematics,” and is generally
seen—despite his own protestations against any “system”—as a systematician. Judging from his reputation or from the occasional quotation in a
secondary source, one could conclude that von Balthasar was not only
outside the stream of contemporary biblical studies, but even opposed to
it. In a protest against many who doubt the sufficiency of historical-critical exegesis, including Louis Bouyer, Henri de Lubac, and Yves Congar,
Joseph A. Fitzmyer remarks that “One should note in particular H. U. von
Balthasar, whose ranting against ‘modern exegesis’ was notorious.”1
1 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Scripture, the Soul of Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1994),

59 n. 8. Cf. the similarly hostile comments on p. 90 n. 70. Contrast this statement
from section 8 of von Balthasar’s “Die Heilige Schrift” below: “Under no
circumstances should such insufficiently proven hypotheses (necessary for
research) be presented to the people in preaching, where they cause confusion.
But to form one’s estimate of the exegetical profession entirely on the basis of

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The specialist in Scripture is therefore understandably surprised to
discover in von Balthasar an accomplished student of modern biblical studies. In the current quest to rediscover a union between Scripture and theology, a way of reading Scripture theologically and theologizing scripturally,
von Balthasar’s work merits attention.The purpose of this translation of Die
Heilige Schrift is to make available in English an essay in which von Balthasar
reflects on Scripture as such. The present introduction has a very modest
objective: to offer an outline sketch of what may strike a biblical specialist
as remarkable as he approaches von Balthasar’s corpus.2
The first outstanding feature of von Balthasar’s use of Scripture is that
he is thoroughly acquainted with modern methods and has a personal
command of both Hebrew and ancient Greek. In the introduction to his
volume on the New Testament in The Glory of the Lord, he remarks
modestly:
One may also fear that the present volume will appear methodologically
imprecise to the reader who is a professional theologian—indeed, that it
will strike him as hopelessly amateurish. . . . [E]ven less of the scholarly
literature that abounds on all sides will be quoted in this volume than in
the preceding volumes: we shall restrict ourselves to indicating a few
useful works, as these present themselves to our notice.3

The truth seems to be that he is well-acquainted with Old Testament studies, and yet more accomplished in the area of the New Testament. His citations of secondary literature in the Old Testament volume show a huge
preference for Gerhard von Rad—understandably, as von Rad is one of the
most theologically sensitive of the historical critics—but no one scholar
dominates the New Testament scene. He cites G. Bornkamm, Rudolf Bultmann, Oscar Cullman, Joachim Jeremias, Ernst Käsemann, E. Lohmeyer,
Rudolf Schnackenburg, along with many others of lesser fame, and displays
the ability to sum up schools of thought in New Testament research.
While he knows Hebrew and quotes it, he is more comfortable in Greek.
such abuses would be as ignorant as unfair.We have shining examples of Catholic
and Protestant exegetes who do the best scientific work and at the same time are
reverent hearers of the Word.”
2 Others with more expertise in von Balthasar’s theology have described his biblical theology in more detail. See W.T. Dickens, Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics: A Model for Post-Critical Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2003); Bevil Bramwell, “Hans Urs von
Balthasar’s Theology of Scripture,” New Blackfriars 86 (2005): 308–22.
3 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 6, Theology:The Old Covenant,
trans. Brian McNeil (Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 1989), 9. All citations of The Glory
of the Lord will be from the English translation.

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His translations from Hebrew tend to resemble existing German translations, much the way an English speaker translating the Old Testament
might sound like the RSV, but his renderings of New Testament Greek
vary tremendously, and show only scattered resemblance to any existing
translations.Within the New Testament, his primary area of interest is the
Gospel of John: In his volume on the New Testament, John accounts for
20 percent of the New Testament citations, twice as many as any other
book.4 Interestingly, von Balthasar’s prose style resembles John’s more
than any other biblical author with his habit of circling around and
around the subject, and his love of paradox.
The scholarly resources von Balthasar deploys are more than decoration. His approach to Scripture is very historical-critical, more so than
many who today wish to retrieve a theological reading of Scripture.With
regard to the Pentateuch, von Balthasar wholeheartedly accepts the
Documentary Hypothesis: He comments first on the story as it stands in
the J source and then separately on the Priestly writer’s version, because
he sees J, E, P, and D as independent (albeit interrelated) theological
voices.5 With the other biblical scholars of his day, he sees J as presuming
that the divine name is widely known while P holds that the tetragrammaton was first revealed to Moses. Disparity and even disagreement
between these theological voices does not trouble him. The Sinai traditions are less than fully integrated in Exodus, “and this deliberately.”6
He also accepts the entire system of dating the Old Testament books
that has grown up within the scholarly community. For example, he
comments:“We have seen how this form [of the mediator] became clearer
from Hosea, through the Moses of Deuteronomy and the major prophets,
up to the ‘Servant of Yahweh.’ ” Here we see the early prophets (Hosea),
who have mosaic traditions but not yet the Pentateuch as we know it; the
Deuteronomistic editor responsible for our text of Deuteronomy and the
portrait of Moses we find there; the later prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah,
and Ezekiel; and finally Deutero-Isaiah, the sixth-century prophet who
4 The leading percentages are as follows: John, 20.48 percent with 758 citations;

Romans, 10.48 percent with 388 citations; Matthew, 10.11 percent with 374
citations; Luke, 9.4 percent with 348 citations; 2 Corinthians, 7.78 percent with
288 citations; 1 Corinthians, 6.48 percent with 240 citations; Mark, 5.24 percent
with 194 citations.
5 This is actually an example of a theory which, to borrow a phrase from von
Balthasar’s essay, has “wandered past.” Those who accept the Documentary
Theory today are in the minority, as on the one hand historical critics move
toward more extreme fragmentation of the text and on the other hand narrative
critics seek a more holistic reading.
6 Theology:The Old Covenant, 42.

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authored the “Servant Songs” of Isaiah 40–55. (Elsewhere von Balthasar
uses the names “First Isaiah” and “Deutero-Isaiah.”)7
Von Balthasar’s discussion of Psalm 29 is a good example of his use of
form-critical, traditio-historical, and redaction-critical approaches.8 He
turns to the psalm in connection with a form-critical discussion of the
“epiphany” or “theophany” form. He is sensitive to the connection between
Psalm 29 and the myth of a primeval battle with chaos, and notes that the
psalm derives from earlier hymns to a pagan “storm god,” both insights
from tradition history.The last verse of the psalm he sets aside as inserted
by a later redactor.
We find the same embrace of historical criticism in von Balthasar’s
treatment of the New Testament. He assumes the validity of the twodocument hypothesis with regard to the Gospels, commenting that
Matthew and Luke “construct” an infancy story and place it before
Mark’s abrupt beginning. As a consequence, he discusses the Baptism of
Jesus before discussing his birth.9 He adopts without discussion the
scholarly consensus that Matthew’s infancy story consists of haggadic
expansions on a “historical kernel” that can be reconstructed by listing
elements of the infancy story common to Matthew and Luke.10
Hans Urs von Balthasar is thus very historical-critical in his approach
to Scripture. He does not just adopt certain conclusions or helpful insights
from contemporary scholarship, but interiorizes historical criticism as a
way of viewing the text. Despite disparaging remarks about those who
attempt to “dissolve” Scripture in the “acid” of historical-criticism, he is
unafraid of the acid, even willing to apply it himself. Scripture, in his view,
needs no one to defend it. Fr.William Kurz, co-author with Luke Timothy Johnson of The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive
Conversation, once remarked to me in private conversation that “von
Balthasar is even more historical-critical than what I’m calling for.”11
In a remarkable way, however, von Balthasar transcends historical criticism even while he uses it. One can see this by setting his discussion of
Psalm 29 in its larger context within The Glory of the Lord. He arrives at
the psalm in the midst of a form-critical discussion, but his form-critical
approach is rooted in the central theological theme of his work. The
formal object of a believer’s perception of Revelation is “the glory of the
Lord,” that which distinguishes him as God from creatures—his wholly7 Glory of the Lord, vol. 7, Theology:The New Covenant, 34.
8 Ibid., 78.
9 Compare ibid., 40 and 58.
10 Ibid., 66.
11 My thanks for Fr. Kurz for allowing me to use this quotation.

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otherness. Hence passages in which God’s glory is made manifest—those
falling under the genre of “theophany”—will inevitably gravitate to the
center of von Balthasar’s thought. Having arrived at a particular form in
Scripture for theological reasons, he proceeds to go beyond what a formcritical technician can do to what a theologian can do: He looks at the
theological meaning of the form itself. He notes that at decisive places in
Scripture God’s “glory” manifests itself before his word is heard: Sinai, the
burning bush, the calls of Isaiah and Ezekiel,Tabor, Damascus, the beginning of the Book of Revelation. Moses falls to his knees and bows his face;
Elijah veils his face; Ezekiel falls face-down; Daniel faints; the apostles on
Tabor are “beside themselves” with fear; John falls down as though dead.
The creature experiences its limit.12 The implication of the “theophany”
or “epiphany” form for our reading of Scripture is this: It is the spirit of
God himself that puts man back on his feet—man hears God’s word not
in his own power, but through the power of God’s grace. All our reading
of Scripture (or doing of theology) is done under the influence of the
Spirit, which makes us capable of enduring “the glory of the Lord.”13
But before the word comes, von Balthasar points out, “the appearance
of the absolute Subject is never abstract or without a relationship to the
human party or parties involved.”14 The glory of the God who disclosed
himself always reveals his holiness as well, and thus it also discloses the full
unholiness of the person who beholds his glory: Isaiah considers himself
lost (Is 6:5), the apostles on Mt.Tabor are beside themselves (Mk 9:6), John
falls down as if dead (Rev 1:17). The decisive factor that separates God’s
glory in the Bible from extra-biblical encounters with the Other is that
together with God’s glory there appears his holiness and sinful man falls to
the ground. It is this important difference that leads into the reconciliation
and redemption of the world. “No glory of the gods has as its opposite
what is called ‘sin’ in the biblical sense.”15 With this insight, von Balthasar
takes his reader beyond tradition history, setting his remarks about the
mythical background of Psalm 29 in their larger theological context.
Finally, von Balthasar goes beyond historical criticism as a whole by
focusing on the realities to which Scripture refers.A weakness in the historical-critical method is that by approaching Scripture from the perspective
of history, it inevitably tends to encapsulate the words of Scripture in a
bubble of “past time” and thus to read Scripture without sufficiently engaging the realities portrayed therein.This seems to be a betrayal of the very
12 Theology:The Old Covenant, 12.
13 Ibid., 13.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 16; cf. 14.

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nature of a word.Von Balthasar acknowledges in this regard that his study
will not remain within the confines of historical criticism:
[N]o critical study concerning the meaning and development of the
concept of kabod is intended, but rather a look at the reality to which
this word points in the Old Testament, and this reality is not limited to
the actual occurrence of the word (and certainly not to its sense in the
priestly writings).The same thing is intensely discussed already by J and
E, and much later, when the Septuagint translates kabod as doxa, it will
retain the much richer content of its meaning.16

The idea of glory changes a good deal during the history of the composition of the Bible, “and yet the intermediate steps are so interconnected
and they so clearly point to one another that in their very variety these
phases constitute a whole, the parts of which support and substantiate
one another.”17 The account of the epiphany at Sinai, taken in itself, is
composed of various sources that seem to represent contradictory and
heterogeneous images of mythical theophanies. But it is a mistake to take
the account of Sinai by itself.The collage of impressions found in Exodus
is presupposed by the story of Elijah’s return to the sacred mountain
(which von Balthasar takes as having at least a basis in history); these two
accounts are brought together at Tabor where Moses and Elijah are seen
speaking with Jesus, reported in a way that makes it impossible to dismiss
the theophany as merely theologized history; the sun is darkened and the
earth quakes again at the climax of the Passion as at Sinai. Many other
such threads can be traced, with one level of Revelation connecting to
the next, and those together to the next, but von Balthasar sees all as
connected by the central viewpoint of “the glory of the Lord,” and all as
climaxing in the Gospel of John—“And the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory
as of the only Son from the Father” ( Jn 1:14).
Holy Scripture by Hans Urs von Balthasar
What Kind of Book?!
It is the most widely read among men, the most admired, the most
reviled, and despite prohibitions everywhere desired and secretly intro16 Ibid., 17. One can see von Balthasar’s indebtedness to the Old Testament Theol-

ogy movement here, but at the same time his originality. He locates the “center”
of Old Testament theology in a theme that brings one inexorably to the completion of the Old Testament in the Gospel of John. Cf. his discussion of the argumentum ex prophetiae in ibid., 402–14.
17 Ibid., 17.

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duced. Every copy and every letter suspected, criticized, and relativized a
hundred times over. And nonetheless, although properly it is no book at
all, but a bundle of seventy-two entirely different writings—primeval
myths, law books, histories, love songs, complaints against God, wisdom
collections, reprimands, letters, visions—again and again it stands there
continuous and unbroken like a block of brass, one demolished a hundred
times over and nevertheless an impregnable fortress. It stands defenseless
against anyone who wants to pick it apart “historically-critically” (for the
Muslim any criticism of the Koran is strictly forbidden), but the changing theories wander past, while it stands still.“Heaven and earth will pass
away, my word will not pass away.”18 What presumption, from a human
perspective, what seductive power! Again and again generations grow
weary of the unchanging Word, but their children snatch it up again,
greedy, curious about it, and begin again to meditate over it.Who speaks
there, so inaudibly?
Wisdom Book, “Foolishness of God”
Let us say at once: God speaks.This is in contrast to the wisdom books of
men, of the non-biblical religions. In these, an unusual, illuminated,
inspired individual has found a “way” by which one may pass beyond the
banal daily routine to the profundity of the ab-solute (that is, separated
from the world), of the primal cause, of that which is sublime beyond
every being. Socrates, Plato, Buddha, Lao-Tse. . . .This is why “renunciation” (asceticism) and “exaltations” (ecstasies) or “absorbtions” are needed.
The wisdom books of men are ways pointed out that ascend from the
world to the divine superworld, from what can be expressed to the inexpressible, which one can perhaps experience in a trance. God, Paul says to
the sages of Athens, has placed men on the earth “so that they may seek
God, if perhaps they might grope after him, and find him, for indeed he
is not far from us” (Acts 17:26–27).
In the Bible, quite the opposite. Everywhere in it God has the initiative.19 God seizes Abraham, to set out and stake everything on the one card
of obedience to God’s word, of the promise and the call (to the point of
offering his son Isaac).The Bible calls this obedience “faith.” Nothing else
was demanded from the people from whom Abraham descended and made
18 Mt 24:35.—trans.
19 The biblical religions are Judaism, Christianity, and, in a looser sense, Islam,

which is greatly influenced by the Bible. After that, there is a radiance of the
Bible in the area of the other religions that is not exactly identifiable; it is possible, e.g., that the most beautiful Indian book, the Bhagavad-Gita, was not formed
without biblical influence.

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his covenant with God.“He who believes will not rush ahead (by his own
thoughts and plans)” (Is 28:16). God makes the covenant and gives his
instructions (“Ten Commandments”) on how one must conduct oneself if
one wishes to stay in this covenant.Again and again the people pursue their
own political and religious schemes:They must pay the penalty for it.When
the Babylonian stands before the gates of Jerusalem, God’s voice speaks
through the prophet to the king: Hand yourself over, then you will be
unharmed. The king thinks of something better—he seeks to form an
alliance with Egypt. He will be blinded, the people deported, and the
Temple with the Ark of the Covenant will go up in flames.
God alone directs, helps, delivers. “I, I alone am God, apart from me
there is no one who helps. I am that which is from all eternity. No one can
deliver out of my hand. I say it, I do it” (Is 43:12–13). Israel understands
that this tremendous “I,” by the freest grace, allies and has engaged the
people,“a little flea,” to himself.Thus it can summarize every burdensome
command in an astonishing way:“You shall love the Lord, your God, with
your whole heart, your whole mind, and all your strength” (Dt 6:5).
But is not this covenant, this attachment [bindung] of the author of the
cosmos to a tiny, troublesome people the very opposite of wisdom, is it
not foolishness? This reaches its peak when God’s Word and Wisdom
draws near to the people in such a way as to become a man among men.
“God’s Foolishness Is Wiser Than Men” (1 Corinthians 1:25)
After all the prophets who were God’s spokesmen (“Thus says the Lord”),
Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s son, appears and in an incomprehensible
way lays claim to the powerful “I” of God.“It was said to you, but I say to
you.”20 “My words are spirit and life.”21 “Before Abraham was, I am.”22
“Whoever believes in me will live, even if he dies.”23 His own relatives
think he is delirious. The leaders of the people see in him a blasphemer
and finally kill him, despite his magnificent (and nonetheless humble)
words and deeds. Yet he never said, “I am God.” He calls only God his
father and designates himself as sent and certified by him. He speaks in the
name of his father, indeed he is the incarnate voice of this father. Utter
scandal! One of his disciples betrays him, the others flee; the Jews demand
his crucifixion, the heathen government authority carries it out. And
precisely this rejection by Christians, Jews, and heathen brings God’s plan
to completion:“God has enclosed all in disobedience” (he passes over their
20 Mt 5:21–22, 27–28, 31–34, 38–39, 43–44.
21 Jn 6:63.
22 Jn 8:58.
23 Jn 11:25.

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unbelief), “that he may have mercy on all” (Rom 11:32). “And I, when I
am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself ” ( Jn 12:32).
Here we are in the center of the Bible:The son of God, the one who
is “one with the Father” ( Jn 10:30), has the power to take mankind’s
“No” over on himself, to suffer through their darkest God-forsakeness on
the cross (“My God, why have you forsaken me?”), and to reconcile them
with the God of Israel—now the Father of all men. Or better: God loved
the world so much that he handed over his own Son for them, for
“everything comes from God, who has reconciled us to himself through
Christ. He made him who knew not sin to be sin for our sake, that in
him we might receive the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:12ff) and
become children in the Son.
This “insanity” of God is the middle of the Bible—all else is simply
their manifold interpretation and rewording. So much so, that in many
places it says that the creation of the world could only be risked, and
justified, and characterized by the creator as “very good,” because the
whole plan rested on the self-surrender of the “Lamb” (1 Pt 1:19ff), who
as one who is unique can at last interpret the meaning of the seven-sealed
book of world history.
The Bible: “Word of God”?
Yes and no.The Word of God is undoubtedly Jesus Christ, the Word of the
Father, who “interprets” ( Jn 1:18) the Father to us through his entire
humanity, his life, words, works, humiliation, suffering, death, and delightful resurrection, who “translates” the Father into the humanly understandable.All that the God of the World has to say, namely his highest love
proven to her in the Son, is said to the full. But is it also understood? The
only way it can be understood at all is if God gives us his Spirit (1 Cor
12:12), so that we may think and also act from the inner mindset of God.
Therefore Jesus promises us this divine Spirit, who will not speak some
other, new word, but rather again and again until the end of the world ( Jn
16:13–15) will “interpret” the Son, who has interpreted the Father. One
could say that he will interpret the interpretation of God (which is Christ)
for us and in us. To this extent one can say of Scripture that it is God’s
word. Because Christ is also the full truth of the Old Covenant and cannot
be separated from it, the whole Bible is a book of the Holy Spirit, or in
other words, given by the Spirit, inspired.What does this mean exactly?
The Word of God in Human Words
Now comes the puzzling thing: that God speaks to mankind through
men. Otherwise they would not understand anything. But how do these

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two things go together? One must remember two things: God is never a
partial cause, but is always “all” and “greater than all his works” (Sir
43:27ff). Every creaturely cause with its received freedom stands at his
service; even if they are imperfect, by no means all-knowing, limited in
many ways, they cannot disturb his perfect work and speech. There can
be some things in the Bible that are conditioned by time; this does not
hinder God from expressing himself in it. The second is that God has
uttered himself from the high-point of his self-offering, in Jesus Christ,
without any obstacle, exactly and fully. In Christ we experience the
innermost center of God:“God is love.”All his other attributes flow from
this love—his wisdom, his righteousness, his omnipotence.
It is of this that the Bible speaks. It is not a book about cosmology, not
a treatise on world history, about psychology or any other worldly
wisdom. Seen from a worldly perspective, it can have historical inaccuracies in what it says, or things conditioned by time:This does not prevent
God from expressing himself in it, fully sovereign and unhindered.
Jesus, who is the Word of the Father, has written nothing.The Word is
infinitely greater than anything which can be captured in writing. And
this is why the divine Spirit must interpret what has been set down in
writing about the Son and the Father. If men find some limitation in
Scripture and ask the corresponding question (did the construction of the
Tower of Babel really happen as described?), they should next ask themselves instead: What does God wish to express to us by this (mythical)
narrative? “Everything happened to them (the old Israel) in a symbolic,
foreshadowing way and took place as a lesson for us” (1 Cor 10:11).
It is characteristic of things having to do with Christ that he, who is
the Word of God in a simple way, cannot be captured in his simplicity by
human words: Four different Gospels approach him from different sides,
just as one must walk around a statue to see it correctly, and it continually shows a new aspect to the one walking around it. There is also a
meditation of the first generation of the Church on his mystery, on the
meaning of his becoming man, his life, death, and resurrection: Progressively new and deeper connections unfold themselves, and the variety of
Scripture testifies to this.Yet it contains no contradictions.
Moreover one can perceive that the sayings about Jesus, indeed his own
words [as] the authors of the Scriptures remembered them, could come
from different times. Some could come from one time, since Jesus himself
did speak, although the hearers understood them only imperfectly, since
he was first able to give them a full understanding after Easter and Pentecost; others are rendered precisely on the basis of this later understanding,
although this does not require that they be falsified or “painted over.”

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Who Owns the Bible?
To understand this question, one must first think back over the aforementioned covenant of God with Israel.The word of God before Christ
was understandably directed to the chosen people and “belonged” to it,
precisely because it was the people who belonged to God.The fulfillment
of this discourse of God to Israel, which is reached in Jesus Christ, is not
at all meant to nullify God’s covenant, but rather to fulfill it in such a way
that from the old, “fleshly” Israel there may arise a new Israel, the “Israel
of God” (Gal 6:16), a “spirit-filled people,” so that now even non-Christians, the “heathen,” have equal access, because Christ has born the debt
of all men before God. This new people consists of all who believe
exactly this; and if Israel already represented all people before God (Gn
12:13; Is 49:6), all the more does the new community of Christ, called
“Church,” which is explicitly sent to all the nations, because the reconciliation of God in Christ with the world concerns all men and should
be made known to them. So we can say that the Bible belongs to the
Church, but as such is open to all men.
It belongs to the Church because it is to this Church that the Holy
Spirit was promised.The Holy Spirit had the books written to safeguard
the truth and enabled the Church to choose and bring together the right
books out of many false and insignificant ones.24 Another reason Scripture belongs to the Church is that the Church, whose distinguishing
mark is her faith in God and his Revelation, is also able to explain it most
correctly for Christians and for all who seek an interpretation.
“Old” and “New” Covenant?
But is the “New Testament” not enough for a Christian? Why this long
and complicated prehistory? Here we run into deep mysteries, which at
root only God can lay bare.
Surely God has only one unique plan of salvation with mankind. He
does not make several “covenants” with mankind unrelated to one another.
What we tend to call the “Old Covenant” is one with the final, irrevocable covenant (cf. Rom 11:29), which runs on from Christ and is fulfilled
in him. For this reason there are not two peoples of God, but only one,
which consists of Israel and the Church. Israel has not recognized or
24 In the list of the books belonging to the Bible (first officially enumerated at the

Council of Trent) the Church does not distinguish as the Jews do between the
more important and the less important nor (as the Protestants do) between the
“canonical” and “deutero-canonical,” although naturally this does not mean that
for the Church too some books, e.g., the gospels and the letters of Paul, cannot
have more importance than others (e.g., the genealogies in the book of Numbers).

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acknowledged its fulfillment in Jesus. It is like the thief on the cross who
turned away from Jesus Christ.The Church has acknowledged the fulfillment of the covenant and resembles the thief who turned toward Jesus. A
kind of ur-schism—a No and a Yes—affects the covenant. But it is now
open to all peoples, although this does not mean that the solidarity of the
Church with the “holy root” (Rom 11:16; “Salvation is from the Jews”:
Jn 4:22) can or should be set aside. Jesus himself relates himself continuously to the “Old Testament,” indeed he came primarily “to gather the scattered sheep of Israel” (Mt 15:24). What becomes of a Church when it
supposes that it can dispense with the Old Testament is quite evident in
Hitler’s “German Christians.”
But the question remains very real if it has to do with the so-called
“inculturation” of Christianity in foreign cultures, perhaps those of Africa
or Asia. Some mean that their own religious tradition can serve as a foundation and preamble [Vorgeschichte] for faith in Jesus.While certainly some
elements of it can be used profitably in a new interpretation for the
Christian faith, the word of God remains unified and indivisible from
Abraham to Christ, and for a right understanding of the “new covenant”
one cannot abandon the essential elements of the “old covenant.” No
matter how high their cultures may stand, from a theological perspective
the “nations” can never be part on the same stage with Israel, or their
holy writings with the Bible.
On a Correct Handling of the Bible
The Bible, we said, stands defenseless before all the world—one can buy
it in a bookstore. But we also said it belongs to the Church, and there are
two tasks that correspond to this. The first is the more important: She
must read and contemplate it as the word of God and learn from it how
to worship God rightly and to thank him. The second is secondary, but
not for that reason unimportant: She must interpret it rightly for Christians and non-Christians and thus defend its true content, which must be
accomplished by an appropriate exegesis—and this all the more as
outsiders often misunderstand and falsely interpret it.
Regarding the first: For believers the Bible is God’s word, but a word
spoken in [the context of] the covenant, which for this reason demands
a corresponding answer. Israel occasionally answered in the best way, in
the Psalms for example, so that its answer was able to be included in the
inspired word of God. More than ever before, Christians must answer as
correctly as possible. Jesus says: The right answer is given by the “little,”
the “infants,” the “simple,” while the revelation of the Father remains hidden
from “the wise and understanding” (Lk 10:21). Simplicity is a fundamental

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word for Jesus: He praises the simple, clear eye, and likewise the simplicity, the unreflective confidence of children. In this simplicity we must let
ourselves be addressed by the word of God and in the same simplicity of
the Lord answer him. Our prayer should be an echo of the sound and
content of this word. An example of this is Mary, who kept God’s words
and deeds “in her heart, always thinking over them” (Lk 1:19, 2:51). One
can call this “contemplation,” although this does not mean a mere gaze
but rather a hearkening to the inexhaustible divine depth of “every word
which proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:21).This can take place
in the lonely “closet,” ideally during a certain time every day, or together
in the innumerable “Bible circles” around, where each participant relates
what touched him for the profit of the others. It is sensible even in
contemplation occasionally to use one of the footnotes that shed light on
the meaning [of the text] (for example, those that the “Jerusalem Bible”
offers so well), so as not to go astray, but without wandering off into a
bare academic study of the text. Indeed, the essential thing in such
contemplation is that I let myself speak personally with God’s word, and
the experience will teach each one that it is this.
As regards the second:The attitude of an exegetical scholar differs from
[contemplation] insofar as he has to examine the text in its historical
connection, its relations to others, to understand earlier and later texts, and
to situate [the text] in its philologically most correct form.This last point
is important, and applies to every scientific treatment of a text:What does
the text itself wish to say? In the case of a biblical author it means to say
something about God and his revelation.To disregard or marginalize this
central character of being a witness would be unscientific. By witnessing,
the text demands faith.To disregard this means to misunderstand it from
the start. Unbelieving scholars can discover important things of an historical and philological nature and contribute to an understanding [of the
text]; but they strike off center with their interpretations. A believing
scholar can be very close to simple contemplation even in the application
of strictly scientific methods, and his work can offer a great deal of help
to one who practices contemplation and wishes to examine more closely
the meaning of a passage. However, he must always distinguish between
results that are well-grounded (for example, that the portrayal of the
temple cult of Yahweh, which was read back into the time of the wilderness, originated nearly a thousand years later in the Babylonian exile), and
the very numerous hypotheses that seem demonstrated to a scholar or to
a generation of scholars, but then are disproved or drastically changed by
those who come afterwards. Under no circumstances should such insufficiently proven hypotheses (necessary for research) be presented to the

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people in preaching, where they cause confusion. But to form one’s estimate of the exegetical profession entirely on the basis of such abuses
would be as ignorant as unfair.We have shining examples of Catholic and
Protestant exegetes who do the best scientific work and at the same time
are reverent hearers of the Word.
Above all, they can protect us from falling into the opposite extreme
as readers and contemplators of the Bible. Namely taking our personal
“feeling” as the norm for right understanding: “This says something to
me, this does not say anything to me: I feel this word this way,” whereby
the individual measures the word of God by his own narrow desires and
expectations. Indeed, it is precisely this often stubborn narrowness that
God’s speech to me wishes to break open.
The Self-Evidence and Ecclesiality of Scripture
Only someone who is spiritually blind could assert that men could have
written the books of Holy Scripture out of their religious feelings.They
carry within themselves the evidence that this is impossible. Above all
because in them man with his desires is rubbed against the grain. Israel
must—for its salvation—always do that which it wishes to avoid. “They
have ears, but hear not” (because they do not want to hear) what God
says to them. If religions talk about gods dying and rising again (particularly because nature dies in winter and reawakens in spring), nonetheless
no one has wanted to worship a god crucified with cruelty and mockery, who in addition was definitely a man (indeed the believing disciples
had enough trouble coping with the cross and resurrection of Jesus).
Which man had the “poetic inspiration” to invent Jesus’ Sermon on the
Mount or the words of the institution of the Eucharist? Or to depict
Paul’s conversion and to make the fate which followed and the man’s
letters believable? For this reason Scripture has an evidence of its truth
within itself, whence one never evades it, so that one ignores it or turns
one’s back on it.Yet it does not thereby lose its strikingness, its character
as “leaven” in mankind. Is Marx not a typical Judas, who, since the
Messiah does not finally come, wants to build the Messianic Kingdom
himself? In the end, has not Gandhi learned non-resistance—along with
all the Indian preliminaries—from the Sermon on the Mount? “The
kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and mixed into
three measures of flour, until the whole mass was leavened” (Mt 13:33),
that is, whether it wants it or not. Since Jesus, the only alternatives in the
end [im Grunde] are a Yes or a No to him.
The Bible remains a book of the Church, however widely it may be
disseminated outside of her. For according to the Bible itself, Jesus is not

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separable from the Church (despite all her defects). He undoubtedly
wanted his “cause” (and this is himself) to continue on. He who himself
possessed “the Spirit without measure” ( Jn 3:34) promised this Spirit to
his disciples; and after his departure the Spirit would lead them on and
guide them into his whole truth, which at the time, while Jesus was living
among them, they were not yet ready to understand ( Jn 16:12–15).The
Church, which is made up of many sinners and a few saints, is not very
believable for the world; but the word that she proclaims, and which is
not separable from her, is believable and also makes its connection with
her believable. The Bible is, as theology says, the “ruling rule” (norma
normans), while ecclesial tradition through the millennia and the ecclesial
office, which Christ established, also rule of course, but [only] insofar as
they are ruled by the Bible (normae normatae). Because of this unbreakable
connection one cannot say: Bible, yes—Church, no. The attempts of
Protestantism to find the place in the Bible where “Catholic” begins, and
to find the true teaching of Jesus before that, have failed. One would have
to go back so far that one would destroy the substance of the kernel itself.
This is why the Second Vatican Council (in Dei Verbum) presented
Bible, tradition, and office as so intertwined with one another that no
one of the three can be made understandable without the other two, yet
in such a way that Scripture as the word of God (or witness to the Word
of God, which is Christ) retains primacy. The Holy Spirit interprets it
ever anew through the millennia; but the office remains the guarantee
that the interpretation does not lie at the mercy of each interpreter.Thus
the word of God is not past history but rather speaks ever anew in each
present age and into the future. “My word will not pass away.”25
Two Dimensions of Reading
One can read Holy Scripture in two dimensions, namely horizontally and
vertically. To read horizontally means to read through the length of it, as
one reads a history book or a novel. One begins at the account of the
creation of the world, hears a few things about the prehistory of mankind,
meets Noah and the nations descended from him, then Abraham, with
whom things get somewhat more concretely visible, his first descendents,
their adventures in Egypt, in the wilderness, at the entry into the promised land, the wars with the Philistines, the exciting histories about Saul,
David, and Solomon, the political chaos under the kings, who have to
hold out against Egypt,Assyria, and Babylon, and later Greece and Rome.
Then the man Jesus emerges, whose fate is described in great detail and
25 Mt 24:35.

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who becomes the occasion for a community which gradually separates
itself from Israel, and whose beginning is depicted for us in an interesting
history book and in many letters and epistles. It closes with a visionary
look at the meaning of the whole of world history and leaves further
depictions of historical events to the authors of Church histories, to them
the history of Israel and world history as a whole. Undoubtedly such a
horizontal reading is part of a right relationship with the Bible: On the
basis of a history covering about two thousand years, it wishes to show us
the significance of world history and of the historical existence of individuals within world history, what God actually intended by establishing
history—be it the history of individuals or of nations, what significance
the whole has in its ever-onward rolling. The meaning is doubtless clear
enough in this snippet from the whole of history. Here one can think back
again to the picture of the seven-sealed scroll, which at first no one can
open, until it is handed over to the Lamb ( Jesus Christ is meant), which
breaks open one seal after another, because, as it says, the Lamb “has
triumphed” by the fact that it “was slain,” and “by his blood he claimed
men for God from every race and tongue, people and nation” (Rv 5:1–9).
What should be said with these pictures is this: that Christ has opened the
final meaning of the world and its history by his cross. On the one side
the whole guilt of those in the world, to have rejected God’s leadership
and put themselves in the place of God, on the other side God’s absolute
love, who, taking on himself the guilt of the world, has reconciled the
world to himself in Christ: his love was deeper than all the sins of the
world and has triumphed over all that is closed in, dark and evil. One reads
the Bible horizontally, and this central truth, the drama of the cross as the
rejection of God by the world and as the reconciliation of the world by
God, becomes clear already in the prehistory and more than ever in the
histories that follow, faintly at first—one thinks of Abraham, of Moses, of
David, the prophets, the Maccabees—then ever clearer, the more experience Israel gains. After the time of Jesus nothing else in the world is
proclaimed by his messengers than the solution given by God. Paul says of
the Church:“God has placed the word of reconciliation in us, so that we
are now heralds of Christ. God urges you through us, in the place of
Christ we say: Be reconciled with God!” (2 Cor 5:19–20).
But right here, where it is clear that the ambassador of Christ has only
this one thing to proclaim, indeed that all history before Christ already
approached this one thing in ever clearer pictures, one recognizes that the
Bible should not be read only horizontally like a novel, but at the same
time and even more essentially should be read vertically, in the depth. For
the central fact, the event of the cross is such an unfathomable revelation

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not only of the sins of the world, but of God’s own self, that one cannot
begin to plumb the depths of this utterance.At each individual word that
refers to the central truth and discloses it before us, one can only stand
still, dismayed, confounded, overwhelmed, and gaze into this depth, without ever coming to the bottom. However does it happen that this love of
God proves itself as more definitive and more triumphant than all the
absurdities and incomprehensible atrocities of the world? Each word of
Scripture is like a well shaft whose bottom one does not see: One throws
a stone down it, and one does not hear how it hits the bottom, whether
on water or soil. One experiences the word of God in this way, and so it
becomes clear why it is called the word of God: It is (to borrow a phrase
from Nietzsche) “deeper than the day remembered.” If one already experiences the real loving devotion of a man as a wonder and cannot understand it (simply because you are, I give thanks to you), then the absolute
love of God for something as unlovable as mankind always seems incomprehensible. And it is not a platonic love, not a love that merely asserts
itself in words, but rather a love that lets itself be hated by the beloved
men, hunted down, betrayed, taunted in a cruel comedy, spat upon, nailed
to a cross, and abused to the point of death, a love that does not suffer all
this with a wise self-composure but in blood-sweating dread, and finally
perishes, crying out in a loud voice, “My God, why have you forsaken
me?”26 Everything had to be exactly this way if God was to infiltrate
men’s loathsomeness. If this is so, who would dare to afterward read the
Bible only horizontally, like a newspaper? Does not a bottomless depth
open itself with every word, before which one stands still as before an
abyss and must gaze down into the umplumbable?
Once one has experienced and understood this, one can no longer
compare this report with any other book of mankind, no matter how full
of wisdom. This book stands wholly unique in world history, alone,
incomparable.This is also why men try again and again to cast it away, for
it is inhuman, intolerable, it must be trampled down. One can get rid of
it in two ways: Either one prohibits it as the most dangerous book (which
indeed it surely is); or one represents it as out of date, one tries to dissolve
it in the acid of “historical criticism” or make it laughable in every way in
the mass media, in Jesus films. A few Christians may object, but what use
is it now, when the multitude will have its perverse, obscene pleasure?
With this we come to one last thing:A man who asserts about himself,
“I am the way and the truth and the life”27 is simply intolerable in the
world as it is.This was so once before and has remained so ever since. It
26 Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34.
27 Jn 14:6.

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is entirely clear that such a one, who concentrates all religions of
mankind in himself—“I am the door, whoever comes in by any other
way is a thief and a robber” ( Jn 10:7f)—provokes atheism.Very rightly
did atheism appear in the world after Christ, because it was precisely the
word of God that was unbearable for it. Occasionally it shows itself
openly as anti-Christian; and its program could be nothing else than to
replace the claim, the crazy assertion of Christ with something more
meaningful and effective.“He has claimed to free mankind:What is going
on here? Now, we will show him how one does that.” One can even give
this anti-Christianity some Christian trappings by twisting the words of
Christ in his mouth to mean the opposite of what they say. But he knew
and foretold all this: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on
earth. I have not come to bring peace, but the sword. Whoever loves
father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me. Whoever seeks to
preserve his life will lose it” (Mt 10:34ff).“The servant is not greater than
the master.They have persecuted me, they will persecute you also. I have
said this to you so that you will remember this when its hour comes. My
peace I give to you, not as the world gives, do I give it to you. . . . Well
N&V
then, let us go out!” ( Jn 15:20ff; 14:27).

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725

Becoming Imbued with the Spirit
and Power of the Liturgy:
Liturgical Formation in Seminaries Today
PAMELA J ACKSON
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

F ORTY YEARS AGO, the Second Vatican Council decided to
undertake a reform of the liturgy so that the faithful could “more surely
derive an abundance of graces” from it, and affirmed that “the aim to be
considered before all else” in this reform was the “full, conscious, and
active participation called for by the very nature of the liturgy.”1 Immediately after stressing the importance of this participation because it is “the
primary and indispensable source of the true Christian spirit,”2 however,
the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) warned
that there was no hope (nulla spes) of it becoming a reality “unless, in the
first place, the pastors themselves become thoroughly imbued with the
spirit and power of the liturgy and make themselves its teachers.”3
To prepare priests for this crucial role in enabling the prospective
outward reforms to serve as a means of spiritual renewal, Sacrosanctum
Concilium went on to provide basic norms for the liturgical formation of
the clergy, which were later developed in the Instruction on Liturgical
1 Vatican II, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium), §§21, 14, in

Documents on the Liturgy 1963–79: Conciliar, Papal and Curial Texts (Collegeville,
MN:The Liturgical Press, 1982).
2 This affirmation is drawn from Pope Pius X’s motu proprio on Church music, Tra
le sollecitudini: “There Our people assemble for the purpose of acquiring the
Christian spirit from its first and indispensable source, namely, active participation in the most sacred mysteries and in the public and solemn prayer of the
Church.” Papal Teachings:The Liturgy (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1962), 252.
3 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §14.

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Formation in Seminaries.4 The purpose of this essay is to reflect, on the
basis of these two documents and in light of the experience of four
decades of liturgical reform, on what is needed to enable seminarians
today to “become thoroughly imbued with the spirit and power of the
liturgy” so that they can help the faithful worship in the liturgy as the
council intended.The first part of the essay will consider what the council enacted concerning the liturgical formation of priests and how this
was developed in Liturgical Formation in Seminaries. The second part will
describe one way the kinds of knowledge concerning the liturgy these
documents prescribe for priestly formation could be presented in courses
as part of a seminary curriculum.5
Aspects of Liturgical Formation of Priests
Sacrosanctum Concilium gives foundational requirements for the kind of
liturgical formation of the clergy necessary in order for the spiritual
renewal through the liturgy the council desires to come about.After stating that professors who teach liturgy to those preparing for priestly
4 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in

Seminaries, in Liturgical Formation in Seminaries: A Commentary (Washington, DC:
United States Catholic Conference, 1984). Note that Instruction on Liturgical
Formation in Seminaries contains an Appendix titled “A List of Questions Which
Seem Important to Treat in the Liturgical Instruction Imparted in Seminaries”;
most of the specific topics prescribed in the Appendix are elaborations on Sacrosanctum Concilium with descriptions of how to explain its contents.
5 The relatively small number of articles treating Sacred Congregation for
Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries, that have been
published have taken the form of commentaries on the document as a whole,
essays on broader topics that contain limited discussion of Instruction on Liturgical
Formation in Seminaries, or critiques. See Achille M. Triacca, “A proposito della
recente istruzione sulla formazione liturgia nei seminari,” Notitiae 160 (1979):
621–39; Balthasar Fischer, “Was muss der junge Seelsorger im Seminar über
Liturgie gelernt haben, um seiner pastoralliturgischen Aufgabe gerechtzuwerden? Die Antworten der Instructio in fünfzehn Grundaussagen,” Seminarium
(new series) 19 (1979): 753–58; Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy,“Commentary,” in Liturgical Formation in Seminaries: A Commentary; Thomas A. Krosnicki
and John A. Guerrieri, “Seminary Liturgy Revisited,” Worship 54 (1980):
158–69; Jan Michael Joncas, “Liturgical Formation in the Seminary,” Seminary
Journal 3.2 (1997): 38–50. Since none of these articles consider the topic of the
present essay (i.e., how the contents of Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries, can be organized into categories from which a seminary curriculum can be constructed that can enable
contemporary American seminarians to bring about spiritual renewal through
the liturgy as envisioned by Sacrosanctum Concilium), it has not been possible to
incorporate discussion of them in this essay.

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ministry should receive thorough and specialized training,6 Sacrosanctum
Concilium calls for seminarians to be given both academic instruction and
spiritual formation in liturgy. In regard to academic instruction, “the
study of liturgy is to be ranked among the compulsory and major courses
in seminaries and religious houses of studies; in theological faculties it is
to rank among the principal courses.”7 Liturgy is to be taught “under its
theological, historical, spiritual, pastoral, and canonical aspects”; and
professors in other disciplines are to “clearly bring out the connection
between their subjects and the liturgy.”8 In regard to spiritual formation,
Sacrosanctum Concilium calls for seminarians “to be given a liturgical
formation in the spiritual life,” including being given an understanding
of what is going on in the liturgy in order that they may participate in it
toto animo.9 This formation should enable them to understand, when they
are priests,“what it is they are doing in their liturgical functions,” and to
“live the liturgical life and share it with the faithful entrusted to their
care.”10 Pastors’ liturgical training should also equip them to “promote
the liturgical instruction of the faithful and also their active participation
in the liturgy both internally and externally.”11
“Liturgical Formation in the Spiritual Life”
Both Sacrosanctum Concilium and Liturgical Formation in Seminaries recognize
the necessity of seminarians receiving “liturgical formation in the spiritual
life.”12 As part of the seminary’s program in formation in the spiritual life
(which includes regular meetings of each seminarian with his spiritual
director, guiding him in developing a serious interior life, and community
conferences by the seminary spiritual director), attention needs to be given
to the role of the liturgy in the spiritual life. Even as seminarians are drawn,
through spiritual direction and prayer, to enter into an ever-deepening relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they must also learn to experience and express that relationship through the rites and prayers of the
liturgy. The more that seminarians’ interior lives are being shaped by and
6 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §15.
7 Ibid., §16.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., §17.
10 Ibid., §18. While

this paragraph describes assistance to be given to priests
ordained before Sacrosanctum Concilium’s prescriptions for seminary training go
into effect, it implies that those ordained in the future will be able to acquire this
knowledge as part of their seminary training.
11 Ibid., §19.
12 Ibid., §17; Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical
Formation in Seminaries, §51.

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nourished by the Church’s liturgical life, the more deeply they will be able
to assimilate the knowledge imparted in academic liturgy courses and then
communicate understanding of the liturgy with clarity and conviction
born of personal experience.This means seminarians need to learn—in the
formulation dear to the Liturgical Movement—not merely to “pray at
Mass,” but to “pray the Mass.”They need to learn to enter into the presence
of God—to pray—through the rites and prayers of the liturgy.
Central to this spiritual dimension of seminarians’ liturgical formation is
their learning “that full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical
celebrations called for by the very nature of the liturgy” which they are
expected to teach the faithful.13 It is, in fact, the need for clergy to promote
this kind of participation that leads Sacrosanctum Concilium to set forth the
requirements for clerical training in liturgy.14 For seminarians to learn this
participation “called for by the very nature of the liturgy” means, first of all, that
they must know what this kind of participation called for by the liturgy’s
very nature is—which requires prayerful study of Sacrosanctum Concilium’s
exposition of the nature of the liturgy in paragraphs 5–13.
To summarize briefly, the nature of the liturgy is described by Sacrosanctum Concilium as calling for those who participate in the Eucharist to
be attentive to and respond to their Risen Lord who is present in his
minister, in the proclamation of the Word, in his sacramental body and
blood, and in his Body, the Church. It calls for participants to enter reverently into this re-presentation of the paschal mystery, where the Risen
Christ as high priest is offering himself to the Father and joining them,
his Body, to himself in this act where God is perfectly glorified and they
are made holy and drawn into union with God and each other. The
nature of the Eucharistic liturgy also calls for those who participate to
join together in sincerely renewing the Church’s covenant with the Lord,
so that they may be drawn into his “compelling love” and “set on fire,”
grateful that they may enter into this anticipation of the heavenly liturgy.
In the case of the other sacraments, the nature of the liturgy also calls for
worshippers to participate in them as encounters with Christ who is
present to pour out his grace upon them.15
It is this kind of participation Sacrosanctum Concilium §11 is speaking of
when it states that it is pastors’ “duty to ensure that the faithful take part
13 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §14.
14 Ibid., §§14–19; cf.Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948–1975, trans.

Matthew J. O’Connell (Collegeville, MN:The Liturgical Press, 1980), 103.
15 For other aspects of Sacrosanctum Concilium §§5–8 that are foundational in semi-

narians’ liturgical formation in the spiritual life, see Sacred Congregation for
Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries, §9.

Liturgical Formation in Seminaries Today

729

fully aware of what they are doing, actively engaged in the rite and
enriched by its effects,” while §48 urges that the faithful should participate
in the celebration of the Eucharist “conscious of what they are doing, with
devotion and full involvement.” Liturgical Formation in Seminaries states
similarly of seminarians’ participation in the liturgy that it should be “full,
understanding, and devout.”16 In addition to intellectual comprehension
of what Sacrosanctum Concilium means by the kind of participation called
for by the very nature of the liturgy, in order to be able to help the faithful enter into this participation “fully, consciously, and actively,” “both
internally and externally,” seminarians themselves must learn to participate
in the liturgy this way toto animo. This requires their learning to participate in the outward form of the liturgy (for example, “acclamations,
responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs . . . actions, gestures, and bearing
. . . silence”)17 as a vehicle through which they unite themselves interiorly
to the theological and spiritual realities mediated by the liturgy described
in Sacrosanctum Concilium §§5–13.18
A crucial component of seminarians’ learning to pray “through” the
rites and prayers of the liturgy is their learning the language of the liturgy,
which is the language of Scripture. As Sacrosanctum Concilium explains,“it
is from Scripture that the readings are given and explained in the homily
and that psalms are sung; the prayers, collects, and liturgical songs are
scriptural in their inspiration; it is from Scripture that actions and signs
derive their meaning.”19 Liturgical Formation in Seminaries states that seminarians should be taught that all these parts of the liturgy derive their
meaning from Scripture, and affirms that the understanding of the liturgy
necessary for priests “demands a diligent familiarity with the Bible.”20
Sacrosanctum Concilium exhorts priests to improve their understanding of
the Bible, especially the psalms, so that they can “attune their minds to
their voices” when praying the Liturgy of the Hours;21 Liturgical Formation in Seminaries further specifies that seminarians should be taught to
understand the psalms “in light of the New Testament and of Tradition,
16 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in

Seminaries, §20.
17 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §30.
18 Cf. Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Forma-

tion in Seminaries, Appendix, 5.
19 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §24.
20 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in

Seminaries, §§52, 11. Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries adds that some
familiarity with the Fathers of the Church is necessary.
21 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §90.

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so as to discover the mystery of Christ in them.”22 As seminarians come
to understand the scriptural language of the liturgy so well that they can
think in it, they will be better able to enter into the presence of God
through the rites and prayers of the liturgy.
Learning to pray from Scripture (lectio divina) can help seminarians
assimilate the language of Scripture. Further, seminarians need to understand what Sacrosanctum Concilium means when it speaks of the proclamation of the Word in the liturgy as nourishing faith,23 and praying
through the proper readings before a liturgical celebration helps enable
them to experience this. Sacrosanctum Concilium also affirms that “in the
liturgy God is speaking to his people and Christ is still proclaiming his
gospel. And the people are responding to God by both song and
prayer.”24 As seminarians learn to listen to God speak to them through
his Word in times of prayer apart from liturgical celebrations, they
develop the ability to listen to him speak through the proclamation of the
Word in the liturgy, and are able to respond instinctively. Practicing lectio
divina can also help seminarians nurture that “warm and living love for
Scripture”25 that the Council states is essential in order for the renewal
of the liturgy to take place. Hearing God speak through the proclamation of the Word in the liturgy, being nourished through that proclamation, and cultivating a “warm and living love for Scripture” are aspects of
the celebration of the liturgy that Sacrosanctum Concilium envisions for all
the faithful; if seminarians are to foster these qualities in their future
parishioners, they must know them as realities in their own lives first.
As seminarians make the language of the liturgy their own, and learn
to engage in the kind of participation called for by the liturgy’s very
nature, they develop the capacity for their prayer life to be rooted in the
Church’s prayer in the liturgy, so that even when they pray outside of
liturgical celebrations, their prayer can draw life from the prayer of the
whole Church in its public encounter with God in worship and be
shaped by it. The vision underlying Sacrosanctum Concilium26 is that the
Church, as community of prayer, lives out each day centered on the reality of God’s revelation of himself in his Son Jesus Christ in the power of
22 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in

Seminaries, §31; cf. Appendix, 73.
23 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §33; cf. Vatican II, Dei Verbum, §21; Sacred

Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries, §31.
24 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §33.
25 Ibid., §24.
26 Ibid., §§5–10, 47, 83–84, 102–4.

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the Holy Spirit, focused in the re-presentation of Christ’s paschal mystery
in the Eucharistic liturgy; and within the unfolding of Christ’s life
through the liturgical year and commemorations of the saints, which is
embodied both in the daily Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. When
members of the Church community pray outside the liturgical assembly,
they do so inspired by and within the embrace of the prayer of the whole
community, rather than engaging in private meditations which ignore
this reality.
For seminarians to have their spiritual lives thus rooted in the Church’s
liturgy is an important part of their “liturgical formation in the spiritual
life,” and Liturgical Formation in Seminaries describes various ways their
formation enables them to do this.The seminarians “are to be helped to
penetrate more profoundly” the most important parts of the liturgy “and
to meditate on them and think on them. They are to learn to draw out
and to take from them ever fresh spiritual nourishment.”27 Sunday must
be “taught and inculcated into the students as a joyful celebration of the
paschal mystery.”28 “The whole liturgical year should be not only a liturgical celebration, but a way of life, in the manner of a spiritual journey,
in which the mystery of Christ is communicated”; and Sundays and
major feasts should be celebrated in such a way that they “really become
days of joy.”29
As seminarians learn to perceive their day-to-day lives in the context
of the unfolding of Christ’s life through the liturgical year, they “must be
formed to grasp the supernatural meaning” of the sacred seasons and
feasts, “so that they will be capable of acquiring a deeper recognition of
the salvific nature of these events and will receive the grace that is found
in them.”30 Those involved in seminarians’ spiritual formation show
them how participating in liturgical celebrations does not merely provide
them with pious ideas for intellectual reflection; rather,“the sacred liturgy
through prayer opens up for the students the source of the Christian
mystery and thus it nourishes their spiritual lives.”31 By thus coming into
contact with the source of the Christian mystery through the liturgy,
seminarians learn “to foster an interior life and to acquire a deep spirit of
meditation and of spiritual conversion.”32
27 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in

Seminaries, §18.
28 Ibid., §32.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., §34.
31 Ibid., Appendix l.
32 Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries, §10.3.

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Pamela Jackson

Through these facets of “liturgical formation in the spiritual life,” as well
as others, seminarians are enabled to draw life from the Church’s liturgy, to
know it not simply as a set of texts and ceremonies to be performed, but
as truly “source and summit” of the Church’s life and theirs as well. Seminarians’ academic training in liturgy is grounded in their “liturgical formation in the spiritual life,” and the academic knowledge concerning the
liturgy they acquire needs to be integrated into their spiritual life.
Academic Instruction in Liturgy
Sacrosanctum Concilium prescribed the study of liturgy “under its theological, historical, spiritual, pastoral, and canonical aspects”;33 and Liturgical
Formation in Seminaries spells out in detail subject matter to be included as
part of each of these aspects. Under the theological aspect, “the very
nature of the liturgy should be theologically explained, following the
mind of the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium”;34 this includes treatment of: the relationship between salvation history and the liturgy, the
paschal mystery, the liturgy as exercise of the priestly office of Jesus Christ,
the presence of Christ in liturgical actions, the role of the Word of God,
the liturgy as glorification of God and source of human sanctification and
as source and summit of the Church’s life, the nature of the Church, and
the liturgy’s eschatological dimension.35 The hierarchic and communal
nature of the liturgy and its teaching function are also to be covered.36
Further, the scriptural character of the entire liturgy is to be demonstrated, with emphasis on “the great importance of Sacred Scripture for
understanding the signs, actions, and prayers of the liturgy”;37 and the
biblical meaning of the natural elements used in the liturgy is to be
explained.38 Along with this, seminarians are to be “introduced into
understanding that symbolical liturgical language” through which the
liturgy makes use of perceptible sacred signs to signify invisible divine
reality, and how through these signs human sanctification is effected.39
33 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §16.
34 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in

Seminaries, §49, referring especially to Sacrosanctum Concilium, §§5–11; Appendix
9 cites Sacrosanctum Concilium, §§5–13.
35 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in
Seminaries, §49; Appendix 9; cf. §9.
36 Appendix, 10–25. This includes principles for translation of liturgical texts into
the vernacular.
37 Ibid., Appendix 15; cf. §52.
38 Also, instruction is to be drawn from Scripture and the Fathers when teaching
on the meaning of liturgical posture and gestures, ibid., Appendix 20.
39 Ibid., §§11, 49; Appendix 9d, 20.

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Liturgical Formation in Seminaries discusses specific areas of the theological aspect of liturgical celebrations that should be addressed; for example, the treatment of the Eucharist is to include explanation of the parts
of the Mass and of the Eucharistic Prayer, the Eucharist as center of the
sacramental system, and the worship of the Eucharist outside of Mass.40
The document also gives particular points to be covered in regard to the
other sacraments, sacramentals,41 and sanctification of time through the
calendar, and insists on presentation of the doctrinal principles underlying the Liturgy of the Hours.42 Study of the liturgical acts themselves—
their prayer-texts and ritual actions, and the Praenotanda of the rites—is
to provide the basis for explaining the doctrine they embody.43
Teaching the theology of liturgy directly from the liturgical texts
themselves helps make clear the “strict connection between the liturgy
and the doctrine of the faith;” Liturgical Formation in Seminaries emphasizes the importance of teaching seminarians about this connection.44
Priests who understand that the Church’s liturgy is the bearer of its theological tradition will understand that to preside at the liturgy is to hand
on that tradition—so they will celebrate the liturgy as it is given, thus
handing on the Church’s faith, rather than substituting their own ideas
for the faith of the Church community. Liturgical Formation in Seminaries
also affirms that while the findings of contemporary disciplines such as
anthropology can be useful in studying the theological aspect of the
liturgy, they are helpful “only within the limits established by the supernatural nature of the liturgy,” and that seminarians must therefore be
taught to “avoid anything that could lessen the full supernatural force of
Catholic worship.”45
In treating the historical aspect of the liturgy, Liturgical Formation in
Seminaries provides a detailed description of material from liturgical
history to be presented. All periods in the history of the liturgy are to be
covered, from Jewish worship in the time of Christ, through Christian
worship in the early centuries, the liturgical work of the Council of
40 Ibid., Appendix 35–41.
41 Ibid., Appendix 43–57; this section includes the liturgy of Christian death.
42 Ibid., Appendix 58–75; §§31, 69.
43 Ibid., §§40, 46; Appendix 42, 69.
44 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in

Seminaries, §44. Ibid., §46, notes that in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal,
General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours, and Praenotanda of the rites “one can
find the theological doctrine, the pastoral motivation, and the spiritual aspect not
only of the rites in general but also of each of their parts.”
45 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in
Seminaries, §50.

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Trent, the Liturgical Movement and the contributions of Pius X, to the
series of documents bringing about liturgical renewal.46 The history of
the Mass is to be taught, beginning with the New Testament texts recounting the institution of the Eucharist, and including the texts of early
anaphoras and other prescribed classic liturgical sources.47 A “thorough
explanation” of the “history of the baptismal liturgy and of the liturgical
catechumenate” is to be given, with students expected to read the baptismal
catecheses of the Fathers of the Church.48
Liturgical Formation in Seminaries also calls for study of the history of the
sacraments, and of the liturgical year and celebrations honoring the
Virgin Mary and the saints, in each instance providing specific instruction on what must be included in this historical study.49 The history of
the Eastern rites, and the characteristics of Eastern (as well as Western)
families of worship are also to be presented.50 If possible, the history of
sacred song and of sacred art are to be covered.51
In spelling out particular subject material within the historical aspect of
the liturgy that should be taught, Liturgical Formation in Seminaries repeatedly stresses that it is important to describe carefully the history of the various aspects of the liturgy, because their history makes clear their meaning.52
It also emphasizes that seminarians must study the history of the liturgy “to
effect understanding of modern liturgical usage.”53 Knowing the history of
the liturgy enables seminarians to understand the developments that led to
the need for certain elements of the liturgy to be changed after the Second
Vatican Council, the meaning of the changes that were made in those
elements, and the meaning of each reformed rite as it is celebrated today.
Studying the historical aspect of the liturgy also contributes to seminarians’ knowledge of its spiritual aspect; as they perceive how the rites developed historically to help the faithful enter into union with God, they will
understand how the rites are intended to enable this today.
In regard to the spiritual aspect of the liturgy, Liturgical Formation in
Seminaries advises that the lectures in liturgy “point out the reciprocal
connection between the liturgy and Christian spirituality.”54 Since, as
46 Ibid., Appendix 26, 28, 29.
47 Ibid., Appendix 30, 31, 26.
48 Ibid., Appendix 44–45.
49 Ibid., Appendix 42, 47–54, 59–67.
50 Ibid., §48; Appendix 27, 31.
51 Ibid., Appendix 18, 23; cf. §57, Appendix 16.
52 Ibid., §47; cf. Appendix 1d, 26, 27, 36, 42, 53, 59, 62, 67.
53 Ibid., Appendix 26; cf. §44b; Appendix, 29, 31.
54 Ibid., Appendix 26b; cf. §10.l. Study of the liturgy’s spiritual dimension is to

include the spiritual aspect of the Eastern rites, ibid., Appendix 31.

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735

Pope John Paul II has explained, “the liturgy is the privileged place for
the encounter of Christians with God and the one whom he has sent,
Jesus Christ,”55 seminarians need to understand how the liturgy “works”
spiritually to mediate this encounter. What is said in academic liturgy
courses concerning the liturgy’s spiritual aspect should inform and reinforce what seminarians are learning in their “liturgical formation in the
spiritual life,” and there should be an explicit connection between the
two. For example, in seminarians’ formation in the spiritual life, they
learn how the Church’s prayer from Scripture has drawn on the “spiritual sense” of Scripture, and how this can inform their own prayer;56 in
their academic liturgy courses they can be shown the special ways that the
liturgy makes use of the “spiritual sense,” such as the use of scriptural
imagery in prayer-texts, or the principle of typology in the selection and
juxtaposition of readings for particular feasts.
Seminarians’ spiritual formation and their academic training in the
liturgy’s spiritual aspect are also linked through the expectation that the
liturgy professor be able to “introduce students into the liturgical life and
into its spiritual character.”57 Thus, even in class lectures, liturgy professors are to present the subject matter in such a way that seminarians will
be drawn into “the liturgical life,” where their prayer lives are rooted in
and informed by the Church’s encounter with God in the liturgy. Only
if priests themselves experience the liturgy as vehicle through which they
can hear God, surrender to God, allow the Father to form them in the
image of his Son, can they help others to experience this.
Liturgical Formation in Seminaries also addresses seminarians’ training in
various practical areas, which fall under the pastoral aspect of the liturgy.
There is to be careful instruction on the General Instructions of both the
Roman Missal and the Liturgy of the Hours, and on the Ritual and
Pontifical and their Pastoral Introductions.58 Seminarians are to study
texts and ceremonies and proper rubrical performance, and also learn how
and why the Church “has forbidden improvisation in the composition and
offering of made-up prayers in the liturgy.”59 They are also to be taught
how to preside at the liturgy in a way that helps the congregation to
55 John Paul II, On the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Conciliar Constitution Sacro-

sanctum Concilium on the Sacred Liturgy (Vicesimus quintus annus) (Washington,
DC: USCC, 1988), §7.
56 Cf. Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries, §31.
57 Ibid., §51.
58 Ibid., Appendix 32–36, 42; §46.
59 Ibid., §46; Appendix 14.

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worship.60 Seminarians are thus to be given a thorough knowledge of the
Church’s liturgy as the Church celebrates it, and trained to prayerfully
perform it this way. They are also to learn how to communicate to the
faithful the riches of the Church’s prayer, and what is needed for fruitful
participation in the liturgy;61 this means seminarians developing the ability to explain how what the prayers and rites are talking about is what is
actually taking place in the liturgy, and learning how to help people
understand what God is doing for them through the liturgy of the Church,
so they can enter into it.
Seminarians also need a thorough understanding of why the lectionary
is set up the way it is, and what is involved in the kind of liturgical
preaching called for by the Council.62 Professors of liturgy, Scripture, and
homiletics should work together to ensure that seminarians are prepared
to preach from the wide range of pericopes and combinations of them
found in the reformed lectionary.63 Liturgy professors should also
encourage the seminarians to learn to integrate what they are being
taught in their academic Scripture courses with a deep understanding of
the liturgical use of Scripture, as well as with the wisdom they receive by
meditating on it, so that they can preach the kinds of homilies described
in Sacrosanctum Concilium §§35 and 42.
Music is an important part of the liturgy’s pastoral aspect, and Liturgical
Formation in Seminaries prescribes that seminarians be given the practical
instruction in music to enable them to sing the presider’s parts in the liturgy
and to oversee the work of those who provide music in the parish.64 They
should understand the role of sacred song in the liturgy, and the different
kinds of songs (for example, psalmody, acclamations, hymns, etc.);65 they
need to be given an appreciation of the Church’s musical heritage and the
criteria for evaluating music for use in liturgical celebrations.66
While the juridical aspect of the liturgy is often treated primarily in
the courses on canon law, studying the other aspects of the liturgy in a
required liturgy course makes it easier for seminarians to understand—
and, therefore, remember—the canonical norms governing liturgical cele60 That is to say, in a way that is pastoral, ibid., §§44b, 46; Appendix 42; cf. Appen-

dix 15–25.
61 Ibid., §20; Appendix 39.
62 For example,Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §§35, 52.
63 Cf. Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Forma-

tion in Seminaries, §53.
64 Ibid., §56.
65 Ibid., Appendix 16.
66 Ibid., §56. “It is most valuable for the students to be familiar with the Latin

language and with Gregorian chant.” §19; cf Appendix 16, 18.

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737

brations. Seminarians who have learned the liturgy’s theological and
historical aspects, especially, will recognize that the Church’s laws for
valid performance of liturgical rites are not arbitrary rules, but a means
for protecting the Church community’s tradition of believing and praying. It is precisely because the liturgy belongs to the whole Church that it
is governed by the laws of the Church.67
In addressing the five aspects of academic liturgical study mandated by
Sacrosanctum Concilium, Liturgical Formation in Seminaries does not treat them
as a discrete entity, completely separated from seminarians’ liturgical formation in the spiritual life. In explaining how seminarians should be instructed
in the “history and spiritual character of Easter and the Easter season,” for
example, the discussion concludes: “Most of all seminarians should be
trained to live the paschal mystery in the depths of their souls and to prepare
themselves for their future paschal ministry.”68 Seminarians are thus not
only to be instructed about the liturgical commemoration of Christ’s dying
and rising, but encouraged to enter into experiential knowledge of how, in
the liturgy, Christ makes present his paschal mystery and draws them into
it, joining them to his offering of himself to the Father, empowering them
to die to self and live for God, and unselfishly serve those in need.
Finally, if seminarians’ liturgical formation in the spiritual life is the
ground in which their academic instruction in liturgy is rooted, actual
celebrations of the liturgy in the seminary are the context which informs
that instruction. Liturgical Formation in Seminaries therefore states that
these celebrations must be exemplary in regard to ritual and texts, “the
spiritual and pastoral mentality adopted,” and the observance of liturgical
norms and laws.69 Seminary liturgies are to make use of a variety of
approved options for ways the rites may be celebrated, so that seminarians become familiar with the many possibilities they may draw on in
their future ministry, and with the “art of making the right choice” from
among those possibilities for a particular celebration.70
In seminary liturgies, seminarians not only practice the internal-throughexternal participation Sacrosanctum Concilium expects them to teach their
67 Ibid., §16.The canonical aspect of the liturgy is treated in Appendix 10–14. For

discussion of other pastoral aspects of the liturgy, see Appendix 15–25.
68 Ibid., Appendix 63; Appendix 73 states that seminarians’ devotion to the psalms

should be fostered through lectures in exegesis given by the Scripture professor.
69 Ibid., §16; cf.Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §§17, 29; Sacred Congregation

for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries, §20. Also,
they are to be done in such a way that their “community and supernatural nature
will shine out,” ibid., §12.
70 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in
Seminaries, §17.

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future parishioners (and lead them in by example),71 but also learn by assisting in liturgical ministries or music. Liturgical Formation in Seminaries expects
that seminary faculty will guide and patiently correct the seminarians in
regard to their contributions to the liturgy “so that there is formed in them
a genuine notion of the liturgy solidly rooted in the doctrine and sense of
the Church.”72 It is important that seminarians “experience the richer and
more developed forms of the celebrations of the seasons and solemnities of
the liturgical year,” since, while they may use a simpler form in their parish
ministry,“it is clear that the way the students experience the liturgy in the
seminary will be an example for them on which their future pastoral
ministry will be based.”73
A Seminary Liturgy Curriculum
While Liturgical Formation in Seminaries fleshed out the norms in Sacrosanctum Concilium with a comprehensive description of the kinds of knowledge
concerning the liturgy needed for priestly formation, it left to each seminary and its liturgy professors to determine how the recommended topics
for instruction should be divided into courses. In 1995 I was invited to
create a seminary liturgy program, composed of required classes and sufficient electives for an M.A. concentration in liturgy, which I based on Sacrosanctum Concilium and the “suitable directives” of Liturgical Formation in
Seminaries summarized above. The fortieth anniversary of Sacrosanctum
Concilium has occasioned renewed reflection on what is necessary for
priests to become “imbued with the spirit and power of the liturgy,” which,
as the Constitution recognized, is dependent on their having appropriate
training in seminary. In the remainder of this essay I will describe the seminary liturgy program I created, as an example of one way the recommendations of Sacrosanctum Concilium and Liturgical Formation in Seminaries could
be translated into a curriculum; I offer this as a contribution to the ongoing discussion of how to enable priests to become “imbued with the spirit
and power of the liturgy,” so that the Council’s reforms in the liturgy can
bear their intended fruit of spiritual renewal.
The Required Course and Its Rationale
The foundation of the program is a required two-semester course in
liturgy, which serves as preparation both for elective liturgy courses, and
71 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §19.
72 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in

Seminaries, §17; cf. §13.
73 Ibid., §33; the sentence continues “as well as the foundation for their meditation

on and knowledge of the liturgical year.”

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739

for later required systematics courses in sacramental theology and practica courses in celebrating Mass and the rites.This required course presents the historical development of the Church’s liturgy focusing on the
meaning of the rites: how they were/are understood theologically and
experienced spiritually as mediating God’s saving presence and how this
was/is affected by the pastoral quality of their celebration. It shows where
the liturgical rites have come from and why they are the way they are
today, so that the liturgical tradition is seen as a unity.74 The course also
incorporates treatment of the role of the Church’s artistic and musical
heritage in worship, and includes slide lectures and musical examples.
In the first semester, the seminarians learn of the Jewish matrix of Christian worship and are led through the development of the Eucharist and the
other sacramental rites, the temporal and sanctoral calendars, and the
Liturgy of the Hours, from their origin to the sixteenth century.As students
read excerpts from liturgical texts through the centuries, they see how
extensively the liturgy draws on Scripture, and begin to have a sense of “the
language of the liturgy,” which includes the language of sign and symbol.
At the beginning of the second semester, the course considers how the
liturgy developed in the Eastern Churches from the patristic period into
the principal rites celebrated today. Returning to the West, after examining the liturgies of the Protestant Reformation, the course considers the
response of the Council of Trent, the Liturgical Movement and its recovery of the Paschal Mystery as heart of the liturgy, culminating in the
Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. After careful study of the theological
vision of Sacrosanctum Concilium, explaining how the specific reforms it
called for were intended to bring about spiritual renewal, the course
turns to each aspect of the worship of the Church today (Mass, calendars,
lectionary, sacraments, etc.) as the present manifestation of the Church’s
living tradition. Special attention is given to the Praenotanda of the
reformed rites (which provide “the theological doctrine, the pastoral
motivation, and the spiritual aspect” of each rite and its parts)75 and to
the meaning of the rites’ texts and ritual actions, and to developing seminarians’ ability to grasp what is needed for celebration that is truly
pastoral, so that participants can enter into deeper union with God and
with each other as Church.The course concludes by considering what is
involved in having one’s prayer life rooted in the liturgy of the Church,
74 Ibid., Appendix 26: “When giving an orderly exposition of the individual litur-

gical actions and of the sacraments, the history of each rite must be dwelt upon
both to effect understanding of modern liturgical usage and to make sacramental theology more clear and precise.”
75 Ibid., §46.

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especially the role of the Liturgy of the Hours.This two-semester required
course thus seeks to enable seminarians to see themselves as celebrants of
the contemporary rites in continuity with the Church’s tradition of liturgical prayer, so that they will identify with it and want to open it up for
those they are leading in worship, so that it gives life.
The required course uses exposition of the history of the liturgy as
framework within which the theological, spiritual, and pastoral aspects of
the liturgy are presented, the juridical aspect being treated in the canon
law courses. While the historical aspect of the liturgy is important in its
own right, course lectures are not limited to offering descriptions of the
rites in chronological sequence. In the decades since the Council, liturgical history has sometimes been taught in a way that can leave the impression that the outward forms of the rites have been determined much
more by anthropological and sociological factors (constantly changing in
different times and places) than by theological and spiritual concerns.
Since the outward forms of the rites are the bearers of their theological
and spiritual meaning, an overemphasis on the diversity of outward forms
through the centuries can be used to support relativism in the rites’ theological meaning. This confusion can be avoided by teaching the historical development of the rites simultaneously with the Church’s theological
understanding of them, and thus presenting the history of the liturgy in
a theological way, as tradition.76
Treating the theological and historical aspects of the liturgy together
also leads to a deeper and richer understanding of the many areas of the
theological aspect specifically prescribed for study by Liturgical Formation
in Seminaries. Rather than discussing these as abstract concepts, course
lectures consider them as they are embodied in the prayers and rites of
the liturgy,77 so that seminarians can see how the Church’s understanding of, for example, the presence of Christ in liturgical actions came to
its mature articulation through centuries of worship.
As lectures present the theological meaning of a given liturgical rite,
they also consider how that rite has functioned spiritually. Treatment of
the spiritual aspect of the liturgy is enhanced by beginning each lecture
76 Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy,“Commentary,” in Liturgical Formation in Semi-

naries:A Commentary, 99:“The historicity of the liturgy should not be taught in such
a manner that the liturgy appears as though it were the product of a series of unrelated occurrences combined in a haphazard manner to shape the worship practices
of the Catholic Church so that what remains is only the product of chance.”
77 Cf. Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries, §46: “The prayers and orations of the sacred liturgy are to be
explained in a way that sheds light upon the doctrinal treasures and the spiritual
values they contain.”

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741

with a prayer taken from the historical rite to be studied, thus demonstrating how texts of liturgical prayers are not only theologically-appropriate statements, but actually express the prayer of the heart of those who
respond to God’s call through those prayers. When lectures explain the
theological dimensions of the liturgy, such as the relationship between
salvation history and the liturgy, they also point out how these dimensions are not simply concepts to be acquired, but realities that must be
understood as they are lived out in seminarians’ lives of praying with the
Church day by day—in the Liturgy of the Hours and the Eucharist,
within the unfolding of the liturgical calendar. The presentation of all
conceptual knowledge in the course is shaped by the ultimate goal that
seminarians be better able both to pray with the Church themselves, and
to enable the faithful entrusted to their care to pray.
Discussion of the pastoral aspect of the liturgy is also integrated with
the presentation of its historical, theological, and spiritual aspects. Sacrosanctum Concilium §19 states that it is one of priests’“chief duties as faithful stewards of the mysteries of God” to help the faithful understand what
God is doing in the liturgy so they can fruitfully participate in it. This
means priests themselves must not only understand what the rites mean,
how they have developed to “work” theologically and spiritually to
enable worshippers to enter into union with God, and what is necessary
for worshippers to experience this—but priests must also have the ability to explain this to their congregations. Lectures throughout the course
call attention to points particularly important for contemporary
Catholics to know, and suggest ways of explaining these things to them.
Since Sacrosanctum Concilium §35 affirms that preaching may draw on liturgical (as well as scriptural) sources, examples are also given of how a
particular source being studied could be used in a homily to convey
needed understanding of how God acts in the liturgy.
The course’s organization around how the Church has worshipped
through the centuries also provides a natural base for treating another
aspect of the pastoral dimension of the liturgy. Since the reformed liturgy
allows for a variety of ways of celebrating a given rite, in order for a celebrant to decide which of the possible options should be selected, he needs
criteria for discerning which option is most pastorally appropriate for a
given set of circumstances.As seminarians study how the liturgy developed
and begin to assimilate the tradition of how and why liturgical rites have
been celebrated, they gradually develop the ability to discern which option
in the reformed liturgy will be most helpful in a particular situation.78
78 Cf. ibid., Appendix 14.

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Further, lectures providing careful commentary on the contemporary
rites themselves, their Praenotanda and the General Instruction of the Roman
Missal, present basic pastoral principles for what is required to preside
over the Church’s worship in a manner that is faithful to the rubrics and
that will help enable worshippers to pray and enter into encounter with
God through the liturgy; later practica courses treat this in much greater
detail. Lectures are illustrated with specific examples (taken from many
years of parish experience) of instances where something went either
very well or very badly from a pastoral perspective, then pointing out the
reasons; seminarians are asked to offer examples from their own experience as well.
In addition, during the second semester, students are assigned a project
that requires working with the practical dimensions of parish liturgy. One
year, after the class selected topics related to parish liturgical life (for example, training servers, children’s liturgies, etc.), they were divided into
groups according to topic and assigned to compile extensive critical bibliographies of resources available (print, audio-visual, internet) to assist
parishes in their liturgical celebrations.Another year, after compiling similar critical bibliographies of resources regarding the many celebrations of
the temporal and sanctoral calendars, and also the Liturgy of the Hours,
the seminarians were assigned to develop a pastoral plan for making the
Church’s liturgy of time come alive in a parish. Yet another year, after
researching relevant resource material, students put together programs for
training lectors that included spiritual formation (for example, Bible study,
retreat), as well as training in public speaking. Sometimes projects required
the seminarians to write talks they would give in their upcoming summer
placements; often, they included seminarians going to their diocesan
liturgy offices and getting to know the staff and resources there.
Using the historical aspect of the liturgy as framework into which its
theological, spiritual, and pastoral aspects are integrated helps future celebrants to understand that what they will do when they stand before the
Church and lead it in worship is not arbitrary; students come to see that
the Church is Catholic not only in space but in time—each part of the
liturgy connects today’s worshippers to generations of praying Catholics
who have faithfully handed it on to them. The presentation of the
historic rites and their meaning to the seminarians is shaped by the goal
that when as priests they preside over the liturgy of the Church, they will
have a deep sense of standing rooted in a tradition that goes back two
thousand years, which they are extending outward to yet another generation, in order to draw them in.

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743

This holistic presentation of the historical, theological, spiritual, and
pastoral aspects of the liturgy as a living tradition enables seminarians to
understand that what is required in order to provide parishioners with
faithful and reverent celebration of the liturgy is not a matter of rotelearning of the rubrics for every conceivable liturgical eventuality. Given
the priest’s responsibilities for every aspect of the liturgy in a contemporary parish, and the enormous number of unforeseeable questions that
will arise, it is not possible for a priest to learn pastoral care for the liturgy
of the Church simply by memorizing a lengthy list of rules, for which he
may never have even been told the reasons. Rather, he needs to absorb
the Church’s liturgical tradition so thoroughly that it is part of who he
is, so that he lives and moves in that tradition like a fish in water, and
therefore can enable his parishioners to have their relationship with God
shaped by the Church’s liturgical tradition, even as his own is.
Required Courses Related to Liturgy
The required two-semester liturgy course lays the foundation for other
required courses related to liturgy. Sacramental theology considered from
the perspective of systematic theology is covered at a later stage in the
curriculum, after the seminarians have acquired the necessary conceptual
background in systematics through courses in Revelation,Trinity, Christology, and Grace.79 Having learned why the rites are the way they are
today80 (and therefore should not be changed by celebrants), seminarians
are prepared to learn how to celebrate them. In practica courses on the
celebration of the rites and presiding at the Eucharist, seminarians can
practice reverently presiding at the liturgy, gaining experience with the
various approved options and overcoming self-consciousness. There is
also a required course on the proclamation of the Word and required
courses in homiletics.
Elective Courses in Liturgy
For seminarians who wish to pursue their study of liturgy in greater
depth, there are also elective courses taught in seminar format, which
may be used toward an M.A. In Christian Initiation: Baptism, seminarians
trace the Church’s initiatory practice from primary sources, beginning
with scriptural evidence and patristic descriptions of the baptismal rites,
through later liturgical texts, the development of the rite and theology of
Confirmation, and finally in the RCIA. Each week seminarians consider
79 Note that Instruction on Liturgical Formation in Seminaries envisions sacramental

theology courses as distinct from courses in liturgy, §54.
80 Cf. ibid., §47.

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Pamela Jackson

another stage in the development of the rites, to see how the Church’s
liturgy has helped to mediate conversion; and they discuss what can be
learned from the Church’s rich experience to help modern-day converts
come to know Christ.
Christian Initiation: Eucharist continues the in-depth reading and discussion of Scripture, the Church Fathers, texts of actual liturgies, theological treatises, councils, and spiritual writings, this time concerning the
Eucharist.The upper-level electives thus make it possible for students to
do much more extensive reading in primary sources (actual rites, prayers,
theological texts) than was possible in the introductory required course,
to do a close reading of contemporary liturgical texts in light of Scripture and the Fathers, and to reflect with each other in seminar discussions
on what can be learned from these historic sources for fruitful pastoral
celebration of the liturgy today.Writing research papers enables them to
develop the skills they will need to write an M.A. thesis. Seminarians
who are not pursuing an M.A. may, if they prefer, use the course material toward putting together a pastoral project which they will use in their
parish assignment.
In Liturgical Time, students read and discuss sources which show the
development of the feasts and seasons, celebrations honoring Mary and
the saints, and the Liturgy of the Hours. The fourth elective, Liturgical
Spirituality, is based on the conviction that in order for a priest to help his
parishioners experience the liturgy as the source from which they draw
their very lives as Christians, as well as the highest expression—the
culmination—of that life,81 he must himself experience his own Christian life as rooted in the Church’s prayer in the liturgy and flowing from
it.Through selected readings, journal reflection, and intensive discussion,
this course seeks to enable students to enter into a truly liturgical spirituality themselves, and to begin to develop ways to lead others into it.
The set of courses just described, of course, represents only one way
that the norms for seminary liturgical training given in Sacrosanctum
Concilium and Liturgical Formation in Seminaries can be translated into a
seminary curriculum. However, while each seminary must consider how
the teaching of liturgy fits best into the curriculum as a whole, there are
some general principles that all who construct curricula in liturgy should
bear in mind. First, in order to provide today’s seminarians with the
preparation they will need to celebrate the contemporary liturgy, any
seminary curriculum should be based on the norms and vision of Sacrosanctum Concilium and Liturgical Formation in Seminaries. Second, the
81 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §10.

Liturgical Formation in Seminaries Today

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purpose of seminary training in liturgy is not primarily to teach a set of
skills or facts—but to enable priests to be “imbued with the spirit and
power of the liturgy” so that they can teach the faithful to enter into the
“full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations called for
by the very nature of the liturgy” which is “the source of the true Christian
spirit.”82 Seminary liturgical training must therefore aim toward enabling
priests to know the liturgy as “the privileged place for the encounter of
Christians with God and the one whom he has sent, Jesus Christ”83 so
that they can help those they lead in worship to experience this, and to
“more surely derive an abundance of graces” from the liturgy—which
was the purpose of the reforms.84 As Liturgical Formation in Seminaries
summarizes it, the main task of those who teach liturgy “is to lead the
students to study the liturgical texts which the seminarians must understand. This is so that, when they become celebrants of the liturgy, they
will be capable of leading the people to a knowledgeable and fruitful
N&V
participation in the mystery of Christ.”85

82 Ibid., §14.
83 John Paul II, Vicesimus Quintus Annus, §7.
84 Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §21.
85 Sacred Congregation for Catholic Education, Instruction on Liturgical Formation in

Seminaries, Appendix 5. (The translation actually reads “seminarists.”)

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 4 (2007): 747–764

747

When Evil Actions Become Good
S TEVEN J. J ENSEN
University of St.Thomas
Houston,Texas

AQUINAS STATES that an action evil in itself can never become good
under any circumstances, for example, the act of adultery is always evil; and
even if it should bring about some good, such as saving someone’s life,
nevertheless it should not be done.1 Good actions, on the other hand, can
become evil through some circumstance, as almsgiving can be evil when
done for vainglory.Why this asymmetry? Because, says Aquinas, evil arises
from any essential defect, while the good is integral, requiring that everything essential to a thing’s completion be present. Actions such as adultery
already lack some essential elements, and so they can never become good.
A text of the Quodlibetal Questions, therefore, is rather disturbing, for in
it Aquinas divides actions not into the familiar threefold distinction—
actions good in species, evil in species, and indifferent—but adds a fourth
category of actions, those that are disordered in themselves but which
may become good through some additional circumstances.The question
that St.Thomas is addressing concerns a priest receiving the income from
several parishes, but Aquinas’s example of an evil action that becomes
good is the act of killing a man. He says,
Certain actions considered absolutely imply a deformity or disorder, but
when some circumstances are added then they are made good. For
example, in itself to kill or strike a human being implies a certain deformity, but if one adds that one is killing an evil doer for the sake of justice,
or that one is striking a criminal for the sake of correction, then it will
not be a sin but virtuous. It seems that a priest having more than one
1 See, for example, De virtutibus, q. 3, a. 1; Summa theologiae I–II, q. 88, a. 6, ad 3; q.

20, a. 2, s.c. and c.; ST II–II, q. 64, a. 2, obj. 3; q. 110, a. 3; De Malo, q. 2, a. 4, ad
2; II Sentences, 36, 1, 5, ad 2.

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Steven J. Jensen
living should be counted amongst this type of action, for it contains
some disorders, but with additional circumstances it may become a
virtuous action, and the previously mentioned disorders may be entirely
removed, for example, if it is necessary to serve many churches, and one
priest may better serve the church absent than another present.2

How can this account be reconciled with Aquinas’s oft-repeated statement that an action evil in itself can never be made good? If killing a man
is in itself disordered, then why should it become good in the instance of
capital punishment?
For those who wish to interpret Aquinas in a proportionalist light, this
text appears not troubling but rather a welcome explicit statement of
Aquinas’s latent view. Louis Janssens, for instance, uses this text in an
attempt to show that Aquinas really was, at heart, a proportionalist.3 On
this reading, when Aquinas speaks of the moral species of an action, he
refers to a description of the action that builds moral good or evil into it.
The moral species of adultery, for instance, might be “having sexual relations with a married woman with whom one should not.” So that saying
adultery is morally evil is a tautology, and precisely for this reason no
circumstance can ever make it to be good. In Quodlibetum 9, then, when
Aquinas speaks of actions evil in themselves that may become good, he
is not referring to moral evil but rather to what the proportionalists call
premoral evil. He is claiming that the act of killing a man has some ontic
evil associated with it, such as the death of the man killed, but that its
moral evil has not yet been determined, and for this reason the action can
become good. According to Janssens, this text makes perfect sense on
proportionalist assumptions and on no other.4
2 Quodlibetum, 9, q. 7, a. 2:“sunt vero quaedam actiones quae absolute consideratae,

deformitatem vel inordinationem quamdam important, quae tamen aliquibus
circumstantiis advenientibus bonae efficiuntur; sicut occidere hominem vel
percutere, in se deformitatem quamdam importat, sed si addatur, occidere malefactorem propter iustitiam, vel percutere delinquentem causa disciplinae, non erit
peccatum, sed virtuosum. in numero harum actionum videtur esse habere plures
praebendas. quamvis enim aliquas inordinationes contineat; tamen aliae circumstantiae possunt supervenire ita honestantes actum, quod praedictae inordinationes
totaliter evacuantur; utputa si sit necessitas in pluribus ecclesiis eius obsequio, et
possit plus servire ecclesiae vel tantumdem absens quam alius praesens, et si qua alia
sunt huiusmodi.”
3 Louis Janssens,“Norms and Priorities in a Love Ethic,” Louvain Studies 6 (1977):
207–38; “St. Thomas and the Question of Proportionality,” Louvain Studies 9
(1982): 26–46; “A Moral Understanding of Some Arguments of St. Thomas,”
Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 63 (1987): 354–60.
4 Similarly, although James F. Ross (“Justice Is Reasonableness:Aquinas on Human
Law and Morality,” The Monist 58 [1974]: 86–103) does not directly address this

When Evil Actions Become Good

749

Mark Johnson, however, has shown that this reading of the text is untenable.5 The disorders of which St.Thomas speaks cannot be premoral evil,
but must be full-fledged moral evil. After all, according to the proportionalist account, ontic evil remains as part of a good moral action, for
example, the ontic evil of killing an unborn baby remains in an act of
abortion, even when on proportionalist reasoning the act is morally good
through its proportion to the saving of the mother’s life. In contrast, the
deformities that Aquinas discusses are, as he says, “entirely removed.”We
may conclude, then, that proportionalism cannot successfully appropriate
this text for its purposes.
For those inclined to the moral philosophy of John Finnis and Germain
Grisez, this quodlibetal passage exposes precisely what is wrong with Aquinas’s
teaching on capital punishment.6 Aquinas recognizes that it is wrong to kill
a man, that this action is inherently disordered, and yet he allows it in the
instance of capital punishment.Were he consistent, then he would treat the
act of killing a man like any other action evil in itself, holding that its evil
cannot be removed even in the instance of capital punishment.
If you are inclined to neither of these readings of St.Thomas, then you
might wish to avoid this text, perhaps treating it as a rare instance of Aquinas
speaking without precision, or as an early foray into moral theory that
Aquinas later abandoned. Unfortunately, this passage cannot be discounted
so readily, for a smattering of other texts resonate with it.
Perhaps the closest parallel comes from a passage of the prima pars in
which Thomas says:
Some thing may be good or evil in its first consideration, insofar as it
is considered absolutely, but if in a consequent consideration something
additional is accounted, then it may become the opposite. For example,
considered absolutely, it is good for a man to live and evil for him to
be killed, but if we add concerning some man that he is a murderer or
that his continued life is a danger to the community, then it is good to
kill him and evil for him to live.7
text, his account of exceptions to moral rules implies that moral principles are
just “policies” (91). Calling something evil in itself, then, could only mean that
it is for the most part evil. General rules, he says, are a balancing or compromise
of conflicting natural law policies (99), much as proportionalist reasoning
involves a balancing of premoral goods and evils.
5 “Proportionalism and a Text of the Young Aquinas: Quodlibetum IX, Q. 7, A. 2,”
Theological Studies 53 (1992): 683–99.
6 See, for example, Germain Grisez, “Toward a Consistent Natural Law Ethics of
Killing,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 15 (1970): 64–96.
7 ST I, q. 19, a. 6, ad 1:“aliquid autem potest esse in prima sui consideratione, secundum quod absolute consideratur, bonum vel malum, quod tamen, prout cum

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Steven J. Jensen

This passage is concerned with different ways that we can will something, antecedently or consequently. It is no surprise, then, that elsewhere
while discussing different senses of willing,Thomas once again raises our
topic. We find an explicit reference by returning to the quodlibeta, this
time to a late quodlibetum, probably as a late as 1271. He says that,
Something might be good considered in the universal, which turns out
to be evil on account of some particular circumstances, for example,
generating a child is good, but generating a child with someone who is
not one’s wife is evil. Similarly, something considered in universal can
be evil, which nevertheless becomes good given some particular
circumstances, for example, of itself killing is evil, but killing a man
harmful to the community is good.8

Finally, in the secunda secundae while discussing whether women can
adorn themselves apart from mortal sin, St. Thomas makes an offhand
reference to actions that are evil in themselves but sometimes are morally
acceptable.9 The third objector claims that it is a sin for women to wear
men’s clothing. Aquinas does not doubt the supposition, but replies:
Exterior clothing should correspond to the state of the person in accordance with common custom, so it is of itself sinful for women to wear
men’s clothing and vice versa, especially since this can cause lustful
desires; therefore, it is specifically prohibited in the law, since the Gentiles
used to exchange clothes for the purposes of idolatrous superstition.
Nevertheless, this action can be done without sin because of some necessity, either for the purpose of hiding from the enemy, or because there is
no other clothing available, or for other reasons of this sort.10
aliquo adiuncto consideratur, quae est consequens consideratio eius, e contrario se
habet. sicut hominem vivere est bonum, et hominem occidi est malum, secundum
absolutam considerationem, sed si addatur circa aliquem hominem, quod sit homicida, vel vivens in periculum multitudinis, sic bonum est eum occidi, et malum est
eum vivere.”
8 Quodlibetum 5, q. 5, a. 3: “contingit autem aliquid in universali consideratum esse
bonum, quod tamen secundum aliquas particulares circumstantias redditur malum;
sicut generare filios est bonum, sed generare filios ex non sua uxore est malum. et
similiter contingit, aliquid in universali consideratum esse malum, quod tamen
secundum aliquas particulares circumstantias fit bonum; sicut occidere, secundum
se est malum, sed occidere hominem perniciosum multitudini, est bonum.”
9 Aquinas uses the Latin word vitiosus rather than malum, a difference that appears
of little import, although it may more forcefully exclude the proportionalist
interpretation. De virtutibus, q. 3, a. 1, also speaks about what is vitiosus in itself,
but here he says that such actions may never become good.
10 ST I–II, q. 169, a. 2, ad 3:“ad tertium dicendum quod, sicut dictum est, cultus exterior debet competere conditioni personae secundum communem consuetudinem.

When Evil Actions Become Good

751

This short selection of texts reveals that Aquinas did not abandon the
idea that some actions can be evil considered in themselves but can
become good with the addition of some circumstance.While he did not
find this manner of speaking the most expedient, neither did he consider
it inconsistent with his overall ethical theory.
We are left with the following perplexity. Aquinas granted, as late as
the secunda secundae, that some actions are wrong in themselves, but that
they can become good.11 He did not mean that they are evil in species,
because he clearly indicates that what is evil in species can in no way
become good. Neither was he referring to a proportionalist premoral
evil.What, then, did he mean? Was he merely struggling with an inconsistency in his moral views? Or is there some way to reconcile these troubling texts with the rest of Aquinas’s moral theory?
I wish to sketch just such a reconciliation.We have two difficulties to
face. First, we must explain how an action in itself disordered can have its
disorder removed. Second, we must explain how these actions are different from actions such as adultery, which are evil in species and can never
have their disorder removed.

et ideo de se vitiosum est quod mulier utatur veste virili aut e converso, et praecipue quia hoc potest esse causa lasciviae. et specialiter prohibetur in lege, quia
gentiles tali mutatione habitus utebantur ad idololatriae superstitionem. potest
tamen quandoque hoc fieri sine peccato propter aliquam necessitatem, vel causa
occultandi ab hostibus, vel propter defectum alterius vestimenti, vel propter aliquid
aliud huiusmodi.”
11 Someone might wish to connect our difficulty with the question of dispensations from the Decalogue. (See, for example, In I Sent., d. 47, q. 1, a. 4; In III Sent.,
d. 37, a. 4; In IV Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 2; I–II, 100, 8; De Malo, 3, 1, ad 17). Our topic
of evil actions that become good is certainly in some manner related to the question of dispensations from the Decalogue, but we should not suppose that the
two are identical. Proportionalists have attempted to use the dispensations to
show that all moral rules—unless they contain a moral judgment in them—have
exceptions (See John F. Dedek,“Intrinsically Evil Acts: an Historical Study of the
Mind of St.Thomas,” The Thomist 43 [1979], 385–413; Franz Scholz, “Problems
on Norms Raised by Ethical Borderline Situations: Beginnings of a Solution in
Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure,” in Readings in Moral Theology: No. 1 [edited
by Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, New York: Paulist Press,
1977], 158–83). For the most parts,Aquinas’s treatment of dispensations from the
Decalogue differs from our topic for two reasons. First, because the dispensations
involve something supernatural, beyond the order of nature; second, because
most of the dispensations do not involve an evil action becoming good, but
rather an action that changes its nature, as we will see with theft further on.

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Abstract and Concrete
Our problem is not merely a matter of consistency with Aquinas’s teaching on actions evil in species; the difficulty appears to be logical.The act
of killing has a feature considered in itself, namely, its evil, that it loses in
some concrete situations. It is perplexing how something could have an
attribute in itself and yet lack that attribute in the concrete. Additional
considerations, it seems, can add an attribute but not remove it.
In this respect, however, moral evil is not alone. Other attributes also
disappear in the concrete. For example, actions done in fear are against
the will when considered in themselves, but they become voluntary with
some consequent considerations. The action of throwing cargo into the
sea, for instance, is in itself contrary to the will of the captain.Yet during
a violent storm this action is also an act of throwing a life-threatening
weight into the sea, and considered precisely as such it is voluntary.12
One and the same action is both according to the captain’s will and
against his will. Of course, in the concrete instance it is only according to
his will and not at all against his will, for in the concrete, the will does
not tend to the action as jettisoning cargo but as disposing of a dangerous weight.
Throwing the cargo overboard is both voluntary and contrary to the
will because these attributes, when applied to the exterior action, are relative terms; they involve a relation between the action and the person’s will.
A voluntary act relates to the will as originating from it; an action against
the will is related as opposed to the inclination of the will. Relations vary
depending upon the term to which they are directed. The Earth, for
instance, is larger when compared to the moon, but smaller when
compared to the sun. Similarly, a single exterior action might be voluntary in comparison to one will and against the will in relation to another.
Of course, in the case of the cargo there are not three things, such as the
Earth, the sun, and the moon, but only two, the captain’s will and the one
action of jettisoning cargo. How, then, do we generate more than a single
relation? By considering the single action in different respects.
12 The second objection of ST I–II, q. 6, a. 6, although it concerns involuntary

actions rather than disordered actions, expresses well our perplexity: “praeterea,
quod est secundum se tale, quolibet addito remanet tale, sicut quod secundum se
est calidum, cuicumque coniungatur, nihilominus est calidum, ipso manente. sed
illud quod per metum agitur, secundum se est involuntarium. ergo etiam adveniente metu est involuntarium.” Similarly, we might argue that if killing a man is
evil of itself, then it must remain so, no matter what is added to it. How can something of itself apply to the universal, and yet disappear in the concrete instance? If
killing a man is not always disordered, then why describe it as disordered in itself?
Why not simply say that it is sometimes disordered and sometimes not?

When Evil Actions Become Good

753

The single action of jettisoning cargo is also, in the concrete, an action
of jettisoning weight; it is both eliminating a good and eliminating an
evil.These two aspects of the single action relate to the will in opposite
manners. Of course, the concrete action cannot have opposite relations
to a single will, for in the concrete the will moves either toward or away
from this action. But Aquinas says that the will, since it is a rational
appetite, can relate to something considered absolutely or in the
abstract,13 that is, the captain can consider simply the act of throwing
cargo overboard, without considering what else it might be, such as an
action of jettisoning a dangerous weight; and his will can respond to it as
such.The will, then, can relate to the same action in two different ways;
it can move away from the action considered in itself, yet tend toward the
action in the concrete. It follows that the action considered in itself may
relate to the will differently than the action in the concrete.14
The evil of killing a man, as well, can be present while considered
absolutely but absent in the concrete. This disappearance of evil follows
the pattern of the disappearance of being against one’s will. After all, two
of the four instances in which Aquinas mentions the removal of evil are
within the context of discussions of willing something absolutely and
concretely. Furthermore, just as the cargo has two aspects—it is both
valuable and dangerous—so we find that in Aquinas’s treatment of capital punishment, the individual has two aspects.
A man may be considered in two ways, either in himself or in comparison to something else. It is in no way permissible to kill a man considered
13 In III Ethicorum, lect. 5, 444. See Stephen L. Brock, Action and Conduct: Thomas

Aquinas and the Theory of Action (Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 1998), 151.
14 We will now try to make sense of ST II–II, q. 6, a. 6, ad 2, which reads as follows,

“ad secundum dicendum quod ea quae absolute dicuntur, quolibet addito remanent talia, sicut calidum et album, sed ea quae relative dicuntur, variantur secundum comparationem ad diversa; quod enim est magnum comparatum huic, est
parvum comparatum alteri. voluntarium autem dicitur aliquid non solum
propter seipsum, quasi absolute, sed etiam propter aliud, quasi relative. et ideo
nihil prohibet aliquid quod non esset voluntarium alteri comparatum fieri
voluntarium per comparationem ad aliud.” It is difficult to determine exactly
what Aquinas means, but his last sentence seems to imply that when we say
throwing the cargo overboard, in general, is involuntary, we do not mean it in a
quasi-absolute sense, for it is in comparison to one thing; therefore, when it is
compared to another, it might be voluntary.We could say, perhaps, that the act of
jettisoning is involuntary when compared to cargo, but voluntary when
compared to a dangerous weight.Aquinas does speak of things that are voluntary
propter seipsum, quasi-absolute, but he never grants that what is done in fear is ever
involuntary in this manner. In other words, the only part of the reply that really
addresses the issue at hand may be the very last sentence.

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Steven J. Jensen
in himself, because in anyone, even in a sinner, we ought to love his nature,
which God made, and which is destroyed through killing. But as was said
above, killing a sinner is made licit through comparison to the common
good, which is corrupted through sin. Since the life of just men preserves
and promotes the common good, because they are the primary part of the
multitude, it is in no manner licit to kill the innocent.15

Just as the action of jettisoning cargo is both an act of eliminating something good and an act of eliminating something evil, so the act of killing a
man is both an action of bringing about the evil of that particular individual, and an action of bringing about the common good. If we consider
the action simply in relation to the individual, then it is an act of bringing about evil, and as such it is disordered, but if we consider the action
in relation to this man who is a threat to the common good, then it is an
act of bringing about good, and as such it is well ordered. In the concrete
instance, of course, the act of killing a man cannot be both disordered and
ordered, but must be only one or the other.What applies in the universal does not apply in every concrete instance.
A troubling perplexity remains unresolved in this article, and it seems
to be the very perplexity that we seek to solve. If it is wrong to kill an
individual simply as an individual, then how can it ever be acceptable to
kill someone? If it is wrong to kill an individual considered in himself,
then is it not always wrong to kill an individual, since he retains, even
when a sinner, that which makes it objectionable to kill him? How can
the additional consideration, relating the individual to the common
good, remove what is already objectionable about the action?
Germain Grisez will inform us that Aquinas is being inconsistent, for
the disorder of killing an individual can never be removed.16 Louis
Janssens, on the other hand, will inform us that there is no need to
remove the evil of killing an individual, for this evil is only premoral.17
Aquinas, however, takes neither approach. He thinks that the disorder of
killing an individual is indeed a moral disorder, but it is removed in the
15 ST II–II, q. 64, a. 6 “respondeo dicendum quod aliquis homo dupliciter consid-

erari potest, uno modo, secundum se; alio modo, per comparationem ad aliud.
secundum se quidem considerando hominem, nullum occidere licet, quia in
quolibet, etiam peccatore, debemus amare naturam, quam deus fecit, quae per
occisionem corrumpitur. sed sicut supra dictum est, occisio peccatoris fit licita
per comparationem ad bonum commune, quod per peccatum corrumpitur. vita
autem iustorum est conservativa et promotiva boni communis, quia ipsi sunt
principalior pars multitudinis. et ideo nullo modo licet occidere innocentem.
16 See note 6 above.
17 See note 3 above.

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instance of capital punishment. Unfortunately, he does not explain how
it is removed.
If our suggestion is correct, then the evil of the action, like being
voluntary, must be a relational term. Furthermore, it must involve some
term, like the will, that can relate to something when considered in itself.
Only a rational power could meet this requirement. As we will now see,
it is precisely a relation to reason that determines the moral good or evil
of actions.
Moral Species of Actions
Let us begin by examining what Aquinas says of actions receiving their
species from their objects.
When it is compared to one active principle, an act will be specified
according to some formality of an object, but when it is compared to
another active principle it will not be specified by that same formality.
For . . . to know white and to know black differ in species if they are
referred to sight but not if they are referred to taste. One may conclude
that the act of any potency is specified according to that which per se
pertains to that potency, not by that which pertains to it per accidens.18

The actions of sensing a white rose and sensing a red rose may or may
not be distinct in species, depending upon what sense you are talking
about. Seeing white and seeing red are two different kinds of seeing, but
smelling a white rose is no different from smelling a red rose. One active
principle, the sense of sight, gives rise to distinct species, while another,
the sense of smell, does not, for it refers not to the formality of colors but
to odors.
Aquinas goes on to say that the principle of human actions is reason,
and therefore, human actions take their species from the object insofar as
it relates per se to reason. He then draws out the consequences.
If we consider objects of human actions that differ in something pertaining per se to reason, then the acts will differ in species insofar as they are
acts of reason, but they might not differ in species insofar as they are acts
18 De Malo, 2, 4:“Ad cuius evidentiam considerandum est, quod cum actus recipiat

speciem ab obiecto, secundum aliquam rationem obiecti specificabitur actus
comparatus ad unum activum principium, secundum quam rationem non specificabitur camparatus ad aliud. . . . Et similiter sentire album et nigrum differt
specie si referatur ad visum, non si referatur ad gustum; ex quo potest accipi quod
actus cuiuslibet potentiae specificatur secundum id quod per se pertinet ad illam
potentiam, non autem secundum id quod pertinet ad eam solum per accidens.”
Also see ST I–II, q. 18, a. 5; and ST I, q. 77, a. 3.

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of some other power. For example, to know one’s wife and to know one
who is not one’s wife are two actions whose objects differ in something
pertaining to reason, for to know one’s own and to know what is not
one’s own are determined by the measure of reason.This same difference,
however, is related per accidens in comparison either to the power of
generation or to the sexual desire.Therefore, to know one’s own and to
know what is not one’s own differ in species insofar as they are acts of
reason but not insofar as they are acts of the generative power or of the
sexual desire. An act is human, however, insofar as it is an act of reason.
Clearly, then, the two differ in species insofar as they are human actions.19

Just as the color of a rose refers per se to the power of sight but not to
the power of smell, so the object of an act of sexual intercourse may have
some formality that refers per se to reason but not to the power of generation. To the power of generation, the object is just a woman; to reason
it is “one’s wife” or “not one’s wife.”To the power of generation the action
is specified merely as sexual intercourse; to reason it is specified as adultery or conjugal relations.
We have, it seems, our relational term. Just as being according to or
against one’s will depends on how an action relates to the will, so being
morally good or evil depends on how an action relates to reason. By
better understanding this relation we may be able to solve our difficulty.
Unfit Material
The material must refer per se to reason—not speculative reason which
simply aims to understand the truth, but practical reason which directs our
activities to achieve some end. But under what formality does the material refer to practical reason? Colors refer per se to sight, and odors refer
per se to the power of smell, but what refers per se to practical reason?
The answer, it seems, depends on the potential of the material to realize the activity of the active principle. Color is precisely that aspect of an
19 De Malo, 2, 4: “si ergo obiecta humanorum actuum considerentur quae habeant

differentias secundum aliquid per se ad rationem pertinentes, erunt actus specie
differentes, secundum quod sunt actus rationis, licet non sint species differentes,
secundum quod sunt actus alicuius alterius potentiae; sicut cognoscere mulierem
suam et cognoscere mulierem non suam, sunt actus habentes obiecta differentia
secundum aliquid ad rationem pertinens; nam suum et non suum determinantur
secundum regulam rationis; quae tamen differentiae per accidens se habent si
comparentur ad vim generativam, vel etiam ad vim concupiscibilem. et ideo
cognoscere suam et cognoscere non suam, specie differunt secundum quod sunt
actus rationis, non autem secundum quod sunt actus generativae aut concupiscibilis. in tantum autem sunt actus humani in quantum sunt actus rationis. sic ergo
patet quod differunt specie in quantum sunt actus humani.”

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object by which it can be seen, and odor is that aspect of an object by
which it can be smelled. Similarly, the material must relate to reason insofar as it is able to be acted upon by reason. Since practical reason seeks to
order to the end, the material will refer per se to practical reason precisely
insofar as it can be ordered to the good.20 Sexual activity, for instance,
receives its moral species insofar as the object is ordered to the good of
procreation. A man having sexual relations with an animal or with
another man is acting upon material that is not ordered to the end, and
so the action is evil. On the other hand, if the object is a woman, then
the action is ordered at least to begetting a child. The color of the
woman’s hair or the shape of her body are irrelevant to the moral species;
what matters is whether the material can be ordered to the end of the
action. For any moral species, then, we must first know to what end an
action is directed. If we did not know that sexual activity is directed to
the end of procreation, then neither would we know what objects are
appropriate for the activity. Given the end of an activity, we then look to
the material to see whether it can be directed to this end.As Aquinas says:
Moral actions, as was said, receive their species from the object insofar as
it is compared to reason; therefore it is commonly said that actions are
good or evil in species, and that an act good in species bears upon appropriate material, as feeding the hungry, while actions evil in species are those
that bear upon unfitting material, as taking what belongs to another.21

The actions that are evil considered in themselves fit this pattern.They
all have material unfit for the end to which they are directed. Consider
the act of wearing clothing, which Aquinas says is directed to the end of
signifying one’s state in life. Obviously, this activity has other purposes as
well, such as protection from the environment; but if we consider simply
the end of signifying one’s state in society and we consider that it is a man
who is wearing clothing, then clearly the material of “women’s clothing”
is not directed to the end of the activity, and so the action is disordered.
In the instance of killing a man, the activity is bringing about death.
The material, on the other hand, is an individual human being, someone
20 See ST I, q. 77, a. 3. In De anima, bk. II, cap. 9, nos. 165–78, indicates that the

material gives species insofar as it is in potential for the end or form. See also
Brock, Action and Conduct, 89.
21 De Malo, 2, 4, ad 5: “actus autem moralis, sicut dictum est, recipit speciem ab
obiecto secundum quod comparatur ad rationem; et ideo dicitur communiter,
quod actus quidam sunt boni vel mali ex genere; et quod actus bonus ex genere,
est actus cadens supra debitam materiam, sicut pascere esurientem; actus autem
malus ex genere est qui cadit supra indebitam materiam, sicut subtrahere aliena;
materia enim actus, dicitur obiectum ipsius.”

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with a nature capable of sharing in the human good. Unlike a car or a
computer, things directed to the good of being used, human beings are
meant themselves to be subjects of the good and are fit material for the
activity of sharing the good, not for the activity of bringing about evil.
The act of killing a man, therefore, is disordered, for it brings about the
evil of death in material that is meant to be the subject of good.
For the sake of time I will pass over the more difficult case of the priest
taking more than one benefice, although we may assume that it too bears
upon inappropriate material.22
These actions, then, have unfitting material and so they are disordered.
How, then, is the disorder removed?
Multiple Orders to the Human Good
Recall that the single action of bringing about death can be both an
action of bringing about the evil of the individual and an action of bringing about justice for the common good. Death relates in two different
ways to the human good, so that while it involves one natural form it can
be diverse kinds of good or evil. The action of killing a man in capital
punishment, then, insofar as it is ordered to the human good, is ambiguous. As the active principle of moral actions, then, reason can relate in
diverse ways to the act of killing a man; it can order the action to evil or
to good.
Now the material of an action relates per se to reason insofar as it is
compared to the order of the action. Just as the material of wax relates to
the activity of heating insofar as it is able to take on the form of heat, so
the material of the human action relates to reason insofar as it is able to
take on the good or evil introduced by reason. In the activity of killing, a
single natural form is introduced, namely, death, and the person who is
killed is certainly able to take on this natural form; he is not immortal.The
moral question, however, is whether he is able to take on the form of good
22 The case of the priest taking more than one benefice is more difficult to analyze,

but I think it is best viewed as an instance of a passive activity, as the priest
accepting or consenting to being acted upon by the benefactor.The benefactor,
then, is directing the priest to care for the parish, and by accepting the benefice,
the priest consents to be the material of the action.The priest’s action is morally
good if he in fact is material properly disposed to receive the action of the benefactor, that is, if he indeed is present in the parish and caring for its members.
Taking a second benefice, then, for a church from which he will be absent, is
inherently disordered, the priest is not properly disposed to receive the direction
given by the benefactor, namely, to care for the parishioners. Aquinas also sees
other disorders associated with the taking of a second benefice, but I need not
delve into these.

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or evil introduced. But here is the difficulty.We cannot say, just by considering the natural form of death, what good or evil is introduced; it might
be the evil of the individual or it might be the common good.
Is the material acted upon, then, able to take on the moral form that
reason introduces? No single answer can be given. If the form introduced
is the evil of the individual, then the material is not fit and the action
itself is evil. If the form introduced is the common good, then sometimes,
when the individual is a criminal and a danger, it is able to bear the form;
as such, the action is good.The act of bringing about death has no inherent order to which the material can respond.We cannot say simply that
the material of a human being is capable or not of being ordered to the
end of death.That depends in what way death is being ordered. Is it being
ordered to the individual, in which case it is an evil, or is it being ordered
to the common good, in which case it can be a good? The material of a
human being is not usually fit material for an act of killing directed to
the good, but if the individual is a criminal whose actions have directed
himself against the common good, then he may be fit material for the act
of killing.
A similar ambiguity is found in the act of wearing clothing.This single
action is ordered to many human goods, such as revealing one’s state in
society, protecting oneself from the environment, and so on. We cannot
say, then, whether a material is fitting or not fitting for this action, unless
we know what order is found within the action. No material relates per
se to the action simply as such.The single natural form of donning clothing has many diverse orders attached to it. Before some material can
relate per se to an action, that action must have a definite order to some
human good or evil.Then the material can be seen as capable of bearing
that good or not, as fitting or unfitting for this good.
Disordered in Itself
Perhaps we have made our case too strong.We have distanced the act of
killing a man from any moral species, but in so doing have we not also
entirely eliminated its disorder? We wish to say, after all, that the act of
killing a man, absolutely considered, is disordered. But if it is disordered,
then must it not have unfitting material, as we have argued previously?
But how can it have unfitting material if it is ambiguous in its order to
the end? We cannot have our cake and eat it too. Either it is disordered
in itself, in which case it has unfitting material, or it is ambiguous in its
order to the end, in which case we cannot identify, just in itself, whether
the material is fitting or unfitting.

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Fortunately, this is precisely a situation in which we can have our cake
and eat it too.When we consider the act of killing a man, in itself, we are
considering it as bearing upon an individual human being, without
considering that he is also a part of the common good. Such a consideration, however, removes the ambiguity with regard to the human good,
for death is unequivocally the evil of the individual man. Such material,
then, when considered abstractly, is indeed unfitting for the act of bringing about death. Similarly, when we describe clothing as “women’s,” we
are considering it precisely insofar as it is ordered to the end of signifying the state of being a woman. We are abstracting from the possibility
that the material could be capable of bearing some other order. We are
considering the action, then, precisely insofar as it is meant to reveal one’s
state in life; and the ambiguity concerning orders to the end is removed.
As long as we consider these actions abstractly, we consider them as
involving a single order to a good or evil. Similarly, when we consider the
act of throwing cargo into the sea, in itself, we consider it simply as
destroying a good, abstracting from the possibility that it might also be an
act of destroying something dangerous. The will reacts adversely toward
destroying a good, and so the action, considered absolutely, is involuntary.
In the concrete instance, however, the will might very well be ordered to
this action in other ways. Similarly, although the act of killing a man,
considered precisely as an act of killing an individual human being, is
disordered, since it is bringing about the evil of that individual, nevertheless, in the concrete instance the action might be ordered to the man
as a part of the common good.
We began by noting that being against the will or according to the will
involves a relation between an action and the will.We concluded that an
action being disordered or well ordered must also involve the relation
between an action and some other term, which we identified as reason
ordering to the end. Just as the will might relate to the act of throwing
cargo overboard in diverse ways, so reason might order the act of killing
a man to diverse ends. If we consider the act of jettisoning cargo in itself,
on the other hand, then the will relates to it only as moving away from
it; similarly, if we consider the act of killing a man in itself, then reason
has but one order for the act, namely, the order to that individual’s evil.
The act is disordered in itself, but that disorder may disappear in the
concrete, where reason finds diverse orders for the action.
Evil from Any Single Defect
We must turn to our second difficulty: if some actions can have their
moral evil removed, then how is it that other actions cannot, such as theft

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and adultery? Even if we have succeeded in explaining how something
can be disordered in itself and yet well ordered in the concrete instance,
we still have a formidable task ahead.We have yet to explain why adultery
is different. Why can the disorder associated with killing a man be
removed, while the disorder of adultery must always remain? The problem
is especially acute for an action such as theft, which St.Thomas says is evil
in its species and can never be made good; yet Aquinas allows that sometimes we can take what we need, as a starving person might take a loaf of
bread. He does not explain this apparent exception, however, in the
manner that he has explained the exception to killing a man, by saying the
deformity can be removed. Rather, he says that in necessity all things are
held in common, so this act of taking in need is not in fact an act of
theft.23 Why would Aquinas choose this seemingly casuistic approach
when he had another alternative available? Why did he not say, simply, that
taking what belongs to another, considered absolutely, is wrong, but it can
become good with the additional circumstance of necessity?24 Is it, as the
proportionalists claim, that theft simply means ‘the wrongful taking of
what belongs to others’? Does it include moral evil within its definition,
so that Aquinas could in no way say that it becomes good?
Let us see how the activity of theft derives its species.The act of taking
some object is directed in the broadest sense to using that object.Whatever the thief plans to do, even if he simply intends to destroy the object,
he is inevitably using it. Possession or ownership, however, designates to
whose use an object is directed. To say that this car belongs to me is to
say that it is directed to my use.25 If I take what belongs to someone else,
then, I am taking what, by definition, is not directed to my use, and so
my action is disordered. A form is being introduced by reason, namely,
the use of the object. If by ‘using the object’ we mean merely the physical activity, then the material is certainly able to bear the form; the thief
23 ST II–II, q. 66, a.7.
24 Some thinkers classify taking in need together with returning deposits, supposing

either that both are exceptionless norms or both are norms with exceptions. See,
for instance, R. A. Armstrong, Primary and Secondary Precepts in Thomistic Natural
Law Teaching. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. 1966, at 164, who ultimately supposes
that both are exceptionless. John Boler, however, (“Aquinas on Exceptions in
Natural Law,” in Scott McDonald [editor] Aquinas’s Moral Theory: Essays in Honor
of Norman Kretzman. Cornell University Press: Ithaca, New York, 1998, 161–204,
at 185–87) provides a good division of exceptions, in which the case of theft, and
others like it, are not truly exceptions but cases in which the nature of the action
itself changes, while returning deposits is truly a norm that has exceptions.
25 Or rather, the procurement for my use (ST II–II, q. 66, a. 2). The argument is
simplified greatly, however, by eliminating the middle term of procurement.

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is able to use the car he steals. But if by ‘using the object’ we are referring not merely to physical activity but to a human good introduced by
reason, then the material is able or not able to bear the form depending
upon possession. If the person owns the object, then the material is well
proportioned to the human good of using it. If he does not own it, then
it is unfit material.
Apprehending the evil of theft, then, need not introduce some tautological moral judgment. Theft is not ‘wrongful taking;’ it is taking what
is not ordered to one’s use. The judgment that one should not take it
follows immediately, but it is not built into the definition. In this regard,
theft is no different from the act of killing a man or the act of a man
wearing women’s clothing. These actions, as well, bear upon unfitting
material, at least when considered in themselves. In what way, then, is
theft different from these actions? Why is it always evil?
The reason, it seems, is that the order to the end is irremovably
connected with the act of theft.The order toward revealing one’s state is
associated with wearing clothing but not necessarily connected to it.The
order to the good of the individual is not of necessity joined to our
actions toward others, for some acts of the state can be directed to the
common good, apart from the good of the individual. In contrast, the
order to the good of using something is unavoidably connected to the act
of theft; to take something is to use it in some manner. Similarly, the order
toward procreation is necessarily associated with sexual activity, so actions
such as adultery or fornication must always be disordered.26
Strictly speaking, for the act of killing, the material of a human being
does not relate per se to reason. There is no necessarily identifiable end
associated with the action. It follows that one cannot say whether the
material is able to bear that end or not; further information must be
provided. Likewise, for the act of a man wearing clothing, the material of
‘women’s clothing’ does not relate per se to reason.There is no necessary
end associated with the act of wearing clothing, or at least the end of
revealing one’s state is not necessary, so that one cannot say whether the
material can bear the end or not. In contrast, the act of taking something
is necessarily directed to the good of using it, whatever other ends it might
also be directed toward.Therefore, if the material cannot bear this good,
26 Possibly, this point might be put in term of the distinction (made only in the

Sentences) between the primary and secondary ends of an action. While sexual
activity can be for the sake of the good of the spouses, its primary end, of procreation, must always remain. See Williams Sweet,“Persons, Precepts, and Maritain’s
Account of the Universality of Natural Law.” Maritain Studies 14 (1998), 141–65,
at 149–52; Armstrong, Primary and Secondary Precepts, 58–75.

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because it belongs to someone else, then the action must always be wrong.
Likewise, the act of sexual activity is necessarily directed to the good of
procreation, whatever other ends it might also have.Therefore, if the material cannot bear this good, then the action must always be wrong.
But then why should we say that actions such as killing a man are evil
when considered in themselves? If further information must be provided
before we have a definite order to an end, then how can these actions be
evil? Because in the abstract we consider the action precisely under the
formality of a certain order.“Wearing clothing” is ambiguous with regard
to the order of reason, but when we consider “wearing women’s clothing” we are focusing precisely upon the end of revealing one’s state, just
as if we consider “wearing warm clothing” we are considering the act of
wearing clothing precisely insofar as it protects us from the environment.
The very description “women’s clothing” is a description of clothing insofar as it reveals a certain state.Therefore, a man wearing women’s clothing, considered in itself, is directed to the end of revealing one’s state, but
it bears upon unfitting material. Similarly, while the act of killing is
ambiguous with regard to the end, when we consider the act of killing a
human being, just in itself, we are considering the action insofar as it
bears upon this individual. As such, it should be directed to the good of
the individual but is not.
In these instances, the order to the end arises because we consider the
action precisely insofar as it has this order. Further considerations might
reveal that this order need not be present in the concrete circumstances.
In contrast, for the act of theft the order to the end arises not simply
because the action is considered under the formality of this order but
because the order to using the object is unavoidably connected to the act
of taking. In no way, then, can this order be removed; consequently, the
material must always be inappropriate.
In capital punishment, we do not merely supply an additional order, as
if covering up or outweighing the original disorder. Rather, a determination is made between two orders that the action might have; the ambiguity associated with death is resolved. We do not have, then, a disorder
that is patched over, but a disorder that is never realized in the concrete.27
The disorders of theft and of fornication, on the other hand, must always
be realized in the concrete, because the action has no ambiguity in its
order to the end. Since any single defect makes for evil, it follows that
27 Sweet (“Persons, Precepts and Maritain’s Account,” 152) goes so far as to say that

when a precept is not reasonable in a concrete situation then it ceases to be a
precept. It is better, perhaps, simply to say that the precept does not apply,
although it remains a precept, since precepts concern actions in themselves.

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theft and fornication will always be evil. Killing a man in the instance of
capital punishment is good not because it has a defect trumped by good,
but because it has no defect, given the particular order that is realized in
N&V
the action.

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765

Reflections on Presbyterorum Ordinis
L AWRENCE J. W ELCH
Kenrick-Glennon Seminary
St. Louis, Missouri
and

G UY M ANSINI O.S.B.
Saint Meinrad School of Theology
St. Meinrad, Indiana

A LTHOUGH the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Ministry
and Life of Priests, Presbyterorum Ordinis, is novel in conception and
expression relative to a narrowly Tridentine view of the priesthood, this
originality functions to assert more important continuities with the greater
breadth of Scripture, the ancient liturgy, and the Fathers.1 The Decree is a
synthesis of two conceptions of the priesthood, one stressing the consecration of the presbyter effected in the sacrament of Holy Orders, the other
stressing the mission of the presbyter received in the sacrament.Archbishop
François Marty famously summarized the intention of the conciliar
commission charged with producing the text of the Decree:
As to the specific nature of the ministry and life of presbyters: On this
matter, there have been expressed two conceptions which seem to
differ at first glance. For one of them insists more on the consecration
of the presbyter worked by the sacrament of Orders, and on the
personal union of the presbyter with Christ, who is the font of holiness
and spiritual efficaciousness.The other conception, however, insists on
the mission of the presbyter, which mission he receives from Christ
through the sacrament: that is, the presbyter, since he becomes a
member of the Order of presbyters, by that fact becomes a helper of
1 By a narrowly Tridentine view, we mean one that relies solely on the Dogmatic

Decree on Orders of the 23rd Session of 1563.

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Lawrence J.Welch and Guy Mansini, O.S.B.
the Order of bishops, so that he acts in the person of Christ unto the
building up of the Church.
In fact, each of these two conceptions puts in light an aspect of great
importance in the ministry and life of presbyters.Therefore, our commission will take care to show how these two conceptions combine with
one another harmoniously and indeed complete each other, so that they
go together in the unity of presbyteral ministry.2

In fact, the final text of Presbyterorum Ordinis arrived at such a combination in §2 of the Decree. On the one hand, the Decree could frame the
priesthood in the theology of mission that reaches its summit in the sacrifice of the Mass, where the spiritual sacrifice of the life and works of the
faithful are joined to the sacrifice of Christ. On the other hand, Presbyterorum Ordinis could explain the priest as consecrated to act in persona
Christi capitis not only at the Eucharist but in the whole of his ministry
in teaching, sanctifying, and ruling, which are precisely the munera constitutive of his mission. The priest-presbyter is consecrated in order to
extend the mission of Christ in world.3
Hardly was the Council concluded than the contestation of the
Catholic priesthood began.4 To many, the Council itself seemed to give
impetus to this movement.5 Did it not recognize the positive elements of
truth and holiness in the Protestant churches and positively express a desire
for Church unity? But then, what did this say about the possibilities of
Church order? And the Council seemed to privilege the local, particular
church in a way hitherto unknown in modern magisterial teaching, both
2 Concluding Relatio of F. Marty,Archbishop of Rheims, October 16, 1965, present-

ing the “textus recognitus,” Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Vaticani II, vol. IV/5
(Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1970), 70–71. Hereafter, AS, and indicating
volume, part, and page.
3 For the history of this synthesis in more detail, see our commentary on Presbyterorum Ordinis in the forthcoming volume marking the fortieth anniversary of
the council, Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, ed. Matthew L. Lamb and
Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
4 See already in 1971 the list of troubles in the “Description of the Situation” in
the statement of the Synod of Bishops on the ministerial priesthood, Ultimis
temporibus.This can be found in Vatican Council II, vol. 2, More Postconciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1982),
672–94.The date given there, 1967, is incorrect.
5 Walter Kasper,“Priestly Office,” in idem, Leadership in the Church: How Traditional
Roles Can Help Serve the Christian Community Today, trans. Brian McNeil (New
York: Herder, 2003), 46:“[O]ne cause of the present difficulties [about priests and
priesthood] results from theological confusions and distortions. More precisely, it
is rooted in a superficial and one-sided reception of the ecclesiology of the
Second Vatican Council.”

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by the renewal of the theology of the episcopate (Lumen Gentium, §§20 ff.)
and by a first step into the ecclesiology of communion (Lumen Gentium,
§26). What did this say about the local church’s capacity to restructure
Church order? Furthermore, the theology of the laity expounded by the
Council seemed to many a sort of invitation to obscure the distinction
between the priesthoods of laity and orders, priesthoods that elsewhere the
Council declared distinct in kind. How could an egalitarian Church of the
People of God be at the same time a hierarchical Church? In the desire of
the Council to make Scripture a more immediately animating principle of
theology, some read an invitation to read the Scriptures as read by liberal
Protestantism, that is, in the absence of the Rule of Faith, independently of
the patristic tradition of Church order and liturgy, and to read each book
extra-canonically, independently of the others. In this way, the Council, or
at least its upshot, seemed to countenance every criticism of the priesthood
made by the Reformers.6 Moreover, where one hermeneutical norm, the
Rule of Faith, is taken away, another will replace it. Postconciliar readings
both of Scripture and of the Council tended more and more to be postmodern readings, which meant that they brought with them the suspicion
that all distinction and all discriminations are nothing but concealments of
the will to power. In some treatments of the Catholic priesthood after the
Council, one discerns the influence of Nietzsche more than of any
reformer or historian.7
After the Council, the two conceptions noted by Marty became the
opposition of Protestant and Catholic readings for the New Testament on
ministry. Many who championed the ministry of the word and a theology
of mission opted for an increasingly Protestant, even Congregationalist
6 See the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,“Notifikation bezüglich einiger

Veröffentlichungen von Professor Dr. Reinhard Meßner” (Notification on Some
Publications of Professor Dr. Reinhard Meßner), November 30, 2000, on Meßner’s
reconstruction of the Church order of “early Catholicism”:“Neu ist allenfalls, daß
diese klassische Vision protestantischer Dogmengeschichtsschreibung hier als
katholische Theologie vorgetragen . . . wird” (“what is new is the fact that this classical vision of Protestant history of dogma is presented here as Catholic theology”).
For Ratzinger, the Protestant interpretation of Christian ministry and worship
returns the Church to the synagogue; see “Life and Ministry of Priests.”This paper
was delivered in 1995 for the symposium on the priesthood, Priesthood: A Greater
Love, for the thirtieth anniversary of the decree Presbyterorum ordinis sponsored by
the Congregation for Clergy, www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/
ccclergy/documents/rc_con_cclergy_doc_24101995_prh_en.html.
7 This was especially true in some of the more shrill accusations formulated apropos of the ordination of women and celibacy. See for example the essays in The
Non-Ordination of Women and the Politics of Power (Concilium, 1999), ed. Elisabeth
Schüssler Fiorenza and Hermann Häring (London: SCM Press, 1999).

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view of ecclesial office, and the conciliar text was characterized as including undigested—by which it was meant still unfortunately unrepudiated—cultic and sacral elements in its view.8 Where was the legacy of the
Council with regard to priesthood to be found?
We will take up three issues. First, there is the complex question of
apostolicity, Eucharistic presidency, and the relation of the priest to the
community. Second, there is the question of the priest’s representation of
Christ.Third, there is celibacy.9
Apostolicity and History, Eucharist and Presidency,
Relation to Community
The issues here can be put narrowly or broadly. Narrowly, the questions
are whether succession of officers is necessarily included in the apostolicity of the Church, and whether presbyteral ordination is a necessary
condition of Eucharistic presidency. Broadly, the issue is whether and
how the priest’s relation to the community is built into the very understanding of the nature of priesthood.
The issue of what is comprised in the reality of apostolic succession
emerged very quickly after the Council.A historical-critical reading of the
New Testament where tradition was bracketed produced a sort of dehistoricized version of apostolic ministry.This in turn set the stage for reconceiving and refashioning Roman Catholic Church order. By a
dehistoricized view, we mean a view according to which apostolicity is first
and fundamentally predicated of the Church as a whole, but within which
there is no structure guaranteeing apostolicity that the Church herself,
independently of and subsequently to Christ, is not responsible for.There
is no question, in other words, of a dominical institution of and historical
8 Christian Duquoc,“Clerical Reform,” in The Reception of Vatican II, ed. Giuseppe

Alberigo, Jean-Pierre Jossua, and Joseph A. Komonchak (Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1987), 297–308; and in the same vein, the
concluding remarks of Eugene C. Bianchi and Rosemary Radford Ruether in
A Democratic Catholic Church:The Reconstruction of Roman Catholicism, ed. Bianchi
and Ruether (New York: Crossroad, 1993), 247–60. More recently, see Peter
Hünermann,“A Half-Hearted Reform:The Decree on the Ministry and Life of
Priests, inThe History of Vatican II, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph Komonchak,
trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 457–65. Hünermann
believes that the Decree’s presentation of the essence of priesthood does not
correspond to that of Lumen Gentium.
9 Even so we do not address all things; for instance, proposals that in practice
divorce pastoral and sacramental ministry, or proposals for part-time and temporary priests after the council. For these last, see e.g., Hans Küng, Why Priests? A
Proposal for a New Church Ministry (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 75–82. The
proposal Küng makes in the book as a whole is to abolish the priesthood.

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succession in office.This view was propounded by Hans Küng, who entertained the possibility even now of a so-called charismatic Church order
without benefit of the imposition of hands, and for whom pastoral ministry
is just one “charism” among others.10 It was the view also of Edward
Schillebeeckx.11 For Schillebeeckx, doctrine, not structures, were received
from the apostles, and the manner of appointment to office is therefore not
determinative of apostolicity. Whatever powers inhere in ecclesial office
inhere first in the Church itself, and it is therefore always possible in
extraordinary circumstances for the assembly of the people of God as such
to erect offices and appoint the holders thereof, without prior approbation
or sacramental consecration by previous office holders. Therefore, while
doctrine must remain, structures are malleable; as they were once upon a
time the invention and arrangement of the Church, they remain to be
refashioned and rearranged as pastoral necessity dictates.Thus, in despite of
Lumen Gentium, §18, we find a more or less congregationalist attempt to
reduce the principle of apostolic succession to identity of doctrine, to the
Church’s possession of the apostolic faith.
Closely connected with apostolicity is the question of the necessity of
an ordained priest for the Eucharist, which Schillebeeckx raised under
the title of the community’s “right” to the Eucharist. If the community
or local church or congregation has such a right, it seems to follow that
it therefore has also the competence to arrange for the exercise of that
right.That means, in turn, that ministerial office is radically the construction of the Church, even the local church. If the ministerial structure of
the Church is the construction of the Church, of the assembly, then no
minister has any capacity to act as a minister that does not inhere originally in the assembly. Therefore every assembly has the wherewithal to
make the Eucharist of itself and to make those presidents of the Eucharistic assembly it needs.
The response to the questions of these first two issues appears in the
Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Sacerdotium
Ministeriale of 1983.12 It is an answer in the strength of council, not just
10 Hans Küng, “What Is the Essence of Apostolic Succession?” in Apostolic Succes-

sion, Rethinking a Barrier to Unity (Concilium 34), ed. Hans Küng (New York: Paulist,
1968), 28–35; also, idem,The Church (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968), 354–59.
11 Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., Ministry: A Case for Change (London: SCM Press,
1981), 33–37.
12 “The Minister of the Eucharist,” Origins 13 (September 15, 1983): 230–33. For
the Latin original see Sacerdotium Ministeriale, www.vatican.va/roman_curia/
congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19830806_sacerdotiumministeriale_lt.html.

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by appeal to the “power” of sacerdotal character; that is, not just by appeal
to Trent. Rather, succession is apprehended as the Christological and so
historical moment of mission and therefore also of the Eucharist and the
continuing and visible Christological headship of the Church. Section
2.b, on apostolicity, sends the reader to Trent and to Lumen Gentium, §20;
and section 4.b, on the presidency of the Eucharist, refers us to Lumen
Gentium, §21, and Presbyterorum Ordinis, §2. The modest and obvious
point here is that the conciliar texts provide the basis for the rejection of
such views as Küng’s and Schillebeeckx’s, not their starting point.13
That the Council could be seen as their starting point, however, brings
us to the broader context, a reformulation of the “two views.” Schillebeeckx’s concern is to understand ministry, including priestly ministry, in
terms of the community’s need, calling, and institution rather than in
terms of one minister’s empowerment of another through the rite of
ordination. The two views are supposed to exclude one another. In the
first, a community of apostolic faith needs pastoral leadership, which also
suitably includes presiding at the Eucharistic assembly, and so there are
priests; in the second, a hierarch ordains a priest, giving him power over
the Eucharist and therefore also over the community whose assembly the
celebration of the Eucharist evokes. In the first, the priest says Mass
because he is pastor of the community; in the second, he rules the
community because he has the sacramental power to say Mass.14 The first
view Schillebeeckx sees in the first millennium of the Church, and in the
prohibition of absolute ordinations—that is, ordinations that were not in
view of a determinate pastoral charge. The second he sees in the theology of priestly character developed especially in the thirteenth century
and whose spirituality is found developed in the French School.15 Now,
did not the Council begin a break with the second view, by reinserting
priestly ministry into a fuller ecclesiological framework and taking express
13 See the remarks on Schillebeeckx of Archbishop Julian Herranz Casado, “The

Image of the Priest in the Decree Presbyterorum Ordinis: Continuity and Projection toward the Third Millennium.” This paper was delivered in 1995 at the
symposium on the priesthood, Priesthood: A Greater Love, for the thirtieth
anniversary of the Decree, sponsored by the Congregation for Clergy, www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccclergy/documents/rc_con_cclergy_doc_
23101995_imp_en.html.
14 See Yves Congar, in his preface to B.-D. Marliangeas, Clés pour une théologie du
ministère: In persona Christi, In persona Ecclesiae (Paris: Beachesne, 1978), 13.
15 For the “modern view” of the priest, see Schillebeeckx, Ministry, 58–65, and for
a summary statement of Schillebeeckx view of the history, 66–74.The history is
fuller and more nuanced in his subsequent, The Church with a Human Face:A New
and Expanded Theology of Ministry (New York: Crossroad, 1987).

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771

note of the community to whom the priest is sent, by speaking of munera
and ministeria rather than potestates; and in locating the foundation of
jurisdiction in ordination, did it not take a first step in distancing the
Church from the legitimacy of absolute ordination?16
The view of Presbyterorum Ordinis underlying Schillebeeckx’s remarks is
once again that the Decree is incoherent, that it took some steps in the
direction of a ministry returned to the local church, but did not complete
the journey.This is clear even in one of his first comments on the Decree,
in which he emphasizes the “pastoral” orientation of priesthood, obliquely
refers to the issue of absolute ordinations, and regards the Council as
having desacralized the priest, taking from him the “aura of mystery” and
regarding him as “a real human being.”17 Schillebeeckx’s view has been
very influential, especially in the United States.18
One can say that Schillebeeckx’s view breaks the synthesis so artfully
constructed by the Council. It is not, however, that he takes one of the “two
views” at the Council, the “mission” view, and makes that architectonic.
Schillebeeckx is faithful to neither of the views in play at the Council.
We wish to say that the priest is sent empowered to say Mass, yes. He
is sent by Christ, through the bishop, by ordination. He is sent to and for
the sake of a community. Both things must be true. It is because he can
say Mass that he rules the community, and it is because he rules the
community that he can say Mass.There is no full and fully fit pastor of a
parish who cannot say Mass. Also, there is no one who can say Mass
(ordinarily speaking, and setting aside the question of religious priests)
who does not have pastoral care of a community of faithful. But the
community to whom he is sent and for whom he presides at Mass does
not give him the wherewithal—the power—to represent Christ and act
in his person in saying Mass.The Lord who makes a man a priest through
ordination at the hands of a bishop does not send him to say Mass in a
vacuum, he does not send the man to himself (which is not to deny the
value of Mass said without a congregation).
It is just here that the issue of the origin of apostolic ministry arises. For
Schillebeeckx, an apostolic community, that is, a community of apostolic
faith living by the Spirit, is the sufficient empowering principle of apostolic office. As already indicated, this stance undervalues the principle of
16 Schillebeeckx, Ministry, 67; idem, Church, 205.
17 Eduard Schillebeeckx, The Real Achievement of Vatican II (New York: Herder &

Herder, 1967), 42–43.
18 See for instance Paul Philibert, “Issues for a Theology of Priesthood: A Status

Report,” in The Theology of the Priesthood, ed. Donald Goergen and Ann Garrido
(Collegeville, MN:The Liturgical Press, 2000), 24–24 and 38–40.

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succession in office, of historical connection to the apostolic age and to
Christ. In addition, it misidentifies the needs of the community to whom
the priest is sent. What the community needs is precisely an apostolic
ministry, which is to say, a ministry from outside of itself. Just as salvation
is from extra nos as coming from God, just as grace is not produced by
nature, just as the gospel word is not the word that comes from within our
heart but enters through the ears, so also the ministry the Church needs
is a ministry that comes to it from above and from outside. It is just this
that Schillebeeckx denies when he denies a “direct” Christological foundation for priestly ministry.19 The candidate for such ministry may come
from the community, but the ministry does not come from the community, even from a community animated by the Holy Spirit.20
It is not, then, as if Schillebeeckx has developed or completed one of
the views at the Council at the expense of the other; he has abandoned
both views. What is true of Presbyterorum Ordinis is that it inserts the
understanding of priestly ministry into ecclesiology, and into a network
of relationality, whereby the priest is related at once to other priests (§8),
to bishops (§7), and to the baptized faithful in both their pastoral need
and their own ministerial competence (§9). The development of these
avenues, however, is to be found, not in what amounts to a plea for the
abolition of apostolic ministry, but in the even richer development of the
relations the priest is the center of and an ever more express realization
of the Church, the context of the priest, as mystery, communion, and
mission.These things, however, are in Pastores Dabo Vobis (§12).
Representation and Gender
Perhaps the most contentious of the issues about ministry and orders troubling the postconciliar Church was the question of the ordination of
women, where the issue was fought especially on the ground of the priestly
representation of Christ.21 What is the relation of priestly speaking in the
person of the Church and priestly speaking in the person of Christ? Inter
Insigniores, the 1976 statement of the Congregation for Doctrine of the
Faith on the inability of women to be ordained, appeals to the second and
thirteenth paragraphs of Presbyterorum Ordinis,22 with its strong emphasis on
19 Schillebeeckx, Ministry, 67; idem, Church, 206.
20 See John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, §16.
21 That is, setting aside such considerations as dominical intention, the alleged

cultural conditioning of the mind of Christ and the New Testament hagiographers, subsequent Church history, etc.
22 There is appeal also to Lumen Gentium, §§10 and 28; and Sacrosanctum Concilium,
§33.

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773

the priestly representation Christ, on acting in his person, especially in the
Eucharist, in order to draw the conclusion that only men and not women
can in the wholeness of their personal reality, which of course includes
bodiliness, successfully carry out this representation of Christ.
In fact, hardly were the decrees of the Council published before the
question of representation, and the order and relation of the representations, ecclesial and Christological, raised. In the highly influential Herder
commentary on the documents of the Council, F.Wulf wants the priest’s
priesthood to be a function of the priesthood of the Church.23 As already
noted, he thinks the characterization of the priest in §2, facing the
Church as representing Christ the Head, is “one-sided.”24 The text forgets
that the priesthood of priests represents the priesthood of the Church
and is “its organ of fulfillment.” Further, while the powers of the priest
are “given by Christ,” they are “primarily powers of the Church.”25
A host of theologians tried their hand at so describing things as to
counter the argument of Inter Insigniores. Edward Kilmartin has it that the
priest represents the faith of the Church, and consequently Christ.26
Similarly, Hervé Legrand holds that the priest’s representation of Christ
is indirect, through first representing the Church.27 To which it might be
replied that, although the priest exercises the faith he shares with the
Church and, in the sacraments, with the assembly, for that very reason he
need not represent either the Church or its faith as though they were
absent things. It is rather Christ, ascended to heaven, who needs palpable
representation in the Eucharist. David Power argues that the priest represents both Christ and the Church in the sacrament equally immediately.28 In this reconstruction, however, the assembly ends up as the
instrument of consecration,29 and the body signified by the consecrated
elements is the body of the assembly.30 In a similar way, Susan Wood has
23 Wulf, “Commentary on the Decree,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican

II, vol. 4, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. Lalit Adolphus et al. (New York: Herder
& Herder, 1967).
24 Ibid., 222.
25 Ibid., 221.
26 Edward Kilmartin,“Apostolic Office: Sacrament of Christ,” Theological Studies 36
(1975): 243–64; and repeating Kilmartin’s view, see also Mary Schaefer “Forum:
Ordaining Women,” Worship 63 (1989): 469.
27 Hervé Legrand,“Traditio perpetuo servata? The Non-Ordination of Women:Tradition or Simply an Historical Fact?” Worship 65 (1991): 503–4.
28 David Power, “Representing Christ in Community and Sacrament,” in Being a
Priest Today, ed. Donald J. Goergen, O.P. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press,
1992), 97–123.
29 Ibid., 101.
30 Ibid., 104–10, 116.

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it that the priest represents Christ only in that he represents the totus
Christus, Christ and the Church.31 Wood thinks that since to say “head”
makes us think also of “body,” the priest in representing Christ the Head
must also by that fact represent the body, as if one cannot say “head”
without also saying “body.” Indeed, she seems to make headship mean
nothing more than representing the body.32
Such liturgical and sacramental convolutions urge a return to the
simplicity with which Inter Insigniores §5 reads Presbyterorum Ordinis §2.33
By speaking of the priest acting in the person of Christ the Head, Presbyterorum Ordinis means to say that the priest acts in the person or name
of the Church only because he first acts in the person of Christ. This
would reflect the original deployment of the language of headship in the
Letter to the Ephesians and the Letter to the Colossians.34 Is this reading
of Inter Insigniores faithful to the conciliar decree itself?35
Presbyterorum Ordinis certainly seems to incline to the view of Inter
Insigniores by speaking first and foundationally of the priest as represent31 Susan Wood,“Priestly Identity: Sacrament of the Ecclesial Community,” Worship

69 (1995): 109–27. See the replies of Sara Butler, “Priestly Identity: ‘Sacrament’
of Christ the Head,’ ” Worship 70 (1996): 290–306; Lawrence J. Welch, “Priestly
Identity Reconsidered,” Worship 70 (1996): 307–18 and his “For the Church and
within the Church: Priestly Representation,” The Thomist 65 (October 2001):
613–37.
32 Wood, “Priestly Identity,” 114–15.
33 For further convolutions, see Dennis Ferrara, for whom the priest says the consecratory words both in the person of Christ and in the person of the Church, in
his “Representation or Self-Effacement? The Axiom In Persona Christi in St.
Thomas and the Magisterium,” Theological Studies 55 (1994): 195–224; and idem,
“In Persona Christi: Towards a Second Naïveté,” Theological Studies 57 (1996):
65–88; and the reply of G. Mansini,“Representation and Agency in the Eucharist,”
The Thomist 62 (1998): 499–517.
34 This is so because the life and growth of the body is, for these letters, derived
from the head. Heinrich Schlier, commenting on the term “kephale” in Eph
1:22f, 4:14, 5:23; Col 1:18, 2:10, 2:19, observes that Christ is presented as Head
of the Church “in the sense that from this Head the body grows up to this
Head.” Moreover: “In this unity of Christ and the Church the Headship of
Christ is manifested in the fact that he directs the growth of the body to himself.
The kephale determines not merely the being of the body but also the fulfillment
of its life. . . .He is the effective “whence” of the activity of the body whereby it
edifies itself though gifts given to its members. As the kephale he is thus the
concrete principle of the bodily growth of the Church, he is the arche, Col
1:18.” See Heinrich Schlier, s.v. “kephale,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 3., ed. Gerhard Kittle, trans. Geoffrey W Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1964–76), 680. See also Markus Barth, Ephesians: Introduction,Translation and Commentary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), 190–91.
35 This is also the reading of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1553.

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ing Christ; the priest as representing the Church, acting in her name, is
added only at the last, not before the final text, and toward the end of §2,
in 2.d. Paragraph 2.a speaks of the mission of the whole church; 2.b,
however, speaks on the contrary of ministers, and does so quite consciously
as of something distinct from the mission of the Church as such (see the
introductory vero), in the line of Christ’s own being sent and his sending,
the line from Father, to incarnate Son, to apostle, to bishop and priest.
Priests are therefore ministers of Christ and not of the Church. This is
expressly the understanding of the text publicly stated at the Council, just
prior to the adoption of the final text.36 On this basis, of course, priests
act for and in the name of the Church. But as ministers of Christ they
are instruments of Christ, not of the Church.37
Again, Presbyterorum Ordinis prepares for the position of Inter Insigniores
by noting in §2 that, since the priestly mission is a mission from Christ
(§2.b), it therefore is conferred by a special sacrament, which, of course,
like all the sacraments, is the action of Christ, and by construing the
mission in 2.c as a mission to the “nations” so that the people of God may
be assembled. It must be seen, therefore, as mission to the Church, not
from the Church, which it is rather the function of the mission to constitute. Even apart from the final relatio, therefore, the text itself substantially
answers the question as to priority of the representations.
In other words, Presbyterorum Ordinis simply presupposes the position
of Pius XII’s Mediator Dei but without drawing attention to the position
the Church has consistently rejected, as Mediator Dei, for its part did not
fail to do, appealing to the Council of Trent, the Decree on Orders, chapter 4. So, in §83 of Mediator Dei, the idea that the “priest acts in virtue of
an office committed to him by the community”—which is only another
way of saying that the priest represents first the community and only so
Christ—is reproved, and in §84, we read that “the priest acts for the
people only because he represents Jesus Christ insofar as [quatenus] Christ
is Head of all his members and offers himself in their stead.”38
36 See the Response to Modus 35, AS IV/7, 123–24: to the suggestion that priests

be said to act ut Ecclesiae ministri in joining the sacrifice of the faithful to the
sacrifice of Christ in 2.d, the commission replied that the text already has it that
priests act in the name of the Church, and that anyway, “presbyters act, not as
ministers of the Church, but as ministers of Christ,” with reference to Lumen
Gentium, §§10.b and 28, where priests act (agunt) in the person of Christ.
37 As in theory, the prime minister of England is the agent and instrument of the
queen, not the people of England.This precision seems to rule out Power’s view
of things.
38 See also Pius XII, Mediator Dei, §40:The priesthood of the priest “is not a delegation from the people.” And “prior to acting as representative of the community

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Presbyterorum Ordinis, in fact, includes the remarkable argument of §93
of Mediator Dei, and does so in 2.d, only without explicit reference to
Mediator Dei, which has it that the people offer the sacrifice of the Mass
“by the hands of the priest,” and according to which this is evident “from
the fact that the minister at the altar . . . represents Christ, the Head of the
Mystical Body.” The people offer, but not because like the priest they
perform the rite.Were that true, they would not need the priest to represent them; and, were that true, and they did not need the priest to act for
them because able to act on their own here, then the priest could indeed
represent the people independently of representing Christ. But no, the
people offer because they “unite their hearts in praise, impetration, expiation, and thanksgiving with the prayers or intention of the priest, even of
the High Priest himself.” Presbyterorum Ordinis, for its part, says exactly the
same thing, but without the contrast to the counterposition. So, in §2.d,
“the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful,” in union with the sacrifice of
Christ, is offered “by their [the priests’] hands” and “in the name of the
whole Church” (per manus eorum, nomine totius Ecclesiae).And this happens,
quite evidently and even though the text does not remark the error of
reversing things, because, as the beginning of 2.d says, priests are “ministers of Jesus Christ”—that is, not ministers of the people—and ministers of
Christ, again and quite evidently, on the ground of the conclusion of 2.c,
that priests are in the first place conformed to Christ and act in his person.
In this light, we can take Pastores Dabo Vobis as the authentic development of Presbyterorum Ordinis §2 on the question of representation.39 In
Pastores Dabo Vobis §12.d, John Paul II notes that the priest’s relation to
Christ is “primary,” and in §§13–15 he treats of the priest’s relation to
Christ as Head and Shepherd as “fundamental.” Paragraph 13 deals with
Christ the Priest, who makes a priestly people; §14 notes that the ordained
priest exists for the sake of this priestly people; and §15 tells us that the
service he brings to it is precisely the representation of Christ the Priest.
Then in §16.a, the priest’s “sacramental representation” of Christ “serves as
the basis and inspiration for the relation of the priest to the Church.”Again,
§16.d speaks of “the relation of the priest to Jesus Christ and in him to his
Church.”That is, once again, the relation to the Church is a function of the
first, foundational relation to Christ.This ordering of things, moreover, is a
sign of the priority of the grace of the Christ to the Church (§16.f):
before the throne of God, the priest is the ambassador of the divine Redeemer.”
And note that the priest is an ambassador of Christ as Head.
39 See also the explanation of the priest’s acting in the person of Christ in the
Eucharist in John Paul II’s letter of 1980, Dominicae Cenae, which speaks in §8 of
the priest’s “sacramental identification” with Christ the High Priest.

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And so the priest, on account of his very nature and sacramental
mission, appears in the structure of the Church as a sign of the absolute
priority and gratuity of that grace which is conferred by the risen
Christ on the Church. And through the ministerial priesthood, the
Church acquires an awareness of herself in faith, that she has her origin
not from herself but from the grace of Christ in the Holy Spirit. The
apostles and their successors—since they exercise an authority which is
not their own—but one which has been received from Christ the head
and shepherd, through their ministry occupy a position facing the
Church. And this ministry is nothing but the sign, as well as the sacramental and visible continuation, of Christ himself, who faces the
Church and world as the one author and source of an abiding and
always new salvation, since he alone is himself the savior of the body.40

This perception of the order of the relations, first to Christ, then to the
Church, perfectly reflects theological tradition. So, for instance, for St.
Thomas, the priesthood of Christ is treated before Christ’s mediation in
the tertia pars of the Summa. For St.Thomas follows an explanatory order,
where causes and principles are treated before effects and things derived
from principles. Therefore, although both priesthood and mediation
suggest a double relation, God to man and man to God, Thomas treats
first of the consequence of the hypostatic union for his relation to the
Father, and second of the consequence for his relation to us, for the very
good reason that his relation (as a man) to the Father is the foundation of
his relation to us.The relationality of the ordained priesthood mirrors this
structure, for the relation to Christ is first and the foundation of the
priest’s relation to the Church.
40 We have reworked the official English translation of this passage because it does

not accurately convey the meaning of the Latin original. For example, the official translation renders “Apostoli autem eorumque successores, cum potestatem
non suam sed a Christo Capite et Pastore receptam habeant, locum coram Ecclesia occupant” into “The apostles and their successors, inasmuch as they exercise
an authority which comes to them from Christ, the head and shepherd, are
placed with their ministry—in the forefront of the Church . . .” (emphasis added).
“In the forefront” does not capture the sense of the Latin original (locum coram
Ecclesia occupant), which tries to express the nature of Christ’s headship in distinction from the Church, and hence the ministry of the apostles and their successors as involving an authority that addresses or faces toward the Church.
Elsewhere, at §§16.b and 22.c the text has erga Ecclesiam as equivalent to coram
Ecclesia, and erga is “toward” or “in relation to.”“In the forefront” suggests not an
addressing or facing toward the Church but a position of facing with the Church
and addressing something else. For the Latin original of this passage see Acta
Apostolicae Sedis 84 (August 3, 1992): 682. For the official English translation see
Origins 21 (April 16, 1992): 718–59.The official French translation available on
the Vatican website has “face à l’Église.”

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We see here also the strength of Benoît de La Soujeole’s observation,
comparing the conciliar texts to previous magisterial anathema, that positive statements of the Council provide for less theological freedom than
the negative, condemnatory ones typical of past conciliar canons.
[P]ositive language is much more restrictive for the theologian. When
the magisterium undertakes to formulate Catholic doctrine for itself
and on such or such a point, it deploys a certain number of affirmations
bound together with one another, and that become the obligatory
framework of theological reflection.41

Had the Council been content to note the difference ordination makes
in terms of incapacity to be reduced to the lay state or, for a bishop, to
that of simple priest, there would have been no strong assertion of the
priestly and episcopal action in the person of Christ. But, in fact, the
Council Fathers chose to state the difference orders make in terms of an
episcopal and presbyteral capacity to act comprehensively and across the
board, in all ministerial functions, in the person of Christ.This plain and
positive statement of the Council is not well interpreted by the convolutions of relations and representations envisaged by those who wish to
obscure the simple meaning, that the priest represents—immediately—
Christ the Priest to the Church, and does so insofar as Christ is distinct
from the Church, as is a head from a body, a bridegroom from a bride.
Celibacy
The priestly representation of Christ is at the same time a representation
of Christ precisely as bridegroom relative to the Church. This, too, has
been resisted in the postconciliar age for the sake of the ordination of
women.This, too, is present if not prominent, in Presbyterorum Ordinis, but
in connection with another issue involving gender: celibacy. For all that
it recognizes the perfect legitimacy of the practice of the Eastern Church,
§16 indicates the suitability of celibacy for priests in very strong terms.
Celibacy “is at once a sign of and a stimulus for pastoral charity and a
special source of spiritual fruitfulness in the world” (§16.a). But these
reasons are not foundational. The suitabilities of celibacy for priesthood
are indeed both personal and pastoral, but the foundational one is the
relation that celibacy gives the priest to Christ. Celibacy consecrates
priests to Christ “in a new and exceptional manner,” so that they may
41 B. de La Soujeole, 452: “le langage positif est beaucoup plus exigeant pour le

théologien. Quand le magistère entreprend d’énoncer la doctrine catholique
pour ell-même sur tel ou tel point, il déploie un certain nombre d’affirmations
liées entre elles et qui deviennent le cadre obligé de la réflexion théologique.”

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“more easily [facilius] cling to him in with singleness of heart” (§16.b),
just as St. Paul told the Corinthians (1 Cor 7:34). Celibacy, a consecration to Christ, is thus suitable for a minister who is to be consecrated to
Christ also by ordination; it links the priest in another way to the consecration for mission that is constitutive of priesthood.42
The Council was most express about this foundational aspect of
celibacy, which entered the text only before its final version. The
Commission observed that it is not sufficient to say that celibacy is a sign,
or testifies to the kingdom, and so on; rather, its value is first of all to
unite the celibate to Christ, whence the sign value follows.43
Everything else is built on the foundation of consecration, beginning
with pastoral effectiveness. The consecration of celibacy as of orders, in
other words, is for mission, and being undividedly devoted to the Lord is
at the same time being devoted to the things of the Lord, taking care of
the Lord’s people in his name.This is spelled out in the clauses following
the fact of consecration, which detail as it were its intended result. Consecration is said in the first place to be for union with Christ, but immediately following we read also that celibate priests more freely (liberius)
dedicate themselves to God and men, that they serve the kingdom and the
work of human regeneration with greater ease (expeditius), and that they
are better fitted (aptiores) for paternity in Christ (see 1 Cor 4:15; 1 Thes
2:11), a paternity they accept more openly (latius).
Last,“by this state” (hoc modo), that is by enacting their ministry in the
aforesaid ways and so fulfilling the pastoral purpose of celibacy, priests are
also a sign. First, they “make an open profession before men” of their
undivided dedication (see again 1 Cor 7:34) to the task of betrothing
Christians to Christ. The first meaning or sign value of celibacy the
Council mentions is therefore that it shows a will to consecrate oneself
wholly to the task of betrothing Christians to Christ the Spouse (2 Cor
11:2), and in this way it is a sign of the eschatological wedding of the
Lamb.44 Also (insuper), in a second way, celibacy is a sign of the eschaton
42 For a brief history of the work leading up to Presbyterorum Ordinis §16, see Jean

Frisque, “Le Décret ‘Presbyterorum Ordinis.’ Histoire et commentaire,” 172–76.
43 Response to Modus 21, AS IV/7, 212:“[T]he theological justification of celibacy

cannot be adequately drawn uniquely or principally from its sign or witnessing
value.The more profound reason for celibacy, rather, consists in a more intimate
consecration to Christ, from which its value as a sign flows as a consequence.”The
Commission directs us to Lumen Gentium §44.
44 The text refers us to Lumen Gentium §42, where continence for the sake of the
kingdom is a spur to and a source of spiritual fruitfulness, to §44, where observance
of all the evangelical counsels bear witness to the eschaton and is an imitation of
Christ, and to Perfectae Caritatis §12, where the chastity of religious leads to greater

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where there is no marriage or giving in marriage, as the Lord says in the
Gospel (Lk 20:35–36).45
In insisting that celibacy must in the first place and foundationally
conduce to holiness, the Council makes the structure of celibacy the
structure of the priesthood itself: first Christ, conformity to Christ and
union with Christ and on that basis, ministry and sign value. Priestly
celibacy has, as it were, the same structure as priestly identity. Just as the
priest is consecrated to Christ for mission, and just as he represents Christ
and on that basis represents the Church, so celibacy is also, in another
way, consecration to Christ, and on that basis there is erected pastoral zeal
and the further service of eschatological witness. Moreover, it is to be
noted that the “better” way that celibacy is as compared to marriage is
not simply a matter of being a clearer sign of eschatological blessing, but
enters into the objective good of the person, holiness itself. It enters,
doubtless, as a more efficacious means to holiness of the kingdom of
God; it is not that non-celibates are not called to perfection46 or do not
cling to Christ; it is that the celibate “more easily clings to him.”47
love of God and man, readies one for apostolic work, and is a sign of the wedding
of the Lamb.
45 The council’s theology of celibacy is nicely reprised by Max Thurian in his “The
Theological Basis for Priestly Celibacy,” in For Love Alone: Reflections on Priestly
Celibacy (Middlegreen: St. Paul’s, 1993), 53–65. This article is also available at
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cclergy/documents/rc_con_cclergy_
doc_01011993_theol_en.html.
46 See Lumen Gentium §40: “Thus it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful of
Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life
and to the perfection of charity.”
47 Presbyterorum Ordinis §16.The straightforward sense of 1 Corinthians 7 and of the
tenth canon of the twenty-fourth session of the Council of Trent is therefore
upheld. It would not be sufficient to say that celibacy or virginity is always better
relative to marriage only insofar as it is a sign, as does, e.g., Karl Rahner,“On the
Evangelical Counsels,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 8, Further Theology of the
Spiritual Life II, trans. David Bourke (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971), 147
and 163. The greater sign value of celibacy or virginity in comparison to
marriage is of course to be recognized, as does for instance John Paul II, The
Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books &
Media, 1997), 273–75 (general audience of April 7, 1982). But also, celibacy and
virginity are to be affirmed as more expeditious as means to holiness as
compared with marriage. For this traditional affirmation, beyond St. Augustine’s
reproof of Jovinian, see St.Thomas, De perfectione spiritualis vitae, cc. 6, 8.As to the
traditional nature of the council’s teaching here, see Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.,
“Vatican II: The Myth and the Reality,” America 188 (2003): 10. See too John
Paul II, The Theology of the Body, 274, where he speaks of a greater human fulfillment through continence, and 277, which denies that continence in itself constitutes a state of perfection, since of the counsels it is rather affirmed that they

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Notwithstanding the careful avoidance of an appeal to ritual purity in
expressing the value of celibacy, however, the postconciliar charge was
that celibacy, like the restriction of orders to men, is a function of some
kind of anti-body fear of sexuality, driving it underground, where it spoils
and leads to perversion and immorality and abuse. So Nadine Foley, writing also after Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (1967) and the Letter to Priests of John
Paul II (1979) says that “if a non-celibate state is inappropriate to sacred
priesthood, despite the tradition of the eastern Church, then something
definitive is being said about women and about marital relations with
women.Women are unfit to approach the realm of the sacred.”48 At the
same time, the very fear and repression of sexuality is said to be an ecclesiastical instrument of political power.49
We think that it can be readily acknowledged that both the distinction
of the sexes as well as marriage and the renunciation of marriage enter inextricably and powerfully into both the structure of Revelation and the
polity—the Church—that Revelation calls into being.The disagreements in
evaluating this fact have to do more with whether one enters into its intelligibility with faith or not, with confidence in the Catholic tradition or not;
and we cannot deal here with the enormous differences of hermeneutical,
anthropological, and theological principle involved. Of course, while maleness is a necessity for the sacramental representation of Christ, celibacy is
not. Nonetheless, it can be understood as furthering the likeness to Christ,
and in this way linked to the capacity of the priest to act in persona Christi.
This implication in Presbyterorum Ordinis is not in fact hard to unfold, if
indeed it can be said to be merely implicit at all. Furthermore, as we shall
see, the postconciliar reception of the Council’s reaffirmation of celibacy
makes of it ever more clearly a form of the affirmation and salvation of
sexuality, and in its male form, not its denial or repression.
We take for granted, first, that sexual differentiation is ordered to the
nuptial gift of embodied persons; second, that this mutual gift is itself
(only!) “help us to achieve a fuller charity” (emphasis added). At the same time
the pope therefore affirms that it is possible for someone who has not taken a
vow or promise of perfect continence to reach a superior degree of perfection—
whose measure is charity “in comparison to the person who lives in the state of
perfection with a lesser degree of charity.”
48 Nadine Foley, “Celibacy in the Men’s Church,” in Women in a Men’s Church
(Concilium 134), ed. Virgil Elizondo and Norbert Greinacher (New York:
Seabury, 1980), 35.
49 See Ferdinand Menne, “Catholic Sexual Ethics and Gender Roles in the
Church,” in Elizondo and Greinacher, Women in a Men’s Church, 20, for whom
celibacy is a constituent of the Church’s political power. Menne relies in part on
the work of Michel Foucault.

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further ordered to fruitfulness; and third, that the ways in which men and
women compass both these things are distinct.Adding the issue of likeness
to Christ, there are therefore four themes to watch for in the Decree and
its reception in subsequent magisterial statements and theology: likeness to
Christ, the gift of the person, fruitfulness, maleness. Likeness to Christ is,
ideally, to be verified in all the other three things, not just in maleness.
If we return to the text of the Decree, we can note that insofar as it is
a sign of the eschaton, priestly celibacy is not proper to priests, but something shared with religious. But the Decree says also that the priest’s
celibacy enables and shows him to be dedicated wholly to the service of
betrothing Christians to Christ (2 Cor 11:2).This meaning of celibacy is
something proper to priests. In this way, as a celibate, a man’s fecundity is
as it were turned over to that of Christ and the Church; one’s bodily
fecundity is suspended at the straightforward bodily level and directed to
spiritual fruitfulness, the spiritual fruitfulness to which priestly ministry is
already dedicated.
The pursuit of spiritual fruitfulness is predicated, however, on the prior
gift of self to the service of God and man, the devotion of self “with
greater freedom” that Presbyterorum Ordinis §16 says celibacy enables;
indeed, it is predicated on the prior consecration to Christ that is the first
moment of priestly celibacy according to the Council.
In the priestly pursuit of spiritual fruitfulness, moreover, in priestly
celibate service to God and man, the celibacy in question is that of a man,
a male, and this is clear from the text the Council adduces. For in presenting himself as betrothing the Corinthians to Christ, the Apostle, Paul, puts
himself in the place of the paterfamilias, the father of the bride whose
office it is to betroth his daughter to her husband.
Celibacy for the sake of this spiritual fruitfulness therefore likens one at
least to Paul, the apostolic minister par excellence. More than that,
however, it likens the priest to Christ. For if the apostolic minister is in the
place of the father of the bride, who would the mother be? It would be
the Church herself, as we read in Galatians of the Jerusalem above, our
mother, whose spouse, quickening the womb that is the laver of baptism,
is Christ. So, Paul is here, in a sort of transitive symbolic way, in the role of
Christ, the spouse of the Church (Ephesians).That is, the apostolic minister functions in the place of Christ the Bridegroom, and this joins up with
the idea of paternity in Christ, also evoked by the Council (1 Thes 2:11; 1
Cor 4:15).50
50 Ignace de la Potterie, “The Biblical Foundation of Priestly Celibacy,” in For Love

Alone, 13–30, esp. 21–25, finds another connection of 2 Cor 11:2 to the priestly
celibate representation of Christ.The phrase,“one husband,” referring to the Christ

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Of course, it might be argued that to say that the priest acts in the
person of Christ the Head, as the Decree does in §2, is already to say that
he acts in the person of Christ the Bridegroom. In Ephesians, after all,
Christ the Head is both and inclusively head relative to the body, and
head relative to the Church his bride.51 In any case, both Paul VI and
John Paul II complete the inference the Decree suggests. Paul VI teaches:
“Laid hold of by Christ” (Ph 3:12) unto the complete abandonment of
one’s entire self to him, the priest takes on a closer likeness to Christ,
even in the love with which the eternal Priest has loved the Church his
Body and offered himself entirely for her sake, in order to make her a
glorious, holy, and immaculate Spouse (cf. Eph 5:25–27). The consecrated celibacy of the sacred ministers actually manifests the virginal
love of Christ for the Church, and the virginal and supernatural fecundity of this marriage, by which the children of God are born, “not of
blood, nor of the will of the flesh” ( Jn 1:13).52

And this text of Caelibatus Sacerdotalis sends us to Presbyterorum Ordinis
§16.53 And here is John Paul II:
The will of the Church [legislating celibacy for priests] finds its ultimate motivation in the link between celibacy and sacred ordination,
which configures the priest to Jesus Christ the Head and Spouse of the
Church.The Church, as the spouse of Jesus Christ, wishes to be loved
by the priest in the total and exclusive manner in which Jesus Christ
her Head and Spouse loved her. Priestly celibacy, then, is the gift of self

to whom Paul says he betroths the Corinthians as a pure virgin, is recalled in the
pastorals by the requirement that apostolic ministers be “a husband of one wife” (1
Tim 3:2, 12;Titus 1:6).The requirement follows from the symbolic character of the
minister, as representing Christ the Bridegroom, a character recognized by both St.
Augustine and St.Thomas.The representation is more perfect, however, according
as the minister practices continence, for the marital love of Christ and the Church
is virginal. As de la Potterie puts it, “the representational role of the monogamous
priesthood also entails the call to continence for the married minister, and consequently, for the unmarried ones, the call to celibacy” (24). De la Potterie’s article can also be found at www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cclergy/
documents/rc_con_cclergy_doc_01011993_bfoun_en.html.
51 It can be argued that it is the nuptial relation of Christ to the Church that makes
the Church his body; see John Paul II, The Theology of the Body, 312–18, the catecheses given in the general audiences of August 18 and 25, 1982; and Sara Butler,
“The Priest as the Sacrament of Christ the Bridegroom,” Worship 66 (1992):
510, who appeals to these catecheses.
52 Paul VI, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, §26.
53 As it does also to Lumen Gentium §42.

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in and with Christ to his Church and expresses the priest’s service to
the Church in and with the Lord.54

It is the celibacy of a man that the priest brings to the priesthood and the
representation of Christ, and this is very important for the psychological
and spiritual integrity of priestly life that the Decree addresses in §14.55
If it is precisely as a man that the priest’s celibacy is important, then he
can say not that he is leaving his sexuality and his masculinity behind but
bringing them forward and offering them for the service of a higher
fruitfulness.56 Given the symbolic register that their own virginity or
celibacy sounds, women can say, “it is precisely because we are women
that our virginity and celibacy is religiously important; it is our celibacy,
womanly celibacy, that we bring to the representation of redeemed
humanity, of the Church, of the bride.” So also for men, celibacy is the
redemption and consecration of their own distinct sexuality.This is especially manifest, moreover, in the priest’s presidency of the Eucharist.57
John Paul II sounds this note both magisterially and more privately as
a theologian. Magisterially, again from Pastores Dabo Vobis:
In virginity and celibacy, chastity retains its original meaning, that is, of
human sexuality lived as a genuine sign of and precious service to the
love of communion and gift of self to others. This meaning is fully
found in virginity which makes evident, even in the renunciation of
marriage, the “nuptial meaning” of the body through a communion
and a personal gift to Jesus Christ and his Church which prefigures and
anticipates the perfect and final communion and self-giving of the
world to come: “In virginity or celibacy, the human being is awaiting,
also in a bodily way, the eschatological marriage of Christ with the
Church, giving himself or herself completely to the Church in the
hope that Christ may give himself to the Church in the full truth of
eternal life.”58
54 Pastores Dabo Vobis §29; see also the Congregation for the Clergy, Directory on the

Ministry and Life of Priests ( January 31, 1994), §§13 and 58, for the same connection.
55 On Presbyterorum Ordinis §14, see Ratzinger, “Life and Ministry of Priests.”
56 Pastores Dabo Vobis §29:“For an adequate priestly spiritual life, celibacy ought not

to be considered and lived as an isolated or purely negative element, but as one
aspect of a positive, specific, and characteristic approach to being a priest.”
57 See Roman Cholij, “Priesthood and Celibacy According to Recent Church
Teaching,” paper given at the Congregation for the Clergy’s symposium on the
priesthood,“Priesthood:A Greater Love” (October 23–28, 1995), who has it that,
at the Eucharistic sacrifice, the priest “lends his chaste flesh to Christ, his continence now becoming an integral constituent of his iconic relationship with
Christ who offers the sacrifice of a total self-oblation to the Father on our behalf.”
58 Pastores Dabo Vobis §29, quoting his Familiaris Consortio (1981), §16.

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There is too much material in the “theology of the body” to canvass in
this essay, but at least we can recall the catecheses on the resurrection and
on virginity. In the first, sexuality is seen to be fulfilled in the resurrected
body, which is to say that the nuptial meaning of the sexually determined
bodiliness of human persons is fulfilled in heaven, where deification makes
the gift of self perfect.59 From the catecheses on virginity, we have this:
if continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven undoubtedly signifies a renunciation, this renunciation is at the same time an affirmation.
It is an affirmation that arises from the discovery of the gift, that is, at
the same time from the discovery of a new perspective of the personal
realization of oneself “through a sincere gift of oneself ” (Gaudium et
Spes §24).60

Celibacy integrates male sexuality into priesthood. First it is self-gift, and
precisely as involving (by way of renunciation, to be sure) sexually characterized bodiliness. Second, it keeps the specific finality of sexuality,
fecundity, but orients it to a higher, spiritual fecundity.We should notice
that here as for marriage, there is an inseparability between the union
effected by self-gift and fruitfulness.61 As the exclusion of one or the
other destroys the integrity of the marital act, so the exclusion of one or
the other in priestly celibacy would destroy its way of affirming and
redeeming sexuality.62
Also, the very way of being sexual as a male is affirmed and redeemed
in priestly celibacy, though this is hard to put into words that will not be
misunderstood. Sara Butler, relying on John Paul’s Apostolic Letter
Mulieris dignitatem, says that the feminine mode of loving is characterized
“by active receptivity, a welcoming love which meets, accepts, and
responds to the husband’s gift with its own gift of self,” and is careful to
point out that “active receptivity” is not passivity.63 By contrast, we can
say that if the feminine welcomes, the masculine knocks; if the feminine
meets, the masculine seeks; if the feminine accepts and responds, the
masculine initiates and begins.These harmonics, too, are sounded in the
59 Catecheses on the resurrection, John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 233–261, esp.

238–40 (December 2, 1981), 240–43 (December 9, 1981).
60 Catecheses on virginity, Theology of the Body, 286 (May 5, 1982).
61 Ibid., 277–278 (April 14, 1982); see also Cholij, “Priesthood and Celibacy,” for

whom the priest’s “conjugal debt is now not toward his wife, but toward the
Church through frequent celebration of the Eucharist. His paternal responsibilities are first and foremost toward his spiritual progeny.”
62 See here Michele M. Schumacher,“An Inseparable Connection:The Fruitfulness
of Conjugal Love and the Divine Norm,” Nova et Vetera 1 (2003): 381–402.
63 Butler, “Priest as Sacrament,” 511; see John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, §25.

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priestly initiative in gathering the Church by the initiative of evangelization and preaching, by the offering of word and sacrament to the welcoming, active receptivity of the faithful.
The orientation of sexuality to a higher goal occurs, mutatis mutandis,
in both Christian marriage and also in another way with a married
clergy, as in the Eastern practice. If one sticks with the Council, it cannot
be said that celibacy flows from the nature of the priesthood, else a
married clergy impedes the working out of nature of the sacrament.64
Nor can it be said on the basis of the above argumentation that married
priests unworthily celebrate Mass, or that they do not give themselves
fully to the fulfillment of their charge.65 But it can be said that with a
married clergy, the integration of sexuality into priesthood does not
happen as unambiguously as with celibacy, for sexuality finds its ordinary
finality in procreation; it is not exclusively integrated into the symbolic
register of priesthood, of the priestly representation of Christ, and
indeed, the earthly Christ, nor is it uniquely integrated into the spiritual
finality of the priesthood. Still, a married clergy does not of itself militate
against either the symbolic harmonics or finality of priesthood. Were it
so, of course, the practice of the Eastern Church could not find the praise
and approbation the Council rightly gives it.66
Conclusion
At the beginning of this article we asked where the legacy of Presbyterorum Ordinis is to be found.This depends very much on whether its view
of the nature of priesthood is coherent, a true synthesis of the two dominant views with which the Council started, or whether it is a juxtaposition of pieces that cannot go together. In the latter case, the legacy is a
choice between two unsynthesizable pieces. As one popular hermeneutic of the Council would have it, we could pursue a reconstituted post64 Response to Modus 16, AS IV/7, 209.
65 Responses to Modus 18 and to Modus 20, AS IV/7, 211.
66 On the other hand, those who want a female priesthood make of sexuality

something indifferent to priesthood, irrelevant to priesthood, something that
cannot, as such, be integrated into priesthood.Whether someone is male or not
is wholly accidental to priesthood. Likewise, those who want homosexual
“marriage,” at the same time as they destroy the nature of marriage, also make of
sexuality something indifferent to priesthood because incapable of speaking a
relation to the finality of priesthood in (spiritual) fruitfulness. Here, sexuality is
denatured because stripped of its ordination to procreation; it cannot therefore
bear any special relation to spiritual fruitfulness, which could no longer justly be
called spiritual “paternity.”

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Tridentinism, a sort of resupernaturalizing and resacerdotalization of
ecclesial ministry (bad things), as some claim to see in the 1971 Synod
and the Letters to Priests of John Paul II. On the other hand, still according to this hermeneutic, the course is forward, to the democratic and
declericalized, egalitarian, charismatic, and collaborative style of ministry
toward which the Council took but a few hesitant and indecisive steps.
A seemingly more moderate hermeneutic, and one critical of the foregoing, would see the Decree, as it sees the production of the Council
generally, as a juxtaposition of views, but a not incoherent one. Rather,
according to this view:“Fidelity to the Council requires that both juxtaposed theses be taken seriously and that an attempt be made through a
more penetrating theological reflection and a renewed ecclesial praxis to
reconcile them in a synthesis that will allow further advances.”67 So, the
Council bequeathed to the Church and theology the task of working for
a synthesis that the Council itself could not or did not effect.
We believe that neither of these approaches is helpful for interpreting
Presbyterorum Ordinis.The textual history of the Decree and the speeches
and discussions that are part of that history show that it was certainly not
the intention of the Council Fathers to do nothing more than juxtapose
two theses or viewpoints.68 The October 16, 1965, relatio of Archbishop
Marty gave voice to that intention, accepted by the fathers. Further, we
think it is no great feat of interpretation to see the fulfillment of this
intention in §2 of the Decree. Interpreting Presbyterorum Ordinis therefore
cannot be a matter of weighing or balancing two masses of material, the
theses of a progressive Council majority on one side and of a conservative Council minority on the other.We are to see, rather, that consecration is for the purpose of extending the mission of Christ, whose own
end is the glory of the Father in a redeemed humanity.The priest-presbyter is sent forth as one consecrated in persona Christi capitis authoritatively to proclaim the Gospel to the world, to extend the offer of salvation
in the sacraments, and to build up the Church.
Determining the legacy of Presbyterorum Ordinis depends also on
whether the Decree is read against the background of prior Catholic
tradition, the great democracy of the diachronic voices from Scripture,
itself read as Dei Verbum §12 teaches us to read it, to the Fathers, from the
Fathers to the theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and
67 Pottmeyer, “A New Phase in the Reception of Vatican II:Twenty Years of Inter-

pretation of the Council,” in Alberigo, Jossua, and Komonchak, The Reception of
Vatican II, 39.
68 We try to show this in detail in the commentary cited in note 3 above.

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Lawrence J.Welch and Guy Mansini, O.S.B.

very much including past conciliar and papal teaching.This way of interpretation was urged by the Synod of Bishops on the twentieth anniversary of the Council.69
We think that, if read in that way, the synthesis of the views, and the
adequacy of the one view arrived at, become manifest. If the priesthood
was framed in the theology of mission, it remained the ministry which
culminated in the Eucharistic sacrifice, where the Christian’s sacrifice of
life passes over sacramentally into the eternal sacrifice of the Lamb.
Precisely because it was framed in the theology of mission, both its historical institution by Christ, as well as its sacramental enablement, now, by
Christ through the Spirit, were affirmed. If the priest was not hailed as an
alter Christus, he was described as acting in persona Christi capitis no longer
merely at the Eucharist, but across the length and breadth of his ministry.
The Decree put it that the priest was to find holiness within the very
exercise of his ministry—teaching, sanctifying, ruling. Still, that is what he
was to find—holiness.The relation of the priest as minister to bishop, to
fellow priests, to the laity, and including to the laity in their own apostolic
labor—in other words, the concrete ecclesial context into which the priest
is inserted was affirmed expressly and in detail. Still, he remained a “man
apart,” both by reason of his consecration and in order to have something
to bring to the people in whose midst he lived and worked.
If read in this way, furthermore, where the truly synthetic character of
the Decree becomes manifest, then it is possible to answer the question
of its legacy, which would appear to be the 1992 apostolic exhortation of
John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis. This is true for the ecclesiological
presuppositions of the priesthood, spelled out by the Holy Father as the
mystery, the communion, and the mission of the Church; it is true for the
centrality of the priest as representing Christ the Head; it is true for the
priority of this representation relative to priestly representation of the
Church; and it is true for the clarity with which celibacy is also linked to
this representative character of the priest. All these things, some more or
less developed by the Council, are brought fully to expression by Pope
John Paul II, especially in relation to the human and ecclesial situation,
the signs of the times, at the beginning of the third millennium. In this
way, Pastores Dabo Vobis shows us a privileged way forward in the task of
N&V
receiving the synthesis of Presbyterorum Ordinis.

69 See “The Final Report,” §5, “A Deeper Reception of the Council,” Origins 15

(December 19, 1985): 445–46.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 4 (2007): 789–816

789

The Senses in the Relationship
of Man with God
C HARLES M OREROD, O. P.
The Angelicum
Rome, Italy

G OD BEING pure spirit, human beings cannot see him with their
senses.This holds as much for the beatific vision, where the divine essence
is united directly to the intellect of the human being,1 as it holds for life
in this world. Nonetheless, in this life, “[t]hough we cannot reach God
with the senses, our mind is urged by sensible signs to approach God.”2
In the economy of salvation, God is made known to us by employing
our mode of knowing, which takes its starting point from sensible experience. In other words, God enters into relationship with human beings
according to a mode that befits human beings, not according to a purely
divine mode. In order to make himself known to us, he speaks our
language and not only his, as it were.
Christian experience shows the presence of a number of sensible
elements: the humanity of Christ, the members of the Church who
proclaim their Savior, the sacraments, the Bible.This seems scandalous to
those who desire a purely spiritual religiosity and who therefore accuse
the Church of being unworthy of God. Such an accusation has been
heard through the centuries, but it is not biblical: “The Holy Spirit
engages the visible level.We are too accustomed to consider the spiritual
life in mental categories that are not its own. The Spirit, in the biblical
Translation by Matthew Levering of “Les sens dans la relation de l’homme avec
Dieu,” Nova et Vetera (French) 79 (2004): 7–35.
1 Cf. Benedict XII, constitution Benedictus Deus ( January 29, 1336), Denzinger,
no.1000. See also St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae (ST) I, q. 12.
2 ST II–II, q. 84, a. 2, ad 3.

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sense of the word, makes himself visible in the body, in what exists.The
Spirit becomes visible.”3
Our purpose here is to identify some of the sensible elements that
belong to the relationship of human beings with God, and to reflect
upon the significance of their existence.
Sensible Knowledge and Natural Theology
The first level to take into consideration is the possibility that, according
to Scripture, God disposed the created order in such a manner that human
beings could come by knowing the created order to a certain knowledge
of its Creator. Karl Barth, reacting to the excesses of liberal Protestantism,
denied such a possibility. James Barr has nonetheless remarked that the
Bible itself obliges us to take seriously natural theology.4 One finds in the
Old Testament an ensemble of texts that invites us to recognize God
through his creation. The most famous, though not the most typical of
the Old Testament, is Wisdom 13:1–5:
For all men who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; and they
were unable from the good things that are seen to know him who
exists, nor did they recognize the craftsman while paying heed to his
works; but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the
circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were
the gods that rule the world. If through delight in the beauty of these
things men assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better
than these is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them. And if
men were amazed at their power and working, let them perceive from
3 Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, Des êtres sont transfigurés. Pourquoi pas nous? (Les Plans-

sur-Bex: Parole et Silence, 2001), 37.
4 Cf. James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1993), 102–4: “To me the arguments of natural theology are not a congenial
field. Even if natural theology should be a valid mode of procedure, I doubt if I
would find it easy to practice it. . . . It may be, indeed, that through the effect of
my own arguments I will be forced to become something of a natural theologian, but that was not the intention with which I started out.What really interests me is the effect that the whole question has upon biblical studies and upon
the place of the Bible in theology.What I do find, after a long period of struggling with the problems, is that the Bible does imply something like natural
theology and makes it impossible for us to avoid the issues that it involves . . .
Barth’s rejection of natural theology was never really based on biblical exegesis,
nor, as he himself, at least partially, admitted, was it really representative of Protestant tradition as it had in fact been, even in the great Reformers themselves. . . .
The fact remains irrefutable: if you thoroughly reject natural theology, and if
natural theology underlies the Bible in any significant degree, then you must
judge that the Bible is inadequate as a theological guide.”

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791

them how much more powerful is he who formed them. For from the
greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.

Isaiah also calls us to be turned from the world to its Author: “Lift up
your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their
host by number” (Is 40:26).
One could cite other texts, notably from the Psalms, or from the
discourse of God to Job.5 The fundamental reason why it is possible to see
in the world a certain reflection of its Creator is that the creation is good.
God has not only created the world good, but also he has preserved it:
For thou lovest all the things that exist, and hast loathing for none of
the things which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have made
anything if thou hast hated it. How would anything have endured if
thou hadst not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by
thee have been preserved?” (Wis 11:24–25)

It is precisely this positive approach that is lacking in theological currents
that promote a “pure spirituality,” scorning the material dimension of
religion, and indeed the entire material world.
In the New Testament, a certain natural theology appears at many
places, notably in the speeches of St. Paul to the pagans.6 The most
famous text is part of the first chapter of the Letter to the Romans:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For
what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has
shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible
nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived
in the things that are made. So they are without excuse; for although
they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him,
but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were
darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds
or animals or reptiles.Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their
hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and
worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is
blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. . . .Though they know God’s decree that those who do
5 Cf. Job 38.
6 Cf. Acts 14:8–18; 17:16–34.

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792

such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those
who practice them. (Rom 1:18–26, 32)

It is necessary to look at the whole of this passage in order to apprehend
its force: The knowledge of God is not only possible, but manifest,
through the creation; not that one sees God directly, but one discovers
God by a reflection on the world that one sees, and in this manner God
is revealed.The fact that such a knowledge is possible is confirmed by the
end of the passage: God condemns those who do not recognize him; it
would be unjust to condemn someone for not having done something
impossible. Certainly the passage is polemical, but within the polemic, St.
Paul affirms an important dimension of the Christian faith.
Man as Such Contributes to Knowing God
Within the creation, the human being contributes uniquely to knowing
God, because the human being is God’s image. To speak properly, the
image is not directly the human being’s knowledge by his or her senses
(even though such knowledge contributes to knowing God), because “it
is according to his intelligence and reason, which are incorporeal, that
man is said to be according to the image of God,”7 and the body alone
is directly the subject of sensible knowledge.
Nonetheless, it is on the basis of sensible knowledge that one attains
the intelligence and the reason of a human being, and to know the
human being contributes to knowing God. For instance, seeing the
perfection that the person represents in the creation, one can deduce that
God must be personal:
Person signifies what is most perfect in all nature—that is, a subsistent
individual of rational nature. Hence, since everything that is perfect
must be attributed to God, forasmuch as his essence contains every
perfection, this name person is fittingly applied to God; not, however,
as it is applied to creatures, but in a more excellent way; as other names
also, which, while giving them to creatures, we attribute to God.8

In his or her spiritual dimension, the human being contributes to the
knowing of the Trinity itself: “[I]n rational creatures, possessing intellect
and will, there is found the representation of the Trinity by way of image,
inasmuch as there is found in them the word conceived, and the love
proceeding.”9 Certainly this knowledge necessarily requires faith and is
7 ST I, q. 3, a. 1, ad 2.
8 ST I, q. 29, a. 3.
9 ST I, q. 45, a. 7.

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793

not directly accessible to the senses. Nonetheless the knowledge of the
spiritual dimension of the human being presupposes sensible knowledge
of the human being, and sensible knowledge is therefore the starting point
of a journey that, in faith, leads upward to perceiving the divine mystery.
Faith and the Observation of Historical Facts
The sensible perception of the presence of God also includes the observation of deeds and historical memory.The credo of the Old Testament is
fundamentally based on history:
A wandering Aramean was my father; and he went down into Egypt
and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became a nation,
great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly, and
afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage. Then we cried out to the
Lord the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice, and saw our
affliction, our toil, and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out of
Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror,
with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us
this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.And behold, now I bring
the first of the fruit of the ground, which thou, O Lord, has given me.
(Dt 26:5–10)

Although what is involved in this passage is a distant memory and not a
direct observation of deeds, nonetheless the events in themselves are
accessible to sensible knowledge.
In the New Testament, the first confessions of faith are also expressed
in relation to history, to the historical experience that the apostles had of
Christ:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was
buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the
scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.Then he
appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of
whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.Then he appeared
to James, then to all the apostles. (1 Cor 15:3–7)

The Second Vatican Council insists upon the revelatory meaning of the
historical events, in connection with the words:
This economy of Revelation is realized by deeds and words, which are
intrinsically bound up with each other.As a result, the works performed
by God in the history of salvation show forth and bear out the doctrine

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Charles Morerod O.P.
and realities signified by the words; the words, for their part, proclaim
the works, and bring to light the mystery they contain.10

St. Augustine was particularly sensitive to the knowledge of God and
of the divine plan that one can draw from history.11 In a general way, in
the lives of individuals as well as in the life of the community, “Time is
not inert. It does not roll on through our senses without affecting us. Its
passing has remarkable effects on the mind.”12 Meditating on his
encounter in Milan with St. Ambrose, Augustine finds the mark of God’s
action:“I was led to him by you, unaware that through him, in full awareness, I might be led to you.”13 Past history should be for us a pledge of
hope as regards the future:
Because both things past, which cannot now be seen, and things present which cannot be seen all of them, at the time which they were
foretold, no one of these could then be seen.Therefore, since they have
begun to come to pass as they were foretold, from those things which
have come to pass unto those which are coming to pass, those things
which were foretold concerning Christ and the Church have run on in
an ordered series: unto which series these pertain concerning the day
of Judgment, concerning the resurrection of the dead, concerning the
eternal damnation of the ungodly with the devil, and concerning the
eternal recompense of the godly with Christ, things which, foretold in
like manner, are yet to come.Why therefore should we not believe the
first and the last things which we see not, when we have, as witnesses
of both, the things between, which we see, and in the books of the
Prophets either hear or read both the first things and the things
between and the last things foretold before they came to pass?14

For Augustine, history is so important that it is at the center of Christianity: “In this religion, the essential point to admit is the history and
prophecy of the manner in which divine Providence accomplishes in
10 Vatican II, Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, §2, in Vati-

can Council II, vol. 1, The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, rev. ed., ed.Austin
Flannery, O.P. (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing, 1996).
11 We could also cite St. Thomas. Cf. in this regard Giuseppe Marco Salvati, O.P.,
“Cristo e il tempo. Prospettive di teologia tomistica della storia,” Angelicum 80
(2003): 527–37.
12 St. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), bk. IV, ch. viii, 13.
13 Ibid., bk.V, ch. xiii, 23.
14 St. Augustine, De fide rerum quae non videntur, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st
series, vol. 3, trans. C. L. Cornish (1887; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995),V, 8.

The Senses and Our Relationship to God

795

time the salvation of mankind, by restoring him and transforming him
for eternal life.”15 History in fact belongs to God and is not only a collection of purely human deeds:“Although human institutions of the past are
described in historical narration, history itself is not to be classed as a
human institution; for those things which are past and cannot be revoked
belong to the order of time, whose creator and administrator is God.”16
The Senses as Involved in the Relationship with Jesus
At the center of history one finds Jesus Christ.All the senses are involved
in the relationship with him. It is evident that he preaches to the people,
and the sense of hearing is therefore involved in the relationship with
him. Given the danger of reducing the role of the senses to hearing alone,
however, we wish to show how the other senses are also involved.
Certain people tried to touch Jesus:“And when the men of that place
recognized him, they sent round to all that region and brought to him all
that were sick, and besought him that they might only touch the fringe
of his garment; and as many as touched it were made well” (Mt
14:35–36). Furthermore, Jesus allowed them to touch him, and he sees in
one such gesture a sign of faith.17 In addition, he himself touches them:
And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind
man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the
hand and led him out of the village; and when he had spit on his eyes
and laid his hands upon him, he asked him,“Do you see anything?”And
he looked up and said, “I see men; but they look like trees, walking.”
Then again he laid his hands upon his eyes; and he looked intently and
was restored, and saw everything clearly. (Mk 8:22–25)
15 St. Augustine, De vera religione, VII, 13.
16 St. Augustine, De

doctrina christiana, trans. D. W. Robertson Jr. (New York:
Macmillan, 1958), II, 28, 44.
17 Cf. Mk 5:25–34: “And there was a woman who had had a flow of blood for
twelve years and who had suffered much under many physicians and had spent all
that she had and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports
about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For
she said,‘If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.’ And immediately the
hemorrhage ceased; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.
And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone forth from him, immediately turned about in the crowd, and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’ And his
disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say,
‘Who touched me?’ And he looked around to see who had done it. But the
woman, knowing what had been done to her, came in fear and trembling and fell
down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, ‘Daughter,
your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’ ”

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796

The sense of smell is also implied in the relationship with Jesus. He
allows his feet to be perfumed with ointment, because he recognized in this
gesture a way of signifying love and respect.18 Christians are compared to
the fragrance of Christ:
But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumph, and
through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being
saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from
death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. (2 Cor
2:14–16)

Christ and Christians give off the fragrance of a good sacrifice,19 in a
cloud of incense.20 If the sense of smell can be invoked in such a context,
it is because what is perceived exteriorly reflects an interior attitude.
Even the sense of taste belongs to the relationship with Jesus, beginning with his first sign, where he made himself known by the good
wine.21 The history of salvation also involves taste, as in the taste of divine
Word in the Old Testament.22 Christians are those who have tasted that
the Lord is good,23 those “who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have
become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the
word of God and the powers of the age to come” (Heb 6:4–5). Elsewhere, the accomplishment of salvation is represented as a banquet, and
one finds again an image of tasting.24
Lastly, Jesus is present to the sight:

18 Cf. Jn 12:1–11.
19 Cf. Eph 5:2: “And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a

fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
20 Cf. Phil 4:18: “I have received full payment, and more; I am filled, having

received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice
acceptable and pleasing to God.”
21 Cf. Jn 2:9–10: “When the steward of the feast tasted the water now become
wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had
drawn the water knew), the steward of the feast called the bridegroom and said
to him,‘Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely,
then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now.’ ”
22 Cf. Ez 3:3.
23 Cf. 1 Pt 2:2–3: “Like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it
you may grow up to salvation; for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.”
24 Cf. Lk 14:15–16; Rv 19:9.

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797

Jesus turned, and saw them following, and said to them,“What do you
seek?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where
are you staying?” He said to them,“Come and see.”They came and saw
where he was staying; and they stayed with him that day, for it was
about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and
followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. ( Jn 1:38–40)

Jesus is looked at in different ways. There is a curious look that Jesus
accepts,25 as well as a curious look that Jesus rejects:26 The look expresses
diverse intentions of the heart. Expressing the intentions of the heart, the
look can be admiring,27 happy,28 or malevolent.29 In every case, the look
engages the person: “But I say to you that every one who looks at a
woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If
your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better
that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into

25 Cf. Lk 19:1–6: “He entered Jericho and was passing through. And there was a

man named Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and rich. And he sought to
see who Jesus was, but could not, on account of the crowd, because he was small
of stature. So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him,
for he was to pass that way.And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and
said to him,‘Zaccheus, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house
today.’ So he made haste and came down, and received him joyfully.” For a different variant, cf. Lk 17:22: “And he said to the disciples, ‘The days are coming
when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and you will not
see it.”
26 Cf. Mt 12:38–39:“Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him,‘Teacher,
we wish to see a sign from you.’ But he answered them, ‘An evil and adulterous
generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the
prophet Jonah.’ ”
27 Cf. Mt 15:31: “The throng wondered, when they saw the dumb speaking, the
maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the
God of Israel.”
28 Cf. Mt 13:16–17:“But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they
hear. Truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what
you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”
29 Cf. Lk 7:39: “Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to
himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort
of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.’ ” Cf. Lk 20:19–20:
“The scribes and the chief priests tried to lay hands on him at that very hour,
but they feared the people; for they perceived that he had told this parable against
them. So they watched him and sent spies who pretended to be sincere, that they
might take hold of what he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and
jurisdiction of the governor.”

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Charles Morerod O.P.

hell” (Mt 5:28–29).30 What one sees can open one to faith, both before31
and after32 the Resurrection.
The look of Jesus himself expresses the dynamic of his movement
toward a person or a community: “And Jesus looking upon him loved
him” (Mk 10:21); “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept
over it” (Lk 19:41). Those who know him recognize the significance of
his look: “[A] man from the crowd cried, ‘Teacher, I beg you to look
upon my son, for he is my only child’ ” (Lk 9:38);“And the Lord turned
and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how
he had said to him,‘Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three
times’ ” (Lk 22:61).
That the fact of seeing Jesus is important is expressed in his identification with the light:“In him was life, and the life was the light of men.The
light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” ( Jn
1:4–5).33 One can refuse this light,34 but if one accepts it, the look of faith
goes above Jesus himself:“ ‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you do
not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father’ ” ( Jn 14:9).
The light that is Christ begets his disciples in the light:“ ‘While you have
the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.’ When
Jesus had said this, he departed and hid himself from them” ( Jn 12:36).
30 Cf. also Lk 9:62: “ ‘No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit

for the kingdom of God’ ”; or again Mt 25:37–40: “Then the righteous will
answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and
give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or
naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit
thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one
of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ ”
31 Cf. Jn 6:2: “And a great multitude followed him, because they saw the signs
which he did on those who were diseased.”
32 Cf. Lk 24:39–40:“ ‘See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see;
for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said
this he showed them his hands and his feet.”
33 Cf. Mt 4:12–16:“Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew
into Galilee; and leaving Nazareth he went and dwelt in Capernaum by the sea,
in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, that what was spoken by the prophet
Isaiah might be fulfilled: ‘The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, toward
the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of
death, light has dawned.’ ”
34 Cf. Jn 3:19–21:“And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world,
and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For
every one who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his
deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that
it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.”

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They are from that point on charged to proclaim the light that they have
contemplated35 and to spread what they have become: “You are the light
of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp
and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and
give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:14–16).
The First Letter of John can summarize faith and mission, therefore,
in terms of vision, touch, and hearing:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with
our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest,
and we saw it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life
which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which
we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have
fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his
Son Jesus Christ.And we are writing this that our joy may be complete.
(1 Jn 1:1–4)

St. Thomas Aquinas has well observed that all the senses are involved in
the relationship with Jesus Christ:
Acquire by experience the mind “which you have in Christ Jesus.” It
should be noted that we should have this mind in five ways according
to the five senses: first, to see his glory, so that being enlightened, we
may be conformed to Him:“Your eyes will see the king in his beauty”
(Is 33:17); “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the
Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to
another” (2 Cor 3:18); secondly, to hear his wisdom in order to become
happy: “Happy are these your servants, who continually stand before
you and hear your wisdom” (1 Kgs 10:8);“As soon as they heard of me
they obeyed me” (Ps 18:44).Thirdly, to smell the grace of his meekness
[Odorare gratias suae mansuetudinis], that we may run to Him: “Your
anointing oils are fragrant . . . draw me after you” (Song 1:3); fourthly
to taste the sweetness of his mercy, that we may always be in God:
“Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps 34:9); fifthly, to touch his
35 Cf. 2 Pt 1:16–19:“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made

known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were
eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the
Father and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory,‘This is my beloved
Son, with whom I am well pleased,’ we heard this voice borne from heaven, for
we were with him on the holy mountain.And we have the prophetic word made
more sure.You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark
place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

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power, that we may be saved: “If I only touch his garment, I shall be
made well” (Mt 9:21).36

Recognizing this sensible dimension of the communication of salvation,
St.Thomas observes that:
Christ came to save the world, not only by divine power, but also
through the mystery of his Incarnation. Consequently in healing the
sick he frequently not only made use of his divine power, healing by
way of command, but also by applying something pertaining to his
human nature.37

In accord with his salvific mission, Jesus makes himself seen and heard:
Christ’s manner of life had to be in keeping with the end of his Incarnation, by reason of which he came into the world. Now he came into
the world, first, that he might publish the truth; thus he says himself ( Jn
18:37): “For this was I born, and for this came I into the world, that I
should give testimony to the truth.” Hence it was fitting not that he
should hide himself by leading a solitary life, but that he should appear
openly and preach in public.Wherefore (Lk 4:42, 43) He says to those
who wished to stay him: “To other cities also I must preach the kingdom of God: for therefore am I sent.”38

He allows himself to be seen, heard, touched,, because this human familiarity strengthens communion:
He came that by him “we might have access to” God, as it is written
(Rom 5:2). And thus it was fitting that he should give men confidence
in approaching him by associating familiarly with them.Wherefore it is
written (Mt 9:10): “It came to pass as he was sitting . . . in the house,
behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with Jesus and
his disciples.” On which Jerome comments as follows: “They had seen
the publican who had been converted from a sinful to a better life: and
consequently they did not despair of their own salvation.”39

The Liturgy
The liturgical rites, too, depend upon sensible experience.The use of objects
in the relationship with God can be done in two senses: the magical sense
36 St. Thomas Aquinas, Super Ad Phil., cap. 2, lec. 2, in idem, Commentary on Saint

Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians and the Letter to the Philippians, trans. F. R.
Larcher, O.P. (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1969).
37 ST III, q. 44, a. 3, ad 2.
38 ST III, q. 40, a. 1.
39 Ibid.

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that consists in wishing to compel God—or some other spiritual force—to
act according to our plans; or the properly religious sense that consists in
showing by means of objects that we place ourselves at the disposition of
the divine plan. The Old Testament, like the New,40 condemns magical
rites,41 while at times integrating them provisionally by changing their
meaning.42 David exemplifies the religious attitude by refusing to use the
Ark of the Covenant in order to put pressure on God, preferring instead to
resign himself to the divine will.43 Objects and rites can be a legitimate
mode of entering into relationship with God, in particular if God himself
gives them to human beings and explains their meaning. This is the case
with the sacrifices of the Temple, of which the people made good use.
In the life of the Church, the liturgy uniquely manifests the relationship between visible and invisible elements:
The Church is essentially both human and divine, visible but endowed
with invisible realities, zealous in action and dedicated to contemplation, present in the world, but as a pilgrim, so constituted that in her
the human is directed toward and subordinated to the divine, the visible to the invisible, action to contemplation, and this present world to
that city yet to come, the object of our quest . . . thus to show forth the
Church, a sign lifted up among the nations, to those who are outside.44

In the sacraments, the raison d’être of sensible signs in the transmission
of spiritual grace appears. Such signs are fit for God because of their spirituality and are fit for human beings because of their sensible and spiritual dimension:
40 Cf. Gal 5:19–21: “Now the works of the flesh are plain: immorality, impurity,

licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I
warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom
of God.” See also Acts 8:9–24, 13:6–11, 16:16–18.
41 Cf. Ex 23:19; Lv 19:26–28; Dt 18:10–12.
42 By “domesticating” provisionally some objects like the Ephod (cf. 1 Sam 2:28)
or the urim and thummin (cf. 1 Sam 14:41).
43 Cf. 2 Sam 15:24–26: “And Abiathar came up, and lo, Zadok came also, with all
the Levites, bearing the ark of the covenant of God; and they set down the ark of
God, until the people had all passed out of the city.Then the king said to Zadok,
‘Carry the ark of God back into the city. If I find favor in the eyes of the Lord,
he will bring me back and let me see both it and his habitation; but if he says, ‘I
have no pleasure in you,’ behold, here I am, let him do to me what seems good
to him.’ ” Saul had a different attitude in consulting Samuel through the medium
of Endor, and Samuel reproached him for it: “ ‘Why then do you ask me, since
the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy?’ ” (1 Sam 28:16).
44 Vatican II, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §2.

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Signs are given to me, to whom it is proper to discover the unknown
by means of the known. Consequently a sacrament properly so called
is that which is the sign of some sacred thing pertaining to man; so that
properly speaking a sacrament, as considered by us now, is defined as
being the “sign of a holy thing so far as it makes men holy.”45

It is necessary to emphasize that “the sacraments of the New Law not
only signify, but effect what they signify.”46 The external sign—the sensible dimension—unveils a real and active interior dimension.
The Relationship to Religious Images
A certain mentality that claims to be spiritual would decry the use of religious images as not spiritual enough.The New Age is in this regard but
a new variant of the iconoclasm that is continually being reborn (not
even from its ashes, but from its embers!). Although attachment to religious objects is not without ambiguity, nonetheless in themselves images
can assist interior conversion:
Thus it is in looking upon the crucifix that we each day withdraw from
our heart the germs of idolatry. “Would I not therefore make,” says St.
John Damascene,“the image of the One who, because of me, has been
seen in the nature of flesh?” Moreover, he says in the same place, if there
is fault in making images, the first culprit is God who has made man to
his image and who, even more, has himself become incarnate! Here
there are, indeed, some evidences of a Christian understanding. Who
would believe that the Christian who painted the Virgin on the wall in
the catacomb of St. Priscilla, that the sculptures or the stained glass
windows of Chartres, that Giotto or Blessed Fra Angelico have transgressed the divine precept?47

The absolute rejection of images can contain, in germ, a rejection of
human communication in general:
The iconoclast error is, furthermore, anti-human. If it is permitted to
use literary and poetic images in order to speak of the mysteries of
God, it should be permitted, by the same principle, to use pictorial
images: they also are a language. But if one proscribed the latter, it
would be necessary equally to proscribe the former and no longer to
seek to render in the language of imagination the truth about God.This

45 ST III, q. 60, a. 2.
46 ST III, q. 84, a. 3, ad 5.
47 Charles Journet, Les images (Fribourg: Saint-Paul, 1950), 11.

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would be the silencing and the end of all apostolate.This position is so
anti-human that it is impossible.48

The rejection of images is ultimately the rejection of a divine economy,
and thus has implications beyond itself:
The iconoclast error is a manifestation of the eternal Manichean temptation. One protests first against images, then against the sacraments,
then against the supreme one among them, namely the Eucharist, then
against the appearance of the Word in the flesh. It is the whole sensible
economy of the Incarnation that one is engaged in misunderstanding.49

If the use of images in prayer is acceptable, it is because it is human and
also because it corresponds to the economy of Revelation. In this regard
it is necessary to be precise: God alone is God, and creatures should not
be adored in his place. God alone is the object of a cult of latria (adoration), creatures can at best be venerated (dulia). It is this idolatrous use that
the interdiction of images in the Old Testament above all wishes to avoid
(“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of
anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is
in the water under the earth”: Ex 20:4). Following Aristotle, St. Thomas
explains that the image returns us to what it represents. The first case to
take into consideration is that of the particular “image” that is the humanity of Christ. Should it be adored? St.Thomas gives a nuanced response:
The adoration of Christ’s humanity may be understood in two ways.
First, so that the humanity is the thing adored: and thus to adore the
flesh of Christ is nothing else than to adore the incarnate Word of God:
just as to adore a king’s robe is nothing else than to adore a robed king.
And in this sense the adoration of Christ’s humanity is the adoration of
latria. Secondly, the adoration of Christ’s humanity may be taken as
given by reason of its being perfected with every gift of grace. And so
in this sense the adoration of Christ’s humanity is the adoration not of
latria but of dulia. So that one and the same Person of Christ is adored
with latria on account of his divinity, and with dulia on account of his
perfect humanity.50

Even in Christ, the humanity is solely an object of veneration.What then
as regards images of Christ? St. Thomas applies clearly the Aristotelian
understanding of images:
48 Ibid., 14–15.
49 Ibid., 21.
50 ST III, q. 25, a. 2.

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As the Philosopher says (De memor. et remin., 1), there is a twofold
movement of the mind towards an image: one indeed towards the
image itself as a certain thing; another, towards the image in so far as it
is the image of something else. And between these movements there is
this difference; that the former, by which one is moved towards an
image as a certain thing, is different from the movement towards the
thing: whereas the latter movement, which is towards the image as an
image, is one and the same as that which is towards the thing. Thus
therefore we must say that no reverence is shown to Christ’s image, as
a thing—for instance, carved or painted wood: because reverence is not
due save to a rational creature. It follows therefore that reverence should
be shown to it, in so far only as it is an image. Consequently the same
reverence should be shown to Christ’s image as to Christ himself.
Since, therefore, Christ is adored with the adoration of latria, it follows
that his image should be adored with the adoration of latria.51

Here again, what is accessible to the senses is not God himself, but a help
given by God so that human beings could have access to him.
The Bible and Preaching as Sensible Signs
A certain iconoclasm, or a certain minimalization of the sensible dimension of the life of the Church, is sometimes made in the name of the
Bible.Thus Calvin, as is well known, banned images from the churches.
Following the intention of the interdiction on images in the Old Testament,52 his goal was to avoid idolatry; his intention was irreproachable.
He reread the history of the Church to present the recourse to images as
a decadence, and he therefore wished to limit their religious use to
“images” chosen by Christ:
Let us here consider, whether it is expedient that churches should contain
representations of any kind, whether of events or human forms. First,
then, if we attach any weight to the authority of the ancient Church, let
us remember, that for five hundred years, during which religion was in a
more prosperous condition, and a purer doctrine flourished, Christian
churches were completely free from visible representations (see preface,
and IV, IX, 9). Hence their first admission as an ornament to churches
took place after the purity of the ministry had somewhat degenerated. . .
.And from the fearful infatuation under which the world has hitherto
labored, almost to the entire destruction of piety, we know too well from
experience that the moment images appear in churches, idolatry has as it
were raised its banner; because the folly of manhood cannot moderate
51 ST III, q. 25, a. 3.
52 Cf. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Grand

Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989), II,VIII, 17, 330.

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itself, but forthwith falls away to superstitious worship. Even were the
danger less imminent, still, when I consider the proper end for which
churches are erected, it appears to me more unbecoming their sacredness
than I well can tell, to admit any other images than those living symbols
which the Lord has consecrated by his own word: I mean Baptism and the
Lord’s Supper, with the other ceremonies. By these our eyes ought to be
more steadily fixed, and more vividly impressed, than to require the aid of
any images which the wit of man may devise.53

It is interesting to see that he recognized that baptism and the Last Supper
are images, because they consist in sensible signs. Yet he remains, even
with regard to these two sacraments, attentive to avoiding an overly sensible approach:“The presence of Christ in the Supper we must hold to be
such as neither affixes him to the element of bread, nor encloses him in
bread, nor circumscribes him in any way (this would obviously detract
from his celestial glory).”54
We would like to pose a question to Calvin: Why not extend to the
Bible itself, and preaching, this mistrust regarding that which is material
and sensible? Certainly he would respond that the Bible is a divine gift,
which is not necessarily the case with the statues in the churches. But the
basic presupposition, which is a fear with regard to the sensible dimension
as such, even in the Eucharist which is also a divine gift, can go beyond
that which Calvin envisaged, namely to the rejection of Scripture itself—
a visible sign in itself and as preached—in the name of a pure spiritualism.
Not only the Bible is a sensible sign, but also human beings participate
in its redaction, because “in sacred Scripture, God speaks through men in
human fashion”;55
To compose the sacred books, God chose certain men who, all the
while he employed them in this task, made full use of their powers and
faculties so that, though he acted in them and by them, it was as true
authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written,
and no more.56

This human dimension within the very redaction of the Word of God as
a revealed text continues, in another manner, in the transmission of
53 Ibid., I, XI, 13, 101. One discerns at times a certain irony in his remarks:“Indeed,

brothels exhibit more chastely and modestly dressed than churches do images
intended to represent virgins. The dress of the martyrs is in no respect more
becoming” (I, XI, 7, 96).
54 Ibid., IV, XVII, 19, 571.
55 Vatican II, Dei Verbum, §12.
56 Ibid., §11.

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Revelation by human beings.Thus the passing on of faith, in the “method”
chosen by God, passes through human beings.57
The intention of presenting the pure Bible was without doubt
commendable. But the manner of doing it was based on presuppositions
which, although they were not consciously grasped at the beginning,
ended by arriving at their conclusion: if the sensible and human elements
are not truly worthy of God, the Bible itself is human; and it is necessary
to search elsewhere for spirituality. For a significant number of biblical
interpreters today, an axiom is that “the biblical text has lost its status as
a sacred text. It is comparable to any other text of world literature and
ought therefore to be read according to the methods in use in the literary and historical disciplines.”58 If on the other hand one sees Revelation
in an incarnate manner, it would be necessary to be able to discern the
divine action within what our senses perceive, including the biblical text
and its proclamation (by sight or hearing).
The Church or the Visibility of Grace
All that we have said so far can be summarized in the work of the Church.
In the Church, divine grace is rendered visible by its effects.The diverse
names or images of the Church that Vatican II enumerated refer to visible realities: sheepfold, flock, the tillage of God, the building of God
(house, dwelling, tabernacle of God, sacred temple), the Jerusalem that is
above, our mother, the immaculate spouse of the spotless Lamb, mystical
Body of Christ, People of God.59 The forms of the Christian life, which
are visible, are signs of the divine action, each in its own manner:
Religious give outstanding and striking testimony that the world
cannot be transfigured and offered to God without the spirit of the
57 Cf. ST II–II, q. 6, a. 1: “Two things are requisite for faith. First, that the things

which are of faith should be proposed to man: this is necessary in order that man
believe anything explicitly. The second thing requisite for faith is the assent of
the believer to the things which are proposed to him. Accordingly, as regards the
first of these, faith must be from God. Because those things which are of faith
surpass human reason, hence they do not come to man’s knowledge, unless God
reveal them. To some, indeed, they are revealed by God immediately, as those
things which were revealed to the apostles and prophets, while to some they are
proposed by God in sending preachers of the faith.”
58 Presentation of the developments of the historical-critical method by Jean
Zumstein in his article “Bible,” 4.2, in Encyclopédie du protestantisme, ed. Pierre Gisel
(Paris-Geneva: Cerf-Labor et Fides, 1995), 125 (certainly one can use the historical-critical method without denying the inspiration of Scripture). Cf. Charles Journet, De la Bible catholique à la Bible protestante (Paris: André Blot, 1930), 54–60.
59 Cf.Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, §§6, 7, 9.

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beatitudes.60 But by reason of their special vocation it belongs to the
laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and
directing them according to God’s will.They live in the world, that is,
they are engaged in each and every work and business of the earth and
in the ordinary circumstances of social and family life which, as it were,
constitute their very existence.61 There they are called by God that,
being led by the spirit of the Gospel, they may contribute to the sanctification of the world, as from within like leaven, by fulfilling their own
particular duties.Thus, especially by the witness of their life, resplendent
in faith, hope, and charity they must manifest Christ to others.62

In the Eucharistic celebration, the priest acts “in persona Christi” and
proclaims his mystery.63 The martyrs render visible the love of Christ.64
The faith can take root through this visible comportment of the community of disciples, as an admirable text of St.Thomas explains:
not [due to] the violent assault of arms or the promise of pleasures, and
(what is most wonderful of all) in the midst of the tyranny of the persecutors, an innumerable throng of people, both simple and most learned,
flocked to the Christian faith. In this faith there are truths preached that
surpass every human intellect; the pleasures of the flesh are curbed; it is
taught that the things of the world should be spurned. Now, for the
minds of mortal men to assent to these things is the greatest of miracles, just as it is a manifest work of divine inspiration that, spurning visible things, men should seek only what is invisible.65

Certainly the Church is not only visible, because her Head—Christ—is
no longer directly visible to us after his ascension; neither the angels nor
the souls in paradise and in purgatory are visible. If our faith is based on
what we see of the Church, it has by definition an invisible object.66 It
60 Cf. ibid., §44.
61 Cf. ibid., §41: “Christian married couples and parents . . . present to all an exam-

ple of unfailing and generous love, they build up the brotherhood of charity, and
they stand as witnesses and co-operators of the fruitfulness of mother Church, as a
sign of and a share in that love with which Christ loved his bride and gave himself
for her. In a different way, a similar example is given by widows and single people,
who can also greatly contribute to the holiness and activity of the Church.”
62 Ibid., §31.
63 Cf. ibid., §28
64 Cf. ibid., no. 42.
65 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, trans. Anton C. Pegis (1955) (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), I, ch. 6.
66 Cf. John of St. Thomas, In Iam, q. 1, disp. I, art. 3, in idem, Cursus theologicus, In
Summam theologicam D.Thomae, new ed., vol. 1, in Primae Partis Quaestiones I–VII
(Paris:Vivès, 1883), 442: “We believe that the Church is visible, but we do not

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is necessary therefore to avoid the mistake of stopping at the most immediately visible object, as if it were the end of our striving rather than
being a stage.67 The spectator of the life of the Church risks not perceiving in it its deeper reality. Augustine himself for a time could not understand what truly animated St.Ambrose, because he ignored his relationship
with God:
Ambrose himself I thought a happy man as the world judges things, for
he was held in honor by the great and powerful. Only his celibacy
seemed to me painful. But I had no notion nor any experience to know
what were his hopes, what struggles he had against the temptations of
his distinguished position, what consolations in adversities, and the
hidden aspect of his life—what was in his heart, what delicious joys
came as he fed on and digested your bread.68

This kind of incomprehension is frequent among those who observe the
Church without spiritual experience. If Augustine could go beyond this
level, this movement did not however take place in a purely interior
believe something because it is visible, since the objects of faith are not visible.
[We believe] because in this visible thing, the gathering of human beings of
which the Church is composed whose head who is a visible man, there is not
only a natural and political authority, but supernatural government and the assistance of the Holy Spirit and the graces of the sacraments and many other invisible realities without which the Church could not subsist; and it is good that
human beings who compose the Church are visible. Similarly we believe that
Christ is a visible man, although we do not believe the visibility, but that this visible element is united to the invisible divinity. And the sacraments are sensible
signs, which does not stop us from believing that they are sacraments and have
an invisible efficacy.”
67 Cf. Charles Journet, L’Église du Verbe Incarné, vol. 2 (Saint-Maurice: S.-Augustin,
1999), 37–38: “The Church can be known from outside by three aspects that
arise from three superimposed levels: 1) at the phenomenal, empirical, statistical,
historical level, she is seen on the surface, as a human community among other
human communities; 2) at the level of moral and metaphysical values, she is seen
more profoundly, as a human community of exceptional quality, even as a moral
miracle; 3) at the level of revealed realities, which alone manifest her adequately,
she is no longer seen by reason but believed by divine faith, and she appears, in
her likeness to Christ, as a mystery in which are indissolubly united the visible,
namely his body, and the invisible, namely his created soul, and the Spirit, his
uncreated Soul, which moves and indwells her. It is from this third point of view
that the theologian speaks of the body of the Church, which he defines, for
instance, as: the visible and exterior behavior of human beings insofar as it is
informed by the outpouring of Christ’s capital grace, that is to say, the priesthood, the kingship, and the holiness of Christ.”
68 St. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992), bk.VI, ch. iii, 3.

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manner, but rather was also and again thanks to encountering flesh-andbone Christians:“There were large numbers of boys and girls, a multitude
of all ages, young adults and grave widows and elderly virgins. In every
one of them was Continence herself, in no sense barren but ‘the fruitful
mother of children’ (Ps 112:9), the joys born of you, Lord, her husband.”69
Thus, the vision of the people of God can be too superficial, but this
superficial level itself contributes to moving beyond this level. It is necessary to hold to the equilibrium between the visible dimension and the
invisible dimension:
[T]he society structured with hierarchical organs and the mystical body
of Christ, the visible society and the spiritual community, the earthly
Church and the Church endowed with heavenly riches, are not to be
thought of as two realities. On the contrary, they form one complex
reality which comes together from a human and a divine element.70

Sensible Knowledge Requires a Purification
To see the Church assists in believing, but the sight, as we have said, should
go beneath the more superficial appearance. In a general manner, all our
sensible knowledge requires to be purified in order that one can approach
it as a sign of the divine action.
First, it is clear that the senses do not enable one to see God in an
unmediated way. On the natural level, they can furnish the starting point
of a knowledge that, after reflection, rises to the author of that which one
observes in existence. The sensible given is also used in faith, but the
object of faith is not itself sensible. According to Hebrews 11:1, which for
St.Thomas is the most complete definition of faith:71 “Now faith is the
assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Even
those who saw the risen Christ have not seen directly the object of their
faith:“Thomas ‘saw one thing, and believed another’: he saw the man, and
believing him to be God, he made profession of his faith, saying: ‘My
Lord and my God.’ ”72
St.Augustine explains that the error would be to stop at creatures, and
not to go beyond them, thereby cutting short before its goal the path
to God:

69 Ibid., bk.VIII, ch. xi, 27.
70 Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, §8.
71 Cf. Aquinas, De veritate, q. 14, a. 2. For Aquinas’s commentary on this definition,

see also ST II–II, q. 4, a. 1.
72 ST II–II, q. 1, a. 4, ad 1.

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Suppose we were wanderers who could not live in blessedness except at
home, miserable in our wandering and desiring to end it and to return
to our native country. . . .But if the amenities of the journey and the
motion of the vehicles itself delighted us, and we were led to enjoy those
things which we should use, we should not wish to end our journey
quickly and, entangled in a perverse sweetness, we should be alienated
from our country whose sweetness would make us blessed.Thus in this
mortal life, wandering from God, if we wish to return to our native
country where we can be blessed we should use this world and not
enjoy it, so that the “invisible things” of God “being understood by the
things that are made” may be seen, that is, so that by means of corporal
and temporal things we may comprehend the eternal and spiritual.73

The description of the famous vision in Ostia shows that creatures speak
of God if one keeps silent and hears them above themselves:
Therefore we said: If to anyone the tumult of the flesh has fallen silent,
if the images of earth, water, and air are quiescent, if the heavens themselves are shut out and the very soul itself is making no sound and is
surpassing itself by no longer thinking about itself, if all dreams and
visions in the imagination are excluded, if all language and every sign
and everything transitory is silent—for if anyone could hear them, this
is what all of them would be saying, “We did not make ourselves, we
were made by him who abides for eternity” (Ps 79:3, 5)—if after this
declaration they were to keep silence, having directed our ears to him
that made them, then he alone would speak not through them but
through himself. We would hear his word, not through the tongue of
the flesh, nor through the voice of an angel, nor through the sound of
thunder, nor through the obscurity of a symbolic utterance. Him who
in these things we love we would hear in person without their mediation. . . .If only it could last, and other visions of a vastly inferior kind
could be withdrawn! Then this alone could ravish and absorb and
enfold in inward joys the person granted the vision. So too eternal life
is of the quality of that moment of understanding after which we
sighed. Is not this the meaning of “Enter into the joy of your Lord” (Mt
25:21)? And when is that to be? Surely it is when “we all rise again, but
are not all changed” (1 Cor 15:51).74

Given that the senses do not give us an immediate perception of God, and
that we should meditate silently on the message that they transmit to us,
we can either go beyond, or refuse to go beyond, the level of appearances.
Our experience leads us to God on the condition that we will it. This
73 St. Augustine, De doctrina christiana, I, IV, 4.
74 St. Augustine, Confessions, bk. IX, ch. x, 25.

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works at the level of the natural discovery of the existence of God, but
especially at the level of faith itself.As St.Thomas says, citing St.Augustine:
Thus, too, we are moved to believe what God says because we are
promised eternal life as a reward if we believe. And this reward moves
the will to assent to what is said, although the intellect is not moved by
anything which it understands.Therefore, Augustine says:“Man can do
other things unwillingly, but he can believe only if he wills it.”75

This will to believe involves a certain renunciation.
Commenting on the definition of the First Vatican Council according
to which the knowledge of the existence of God by natural reason is
possible,76 Pope Pius XII takes into consideration the question of atheism: Does not the fact of the existence of atheists deny the value of the
conciliar definition? He responds that some obstacles are opposed to this
knowledge of God:
For though, absolutely speaking, human reason by its own natural force
and light can arrive at a true and certain knowledge of the one personal
God,Who by his providence watches over and governs the world, and
also of the natural law, which the Creator has written on our hearts, still
there are not a few obstacles to prevent reason from making efficient and
fruitful use of its natural ability.The truths that have to do with God and
the relations between God and men, completely surpass the sensible
order and demand self-surrender and self-abnegation in order to be put
into practice and to influence practical life. Now the human intellect, in
gaining the knowledge of such truths is hampered both by the activity
of the senses and the imagination, and by evil passions arising from original sin. Hence men easily persuade themselves in such matters that what
they do not wish to believe is false or at least doubtful.77

The knowledge of God, whether natural knowledge or the knowledge
of faith, requires that the person consent, accept the sacrifices that follow,
and accept the action in the person of the purifying grace of God.
In addition, given that sensible perception requires to be extended by
reflection, the intelligence itself has need of formation and eventually
purification. Pius XII indicates this also, after the text that we cited above:
75 Aquinas, De veritate, q. 14, a. 1.
76 Cf. Vatican I, constitution Dei Filius (April 24, 1870), ch. 2: “The same holy

mother Church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things, can
be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural
power of human reason:‘ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature
has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made’ [Rom 1:20].”
77 Pius XII, encyclical Humani Generis (1950), §2.

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812

It is well-known how highly the Church regards human reason, for it
falls to reason to demonstrate with certainty the existence of God,
personal and one. . . . But reason can perform these functions safely and
well, only when properly trained, that is, when imbued with that sound
philosophy which has long been, as it were, a patrimony handed down
by earlier Christian ages, and which moreover possesses an authority of
even higher order, since the magisterium of the Church, in the light of
divine revelation itself, has weighed its fundamental tenets, which have
been elaborated and defined little by little by men of great genius.78

The purification of the intelligence requires not only a purification of the
principles of thought, but also a purification of memory:The images present in memory can weigh down the inclination of the will, as they
restrained Augustine at the threshold of faith:
Vain trifles and the triviality of the empty-headed, my old loves, held
me back.They tugged at the garment of my flesh and whispered: “Are
you getting rid of us?” And “from this moment we shall never be with
you again, not for ever and ever.” And “from this moment this and that
are forbidden to you for ever and ever.”79

Memory should therefore be purified by a focus turned toward God,
which demands an ascesis and sacrifices.
Sacrifices contribute to orienting the heart toward the Creator rather
than toward creatures. By means of sacrifice, the person recognizes that
his or her goods come from God as origin (or as efficient cause): “Now
in order to direct his mind to God aright, man must recognize that whatever he has is from God as from its first principle, and direct it to God as
its last end.This was denoted in the offerings and sacrifices.”80
He or she recognizes also that these goods should be offered to God as
final cause:“And since, for the human mind to be directed to God aright,
it must recognize no first author of things other than God, nor place its
end in any other; for this reason it was forbidden in the Law to offer sacrifice to any other but God.”81 They are therefore an instrument of purification, already at the natural level; and it is normal that for this purification
the person has recourse to sensible means, which are suited to him:
Natural reason tells man that he is subject to a higher being, on account
of the defects which he perceives in himself, and in which he needs
78 Ibid., §29.
79 St. Augustine, Confessions, bk.VIII, ch. xi, 26.
80 ST I–II, q. 102, a. 3.
81 Ibid.

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813

help and direction from someone above him: and whatever this superior being may be, it is known to all under the name of God. Now just
as in natural things the lower are naturally subject to the higher, so too
it is a dictate of natural reason in accordance with man’s natural inclination that he should tender submission and honor, according to his
mode, to that which is above men. Now the mode befitting to man is
that he should employ sensible signs in order to signify anything,
because he derives his knowledge from sensibles. Hence it is a dictate
of natural reason that man should use certain sensibles, by offering
them to God in sign of the subjection and honor due to Him, like
those who make certain offerings to their lord in recognition of his
authority. Now this is what we mean by a sacrifice, and consequently
the offering of sacrifice is of the natural law.82

Thus, if the tendency of human beings to take creatures for the ultimate
end in the place of God is an obstacle to faith or at least to believing in
God, these same creatures can be a means of expressing the recognition
of God as Lord; they can assist the purification of the human heart and
thus foster belief and the desire for God.
Fundamentally, the disordered attachment to creatures, which is
opposed to the ascending movement toward God, is corrected by the
very movement of faith:
Now it is evident that the rational creature is more excellent than all
transient and corporeal creatures; so that it becomes impure through
subjecting itself to transient things by loving them. From this impurity
the rational creature is purified by means of a contrary movement,
namely, by tending to that which is above it, namely, God. The first
beginning of this movement is faith: since “he that cometh to God must
believe that He is,” according to Hebrews 11:6. Hence the first beginning of the heart’s purifying is faith; and if this be perfected through
being quickened by charity, the heart will be perfectly purified thereby.83

The movement toward God comes from the grace of faith itself, which
can be given in anticipation of faith. When the person believes, the
process of the purification of the heart continues.
In the movement of purification in view of union with God, the
mystical life involves a purification of the senses. If God uses our senses
in order to communicate himself to us, he remains above what our senses
can perceive; and sensible attachment draws the person toward what is
lower. Jacques Maritain summarizes this purification of the senses, a
82 ST II–II, q. 85, a. 1.
83 ST II–II, q. 7, a. 2.

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necessary preparation for perfect peace in the mystical theology of St.
John of the Cross:
To heal the . . . impurity which comes in the wake of the senses and
which prevents the union of love and contemplation by a mist of creatures, there is but one remedy: night, the void. St. John of the Cross
deals most fully and completely with this purification (which belongs
properly to mystical theology) in his teaching on the Night of the
Senses.This is a twofold night, both active and passive, or rather perhaps
a twilight into which those souls penetrate who have heard the call to
contemplation. . . .In the one case, the soul exerts itself on its own
initiative, turning down the taste of the senses and the force or their
attractions, lulling the appetites to sleep. In the other case, God works
in the soul, purifying it Himself with an incomparably greater efficacy.
Without this divine scouring of the passive night, the soul would never
be cleansed of those all-too-visible stains which are imperceptible to it:
of the desire for consolation, the spiritual presumption, sensuality, impatience, avarice, gluttony, envy, and sloth which are the ordinary faults of
apprentices in perfection. Distinguishing spiritual realities from sensible
representations, passing beyond phantasms, beginning to know itself
and to understand that the divine will fill it just insofar as it is empty,
the soul begins also to glimpse the peace of God, enters into the prayer
of quiet, the beginning, the tiny beginning of infused contemplation.84

If it is without doubt erroneous to undervalue the role of the senses in
the Christian life, it is at the same time necessary to avoid confusing the
mystical life and sensible feeling: Such a confusion can only lead to
deception, because it confuses God with a being of this world, and it
forgets that our path to beatitude passes through the Cross.
Conclusion: Why Does God Have Recourse
to Sensible Means?
We have seen from different points of view that God has recourse to
sensible means in his relationship with human beings: man himself,
history, the Church, the liturgy, the sacraments, images, and, indeed above
all else, the humanity of Jesus Christ. Would it not be more worthy of
God to have recourse to a purely spiritual contact? For St.Thomas, such
could be the case before sin, but no longer.85 To reject sensible signs in
84 Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite or The Degrees of Knowledge, 4th ed., trans.

Gerald B. Phelan et al. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995),
384–85.
85 Cf. ST III, q. 60, a. 5, ad 3:“[J]ust as under the state of the law of nature man was
moved by inward instinct and without any outward law, to worship God, so also

The Senses and Our Relationship to God

815

the communication of God with human beings would deny the impact
of original sin. St.Thomas explains that “the effect of the divine power is
manifested especially in material realities, since spiritual realities are less
known to us.”86 Regarding the sacraments, he explains that their simultaneously spiritual and material dimensions correspond to the human
being: “The Church’s sacraments are ordained for helping man in the
spiritual life. But the spiritual life is analogous to the corporeal, since
corporeal things bear a resemblance to spiritual.”87 The liturgical cult is
celebrated in ways that befit not God as such, but rather the human
being, and that are dependent on the economy of the Incarnation:
The divine worship regards two things: namely, God who is
worshipped; and men, who worship him. Accordingly God, who is
worshipped, is confined to no bodily place: wherefore there was no
need, on his part, for a tabernacle or temple to be set up. But men, who
worship him, are corporeal beings: and for their sake there was need for
a special tabernacle or temple to be set up for the worship of God, for
two reasons. First, that through coming together with the thought that
the place was set aside for the worship of God, they might approach
thither with greater reverence. Secondly, that certain things relating to
the excellence of Christ’s divine or human nature might be signified by
the arrangement of various details in such temple or tabernacle.88

It is therefore not on account of God himself, but on account of human
beings that God uses sensible signs. St.Thomas gives three reasons for this
economy: human nature, the Incarnation, and the fact that corporeal reality
the sensible things to be employed in the worship of God were determined by
inward instinct. But later on it became necessary for a law to be given (to man)
from without: both because the Law of nature had become obscured by man’s
sins; and in order to signify more expressly the grace of Christ, by which the
human race is sanctified.And hence the need for those things to be determinate,
of which men have to make use in the sacraments. Nor is the way of salvation
narrowed thereby: because the things which need to be used in the sacraments,
are either in everyone’s possession or can be had with little trouble.”
86 St.Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Psalm 17.
87 ST III, q. 73, a. 1.
88 ST I–II, q. 102, a. 4, ad 1. See also ST II–II, q. 81, a. 7:“Now the human mind, in
order to be united to God, needs to be guided by the sensible world, since ‘invisible things . . . are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,’ as
the Apostle says (Rom 1:20). Wherefore in the divine worship it is necessary to
make use of corporeal things, that man’s mind may be aroused thereby, as by signs,
to the spiritual acts by means of which he is united to God.Therefore the internal acts of religion take precedence of the others and belong to religion essentially, while its external acts are secondary and subordinate to the internal acts.”

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can otherwise lead to sin. We conclude with this text, containing all the
elements of our question:
Since, however (as has already been said [ch. 55, n. 29]), the death of
Christ is, so to say, the universal cause of human salvation and since a
universal cause must be applied singly to each of its effects, it was necessary to show men some remedies through which the benefit of Christ’s
death could somehow be conjoined to them. It is of this sort, of course,
that the sacraments of the Church are said to be. Now, remedies of this
kind had to be handed on with some visible signs. First, indeed, because
just as He does for all other things, so also for man, God provides
according to his condition. Now, man’s condition is such that he is
brought to grasp the spiritual and intelligible naturally through the
senses. Therefore, spiritual remedies had to be given to men under
sensible signs. Second, because instruments must be proportioned to
their first cause. But the first and universal cause of human salvation is
the incarnate Word, as is clear from the foregoing. Therefore, harmoniously the remedies by which the power of the universal cause reaches
men had a likeness to that cause; that is, the divine power operates in
them under visible signs. Third, because man fell into sin by clinging
unduly to visible things. Therefore, that one might not believe visible
things evil of their nature and that for this reason those clinging to
them had sinned, it was fitting that through the visible things themselves the remedies of salvation be applied to men. Consequently, it
would appear that visible things are good of their nature—as created by
God—but they become damaging to men so far as one clings to them
in a disordered way, and saving so far as one uses them in an ordered
way. Thus, of course, one excludes the error of certain heretics who
want every visible thing of this kind removed from the sacraments of
the Church. Nor need one marvel at this, for the very same men maintain that whatever is visible is evil in its nature and is produced by an
evil author.And this we rejected in book II. Nor is it unsuitable that by
things visible and bodily a spiritual salvation is served. For visible things
of this kind are the instruments, so to say, of a God who was made flesh
and suffered. Now, an instrument does not operate by the power of its
nature, but by the power of its principal agent who puts it into operation.Thus, also, then, do visible things of this kind work out a spiritual
salvation—not by a property of their own nature, but by Christ’s instiN&V
tution; and from the latter they receive their instrumental power.89

89 Summa contra Gentiles, IV, ch. 56. See also the very similar text of ST III, q. 61, a. 1.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 4 (2007): 817–842

817

From Within the Mediation of Christ:
The Place of Christ in the Christian Moral and
Sacramental Life According to St. Thomas Aquinas
ROGER W. N UTT
Ave Maria University
Ave Maria, Florida

Introduction
THE S ECOND Vatican Council, when treating the renewal of ecclesiastical studies in Optatam Totius, commends St.Thomas Aquinas when it
says, “[I]n order to throw as full a light as possible on the mysteries of
salvation, the students should learn to examine more deeply, with the
help of speculation and with St. Thomas as teacher, all aspects of these
mysteries, and to perceive their interconnection.”1 But, however strong
or weak an interpretation is given to this passage from Vatican II, one
thing is certainly clear: It has not been evident to theologians since the
time of the Council that St. Thomas’s theological system can carry out
the task prescribed for theology by the Council—especially regarding the
renewal called for in moral theology.2 As a case in point, I cite Livio

Nova et Vetera Lecture, June 2, 2006, Ave Maria University.
1 Austin Flannery, O.P., ed., The Second Vatican Council, vol. 1, The Conciliar and Post
Conciliar Documents (Northport: Costello Publishing Company, Inc, 1996), §16.
2 Optatam Totius §16 takes up a number of other theological disciplines beginning
with moral theology:“In like manner [item] the other theological subjects should
be renewed [instaurentur] through a more vivid contact with the Mystery of Christ
and the history of salvation. Special care should be given to the perfecting of
moral theology. Its scientific presentation should draw more fully on the teaching
of Holy Scripture and should throw light upon the exalted vocation of the faithful in Christ and their obligation to bring forth fruit in charity for the life of the
world.”Also, Pope John Paul II, in his Apostolic Constitution Sapientia Christiana,

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Roger W. Nutt

Melina. Melina is a very Thomist-friendly scholar. Speaking specifically
of Optatam Totius, he notes, “Vatican Council II . . . proposed the Christological reference as essential for moral theology. In its Decree on the
Training of Priests, the Council affirms that the teaching of moral theology has the task of illustrating the height of the vocation of the faithful
in Christ (see Optatam Totius, no. 16).”3 Melina then goes on to make the
following observation about St. Thomas’s theology within the Christocentric renewal proposed by the Council:
Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Summa theologiae, with brilliant originality but still in his character as “Common Doctor,” proposed a very
different form of ethics consistent with the classical tradition and
centered on the virtues. It was a profoundly theological ethics, beginning with the fact that the formal perspective is always that of Christian revelation: the last end is to be grasped as supernatural beatitude, the
human acts that prepare it are placed in the perspective of merit, and
the virtues become integrated in the dynamic of love, which is their

§67, describes the organization of theology in similar terms: “The individual
theological disciplines are to be taught in such a way that, from their internal
structure and from the proper object of each as well as from their connection
with other disciplines, including philosophical ones and the sciences of man, the
basic unity of theological instruction is quite clear, and in such a way that all the
disciplines converge in a profound understanding of the mystery of Christ, so
that this can be announced with greater effectiveness to the People of God and
to all nations.”
For a summary of the debate about the place of Christ within the narrative
of the Summa theologiae, see J.-P. 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) 150–56. Also, a more detailed and technical
analysis can be found in Inos Biffi’s Teologia, Storia e Contemplazione in Tommaso
d’ Aquino, vol. 3, La Costruzione della Teologia (Milano: Editoriale Jaca Book,
1995), 225–312.
For an engagement between Thomas’s Christology and other prominent
contemporary contributions to Christology, cf. D. Ols, Le Cristologie contemporanee e le loro posizioni fondamentali al vaglio della dottrina di S.Tommaso (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1991). On pp. 7–14, Ols briefly reviews the
use—or lack thereof—of Aquinas in the Christological writings of the most
prominent recent authors, including Galot, Kasper, Balthasar, Bultmann, and
Rahner. Throughout his book Ols provides detailed descriptions of points of
convergence and divergence between Aquinas, and Rahner and Schillebeeckx
on numerous Christological topics.
3 L. Melina, Sharing in Christ’s Virtues: For a Renewal of Moral Theology in Light of
Veritatis Splendor, trans. William E. May (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of American Press, 2001), 116.

Christ in the Moral and Sacramental Life

819

mother and form. However, the explicitly Christological reference, while present, is very slight, we must frankly admit that the centrality of Christ for morality is not very evident in the moral theology of Aquinas. It is in this direction,
however, that Vatican Council II and recent magisterium of the Church invites
us to proceed.4

Certainly these lines reflect the thoughts of many, and from such a
formidable theologian they deserve to be taken seriously. However, my
research into St. Thomas Aquinas leads me to disagree with Melina’s
assessment. I believe that Aquinas’s understanding of Christ as priest and
mediator serves as a tripwire or as what Fr. Torrell calls a “subterranean
current”5 (or “Christological reference point”) running through his
theological system. I have titled this lecture “From Within the Mediation
of Christ” because I think that is precisely how St. Thomas understands
the implications of his Christological conclusions.The whole of Christian life is a life lived within the mediation of Christ—a life contingent
upon his priestly sacrifice.While the sacraments and moral theology can
be studied in their own right, they depend in their inner theological
nature on the effects won by Christ’s priestly activity. What a renewed
theology needs is not simply an athematic Christocentrism, but an awareness of the irreplaceable importance of Christ as priest and mediator.And
I think that what Aquinas has to say about Christ as priest and mediator
is an aspect of his theology that has special resonance with the renewal
called for by the Council, as well as for the overall integration that is so
lacking today between the diverse theological specializations.6
I hope to demonstrate this in two parts. First, I will summarize what
Aquinas has to say Christologically about Christ’s priesthood and mediation. Second, I will demonstrate how these conclusions inform and
appear in his moral and sacramental theology.

4 Ibid., emphasis added.
5 J.-P. Torrell, O.P., Aquinas’s Summa: Background, Structure, and Reception, trans.

Benedict M. Guevin, O.S.B. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 2005), 27.
6 For a distinct, though related work, cf. A. N. Williams, “Mystical Theology
Redux: The Pattern of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae,” Modern Theology 13 (1997):
53–74.While not intending to offer a rapprochement between Aquinas and Vatican
II, on p. 56 Williams presents Aquinas as a true model for reestablishing unity
within theology. Also for a brief treatment of the relationship between Aquinas,
the Council, and recent theology, cf. Jean-Pierre Torrell’s La “Somme de théologie”
de saint Thomas (Paris: Cerf, 1998), esp. 156–57.

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Roger W. Nutt

Part I: The Priestly Mediation of Christ
According to St. Thomas7
The topic that Thomas places before himself in question 22 of the Treatise on Christ in the tertia pars is de sacerdotio Christi.8 In the body of the
first article of question 22, Aquinas explains that “the office proper to a
priest is to be a mediator between God and the people.”9 Aquinas further
7 Summa theologiae III, q. 22, a. 1. “Proprium officium sacerdotis est esse media-

torem inter Deum et populum.”This close rapport between the nature of priestly
and mediatorial activity clearly demonstrates the necessity of discussing both.
The overlap between the offices of priest and mediator is established by Scripture. For example, Hebrews 8 (verses 1 and 6) speaks of Christ as both a high
priest (archiereus) and mediator (mesites). The Greek word mesites (mediator) is
applied directly to Christ four times in the New Testament: in 1 Tim 2:5; and in
Heb 8:6, 9:15, and 12:24.
There are a number of other places in Aquinas’s corpus in which he defines
a priest as a mediator. For example, Fr. Serge-Thomas Bonino in his article “Le
sacerdoce comme institution naturelle selon saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue
thomiste 99 (1999): 47, provides six texts from Thomas’s opera that all define the
role of a priest as that of mediator or medium.Three citations that are not found
in the tertia pars or in Thomas’s commentary on the Letter to the Hebrews include:
(1) In IV Sent., d. 5, q. 2, a. 2, qla 2, arg. 2:“Sacerdotes sunt medii inter Deum et
plebem”; (2) ST II–II, q. 102, a. 4, ad 6:“Sacerdos Mediator inter Deum et populum”; and (3) ST II–II, q. 86, a. 2:“Sacerdos quodammodo constituitur sequester
et medius inter populum et Deum.”
8 The question is ordered around several biblical-Christological themes that flow
especially from the Letter to the Hebrews. This structure is not uncommon to
medieval theology. “This is, in fact,” one author explains, “an artificial method,
typical of the literary genre of a summa, for presenting the teaching of the Scriptures.” Summa theologiae, ed. Colman E. O’Neill, O.P. (London: Blackfriars, 1965),
vol. 50, 137 n. a.
9 ST III, q. 22, a. 1, c.: “Proprium officium sacerdotis est esse mediatorem inter
Deum et populum.” N.B. All English citations to the Summa theologiae, unless
otherwise noted, will be taken from the translation provided by the English
Dominican Province published in 5 volumes, now available as Summa theologica
(Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981).
The recognition of the connection between the two offices of priest and
mediator is not absent from the secondary literature on St. Thomas. For example, Battista Mondin, in “Sacerdozio di Cristo,” Dizionario Enciclopedico del
Pensiero di San Tommaso d’Aquino (Bologna: ESD, 1991), 539, offers the following
comments on this relationship: “To define the priesthood of Christ, St.Thomas
has recourse to the category of mediation, which is the category that he uses to
define the priesthood in general. In fact, the priest is, by definition, the mediator between God and men. Now, since Jesus Christ is not only the mediator
between God and men, but he is also the unique person who performs suitably
such a function, it is evident that to him the title and office of priest belong
eminently” (Per definire il s.d.C., S.T. ricorre alla categoria della mediazione, che

Christ in the Moral and Sacramental Life

821

specifies Christ’s priestly action by delineating two principle functions.
The first function Thomas recognizes is that: “He [Christ the Priest]
bestows divine things on the people.” Thomas speaks of the second
priestly function as follows:“forasmuch as he offers up the people’s prayers
to God, and, in a manner, makes satisfaction for their sins.”10 For St.
Thomas, Christ is a priest in the fullest or most fitting sense of the word
because he carried out the twofold priestly office in the highest (superlative) manner.11 “For in him,” Thomas points out, “are gifts bestowed on
è la categoria che si usa per definire il sacerdozio in generale. Infatti, il sacerdote
è, per definizione, il mediatore tra Dio e gli uomini. Ora, poiché non solo Gesù
Cristo è mediatore tra Dio e gli uomini, ma è anche l’unica persona che assolve
adeguatamente tale funzione, è evidente che a lui compete eminentemente il
titolo e l’ufficio di sacerdote). [My translation.]
10 ST III, q. 22, a. 1, c.:“Inquantum scilicet divina populo tradit . . . et iterum inquantum preces populi Deo offert, et pro eorum peccatis Deo aliqualiter satisfacit.”
11 Ibid.:“Hoc autem maxime convenit Christo.” For a treatment of the insight and
influence of Aquinas’s theological exegesis in his theology of Christ as priest and
mediator, I refer the reader to the following: Firstly, in “The Twofold Division of
St. Thomas’s Christology in the Tertia Pars,” The Thomist 60 (1996), John Boyle
notes that the structure of the tertia pars uniquely captures the ordo of the theological narrative of the New Testament that Lombard and his commentators
failed to identify:“The epistles provide a great number of decisive categories that
interpret the mission of Christ: Christ the redeemer of a fallen humanity; Christ
the true mediator between God and man; Christ the great high priest; Christ the
head of the Church. . . . In a temporal narrative of Christ’s life, there is no obvious place for the treatment of his mediatorship, priesthood, or headship. Each
extends throughout, and even beyond his earthly life, although each is intimately
bound to particular aspects of that life. The problem is thus one in which both
the narrative and its primary categories of intelligibility are in Scripture” (440).
Secondly, within Aquinas’s method for organizing and appropriating the
biblical categories in his Christology, we find that he uses what Boyle refers to
as the “primary categories” in a special way.When Aquinas applies biblical terms
to Christ as names, e.g., mediator (or priest), he uses the word in a unique and
special way.The names then, as Aquinas uses them, take on a new significance for
understanding who Christ is, and this significance is the result of Aquinas’s theological exegesis. Henk Schoot describes St. Thomas’s methodology of exegetically “naming” Christ according to the following consistently discernible
pattern: “This one example [mediation] enables us to ascertain some typical
features of the analysis of names applied to Christ. According to the fullness of
its meaning, the name is applicable to one only. In order to determine the meaning of the word, one should consult the meaning it has when applied to priests,
prophets, and angels. The word turns out to be used analogously, i.e., all the
aspects that constitute the meaning of the word when used for priests, prophets,
and angels are present when applied to Christ, but only Christ is the perfect
mediator.” (Henk J. M. Schoot, Christ the ‘Name’ of God: Thomas Aquinas on
Naming Christ [Leuven: Peeters, 1993], 81.) Schoot’s point here is important.

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men. . . .Moreover, he reconciled the human race to God. . . .Therefore it
is most fitting that Christ should be a priest.”12
There are other personages in the Bible who exercise the office of priest or
mediator, but when Christ assumes these offices he exercises them in a unique
and exclusive manner. Therefore, Aquinas’s appropriation of the biblical categories used to name Christ and explain his saving work take on a superlative
connotation when he develops their meanings. Christ is not simply one priest
among many, but the priest. He is not yet another mediator similar to the angels
or even Moses; he is the perfect and unique mediator between God and man.
Finally, Ocáriz, Mateo Seco, and Riestra, in The Mystery of Jesus Christ, trans.
M. Adams and J. Gavigan (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1994), 166, note the
importance of Christ’s priestly mediation as a theme revealed in Hebrews. “The
author of the Letter to the Hebrews not only makes our Lord’s priesthood the
central theme of his message, but depicts the entire messianic work of Christ as
a ‘priestly mediation,’ describing him as the great priest of the New Alliance. Our
Lord himself spoke at the Last Supper about his blood being poured out like
‘blood of the covenant’ (Mk 14:24).The underlying argument of the Letter can
be summed up in this way: the covenant implies sacrifice, and therefore a mediator with priestly functions. When Hebrews speaks, therefore, about a new
covenant it also has to speak of a new priesthood.” It follows, in a sense, that
Christ as the priest and mediator of a new “superlative” (everlasting) covenant,
should be described in analogously superlative terms.The superlative manner in
which Christ exercises his munera is affirmed by Aquinas when he treats the various objections to Christ’s priesthood. In response to the objection that Christ
could not be a priest because in the Old Testament there was a separation
between the lawgiver and priests, Aquinas appeals to the impact that the hypostatic union and consequent fullness of grace had on Christ. “Christ,” he
explains, “as being the head of all, has the perfection of all graces.Wherefore, as
to others, one is a lawgiver, another is a priest, another is a king; but these concur
in Christ as the fount of all grace.” ST III, q. 22, a. 1, ad. 3: “Christus, tanquam
omnium caput, habet perfectionem omnium gratiarum. Et ideo, quantum ad
alios pertinet, alius est legislator, et alius sacerdos, et alius rex: sed haec omnia
concurrunt in Christo, tanquam in fonte omnium gratiarum.”
Also, in his In Heb., cap. III, lect. I, Aquinas sees a manifold superiority of
Christ over Moses. Aquinas uses the important distinction between Moses as a
servant of God and Christ as the Son of God to establish the points of Christ’s
superiority. Firstly, Aquinas comments that Christ is the builder (aedificator) of
God’s house, while Moses dwells (inhabitat) in the house built by Christ.
Secondly, regarding Christ and Moses as administrators within God’s house,
Aquinas calls Christ the “legislator principalis,” whereas Moses is the “legis
pronuntiator.” Thirdly, in domo patris Christ bears the name of filius, but Moses
acted as a famulus.
12 ST III, q. 22, a. 1, c.: “Nam per ipsum dona hominibus sunt collata, secundum
illud 2 Pet. 1, ‘per quem, scilicet Christum, maxima et pretiosa nobis promissa
donavit, ut per haec efficiamini divinae consortes naturae.’ Ipse etiam humanum
genus Deo reconciliavit, secundum illud Coloss. 1, ‘in ipso, scilicet Christo,

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Having discussed the fittingness of referring to Christ as a priest,
Thomas then proceeds to demonstrate exactly what it was that Christ
offered as his priestly sacrifice, the “type” of priesthood that Christ exercised, and the effects of Christ’s priesthood.
The first of these issues that Aquinas deals with is the nature of Christ’s
sacrifice. Thomas approaches this question by asking whether or not
Christ was at once both “priest and victim.”13 It is here that St.Thomas
forcefully displays his Augustinianism.Thomas constructs his affirmation
that Christ indeed is both priest and victim by applying St. Augustine’s
understanding of sacrament and sacrifice to Christ’s priestly work. In the
tenth book of The City of God,Augustine explains the sacramental correspondence between the visible and invisible. Aquinas, citing Augustine’s
classic formula, teaches that,“Every visible sacrifice is a sacrament, that is,
a sacred sign, of the invisible sacrifice.”14 In applying this formula to
complacuit omnem plenitudinem inhabitare, et per eum reconciliare omnia.’
Unde Christo maxime convenit esse sacerdotem.”
In In Heb., cap.V, lect. I, Aquinas argues that the dignity of Christ’s priesthood
supercedes all other valor because it and the things it is concerned with,“pertain to
the worship of God, they exceed temporal things, thus the high priestly dignity in
this way exceeds all other dignities” (Sicut ergo illa quae pertinent ad Dei cultum, excedunt temporalia, ita dignitas pontificalis excedit omnes alias dignitates). [My translation.]
13 ST III, q. 22, a. 2: “Utrum ipse Christus fuerit simul sacerdos et hostia.”
14 Cf. The City of God, X, 5, cited by Thomas in ST III, q. 22, a. 2, c.:“Omne sacrificium visibile invisibilis sacrificii est sacramentum, idest sacrum signum.”
Aquinas is much more indebted to Augustine in relation to his theology of
Christ’s priestly offering than he discloses with his citation of Augustine’s definition of a sacrifice from The City of God. However, later in the tertia pars, q. 48,
a. 3, in treating Christ’s passion, Aquinas returns to Augustine’s treatment of the
matter and offers further clarification. In the same work, just a few lines below,
Augustine develops an understanding of “true” sacrifice by commenting on Ps
51:17, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken contrite
heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” God, Augustine explains, “does not desire
the sacrifice of a slaughtered beast, but He desires the sacrifice of a contrite heart.
Thus, that sacrifice which he says God does not wish is the symbol of the sacrifice which God does wish.” The City of God, trans. M. Dods, vol. 18, The Great
Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), 301.
In the next chapter of the same book, Augustine applies this understanding
of sacrifice to Christ’s own offering:“Since, therefore, true sacrifices are works of
mercy to ourselves or others, done with reference to God, and since works of
mercy have no other object than the relief of distress or the conferring of happiness . . . it follows that the whole redeemed city . . . is offered to God as our sacrifice through the great High Priest, who offered himself to God in his passion for
us that we might be members of this glorious head, according to the form of a
servant. For it was this form he offered, in this he was offered, because it is
according to it he is Mediator, in this he is our Priest.” The City of God, 302.

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Christ’s priestly sacrifice,Aquinas was able to see Christ’s offering as more
than just the external and physical act of offering his human nature on
the cross. Christ’s external offering is intimately connected to his invisible and interior disposition, especially his full enjoyment of charity.15
This charity-based understanding separates Aquinas’s reading of Christ’s
sacrifice from those who view it exclusively in terms of an impersonal
juridical act of satisfaction.16
Aquinas then articulates three reasons why man needs (indiget) to offer
sacrifice.The first need that man has is “for the remission of sin, by which
he is turned away from God.” Secondly, man needs to offer sacrifice “that
man may be preserved in a state of grace, by ever adhering to God,
wherein his peace and salvation exist.”17 And the third reason is “in order
that the spirit of man be perfectly united to God: which will be most
These words of Augustine contain the primary structure of Aquinas’s treatment
of Christ’s priestly offering. Namely, that his priestly sacrifice remedies the
“distress” of sin, because in Christ there is a perfect harmony between the offering
itself and the interior dispositions of the one making the offering. For a treatment
of mediation in the theology of Augustine, cf. Deborah Ruddy, “The Humble
God: Healer, Mediator, and Sacrifice,” Logos 7 (2004): 87–108, esp. 93–99.
15 Fr. Romanus Cessario has concisely summarized this point in the following line:
“Consistent with previous teaching, Christ’s satisfaction finds its value not in
suffering but in love.” Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas (Washington DC: University Press of America, 1982), 185.
Also, for a helpful exposition of Aquinas’s understanding of the saving value of
Christ’s human actions, cf., Bernard Catão, Salut et rédemption chez Saint Thomas
d’Aquin; l’acte sauveur du Christ (Paris: Éditions Montaigne, 1965), 150–55. Catão
explains that Christ’s human love is not divorced from the divine plan for salvation—to the contrary Christ’s human love is an integral part of the divine plan
of salvation. He notes on p. 155: “Son [Christ’s] âme participe humainement à
l’oeuvre de la divinité, et le salut jaillissant de la profondeur divine de son être,
en fait de son Coeur une source et un principe humain.”
16 For a treatment of the relationship between justice and charity in Aquinas’s soteriology, cf. Levering, “Juridical Language in Soteriology: Aquinas’s Approach,”
Angelicum 80 (2003): esp. 321–22. Also, later in the tertia pars, when dealing with
the “Efficiency of Christ’s Passion” (q. 48), Thomas mentions the relationship
between Christ’s charity and his sacrifice,“passio Christi ex parte ipsius ex caritate patientis fuit sacrificium. Unde hoc sacrificium ipse Christus obtulisse dicitur, non autem illi qui eum occiderunt.” ST III, q. 48, a. 3, ad. 3. For a Thomistic
treatment of the relationship between Christ’s sonship and Christian adoptive
sonship, see Romanus Cessario, “The Light of Tabor: Christian Personalism and
Adoptive Sonship,” Nova et Vetera (English) 2 (2004): 238–40.
17 Thomas also argues that this is the reason for the “peace offering” (cf. Lev 3, and
ultimately for the other types of offerings described in the opening chapters of
Leviticus) of the Old Law. For Thomas’s own treatment of the diverse sacrifices
of the Old Testament, cf. ST I–II, q. 102, a. 3, ad. 8.

Christ in the Moral and Sacramental Life

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perfectly realized in glory.”18 Aquinas affirms that these three needs were
all satisfied in Christ’s priestly offering—per humanitatem Christi. “For, in
the first place,”Thomas explains,
our sins were blotted out. . . .Secondly, through him we received the
grace of salvation. . . .Thirdly, through him we have acquired the perfection of glory. . . .Therefore, Christ himself, as man, was not only priest,
but also a perfect victim, being at the same time victim for sin, victim
for peace-offering, and a holocaust.19

Then Thomas develops the “effect” that he ascribes to Christ’s priesthood by asking, “Whether the effect of Christ’s priesthood is the expiation of sins?”20 In answering this question, Aquinas first addresses the
twofold reality of the “macula culpae” and the “reatus poenae.” Since
mankind suffers from both the “stain of sin” and the “debt of punishment” due to sin, a true cleansing or expiation for sin would need to
satisfy for both.The “macula culpae” is removed “by grace, by which the
sinner’s heart is turned to God.”The “reatus poenae” is remitted by “the
satisfaction that man offers to God.”Therefore,“the priesthood of Christ
produces both of these effects,” Aquinas acknowledges: “For by its
[Christ’s priesthood] virtue grace is given to us, by which our hearts are
turned to God. . . .Moreover, he satisfied for us fully. . . . Wherefore it is
clear that the priesthood of Christ has full power to expiate sins.”21
18 ST III, q. 22, a. 2, c.: “Indiget homo sacrificio propter tria. Uno quidem modo

ad remissionem peccati, per quod a Deo avertitur. . . . Secundo, ut homo in statu
gratiae conservetur, semper Deo inhaerens, in quo eius pax et salus consistit. . . .
Tertio, ad hoc quod spiritus hominis perfecte Deo uniatur: quod maxime erit in
gloria.”
19 Ibid.: “Nam primo quidem, nostra peccata deleta sunt. . . . Secundo, gratiam nos
salvantem per ipsum accepimus. . . .Tertio, per ipsum perfectionem gloriae adepti
sumus. . . . Et ideo ipse Christus, inquantum homo, non solum fuit sacerdos, sed
hostia perfecta, simul existens hostia pro peccato, et hostia pacificorum, et holocaustum.” Regarding Christ’s humanity and the effect of his sacrifice, Smith
notes, “In other words . . . it is Christ’s humanity which provided for us, and
through it all the needs of sacrifice are completed: Christ removes our sins, we
receive saving grace, and we are fitted for heavenly glory.” J. C. Smith,“Christ as
‘Pastor,’ ‘Ostium’ and ‘Agnus’ in St.Thomas,” Angelicum 56 (1979): 113.
20 ST III, q. 22, a. 3: “Utrum effectus sacerdotii Christi sit expiatio peccatorum.”
21 ST III, q. 22, a. 3, c.:“Macula quidem culpae deletur per gratiam, qua cor peccatoris in Deum convertitur, reatus autem poenae totaliter tollitur per hoc quod
homo Deo satisfacit. Utrumque autem horum efficit sacerdotium Christi. Nam
virtute ipsius gratia nobis datur, qua corda nostra convertuntur ad Deum. Ipse
etiam pro nobis plenarie satisfecit. . . . Unde patet quod Christi sacerdotium

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To close out question 22,Thomas asks whether or not the effect that
Christ accomplished through his priesthood was beneficial only for
others or for himself as well,22 how we are to understand the eternal
nature of Christ’s priesthood, and the significance of Christ’s relationship
to the priesthood of Melchizedek.
In Christ’s case, unlike that of the Old Testament priests who themselves are in need of atonement for sin, Christ exercised his priesthood
exclusively on behalf of others.Thomas explains this important point in
the following passage:
For the influence of the first agent in every genus is such that it receives
nothing in that genus: thus the sun gives but does not receive the light;
fire gives heat but does not receive heat. Now Christ is the fountain
head of the entire priesthood [fons totius sacerdotii]: for the priest of the
Old Law was a figure of him; while the priest of the New Law works
in his person. . . .Therefore it is not fitting that Christ should receive
the effect of his priesthood.23

The eternity of Christ’s priesthood has important moral, soteriological,
and eschatological implications for St.Thomas. Building his argument on
Psalm 110:4, “You are a priest forever,” Aquinas focuses on the “end” of
Christ’s priestly sacrifice. Since the priestly action consists in offering
sacrifice, the nature of the priest and priesthood that makes the offering
must be viewed in light of the effect brought about by the offering.Thus,
in the case of Christ,“the end of the sacrifice,”Aquinas explains,“consisted
not in temporal but in eternal good, which we obtain through his death
. . . , for which reason the priesthood of Christ is said to be eternal.”24
habet vim plenam expiandi peccata.” In ST III, q. 48, a. 2, c., Aquinas describes
Christ’s satisfaction as “superabundans satisfactio.”
Also, later in the tertia pars,Thomas describes this twofold sense of satisfaction
in terms of redemption from the perspective that Christ “redeemed” us from
both the “bondage of sin” and the “debt of punishment” due to it. Christ, therefore, is a “redeemer” in relation to both. Cf. ST III, q. 48, a. 4.
22 For a helpful presentation of Aquinas’s treatment of this same issue latter in the
tertia pars, cf.W. Jerome Bracken’s “Of What Benefit to Himself Was Christ’s Suffering? Merit in Aquinas’s Theology of the Passion,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 385–407.
23 ST III, q. 22, a. 4, c.:“Primum enim agens in quolibet genere ita est influens quod
non est recipiens in genere illo: sicut sol illuminat sed non illuminatur, et ignis calefacit sed non calefit. Christus autem est fons totius sacerdotii: nam sacerdos legalis
erat figura ipsius; sacerdos autem novae legis in persona ipsius operator. . . . Et ideo
non competit Christo effectum sacerdotii suscipere.”
24 ST III, q. 22, a. 5, c.: “Finis autem sacrificii quod Christus obtulit, non fuerunt
bona temporalia, sed aeterna, quae per eius mortem adipiscimur . . . ratione cuius
Christi sacerdotium dicitur esse aeternum.”

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Similarly,Thomas interprets Christ’s ascension into heaven as “the way for
us, that we might enter by virtue of his blood, which he shed for us on
earth.”25 Heaven, therefore, is entered through the power of Christ’s
blood. Hence, according to Aquinas, Christ remains a priest forever, not
because he is repeatedly offering sacrifice, but because of the eternal and
eschatological end that his sacrifice accomplishes by bringing the faithful
to eternal beatitude.
In his corresponding presentation of Christ’s mediation, St. Thomas
underscores three central and overlapping themes, each of which is related
to Christ’s priestly activity: first, “the office of mediator”; second, the
“locus” of Christ’s mediation; and, third, the “perfect” or “exclusive”
nature of Christ’s mediation. For the sake of brevity, I will simply summarize the conclusions that Aquinas draws in the two articles of question 26.
Thomas attributes Christ’s activity of mediation to his human nature
for two reasons.26 The first reason concerns the mediator’s office of
“uniting” the extremes. The second is that he “conjoins” the aspects of
each extreme to the other.27 Thomas concludes that “[n]either of these
can be applied to Christ as God, but only as man.”28 As his reason for this
position Thomas argues as follows: “For as God, he does not differ from
the Father and the Holy Ghost in nature and the power of dominion.”29
25 Ibid.: “et nobis viam paravit intrandi per virtutem sanguinis sui, quem in terra

effundit.”
26 Gérard Remy, in “Le Christ mediateur dans l’oeuvre de saint Thomas d’Aquin,”

Revue Thomiste 93 (1993): 192, commenting on the rank or “position” of the mediator, notes the following: “Le fondement de la ‘médiété,’ à savoir sa position entre
deux termes extrêmes et son acte qui est de les joindre. La qualité de médiateur
revient à celui qui, en vertu de sa position médiane, est capable d’opérer la jonction
entre ces termes extrêmes. En outre, cette position suppose un ordre de supériorité par rapport au premier terme et d’infériorité par rapport au terme ultime.”
Regarding Thomas’s treatment of Christ’s unique place between God and
man, Fr. Ruggero Biagi wrote: “In questa natura umana superdignificata dalla
grazia divina, S. Tommaso trova il mezzo capace di congiungere Dio e l’umanità.” Cristo Profeta Sacerdote e Re: Dottrina di S. Tommaso e sviluppi della teologia
moderna (Bologna: ESD, 1988), 27. Obviously, the “super-dignified” state of
Christ’s human nature cannot be divorced from the hypostatic union.
Also, for a helpful presentation of Aquinas’s understanding of the instrumentality of Christ’s human nature in the Summa theologiae, see J. Martinez, “La
medicación de la humanidad de Cristo: clave de lectura de la soteriología de
santo Tomás Aquino (I),” Ciencia Tomista 128 (2001): 264–68.
27 St.Thomas uses the verbs coniungit and defert.
28 ST III, q. 26, a. 2, c.: “Neutrum autem horum potest convenire Christo secundum quod Deus, sed solum secundum quod homo.”
29 Ibid.:“Nam secundum quod Deus, non differt a patre et spiritu sancto in natura
et potestate dominii.”

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The tasks of “uniting” the extremes and “conjoining” come together in
Christ only as man, as Thomas notes in the following text:
Because as man, he is distant both from God, by nature, and from man
in the dignity of both grace and glory.Again, it belongs to him, as man,
to unite men to God, by communicating to men both precepts and
gifts, and by offering satisfaction and prayers to God for men. And
therefore he is most truly called mediator, as man.30

Having defined the office of mediator and the locus of Christ’s mediation, Thomas then moves directly into his reasons for affirming that
Christ, as mediator, exercised his office in a perfect and unique way.31
“Now to unite men to God perfectly belongs to Christ,” he explains,
30 Ibid.: “Secundum quod est homo, distat et a Deo in natura, et ab hominibus in

dignitate et gratiae et gloriae. Inquantum etiam est homo, competit ei coniungere homines Deo, praecepta et dona hominibus exhibendo, et pro hominibus
ad Deum satisfaciendo et interpellando. Et ideo verissime dicitur mediator
secundum quod homo.”
31 The biblical text of 1 Timothy 2:5 figures importantly in Thomas’s considerations on Christ’s mediation.The text of 1 Timothy 2:5 reads as follows: “One is
God and one is the mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who
gave himself for the redemption of all” (RSVCE). St.Thomas often draws on the
text of 1 Timothy 2:5 in his writings on Christ’s mediation. In the sed contra of
ST III, q. 26, a. 1, Thomas provides 1 Timothy 2:5 as his defense of Christ’s
unique mediation. In his commentary on this text, Thomas develops a concise
existential interpretation of the perfect nature of Christ’s mediation; that is,
Thomas uses this text to show how Christ’s mediation overcomes the existential
imperfections of the Fall, by exchanging man’s condition of separation from God
via injustice and death through his own perfect justice and atoning death. Here
again Aquinas is forcefully Augustinian, drawing nearly verbatim on Augustine’s
distinction between the true and false mediator in tenth book of The Confessions.
Brian Daley argues that mediation was such a point of emphasis in Augustine’s
Christology that as his theology developed, “Augustine came to express Christ’s
mediating role, too, not simply as the heart of his work but as rooted in the very
structure of who he is.” “Christology,” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 168.
In In I Ad Timoth., cap. II, lec. I, Thomas makes the following commentary:
“Tunc ponitur ratio ex parte hominis Christi, ibi unus et mediator, et cetera. Ubi
primo probat intentum, secundo inducit signum, ibi qui dedit. Dicit ergo: homo
Christus Iesus est mediator Dei et hominum, non quorumdam, sed inter Deum et
omnes homines, et hoc non fuisset nisi vellet omnes salvare. Et potest dici quod
Christus mediator est similis utrique extremo, scilicet Deo et homini inquantum
Deus et inquantum homo, quia medium debet habere aliquid de utroque extremorum. Et haec sunt homo et Deus. Sed quia medium est distinctum ab utroque
extremorum, et filius non est alius Deus a patre, ideo melius est dicendum quod
mediator est secundum quod homo. Sic enim communicat cum utroque extremorum. In Deo enim sunt duo, scilicet iustitia et immortalitas; in hominibus vero est

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“through whom men are reconciled to God, according to 2 Corinthians
5:19: ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.’ And, consequently, Christ alone is the perfect Mediator of God and men, inasmuch
as, by his death, he reconciled the human race to God.”32 For this reason,
Christ is not only the unique mediator between God and man, but also
his mediation alone is “perfect.”
Thomas Aquinas’s exegesis of the Christological-biblical titles of priest
and mediator meant something very specific theologically—something
that has intrinsic moral, soteriological, and liturgical implications. It is this
understanding of the centrality of Christ’s work and its effects that places
Christ at the heart of Aquinas’s thought and leads me to see the Christian life as one lived from within Christ’s mediation.
Part II: The Proactive and Retroactive Impact
of Christ’s Priestly Mediation in the
Sacramental and Moral life
How do the nature and effects of Christ’s priestly-mediatorial activity
establish Christ’s presence in the Christian moral and liturgical life—or
iniustitia et mortalitas. Media ergo sunt duo: unum in quo est iustitia et mortalitas.
Aliud in quo est immortalitas et iniustitia. Et utrumque est medium, sed primum
medium convenit Christo, secundum vero Diabolo. Et ideo Diabolus est medium
disiungens, quia per iniustitiam suam disiungit nos a divina iustitia; sed Christus est
medium coniungens, quia est iustus et mortalis, et per suam mortem coniungit nos
Dei iustitiae. 1 Io. 2:2: ipse est propitiatio pro peccatis nostris, pro aliquibus efficaciter,
sed pro omnibus sufficienter, quia pretium sanguinis eius est sufficiens ad salutem
omnium: sed non habet efficaciam nisi in electis propter impedimentum.”
32 ST III, q. 26, a. 1, c.: “Unire autem homines Deo perfective quidem convenit
Christo, per quem homines reconciliantur Deo: secundum illud 2 Cor 5 [19]:
Deus erat in Christo mundum reconcilians sibi. Et ideo solus Christus est perfectus Dei et hominum mediator, inquantum per suam mortem humanum genus
Deo reconciliavit.”
In Cristo Profeta Sacerdote e Re, 27, Ruggerro Biagi points out that: “Since
Christ has united men to God in the activity of his human nature, his mediation
is most perfect, because he in a perfect and unique way has reconciled God with
humanity” (Benché Cristo abbia unito gli uomini a Dio nell’ attività della sua umanità,
la sua mediazione è perfettissima, perché egli in modo perfetto e unico ha riconciliato Dio
con l’ umanità). [My translation.]
Similarly, Henk Schoot, explaining Aquinas’s affirmation of the perfect nature
of Christ mediation, concludes:“according to the full, perfect signification of the
word, only Christ is called mediator. Only Christ, through his death, has united
and reconciled God and humankind. Others are said to be mediator as well, but
only according to a certain meaning of the word, only in a certain respect, i.e.,
dispositive et ministerialiter, in the manner of preparation and not principally.”
Christ the ‘Name’ of God, 80.

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830

integrate the diverse branches of theology? It is here that I think we can
see the “tripwire” effect.The conclusions that Aquinas makes about Christ’s
priestly-mediatorial activity establish a Christological reference point upon
which the moral and liturgical life rest.The following comment from Fr.
Torrell encapsulates the general thrust of this point:
[T]he end will not be achieved without grace and without following
Christ who came to show us, in his humanity, the way to happiness. . .
. Between the study of human action described in the Second Part and
that of the happy life which concludes the Summa,Thomas will insert,
in the Third Part, a study of Christ—“the unique mediator between
God and humanity” (1 Tim 2:5)—and the sacraments which are part of
the “means” left to his followers to assist them in reaching their end.33

Because of the effects that Aquinas attributes to Christ’s priestly mediation, I maintain that, within the narrative of the Summa theologiae, it has
a proactive value for the sacramental theology that comes later and a
retroactive value for the moral theology that comes before it.
Aquinas commences his treatment of the sacraments of the Church
with question 60 of the tertia pars. The sacraments (and the Church),
therefore, in Aquinas’s system flow as a natural extension or outgrowth of
his Christology, which is presented in the previous fifty-nine questions.34
Aquinas’s sacramental theology allows him to answer the all-important
question of how it is that Christ’s saving work and exclusive mediation
touches and affects people through the ages. For Aquinas, the sacraments
are the means by which the believer is brought into contact (communio)
with Christ the priest, and the efficacy of the sacraments flows directly
from the efficacy of Christ’s own priesthood and mediatorial activity.The
following declaration from Aquinas well summarizes the impact that his
understanding of Christ as a priestly mediator has on his sacramental
theology: “Every sacrament makes man a participator in Christ’s priesthood, from the fact that it confers some effect thereof.”35
33 Torrell, Aquinas’s Summa, 29.
34 For a general explication of the place of Christ as mediator in the liturgy of the

Church with an emphasis on Sacrosanctum Concilium, cf. Riccardo Barile,“Cristo
centro e mediatore nel culto cristiano,” Divus Thomas 31 (2002): 225–40. Also
helpful are, L.Walsh, O.P., “Liturgy in the Theology of St.Thomas,” The Thomist
38 (1978): 559; and Colman O’Neill, O.P., Sacramental Realism: A General Theory
of the Sacraments (Chicago: Midwest Theological Forum, 1998).
35 ST III, q. 63, a. 6, ad. 1: “Per omnia sacramenta fit homo particeps sacerdotii
Christi, utpote percipiens aliquem effectum eius.”
Journet explicates this connection in the following terms: “Our salvation is
the fruit of the noblest of all acts of love, which because it came from a Man and

Christ in the Moral and Sacramental Life

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In the third article of question 60,Aquinas discusses what it is that the
sacraments signify. He answers that:
A sacrament properly speaking is that which is ordained to signify our
sanctification. In which three things may be considered: namely, the
very cause of our sanctification, which is Christ’s passion; the form of
our sanctification, which is grace and the virtues; and the ultimate end
of our sanctification, which is eternal life. And all these are signified by
the sacraments. Consequently a sacrament is a sign that is both a
reminder of the past, i.e., the passion of Christ; and an indication of that
which is effected in us by Christ’s passion, i.e., grace; and a prognostic,
that is, a foretelling of future glory.36

Thus the sacraments, as sacred signs, draw their power of signification
(or sign value) from Christ’s passion, which is nothing other than his
priestly offering. Not only do the sacraments signify Christ’s passion, but
they also signify the effects of Christ’s passion, namely, grace and glory, and
these effects correspond directly to the importance that Aquinas devotes
to the eternity and effects of Christ’s priesthood.37 Aquinas then seeks to
establish whether or not they are necessary. On face value it would seem
that the sacraments are not necessary in so far as Christ sufficiently satisfied for sins by offering himself on the cross.38 “Christ’s passion is a sufficient cause of man’s salvation,” Aquinas explains. “But it does not follow
was to be a rallying point for men, expressed itself in visible sacrifice, preordained
by God from all eternity.A liturgy, ascending and descending, is at the root of the
Christian religion. It constitutes as it were its framework. It cannot be detached
from it—not at any rate without tearing Scripture to bits and changing Christianity into something else.The Priest of the liturgy is Christ. . . .And if the priest
is a mediator consecrated to send up the prayers of the people to God, and to
bring the favors of God down to the people, it is clear that no one ever was or
ever will be a priest like Christ, ‘a priest for ever according to the order of
Melchisedech’ and ‘mediator of the New Testament.’ ” The Church of the Word
Incarnate, vol. 1, The Apostolic Hierarchy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 57.
36 ST III, q. 60, a. 3, c.: “Sacramentum proprie dicitur quod ordinatur ad significandam nostram sanctificationem. In qua tria possunt considerari: videlicet ipsa
causa sanctificationis nostrae, quae est passio Christi; et forma nostrae sanctificationis, quae consistit in gratia a virtutibus; et ultimus finis nostrae sanctificationis, qui est vita aeterna. Et haec omnia per sacramenta significantur. Unde
sacramentum est et signum rememorativum eius quod praecessit, scilicet passionis Christi; et demonstrativum eius quod in nobis efficitur per Christi passionem,
scilicet gratiae; et prognosticum, idest praenuntiativum, futurae gloriae.”
37 In ST III, q. 61, a. 4, c., Aquinas argues that after Christ’s coming the sacramental system remains necessary because the sacraments are signs and expressions of
the faith in Christ’s passion that justifies us.
38 Cf. ST III, q. 61, a. 1, obj. 3.

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that the sacraments are not also necessary for that purpose: because they
obtain their effect through the power of Christ’s passion; and Christ’s
passion is, so to say, applied to man through the sacraments.”39
Hence, Christ’s irreplaceable priestly activity remains alive and active
in the world in and through the sacramental life of the Church which
perpetuates it.40 From these conclusions Aquinas moves on to establish
how it is that the sacraments actually place one in real and efficacious
contact with Christ’s saving merits. Aquinas engages this issue from the
perspective of whether or not the sacraments cause grace and, if so, how.
To assert that the sacraments cause grace would seem to displace the
centrality already attributed to Christ’s priestly offering. Aquinas affirms
the causality of the sacraments in the order of grace by arguing from the
effect ascribed to the sacraments, which is grace or the gift of the Holy
Spirit.41 In presenting his understanding of sacramental causality,Aquinas
rejects those theories that view the sacraments simply as non-causal signs.
By appealing to the twofold nature of efficient causality as “principalis et
instrumentalis,”42 Aquinas notes that: “In this way none but God can
cause grace: since grace is nothing else than a participated likeness of the
Divine Nature.”43 As a result, Aquinas further clarifies the nature of the
instrumental causality by which the sacraments work as causes of grace:
Now the principal efficient cause of grace is God himself, in comparison with [ad quem comparatur] whom Christ’s humanity is as a united
instrument, whereas the sacrament is as a separate instrument. Consequently, the saving power must needs be derived by the sacraments from Christ’s
Godhead through his humanity.44
39 ST III, q. 61, a. 1, ad 3. “passio Christi est causa sufficiens humanae salutis. Nec

propter hoc sequitur quod sacramenta non sint necessaria ad humanam salutem:
quia operantur in virtute passionis Christi, et passio Christi quodammodo applicatur hominibus per sacramenta.”
40 In ST III, q. 61, a. 3, c.,Aquinas notes that,“Nullus autem sanctificari potest post
peccatum nisi per Christum.”
41 ST III, q. 62, a. 1, c.: “Necesse est dicere sacramenta novae legis per aliquem
modum gratiam causare. Manifestum est enim quod per sacramenta novae legis
homo Christo incorporatur: sicut de Baptismo dicit apostolus, Galat. III, [27]:
Quotquot in Christo baptizati estis, Christum induistis. Non autem efficitur homo
membrum Christi nisi per gratiam.”
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.: “Et hoc modo non potest causare gratiam nisi Deus: quia gratia nihil est
aliud quam quaedam participata similitudo divinae naturae.”
44 ST III, q. 62, a. 5, c., emphasis added: “Est autem duplex instrumentum: unum
quidem separatum, ut baculus; aliud autem coniunctum, ut manus. Per instrumentum autem coniunctum movetur instrumentum separatum: sicut baculus per
manum. Principalis autem causa efficiens gratiae est ipse Deus, ad quem comparatur

Christ in the Moral and Sacramental Life

833

From this it follows that the humanity of Christ, which he offered as
his priestly sacrifice, and which was the locus of his mediation, is also the
foundation of the efficacy of the sacraments as instrumental causes of
grace. This relationship which Aquinas recognizes between the salvific
value of Christ’s human nature and the causality of the sacraments is
precisely why Christ’s priestly mediation has a proactive value in the
Summa theologiae. For Aquinas, the causality of the sacraments cannot be
divorced from Christ’s activity as priest nor from his unique status as the
one true mediator between God and man.45 The special status that
Christ’s human nature enjoyed because of its union with the Eternal
Word allows it to exert a truly spiritual effect on others as an instrumental cause. In the following passage Aquinas further specifies this point and
connects it with the activity of the Eternal Word:
The Word, forasmuch as he was in the beginning with God, quickens
souls as principal agent; but his flesh, and the mysteries accomplished
therein [mysteria in ea perpetrata], are as instrumental causes in the
process of giving life to the soul: while in giving life to the body, they
act not only as instrumental causes, but also to a certain extent as exemplars [per quandam exemplaritatem].46

Likewise, in another question, Aquinas argues that the spiritual effect
of grace produced by the sacraments is caused by Christ as both God and
man. “Christ produces the inward sacramental effect,” Aquinas explains:
Both as God and as man, but not in the same way. For, as God, he works
in the sacraments by authority: but, as man, his operation conduces to
the inward sacramental effects meritoriously and efficiently, but instrumentally. For . . . Christ’s Passion which belongs to him in respect of his
human nature, is the cause of justification, both meritoriously and efficiently, not as the principal thereof, or by his own authority, but as an
instrument of his Godhead.47
humanitas Christi sicut instrumentum coniunctum, sacramentum autem sicut
instrumentum separatum. Et ideo oportet quod virtus salutifera derivetur a
divinitate Christi per eius humanitatem in ipsa sacramenta.”
45 In ST III, q. 62, a. 4, ad 3., Aquinas again affirms that the sacraments draw their
spiritual efficacy from Christ, “Sacramentum consequitur spiritualem virtutem
ex benedictione Christi et applicatione ministri ad usum sacramenti.”
46 ST III, q. 62, a. 5, ad 1: “Verbum prout erat in principio apud Deum, vivificat
animas sicut agens principale: caro tamen eius, et mysteria in ea perpetrata, operantur instrumentaliter ad animae vitam. Ad vitam autem corporis non solum
instrumentaliter, sed etiam per quandam exemplaritatem.”
47 ST III, q. 64, a. 3, c.: “Interiorem sacramentorum effectum operatur Christus et
secundum quod est Deus, et secundum quod est homo: aliter tamen et aliter. Nam

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Furthermore, Aquinas teaches that Christ’s offering on the cross acted as
the beginning of the sacramental system and the uniquely Christian form
of worship. “Likewise by his Passion,” Aquinas states:
He inaugurated the rites of the Christian religion by offering himself—an
oblation and a sacrifice to God (Eph 5:2).Wherefore it is manifest that the
sacraments of the Church derive their power specially from Christ’s
passion, the virtue of which is united to us by our receiving the sacraments. It was in sign of this that from the side of Christ hanging on the
Cross there flowed water and blood, the former which belongs to
Baptism, the latter to the Eucharist, which are the principal sacraments.48

Furthermore, sacramental character is intimately connected with
Christ’s own priesthood. It is by character that the faithful are “deputed”
in various ways to participate in the full sacramental and liturgical life of
the Church, which has as its source Christ’s own perfect act of worship
on the cross.Thomas explains the connection between sacramental character and Christ’s priesthood in the following terms:
Now the whole rite of the Christian religion is derived from Christ’s
priesthood. Consequently, it is clear that the sacramental character of
Christ, to whose character [sacerdotio] the faithful are likened by reason
of the sacramental characters, which are nothing else than certain participations of Christ’s Priesthood, flowing [derivatae] from Christ himself.49
secundum quod est Deus, operatur in sacramentis per auctoritatem. Secundum
autem quod est homo, operatur ad interiores effectus sacramentorum meritorie,
et efficienter, sed instrumentaliter. . . . Passio Christi, quae competit ei secundum
humanum naturam, causa est nostrae iustificationis et meritorie, et effective, non
quidem per modum principalis agentis, sive per auctoritatem, sed per modum
instrumenti, inquantum humanitas est instrumentum divinitatis eius.”
48 ST III, q. 62, a. 5, c.: “Similiter etiam per suam passionem initiavit ritum Christianae religionis, offerens seipsum oblationem et hostiam Deo, ut dicitur Ephes. 5, [2].
Unde manifestum est quod sacramenta Ecclesiae specialiter habent virtutem ex
passione Christi, cuius virtus quodammodo nobis copulatur per susceptionem
sacramentorum. In cuius signum de latere Christi pendentis in cruce fluxerunt
aqua et sanguis, quorum unum pertinet ad Baptismum, aliud ad Eucharistiam,
quae sunt potissima sacramenta.
49 ST III, q. 63, a. 3, c.: “Deputatur quisque fidelis ad recipiendum vel tradendum
aliis ea quae pertinent ad cultum Dei. Et ad hoc proprie deputatur character
sacramentalis. Totus autem ritus Christianae religionis derivatur a sacerdotio
Christi. Et ideo manifestum est quod character sacramentalis specialiter est character Christi, cuius sacerdotio configurantur fideles secundum sacramentales
characteres, qui nihil aliud sunt quam quaedam participationes sacerdotii Christi,
ab ipso Christo derivatae.”

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Sacramental character, therefore, is not simply an abstract concept for
Aquinas. Character is what incorporates the faithful in various ways into
Christ’s own priesthood.
Perhaps less evident on the surface, though equally logical in presentation, is the place of Christ’s priestly mediation in Aquinas’s exposition of
the moral life located in the secunda pars of the Summa theologiae. In point
of fact, it is specifically in this area of his theology that Aquinas appears to
be most out of harmony with the vision of theological instruction advocated by Vatican II. It must be recalled that Christ, for Aquinas, is both the
moral and ontological exemplar of the Christian life.50 As such, both the
interior and exterior elements of Christian morality can be traced back to
Christ as their source. For this reason, I describe Christ’s work as mediator
and priest as having a retroactive value for the moral life in Aquinas’s Summa
theologiae. In a certain sense, Aquinas’s understanding of the sacraments as
instrumental causes of grace likewise influences the Christian moral life.51
In his Treatise on Law (ST I–II, qq. 90–108),Aquinas dedicates the last
two questions to the New Law, or the Law of the Gospel. These questions take us to the heart of the overlap that exists between the content
of the New Law, the life of grace, and the work of Christ. In question
106, Aquinas asks himself whether or not the New Law is written or
unwritten. Aquinas affirms the interiority of the New Law while also
insisting that it is planted, so to speak, in the hearts of men through the
virtue of faith given by Christ:
50 For treatments of exemplarity in Aquinas, see Michael Dauphinais and Matthew

Levering, Knowing the Love of Christ: An Introduction to the Theology of St.Thomas
Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 82; and
Dauphinais’s “Christ the Teacher:The Pedagogy of the Incarnation According to
Saint Thomas Aquinas” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2000), 259–70.
51 Cessario, in The Moral Virtues and the Theological Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 21–22, adequately summarizes this point of
discussion in the following passage: “For the Christian believer conformity to
Christ in the Church of faith and sacraments provides the only legitimate way to
attain the ‘truth of life.’ The conciliar documents repeatedly emphasize the
centrality of Christ in salvation history.Admittedly, certain scholastic theologians,
including Aquinas, developed their tractates on the virtues without prolonged and
repeated reference to the uniquely Christian claim that moral perfection exists in
anyone only to the extent that the person maintains a living relationship with
Christ. In the case of Aquinas, the absence of frequent reference to Christ in the
secunda pars happens simply because of his methodological presuppositions in
developing the Summa theologiae. Still, any theologian who fully grasps the New
Testament teaching on the gratuity of divine grace realizes that every meritorious
deed performed by the believer derives its efficacy from God’s goodness. And
Aquinas surely realized this happens only through the mediation of Jesus Christ.”

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Roger W. Nutt
Now that which is preponderant in the law of the New Testament, and
whereon all its efficacy is based, is the grace of the Holy Ghost, which
is given through faith in Christ. Consequently the New Law is chiefly
[principaliter] the grace itself of the Holy Ghost, which is given to those
who believe in Christ.52

Also, contrasting the Old Law and the New, Aquinas explains that it is
Christ’s Passion that brings the Old Law to perfection.53 And, since it
fulfills the Old Law, the New Law of Christ, through the power of his
Passion, brings with it the justification of the sinner.Aquinas explains that
apart from Christ the Old Law “[c]ould not accomplish this: but foreshadowed it by certain ceremonial actions, and promised it in words.And
in this respect, the New Law fulfills the Old by justifying men through
the power of Christ’s Passion.”54 Therefore, it is Christ who, through his
priestly offering, brings to fulfillment the Old Testament and efficiently
and sufficiently causes the New Law of grace.
Drawing on this Christological foundation of grace, in question 108
of the Treatise on Law, Aquinas argues as follows:
Now men become receivers of this grace through God’s son made
man,Whose humanity [humanitatem] grace filled first, and then flowed
forth to us. . . . Hence it is added that grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
Consequently it was becoming that the grace which the incarnate
Word should be given to us by means of certain external sensible
objects [Aquinas is here referring to the sacraments].55
52 ST I–II, q. 106, a. 1, c.: “Id autem quod est potissimum in lege novi testamenti,

et in quo tota virtus eius consistit, est gratia spiritus sancti, quae datur per fidem
Christi. Et ideo principaliter lex nova est ipsa gratia spiritus sancti, quae datur
Christi fidelibus.”
53 For an explication of Christ’s saving work in terms of Aquinas’s understanding
of the Old Law/New Law relationship, cf. Matthew Levering, Christ’s Fulfillment
of Torah and Temple: Salvation According to St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2002).
54 ST I–II, q. 107, a. 2, c.: “Quam quidem lex efficere non poterat, sed figurabat
quibusdam caeremonialibus factis, et promittebat verbis. Et quantum ad hoc, lex
nova implet veterem legem iustificabo virtute passionis Christi.” In this article
Aquinas specifies a number of ways that Christ brought the Old Law to fulfillment.
55 ST I–II, q. 108, a. 1, c.: “Hanc autem gratiam consequuntur homines per Dei
filium hominem factum, cuius humanitatem primo replevit gratia, et exinde est
ad nos derivata. Unde dicitur Ioan. I, verbum caro factum est; et postea subditur,
plenum gratiae et veritatis; et infra, de plenitudine eius nos omnes accepimus, et gratiam pro
gratia. Unde subditur quod gratia et veritas per Iesum Christum facta est. Et ideo
convenit ut per aliqua exteriora sensibilia gratia a verbo incarnato profluens in nos

Christ in the Moral and Sacramental Life

837

Thus the grace enjoyed by Christ’s followers comes to them through his
own fullness, which animated his priestly offering to its eternal efficacy.
Thomas offers a number of reflections on the significance of Christ’s fullness in his Commentary on John. In commenting on John 1:16–17,Aquinas
notes that John,
in order to show this unique fullness of efficiency and overflow in
Christ, said, “Of his fullness we have all received,” i.e., all the apostles
and patriarchs and prophets and just men who have existed, do now
exist, and will exist, and even the angels.
Note that the preposition de [of, from] sometimes signifies efficiency, i.e., an originative cause, as when it is said that a ray is or proceeds
“from” the sun. In this way it signifies the efficiency of grace in Christ,
i.e., authorship [seu auctoritatem], because the fullness of grace in Christ
is the cause of all graces that are in [omnibus] intellectual creatures.56

Thomas also argues that the first grace, that is, the grace of conversion
(which cannot be merited), thus flows gratuitously to the sinner from
Christ’s own meritorious fullness. Aquinas holds that the “first grace” or
the grace of conversion, cannot be merited by one person for another
person, except in the unique case of Jesus.“It is clear,”Aquinas recognizes,
that no one can merit condignly for another his first grace, save Christ
alone; since each one of us is moved by God to reach life everlasting
through the gift of grace; hence condign merit does not reach beyond this
motion. But Christ’s soul is moved by God through grace, not only so as
to reach the glory of life everlasting, but so as to lead others to it, inasmuch as he is head of the Church, and the author of human salvation.57
deducatur; et ex hac interiori gratia, per quam caro spiritui subditur, exteriora
quaedam opera sensibilia producantur.”
56 Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, part I, trans. J.A.Weisheipl and F. R. Larcher
(Albany: Magi Books, 1980), 98. Super Ioannem, cap. 1, lect. 10: “Ut ergo Evangelista hanc singularem plenitudinem redundantiae et efficientiae de Christo
ostenderet, dixit de plenitudine eius omnes accepimus, scilicet omnes apostoli, et
patriarchae, et prophetae, et iusti, qui fuerunt, sunt et erunt, et etiam omnes
Angeli. Nota, quod haec praepositio de aliquando quidem denotat efficientiam,
seu originalem causam, sicut cum dicitur, radius est vel procedit de sole; et hoc
modo denotat in Christo efficientiam gratiae, seu auctoritatem, quia plenitudo
gratiae, quae est in Christo, est causa omnium gratiarum quae sunt in omnibus
intellectualibus creaturis.”
57 ST I–II, q. 114, a. 6, c.:“Ex quo patet quod merito condigni nullus potest mereri
alteri primam gratiam nisi solus Christus. Quia unusquisque nostrum movetur a
Deo per donum gratiae ut ipse ad vitam aeternam perveniat, et ideo meritum
condigni ultra hanc motionem non se extendit. Sed anima Christi mota est a Deo

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When Aquinas moves from treating the interiority of the New Law of
grace to treating the external parts of the New Law, he unites the
concepts of grace and the sacraments by treating the sacraments as external acts instituted by Christ for the sake of communicating the gift of
grace. “The New Law,” he explains, “had to make such prescriptions or
prohibitions alone as are essential for the reception or right use of grace.
And since we cannot of ourselves obtain grace, but through Christ alone,
hence Christ himself instituted the sacraments whereby we obtain
grace.”58 Likewise, from the perspective of the relationship between the
sacraments and grace, in treating the effects of baptism, Aquinas argues
that grace and the virtues are enjoyed by the recipient of baptism because
they flow into the individual soul, through baptism, from Christ’s own
superabundant headship.“Now the fullness of grace and virtues,”Aquinas
observes, “flows from Christ the Head to all his members, according to
John 1:16:‘Of his fullness we have all received.’ Hence it is clear that man
receives grace and virtues in baptism.”59
In his treatment of the theological virtues, Aquinas draws on the
concept of infusion. Because man’s ultimate perfection and happiness is
supernatural, the perfection coming to man’s natural activity as a result of
the acquired virtues still falls short of producing the supernatural effects
needed to elevate the soul to eternal beatitude. Consequently, Aquinas
argues that beyond the natural effects and happiness of the human or
acquired virtues, there is “a happiness surpassing man’s nature, and which
man can obtain by the power of God alone, by a kind of participation of
per gratiam non solum ut ipse perveniret ad gloriam vitae aeternae, sed etiam ut
alios in eam adduceret, inquantum est caput Ecclesiae et auctor salutis humanae.”
In a distinct question on the “timing” of the dispensation of the New Law,
Aquinas argues that the grace of the Holy Spirit was fittingly put off until the
repellant of sin had been removed by Christ: “[T]he New Law, as stated above,
consists chiefly in the grace of the Holy Ghost: which it behooved not to be
given abundantly until sin, which is an obstacle to grace, had been cast out of
man through the accomplishment of his redemption by Christ.” ST I–II, q. 106,
a. 3, c.:“Quarum prima est quia lex nova, sicut dictum est, principaliter est gratia
spiritus sancti; quae abundanter dari non debuit antequam impedimentum
peccati ab humano genere tolleretur, consummata redemptione per Christum.”
58 ST I–II, q. 108, a. 2, c.:“lex nova in exterioribus illa solum praecipere debuit vel
prohibere, per quae in gratiam introducimur, vel quae pertinent ad rectum
gratiae usum ex necessitate. Et quia gratiam ex nobis consequi non possumus,
sed per Christum solum, ideo sacramenta, per quae gratiam consequimur.”
59 ST III, q. 69, a. 4, c.: “A capite autem Christo in omnia membra eius gratiae et
virtutis plenitudo derivatur, secundum illud Ioan. I, de plenitudine eius nos omnes
accepimus. Unde manifestum est quod per Baptismum aliquis consequitur gratiam
et virtutes.”

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839

the Godhead, about which it is written (2 Pt 1:4) that by Christ we are
made ‘partakers of the Divine nature.’ ”60 The theological virtues, then,
are held by Aquinas to be infused into the soul for the sake of elevating
and directing man’s moral activity to the supernatural order. This infusion, or participation in the divine nature, is an effect of Christ’s activity
and a result of the reunification of God and man brought about by
Christ’s mediation.61
The theological virtue of charity has a special connection with
Christ.62 Out of his insatiable love for his Father and his neighbors,
Christ offered himself to the Father so that man through him may be
reunited to the Father.63 Thus, the theological virtue of charity is closely
related to Christ, not simply as a moral effect of his mediation, which it
60 ST I–II, q. 62, a. 1, c.: “Alia autem est beatitudo naturam hominis excedens, ad

quam homo sola divina virtute pervenire potest, secundum quandam divinitatis
participationem; secundum quod dicitur 2 Petr. 1, quod per Christum facti
sumus ‘consortes divinae naturae.’ ”
61 For a helpful presentation on the role of Christ in the moral life, cf. Romanus
Cessario, Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of American Press, 1996), 17–25. Cessario titles this section of the
book, “Christ: Source of the Theological Life.”
62 For Aquinas’s treatment of Christ’s place within the life of faith, cf. ST I–II, q.
106, a. 1, ad 3: “nullus unquam habuit gratiam spiritus sancti nisi per fidem
Christi explicitam vel implicitam. Per fidem autem Christi pertinet homo ad
novum testamentum.”
Also, Fr. Servais Pinckaers offers the following reflections on the importance
of faith in the Christian moral life and Christ’s role therein: “[Faith] centers the
moral life on a particular person: Jesus, the Christ. In his historical particularity—
in his body that suffered and was resurrected—Jesus becomes the source and
cause of justice and wisdom. In short he becomes the source and cause of moral
excellence for those who believe in him. . . . This view is unique among the
moralities and religions of the world: For Christians, the person of Jesus has become
the center of the moral life, as he is also the center of prayer and the liturgy that nourishes
it.” Morality:The Catholic View, trans. Michael Sherwin, O.P. (South Bend, IN: St.
Augustine’s Press, 2001), 85–86. [Emphasis added.]
63 In fact,Aquinas holds that because of its importance, all the moral virtues are infused
with charity to support it in making good human acts. “All the moral virtues are
infused together with charity. . . . Now it is evident that charity, inasmuch as it
directs man to his last end, is the principle of all the good works that are referable
to his last end.Wherefore all the moral virtues must needs be infused together with
charity, since it is through them that man performs each different kind of good
work” (cum caritate simul infunduntur omnes virtutes morales. . . . Manifestum est
autem quod caritas, inquantum ordinat hominem ad finem ultimum, est principium omnium bonorum operum quae in finem ultimum ordinari possunt. Unde
oportet quod cum caritate simul infundantur omnes virtutes morales, quibus homo
perficit singula genera bonorum operum). ST I–II, q. 65, a. 3, c.

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truly is, but also as a participation in Christ’s own fullness. Charity
connects mankind with Christ’s mediation because, as a virtue, charity
communicates to man a certain friendship with God—a friendship that
follows from the reconciliation caused by Christ. “For he [Christ],” St.
Thomas recognizes, “received all the gifts of the Holy Spirit without
measure, according to a perfect fullness; but we participate through him
some portion of his fullness; and this according to the measure which
God grants.”64
Charles Journet further develops this notion by connecting the charity of Christ, especially as it is manifest in his priestly sacrifice, with
Christian worship and the sacramental system.“Christ,” Journet explains,
“inaugurated the regime of the New Law by his death on the Cross,
which is simultaneously the supreme act of worship and the supreme act
of love. The cult, which is the container, so to speak, and love, which is
the content, are inseparably united in it.”65 Christ’s charity is not only the
essence of the Christian moral life, it is also the ethos that animates the
Christian cult that he inaugurated.
Conclusion
In light of the above argument, I think that it can be fairly claimed that
the real question for contemporary theology is not how to make moral
theology Christocentric, but whether we are adequately aware of the
moral and sacramental theology intrinsic to an authentically biblical
Christology.When Aquinas’s theology is read from the perspective of the
nature and effects that he attributes to Christ’s exercise of the offices of
64 Commentary on St John’s Gospel, vol. 1, 99. Super Ioannem, cap. 1, lect. 10: “Ipse

enim accepit omnia dona spiritus sancti sine mensura, secundum plenitudinem
perfectam; sed nos de plenitudine eius partem aliquam participamus per ipsum.”
65 Journet, The Theology of the Church, trans.Victor Szczurek, O. Praem (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 173.
The wider presence of Christ in Aquinas’s theology is well described by Fr.
Pinckaers when he notes a common error of myopic nearsightedness in reading
the Summa: “It is the third part, centering on Christ as our one way to God, that
gives the entire Summa, and especially to the virtues and gifts, their Christological
dimension. Similarly, the Trinitarian dimension of the Summa is provided by the
study of the divine Persons in the first part. In order to undertake a study of charity according to St.Thomas, we would need to consider the questions devoted to
the Holy Spirit seen as love and as gift, in the first part, and the grace of Christ
formed in the Passion and communicated through the sacraments, especially the
Eucharist, in the third part.” 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), 170. See also Thomas Hibbs,“Imitatio Christi and the Foundation of Aquinas’s Ethics,” Communio 18 (1991): esp. 572.

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841

priest and mediator, both the sacramental life of the Church and the
Christian moral life find their wellspring.Therefore, in St.Thomas’s theology of Christ’s priestly mediation we are not only able to detect Christ’s
presence in the Christian life—more importantly, we learn that the Christian life is one that is only truly found within Christ’s mediation.
N&V

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 4 (2007): 843–880

843

Pascendi Dominici Gregis at 100
Two Modernisms, Two Thomisms:
Reflections on the Centenary of Pius X’s
Letter Against the Modernists
RUSSELL H ITTINGER
University of Tulsa
Tulsa, Oklahoma

Introduction
T HIS YEAR marks the centenary of Pope Pius X’s condemnation of
Modernism. The condemnation appeared in two documents during the
summer of 1907.The Roman Inquisition published the decretum Lamentabili Sane ( July 3, 1907), containing a syllabus of sixty-five modernist
propositions.1 Two months later, under his own name, Pius X issued the
encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, On the Doctrines of the Modernists
(September 8, 1907). Admitting that his exposition was unusually prolix
and didactic, Pius X insisted that such was necessary to deal with
Modernism as a “whole system,” indeed as “the synthesis of all heresies.”2
In January 1908, The Dublin Review published an editorial on the
encyclical.3 The editor,Wilfrid Ward, immediately proffered obedience to
1 Lamentabili

Sane, was signed by Pietro Palombelli, Notary of the Supreme
Congregation of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, but it contained
the notification that Pius X had approved and confirmed the syllabus, and that
“every one of the above-listed propositions be held by all as condemned and
proscribed.” Pii X P.M., Acta V, 76–84.
2 “Iam systema universum . . . ut ominium haereseon conclectum.” Pascendi
Dominici Gregis, §39 (Acta IV, 93). For Pius X, not just one, but virtually all sectors
of sacred doctrine were being reduced to evolving historical constructs.
3 “The Encyclical Pascendi,” The Dublin Review 142 ( January/April 1908): 1–10.

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what he called “the act” of the Holy See condemning the doctrine of the
Modernists. He was not pleased, however, with what he called “the document.” He complained that it left too vague the origin, definition, and
scope of Modernism.4 It was clear enough,Ward conceded, that the pope
wished to condemn the principle of “subjectivism in religion.” So stated,
Modernism would seem to be nothing other than generic Liberalism in
matters of religion and theology.5 If read as a “newspaper article,” generalizations and “isolated passages” would too easily furnish partisans with
cudgels by which to censure certain books and theologians, not to
mention any number of merely half-baked ideas, that were not mentioned
in the encyclical itself.
4 The word modernismus had not appeared in the writings of Pius X’s predecessors,

Pius IX and Leo XIII. In Aeterni Patris (1879) Leo rarely used the word modernus, much less modernismus. Rather, in connection with methods, ideas, and
sciences, he used terms like recentis (recent) or hodiernus (contemporary). One or
another variant of the word “modern” did not stand on its own for the purpose
of describing, listing, or collecting errors. The Roman Magisterium had plenty
of other words that could be wheeled out, as the occasion required, for indicating errors: e.g., rationalismus, pantheismus, indifferentismus, socialismus, or liberalismus.
All of these can be found in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors, attached to the encyclical Quanta cura (1864). But we do not find modernus or modernismus. But, see
three Leonine uses of the term modernus which run in the direction of Pius’s
pejorative sense: (1) “in treating of the so-called modern liberties [de modernis, uti
loquuntur], distinguished between their good and evil elements; and We have
shown that whatsoever is good in those liberties is as ancient as truth itself, and
that the Church has always most willingly approved and practiced that good: but
whatsoever has been added as new is, to tell the plain truth, of a vitiated kind,
the fruit of the disorders of the age, and of an insatiate longing after novelties”
Libertas praestantissimum (1888) §2 (Leonis XIII P.M., Acta VIII, 213); (2)
“Substantially the struggle is ever the same: Jesus Christ is always exposed to the
contradictions of the world, and the same means are always used by modern
enemies of Christianity [les ennemis modernes du christianisme], means old in principle and scarcely modified in form” Au milieu des solicitudes (1892) §12 (Leonis
XIII P.M., Acta XII, 27); (3) “Superficial erudition or merely common knowledge will not suffice for all this—there is need of study, solid, profound and
continuous, in a word of a mass of doctrinal knowledge sufficient to cope with
the subtlety and remarkable cunning of our modern opponents [de nos modernes
contradicteurs]” Depuis le jour (1899) §48 (Leonis XIII P.M., Acta XIX, 187).The
last citation is taken from Pecci’s pastoral letter (19 July 1866), written in Perugia in the wake of the Syllabus.
5 Ward was referring to the concluding error (# 65) in the syllabus of Lamentabili
Sane :“Contemporary Catholicism can be reconciled with true science only if it
is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity, that is to say, into a broad and
liberal Protestantism” (Catholicismus hodiernus . . . in protestantismum latum et
liberalem). Acta V, 84.

Two Modernisms,Two Thomisms

845

Presciently, he worried that the term could draw into its net a millennium of Catholic intellectual labor devoted to reconciling the moderni (the
new authors, books, ideas, devotions) with the antiqui (with its authors,
books, and ideas). For example, Pius X quoted Gregory IX’s letter written
in 1223 about certain nefarious moderni at the University of Paris, suggesting that the precedent for Modernism was the reception of Aristotle among
the Parisian masters.6 In point of fact, Gregory supported Aristotelian
scholasticism and had criticized only certain translations and commentaries
of an Averroistic bent. Read without qualifications drawn in the rest of the
Gregorian letter, the reader of Pascendi might conclude that just as the
moderni of the thirteenth-century schools were once roundly condemned,
so too must we reject whatever proves to be modern in theology.
The reader of The Dublin Review would have understood the problem
raised so delicately by Ward. In 1879 Leo XIII issued Aeterni Patris, calling
for a revival of scholastic philosophy and theology. He insisted that the
Catholic mind ought to do just what the careless reader of Pascendi might
construe as forbidden. Namely, to harmonize the modern sciences with
scholastic philosophy. Leo proclaimed, “The best parent and guardian of
liberty amongst men is truth.”7 The proper response to the moderni is critical openness to truth and to all of the sciences. Not, of course, openness
in a haphazard way. Leo recommended not merely a generic scholasticism
as the frame of reference, but a more specific scholasticism culled from St.
Thomas.Thomas’s philosophy, he believed, provided the best combination
of core principles and synthetic reach on disputed issues in modern times.
Regarding the normativity of Thomas’s thought, Leo wrote:
While, therefore, We hold that every word of wisdom, every useful
thing by whomsoever discovered or planned, ought to be received with
a willing and grateful mind, We exhort you, venerable brethren, in all
earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas and to spread
it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the
good of society, and for the advantage of all the sciences.The wisdom
of St.Thomas,We say; for if anything is taken up with too great subtlety
by the Scholastic doctors or too carelessly stated—if there be anything
that ill agrees with the discoveries of a later age or, in a word, improbable in whatever way—it does not enter Our mind to propose that for
imitation to Our age. Let carefully selected teachers endeavor to
implant the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas in the minds of students and
set forth clearly his solidity and excellence over others. Let the universities already founded or to be founded by you illustrate and defend this
6 Pius X, Pascendi, §17 (Acta V, 64 n. 8).
7 Immortale Dei (1885), §40 (Leonis XIII P.M., Acta V, 144).

Russell Hittinger

846

doctrine and use it for the refutation of prevailing errors. But, lest the
false for the true or the corrupt for the pure be drunk in, be ye watchful that the doctrine of Thomas be drawn from his own fountains, or at
least from those rivulets which, derived from the very fount, have thus
far flowed, according to the established agreement of learned men, pure
and clear; be careful to guard the minds of youth from those which are
said to flow thence, but in reality are gathered from strange and
unwholesome streams.8

Ward did not mention—and perhaps did not even notice—that Pius X
quoted only the sentence regarding the “too great subtlety of the Scholastic doctors.”9 Left out is the opening exhortation regarding receptivity to
truth “by whomsoever discovered or planned.” He also elides Leo’s
explicit recognition that Thomas is mediated by tradition(s), or “rivulets”
(ex iis rivis), which need to be discerned with regard to the fount (ab ipso
fonte). In other words, Leo’s program looked backward, from the traditions
to the original, and forward toward a constructive engagement with
modern philosophy and science. For his part, Pius X moves directly to a
disciplinary matter. Leo’s prescription must be “strictly observed” by all
bishops and religious superiors. Seminary professors, he adds, may not
disparage or set aside Thomas “especially in metaphysical questions” (praesertim in re metaphysica).10 What began in Leo’s encyclical as a program for
reckoning with contemporary philosophy and science had been turned
into a quite different conversation, emphasizing discipline ad intra.
What accounts for these different points of view? Pius X made it clear
that the adversaries of Catholicism now are “not from without but from
within.”11 Along with its disciplinary apparatus, Pascendi treats the moderni
as an “intestine” disorder to be purged from the bowels of the Church,
and then only with great difficulty because this cancer has what Pius X
calls a “manifold personality.”12 The moderni are shape-shifters and therefore must be astutely diagnosed according to their diverse and often
misleading symptoms. Pius X is concerned not merely to distinguish true
from false philosophy, but to detect true from false churchmen.Thomism
was brought into the center of that diagnostic task. While Leo and Pius
X agreed on the practical conclusion, that Thomas ought to be privileged
in institutions of ecclesiastical formation, we cannot ignore their quite
8 Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris (August 4, 1879), §31 (Leonis XIII P.M., Acta I, 283).
9 Pius X, Pascendi, no. 45 (Acta V, 102).
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., no. 3 (Acta V, 48): “Nam non hi extra Ecclesiam, sed intra.”
12 Ibid., no. 5 (Acta V, 50): “Modernistrarum quemlibet plures agere personas ac

veluti in se commiscere.”

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847

different conceptions of how the Catholic (and Thomistic) mind ought
to situate and dispose itself to modernity.
We will argue that the differences between Aeterni Patris and Pascendi
contain in nucleo not only a tension between a constructive and synthetic
Thomism on the one hand and a legislated or disciplinary Thomism on
the other.13 Deeper still was another tension—best understood in terms
of two different aspects of modernity with which Catholicism had to
reckon.The two are interlaced and therefore are not easily separated. But
they can be distinguished.
For purposes of our inquiry, the first is modernity as social, economic,
political, and legal phenomenon. We are speaking of those aspects of
modern life that made necessary the development of what came to be
called “social doctrine.” Pius XI (1922–39) is the first pope to speak
explicitly of social doctrine as a unified body of teachings that develop
by way of clarity and application.14 How should Catholics live in a world
in which political Christendom is defunct? Both chronologically and in
the lived experience of Catholics, this cluster of questions came first.The
second theme is modernity as philosophical system that displaced, or at
least threatened, what could be called the praeambula fidei. Again, for our
purposes, these “preambles of faith” include truths known in principle by
natural reason, particularly on issues having a propinquity to sacred
doctrine.15 They can be summarized in the pithy remark by Pius X in
reference to the obligation of seminary professors to adhere to Thomas
praesertim in re metaphysica.
The revival of Thomism was closely connected to the search for an
adequate social doctrine or, to use the older term, a doctrina civilis. But the
problem of the praeambula fidei was never far behind the curve of political
and social questions. It became an especially pressing issue after the First
Vatican Council (1869–70), when the Church had the liberty and the will
13 The expression “disciplinary or legislated Thomism” is taken from the magiste-

rial essay by James A. Weisheipl, O.P., “Thomism as a Christian Philosophy,” in
New Themes in Christian Philosophy, ed. Ralph M. McInerny (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 184.
14 Pius XI said that he inherited a “doctrine” handed on from the time of Leo XIII.
Quadragesimo Anno (1931) §§18–21 (AAS 23, 182–84). See, also, Mary Elsbernd,
Papal Statements on Rights:A Historical Contextual Study of Encyclical Teaching From
Pius VI–Pius XI (1791–1939) (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of Louvain, 1985),
587 n. 1, on the emergence of the term doctrina.
15 Debates among Thomists over the status of the praeambula is thoroughly covered
by Ralph M. McInerny, Praeambula Fidei:Thomism and the God of the Philosophers
(Washington, DC:The Catholic University of American Press, 2006). Note especially the historical chapters in Part II on the post-Leonine disputes.

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to refashion its internal order—particularly the seminaries—according to
Roman norms. Thus, the title of this essay “Two Modernisms, Two
Thomisms.” Beginning in the nineteenth century there emerged two
distinct sets of problems for which Thomism was to provide the remedy.16
Leo’s project included both, but with a decided emphasis upon the social.
Pius X’s included both, but with an even more decided emphasis upon the
philosophy officially needed ad intra to buttress sacred doctrine.
To prepare ourselves for this discussion, it is necessary to take a bird’seye view of the historical events in response to which modernity became
a Catholic problem and, what is more, a problem to be understood in
Thomistic terms. Among other things, we must consider early efforts by
Rome to create lists or syllabi of modern errors. This is of some consequence to our story, because Leo revived Thomism in order to find an
alternative to the “lists.” The reader will bear in mind that it is not our
intention to pass judgment on these syllabi and lists as regards their content,
at least not on their substantive merit. It will suffice to show how they positioned the Church to fashion two distinct responses to modernity and how
Thomism was drawn into the different orbits of the question.17
Modern Times
Catholicism was not, as commonly depicted, dragged kicking and screaming into modern times. For several centuries, Catholicism was comfortably—perhaps all too comfortably—adapted to many aspects of modernity.
Beginning with the discovery of the New World and the projection of
Catholic missions to four continents, many Catholics—clerical and lay—
understood that they lived in a new era of exploration, industry, education,
art, vernacular literatures, devotions, science, and philosophy. The Reformation and religious wars, culminating in the treaties of Westphalia (1648),
destroyed the medieval common law of Christendom by creating a system
of states having diverse confessional allegiances. Innocent X declared Westphalia “null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane,
empty of meaning and effect for all time.”18
Even so, a new common law evolved among the peoples under Catholic
rule. It was built upon a complex and evolving set of treaties, informal
agreements, and legal fictions through which the Church conceded to
Catholic sovereigns rights and obligations over many aspects of ecclesiastical life (the so-called ius patronatus), in exchange for which the sovereigns
16 See note 95 on Pius XI’s understanding of the two modernisms.
17 I have left out of this account the issue of biblical studies and interpretation,

which is very important to the modernist controversy.
18 Innocent X, Zelo Domus Dei (November 26, 1648).

Two Modernisms,Two Thomisms

849

protected the Church from schism and supplied the material resources and
governance for the far-flung missions across the world.The sovereigns were
deemed junior apostles, entitled to rule “in trust” the quotidian life of the
Church in Europe and in her colonies. Innocent X’s declaration that Westphalia was “empty of meaning and effect for all time” remained on the
books, as it were; but on the ground, Catholicism developed a remarkable
symbiosis with the new system of sovereignty—so long as it was in the
hands of Catholic families. In fact, the modern state was assembled within
the Catholic world, beginning on the Iberian peninsula in 1492, but especially in the bureaucratic system that emerged in the Spanish dominions
overseas.19 It required a deep and extensive cooperation of ecclesiastical and
civil authorities.To the very end, on the eve of the French Revolution, this
modernity, as it were, was not perceived as a special problem either ad intra
or ad extra. For Catholics it was a political culture involving an intricate
minuet of ecclesiastical powers, new religious orders, and ruling dynasties.
I shall not try here to cover these earlier centuries in proper detail, but
one story might suffice to convey something of its mindset. On December
15, 1781, Pope Pius VI dispatched from Rome a courier carrying a secret
letter to be delivered by the papal nuncio to the Emperor of the Romans,
Joseph II.The letter announced the pope’s intention to visit Vienna in two
months’ time to treat with the emperor on issues of ecclesiastical
jurisdiction and disputes over territories in the north of Italy.The Crown
Cardinal from France, Cardinal de Bernis, warned that the pope would
“give the signal of a paper war” with much stronger governments, and thus
19 Restricting ourselves only to Spain, Pope Alexander VI issued the bull Inter Caetera

(1493), conceding to the Spanish monarchs title to the lands discovered and still
to be discovered in the Indies.This was followed in 1508 by Julius II’s bull Universalis Ecclesiae, conceding a universal patronage over the Church in America.Within
a century, however, the delegation had been delegated once again. A royal law in
1609 entrusted the ius patronatus in cases of lesser ecclesiastical positions to
viceroys who came to control the appointment of parish priests.The panoply of
Church life, from councils and synods, episcopal chancelleries and ecclesiastical
courts, the publications of papal bulls and rescripts, tribunals of the Inquisition,
down to the quotidian life of parishes, schools, and hospitals fell to the plenary
authority of the king. By concordat in 1753 Benedict XIV extended the patronal
right throughout all of Spain. And thus came into existence what was called the
Patronato Real Universal, which now encompassed Grenada (1486), the Indies
(1508), and continental Spain (1753). Rome had never before conceded, nor had
any Catholic prince received, such a package of delegated authority. For the legal
structure and history of the Patronato Real, one can rely on studies by W. Eugene
Shiels, King and Church: The Rise and Fall of the Patronato Real (Chicago: Loyola
University Press, 1961); and on broader historical canvas, the work by J. H. Elliott,
Empires of the Atlantic World (New Haven:Yale University Press, 2006).

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Russell Hittinger

“give birth to a discussion which the very interest of religion requires you
to avoid.”20
What was a “paper war,” and why was it deemed injurious to the “interest of religion”? In sum, paper wars included lists of complaints or errors,
or—what was even worse—exercises in speculative theology tending to
disturb the common law of Christendom. A serious paper war erupted
during the reign of Louis XIV who induced popes to issue six bulls against
the Jansenists, the most famous being Unigenitus (1713),21 which
condemned some 101 propositions extracted from Pasquier Quesnel’s
Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament. It proved disastrous, not only for
the moral authority of the papacy and for the stability of the French crown,
but also for the Jesuits, who eventually would be expelled from France
(1764) and suppressed by the papacy (1773).
The French Revolution’s Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1790) unilaterally overturned the modern common law of political Christendom.
Church governance was handed over not to the mischievous but familiar
Catholic families, but instead was given to the nation.The clergy became
civil servants elected by democratic vote.This model spread to the former
colonies, particularly in Latin America. Rights once belonging to the
Church had been transferred to kings, and now to the nation. The state
was no longer governed by anointed laity, but by a new doctrine of laicism.
Joseph de Bonald and François-René de Chateaubriand founded the
journal Le Conservateur in 1818, introducing the term “conservative” into
the political idiom of European politics. (Conservative, it should be noted,
did not mean the opposite of “modern” but rather of “anarchical.”)
What was to be “conserved”? There was more than one answer. Politically, the thing to be conserved was the first modernity, the modern relationship between throne and altar that evolved after the religious wars.
Thus, the Congress of Vienna in 1815 attempted to restore the union of
throne-and-altar, hoping to contain if not defeat the forces of anarchy. In
Rome, Pius VII established in 1801 the Congregation of Extraordinary
Affairs. It became a kind of kitchen cabinet that oversaw relations
between Rome and the civil powers.22 Rome went into an emergency
20 Jean Francois Baron de Bourgoing, Historical and Philosophical Memoirs of Pius the

Sixth, vol. I (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1799), 221.
Dei Filius (September 8, 1713); Denzinger-Hünermann (1997),
§§2400–2502.
22 It would have a long life, lasting with only slight adjustments until 1967. Gregory
XVI will make the Secretary of State a member pro tempore and executor of the
Congregation’s resolutions. In 1908, Pius X made it one of three sections of the
Secretariat of State.
21 Unigenitus

Two Modernisms,Two Thomisms

851

mode, resolved to handle the Church-state crisis on an ad hoc basis. But
it also signaled that there would be no over-arching doctrine to meet the
crises. Encyclicals of the era urged Catholics to obey legitimate authority, beginning with the pope’s own temporal authority in the papal states.
This was the era of Restoration or Legitimism.23
Yet there was also a quite different and more radical notion of what
had to be conserved. In the aftermath of the Revolution, Catholic reactionaries and liberals disagreed about the proper political response. Reactionaries like Joseph de Maistre, Bonald, and Donoso Cortés argued that
the new ideas, new constitutional foundings were inherently unable to
master the dynamics of revolution and anarchy.They recommended more
rather than less repression by the police powers of state. Liberals, like
Lamennais, Montalembert, and Lacordaire argued that the revolutions
could be tamed by moderate, liberal constitutions, such as the Belgian
Constitution of 1831—the first European constitution to renounce civil
control of the Church. But both camps agreed on one cardinal point:
That the common law of modern Christendom was itself the cause of
the troubles. Neither side wished to conserve the ancien régime just as
such. They did not need to read Tocqueville to understand that the socalled ancien régime was not medieval, but something quite modern.
So, they returned imaginatively and critically to the work of Gregory
VII during the Investiture Controversy of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. It was Joseph de Maistre who first insisted that Gregory VII’s
work had to be completed in modern times. Maistre criticized the ecclesiology of national churches, and he accused kings and princes of a “great
rebellion.”24 For Maistre, Gregory VII was “the genius,” the man without
whom “all was lost, humanly speaking.”25 Interestingly, in this context,
Gregory VII was the “modern” because his reform was put in opposition
to the “feudal,” which is to say, vassalage of the Church to lay powers.To
declare Gregory VII the model for the Church’s relations to the restored
crowns of 1815 was a most unlikely proposition. But the idea was vigorously and publicly pursued by virtually all of the important Catholic
writers in the wake of the Revolution.26 To speak of the Gregorian
23 No encyclical better exhibits the principles and the failure of Legitimism than

Gregory XVI’s Cum Primum ( June 9, 1832) commanding the Poles to obey the
czar.
24 Joseph de Maistre, The Pope, trans. Aeneas M. Dawson (1819; London: C.
Dolman, 1850), III.4, at 277.
25 Ibid., II.12 at 199; III.2 at 255.
26 Notable works in this genre include: Félicité Robert de Lamennais’s notes on the
history of the Gregorian reform, Tradition de l’église sur l’institution des évêques
(1814); Dom Guéranger’s Affaire de la Légende De Saint Grégoire VII, in Institutions

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reforms as a model for the era of Restoration not only seemed anachronistic, but if put into effect it would mean that the Gregorian critique of
the lay control of the Church had to be applied first against the remnants
of Catholic temporal authorities, and second against the new, laicist states.
Improbably, this is exactly what found its way into papal rhetoric.
From Clement XI (1700) until the election of Pius VI (1775), we find
only a single reference in Roman teaching documents to Acts 5:29,“We
must obey God rather than men.”27 Then it went into abeyance until
after the Syllabus of Errors (1864). Recovered from its desuetude by Pius
IX, Acts 5:29 became the text by which Roman authorities traced the
boundary of Matthew 22:21 regarding the things not owed to Caesar.
The Roman Magisterium was ready to critically engage and freely criticize the ruling powers.What had changed?
The Paper War of Pius IX: Syllabus of Errors
The Syllabus of Errors stood on a simple fact of political history. In 1860
Pius IX lost his Italian dominions to the House of Savoy, which installed
not merely a lay state, but a laicist state. The Restoration was defunct.
Pius’s secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, confided to a British envoy
that “exclusively Catholic governments had virtually ceased to exist.”28
The triumph of the Italian Risorgimento had the unintended effect of
removing any inhibition of the papacy to speak on matters political. But
how should it speak? There had been no systematic political theology for
two centuries, since the school at Salamanca. Pius IX and his advisors
cobbled together a number of pontifical statements and admonitions,
grouped them under various headings, and fired away.
liturgiques, t. II, ch. XXI (1841); Henri Lacordaire’s Éloge Funèbre De Daniel O’Connell (February 10, 1848); John Henry Newman’s Present Position of Catholics in
England (1851); Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler’s Freedom, Authority, and the
Church (1862), XXV; Donoso Cortés’s Letter to Cardinal Fornari ( June 19, 1852),
which provided notes for an early version of the Syllabus of Errors; and Antonio
Rosmini’s Delle cinque piaghe della Santa Chiesa (1832, 1848), a passionate but
scholarly compendium of arguments against civil control of the Church. As late
as Vatican II, the Gregorian theme was used by John Courtney Murray, S.J. See
note 81below.
27 In a secret consistory during the Revolution, Pius VI once mentions Acts 5:29.
For his remarks at the Quirinal (September 26, 1791), see M. N. S. Guillon,
Collection générale des brefs et instructions de Notre Très-Saint Père le Pape Pie VI, relatifs a la rèvolution Françoise, vol. 2 (Paris: Chez Le Clere, 1798), 188–91.
28 Lord Odo Russell to Earl of C. (March 7, 1870), in The Roman Question, Extracts
from the Despatches of Odo Russell from Rome, 1858–1870, ed. Noel Blakiston
(London: Chapman and Hall, 1962), 404.

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Attached to the encyclical Quanta Cura (1864), the Syllabus lists eighty
propositions. They are somewhat confusing because almost every erroneous proposition is stated in the affirmative.The reader must negate the
affirmative proposition. So, for example, proposition 80 states that the
Roman Pontiff ought to “reconcile himself to contemporary liberalism,”
the negation of which might be “the pope is not obliged to reconcile
himself to contemporary liberalism”; but it could also be,“the pope is not
obliged to reconcile himself to this or that brand of liberalism, or not
obliged to reconcile himself to liberalism as it is understood today.”
Indeed, the search for a proper set of negations became very important
to the Church’s response to the problems of the mid-nineteenth century.
From the outset, churchmen understood the problem of promulgating
lists of errors. Catholic journals, including The Dublin Review considered
republishing the Syllabus as a set of negative propositions.29 In France,
there was talk of making a new catechism out of the Syllabus, prompting
the Minister of Public Worship to decree on January 1, 1865, that Quanta
Cura and its appendix could not be addressed from the pulpit. Félix
Dupanloup, the bishop of Orléans wryly responded, “this is done in the
name of Gallican liberties, based on two specially liberal Sovereigns, to
wit, Louis XIV, and Napoleon I.”30 Dupanloup argued for a sensible principle of interpretation. He contended that the erroneous propositions
listed in the Syllabus should be read as Liberal theses—Liberal “universals”
as it were. A false theory when turned into a universal principle is bound
to be bad in a great number of cases, and for that reason must be repudiated.Take proposition 42: “In the case of conflicting laws enacted by the
two powers, civil law prevails.”This is not always true and therefore must
be negated. Or take proposition 39: “The State, as being the origin and
source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by
any limits.”This proposition is never true. But, alas, Dupanloup’s method
required considerable sophistication. The ordinary person had to keep
fixed in mind that the Syllabus lists liberal theses rather than Catholic
doctrines, and then had to go in search of just the right negation.31
29 See the account by Wilfrid Ward in William George Ward and the Catholic Revival

(London: Macmillan, 1893), 242f. His father,William George Ward, editor of The
Dublin Review, was also inclined in this direction, but reluctantly begged off (257).
30 Msgr. Felix Dupanloup, Remarks on the Encyclical, of the 8th of December, A.D. 1864
(32nd Paris ed., Convention du 15 septembrè et l’encyclique du 8 décembre) trans.
William J.M. Hutchinson, 2nd ed. (London: Burns, Lambert, & Oates, 1865), 4.
31 It also caused confusion because Catholics had already converted the (liberal)
affirmations into negations, thus making it seem that it was the Catholic thesis
that had to be derogated or qualified. On this view, the Catholic thesis (every state
must have a religion) could be bent, in hypothesis, to cover certain exceptions

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Despite such confusions, Pius IX clearly set forth the purposes and
targets of the Syllabus. At the beginning of his encyclical, he notes that
the errors are “opposed to the eternal natural law engraven by God in all
men’s hearts, and to right reason; from which almost all other errors have
their origin.”32 The chief harm, he says, is to the “good of human society.” The ideologues of state power intended nothing less than “to raze
the foundations of the Catholic religion and of civil society.”This is not
a disciplinary encyclical on matters ad intra. Rather, it is firmly anchored
in the political questions following the revolutions of 1848. It would be
difficult to imagine a more extroverted encyclical.
For our purposes, three things are important, and each supports our
thesis that the social-political problem came first. First, among the
Syllabus’s eighty propositions only seven are not directly related to the
issue of Church and state (but also, by implication, marriage, family,
education, sodalities, etc.). Second, only four are culled from papal statements prior to the revolutions of 1848.This is a fact of some importance,
because it indicates that Pius IX and his editors knew they were entering a new situation.Third, the core of the document, propositions 19–55,
laid waste to the older common law of Christendom.33 In proposition
after proposition, Pius IX flatly denies the rights once exercised by
Catholic sovereigns, and now by nation-states. He declares, in effect, the
independence of the Church not only in matters of ordinary governance
(sacraments and the episcopacy), but also with regard to schools, religious
orders, marriage and families, and sodalities. Although he did not intend
to inaugurate what came to be known as Catholic social doctrine, many
of the rudiments of this tradition are found in the Syllabus.
Five years later, parts of the Syllabus were reworked into five chapters
and twenty-one canons of the first draft of the conciliar document De

from the ideal. See M. Bévenot, S.J., “Thesis and Hypothesis,” Theological Studies
15 (1954): 440–46. Bèvenot points out (433) that the confusion was due, in part,
to the fact that one year earlier, in an unsigned article (attributed to C. M. Curci),
Civiltà Cattolica had reversed the distinction. Fixed principles of ontology were
identified with the “thesis,” while the “hypothesis” stood for things as they might
become by intrusion of accidental circumstances, perhaps regrettable and sometimes criminal. (Civiltà Cattolica, 5th series, 8 [October 2, 1863]: 129–49). The
Syllabus was turned upside-down, but this perspective did not always afford a
better view. Confusions about the thesis-hypothesis distinction would haunt
Catholic thought for the better part of the next century.
32 Quanta cura (December 8, 1864), §2 (Pii IX P.M., Acta I/3, 689).
33 Syllabus (Acta I/3, 701–717).

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Ecclesia Christi.34 If conjoined to the doctrine of universal jurisdiction of
the pope, the net effect would amount to something like a doctrinalization and enforcement of Gregory VII’s reforms, albeit in a completely
different time and place. The courts and cabinets of Europe certainly
interpreted things in just this way. They were furious that the old fool,
the epileptic, the so-called “Oracle of the Tiber,” had out-maneuvered
them. As it turned out, the chapters and canons drawn from the Syllabus
had to be dropped because the bishops could not agree on any over-arching theory to unify them. And, of course, they worried about being
harassed by their home governments. In July 1870, they gave the papacy
universal jurisdiction and went home.
The Syllabus and Vatican I laid out the predicates of ecclesiastical order
unfettered by civil control. They killed Gallicanism—no more national
churches, no Catholicism controlled by local ecclesiastical and lay elites.
The theory and the legality of the act were hardly developed or aligned,
one with the other. Yet even Catholics like John Henry Newman and
Bishop Von Ketteler, who were diffident about the timing of the decrees
on papal infallibility and the award of universal jurisdiction, publicly celebrated the result. Newman admitted that “there will be no more of those
misunderstandings out of which Jansenism and Gallicanism have arisen,
and which in these latter days have begotten here in England the socalled Branch Theory.”35
The Leonine Project: A Thomist Response
When Leo was elected in 1878, he inherited an incomplete revolution.
Unlike the time of Trent, he had no full set of conciliar doctrines; he had
no new catechism; and, none of the revolution had been canonically
codified (which will await the Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law of
1917). He inherited a fact, or a deed, rather than a coherent doctrina civilis.
Therefore, he had to put three things into some kind of synthesis:
First, the Syllabus of Errors, with its eighty propositions, which had to be
converted not merely into negations but into an adequate doctrina civilis.
34 Ioannes Dominicus Mansi, ed., Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio,

vol. 51, Primum Schema Constitutionis de Ecclesia Christi (Arnhem and Leipzig,
1926), chs. X–XV, 543–51; canons I–XXI, 551–53.
35 Letters and Diaries, vol. XXV, 1873–77, 259. In 1883, when the Gladstone
government introduced an Affirmation Bill that replaced the oath invoking the
name of God, Newman refused to join other church leaders in protest; the God
of Christianity, he thought, had long ceased to be the God of Parliament. Ibid.,
vol. XXVIII, 206.

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Second,Vatican Council I’s Constitution Dei Filius, ratified unanimously in the spring of 1870, keyed itself to Wisdom 8:1, where Scripture says that divine providence governs all things sweetly [suaviter]. Dei
Filius asserted that God is the “Lord of the Sciences,” that faith and
reason have distinct objects and ends which are mutually supportive,
and that the “assent of faith is by no means a blind movement of the
mind.”36 The preambles of the faith needed to be clarified and organized for modern times.
Third, he inherited from the Council authority to directly teach
the Catholic world without interference of the state.

The question, then, was how to put these three together.The answer, in
part, was to bring his Perugian Academy of St.Thomas Aquinas to Rome,
and to make two of its faculty (one of whom was his brother) cardinals.
A year later, he issued Aeterni Patris (1879).
Before we turn to that encyclical, two points need to be made. First,
it should be mentioned that Leo never trusted the Romantic Reactionaries of the early nineteenth century. In his view, they gave a onesided, and inadequately philosophical, response to the Enlightenment. In
his famous Speech on Dictatorship (1849), Donoso Cortés asserted that,
“[T]here are no more than two possible forms of repression. . . .There is
a law of humanity, a law of History.”37 God does not subject creatures
only to the natural laws. He is also a dictator in the sense that his decrees
can bend or suspend the natural course, and hence by particular Providence history is the theatre of divine admonition and grace.38 And as
God governs in both modes of by pure positivity of power, dictatorially,
as it were, so too in human societies we see the governance of the state
and the Church.39
For Leo, the idea of a divine dictator suspending the laws of nature,
imposing a twofold order of repression, could not be reconciled with Dei
Filius, which affirmed a twofold order of providence and a twofold order
of knowledge rather than two modes of repression. It was the last thing
36 Pastor Aeternus ( July 18, 1870), cap. III, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol.

2, ed. Norman P.Tanner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990),
813f. Dei Filius (April 24, 1870), cap. IV, in Tanner, Decrees, vol. 2, 808.
37 “Speech on Dictatorship” ( January 4, 1849), in Selected Works of Juan Donoso
Cortés, trans. Jeffery P. Johnson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 53.
38 “So gentlemen, when God operates in this way, can it not be said, if human
language can be applied to divine things, that he is operating dictatorially?” Ibid.,
48.
39 Interestingly, Donoso was invited to assist with an early draft of the Syllabus of
Errors. Letter to Cardinal Fornari, “Errors of Our Times” ( June 19, 1852), in
Selected Works, 110.

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that modern states needed to hear. It was not, for example, the kind of
message that he intended to send to Bismarck, whose Kulturkampf was
still under way in Prussia and parts of Poland.
Second, Leo was also suspicious of what James Weisheipl aptly calls
“nineteenth-century apologetics.”40 Since the eighteenth century, philosophical efforts to defend Catholic doctrine as well as to create bridges
to modern thought were not Thomistic. They were inspired rather by
Descartes, Christian Wolff, Kant, and Hegel. Education in ecclesiastical
institutions, we must remember, was only sporadically under Roman discipline.The new governments suppressed, or at the very least interfered with,
Catholic education at every level.There was no “unitary” system of philosophy either at the level of curriculum or discipline. Occasionally, a certain
thinker or book or set of ideas was censured by the Roman magisterium—
Lamennais, Rosmini, Anton Günther, and George Hermes ran afoul of
Roman authorities. Yet there was no over-arching policy of censuring
philosophy, certainly nothing like the disciplinary apparatus created by Pius
X after Leo’s death. Since the French Revolution, the papacy was too
distracted by the political issues to land with both feet in the midst of intramural disputes about academic philosophy.The important thing now was
the centralization of ecclesiastical jurisdiction after 1870, which gave Leo a
window of opportunity to address the problem of philosophical eclecticism
in institutions coming under Church discipline.
In Aeterni Patris, Leo insisted that a sound philosophy is needed “in order
that sacred theology may receive and assume the nature, form, and genius
of a true science.”41 The faith-reason issues highlighted in Dei Filius could
be maintained or advanced on the basis of philosophical eclecticism. Leo
complained that since the sixteenth century, philosophical systems have
“multiplied beyond measure,” and that even Catholic philosophers accommodated themselves to a system “which depends on the authority and
choice of any professor.”42 His remark about sixteenth-century “innovators” might be construed as a warning shot, fired in the direction of
Baroque-era scholastics, particularly the Suárezians. But this is not quite
true. In fact, he praises the schools of sixteenth-century Scholasticism, calling them “homes of human wisdom.”43 He explicitly recognized that
Thomas’s thought was “unfolded in good time by later masters and with a
goodly yield.”44 Leo’s immediate target was not intramural debate among
40 Weisheipl, “Thomism as a Christian Philosophy,” 166.
41 Leo XIII, Aeterni, §6 (Acta I, 262).
42 Ibid., §24 (Acta I, 278).
43 Ibid., §20 (Acta I, 274f.).
44 Ibid., §18 (Acta I, 273).

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scholastics or schools of Thomism. He was speaking of “tottering and
feeble” attempts to render modern philosophies user-friendly to Catholic
doctrine, but only at the price of creating transitory and eccentric adaptations rather than sound syntheses needed for systematic theology.45
It is true, however, that Aeterni Patris cannot be read, on its own terms,
as an exhortation to a merely generic Scholasticism.Thomas is held out as
the “Master,” and Leo does not hesitate to admonish churchmen “that
nearly all the founders and lawgivers of the religious orders commanded
their members to study and religiously adhere to the teachings of St.
Thomas, fearful lest any of them should swerve even in the slightest degree
from the footsteps of so great a man.”46 Thomas’s doctrine must enjoy
“excellence over others.”47 Leo did not make a chart of the authentic
“rivulets” of interpretation, much less make a list of polluted ones, but it
is clear enough that he believed that there is an authentic Thomism.48
When we read Aeterni Patris as a whole, we see that Leo framed the
revival of Christian philosophy chiefly in the context of the ongoing
political problems.
Whosoever turns his attention to the bitter strifes of these days and
seeks a reason for the troubles that vex public and private life must
come to the conclusion that . . . false conclusions concerning divine and
human things, which originated in the schools of philosophy, have now
crept into all the orders of the State.49

When he enumerates the benefits of reviving scholastic philosophy, and
more particularly, the philosophy of Thomas, he speaks first of the socialpolitical issues (and “kindred subjects”), and then of the advance of the
physical sciences.50
45 Just what Weisheipl calls “nineteenth-century apologetics,” or the attempt to

cherry-pick a theme or principle in Descartes, Kant, or Hegel and then to turn
it to the apparent advantage of Catholicism. Even here, however, Leo is gentle.
“In saying this We have no intention of discountenancing the learned and able
men who bring their industry and erudition, and, what is more, the wealth of
new discoveries, to the service of philosophy; for, of course,We understand that
this tends to the development of learning. But one should be very careful lest all
or his chief labor be exhausted in these pursuits and in mere erudition.” Aeterni,
§24.
46 Ibid., §19 (Acta I, 274).
47 Ibid., §31 (Acta I, 283).
48 The subtitle of the encyclical implies as much: De philosophia Christiana ad
mentem Sancti Thomae Aquinatis in scholis catholicis instauranda.
49 Ibid., §2 (Acta I, 256f.).
50 Ibid., §§29–29 (Acta I, 280f).

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It cannot be doubted that the Leonine revival was motivated by the
search for an adequate doctrina civilis. Long before Aeterni Patris, Leo’s
mentors were using Thomas for just this purpose.The Jesuits on the editorial staff of La Civiltà Cattolica, founded in 1850 to respond to the political and cultural crisis of Risorgimento, had already begun to cut this groove.
Luigi Taparelli first sketched his theories of social justice and subsidiarity
in the cockpit of the journal. His colleague, Matteo Liberatore, who
became one of Leo’s trusted advisors and a member of the Roman Academy of St.Thomas Aquinas, actually converted to Thomism after joining
the staff of Civiltà Cattolica. In other words, he came to Thomism through
the crucible of the social and political issues. In Leo’s own work—in the
some 110 encyclicals and other teaching letters—Thomas is rarely
discussed or referenced apart from the social-political problems.
These two aims—the systematic and pedagogical, and the search for an
adequate doctrina civilis—were not without tension. Leo’s metaphor of a
fountain of doctrine dispersed into certain “rivulets” required an important though subtle distinction. In those subjects having propinquity to
sacred doctrine, it is crucial to achieve a rather tightly organized account
of the relationship between philosophy and the deposit of faith. Even
slight changes in the philosophy will entail new estimations of the
doctrine. If St.Thomas is to be the “Master” on such things, the relationship between the rivulets of interpretation and the source is not something about which the Church could be indifferent. On the bevy of issues
which swarm around the social-political problem, the terrain allowed
much more room for creative maneuver. As Thomas himself taught, the
natural law can change “by addition.”51 The very nature of the subject
allows a broad threshold in which principle and prudence conjoin to
deliver a suitable conclusion. In the case of Roman encyclicals, there was
also the prudence of papal policies related to governance of the Church,
particularly in its dealings with a variety of political situations. Leo explicitly called this level of prudence, concerning “diverse and multiform
things,” to the attention of the Church.52 So long as one did not contradict a basic principle, merely plausible lines of interpretation could suffice
51 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 5.
52 “The like disposition and the same order should prevail in the Christian society by

so much the more that the political prudence of the Pontiff embraces diverse and
multiform things, for it is his charge not only to rule the Church, but generally so
to regulate the actions of Christian citizens that these may be in apt conformity to
their hope of gaining eternal salvation.Whence it is clear that, in addition to the
complete accordance of thought and deed, the faithful should follow the practical
political wisdom of the ecclesiastical authority.” Sapientia Christianae ( January 10,
1890), §37 (Acta X, 34f.).

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for fashioning a Thomistic position on such issues as democracy, the social
contract, civil toleration of error, and so forth.
To be sure, there is overlap between the two foci. Metaphysical truths
about divine providence, the ordination of the soul to a final end, the intelligibility of the good—to mention only a few—stand in both registers.
Fundamental issues of anthropology are always Janus-faced, looking in one
direction toward preambles of the faith and in another direction toward
practical applications in the history of political and economic institutions.
Leo wanted Thomism to guide both of these endeavors. But even Leo
understood that the social vector had a developmental aspect distinct from
the metaphysical and anthropological issues constituting preambles of faith.
Prior to Leo’s election to the papacy, Catholic response to the social
and political crises were not always Thomistic—not even in a broad,
generic sense of the term. As we said, the Romantic reactionaries were
anything but “schoolmen.” Archbishop Emmanuel von Ketteler used
pieces of scholastic philosophy to frame the social question, but he did not
have any apparent programmatic interest in Thomism. Dom Guéranger of
Solesmes, Antonio Rosmini, and John Henry Newman had much to say
about the Church-state problem without relying upon Thomistic, or even
scholastic, systematics.
But it is not merely coincidental that the recently restored Society of
Jesus would become a kind of sluice-gate for Leo’s quest to develop a
new doctrina civilis based upon Thomistic principles. Let us briefly
consider why this was so. After their founding in 1640, the Jesuit ratio
studiorum prescribed the study of St. Thomas. Although the Constitutions
of the Society forbade Jesuits from staffing faculties of law,53 it left them
free to teach and publish on the deeper issues of jurisprudence and political philosophy. Thus began the first systematic modern “schooling” of
Thomas’s De legibus. Some three hundred years after they were written,
Thomas’s questions on law were excavated, propounded in lectures,
summarized in textbooks, and applied not only to casuistical problems
but more importantly to the most controversial issues of the time. Cardinal Bellarmine (1542–1621), Juan de Mariana (1536–1624), Louis de
Molina (1535–1600), and Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), and a host of
lesser lights, made extensive and astute investigations of political order,
economics, and relations between the Church and temporal governance.
Like all schools of thought, this neo-Thomism eventually declined in
vigor and creativity. Among other reasons, the Jesuits sometimes sailed
53 Constitutions, cap. XII–4, Gans 215. This is a fact of some importance. Because

they were pulled away from the actual practice of the law, Jesuits gravitated to
the philosophical and theological issues in jurisprudence.

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much too close to the shores of politics. In 1547, the books of Bellarmine
and Vitoria were put on the Index (only temporarily) for suggesting that
the pope did not enjoy de iure direct power in matters temporal. Jesuits
more often ran afoul of Catholic sovereigns by speculating that political
authority is vested inchoately in the body politic, that the original form
of government was by nature democratic, that there are, in principle,
plural forms of legitimate government; indeed, they argued that heathen
peoples have a natural capacity and right of self-governance—rights that
include not only standing at private law but also at international law.Yet
they were the first to understand and to discuss in print the idea that the
emerging common law of modern Catholic Christendom was weakly
founded. The principle of Absolutism was not suitable for addressing
either the Church-state problems in Europe or the problems of colonization abroad. Canon law did not immediately apply to heathen polities. Despite their support of both the papal and temporal monarchies, the
Jesuits’ search for a new doctrina civilis was potentially subversive.54 But it
was there to be plucked by a new generation of Thomists.
The Jesuits Taparelli and Liberatore had a stake in the systematic and
educational reform issues; yet in their quest for a doctrina civilis, they rather
freely adapted Thomas to contemporary questions of natural rights,
private property, and the social principle of subsidiarity—all of which had
purchase once one considers the organization and disposition of the
modern state, the dislocation of labor, and the suppression of Catholic
social institutions.55 In America, Orestes Brownson’s The American Republic (1865) resourced the ideas of the early-modern scholastics to understand and defend the American experiment in republican government
and the rule of law. So, too, did Archbishop John Ireland, who used the
modern scholastic authors to understand the natural-law foundations of
limited government. Ireland took it for granted that the thought of
Baroque scholasticism, as applied to the problems of the late nineteenth
century, is what the recently elected Pope Leo had in mind. The lesson
to be drawn is that Catholics did not view Thomas’s political thought as
something unmediated by commentators, polemicists, and schools of
54 For example, when Rome was enveloped by revolutions of 1848, Pius IX took

refuge in the kingdom of Naples. On April 6, 1850, appeared in Naples the first
issue of Civiltà Cattolica. The Jesuit editors, however, made the mistake of arguing in one issue that St. Thomas and the Thomists taught that there are plural,
legitimate forms of government.The king of Naples promptly expelled the journal in 1854 on the grounds that it taught doctrines subversive to the state.
55 According to Ernest Fortin, they took on board too much of the modern project. Ernest L. Fortin, “ ‘Sacred and Inviolable’: Rerum Novarum and Natural
Rights,” Theological Studies 53 (1992): 202–33.

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philosophy, including different schools of Thomism. Catholics were reglossing ideas that had already been once glossed in the sixteenth century, and
were being glossed once again.56
Thus there emerged a kind of broad Thomism suitable for the political and social issues.When Leo spoke of the “rivulets which [are] derived
from the very fount” of the Angelic Doctor, it was often the “rivulets”
that seemed especially important. At least in this respect, there is some
truth to Lord Acton’s claim that Thomas was the “first Whig.”57 He
should have said that the Thomists were Whiggish because they developed rather free-wheeling interpretations of the master on disputed
issues of political, economic, legal, and social order in modern times, and
they showed considerable ingenuity in making their adaptations look
continuous with the work of the Angelic Doctor.This penchant for novel
interpretations and applications was in full view in Leo’s own encyclicals.
To take but one example, in Rerum Novarum (1891), Leo audaciously used
Thomas’s Contra impugnantes—originally written to defend mendicant
poverty and preaching—as the basis for understanding the natural right
of laborers to form associations.58 This is not to mention the point that
Ernest Fortin has made regarding Leo’s rather interesting incorporation
of a Lockean understanding of property rights (to possession and not
merely private use) according to a labor theory of value.59
None of this should suggest that Leo or his advisors were uninterested
in the authentic teachings of Thomas on matters social and political.
While Leo never made a list of core doctrines, there were certain principles that framed what could count as plausible interpretations. Chief
56 See Orestes Brownson’s The American Republic (1865), especially parts V–VII for

his appropriation of Baroque-era scholasticism. Collected Works (1885), vol. 18.
See, also, Bishop John Ireland’s speech at the opening of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (November 10, 1884), later published under the title “The
Catholic Church and Civil Society,” and collected in John Ireland,The Church and
Modern Society: Lectures and Addresses (Chicago: D. H. McBride & Co., 1896),
7–47. Here I put to one side the debate between historical purists and innovators in order to make the point that it is historically naive to believe that
Thomas’s political thought was suddenly hijacked by twentieth-century Catholic
liberals. See Heinrich Rommen’s rather pointed remarks on this subject in his
review of Jacques Maritain’s “Man and the State,” Commonweal 54 (1951):
239–42.
57 Selected Writings of Lord Acton, vol. III, Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality, ed.
J. Rufus Fears (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1988), 536; and vol. I, Essays in the
History of Liberty, 34. Acton was here thinking of the doctrine of liberty and just
revolution.
58 Rerum Novarum (1891), nos. 51–53 (Acta XI, 134–37).
59 Fortin, “ ‘Sacred and Inviolable.’ ”

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among these were the teaching on the Eternal Law, the participation in
that law by natural reason, the harmony of faith and reason, the twofold
order of divine providence, the priority of intellect to the will in practical reasoning, the common good as the measure of the political order, the
penultimacy of political society, and so forth. All of these, and more, had
solid foundation in Thomas. Equipped with only a few principles properly delineated and connected, one could go on to make considerable
headway in developing a social doctrine.
We should bear in mind that in this sector of the Leonine program the
aim was not to produce a pure Thomism to which social doctrine could
be appended as so many conclusions; rather it was a quest, lasting over
several pontificates, for a social doctrine. Moving from the mid-nineteenth
to the mid-twentieth century, the problems continued to change along
with the political, legal, and economic facts on the ground.Thomism was
a resource for the project, but not its end. Beginning with the Jesuit
editors at Civiltà Cattolica who cobbled together pieces of Thomism for a
wide array of public policy problems, the Thomism in social thought was
pluralistic and somewhat eclectic in the order of application.60 Liberatore
was a Suarezian of sorts,Taparelli was not, even though his systematics in
social questions reached far beyond the original texts of Thomas.61
Convinced that a new doctrina civilis was long overdue, Leo gave his
Thomists permission to do four things. First, to resurrect the doctrine of
plural legitimate forms of regimes.This was the sore spot of the Baroque
tradition, and in Leo’s time it was still a neuralgic issue for the remnants
of the Catholic right-wing, particularly in France. Second, to speculatively
reengage the so-called translation theory of authority, according to which
God, by the natural law, vests authority originally though inchoately in the
body politic.This seemed to be a promising way to give a scholastic foundation to political consent, and brought the Thomist tradition to the
vestibule of democratic theory. Leo himself did not officially take a position one way or the other on the matter, but he made it clear that he
would not rule out the so-called “translation” theory.62 Third, to integrate
60 See Walter T. Odell, The Political Theory of Civiltà Cattolica from 1850 to 1870

(Ph.D. diss. Georgetown University, 1969).
61 On Libertore, see Gerald McCool, The Neo-Thomists (Milwaukee: Marquette

University Press, 1994), 33. On Taparelli, see Robert Jacquin, Taparelli (Paris: P.
Lethielleux, 1943).
62 No issue better displays the plurality of opinions and different schools of
Thomism in the area of political philosophy.Translation theorists held that political authority is vested by God implicitly in the body politic, which then, by
implicit or express consent “translates” that authority into a particular form or
regime. Designation theorists held that while political authority comes from

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Russell Hittinger

natural law and natural rights. Fourth, to allow analysis of historical change
to play a role in the prudence of state-making.63 All of these matters were
discussed in Leo’s encyclicals, but the Leonine vector of thought was
completed in the work of a generation of thinkers who were born in the
waning years of his pontificate: Luigi Sturzo (b. 1881), Jacques Maritain (b.
1882), Charles Journet (b. 1891), Heinrich Rommen (b. 1897),Yves Simon
(b. 1903), and John Courtney Murray (b. 1904).64
God, the human act of consent does not transfer or translate power to command
from its original bearer, but rather designates the incumbent. There is no ex
professo treatment of the issue in Thomas.The history of the debate is considered
carefully by Jeremiah Newman, who makes the sensible point that translation
theory achieved its first elaboration during the struggle against absolute
monarchs, while the designation theory was devised to put a brake upon democratic extremism during the age of revolutions. Studies in Political Morality
(Dublin: Scepter, 1962), 19.With the collapse of the papal states, and with Leo’s
decision to adopt a more creative stance toward the new states, the translation
theory came back in vogue. Cardinal Cajetan (1480–1547), in his commentary
on ST II–II, q. 50, a. 1, ad 3, introduced the notion of the people translating
authority to a king (potestatem in eum transtulerunt), and then went on to speculate about a primordial election. Cajetan’s commentary was included in the 1895
Leonine edition of the Opera S. Thomae. During Leo’s time, Cardinal Billot
explained that Leo denied what has “always been denied with unanimous
consent by Catholic theologians,” namely, that the people create the principatus.
This left the question entirely open, for both sides held the premise that political power, as such, is not a human construct. For Billot’s response, see Alfred
O’Rahilly, “The Sovereignty of the People,” Studies (Dublin) 10 (1921): 39–56,
277–87. Elsewhere, O’Rahilly lists some 139 scholastic thinkers who held the
translation theory. See his “Theology of Tyranny,” Irish Theological Quarterly 15
(1920): 301–20. After the rise of the totalitarian regimes in the 1920s, the translation theory commanded the consent of virtually all Thomists working the area
of social doctrine. See Pius XII’s address to the Roman Rota (October 2, 1945):
“We bear in mind the favorite thesis of democracy—a doctrine which great
Christian thinkers have proclaimed in all ages—namely, that the original subject
of civil power derived from God is the people (not the ‘masses’)” (AAS 37,
258ff.).What we learn from this fascinating and somewhat exasperating tangle of
interpretations is that Thomists had quite different opinions on the role of
human consent in matters political, that they changed opinions over time, and
that the evolution of opinion tracked very closely the evolving character of
Catholic social thought in light of current political conditions. It is but one case
in point for appreciating how Leo launched a Thomism “in motion” as it were.
63 Regarding these permissions, see my chapters in The Teachings of Modern Christianity: On Law, Politics, & Human Nature, ed. John Witte and Frank Alexander
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 3–38 and 39–74.
64 By the 1940s it was not so easy to distinguish Thomas and the Thomists on matters
of political philosophy.The ever astute Leo Strauss expressed bewilderment at the
extent to which Thomists were revising medieval terms to fit contemporary

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Leo was engaged in a new kind of “paper war.” He took the outmoded
structure of a medieval scholastic “article” (for example, what we find in
the Summa theologiae, with the question, the objections, the sed contra, the
response, and replies to objections), then he changed the questions and
rebuilt the “article” in the prose of an encyclical teaching. It was in part
dialectic, in part systematic, and in part apologetic.There was no need to
make lists of errors that left Catholics scratching their heads about what
had to be affirmed or negated. For example, if we take the most controversial proposition of Pius IX’s Syllabus—“The Roman Pontiff can, and
ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism,
and recent civilization”—we convert it into a negation: “The Roman
Pontiff need not reconcile himself with progress, liberalism, and recent
civilization.” The negation is then converted into an affirmation: “By
natural right, workers and their families may justly claim to organize and
to bargain for living wages, the doctrines of laissez-faire liberalism
notwithstanding.” Hence, we have the encyclical Rerum Novarum. All of
Leo’s major encyclicals on social and political questions can be read in
just this fashion. He begins with a question, surveys the authorities,
affirms the harmony of faith and reason, and then goes on to construct a
teaching on the question at hand.
Leo’s Pharmakon and Pius X’s Prescriptions
Leo’s response to the political and social aspects of modernity proved very
successful. For one thing, there was no living memory of a pope doing this
kind of work—namely, doing something more than issuing ad hoc
complaints or making lists of errors. At least on questions of political and
social order—the role of consent, the importance of historical change, the
proper role of human creativity in exercising prudence in political foundings, the quest of the third estate for natural rights limiting the state—Leo
made use of the pharmakon, the thing that is both the disease and the cure.
The subversive questions of the Enlightenment were brought within the
purview of the Catholic tradition, where they were corrected and harmonized with Catholic truth. From philosophers like Marsilius of Padua to
discussions. See, for example, his generally favorable review of Heinrich A.
Rommen, “The State in Catholic Thought: A Treatise in Political Philosophy,”
Social Research 13 ( June 1946): 250–52, reprinted in What Is Political Philosophy? and
Other Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 281–84. But see also
his more critical evaluation of Yves Simon (306–11) and Anton Pegis (284–86) in
that same collection. Interestingly, Strauss recognized the difference between adaptations in political-institutional questions and fundamental principles in the philosophy of nature. In his review of Pegis, he was unforgiving where he detected
compromise on the systematic issues.

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Locke to Rousseau, and on issues running from Church-state relations to
the origin of authority, and from problems of class warfare to international
law, Leo believed that social doctrine enabled the Church to be something
more than the outsider in modern life.65
The underlying scholastic doctrine gave the body of work at least the
appearance of coherence; and as Leo’s successors, as well as lay and clerical scholars, continued the project, there emerged a remarkably structured
but evolving body of social doctrine. In many respects, it was more sophisticated than its secular rivals. It proved successful because the Leonine
project was ready to ascertain what is open or closed in the secular mind,
and to use the right mixture of dialectics and systematics to move the
latter toward the former. Finally, it proved successful because his lengthy
pontificate was the seedbed for six future popes.66 This allowed a virtually
contemporaneous communication of the method and its application to
new issues. By 1950, the Leonine project had established itself as a different kind of liberalism that survived the crises of the twentieth century. It
was robust and confident. After the Second Vatican Council, the only
significant resistance to this vector of doctrine were the neo-Gallicans in
France (Marcel Lefevre) and Liberationists in Latin America.
But this brings us back to Pascendi and to our over-arching theme of
“Two Modernisms,Two Thomisms.” Pius X went back into the mode of
making lists of errors. Lamentabili Sane listed sixty-five errors.To complicate matters, Pius also referenced the encyclical Auctorem Fidei (1794),
which condemned a list of another eighty-five, propositions in connection with Jansenism.67 A scrupulous scholar under ecclesiastical discipline
now found himself reckoning with 150 propositions; and if we include
the Syllabus of Errors, 230 erroneous propositions.Who could keep track
of all these errors?
Charity of interpretation requires us to concede that Leo had the
advantage of dealing with a different sector of Liberalism, and in Catholic
affairs, with a different species of Liberal. Montalembert, Lacordaire,
Lamennais (through his mid-career, before he defected), and Rosmini
65 As John Paul II said in Centesimus Annus, §5, “Rerum novarum gave the Church

citizenship status.”
66 Pius X (b. 1835), Benedict XIV (b. 1854), Pius XI (1857), Pius XII (b. 1876),

John XXIII (b. 1881), Paul VI (b. 1897).
67 Pius X, Pascendi, §24 (Acta V, 73). From the Synod of Pistoia, a schismatic synod

held in Tuscany in 1786. See Denzinger-Hünermann (1997), §§2600–2700.
During the turmoil of the French Revolution, while the Catholic sovereigns
were distracted by the war, Pius VI condemned propositions tinctured with
Febronian ( Jansenist) principles on ecclesiastical and civil relations. Interestingly,
by 1907 those propositions had been condemned and rendered defunct not only

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were liberal but pro-papal. Montalembert’s most famous work was his
multivolume The Monks of the West, dedicated to Pope Pius IX—he was
hardly a Hans Küng in-the-making.68 These men had no interest in
impeaching the deposit of sacred doctrine or of appealing to history in
order to suggest profound discontinuity in theology proper. Pius X was
dealing with an entirely different kind of theological liberal who resented
the post-1870 Roman authority emancipated from civil or democratic
control, and who rejected not only Leo’s Thomism but scholasticism itself.
Leo also had the advantage of focusing upon the institutional survival
of the Church, as well as the array of social institutions clustered around
it. Even though it had taken more than three hundred years to develop
an adequate doctrina civilis, once Rome recovered its bearings, this task
played to the strong suit of Church unity against external threats. More
often than not the misbehavior of the nation-states only reinforced the
perception among Catholics (and non-Catholics) that Leo’s teachings
were well measured. Disciplinary action ad intra could be handled within
the ordinary politics and prudence of the pontifical office as well as
through the usual instrument of Vatican diplomacy. Clearly, this was an
easier battle than tracking down heretical professors in one’s own seminaries, where the Church would seem to play the role of the bully. The
Oath Against Modernism (Sacrorum Antistitum, 1910) and the institution
of committees of vigilance at the parish levels certainly distracted attention from the serious theological issues discussed in Pascendi.
Pius X turned inward and fixed upon the other set of issues that stood
close to sacred doctrine. In Lamentabili, only six of the sixty-five propositions remotely touch upon the social questions. In Pascendi, we find perhaps
three paragraphs in the sphere of social-political thought.69 Interestingly, in
by Pius VI, but by the Syllabus of Pius IX, by the decrees of the First Vatican
Council, but also in several of Leo’s encyclicals. Why would Pius X want to
resurrect a battle that had already been won by the Church of Rome? The
answer probably lies in the few passages in Lamentabili, and Pascendi touching
upon the analogies and disanologies between ecclesiological and political order.
See note 68 below.
68 Here, paraphrasing Marvin R. O’Connell’s insight, in Critics on Trial:An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of
America Press, 1994), 14.
69 In Lamentabili, §§52, 53, 56–59 (ActaV, 83) attack the idea that the Church should
be understood primarily in social and historical terms. In Pascendi, Pius X criticizes the reduction of the Church to a democratic form (§23; Acta V, 71f.), the
inferiority of the Church to the state on mixti quaestionibus, on issues of overlapping jurisdiction such as marriage and education (§24; ActaV, 72), and the notion
that religion is purely spiritual, without authority in the order of external acts
(§25; Acta V, 73f.). All of these were fighting issues for Pius IX and Leo.

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all of Pius X’s teaching letters, the favorite Leonine theme of the “Eternal
Law,” which constituted the synthetic fulcrum of his social teaching, is
mentioned but once.70 For Pius X, the “synthesis of all heresies” was a
different sort of Modernism. At least in the sphere of sacred doctrine and
the metaphysical principles conjoined to it by way of preambles, there
could be no compromise, nor could there be a development analogous to
what was already underway in social teaching. Inevitably,Thomism would
be put in a defensive role not only with regard to the deployment of its
philosophical theology but also in terms of ecclesiastical discipline.
The apparatus of ecclesiastical discipline consisted not merely of what
had accrued from the decretum Lamentabili, the encyclical Pascendi, and
motu proprio Sacrorum Antistitum (the Oath Against Modernism, 1910).
Some of the impetus for internal discipline arose from questions not quite
settled by Leo. In the first year of his pontificate, Pius X sent a brief to the
Roman Academy of St. Thomas, noting that Leo’s plan for installing
Thomism in the seminaries was not moving along satisfactorily.71 Institutional resistance began not with the Modernists, but inside the Society of
Jesus during Leo’s own pontificate. Four years after Aeterni Patris, at their
XXIII General Congregation (1883), the Jesuits pledged their allegiance
to the plan of the encyclical, but at the same time expressed esteem for
their own scholastics and masters, such as Suárez. This prompted a mild
but clear admonition from Leo concerning any derogation from the unity
of doctrine. A decade later, the General of the Society, Luis Martín
inquired whether Jesuit teachers were required to follow Thomas’s “real
distinction” between essence and the act of existence in creatures. Again,
Leo replied that the Society’s Constitutions required the teaching of
Thomas’s doctrines, though he added that adherence to the Angelic
Doctor did not imply any lack of esteem for the erudition and profundity
of the Jesuit doctors.This was a delicate situation indeed; for in the sphere
of social, political, and legal thought, the Baroque-era Jesuit thinkers
provided useful resources for the development of political theory. Moreover, the minds of some of Leo’s own teachers and colleagues were more
than a little tinctured with Suárezianism. But the social doctrine was not
70 I rely on the word count by Elsbernd, Papal Statements on Rights, 406.
71 Pius X, In Praecipuous Laudibus, AAS 36 (1903–4): 654. For the controversy over

Thomism during the pontificate of Pius X and for the precise sequence of events
leading to the publication of the XXIV theses in 1914, I rely on the fine work
of Jesús Villagrasa, L.C., “Origin, Nature and Initial Reception of the XXIV
Thomistic Theses in the Light of the Controversy Between Neo-Thomism and
Suarezianism,” Doctor Angelicus 6 (2006): 193–230. See, also, the collection he
recently edited, Neotomismo & Suarezismo, a cura di Jesús Villagrasa (Roma:
Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum, 2006).

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the problem. Rather, at issue was the unity of the metaphysical theses
constituting the praeambula fidei. Leo made his mind clear on this matter.
Seminarians were not to be trained in plural metaphysical systems, which
at this point in time meant plural Thomisms.
Pius X intended to supply something more than exhortation.The sure
sign of Modernism was derogation from, or even disparagement, of
Scholasticism.
Whether it is ignorance or fear, or both, that inspires this conduct in
them, certain it is that the passion for novelty is always united in them
with hatred of scholasticism, and there is no surer sign that a man is
tending to Modernism than when he begins to show his dislike for the
scholastic method.72

To be heard “carping” (carpendo) at Scholasticism was a ground for dismissing either faculty or administrators in ecclesiastical schools.73 Lest there be
any doubt what is meant by Scholasticism, Pius X issued a motu proprio
Doctoris Angelici (1914), putting the Thomistic norm for studies (in degreegranting ecclesiastical schools) explicitly under precept from the Holy See.
In order to curb the private opinions of professors, Pius X ordered that the
text of the Summa theologiae be used as the text of the lectures and that
professorial comments be restricted to Latin (et latino sermone explicent).74
Understanding how unlikely it would be that the entirety of the Summa
would be so taught, Pius X added:“It goes without saying that Our intention was to be understood as referring above all to those principles upon
which that philosophy is based as its foundations [principiis maxime hoc intelligi voluisse, quibus, tamquam fundamentis].”75 These principles, fundaments, or
“capital theses” (capita) are not to be “placed in the category of opinions
capable of being debated one way or the other.”76 Importantly, none of the
social and political issues, which were already being vigorously debated and
expounded, appear among the principles targeted in the motu proprio.
History teaches that to even hint at a list of core principles requires
one to say more. Hence, a few weeks later, virtually on the eve of Pius
X’s death, Cardinal Lorenzelli, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for
Studies, published a list of XXIV theses.77 These include, at the outset of
the list, an affirmation of the divine being as pure act, in contrast to the
72 Pius X, Pascendi, §42 (Acta V, 98).
73 Ibid., §48 (Acta V, 104).
74 Pius X, Doctoris Angelici ( June 29, 1914) AAS 6 (1914): 340.
75 Ibid., AAS 6 (1914): 337.
76 Ibid., AAS 6 (1914): 338.
77 Decretum, AAS 6 (1914): 383–86; Denzinger-Hünermann (1997), §§3601–24.

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admixture of potency in creatures.78 They comprise metaphysical theses
of just the sort that Pius X said cannot be placed “in the category of
opinions capable of being debated.” Everyone understood that the XXIV
theses were aimed in the direction of Suárez, beginning with the doctrine
of the real distinction between essence and existence in creatures, which
was not generally held by the Suárezians. The advisors who labored on
the list did, in fact, worry that another summary list of truths (or corresponding errors) would be received as a compendium, and thus might
suggest that Thomistic principles are to be found simply within the four
corners of the list. Editors at La Civiltà Cattolica noted that the subtlety
of interpretations is built-in the questions themselves. The editors were
too discreet to draw the obvious conclusion: that learning to think
Thomistically requires the student to learn how to grapple with very
complex and subtle metaphysical issues. Still other churchmen worried
that the new list would appear to be a “piece of propaganda” that might
impugn the seriousness and authority of Thomas.79
Two Thomisms
When Pius X died on August 20, 1914, there were “two Thomisms,” one
broadly devised and oriented to social questions, the other narrow and
consisting of capita which could not be debated.The former was ensconced
in the ordinary prose and philosophical expositions within the encyclical
tradition, the latter in the newly framed lists of errors and truths. In 1917
there was planned an international Congress in Granada, celebrating the
third centenary of the death of Suárez. The Catholic press, of course,
noted that the XXIV theses had impeached the reliability of Suárez on
certain questions of metaphysics.80 Moreover, the newly drafted, soon to
be promulgated Code of Canon Law (1917) required those in charge of
religious and clerical formation to teach the “principles of the Angelic
Doctor and hold to them religiously.”81 The Congress did not juridically
fall under the disciplinary decretals, but it was an awkward moment
78 On the context and effects of the theses, see Fergus Kerr, Twentieth-Century

Catholic Theologians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 2007), 3–4, 21–24.
79 See Villagrasa, “Origin, Nature and Initial Reception,” 229.
80 On the Granada Congress, see ibid., 225–26. It should also be noted that the
Congress provided Fr. Luis Alonso Getino with a timely opportunity to correlate
the XXIV authentically Thomist theses with the errors of Suárez. This work, in
parallel columns, is included in Neotomisimo & Suarezismo. See the appendix titled
Tesi di Tommaso d’Aquino e di Francisco Suárez, 165–78.
81 Code of Canon Law (1917), can. 1366 §2. See also can. 595 §1.

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nonetheless. Apparently, Rome recommended that the Congress focus
upon the social, political, and international-law aspects of Suárez’s
thought. On these matters, one was permitted to avow an evolving line
of thought and to celebrate its utility in handling modern problems.
We have highlighted only a few important moments and problems in
the emergence of these two foci of modernity to which Thomism was
applied. At least in passing, we should say that the field of social doctrine
was not wide open. Political programs and movements could run afoul of
Roman authority, as did Marc Sangnier’s Le Sillon (1910), and on the other
end of the political spectrum, L’Action Française (1926). Moreover, significant differences between Thomas and Suárez on both the epistemological
and metaphysical foundations of law were well-known both to clerical and
lay scholars. But our general point holds true. So long as one did not advocate Bolshevism or state control of the Church or reduction of ecclesiological principles to match those of (democratic) civil government, one had
to rather egregiously run afoul of Roman diplomatic or political policies
to be censured in the area of social theory. Important, if subtle, differences
within the Thomistic schools were aired and debated at an academic
level.82 Undoubtedly, these debates could have a practical impact within a
particular school, faculty, or religious order. Even so, opinions were not put
completely out of bounds in the same way as the Pian disciplinary actions.
Decades later, John Courtney Murray, S.J., was censured for his opinions
on Church-state questions, but this had nothing immediately to do with
82 Suárez taught that command (imperium) is chiefly an act of the will rather than

of intellect.This had implications for the doctrine on the Eternal Law, and could
not be reasonably accommodated either to Thomas’s teaching or to Leo’s stout
intellectualism in matters of law (and kindred aspects of practical reason).The best
treatment of the similarities and differences between Thomas and Suárez on natural law and metaphysics of participation is the doctoral thesis written at the
University of Fribourg by Walter Farrell, O.P., The Natural Moral Law According to
St.Thomas and Suarez (Ditchling: St. Dominic’s Press, 1930). Like Fr. Getino’s 1917
article on the XXIV theses, Farrell puts the Thomistic and Suarezian theses on law
into parallel columns (148–52). Farrell is at pains to explain why and how the
most important differences are subtle. He does not invoke ecclesiastical discipline
to make his argument. Only in the conclusion does he discreetly observe that
Suárez’s voluntaristic bent comports with “a decidedly popular theory in modern
statecraft.” In effect, he suggests that Suárez cannot deliver the foundations for
which Thomism was being revived in matters legal and political. On this score,
see Vernon Bourke’s obituary for Heinrich Rommen, “In Memoriam: Heinrich
Albert Rommen (1897–1967),” Natural Law Forum 12 (1967): vii–viii.A Thomist
of the more strict observance, Bourke explicitly notes that Rommen’s Suárezian
studies never led him into some of the more disputable voluntaristic theses.

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Thomism. Rather, his troubles ensued upon a spitting match with Cardinal Ottaviani, then the dean of ecclesiastical public law.83
In the summer of 1914, it was clear that intramural disputes among
Thomists had been brought into the Modernist controversy. Popes soon
began to have second thoughts about this strange and potentially crippling
consequence. Beginning with Benedict XV, they were unwilling to
strictly enforce Pius X’s “official”Thomism within the seminaries and the
ranks of religious orders.While the exhortations of Leo and the precepts
of Pius X were duly noted by Benedict and his successors, rigorous
enforcement proved to be the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, only
five months after Pius X’s death, Benedict conceded that there is room
“for divergent opinions” so long as they constitute no “harm to faith or
discipline” and so long as they are expressed “with due moderation.”84 He
explicitly warned that no one should take upon himself the role of
impugning the orthodoxy of others and affixing “the stigma of disloyalty
to faith or to discipline.” His successors adopted the same policy, insisting
on the normativity of Thomas in re metaphysica, while at the same time
quietly acting to prevent the in-house educational system from becoming

83 John Courtney Murray, S.J., first cut his teeth on the Baroque-era scholastics and

on the post-1789 reactionaries: “St. Robert Bellarmine on the Indirect Power,”
Theological Studies 9 (1948): 491–535; and idem, “Political Thought of Joseph de
Maistre,” Review of Politics 11 (1949): 63–86. On Thomas’s social, legal, and political thought, Murray’s opinions were mostly derivative of work already finished.
See, for example, Heinrich Rommen’s The State in Catholic Thought (German
1935, English 1945). Murray and Rommen admired one another, but Rommen
was the senior scholar, and it was to Rommen rather than Murray that the New
Catholic Encyclopedia turned in the early 1960s for its entry on the State. “The
State,” New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. XIII (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.,
1967), 644–54. Relying on work already done by others, Murray’s genius was
not as a commentator on Thomas but rather his uncanny ability to discern developmental threads in papal teachings. He carefully studied the magisterial documents from Pius IX up to John XXIII, and was able to cite chapter-and-verse,
as it were, the “growing end” of the tradition. In the summer of 1964, he circulated a brief that was later published under the title “The Problem of Religious
Freedom” (1964, 1993). Tracing the crisis through the Syllabus of Errors and the
letters of Leo XIII, Murray showed why the crisis called for a recovery of “the
Gregorian state of the question of public care of religion,” as well as a new
discernment of the “ ‘growing end’ of the tradition.” The brief circulated at the
Council: John Courtney Murray,“The Problem of Religious Freedom,” in Religious Liberty: Catholic Struggles with Pluralism, ed. J. Leon Hooper, S.J. (Louisville,
KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 165, 188.
84 Benedict XV, Ad beatissimi (November 1, 1914), no. 23, AAS 6 (1914): 576f.

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politically suffocating.85 Yet this prudent policy could not remove the
sense among faculty and students that in the systematic area it was necessary to tread carefully. As James Weisheipl concluded many years later:
Not even the ardent efforts of Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, or Pius
XII were able to effect anything more than a closed, safe, and sterile
Thomism, imposed by legislative authority. Legislation did not stimulate a return to the authentic thought and spirit of St. Thomas. Legislation led rather to the production of safe textbooks.86

Weisheipl correctly distinguishes this in-house Thomism from the more
creative Thomism developed in social thought: “on social problems,
government, human liberty, sacred scripture, Catholic Action, marriage,
and education.”87
Benedict’s amelioration of the decretals was motivated by a desire to
prevent the Modernism crisis from engulfing the internal order with
unnecessary disputes and accusations. However, another factor was in
play. With the disaster of the Great War and the rise of the totalitarian
regimes, the papacy’s attention was funneled back into the social and
political issues.The shift of magisterial attention back to political modernity is particularly evident during the pontificate of Pius XI (Achille
Ratti). As a young cleric, Ratti had been trained by Leo’s Thomistic
colleagues in Rome. In two encyclicals he weighed in on the issue of the
program of ecclesiastical studies and formation.
In Studiorum Ducem (1923), Pius XI extolled the virtues of Thomas:
“[I]t will be sufficient perhaps to point out that Thomas wrote under the
inspiration of the supernatural spirit which animated his life and that his
writings, which contain the principles of, and the laws governing, all
85 On the gradual amelioration of the disciplinary decretals, one can read José

Pereira’s “Thomism and the Magisterium: From Aeterni Patris to Veritatis Splendor,” Logos 5 (2002): 147–83. He does not distinguish, as we do, between the
different sectors of Thomism (social-political and metaphysical), and is
concerned entirely with the problem and, in his estimation, the inanity of an
officially imposed philosophy. Pereira would seem to make the canonical and
disciplinary actions the measure of the papal esteem for Thomism. This confusion is answered by Steven Long’s keynote address,“The Thomistic Meta-Structure of John Paul II’s Doctrinal Initiatives,” Lilly Foundation sponsored seminar
on “The Vocation of the Catholic Intellectual,” Catholic Studies Center, University of St.Thomas, St. Paul (2003).
86 Weisheipl,“Thomism as a Christian Philosophy,” 184. He is speaking of the official Thomism within ecclesiastical institutions.
87 Ibid., 177.

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sacred studies, must be said to possess a universal character.”88 He approvingly quotes Pius X’s admonition that there must be no deviation from
Thomas, praesertim in re metaphysica,89 and he very clearly reiterates the
conviction that the organization and presentation of sacred doctrine
require the preambles, or “reasons for belief ” drawn from philosophy.90
This core of metaphysical systematics must be preserved intact, even
while allowing the “lovers of Thomas” (amatores sancti Thomae) to engage
in “honorable rivalry in a just and proper freedom which is the life-blood
of studies.”91
But what is most striking about Studiorum Ducem is Pius XI’s interest
in the social and political issues. One might think of a team that had trouble running the ball but still knew how to throw the pass and make the
big play in social doctrine. In the section on the preambles, for example,
he includes Thomas’s contributions “in the science of morals, in sociology and law, by laying down sound principles of legal and social, commutative and distributive justice and explaining the relations between justice
and charity.”92 The over-arching theme of the Pian pontificate, the rule
of Christ the King, also needed preambles drawn from the natural order.
He writes:
He [Thomas] also composed a substantial moral theology, capable of
directing all human acts in accordance with the supernatural last end of
man. And as he is, as We have said, the perfect theologian, so he gives
infallible rules and precepts of life not only for individuals, but also for
civil and domestic society which is the object also of moral science,
both economic and politic. Hence those superb chapters in the second
part of the Summa Theologica on paternal or domestic government, the
lawful power of the State or the nation, natural and international law,
peace and war, justice and property, laws and the obedience they
command, the duty of helping individual citizens in their need and
cooperating with all to secure the prosperity of the State, both in the
natural and the supernatural order. If these precepts were religiously
and inviolably observed in private life and public affairs, and in the
duties of mutual obligation between nations, nothing else would be
required to secure mankind that “peace of Christ in the Kingdom of
Christ” which the world so ardently longs for. It is therefore to be
wished that the teachings of Aquinas, more particularly his exposition
[praesertim explicando] of international law and the laws governing the
88 Pius XI, Studiorum Ducem ( June 29, 1923), §11, AAS 15 (1923): 314f.
89 Ibid., §16, AAS 15 (1923): 317.
90 Ibid., §27, AAS 15 (1923): 322.
91 Ibid., §30, AAS 15 (1923): 323.
92 Ibid., §27, AAS 15 (1923): 322.

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mutual relations of peoples, became more and more studied, for it
contains the foundations of a genuine “League of Nations.”93

While adhering to Pius X’s prescriptions regarding what must be
adhered to (praesertim in re metaphysica), he returns to the Leonine project of
what especially needs to be explicated (praestertim explicando). Interestingly,
it is not the prima pars, with its metaphysical armature, but rather the secunda
pars of the Summa, on human conduct.This line of thought is repeated in
Divini Illius Magistri (1929), which takes up the problem of education,
chiefly ad extra—in families, in schools, and particularly in the face of
claims by governments to enjoy a monopoly on education. Here, Pius
recommends Luigi Taparelli’s work on natural right—“a work never sufficiently praised and recommended to university students.”94 Divini Illius is
also the first encyclical to cite an American Supreme Court decision, Pierce
v. Society of Sisters (1925), in which the Court insisted that “the child is not
the mere creature of the State.”95 On balance, Pius XI held together the
two Thomisms, but with the broad and synthetic Leonine approach to the
social and political issues put front and center, because he believed that
political modernism was by no means rendered defunct by the Great War.
In his first encyclical, Pius had distinguished two modernisms: “There is a
species of moral, legal, and social modernism which We condemn, no less
decidedly than We condemn theological modernism.”96 As the political
crises mounted in Europe and Latin America, Pius XI gave a certain cachet
to this broad Thomism by canonizing Robert Bellarmine in 1931, and by
making him a Doctor of the Church the following year. It was Bellarmine’s
social and political thought that was held up as exemplary for the Church’s
struggle against state absolutism.
Some Conclusions
We set out to show how Thomas’s thought was resurrected and put into
play with respect to problems posed by political modernity and then by
93 Ibid., §20, AAS 15 (1923): 319.
94 Luigi Taparelli, Saggio teoretico di Diritto Naturale (A Theoretical Treatise on Natural

Right, Based on Fact) (1840–43); Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri (December 31,
1929) AAS XXII: 65 n. 27.
95 Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, §37, citing Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), 268 U.S.,
at 534–35.
96 Ubi arcano (1922), §61 (AAS 14 [1922], 696. In quo genus quoddam modernismi
moralis, iuridici ac socialis est agnoscendum; quodc quidem, una cum modernismo illo
dogmatico. Interestingly, Pius’s citations of Thomas and Augustine, as well as his
citations of the pronouncements of his immediate predecessors (Leo XIII, Pius
X, and Benedict XV), are concerned exclusively with the genus moralis/socialis.

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the philosophical and theological issues related to the Modernism crisis
of the early twentieth century. We looked at these two foci primarily
from the standpoint and documents of the Roman Magisterium. All of
these matters need to be delineated at a more detailed and complete
level. But if our narrative is generally correct, we can draw four conclusions.The first two would seem to follow rather directly from our exposition; the second two are more hypothetical, needing careful thought
beyond the bounds of this essay.
First, the Roman attempt for issuing syllabi and lists of errors (and truths)
did not necessarily achieve the results for which the lists were designed.
Whether in response to political or philosophical modernity, from the early
lists in the Jansenist controversy, such as Unigenitus (1713), through the
Syllabus of Errors (1864), and then up to Lamentabili (1907) and the XXIV
theses (1914), the lists sparked confusions. On balance, the Leonine practice
of encyclical teaching was more effective, both ad extra and ad intra. Encyclicals provided magisterial models that could be completed by scholars.
Second, the list-making approach did not play to the strong suit of
Thomism, which requires not only definitions and conclusions but also
a deeply textured set of questions and distinctions. Particularly on social
questions, the developmental curve entails an exquisite balance of principles and facts. On the one hand, it is dependent upon ever-changing
historical events. On the other hand, the post-1789 questions could
hardly be answered just by repairing to Thomas’s treatment of political
matters in the thirteenth century. These questions had been glossed by
several centuries of scholastic commentary and, after the election of Leo,
by the tradition of papal encyclicals that provided a new template for
bringing Thomas’s thought to modern problems. Skill in this area
required one to know Thomas (and Aristotle), the commentators, and the
new applications forged in the crucible of magisterial teachings. As we
explained, the vector of social thought got a head start over the recovery
of Thomas’s metaphysics. For nearly a generation, therefore, the recovery
of the systematics and its deployment in the curricula of schools had to
play catch-up; and it had to do so while laboring under the disadvantage
of trying to forge a consensus among different schools of Thomism,
which had crystallized their opinions over the course of several centuries.
Opinions were hardened, too, by loyalties within religious orders and
their lay associates. In social thought, however, the “schooling” of
Thomism allowed more consensus because the material was permeable
to the politico-ecclesiastical needs and policies of Leo and his successors.
For their part, the metaphysical issues were complex and subtle.They
are difficult on their own terms, never mind the practical questions of

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how to instantiate and to enforce them in educational institutions. The
XXIV theses were not strictly juridical in nature, though it was perhaps
naive to think that they would not be regarded as glosses on the canonical and other disciplinary apparatus.The theses rather tried to expose the
deep veins of Thomas’s metaphysics. By and large, these veins were much
deeper than what many faculty or students could have mastered even
under the best conditions. A slight and passing familiarity with Thomas’s
system, usually acquired secondhand, was almost bound to breed that
kind of contempt that comes from knowing a little but not enough. Leo
and his successors certainly wanted to keep Thomism in the intelligible
rather than in the merely canonical or disciplinary order.97 Just how to
enkindle Thomism as a living pattern of thought, and by what combination of exhortation and precept, proved to be a very difficult problem.
Third, although it would take us far beyond the bounds of our present essay, it would be useful to ask whether Leo’s aim for a systematic
Thomism in re metaphysica did not harbor a tension. On the one hand, he
discerned the need for a careful exposition of the preambles needed for
a scientific organization of sacred doctrine. On the other hand, he wanted
systematic Thomism to build a bridge of discourse with contemporary
philosophies and sciences.The two are related, of course, but they are not
exactly the same kind of work, nor do they include (in the context of
modern academics and scholarship) exactly the same audience.
The official discipline, though duly relaxed after 1914, created disgruntlement within clerical ranks.Academicians began to question the need
for philosophically organized praeambula fidei. Such dissatisfaction could take
the route of wanting to make the preambles entirely a matter of theology
and history. One could repair, for example, to the history of the early
Church and to patristic thinking, or to the theory that Thomas’s philosophy
was chiefly a work of theology. These lines of inquiry had the seeming
advantage of bypassing not only the bewildering welter of medieval
disputes, but also the forbidden zone of opinion carved out by the official
Thomism.They also had the advantage of a thoroughly theological answer
to modernity:The deep calling upon the deep, as it were. It had the promise of a new, and less philosophically constrained, apologetics.98 At the same
97 As Thomas himself wrote: “It is unseemly and rather ridiculous for professors of

sacred doctrine to cite the little glosses of canon lawyers as theological authorities,
or to make them the basis of argument” (quamvis inconsonum et derisibile videatur quod
sacrae doctrinae professores, iuristarum glossulas in auctoritatem inducant, vel de eis disceptent),
Contra retrahentes, 13. I thank Steven Long for calling my attention to this gem.
98 On a more direct theological investigation that is not constrained by the long
ramp of philosophical preambles, see Kerr, op cit., 168 and 191.

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time, truly novel and perhaps heterodox philosophical theologies could be
developed if one was clever enough to drape the philosophy in the officially
approved terminology.
As ecclesiastical discipline declined precipitously in the 1950s and 1960s,
and as the drapes were removed, systematic Thomism underwent a kind of
defenestration. No longer privileged in the curriculum of either seminaries or Catholic schools (which, by then, chiefly was about the education of
the laity), systematic Thomism became a historical specialty. It is ironic that
it was Pius X’s fear that modernists “wish the scholastic philosophy to be
relegated to the history of philosophy.”99 But after the curricular defenestration, this is just where it was deposited.The quest for a pure and official
Thomism in systematic questions became a historical specialty charged
with the responsibility to deliver, according to contemporary methods of
research, just what Thomas said, but often without the systematic or apologetical project for putting that information to good use.100
Fourth, the Thomistic contribution to social doctrine was never meant
to be a complete Thomism, but rather an adaptation for the purposes at
hand. Social doctrine had its own momentum, seemingly unaffected by
the institutional demise of systematic Thomism. Most everyone understood that the great encyclical teachings were wound together by various
and sundry threads of Thomistic thinking. For several decades, both
progressives and conservatives could affirm the general profile of teachings on the common good, subsidiarity, social justice, and human rights.
The gradual separation of the social doctrine from the overall system of
Thomas, however, began to create the impression that the philosophy of
practical reason was free-standing, a kind of prima philosophia having
connection to the metaphysical system only by way of dotted lines.This
could prove attractive not only for progressives but for moral conservatives as well. The frayed edges between metaphysics and practical reason
was particularly evident in the diverse conceptions of natural law, a
subject that became a kind of “public reason” detached from the Leonine
teachings about participation in the Eternal Law, divine providence, and
the finis ultimis—detached even from teleology and the rudiments of
philosophy of nature. Such issues really did stand close to the preambles.
Leo’s revival made “natural law” a common coin of discourse and
exposition. Given the fact that natural-law thinking had gone into
abeyance in Catholic thinking during the eighteenth century and the
subsequent era of Legitimism, it was quite an accomplishment to have
99 Pius X, Pascendi, §38 (Acta V, 91).
100 Which is not to disparage the value of historical research, nor the painstaking

labor needed to assemble critical editions of Thomas’s opera.

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brought it back so late in the game of modern debates over political philosophy. But the coin came in different denominations. As early as 1930,
Walter Farrell took note of the fact that standard textbooks on moral and
social thought could contain as many as six different opinions on natural
law. “Evidently,” he remarked, “it is time that some definite, well established ideas be proposed on this subject.”101 Farrell detected that the
chief term in social doctrine was being used very loosely and confusedly,
and that it was necessary to locate the subject more securely in Thomas’s
own doctrine.
Perhaps we should conclude that the Leonine and Pian insistence
upon adherence to Thomas praesertim in re metaphysica turned out to be
the more important issue. Leo certainly wanted to preserve the proper
analogies and systematic connections between the two foci of metaphysics and politics.A century after Pascendi, however, the two Thomisms
are not at peace. To some degree, this is due to the fact that the secunda
pars (on human action) is not always adequately integrated with the prima
pars of the Summa theologiae.We need only survey the chronic and significant differences of opinion over the systematic grounding of natural law
today, and the extraordinarily complicated and controversial skirmish
lines over questions of moral theology to see that this is so. As the legislated Thomism in metaphysics retreated in our time, the issues of discipline and Church authority migrated from metaphysics and the
preambles of faith into sectors of practical reasoning, particularly the life
issues. How strange, but true. But it is not our aim here to complete this
circle.We set out to show how the different orbits of Modernism and the
Thomistic revival began and how they developed both in and out of
N&V
tandem through the Pascendi era.

101 Farrell, The Natural Moral Law, Introduction. Here, referring to L. Lehu, O.P.,

Philosophia Moralis et Socialis (Paris: Gabalda, 1914).

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 4 (2007): 881–894

881

A Montage of Catholic Modernists
M ARVIN R. O’C ONNELL
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

O NE LATE SPRING DAY in 1955 my classmates and I were
ushered into the seminary chapel where the rector solemnly greeted us
and handed each of us two or three pages of closely typed Latin. He
instructed us to read the text aloud in unison, inserting our individual
names as appropriate. And so:
I, Marvin Richard O’Connell, firmly embrace and accept each and
every definition that has been set forth and declared by the unerring
teaching authority of the Church, especially those principal truths
which are directly opposed to the errors of this day.

The avowal went on to specify among “those principal truths” particularly the decrees of the First Vatican Council about the relation between
faith and reason, and:
Furthermore, I submit and adhere with my whole heart to the
condemnations, declarations, and all rescripts contained in the encyclical Pascendi and the decree Lamentabili, especially those concerning
what is known as the history of dogmas.

It was only when I read a translation of what I was then reciting—my
Latin was of the purely technical variety—that I realized how passionate
was its prose, how far removed from the dry and juridical tone of most
documents issuing from the Roman curia.
This essay was delivered at the “Modernity: Yearning for the Infinite” conference
sponsored by the Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame,
December 1, 2006.

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Marvin R. O’Connell
Finally, I declare that I am completely opposed to the error of the
modernists, who hold that there is nothing divine in the sacred tradition;
or, what is worse, say that there is, but in a pantheistic sense, with the
result that there would remain but this plain simple fact—one to be put
on a par with the ordinary facts of history—the fact, namely, that a group
of men by their own labor, skill, and talent have continued through
subsequent ages a school begun by Christ and his apostles. I firmly hold,
then, and shall hold to my dying breath, the belief of the Fathers in the
charism of truth, which certainly is, was, and always will be in the succession of the episcopacy from the apostles.The purpose of this is, then, not
that dogma may be tailored according to what seems better and more
suited to the culture of each age; rather that the absolute and immutable
truth preached by the apostles from the beginning may never be believed
to be different, may never be understood in any other way.
I, Marvin Richard O’Connell, shall keep all these articles faithfully,
entirely, and sincerely, and guard them inviolate, in no way deviating
from them in teaching or in any way in word or in writing. Thus I
promise, this I swear, so help me God.

So it was that my classmates and I, on a bright Minnesota May day
more than half a century ago, swore the celebrated Oath against
Modernism.That the rhetoric of the document at hand smacked of peculiar ardor comes, after some reflection, as no surprise. Giuseppe Sarto—
Pope Pius X, who inspired it if he did not write it word for word—was a
passionate man, and very much a populist, who found in the opinions of
those arrogant academic elitists he called “Modernists,” the “synthesis of all
heresies,” which could eventually undermine the Catholic faith of
millions, the sophisticated and unsophisticated alike.The papal passion was
if anything more pronounced and explicit in the encyclical Pascendi
dominici gregis of 1907 in which this “synthesis” was described and
denounced.Those who had formulated it were “men of boundless effrontery”; as their doctrine is “pernicious,” “destructive,” and “malevolent,” so
are they themselves “full of gall and hatred,” “impudent,” “domineering,”
“arrogant,” and “imprudent.” “They seize upon chairs in the seminaries
and universities and gradually make them chairs of pestilence; one of them
but opens his mouth, and the rest applaud him in chorus, proclaiming that
science has taken another step forward.” I must admit that this sarcasm and
invective were pretty much lost on me in 1955, if indeed I was aware of
them. The oath imposed upon us young fellows then—and upon those
similarly circumstanced universally across the Catholic world—was, as we
saw it, just one of the hoops we had to jump through on our way to the
priesthood—like learning how properly to say the Latin Mass or the
formula for sacramental absolution—because in a few days time we were

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to be ordained to the subdiaconate, the first of the so-called major orders,
and thus introduced irrevocably into the clerical estate, required from then
on to pray the breviary every day and to observe the rules of celibacy. By
virtue of the decree signed on September 1, 1910, by Pius X, we were
bound to swear the oath before we took that fateful step. As I look back
on that day all these years later, I cannot say that I was moved one way or
another by reciting a text I only half-understood.
“Modernism” flourished between 1890 and 1930—so at least we are
told by the people who specialize in categorizing cultural phenomena.As
such it remains one of those blanket terms that covers so much ground
that its usefulness is limited. But there is no doubt that in its various manifestations Modernism represented a profound shifting of the cultural
ground. As the twentieth century dawned, that collection of traditional
moral and intellectual assumptions, called, not altogether inaccurately,
“Victorian” came under challenge, all in the name of modernity. There
was “modernist” literature, music, architecture, painting, even modernist
economics and psychology. Indeed, the publication in 1900 of The Interpretation of Dreams by an until-then obscure Viennese physiologist named
Sigmund Freud was very much a sign of the times. Over the next couple
of decades, theories about relativity and evolution and astronomy
combined to bring into question truths that had seemed timeless and
universal. In aesthetics, too, a definition of beauty radically different from
that which had held sway for so long thrust itself to the fore. Surely
Claude Monet and the other Impressionists, or the young Pablo Picasso,
would not subscribe to the same artistic principles as David or Millais.
And, a little later, the verse of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot appeared to bear
only a scanty relationship to that of Lord Tennyson or Robert Browning.
Perhaps among the arts the most instructive in this regard is in the field of
serious music. Romantic music, like romantic poetry, is different from the
classical. Robert Schumann’s mid-nineteenth-century compositions do
not sound like Joseph Haydn or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But the
atonal conclusion of Arnold Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet (1908),
the technique of which was adopted by Igor Stravinsky and Alban Berg
and many others, represented more than merely a horizontal progression
from an agreed starting point. It was, in its way, an intellectual and artistic
revolution. Nor was the gloomy science of economics and its political
outrider exempt from the winds of change.Anarchists in Spain and socialists in Germany might debate the intricacies of Karl Marx’s teachings, but
they agreed that the exploitative financial structures of conventional capitalism had to be eradicated.The war of 1914—the Great War, the war that
was to make the world, in Woodrow Wilson’s utopian aspiration,“safe for

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democracy”—with its ghastly and seemingly pointless blood-letting—
appeared to confirm the bankruptcy of the Western tradition.The victory
of the Bolsheviks in Russia made the same point.
Of course swearing the Oath against Modernism did not oblige me to
avoid listening to music composed by Schoenberg, though in fact I have
gone to considerable pains to do just that. But the Catholic Modernists
were also fin de siècle thinkers and artists, who displayed the same basic
distrust and disdain as their secular brethren for the intellectual milieu in
which they found themselves.They too kicked against the goad, they too
reveled in the brave new world that nineteenth-century science and technology had created.And, finally, they too were elitists; Catholic Modernism
was never a popular movement. It was rather a collection of individuals,
more or less in contact with each other—though not always in full agreement with each other—who aimed to bring to bear their new scholarly
insights in order to promote reform of the old Church. Indeed, the very
term, which the encyclical employed with only a few obscure Italian
precedents, came as a surprise to those to whom it applied. Modernism is
“a chance name,” observed a friendly contemporary, “a name of circumstance, of accident, unless it was a name given in anger.” “Modernism,”
wrote the editors of a French clerical journal, “is a phenomenon so very
recent that a word had to be added to the language to cover it.”
The Catholic Modernists were a group of remarkable and, for the most
part, attractive persons. Least attractive perhaps was Alfred Loisy, the son
of Champagne peasants who became a priest because he was deemed too
small and frail—“le petit Loisy” his rough classmates called him in derision, and the nickname followed him into adulthood—to do anything
else. But he was smarter than all of them, much smarter, brilliant indeed;
and out of his immense linguistic talent, he forged a career as the leading
scripturist of his time. A man of iron self-discipline given to unremitting
toil, who published sixty books and three hundred articles of the most
intricate scholarship, Loisy came to feel only contempt for those who
disagreed with him. Never less alone than when alone, in his memoirs he
asserted that he had had only two friends over the course of his life,
neither of whom he met on more than a few occasions. As an idealistic
young man, Loisy aspired to employ the so-called higher criticism of
textual analysis of the Bible in order to create a new Catholic apologetic
to serve the needs of a new era. Instead, his methodology led him to
conclude that the only article in the Creed he could accept as true was
“He suffered under Pontius Pilate.”
George Tyrrell, on the other hand, had a host of friends and limited
youthful aspirations. Born in Dublin, he was a Protestant waif in an

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incomprehensible Catholic sea. His father, a penniless journalist, died a
month before George’s birth; and his mother, a warm-hearted if feckless
woman, could not provide a permanent home for him and his two
siblings.They drifted from one dreary boarding house to another, which,
so to speak, set the pattern of George Tyrrell’s life: He was perpetually
seeking stability, wanting to belong somewhere, belong to something. At
school he proved clever but lazy, and, as he put it, his moral life was not
so much wicked as slovenly. Still, he reacted strongly against the Calvinist
temper predominant in the Church of Ireland, seeking out the rare high
Anglican liturgies and ultimately the plentiful Roman ones. At the age of
twenty, he fled Dublin for London—he never saw Ireland again—and
made his way to the famous Jesuit church on Farm Street, where he was
received into the Catholic Church. Shortly after that, he was admitted as
a postulant into the Society of Jesus. The love-hate relationship with the
Society began almost immediately, and Tyrrell brought to it his warmth
and charm and wit, but also his inherent impatience with formality, his
inability to acknowledge authority, and, perhaps most significantly, his
deep Celtic melancholy, this last exacerbated by guilt at having deserted
his mother. Even so, as a Jesuit, his careless and rudderless life assumed at
least a measure of direction in accord with his superiors’ just estimate of
his greatest gift: He wrote a lyrical and compelling English prose, as
powerful in its way as Loisy’s elegant French.After he read Pascendi,Tyrrell
said, almost ruefully,“I think the pope had Loisy and me in mind.”
No doubt he did, but there were others as well. Baron Friedrich von
Hugel, Austro-English polymath, self-taught scholar, linguist, incessant traveler and letter-writer, whose house on the edge of London’s Hampstead
Heath and later in fashionable Kensington was as close as the Modernists
ever came to having a communications center and was at the same time a
place of the most intense mystical piety; Albert Houtin, priest of Angers,
journalist, democrat, supporter of Dreyfus, self-described “free-lance in the
service of the Church”; Romolo Murri, priest, who came out of the stark
poverty of the Roman Marches, Italian patriot, social reformer, and political activist; Maurice Blondel, originator of the philosophy of Action, known
as much for the holiness of his life as for the acuity of his mind and the
denseness of his prose; Maud Petre, Modernist grande dame, scion of a noble
English house which had been loyal to Catholicism through all the dangerous and wearisome days of the Penal Laws, a woman of similarly stubborn
loyalty who bore ostracism in support of her friends, while through two
world wars she cared for widows and orphans in their tribulation; Henri
Bremond, secularized Jesuit, recluse, snob, religious psychologist, and literary
historian, who crossed the sea at his own peril to be with the dying George

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Tyrrell, his friend;Antonio Fogazzaro, novelist, bon vivant, genial politician,
and Italian senator whose book Il Santo expressed in fictional terms the
Modernist ideal and whose last testament, four years after Pascendi, said,
“There is nothing on this earth I love more than the Church”; Lucien
Laberthonnière, Oratorian priest, philosopher, originator of the theory of
moral dogmatism, salty controversialist, a familiar figure, bereted and stoopshouldered, on the Paris metro where he contemplated new ways to smash
hip and thigh the hated Aristotelians and Thomists; Lucien Lacroix, secularized Dominican, preparatory-school chaplain, liberal journalist, appointed
bishop of Tarentaise at the insistence of the anti-clerical French government
and approved by the Vatican only because, in the words of the nuncio to
Paris, Tarentaise was “the poorest and least significant diocese in France,”
self-styled bishop of the Modernists who resigned his see in the wake of
Pascendi and wandered for the rest of his life in an ecclesiastical limbo;
Edouard Le Roy, mathematician, disciple of Bergson, pragmatist, evolutionist, precursor of Teilhard de Chardin, like Von Hugel and Blondel a layman
of exceptional personal piety, whose definition of the nature of religious
dogma was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books in record time; Ernesto
Buonaiutti, priest, journalist, historian, philosopher, the only first-rate
thinker among the Italian Modernists, whose works were, on three different
occasions, placed on the Index, an excommunicate who refused to take off
the cassock and who lost his chair at the University of Rome when
Mussolini made peace with the Vatican in the Lateran Treaties of 1929;
Marcel Hébert, like Loisy a native of Champagne, a gentle, self-effacing
priest whose lycée students adored him, who drifted into the conviction
that religious activity was void of any value save the symbolic, who asked
that only two words be carved upon his tombstone, In Spe; Giovanni Semeria, Barnabite monk, spellbinding preacher, devotee of Tolstoy, who was
allowed, through an exception agreed to by Pius X, to swear with reservations the oath I swore in 1955, who was nevertheless later suspended from
priestly functions and found unlikely refuge in the Belgian diocese of the
rigidly Thomist Cardinal Mercier, then heroic chaplain during the First
World War, and afterward organizer of relief for war orphans in Italy;
William Sullivan, Paulist priest turned after Pascendi into Unitarian minister,
whose novel The Priest: A Tale of Modernism in New England remains the
unique expression of the phenomenon in the United States; Francis Duffy,
dismissed under a Modernist cloud from his professorship in the major
seminary in New York, later the famous chaplain of the famous Sixty-Ninth
Regiment of New York volunteers—the “fighting Sixty-Ninth”—in
memory of which service during World War I his statue broods today over
the gaudy and sometimes obscene frolics in Times Square.

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What had they written? What had they proposed? What had they done
to bring upon themselves such fierce condemnation? Certainly it had
nothing to do with their personal morality, to which even Pascendi paid
grudging tribute. Loisy said Mass every day and confessed every fortnight, while Von Hugel was known to spend hours on end in prayer
before the Blessed Sacrament. Frivolous Lacroix may have been, but
surely no one could call him a bad man, and even Fogazzaro in his later
years lived in a style that gave little offense.What had they done?
Their contemporary, the often cynical George Santayana, offered a
tongue-in-cheek, yet plausible answer. “The Modernist,” he said, “starts
with the orthodox but untenable persuasion that Catholicism comprehends all that is good; he adds the heterodox though amiable sentiment
that any well-meaning ambition of the mind, any hope, any illumination,
any science must be good and therefore compatible with Catholicism.”
But the battle was to be fought out along more specific lines. The
Modernist, Santayana continued, “bathes himself in idealistic philosophy,
he dabbles in liberal politics, he accepts and emulates rationalist exegesis
and anti-clerical church history.”And indeed these many intellectual faces
of modernity were to show themselves one by one.Thus the Modernists
assumed the correctness of Darwinian evolution as applied to societies and
institutions as well as to organisms.They assumed as well that the speculations of Descartes and Kant had put to flight forever the old-fashioned
confidence that the human intellect could penetrate beyond itself to
objectively real phenomena. But they saw this as a liberation, not a
hindrance: a liberation from formulas and legalisms that grew out of a lifeless philosophical realism.A realist metaphysic, Laberthonnière liked to say
gruffly, was not only foolish but perverse, because it encouraged illusion,
just as it thwarted the inward drive toward godliness. Kant had also taught
them that the stern voice of conscience within gives assurance of truths
that the intellect is powerless to establish.
So the gentle Blondel posited his philosophie d’action, understanding
“action” in the widest and most profound sense of the word, disdaining
the dead end of useless speculation and arguing that, since the human will
directs life and produces action and since the will cannot satisfy itself with
the finite, the very existence of God can be accepted only because of
one’s deep and abiding longing for him.
So Laberthonnière—for whom Blondel was a beloved friend and
teacher but Descartes was the ultimate magister—Laberthonnière developed
what he called “moral dogmatism,” which sets aside the impotent intellect
and seeks the definition of the divine out of tous les activités de la vie. Empty
dialectics can then give place to something vital and complete, which

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provides a sure base for the fundamental truths of religion and the dogmas
of Christianity. Laberthonnière liked to contrast Christian reality with what
he called Greek theory, the concrete with the abstract; and since for him
the individual experience, welling up from inside oneself, was the Christian reality, the eternal verity, it followed that all creeds and traditions and
sacred books needed constant reinterpretation if they were to be relevant
to the individual Christian in an ever-changing, ever-evolving life.
So Edouard Le Roy the mathematician, writing in a more or less popular journal, asked, “What is a Dogma?” (1905) and then proposed a new
answer. Modern thought, he argued, has a deep aversion to the traditional
Catholic faith and especially to the Catholic notion of dogma.The idea of
an immutable and authoritative statement of religious truth is unthinkable,
either because it presumes an entirely pure authority or it presumes the
mind can escape (abstract from) its anthropomorphic conditioning. A
secure apologetic for modern men and women can be reached by reversing the conventional order. Instead of seeing dogma as a speculative proposition that has impact upon moral conduct, rather, Le Roy said, regard
dogma as the minimum affirmation necessary to justify conduct.Thus, for
instance, the dogma of the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament would mean treating the altar bread as though it were Jesus.
This minimalist position sounds at first blush so absurd that I wonder
if I am giving due justice to Le Roy’s position. Perhaps not; I am surely
not philosophically sophisticated. Even so, it seems to me that this reply
to the generic question “What is a Dogma?” can make sense only within
the penumbra of Blondel’s and Laberthonnière’s teaching—and Le Roy
and Laberthonnière were very close associates, almost for a while in daily
communication with each other—within, that is, the Cartesian conviction that recognition of the truth of the Christian evangel about the
Eucharist or anything else can be guaranteed only from the proper application of systematic doubt. I wonder how Flannery O’Connor would
respond to such intellectual gyrations. “If the Eucharist is merely a
symbol of Christ’s presence among us,” she once famously declared,“then
I say the hell with it.”
Pascendi in any case called this apologetic Immanentism and charged
that it fit all too nicely with the work of the higher critics, like Alfred
Loisy; and it was perhaps this natural congruence that caused Pius X to
see a conscious conspiracy when in fact there was none.The Higher Criticism came relatively late to trouble Catholic biblical scholarship. Strauss’s
Leben Jesu had appeared in 1836.As early as 1840 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
had observed that the Bible should be read like any other book, though
he added the qualification that “I do so as far at least as I can or dare.”

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Ernest Renan’s Vie de Jésus, published in 1863, popularized the theory that
the truth of the Scriptures depended solely upon reading them in the light
of the literary methods and sources of their authors.The blow was devastating to conventional Protestantism, but the Roman Church took the
smug line that the Higher Criticism could not budge its positions, because
Catholics had never accepted the view that the Bible authenticates itself
or interprets itself. Apologetics demonstrates the divine foundation of the
Church, and then the Church guarantees the Bible.
But before long this position began to fall under threat as the critics
shifted their attention from the Old to the New Testament. One might
accept placidly enough the depiction of the Patriarch Abraham as a desert
sheikh. But what if Jesus is reduced, as Renan had reduced him, to an
amiable Galilean social reformer with scant moral and no supernatural
significance? The apologist uses Scripture as history to establish the right
of the Church to interpret Scripture; and so the argument is circular. If
the Petrine texts—“Thou art Peter and upon this rock I shall build my
Church” (Mt 16:18)—are not historical, or if they have meaning only
within the context of Palestine early in the first century, then what?
This was precisely the conclusion reached by Alfred Loisy, who at first
took great pains not to bruise orthodox sensibilities, while at the same
time he shredded the historicity of the Bible. He protested over and over
that creeds and dogmas were quite beyond his scholarly ken, though he
seldom passed up an opportunity to express in glittering phrases his
reverence for them. His professional business, he said, was with the texts
and their meaning, with positivist, scientific facts which the theologians
might fit into their doctrines as best suited them.This prudent course—
a profound dishonesty as later events amply demonstrated—kept him out
of all but one or two scrapes with ecclesiastical authority until 1902 and
the publication of L’Évangile et l’Église.
The argument of this book, The Gospel and the Church, which was
intended for the educated general public, was simple enough.The gospel is
Jesus’ preaching of the messianic kingdom and the call to penance as a kind
of eschatological warning of imminent destruction, which was typical of
the Judaism of the first century. The Church continues this function, but
always in a way subject to the conditions of the time, just as Jesus’ preaching was conditioned by the circumstances of his time. So come the successive formulas, creeds, hierarchical institutions, sacraments—all in a kind of
rational flux, pressing forward, ever refining themselves, just as the evolving
universe does. Nothing stands permanent, nothing that has been said will
not be unsaid. For proof of this Loisy, in the most famous sentence in the
book—indeed, its thesis sentence—compared Jesus’ preaching with what

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in fact had been wrought:“Jesus preached the kingdom, and”—voila!—“it
is the Church that has come.”“Jesus and the Church,” he went on,“lift their
eyes to the same symbol of hope.”“The dogmatic formulas are in the same
condition as the words of the Savior. . . .Their value is in the sense that one
attaches to them.”
At this point Pascendi discerned the striking of a bargain between the
Modernist philosophers and the Modernist critics. Criticism stripped
away the objective foundations of the Christian religion, but Immanentism stepped in to fill the gap.The historical personage named Jesus may
be permanently elusive; the evangelical miracles may be fairy tales;
dogmas like the Incarnation or the Resurrection may simply reflect an
elaboration proper to a certain set of temporal circumstances. But never
mind. Religious truth is not something that comes out of a proclamation
from outside yourself. Religious truth wells up from within you and
certifies itself, because it responds to your deepest needs and longings.
Religious truth is what you, caught in the flux of time, discover it to be.
There was in fact no such bargain struck. Maurice Blondel, for
instance, was horrified by Loisy’s critical speculations when he finally
came to understand them. But enough similarity of approach and
methodology among the Catholic Modernists warranted at least a suspicion on the pope’s part of collaboration. And on one matter they did
indeed appear to speak in unison. As George Tyrrell famously quipped:
“Pascendi tries to show the Modernist that he is no Catholic; it mostly
succeeds in showing him that he is no scholastic.” Hostility among the
Modernists to the philosophy and theology of the schools was deep and
abiding; and so Pius X’s assault upon them, using those intellectual tools,
seemed particularly obnoxious. Von Hugel dismissed scholastic metaphysic as “childish.” Scholasticism, Blondel said loftily, is “a mountain of
ice afloat on the southern sea.”The feisty Laberthonnière was driven into
paroxysms of rage whenever he had quoted to him the Aristotelian
maxim: “There is nothing in the mind which is not first in the senses.”
They bathed themselves, as Santayana put it, in idealist philosophy.
Nor was this considered an eccentric position to take. One of the
sharpest and most eloquent critics of scholasticism was a French priest of
impeccable orthodoxy whose reputation as a confessor and spiritual
director was legendary in Paris and throughout France. Henri Huvelin
was not an academic or a publishing scholar; he was vicar of the parish
of Saint-Augustin, on the right bank of the Seine, up the Boulevard
Malsherbes from the Madeleine. He suffered from gout in the eyes and
brain, and spent most of the day lying prone in a darkened room where
he served countless troubled and sorrowing souls, with, as Friederich von

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Hugel admiringly said,“the supreme authority of self-oblivious love.”Von
Hugel first met him during the 1880s and kept in close touch till Huvelin
died in 1910. He was, the baron wrote in his fractured prose, “the greatest manifestation of sheer holiness that I have been privileged to watch
and to be moved by at close quarters. I owe more to this Frenchman than
to any man I have ever known in the flesh.” Henri Bremond and Maud
Petre were also regular attendees in the dark upper chamber of the presbytery on the Boulevard Malsherbes. Huvelin’s most spectacular feat had
been the deathbed conversion of Emile Littré, a ferocious anticlerical
politician. But more memorable in the long run was his success in 1886
in bringing back to the practice of his Catholic faith Charles de
Foucauld, destined for fame and martyrdom as the Hermit of the Sahara.
One of Huvelin’s great strengths as a director was the care he took to
treat each person within the context of that individual’s specific circumstances. In dealing with Von Hugel he gave advice about prayer and selfabnegation and patience with trial—the baron’s progressive deafness was
a severe cross for him. But this particular penitent was also an intellectual
who spent all his time and energy studying religion, and so Huvelin
tailored his guidance to take due account of Von Hugel’s self-defined calling in life.What about these conventional philosophers and theologians,
he asked the baron rhetorically, what about these scholastics with their
neat syllogistic arguments and brash certitudes? “What are certainties for
others,” he said (and Von Hugel recorded),
for you are merely hints, indications, outlines. Scholasticism, even Saint
Thomas the greatest of the scholastics, cannot explain everything.The
living truth flees definitions from whatever direction. The Scholastics
think they can put the moon in a bottle; perhaps they could if the
moon were made of cheese. . . . Scholasticism clarifies things by impoverishing them. It cuts great roads in all directions through a virgin
forest. It succeeds in seeing the forest more clearly, but how many beautiful trees have been sacrificed. . . . The Scholastics do not understand
that life, all life, escapes analysis.What they dissect is the dead body.

“Pass them by,” Abbé Huvelin advised the baron, “with a gentle, very gentle,
smile, pass them by.”
But this counsel was difficult for the Catholic Modernists to comply
with; pass the scholastics by, yes, to be sure, but gently, gently into the night?
That was not so easily agreed to. And there were other factors at work,
wheels within wheels, so to speak.The decadent state of traditional scholasticism by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, enfeebled by lethargy
and by the intellectual numbness induced by the rote repetition of habit-

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ual theses—the dismissal, for example, of serious thinkers like Kant by a
couple of bland sentences setting out the errores adversariorum nostrorum—
was all too clear to see. But then, in 1879, the new pope, Leo XIII—an
intellectual, especially if contrasted with his amiable but unlearned predecessor, Pius IX—issued an encyclical, Aeterni Patris, in which he set out as
the Roman Church’s official policy that the texts of Thomas Aquinas, the
Universal Doctor, should be the basis of all ecclesiastical education. Note,
if you please, the texts themselves, not commentary upon them, not manuals allegedly based upon them, not a whole literature of scholastic or even
so-called Thomistic studies long since in the public arena, but what in fact
the Angelic Doctor had written.This proved a hard saying for many seminary professors, invested as they were in the intellectual status quo; and they
evaded the pope’s mandate as long as they could. (As late as the 1950s my
courses in theology in an American seminary—some, I rejoice to say, not
all—were taught out of manuals written by a Sulpician named Adolf
Tanquerey [d. 1932], written, it was said in the prefaces,“ad mentem Sancti
Thomae.” How the minds of Father Tanquerey and St.Thomas were meant
to mesh remains unclear to me to this day.)
This papal intervention was crucial to the story of the Catholic
Modernists, even though Aetrni Patris was issued a generation before the
publication of Blondel’s Action or Loisy’s L’Evangile et l’Église. Crucial,
because in the authoritative endorsement of Aquinas—and by inference of
Aristotle—the encyclical came down, at least for the training of the clergy,
on the side of philosophical realism: Or maybe, more to the point here, of
realist epistemology. Granted, one always has to confound the temptation
to oversimplify, to look for that overarching explanation that can brush
aside awkward complexities, for the intellectual silver bullet that does the
deed cleanly and swiftly. Even so, does it not seem to you that much of the
Catholic Modernist controversy sprang out of varying theories of knowledge? I must tread carefully here—I have trouble enough pronouncing
epistemology, to say nothing of trying to plumb its cerebral depths. But I
believe it really matters little that the norms of Aeterni Patris were applied
only slowly and reluctantly, indeed, to a degree were never applied.What
did matter was that, whatever Lucien Laberthonnière’s fury, the Church he
loved and served loyally till he died in 1932 had taken the position that
there is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses. So that when
that other encyclical, Pascendi, appeared, it did not need to mention Kant
or Laberthonnière’s beloved Descartes (nor indeed did it mention anyone
by name) in order to bring the theory of Moral Dogmatism into disrepute.
One small irony having to do with Aeterni Patris, the Thomistic revival,
and Catholic Modernism.The two most prominent Modernists, George

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Tyrrell and Alfred Loisy, both eventually excommunicated nominatim,
both had a youthful and fanciful exposure to the works of St. Thomas.
Tyrrell at Stonyhurst, the Jesuit foundation in Lancashire during the mid1880s, found that his professors continued, despite the encyclical’s directives, to filter Aquinas’s teaching through “his third-rate commentators
and imitators,” and so he decided “to throw myself wholly into mastering and defending the Thomistic system of philosophy and theology.” An
ambition noble perhaps in itself, but hardly feasible for so undisciplined
a mind, and adopted really to annoy his superiors. A few years earlier
Loisy, a student at the major seminary at Chalons-sur-Marne and bored
almost out of his mind by the ordinary curriculum, “plunged boldly,” as
he put it, and with no direction, into an analysis of the Summa theologiae.
He went through the tract on the Trinity article by article, an exercise he
described later with ill-concealed contempt: “The speculations of St.
Thomas on the Trinity had upon me the affect of a huge logomachy and
left, as it were, a void.” It was merely a bunch of meaningless words to the
young Frenchman, and merely a tool to discomfit his Jesuit brethren for
the young Irishman. The prideful disposition at work in each case is
breathtaking: as though a callow youth without any mature guidance
could “master and defend”—Tyrrell’s words—one of the most sophisticated philosophical systems ever developed within the Western tradition.
After Pascendi the Modernists—as, with reluctance, they were now
prepared to call themselves—reacted variously. Loisy put off the soutane
and ceased saying Mass with no regret. He lectured at the College de
France in the chair once held, appropriately, by Ernest Renan. Despite his
frailty he lived to a great age; he died of uremia in 1940, just in time to
avoid witnessing the third German invasion of his beloved Champagne.
George Tyrrell, in contrast, died young in 1909, only forty-eight, wracked
all his adult life by migraine headache and nausea, brought down at the end
by kidney failure. Maud Petre never left his bedside during the week of his
last agony; Baron von Hugel came from London and Henri Bremond from
Paris to give his excommunicated friend absolution. Denied Catholic
burial,Tyrrell rests now in an Anglican cemetery on the edge of Storrington, in West Sussex. Maud Petre who loved him and who now lies beside
him—she died in 1942—commissioned an up-and-coming London sculptor named Eric Gill to fashion the tombstone in accord with the deceased’s
wishes. Framed by a carved host and chalice, the inscription reads:“Of your
charity pray for the soul of George Tyrrell, Catholic priest, who died July
15, 1909, aged forty-eight years. Fortified by the rites of the Church. RIP.”
They are all gone now, long gone, the Catholic Modernists. If some
uneasy observers today think they discern new Tyrrells or Loisys, they are

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surely mistaken. Despite the oft-quoted saying, history does not repeat
itself. Every human life is a unique experience. On the other hand, one
can certainly see similarities between the ecclesiastical rumbles of 1906
and those of 2006 for a relatively simple reason. From the time of the
apostles until now, disputes within the Church have always turned on two
questions: first,What shall be taught?; and second,Who shall decide what
shall be taught? It has ever been so. But other things have disappeared as
well. The Oath against Modernism I swore fifty-one years ago was
rescinded by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1967.
And the order of subdeacon was suppressed in the Latin rite by Pope Paul
N&V
VI in 1972.They are all gone now.

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Discussion
Postmissionary Messianic Judaism:
Redefining Christian Engagement
with the Jewish People
by Mark S. Kinzer
(Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005)
J OHN P. YOCUM
Loyola School of Theology
Ateneo de Manila, Philippines

A LASDAIR M AC I NTYRE ’ S statement,“Christians need badly to
listen to Jews,”1 remains as true today as it was when he wrote it nearly
twenty years ago. The first thing that needs to be said about Mark
Kinzer’s Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement
with the Jewish People, is that it ought to be read broadly and carefully.
Written by a son of Abraham according to the flesh, a believer in Jesus of
Nazareth as the Messiah of Israel, and an adherent of the Apostles Creed,
this book is the fruit of long and deep study of Scripture and contemporary theology, as well as broad ecumenical and pastoral experience, by
a weighty and thoughtful scholar. Kinzer writes lucidly and engagingly
and takes great care to lay out his argument clearly, repeatedly retracing
the steps he has taken, and pointing out the next section of the trail he
intends to follow.
Kinzer argues that the relationship between Christianity and Judaism
belongs properly, not to missiology, but to ecclesiology. “We are dealing
1 Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN: Univer-

sity of Notre Dame Press/London: Duckworth, 1988), 11.

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with one people and one religion, but it is a people and a religion that is
inherently twofold in nature. Sadly, what should have been an enriching
differentiation became a bitter schism” (21–22). Kinzer advocates a “bilateral ecclesiology in solidarity with Israel.”
Our ecclesiology can be summarized in five basic principles: 1) the
perpetual validity of God’s covenant with the Jewish people; 2) the
perpetual validity of the Jewish way of life rooted in the Torah, as the
enduring sign and instrument of that covenant; 3) the validity of Jewish
religious tradition as the historical embodiment of the Jewish way of
life rooted in the Torah; 4) the bilateral constitution of the ekklesia,
consisting of distinct but united Jewish and Gentile expressions of
Yeshua-faith; 5) the ecumenical imperative of the ekklesia, which entails
bringing the redeemed nations of the world into solidarity with the
people of Israel in anticipation of Israel’s—and the world’s—final
redemption. In short, we have argued for a bilateral ecclesiology in solidarity with Israel that affirms Israel’s covenant,Torah, and religious tradition. (264,
original emphasis)

Kinzer’s ecclesiology is built on an argument resting on three foundational, interrelated claims: (1) the New Testament—read canonically and
theologically in the light of history—teaches that Israel’s covenant, way
of life, and religious tradition have enduring validity and importance,
even when Israel proves unwilling or unable to explicitly recognize its
Messiah; (2) the failure of the Gentile ekklesia to receive and confirm this
truth contributed decisively to the rupture between the ekklesia and the
Jewish people—“a rupture that constitutes a debilitating schism in the
heart of the people of God”; and (3) this schism was manifested first in
the rejection of the validity and importance of the Jewish ekklesia and of
its integration within the wider Jewish world, and the healing of this
schism requires the restoration of such an ekklesia (303). His case is
complex and linear, consisting of a series of linked arguments about the
status and function of the Jewish people in the divine plan, drawn from
Scripture and history. The various components merit consideration in
detail. Here I can offer only a lengthy sketch, but at least that much is
required in order to make clear the scale and interest of the project and
to offer some initial thoughts in response.
Following a disarmingly sincere and earnest introduction that recounts
the author’s fascinating personal journey, the first three of nine chapters
deal with the New Testament.The first chapter suggests that certain nonexegetical historical factors ought to incline the reader favorably toward
the novel exegesis of the Scripture that the book will propose. The first

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of these factors is the dramatic difference in the social location of the
biblical authors and of their contemporary readers, the latter “boxed
into” thinking in terms of mutually exclusive Jewish and Christian categories and social worlds. Second, one ought to consider carefully the
ethical implications of one’s interpretive scheme; in particular the reading of Matthew 27:25 as the enduring self-curse of the “deicidal Jews”
has been the root, so Kinzer argues, of untold suffering inflicted upon
them and its facile dismissal. Finally, if one accepts that the God revealed
in the Bible is the Lord of history, one ought to take seriously the postbiblical history of both the Gentile Church and the Jewish people and be
prepared, as Robert Louis Wilken says, to “see dimensions of the Holy
Scriptures that were not apparent to earlier generations” (42). Kinzer cites
six historical developments that he believes should be pondered as a
propaedeutic exercise to the exegesis of the at times “irreducibly ambiguous” texts of the New Testament (41)—texts that he reads as canonical
and authoritative.The six factors are: the loss of a visible Jewish presence
in the ekklesia (the term Kinzer normally uses in preference to “church,”
which he sees carrying with it a freight of institutional history); the
astonishing survival of the Jewish people and Judaism; the emergence of
virulent and violent anti-Judaism in the Christian tradition; the holocaust, which Kinzer sees as “the ultimate outcome of Christian supersessionism” (44), the belief that the covenant of Sinai has been replaced by
the covenant with the Church; the return of the Jewish people to Israel
(which Kinzer carefully describes only as confirmation of “the significance of the Jewish people in the divine purpose,” fully recognizing that
“these realities have not always cast a favorable light on the Jewish
people” (45); the emergence of the Messianic Jewish movement in the
last fifty years or so.
All these factors justify, for Kinzer, a serious rethinking of the relationship between Israel and the Gentile ekklesia. He is not alone; throughout the book he cites authors ranging from the Roman Catholic Wilken,
to the Lutherans Wolfhart Pannenberg and Robert Jenson, to the former
Lutheran and now Roman Catholic Bruce Marshall, to the Anabaptist
John Howard Yoder, to the non-messianic Jew Michael Wyschogrod.
And, of course, Kinzer duly regards the towering figure of Karl Barth. In
addition, he notes that the Catholic Magisterium has lately taken care to
give clarity and nuance to the way in which the Church ought to see the
people of Israel and its relationship to them.
The second and third chapters deal with the New Testament and
Jewish practice and the New Testament and the Jewish people, respectively.The second chapter argues that, according to the New Testament,

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keeping the prescriptions of the Mosaic Law that peculiarly identify the
Jews as a people with a distinct way of life—circumcision, the dietary
laws, keeping the festal calendar, and the Sabbath—is not only permissible for Jews, but obligatory. Kinzer’s chapter offers a clear and compact
overview of the more recent, weighty literature on the subject (for example, that of E. P. Sanders, Jacob Neusner, Peter Tomson, Gabriele Boccaccini, Mark Nanos, and Douglas Harink). The findings of such studies,
piling up over the last two decades, ought to sideline a good deal of what
has been taken for granted about the relation between Jesus, his first
disciples, and the Torah.
The third chapter concludes that “God’s covenant with Israel remains
intact” (23).“The New Testament regards the Jewish people as recipients
of a particular calling and as servants with a distinctive role and mission
in the divine purpose . . . [which] is not transmitted to or absorbed by the
multinational ekklesia as a whole” (97). In other words, the Jewish people,
whose national identity is constituted in large part by the practices
prescribed by the Law, have an important and distinctive role in the
divine purpose that is fulfilled precisely by remaining a distinct, visible
people. The positive role in the divine redemptive purpose belongs not
only to those Jews who believe in Yeshua as Messiah, but also to “Jews
who have not believed in Yeshua, but who have loyally sustained a
continual Jewish communal presence in the world through hours of
deepest darkness [and] are heirs of God’s covenant with Israel” (98).
While Kinzer gives attention to Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts, and John,
at the heart of this chapter is, as one would expect, a treatment of Romans
9–11. Kinzer adopts a rather surprising view of this Pauline tract,
expounded in the book’s longest piece of sustained exegesis of a single
text. He lays out his view of the role of Israel as “partially hardened,”
namely blind to the identity of Yeshua as Messiah. (This translation, an
alternative to the hardening of “a part of Israel,” is crucial to his exegesis.)
Whereas a traditional reading of Romans 9–11 has seen the hardening
of nonremnant Israel as exclusively punitive in nature, the texts we have
been exploring point in another direction. They depict Israel’s suffering as a form of suffering imposed by God so that God’s redemptive
purpose for the world might be realized. (129)

Kinzer, following Elizabeth Johnson, Richard Hays, Douglas Harink, and
Mark Nanos, argues that Romans 9–11 must be seen in connection to
the letter as a whole, especially Romans 8. He asks whether, perhaps,
“Paul is hinting through these striking parallels between Romans 8 and

On Kinzer’s Postmissionary Messianic Judaism

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Romans 9–11 that Israel’s temporary unbelief in Yeshua is itself, paradoxically, a participation in Yeshua’s vicarious, redemptive suffering?” (133).
Kinzer, again relying on Hays, sees behind this allusion to the suffering
servant of Isaiah 53.
The fourth chapter initiates Kinzer’s positive ecclesiological proposal:
. . . an ekklesia that consists of two distinct but united corporate
bodies—a Jewish and a Gentile ekklesia. the Jewish ekklesia would live
as part of the wider Jewish community and the Gentile community
would express its solidarity with the Jewish people through the loving
bond with the Jewish ekklesia. (23)

He builds his case again through an examination of the New Testament,
giving particular attention to the Book of Acts as presenting “the
Jerusalem community under the leadership of James as the mother
congregation for the worldwide ekklesia” (177). He backs this up with an
appeal to Galatians 2 and Ephesians 2. The chapter closes with a reflection on the parallels and differences between the author’s proposal and
the theology of Israel propounded in Karl Barth’s theology of election.
In the fifth chapter, Kinzer surveys the history of the “Christian No to
Israel.”This “No” consisted first of all in the prohibition of Jewish practice for Jewish believers. “Thus a schism ruptured the messianic ekklesia
and helped to produce the wider rupture between ekklesia and the Jewish
people as a whole,” without invalidating the Church’s vocation or tradition (24). Kinzer traces the roots of this “No” to a very early stage in the
Church’s history, finding the first such proponent in Ignatius of Antioch.
He surveys a number of patristic witnesses, some of whom are more positive than others, as well as Aquinas, and traces among them a pattern of
supersessionism. He then asks what denouncing supersessionism might
mean, finding hope for such an enterprise in the fact that “[t]he church
faithfully preserved and carried within it the truths that would allow it
eventually to reexamine its history and recognize supersessionism as an
error demanding correction” (211).
In the next two chapters, Kinzer subjects his own ecclesiological
proposal to cross-examination, first by a “Christological test,” then a
“biblical test.”The first of these chapters turns an “apparent” Jewish “No”
to Yeshua on its head, finding that:
Once the church had prohibited Jewish practice—as it did at a very
early stage—the Jewish no to Yeshua actually expressed its yes to God
and God’s covenant. In this way the Jewish no to Yeshua paradoxically
shared in Yeshua’s own yes to God. I conclude that the risen Yeshua

John P. Yocum

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dwells in hidden fashion among his own flesh and blood brothers and
sisters and that the schism with the church, while damaging to the
Jewish people, does not invalidate its vocation or tradition. (24)

Kinzer argues that Rabbinic Judaism—which emerged in the early
centuries of the common era, with the Mishnah, Talmud, synagogue and
prayer book, and Torah study as its pillars—manifests this ongoing presence.
Having argued, especially on the basis of his reading of Romans 9–11 for
the ongoing role of the Jewish people in the divine plan, he draws an inference from the historical role of rabbinic Judaism: “This particular expression of Judaism—and only this particular expression of Judaism—
succeeded in preserving both the Jewish people and its covenantal way of
life. Its crucial role in what is evidently a divinely appointed task points to
its inherent value” (215). Kinzer argues, with the support of N.T.Wright,
that Yeshua is the representative and individual embodiment of the entire
people of Israel, but unlike Wright, he rejects supersessionism. Instead, he
takes up the position of David Stern, that “Yeshua is in union, not only
with the church, but also with the Jewish people” (223).2 Most strikingly,
Kinzer draws from Paul Van Buren an argument that the Jews were offered
a church that (wrongly) taught that God’s covenant with Israel had been
superseded, and takes it a step further:
If the obedience of Yeshua that led him to death on the cross is rightly
interpreted as the perfect embodiment and realization of Israel’s
covenant fidelity, then Jewish rejection of the church’s message in the
second century and afterward can rightly be seen as a hidden participation in the obedience of Israel’s Messiah. (225)

Thus, rabbinic Judaism passes the “Christological test.”
The “biblical test” of the following chapter argues
that the Pentateuch confirms the need for both an oral tradition of legal
interpretation and an institutional framework in which that tradition
can be developed and practically applied . . . [and] that later rabbinic
tradition is compatible with—though not identical to—the teaching of
the New Testament. (24)

The first part of that argument takes off from the story in Exodus 18 of the
institution of judicial elders under Moses, recommended to him by his
father-in-law, Jethro. It is an insightful argument, of relevance as well to the
relation between Scripture and tradition in the Church.The second part of
2 David Stern, Messianic Jewish Manifesto (Clarksville, MD: Messianic Jewish Resources

International, 1988), 108.

On Kinzer’s Postmissionary Messianic Judaism

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the argument notes the commonalities between Yeshua’s teaching and that
of Pharisaic Judaism. Kinzer cites a 1985 document from the Vatican
Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, which, like Kinzer,
argues that the strong adversarial portrayal of Jesus’ relation to the Pharisees, especially in Matthew’s Gospel, arises from a “polemical affinity” that
indicates the proximity of the teachings of Jesus and the Pharisees.
In the eighth chapter, “From Missionary to Postmissionary Messianic
Judaism,” Kinzer recounts the birth of Hebrew Christianity in the nineteenth century and Hebrew Catholicism and Messianic Judaism in the
twentieth century and compares each in turn to his five basic principles.
For most readers, the whole history will be new; and those who know of
messianic Judaism at all will likely be familiar only with one of the movements, Jews for Jesus. Kinzer’s account demonstrates the variety of forms
and rationales that Jewish messianic faith has assumed in the last two
centuries and sheds light on a story seldom told in histories of Christianity or Judaism.
On Kinzer’s account, each of these movements was essentially missionary in its orientation toward the Jewish people as a whole. By contrast, in
the final chapter he offers three aspects of the postmissionary orientation
of the Jewish ekklesia to the wider Jewish world: (1) it will realize that it
must first receive the testimony borne by the wider Jewish community
to the God of Israel before it is fit to bear its own witness; (2) the Jewish
ekklesia bears witness to the one already present in Israel’s midst; it only
points other Jews to his intimate proximity; (3) it bears witness discreetly,
sensitively, and with restraint, as always aware of the painful wounds of the
past. Nonetheless, faith in Yeshua is not simply envisioned as an
appendage to a more fundamental Jewish faith. In the Jewish ekklesia,
“Yeshua-faith and Judaism are not two separate realities, but one integrated whole. Its Yeshua faith will affect every dimension of its life,
including its participation in the wider Jewish world” (304).
Besides this thoroughgoing identification with and witness to the
Jewish people, the Jewish ekklesia will also “stretch out its hands to the
Gentile ekklesia and bring it into a structured ecclesial relationship to the
Jewish people” (305). Kinzer sees the restoration of a Jewish ekklesia, which
he refers to several times as a “bridge,” as bringing with it a power to
contribute to the healing of other divisions, to combat the temptation to
a dualism of body and spirit, and to better hear, understand, and respond
to the Word of God in the Scriptures. Kinzer avers that the
schism between the Jewish people and the ekklesia can be healed without coming to full agreement over Yeshua’s messianic identity, though full

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John P. Yocum
healing of the schism will come only “when the wider Jewish community accepts the Jewish ekklesia as a legitimate participant in Jewish
communal life. (307)

As for the Christian churches, they can act so as to promote such healing, Kinzer says, in at least three ways. First, Kinzer encourages the
churches to redouble efforts to foster respect for the Jewish people and
Judaism; and, going far beyond this, Kinzer urges that they need to “see
Judaism and the Jewish people in the Christological perspective” that
Kinzer argued for in his chapter on “The Christological Test” (308).
Second, the churches must not only allow, but urge Jews in their midst
to live as observant Jews. Finally, Kinzer calls for initiating dialogue at all
levels with the Messianic Jewish movement as it now exists.
Kinzer’s book is broad and audacious. Each of its subarguments could
engender an entire symposium. Here I will attempt to offer some initial
response to his proposals, recognizing that they constitute, not so much a
rejoinder, as an invitation to offer clarification and fuller elaboration.
First, for those who hold that the apostolic mark of the Church
confessed in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed consists in part in the
succession of episcopal office-holders going back to the apostles, Kinzer’s
proposal raises a special challenge: How would the “bi-lateral ecclesiology
in solidarity with Israel” manifest itself concretely in a way that accords
with an actual succession of apostolic office holders? This obstacle to agreement is a high one indeed, even if not insurmountable. In an era in which
the pontiff can call for proposals from Orthodox and Protestant Christians
on how the Bishop of Rome might advance the unity of all believers, one
can certainly imagine a similar call for proposals on how the Church might
manifest its constitution as an apostolic communion in continuity with a
visible people of the covenant at Sinai, a people whose ongoing covenantal status seems to be affirmed both in recent magisterial statements and in
the writings of a wide variety of contemporary theologians. In addition to
that, Kinzer points to developments in the movement he calls “Hebrew
Catholicism” that indicate some possible ways toward integrating a distinctive Jewish life and liturgy within the Catholic communion.
More crucially, Kinzer’s adumbration of the relation between the
Jewish people and Christ raises some concerns. Chief among these is the
positive portrayal of the hardening in Romans 11. Even if we accept the
translation that takes the hardening to be a partial hardening of perception, rather than a hardening of some portion of the whole people, the
biblical usage of this image is never positive.Whether we think, for example, of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart by God, or the hardening of their

On Kinzer’s Postmissionary Messianic Judaism

903

own hearts by the people of Israel at Massah (Ps 95:8ff), or the hardening that Isaiah denounces (Is 63:17), or the hardness of Gentile hearts
(Eph 4:8), the image seems to be thoroughly negative; and it would be a
surprising reversal to use it as positively as Kinzer sees Paul using it. It is
true that the phrase in Romans does not explicitly refer to the “heart” as
these other passages do, but it is easier to imagine Paul’s use of “hardening” aligning with these other passages than departing from them, especially since he explicitly connects it with disobedience.
One of the most difficult aspects of Kinzer’s book to get some purchase
on is his use of the notion of participation in Christ’s sufferings, or “cosuffering.” Participation is a popular but imprecise term in contemporary
theology, the use of which calls for much more careful delineation. I find in
particular the use of participation in connection with the “vicarious suffering” of Christ a cause for some unease.The unease is rooted in a concern
that the uniqueness of Christ’s redemptive suffering not be compromised.
That concern applies not only to the application of that notion to the Jews,
but to all the martyrs—witnesses—of all times, and to the assertion (unsupported by reference to any other exegetes or to internal evidence) that in
Romans 8:18–25 “it is likely that [Paul] sees this co-suffering [of the sons
of God] as an essential component in the eschatological redemption of
creation” (130). It may be necessary to suffer in this life while we await the
full redemption of our bodies, but it is not at all clear that the suffering is
redemptive of creation, as Kinzer seems to suggest.
This is not a blunt charge of deficiency in Kinzer’s work; the strongest
language about “vicarious suffering” comes not from the author, but from
some of those he cites. Surprisingly, the most unsettling quotation comes
from a pupil of Karl Bath, Thomas Torrance, who speaks of the Jewish
slaughter at the hands of the Nazis as “a burnt offering laden with the guilt
of humanity” that “brings a new appreciation for the vicarious role of
Israel in the mediation of God’s reconciling purpose in the dark underground of conflicting forces within the human race” (227). One can put
an acceptable sense upon such statements, but such general and highly
charged rhetoric—particularly because it is used in speaking about such a
tragic, horrific, and moving event—carries with it a danger: that the
redemptive role that belongs uniquely to Christ as the One Mediator,
who uniquely redeems and represents the whole of the sin-laden human
race before God, might be shared among other vicarious mediators.
Of course, there is a role of mediation in which human beings can
participate in the accomplishment of the divine plan, and that role can
involve suffering.We also know that Christ himself can call the suffering
of his persecuted brethren his own (Acts 8:4–5). All those who suffer for

John P. Yocum

904

the sake of Christ make their lives an offering to God along with him,
and in so doing may themselves be conformed more perfectly to his
image (Rom 8:29). But the term “vicarious suffering,” with its connotations of the one who “bore our sins in his body on the tree,” is probably
best discarded, whether it is used of Jew or Gentile, believer or apparent
unbeliever. In particular when the suffering of the Jews as a result of their
“hardening” is joined to Isaiah 53, it gives one pause.
At times Kinzer uses a mode of speaking about a mediating role for the
Jews that seems to me to be entirely unobjectionable, and nonetheless of
genuine importance: that of witness, including martyrdom.The Jews may
participate in Christ’s suffering in that their existence, which as Kinzer
argues is inextricably bound to observance of the prescriptions of the
Torah, witnesses to the reality and the all-surpassing worth of the God of
Israel who has come to redeem us in the Person of Jesus Christ.This thesis
is still not beyond debate, but it is less problematic than the talk of vicarious, redemptive suffering. In any case, perhaps one should take care to trim
back the lush growth of language about “vicarious suffering” in connection with the redemptive plan of God, lest the unique work of the incarnate Son of God merge into a general theory of redemptive suffering.
A troubling absence from the book is mention of the gift of the Holy
Spirit as constitutive of the body of Christ, and what this might mean for
our understanding of the status of the people of Israel. Kinzer mounts a
“Christological test” for the validity of rabbinic Judaism, and concludes
that the tradition of the Talmud and Mishnah pass that test. I would not
suggest that there is such a thing as a “pneumatological test,” since normally
the presence of the Holy Spirit is tested by reference to Christ rather than
vice versa; but is not the presence of Christ possible in different modes,
and is the confession of Yeshua as Messiah not intrinsically connected to
his vivifying, illuminating, empowering presence through the outpouring
of the Holy Spirit? Certainly the New Testament indicates that in some
way Christ was present and active already in the history of Israel prior to
the incarnation, but not in the mode in which he is present to those who
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit after the resurrection. Is it only recognition of the intimate presence of the one already present in their midst
that is at issue in the acceptance of Yeshua as Messiah?
It seems at times that Kinzer’s strong affirmation of the participation of
the Jewish people in Yeshua, the Jewish people as a kind of corpus mysticum
Christi,3 even in the absence of their knowledge or acknowledgment of
3 A

phrase taken from Lev Gillet, building on Jacques Maritain. Lev Gillet,
Communion in the Messiah (1942; Eugene, OR:Wipf and Stock, 1999), 157.

On Kinzer’s Postmissionary Messianic Judaism

905

his presence, makes explicit Christian faith for a Jew primarily cognitive.
Do all the radical New Testament declarations of regeneration, renewal,
and salvation relate only to the Gentiles? Ephesians 2:4–6, for example,
speaks in the first person plural, which suggests that the need for resurrection of “we who were dead in our trespasses and sins” would apply to
Jew and Gentile, on Kinzer’s reading. If these apply to the Jews as well, is
there not more at stake in the Jewish reception of Yeshua as Messiah than
simply an acknowledgment of the already intimate presence of him “who
lives within Israel and directs its way, who constitutes the hidden center of
its tradition and way of life” (304–5)? While the ongoing, irrevocable election of the people of Israel is not in doubt, isn’t there more to say about
what is new in the New Covenant than that the nations are now joined
to Israel? And is not the newness of the New Covenant bound both to
faith in Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit?
No doubt Kinzer would say that he is writing for the Gentile ekklesia,
and would say something different to his Jewish brethren. His emphasis
on continuity and commonality between Israel and the ekklesia is entirely
understandable in a book that attempts to counter the prevailing view of
Jewish legal observance as at best superfluous and at worst sinful. Nevertheless, because the presence and action of the Holy Spirit is so central
to the claims that the New Testament makes about the New Covenant,
in its impact on both Jews and Gentiles, Kinzer needs to clarify what
difference the outpouring of “the gift of the Father” makes, how that
outpouring is new in the New Covenant, and how it relates to explicit
faith in Yeshua as the Messiah of Israel and the Savior of the world.
In line with the foregoing observation, to say that the “schism between
the Jewish people and the ekklesia can be healed without coming to full
agreement over Yeshua’s messianic identity” (307) is also rather troubling.
It seems to me that some kind of fundamental division objectively exists
when there is disagreement as to whether this particular son of Abraham
is also the Son of God come in the flesh. If “schism” is taken to mean
active enmity, then, no, healing schism does not require such agreement.
But if “schism” means a disruption in communion, such as would be
appropriately expressed in the Christian tradition by gathering at the
Eucharistic table, then healing that schism must involve recognition of
the identity of the One with Whom we commune.
Despite these reservations about Kinzer’s proposal, this is a book well
worth pondering as an important starting point for a vital theological
topic. It offers a fresh, ambitious attempt to assess the status of the life,
tradition, and witness of the millions of observant Jews who worship the
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of all, and the maker of the

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John P. Yocum

covenant at Sinai, and who do so in obedience to that covenant’s demands.
Moreover, its case is made with a full and unreserved reverence for the
New Testament as the written Word of God. His three proposals for how
the Church might act to promote healing of divisions between Jew and
Christian Gentile deserve a serious response and, at least for the most
part, approbation. Amidst the clamor for dialogue among religions, how
can we neglect dialogue between Jewish and Gentile brethren in Christ?
This book makes an honest, earnest, and valuable contribution to that
N&V
vital discussion.

Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 5, No. 4 (2007): 907–936

907

Book Reviews
Changing Unjust Laws Justly: Pro-Life Solidarity with “The Last
and the Least” by Colin Harte (Washington, DC:The Catholic University
of America Press, 2005), vii + 363 pp.
H ARTE IS the pro-lifer’s pro-lifer. In his Changing Unjust Laws Justly: ProLife Solidarity with “The Last and the Least,” Harte argues persuasively for
solidarity with all human life, even with the last and the least among us,
namely, infants in the womb. His central thesis is that solidarity with the
last and the least among us would preclude voting for legislation that
would restrict abortions. To vote in favor of such legislation, he argues,
would be to vote for a law that is fundamentally unjust.
In Part One, Harte deals with the practical realities of restricting abortion.What is missing in this debate, he offers, is a denial of solidarity especially when certain categories of unborn (for example, in the case of rape,
incest, genetic anomalies, etc.) children are excluded from protection
against abortion. In Part Two, Harte discusses the legal questions surrounding the abortion debate, especially the notions of legal “permission” to
carry out abortions versus legal “toleration” of the same. It is within this
section that the author discusses the issue of intrinsically unjust laws
among which are included not only the most liberal abortion laws, but
also the most restrictive. Even the most restrictive abortion legislation
leaves some infants unprotected against death by abortion. Harte takes up
ethical considerations in Part Three. Here he deals with the fundamental
distinction between bad acts and good acts, material cooperation, the
principle of totality, the notion of the lesser evil, and the law of gradualness: the latter three in the context of avoiding ethical inconsistencies.
Legislative matters make up Part Four. Here Harte makes the distinction
between just and unjust proposals and looks at the history of voting
opportunities. In the Part Five, Harte discusses magisterial teachings, especially Pope John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae and Veritatis Splendor. This is
followed by an overview of his arguments and conclusions.The book ends
with five appendices containing the texts of various abortion laws.

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Book Reviews

The most controversial part of Harte’s position is, without doubt, his
analysis of Evangelium Vitae, especially the meaning of §73.3. Here we
read that,
when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to
procured abortion was well know, could licitly support proposals aimed
at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative
consequences at the level of general morality and public morality.This
does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but
rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects.

Harte’s interpretation of this passage, we will see, does not permit legislators to vote for restrictive abortion laws. He bases his conclusions on
the paragraph that immediately precedes the one just quoted, which
states: “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting
abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part
in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it’ ” (§73.2).
For those who have been heartened by John Paul II’s approach to the
dilemma in which many pro-life legislators find themselves, namely,
whether or not to vote in favor of legislation that would restrict abortions, Harte’s more apodictic position may come as a surprise.What kind
of moral analysis lies behind John Paul II’s approach? What are we to
make of the preceding paragraph that would seem to preclude voting for
more restrictive legislation? Is Harte correct in his interpretation of Evangelium Vitae, or isn’t he?
Regarding the kind of moral analysis that lies behind John Paul II’s
approach, it is fairly safe to presume that the pope draws from Veritatis
Splendor, §78:
The morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the
“object” rationally chosen by the deliberate will. . . . In order to be able to
grasp the object of an act which specifies that act morally, it is therefore necessary to place oneself in the perspective of the acting person. The
object of the act of willing is in fact a freely chosen kind of behavior.
[original emphasis]

The consensus among moral theologians commenting on Evangelium
Vitae, §73, is that, in the case of the elected official voting for legislation
to restrict abortion, the freely chosen object would be the vote for said
legislation with the further intention, that is, the motive, of limiting its
scope. What lies outside of the legislator’s intention (praeter intentionem)
would be the continued practice of abortion that the law permits. Harte

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909

does not accept this consensus opinion. He argues that these moral theologians have misread both Evangelium Vitae, §73, and Veritatis Splendor, §78.
Harte argues that Evangelium Vitae, §73.3, must be understood in light of
§73.2. §73.2 prohibits voting for abortion laws of any kind, even the most
restrictive.Why is this? Because such laws are intrinsically unjust.According
to Harte, §73.3 does not contradict this statement. How so? Because §73.3
states that a legislator may vote for proposals aimed at limiting the harm done
by such a law.Voting for proposals that limit the harm done by even restrictive abortion laws is not the same as voting for a law itself.To vote for such
a law would, in Harte’s estimation, be to vote for a law that is intrinsically
unjust by virtue of the fact that even restrictive abortion laws preclude those
to whom they do not apply, for example, infants conceived as a result of
incest, rape, who are a danger to the mother’s life, or who may be in some
manner handicapped. In spite of the good motives of pro-life legislators, the
choice to vote for restrictive abortion laws would be the choice of an object
that is intrinsically evil, as Harte reads Veritatis Splendor, §78.
The purpose of this review is not to resolve the divergent interpretations of the two encyclicals. It is my hope, rather, that this review will
goad those who are interested in the topic to pick up and read Harte’s
worthwhile contribution to the discussion. Wherever one stands on the
issue, Harte’s book will not disappoint. It will find a welcome home in
college and university libraries and in the hands and on the shelves of
N&V
educated readers.
Benedict M. Guevin, O.S.B.
Saint Anselm College
Manchester, New Hampshire

Constructing Antichrist: Paul, Biblical Commentary, and the
Development of Doctrine in the Early Middle Ages by Kevin L.
Hughes (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005),
278 pp.
K EVIN H UGHES has written a thorough study on how the Second
Letter to the Thessalonians has functioned as a vehicle for the development (in different ways) of early medieval thinking on the Antichrist.This
means that for instance the Johannine perspective (1 Jn 2:18–22, 4:1–3;
2 Jn 7; Rev 13) does not receive much attention. However, what the
book loses in scope it gains in depth: By focusing on 2 Thessalonians
(which is included, in the book, in the Latin of the Vulgate and in English
translation) Hughes provides a detailed survey of one specific avenue of
thinking about the Antichrist.

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Book Reviews

This is not to say that even within the tradition of commentaries on
2 Thessalonians Hughes fails to uncover different strands. On the
contrary, building on suggestions made by Bernard McGinn, he helpfully
distinguishes in chapter one between a number of polarities, characterizing the role of the Antichrist as external (evil comes from without) or
internal (it comes from within); as in terms of dread or as a deceiver who
lures the faithful away; Hughes further introduces a “temporal polarity”
in which the Antichrist is described as either “present” or “to come.”
These polarities then allow Hughes to distinguish between “apocalyptic
realism” (which understands the Antichrist primarily as imminent and
external), and a more “spiritual” interpretation of Antichrist (in which
the Antichrist is seen as immanent, internal, and deceptive).The first position emphasizes the historical, the political, and the future. The second
prefers to interpret apocalyptic events and figures primarily in terms that
refer to the present life of the Church and the soul, and only secondarily to the future judgment.
In chapter two, dealing with “apocalyptic realism” in the early Church,
A.D. 200–400, Hughes offers an in-depth overview of a number of
authors (Ambrosiaster,Theodore of Mopsuestia, Jerome, Pelagius) who all
share an emphasis upon the non-allegorical, eschatological meaning of
the Antichrist, although none claim that the arrival of the Antichrist is
imminent. Chapter three deals with a more spiritual exegesis of 2 Thessalonians: Especially influential in this regard is the typological interpretation by Tyconius, an excommunicated Donatist layman from the end of
the fourth century. Without denying that the end will come, Tyconius
very much puts the emphasis elsewhere, on a more spiritual reading: For
him the revelation of the “man of sin” is actually that of “the body of sin”
within the Church.Tyconius appears to have influenced the later Augustine who proves quite dismissive of predictive, realist apocalyptic speculation. Augustine remains agnostic about the details of the events of the
end although he remains convinced of their essential truth; and he too
interprets the Antichrist primarily in terms of the growing body of iniquity within the Church.
Chapter four covers mainly the Carolingian period and beyond: from
A.D. 500–1000. During this period a synthesis of apocalyptic realism and
the Augustinian critique was eventually forged. Key figures that pass the
review include Rabanus Maurus, Sedulius Scotus, and Haimo of Auxerre.
The following chapter examines the way Paul and the Antichrist were
seen in the early scholastic exegesis (A.D. 1000–1160), with particular
attention to Lanfranc of Bec (the teacher of Anselm of Canterbury) who
affirms the apocalyptic realist perspective, editing and reinterpreting the

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911

Augustinian position to support this perspective. Lanfranc also develops a
new form of biblical exegesis, attempting to understand the text first
through close grammatical analysis, followed by drawing up his own
interpretation while using individual glosses summarizing the tradition.
Major attention is also given to Bruno the Carthusian, the Glossa ordinaria, and Peter Lombard (who preserves the different exegetical traditions, both realist and spiritualist, although his own preferences clearly lie
with a thoroughgoing spiritualist reading).
Kevin Hughes has produced a solid scholarly and detailed study of the
way the Antichrist was perceived and “constructed” through the lens of
early medieval commentaries on the Second Letter to the Thessalonians.
He has shown that the apocalyptic imagination was a constant cultural
fact in the Middle Ages, thereby challenging the view that the early
medieval high culture was essentially “post-apocalyptic.” He has also
reminded us that the medieval tradition of apocalypticism is faithful to
the tension of the “already” and the “not yet” within the New Testament:
“Antichrist was alive and well in the early Middle Ages, both as the
immanent presence of evil and as the coming evil one.” (250).This book,
with its detailed and nuanced reading of early medieval apocalypticism in
the tradition of commentaries on 2 Thessalonians, will undoubtedly
N&V
remain a standard work for many years to come.
Rik Van Nieuwenhove
Mary Immaculate College
Limerick, Ireland

Cusanus:The Legacy of Learned Ignorance edited by Peter Casarella
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), xxxi + 280 pp.
S ANDWICHED between Meister Eckhart (1260?–1329?) and Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64), cardinal-statesmantheologian, vies with them for regularly missing top billing in the history
of philosophical theology. Astride the “early-modern” period, he resists
classification, so had often been seen as a forerunner of the Renaissance,
notably in the neo-classical revival of Plato and Platonism—a view that
this collection partially inverts by tracing his continuity with earlier
figures. His “Platonism” is especially evidenced by the recourse he has to
complex mathematical figures to illustrate the ineffable relation of creatures to their creator, a topic neatly elucidated in this volume, itself the
result of a symposium called in 2001 to celebrate the six-hundredth
anniversary of his birth. Contributors include long-standing expositors of
Cusanus (as he has come to be called), while the diversity of topics aptly

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illustrates the range of his life and work, from debates at the Council of
Basel regarding the degree of authority to be given either to pope or to
councils, and on to be papal legate to Byzantium to negotiate a shortlived reconciliation between Eastern and Western Christianity. As the
proceedings of a symposium celebrating the range of Cusanus’s work,
however, one misses a focus, so those wishing a clearer presentation of his
singular contribution to philosophical theology ought to let the disparity of these essays direct them to the superbly focused work by Clyde Lee
Miller, Reading Cusanus: Metaphor and Dialectic in a Conjectural Universe
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003),
where thorny issues like “negative theology” are treated with both philosophical deftness and theological sensitivity. Taken together, these two
works would then genially introduce us to a figure who epitomizes that
quality of medieval theological reflection for which Aquinas offers a
paradigm, notably in transforming Hellenic philosophical categories to
negotiate what Robert Sokolowski has dubbed “the distinction” of
creator from creatures. A participant in the symposium, Miller’s mature
reflections on the interaction of language and logic in Cusanus show how
adroitly he epitomizes the subdominant Platonic themes elucidating
Christian faith, from Scottus Eriugena through Meister Eckhart, to
return us to an illuminating recapitulation of the “unknowing” regnant
in Aquinas’s philosophical extensions of “Christian doctrine.” Seen in this
way, Cusanus offers a capstone to classical medieval philosophical theology, as well as offering fresh initiatives.
As organizer of this symposium and editor of the volume, Peter
Casarella offers an illuminating introduction, linking these efforts with
those of 1964 in Brixen, Cusanus’s Tyrolean see, for the fifth centenary of
his death.The 1964 papers “were oriented toward the idea that Cusanus’s
thought was an original synthesis of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance
sources whose principal function was to pave the way for modernity,”
while “the focus in 2001 was not so much on modernity’s origins as on
its manifold expressions” (xxiii). Moreover, he notes how our current
ambivalence regarding “modernity” is also exhibited in this symposium
in a way it was not in 1964, so that “the overcoming of modernity’s
excesses—whether such excess is posited in the anthropocentric eclipse
of a sense of meaning and wonder in the world or a positivistic separation of the pope’s juridical authority from the need for consent and
reception in the Church as a whole—is also in view in many of the
essays” (xxiv–xxv). A masterfully succinct summary of the present legacy
of On Learned Ignorance, “the first truly philosophical and the most
programmatic work of Nicholas” (xxv) completes this introduction.

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The essays can be grouped in four clusters: (1) spirituality and philosophical theology, beginning with an illuminating translation of his
sermon on the Pater Noster (Nancy Hudson and Frank Tobin) and Bernard
McGinn’s exposition of his De visione Dei, locating it in the neo-Platonic
tradition of “Seeing and Not Seeing” God. Jasper Hopkins then details
Cusanus’s “Intellectual Relationship to Anselm of Canterbury,” while
Louis Dupré explores “The Question of Pantheism from Eckhart to
Cusanus” and Wilhelm Dupre “The Image of the Living God” in human
beings. (2) The power of visual representation is explored by Karsten
Harries in the “Power and Poverty of Perspective,” while Walter Andreas
Euler essays an interpretation of “An Italian Painting from the Late
Fifteenth Century” as a way of introducing Nicholas’s efforts to come to
terms with Islam. While his interpretation of the three figures as representative of the three Abrahamic faiths is disputed in a companion piece
by Il Kim, his assessment of the balance of Cusanus’s ground-breaking attitudes toward Islam is quite judicious. (3) Cusanus’s attempts to lay out the
civil and ecclesial polities as complementary are assessed by Thomas Prügl
—“The Concept of Infallibility”; Cary Nederman in “Empire Meets
Nation,” as Cusanus tries to make way for new forms of political life; and
in Paul Sigmund’s critical assessment of Cusanus’s contribution to modern
political theory in “Medieval and Modern Constitutionalism.” (4) Elizabeth Brient then explores “Three Mathematical Metaphors from De docta
ignorantia” to ask how “the infinite can be the measure of the finite?,”
while Regine Kather extends the “Arguments for the Relativity of
Motion” in his cosmology to “Their Transformation in Einstein’s Theory
of Relativity.” Rich fare, indeed, and the fertility of Cusanus’s inquiry is
clearly demonstrated by the way each of these distinguished thinkers can
find him contributing incisively to their respective disciplines. In nearly
every case, his way of breaking new ground allows his seminal explorations to shed fresh light on current ways of considering these topics—
another fascinating sign of his diversity.
Allow me to inscribe summary statements of each author, some more
amply than others. Beginning with the initial set, McGinn notes that
the Cardinal’s treatise was larger than its times. In De visione Dei Cusanus
not only rethought and reformulated the fundamentals of the dialectical Neoplatonic mysticism developed by Dionysius, Eriugena, and
Eckhart, but he also sought to bring to coherence issues about God’s
visible invisibility that were rooted in Scripture and had been present
in Christian mysticism since its earliest encounters with Hellenic
philosophy. . . . It was a new creation. (52–53)

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914

Then Jasper Hopkins:
Nicholas, making use of Anselm’s writings, seeks to extend and supplement those of Anselm’s ideas that he incorporates into his own metaphysics, . . . lead[ing] Nicholas to speak in paradoxical ways: God, he says
is unknowable because He is infinitely knowable; God is the Being of
being and the Not-being of not-being; God can give himself to me
only if He gives me to myself. In such paradoxicality, Anselm’s thought
becomes . . . subsumed, elevated, and transformed. (71–72)

Louis Dupré emphatically insists that
Cusanus never was a pantheist, no more than Eckhart. But their views
on the relation between God and creation differ from common
doctrine on causality. . . . Cusanus avoids that ambiguity [between
formal or efficient causality] in his radical equation of God’s immanent
presence with a person’s identity. (87)

(I would suggest, however, that Sara Grant has effectively challenged a
“common doctrine on causality,” as it intends to reflect Aquinas’s teaching,
in her Teape lectures, Towards an Alternative Theology: Reflections of a Nondualist Christian [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002].)
Wilhelm Dupre allows that “much of what Cusanus says sounds exaggerated in our ears; [yet] the metaphor of the living image . . . brings the meaning and experience of humanity into perspective and inspires us to give the
aesthetic dimensions of our being the credit they deserve” (102).
In the second set, Karsten Harries reminds us that “we have no way of
understanding God’s creation as He understands it” (121); hence the need
for conjectures—a favorite term of Cusanus.Yet what guides our formulating such conjectures is that
our soul experiences something of . . . the call of the divine Logos, in all
that is beautiful. The beauty of creation opens windows in the house
our reason has built. Only by thus opening ourselves to what lies
outside that house can our life and thought gain the measures that are
a presupposition of all responsibility. (126)

Walter Andreas Euler folds his original paper, with the working title of
“The Christology of the Cribratio alkorani,” into speculation regarding a
late fifteenth-century painting in Sassoferrato (Italy), whose three figures
he takes to represent the three Abrahamic faiths. Il Kim’s sequel punctures
that line of speculation, but Euler’s reflections on Cusanus and Islam
stand. Bedeviled as he was by a poor translation of the Qur’an as well as

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hamstrung by prevailing attitudes in the West, often fertilized by fear,
Cusanus did not keep from searching “tirelessly throughout the Qur’an
for links with his understanding of religions” (141), specifically that “the
actual path to God has at its center the Christological dogma of the
hypostatic union of God and man in one person” (140), which Islam
could, of course, never countenance.
In the third set,Thomas Prügl offers a careful analysis of infallibility in
Cusanus, the more significant for his early role in the “conciliarist” movement. He concludes that
infallibility in Cusanus stems from a soteriological context. . . . The
Roman Church (Ecclesia romana in all its realization) and the universal
councils share the privilege of inerrancy, [which] however, presupposes
broad consent within the Church, especially consent among the members
of a council and the consent between council and Pope. (175–76)

Cary Nederman links Cusanus with “Piccolomini [to] demonstrate how
genuine intellectual commitment to the idea of a universal empire did
not preclude acceptance and justification of the national state system that
had clearly enveloped Europe by the fifteenth century” (194). Paul
Sigmund reprises a debate between Nederman and Francis Oakley
regarding the “differences between late medieval and early modern
constitutionalism” (207), without attempting to conciliate their views, yet
firmly distancing Cusanus from Locke’s “much more individualistic
theory of consent” (208).
In the fourth set, Elizabeth Brient explores Cusanus’s twin assertions
that “[i]t is evident that there is no proportion between the infinite and
the finite” yet that “the divine infinite is ‘the one, most simple, and most
adequate measure of the whole universe and of everything existing in the
universe’ ” (210). Absent any “proportion,” what could “measure” possibly mean here? The answer can be found in a metaphysical strategy
closely connected with the relation between One and many: “[E]very
finite creature participates (albeit in an limited way) in the divine infinite”
(220) (emphasis added). Moreover, the inscribed polygon tending, at its
limit, to the circle in which it is inscribed offers an example within
creation of “the way in which the infinite acts as the measure of the finite
because it is [displayed in the limit as] the essence of each finite thing”
(224). Finally, Regine Kather, while acknowledging that “the starting
point of the theory of relativity differs from the cosmology Cusanus
developed,” goes on to note how

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916

insight into the methodological and conceptual limits of a physical
cosmology and into the ontological conditions of human life leads
Einstein—as well as other theoretical physicists of the twentieth
century—to a view of the world that converges in a certain respect
with that of Cusanus. (249–50)

And as if all this were not enough, Peter Casarella appends a rich panoply
of “suggested reading,” where one can find the work by Lee Miller with
which we began this review.
N&V
David Burrell, C.S.C.
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

Implicit Moral Knowledge by Ralph McInerny (Soveria Mannelli:
Rubbettino Publishers, 2006), 49 pp.
THIS brief but very interesting book contains the first of the Aquinas
Lectures of the Thomas International project. The lecture was given in
Palermo, Sicily, in 2004, and it deals with one of the most important topics
in modern and contemporary philosophy: the foundations of knowledge
and the relation between implicit and explicit knowledge in ethics.
This is about the “great questions which, one way or another, everyone already has asked or will eventually ask” (25). As one might expect,
in the course of history there have been many significantly different
answers.With regard to the foundations of knowledge, modern philosophers (from Descartes on) have put forward perspectives completely
different from the past.Therefore, to deal with this topic with the help of
one of the most important thinkers of the ancient and medieval period,
Thomas Aquinas, can be very stimulating in order “to promote engagement between classical thought and modern and contemporary thought,
in all branches of human knowledge” (9).This is the aim of the Thomas
International project, as its president, Fulvio Di Blasi, states in the preface.
Since the project aims also at combining “the best energies of the old and
the new continents” (9), it is promoted by both American and Italian
research institutes.Accordingly every Aquinas lecture will be published in
both English and Italian.
This book is easy to read, even though its theme is crucial to the
history of philosophy. As the author states at the beginning, “philosophy,
at least as I have engaged in it, call it the Aristotelian way, prides itself on
beginning where everyone already is” (19). McInerny adds that “the small
hope I have is that, when I am done, you will say, I already knew that”

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917

(19–20).Well, this is not so puzzling as it might seem. Philosophy should
provide accounts for the experience shared universally by humanity
because, before doing philosophy, the philosopher is a man.This is why I
said earlier that this book is easy to read, and why the author maintains
that his aim is to explicate what everybody already knows.
Let me now talk about this point in detail, since it constitutes the speculative core of the book. First of all, I would like to point out that this
book presupposes a very specific image of philosophy. McInerny suggests
that we call it “the Aristotelian way,” and he seems to use Alasdair McIntyre’s definition of Aristotle as “the first philosopher of common sense.”
In fact, the great Greek thinker was the first to take common experience
as the starting point of philosophy. As such, philosophy should only
unfold what people already know.We could add that it should not discover
or produce, as it is the case in the scientific and technological domain, but
only explicate.To use a modern word, philosophy must show the foundations of knowledge. In other words, the foundations already exist because
every knowledge presupposes them, and the goal of philosophy is to
explicate them.To give an example, in the realm of moral knowledge the
philosopher should not find new moral rules but only define principles
already known by every man (known only implicitly, as a presupposition
of every action) and then explain how to act in conformity with them.
I hope that everything I have said so far is clear. For clarity’s sake, I also
want to explain what the “common experience” is, out of which every
philosopher should start. If philosophy is the quest for truth—as its
etymology implies—then its starting point must be something true. By
the same token, it cannot consist of a not-specified “common knowledge,” but only of what we cannot not know (as in the suggestive title of a
book by Jay Budziszewski, What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide [Dallas:
Spence Publishing, 2003]). I am referring to judgments that have the
following characteristics: Firstly, they are true; secondly, they are common
in that everybody knows them immediately without any kind of cognitive process.They cannot be demonstrated except per absurdum (the only
form of demonstration in matter of principles). That the world (understood as the whole of everything that is) exists and that I exist:These are
only some examples of what I am referring to. From ancient times on,
and particularly in modern and contemporary histories of philosophy,
such judgments have been called “common sense” (from Latin sentire =
to judge, to think, to have an opinion). Many philosophers have dealt
with them in many different countries and languages (“sensus communis,” “Gemeinsinn,” “senso comune,” “sentído commun,” “sens commun,”
“common sense”). To recall only a few: Juan Luis Vives, Claude Buffier,

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Giambattista Vico, Thomas Reid, Friedrich Oetinger, Antonio Rosmini,
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Gilson’s
pupil, the contemporary Italian Antonio Livi. Although employing very
different philosophical perspectives, they all have pointed out that not all
knowledge can be reached through demonstration and have opposed the
tendency of some modern philosophers to reduce philosophy to the
mathematical method. In this respect, they have rejected every kind of
rationalism and have stressed that philosophy is “wisdom,” that its beginning is in universal human experience, which should be simply acknowledged as it is. As McInerny says by means of a suggestive image,“when a
mother asks, ‘How would you like it if someone did that to you?’ she
expects and gets a recognition from her child. Is she teaching him the
Golden Rule? Only in the sense that she teaches him English, presupposing the capacity to speak” (43).
All said and done, I must confess that I do not fully understand why
McInerny states that “the first truth of thought, language, and reality is
that something cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same
respect” (35).True, the principle of non-contradiction is the first logical
principle, but it cannot be considered the first judgment.What I mean is
that contra-dictio refers only to dictio, only to thought and language; in the
sense that it is useful to understand, it is the first logical principle, but it
is not the first content of knowledge. It is possible to state that something
cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect only by
logically presupposing the following:
1. that something exists;
2. that something is different from something else;
3. that not only one, but many things exist; and
4. that things change in time.
This is what Gilson meant when he stated that the first truth is that “res
sunt,” and that the principle of non-contradiction is based on this sentence.
Perhaps McInerny would agree with my explanation, since he himself
observed that what he had just defined “the first truth” (the principle of
contradiction) “is said to be grounded in knowledge of being, of that
which is, and everybody has that” (35).
It goes without saying that in this context “common experience” or
“common sense” does not refer to what people generally know (this is
irrelevant within a philosophical discourse), but to the very foundations
of knowledge, to what people intuitively know as the presupposition of

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919

everything they know (knowledge), to what cannot be denied. True,
some modern philosophers tried to deny this (from the “cogito” on), but
for some others (at least those I have already quoted) this has only led to
a further confirmation that this position lacks philosophical validity.
Let me now take into consideration the term “implicit philosophy.”
John Paul II used it in the encyclical Fides et Ratio as a synonym of
common experience. This is very important: Although the pope was
interested principally in the relation between faith and reason, he also
wanted to deal with the foundations of knowledge. McInerny himself
used the term “implicit philosophy” as a synonym of prephilosophical
knowledge or common sense and I personally agree with this choice.
However, I also see a close relationship between the notion of implicit
philosophy and the encyclical’s topic. It is true that at the end of the book
McInerny refers to this in some evocative image. He says:
Theology? From Plato to Chomsky, philosophers have confronted this
ineluctable fact about us. We have the capacity to learn, practically,
morally, theoretically. No other human confers it on us. . . . There are
metaphysical and theological discussions of this, but all those discussions
bear on something already there. (47)

Clearly, McInerny sees the connection but he does not dwell on it. If one
were to further explicate it, one would come to the connection between
philosophy and Christian faith. As “wisdom,” philosophy deals with the
foundations of every knowledge. Any discourse about foundations takes
us back to the metaphysical relationship that binds all creatures to their
Creator. Not by chance, Heidegger had interpreted the Cartesian cogito
as abandonment of the Christian Revelation.
Maybe this remark is useful also with regard to the Thomas International
project, because “to confront the perennial questions of the human heart
and to seek solutions to the problems facing our society” (as Di Blasi says
on page 9) is very difficult without referring constantly to the importance of Christian faith for society’s development and our culture at large.
I would like to add that what I have just said does not support any
kind of confusion between faith and reason. Christian Revelation itself
helps human reason to work on its own and poses many questions for
philosophers thanks to its own rational foundations. (Antonio Livi has
dwelled on this in Reasons for Believing. On the Rationality of Christian Faith
[Aurora, CO:The Davies Group Publishers, 2005].) This is why philosophy would not be the same today without its relationship with Christian
religion (it suffices to mention such notions as those of creation, freedom,
person, history).

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Implicit Moral Knowledge represents a very good beginning for the Thomas
International project. McInerny’s book shows both the perennial value of its
central topic and the extraordinary speculative wealth one can find in the
classical philosophical tradition and in particular in Thomas Aquinas.With
regard to Thomas, I would like only to remind the reader that he came very
close to a definition of common sense. In his discourse on “cognitio experimentalis” (see Summa theologiae, I–II, q. 112, a. 5), he said that only by willing we know our will, only by living we know that we live. In his lecture
and book, McInerny expressed this thought so well that to quote him
represents the best way to conclude this review: “Articulating common
sense is something like explaining a joke. No explanation can substitute for
the outburst of laughter that preceded the explanation.The explanation is
not the joke, it presupposes an immediate response” (21).
N&V
Roberto Di Ceglie
Pontifical Lateran University
Rome, Italy

Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology by Lewis Ayres (New York: Oxford University Press,
2004), 475 pp.
T HE DEBATE following a Church council is often as significant as what
went on before and during the council.That was certainly true after the
Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 451, and it has been borne out in modern
times in the decades since Vatican Council II. But it was also the case after
the Council of Nicaea, the first worldwide assembly of Christian bishops.
What happened in the five decades between Nicaea in 325 and the
Council of Constantinople in 381 has formed our understanding of its
decisions and our interpretation of its creed.
Lewis Ayres believes that the conventional accounts of this epoch, dutifully repeated again and again in histories of Christian thought, have gotten
the story wrong and are, in his words,“deeply mistaken” (11). Nicaea and Its
Legacy is a revisionist interpretation of the controversy over the decree of
Nicaea and of the theological views that eventually brought about a resolution to the conflict. It is an ambitious project and Ayres carries it off with
learning and intelligence.The discussion is detailed and dense, but he offers
fresh insights into many longstanding problems as well as a comprehensive
view of the formation of classical Trinitarian thinking. But this is not simply
a historical study; Ayres also has a contemporary agenda and the final part
of the book offers a proposal about how to re-appropriate more faithfully
the classical Christian theological tradition.

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921

To lay the groundwork for his argument Ayres notes some puzzling
facts about Nicaea and its aftermath: In the ancient sources there is no
suggestion that the creed of Nicaea was a universal statement of faith
binding on the whole Church; there is no mention of the creed of
Nicaea in letters or other documents from 325 to the early 340s, that is
during the first fifteen years after the Council adjourned; the terminology of Nicaea, for example, words such as ousia or homoousion, was not
considered sacrosanct, the necessary starting point for thinking about the
relation of the Son to the Father;Arius was only one item on the Council’s agenda, the bishops also issued a number of liturgical, disciplinary,
and administrative canons; there was no “Arian” school, that is a group of
teachers who sought to preserve and defend Arius’s theology.
To explain such anomalies Ayres shows that in the early fourth century
there were four theological “trajectories” reflected in the writings of major
Christian thinkers. Identified by the names of individual figures, they are
the following: (1) Alexander of Alexandria and the early Athanasius who
taught, following Origen, the eternal generation of the Son from the
Father, yet resisted speaking of three hypostases. (2) The Eusebian approach
found in bishops such Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea,
who, like Arius, believed that the Word came into being not through
“generation” but as an act of the divine will. St. Paul, they argued, did not
call Christ the power of God or the wisdom of God, but “God’s power and
God’s wisdom” without the article. (3) Marcellus of Ancyra who thought
that the use of the terms hypostasis and ousia in the plural was a serious
mistake and threatened the Church’s teaching on the oneness of God.
Understandably he was suspected of Sabellianism. (4) Latin writers, for
example,Tertullian, Novatian, Lactantius, and the early Hilary, emphasized
the unity of God, but were strongly antiadoptionist.At the same time they
carefully distinguished the Father from the Son, the one “an overflowing
fount,” the other “a stream flowing . . . from that” (73).
Ayres contends that in the wake of Alexander’s condemnation of Arius
in Alexandria and the deliberations at the Council the differences in these
several theological positions came to the surface.Though all these thinkers
were supporters of Nicaea—to different degrees—and could agree on
many central theological points, the Council’s decree did not resolve the
differences in their approaches. For that reason, in the decades that
followed, its formulations became contentious and differences in interpretation led to the sorry spectacle of regional councils going their own way
and in some cases anathematizing one another. It was only as Nicaea was
given a fresh interpretation by another generation of theologians, most
notably the Cappadocians, that its language became authoritative and its

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creed acknowledged as binding on all.The reception of the Council took
place not through a benign process of acquiescence but through a bitter
and protracted theological (and political) controversy that stretched over
two generations.
The theological differences were real, and it was only after much reflection and argument, and, one might add, several failed attempts, that the
leading bishops of the Church were able to find terms and formulas that
all could live with. The “orthodox” understanding of the Trinity was
achieved only at the end of the controversy. Along the way there were
definite casualties, thinkers who held on too long to ways of thinking that
had to be discarded because they were thought incapable of expressing the
fullness of the God that Christians worshipped. Though the mystery of the
triune God was beyond the grasp of human thought, the Church had to
find a way to express in human language what was believed in human
language.To do less was to make Christian teaching a matter of feeling and
sentiment or of will and power. Of course much that transpired during
the decades after Nicaea was low and dirty, the machinations of ambitious,
ruthless, and self-serving bishops, as Ramsay MacMullen has shown in his
recent Voting about God in Early Church Councils (New Haven:Yale University Press, 2006).Yet any serious student of the period must be impressed
by the high seriousness of the endeavor.
The bishops realized that there were insurmountable obstacles in the
way of defining orthodoxy by reference to “individual terminologies and
creedal formulae” (84). For this reason Ayres proposes that the developments after the Council created a distinct “theological culture,” a way of
thinking about the mystery of the Triune God that is common to both
Eastern and Western thinkers. Christian thinkers were able to set forth in
great detail the inner logic of Christian belief about the relation of the
Son to the Father, and they insisted that the language of Christian doctrine
be interpreted within the context of the Church’s understanding of the
Holy Scriptures and her worship and prayer.
The Church Fathers were not interested in ideas as such. For them
theology was always in service of the praise and adoration of the Triune
God and the practice of the Christian life. The “Nicene” theologians
thought that their opponents failed “to maintain appropriate attention to
the mysteriousness of God” (343) and were inattentive to the consequences
of their teaching on the “training of the soul.” In a sermon on John 1:1–3,
Augustine says to his congregation that this passage was not read “to be
understood” but to help us discover “what prevents our understanding and
so move it out of the way and hunger to grasp the eternal Word, and for
ourselves to be changed from worse to better” (338). Ayres remarks, “the

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skopos of the Scripture intrinsically includes the journey of the soul in
Christ towards union with and understanding of the Triune God” (338).
In his presentation of the “theological culture” of Nicaea, Ayres gives
greater attention to the Scripture than to the liturgy. He does mention
St. Basil’s appeal to the baptismal formula in his defense of the divinity of
the Spirit, but it is the scriptural context of theological language that
dictates the argument of the book.“The language of Scripture is taken as
the primary and most trustworthy language for Christians”; and the technical terms they forged were conceived “not as a necessary transposition
of ideas, but as an elucidation of the text of the Scripture” (277).
Yet I felt in reading the book that Ayres is still too much formed by
older ways of thinking about patristic thought and that the centrality of
the Scriptures in early Christian writings does not actually shape his
mode of discourse. In truth there are long sections in which the Scriptures enter only tangentially into the discussion. And Ayres has the frustrating habit of mentioning a biblical text but not actually citing the
passage under discussion. As a consequence the reader can easily miss the
force of the argument being presented. Inexplicably the book does not
have a scriptural index. More significantly he could have made the differences between the four “trajectories” of thinking in the early fourth
century much more vivid by illustrating how the several writers dealt
differently with the same biblical texts or deployed other texts.
As an example of what is missing, consider Exodus 3:14,“I am who I
am.” Ayres mentions the text (without giving the scriptural reference) in
passing in a discussion of Gregory Nazianzen’s use of light imagery, but
he does not let the reader know why this passage was so problematic and,
in the end, so rich for Trinitarian thinking. The reason it was difficult is
that it suggested that only God the Father was “being” in the proper sense
of the term.
Because Eunomius thought it referred only to God the Father, not the
Son, Gregory of Nyssa discusses it in some detail in his Contra Eunomium.
In his interpretation of the passage, Gregory first cites Galatians 4:8,
where Paul says that the Galatians once served “beings that by nature are
no gods.” He notes that Paul uses the same expression,“to be,” in this case
“are no gods,” as is used in Exodus, but he also employs the expression
“served” with relation to “those who are no gods.” From there Paul moves
to the term “servant” in Romans 1 where one reads “servant of Jesus
Christ.” From this he concludes that we “no longer serve those who are
by nature no gods” but serve the one who is by nature God “to whom
every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth.”That is to say, Jesus Christ,
like the Father, belongs in the category of the “one who is.”

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Next Paul cites 1 Timothy 6:16, another key text, which reads, “king
of kings and Lord of lords who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light.” Like Exodus 3:14 this passage also seems to assume that
the Father is uniquely God and alone possesses immortality. But Gregory
points out that in the Gospel of John Jesus says, “I am the life” and so is
also the source of immortality, and as the “true light,” he too is “unapproachable.” From these texts then we learn that the “Father is not without the Son” and the words “I am who I am” apply equally to the Son
as to the Father.
Ayres is of course aware of this kind of reasoning in the Church Fathers,
but he passes too quickly over the actual interpretation of biblical passages
in the texts he cites to move on to what seems more properly theological
or philosophical.The reader seldom senses how pervasively the language of
the Bible actually gives shape to the form of the arguments.The theological issues that dominated the discussion were at bottom exegetical. Fourthcentury writers were faced with a panoply of biblical texts that needed
interpretation, and different writers sought to reconcile the seeming
contradictions between biblical passages in different ways. In turn this led
them to conclusions that were often at odds with each other. It was only
as the interpretation of key texts gained wide assent that a consistent theological perspective took hold in the Church’s life and thought.
In a penultimate section dealing with Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine,
Ayres shows that though they differ in many respects, they shared a wide
set of fundamental assumptions about how to think about the Holy Trinity. That is to say they offer “two compatible articulations of the legacy
bequeathed to later generations by pro-Nicene Christians across the late
antique Mediterranean and Near East” (383). This understanding of the
classical differences between Greek and Latin writers has the potential of
seeing Eastern and Western Trinitarian thought as complementary.
The final section of the book is a critique of the assumptions of modern,
that is, post-Enlightenment, systematic theology. A distinctive feature of
modern theological reasoning is that Christian teaching must be established on some other ground than the authority of the tradition.The truth
of Christian faith must be subjected to criteria that have been developed
since the Enlightenment, including modern historical exegesis of the Bible.
Against this view Ayres presents a view of theology as “contemplation
of Scripture.” By this he means that the sense of the text is to be understood as it has been “organized and summarized” (418) by the Church’s
basic creedal formulations.As Tertullian argued in his programmatic essay,
De praescriptione haereticorum, the Bible is the Church’s book and must be
read in light of the Church’s life, worship, and creeds.This means that the

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task of the interpreter is to find a place for Christian discourse within the
world opened by the scriptural text as it is interpreted in the Church’s
tradition. The reasoning behind this argument is deceptively simple and
one that is supported by historical experience.Theologies that are unable
to sustain a reading of the Scriptures within the Catholic tradition of
scriptural interpretation eventually find it difficult to sustain an engagement with the doctrinal tradition they claim to uphold.
Too often it is assumed that continuity of doctrine means continuity in
prepositional content. But Henri de Lubac argued that all reflection is an
abstraction from contemplation of the mystery itself, and that the development of Christian doctrine should be seen in light of the awareness of the
mystery at its core.That is, though we receive as an inheritance the formulations and concepts of the past, nevertheless we stand in a similar relation
to the mystery we seek to understand as those who have gone before.
Although this is a work of highly sophisticated theological and historical reasoning, and to follow its argument is a demanding intellectual
enterprise, Ayres ends his fine book, in a welcome ecclesiological key. In
the final pages he argues that the faithful handing on of the Church’s faith
may not rest on establishing intellectual or historical criteria to judge the
appropriateness of doctrinal developments, but will depend on “wider
faith commitments” (429). By this he means belief in the one, holy,
catholic, and apostolic Church and her teaching office. This does not
mean that one silences the historian or shuts down the workshop of the
theologian, but acknowledges that we cannot, either by theology or
historical research, demonstrate the continuity of the Church’s teaching
from apostolic times to our own.
In the view of his contemporaries Newman’s approach to the development of doctrine seemed to lead too readily to a justification of an inspired
teaching office as the only faithful guide for a historically minded Christian.
“To modern ears,” writes Ayres,“this seems a strange paradox to be sure; but
perhaps his contemporaries had seen the heart of the matter” (429).
N&V
Robert Louis Wilken
University of Virginia
Charlottesville,Virginia

Lectura romana in primum Sententiarum Petri Lombardi by
Thomas Aquinas, edited by Leonard E. Boyle, O.P. and John F. Boyle
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2006), x + 221 pp.
T HE SINGLE most important decision in St.Thomas Aquinas’s career as an
author, the one with the most far-reaching consequences for the flowering

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of his genius and for his influence on the history of theology and philosophy, would appear to have been his decision in Rome, probably in 1266,
to abandon a commentary on Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences that he
had begun there in the academic year 1265–66, in order to start working
on what would be his masterpiece, the Summa theologiae. The commentary is mentioned in the early fourteenth century by the Dominican
historian Tolomeo of Lucca, who had known Thomas in Naples during
1272–73. Tolomeo specifies that it is a commentary on Book One and
says that he himself had seen a copy of it in Lucca. From the time of
Tolomeo until the late twentieth century, however, the commentary,
presumed lost, was rarely mentioned, while on the other hand the
Summa’s authoritative status tended to obscure the occasion of its origin.
Thomas had commented on the Sentences before, in the normal course
of his studies in theology at the University of Paris during 1252–57, but it
was an unusual step for him to do so again as a master. His reason for
starting a second Sentences commentary was apparently to provide his
Dominican students in Rome with an introduction to theology. His reason
for setting it aside seems to be hinted at in his prologue to the Summa,
where he explains his proposal to write on what he variously calls Catholic
truth, Christian religion, and sacred doctrine, in a mode suited to beginners, who he says are suffering from several impediments, including the
fact that what is necessary for them to know is not being taught according to “the order of learning,” but according to what is required by “exposition of books.”The prologue thus seems to allude obliquely to Thomas’s
turn away from exposition of Lombard’s book to a project of setting forth
the order intrinsic to the discipline of theology. This inauguration of a
new mode and order of writing might be compared to other momentous
literary decisions.With the Book of Sentences itself, for example, Lombard
had made a similarly drastic and comprehensive innovation in the ordering of theological material against a background of earlier twelfth-century
collections of sententiae. And in the other direction, at the end of the
sixteenth century, Francisco Suárez introduced a new order of metaphysical learning with his Disputationes metaphysicae, which he wrote while
pausing from his work on an exposition of Thomas’s Summa.The sources
of the Sentences among the Fathers and the influence of the Disputationes
among the moderns suggest even wider historical horizons for Thomas’s
decision in Rome.
Much scholarly work remains to be done that would contribute to
fuller understanding of the more immediate circumstances and ramifications of that decision. For one thing, the structural and doctrinal relations
between Thomas’s Summa and the Summa theologica begun by Alexander

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927

of Hales and continued by other Franciscans after Alexander’s death in
1245 are still largely unexplored. For another, a critical edition of
Thomas’s Summa is a desideratum, and will probably continue to be one
for another generation or more. On the other hand, thanks to the edition
here under review, at least some of the text of Thomas’s second commentary on the Sentences is now available. In providing such valuable context
for Thomas’s Roman decision, the edition makes a major contribution to
Thomistic scholarship.
The text is that of a commentary in the front and back leaves and the
margins of a late thirteenth-century Italian manuscript at Oxford (Lincoln
College, Lat. ms. 95), the main text of which is Thomas’s Parisian
commentary on the first book of the Sentences.The marginal commentary
was probably copied into the manuscript before 1286 (10). In an article
titled “Alia lectura fratris Thome?” published in 1980 in Mediaeval Studies
42, Hyacinthe Dondaine drew attention to this marginal commentary,
asking whether it might be Thomas’s Roman Sentences commentary but
concluding that it is not. He discussed several marginal references in the
manuscript to “the other lecture of Brother Thomas,” a phrase that he
took to mean Thomas’s Roman commentary, from which, along with
other works by Thomas, he thought the author of the marginal commentary is drawing. Dondaine argued that the commentary transmits
Thomistic doctrine, but he also thought that it reveals an un-Thomistic
extension of reason’s power in the following remark:“It must be said that
just as faith posits, so reason can consider, although not perfectly, the Trinity of persons in unity of essence in what is divine” (Lectura romana 2.2.3,
98). In 1982 Leonard E. Boyle mentioned the marginal commentary in
his Gilson lecture,“The Setting of the Summa theologiae of Saint Thomas,”
which has been printed and twice reprinted, and which is the most
authoritative scholarly account of Thomas’s situation at the time of his
Roman decision. Boyle said that “there is good internal as well as external evidence in this marginal commentary that it is really a copy of a reportatio of the Roman classroom lectures of Thomas on I Sententiarum in
1265–66.” In 1983 Boyle published this evidence in a reply to Dondaine
in Mediaeval Studies 45 titled “Alia lectura fratris Thome,” insinuating by
his subtraction of Dondaine’s titular question mark that there is no question in his own mind that the marginal commentary itself is a copy of at
least some of a reportatio of Thomas’s Roman commentary, and that the
references to “the other lecture of Brother Thomas” are indications of
places where this commentary should be aligned with Brother Thomas’s
“other”—that is, his Parisian—commentary. Boyle soon invited his student
John F. Boyle to serve as co-editor in preparing the present edition of the

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Roman commentary, which he, Leonard Boyle, continued to work on
until his death in 1999, even throughout his thirteen years as prefect of the
Vatican Library. John Boyle has completed the edition and furnished it
with a learned introduction that presents the commentary in detail. It
would be an impertinence to praise the scholarship of the great medievalist Leonard Boyle, but it can be said that John Boyle, his student, collaborator, and successor on this project, has maintained the very high standards
of scholarship established by him.
I note that while many, myself obviously included, have been persuaded
by the arguments of the two Boyles that the marginal commentary is
indeed Thomas’s Roman commentary, there are skeptics, including the
distinguished Jean-Pierre Torrell, who was at first persuaded by Leonard
Boyle’s original arguments but later became doubtful. But I also note that
since publication of the edition John Boyle has published “Aquinas’s
Roman Commentary on Peter Lombard” (Anuario Filosófico 39 [2006]:
477–96), which skillfully addresses the doubts of both Dondaine and
Torrell with respect to the remark quoted above about reason’s ability to
consider the Trinity of persons in the unity of the divine essence. (This
point of controversy seems a good occasion to ponder the sense Thomas
attributed to his beloved verb considerare.) Meanwhile the editors have
shown that whoever copied the marginal commentary believed that he
was copying a text by Thomas (8), and that the owner of the manuscript
may have been a student of Thomas’s (67–69). Since even those who, like
Dondaine and Torrell, doubt the Thomistic authorship of the commentary
grant that much of its doctrine is closely related to that of Thomas, there
is every reason for Thomists, whatever their views on the commentary’s
authenticity, to take a serious interest in this edition.
The contents consist of John Boyle’s introduction (1–57), which
includes an extensive “Description of the Distinctions and Articles”
(19–55); a reprint of Leonard Boyle’s “Alia lectura fratris Thome”
(58–69); the text of the commentary (71–207); a bibliography (208–211);
and indices of scriptural passages and other authorities quoted by the
commentary or the editors (211–221).There is a textual apparatus and an
apparatus of sources, the latter of which includes for most of the articles
indications of loca parallela in the Thomistic corpus. The text regularizes
the manuscript’s spelling to conform to modern—that is, classical—
conventions, and the numbering of lines for each article is indicated in
the margins at five-line intervals.
It is not clear whether the manuscript, and therefore the present
edition, include all or only part of what Thomas completed of his Roman
commentary on book one of the Sentences, but as it stands there is a

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929

prologue followed by commentary, consisting of ninety-seven articles and
three notes, on some early parts of the first book of the Sentences, namely
Lombard’s prologue and distinctions 1–17 and 23–24. Unlike Thomas’s
other Sentences commentary, this one, at least in the manuscript copy,
contains no divisions or expositions of the text, although it does provide
at the opening of most distinctions a list of questions to be discussed.
Because of the parts of the Sentences treated, the principal themes of
the commentary as we have it include the mode of proceeding in theology, the Augustinian distinctions between use and enjoyment and
between things and signs, divine names, the possibility of reaching
knowledge of God through creatures, the processions of the Trinity, charity, and—at greatest length—the person of the Holy Spirit. Evidently the
text holds special appeal for theologians,Trinitarian theologians in particular, but those interested in Thomas’s metaphysics will also be drawn to
it for its articles on the divine simplicity in distinction 8 and on the definition of person in distinction 23.
It remains for Thomists to continue what the editors have begun by
assimilating this “new” text and comparing its contents with those of the
familiar works in the Thomistic corpus.The indications of loca parallela in
the apparatus of sources will be useful pointers for such comparison, and
complementing these are valuable remarks in the introduction that help
situate the commentary in the Thomistic corpus by pointing out verbatim
parallels between it and other works in the corpus (Compendium theologiae,
De veritate, De potentia, and De virtutibus in communi), and by discussing the
Thomistic character of its style and doctrine (14–16).The bibliography of
secondary sources (210–211) includes references to preliminary researches
on the commentary’s relation to the corpus that have already been
published, among them John Boyle’s “The Ordering of Trinitarian Teaching in Thomas Aquinas’s Second Commentary on Lombard’s Sentences”
(Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, suppl. 1 [1995]: 125–36), which
suggests that Thomas in this commentary chafed at Lombard’s order of
topics as he came to realize that it is not the order of learning.
As familiarity with the text becomes common among Thomists and the
scholarship on it grows, it will become clearer both how the Lectura
romana resembles other Thomistic texts and how it adds to our knowledge
of Thomas’s mind by presenting words, phrases, images, questions, and
arguments unparalleled in the Thomistic corpus. On the micrological
level, the introduction mentions three terms that occur nowhere else in
the corpus, namely effigiatio, individuativum, and multiplicabilitas (18). On a
larger scale, while most of the ninety-seven questions asked are provided
with indications of parallels in the corpus, there are eight exceptions, cases

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in which the editors have been unable to find Thomas asking precisely the
same question elsewhere (see 16, note 63).These are: whether man ought
to use or enjoy himself (1.1.3.1, 86–88); whether virtues are to be enjoyed
(1.1.3.4, 90–91); whether there is something supremely good (2.2.1,
95–96); whether there is only one supreme good (2.2.3, 98–99); whether
it is possible for there to be a plurality of persons in the supreme good
(2.2.4, 99–101); whether essence is a principle of generation (5.1.2,
126–27); whether God alone is simple (8.3.1, 145–46); and whether a
supernatural light is required for loving God (17.1.1, 190–91).
The introduction identifies several “illustrations” that are “fuller in the
Lectura romana than anywhere else in Thomas’s writings (if present at all)”
(17), and by way of offering a foretaste of the text, I conclude with a
translation of one of these. It occurs in an article on the Augustinian
theme of the image of the triune God in the human mind’s threesome
of memory, intelligence, and will. An objection says that thought about
and love of God are not always present in the human mind, yet the image
of God is always present, and so the meaning of image should not be
understood with reference to intellect and will. In his answer Thomas
uses one of the terms just mentioned that occur nowhere else in his
works, namely effigiatio, meaning “outline.”
To the fourth objection it must be said that just as we see that in an external image sometimes there is only an outline, that is, when the image is
merely drawn, but sometimes there is, in addition to this, coloration, so
too it is in the soul. For when the soul is fixed on God and joined to
Him through understanding, then it is an image that is “colored in,” as it
were, and complete. But because it cannot always be fixed on God and
joined to Him, there is not always in it an image with complete knowledge and love. Inasmuch as the mind is naturally capable of turning to
God by means of intelligence and love, however, there always remains in
it an image at least “in outline,” as it were. (3.3.3, ad 4, 119)

Here Thomas makes an analysis of visual images into outline and color
serve as the basis of a vivid comment on the spiritual image, according to
which sometimes there is in the human soul, by virtue of its natural
powers, merely a “drawing” of God, but sometimes, by virtue of the soul’s
activities of thought and love, there is in it a “painting” of him, so to
speak.While its point is different, the passage is in keeping with Thomas’s
remarks on image, shape, and color in Summa theologiae, I, q. 35, a. 1. More
generally, the passage’s elaboration of images of the image of God is keeping with the way in which Thomas, despite the abstractness of his
thought and the formality of his speech, always kept in view, and was

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ready to make something of, the precise and concrete implications of the
N&V
words he was using.
Kevin White
The Catholic University of America
Washington, DC

Divine Likeness:Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family
by Marc Cardinal Ouellet (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 246 pp.
D IVINE L IKENESS shows how fruitful it can be to bring John Paul II
into dialogue with the theological anthropology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar, about which Cardinal Ouellet wrote his 1983 dissertation at
the Gregorian University in Rome (L’existence comme mission: l’anthropologie théologique de Hans Urs von Balthasar).The first part of Divine Likeness (“Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology”) reproduces the 1996
McGivney lectures delivered by Ouellet at the John Paul II Institute in
Washington, DC. It is the theologically richest and most systematic part
of the book. The second part consists of six essays united by the theme
“Perspectives of Trinitarian Spirituality for Marriage and the Family”
written for study weeks of the Italian Conference of Bishops between
1998 and 2000.
Ouellet’s book is simultaneously scientific and pastoral.While it presents a rigorous and profound theological argument, its declared aim is to
help Christian families achieve “a new theological awareness that shapes
from within the sacramental relationships of love, faithfulness, and fecundity in the service of the Gospel” (4). Its intended audience is thus not
only theologians, but Christians from all walks of life.
Chapter one presents an introductory overview of “Theology of the
Family: An Ongoing Project.” Vatican II’s Trinitarian ecclesiology of
communion serves as the point of departure for a new theological examination of the family.The communion of divine persons is the exemplar
of all communion (Gaudium et Spes §24.3). Even more, there is a dramatic
interpenetration between family relations and Trinitarian relations. The
“place” of every created person is the exchange of love between the
divine persons. Image and dramatic interpenetration, these are the two
principal themes of Ouellet’s McGivney lectures.
Chapter two is devoted to the first of these two themes, “The Family,
Image of the Trinity.” John Paul II affirms that the family is an image of the
Trinity, while Augustine, in Ouellet’s reading, rejects it (more on this issue
later).The recent work of some exegetes about Genesis (reviewed in detail
by Ouellet) supports John Paul II’s thesis.The family “we” is an image of

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the Trinitarian “We” in a manner that goes beyond mere metaphor to
genuine analogy.The precise point of analogical likeness does not lie in the
bodily characteristics of the male and female sex, but in the communion of
persons.“The specificity of the analogy is centered on communion” (34).
Chapter three is devoted to the second of the two themes. It takes the
step beyond mere likeness to the dramatic interplay between the Trinity
and the family (“The Covenant of the Trinity and the Family: The
Domestic Church”). Ouellet unfolds this topic by turning to Balthasar’s
account of the full constitution of personhood through mission. While
every human being is a unique spiritual subject, that subject cannot
answer the question, “Who am I?” in an ultimate way out of its own
natural resources. Only when God grants it a share in the mission of his
Son, a unique mission in the body of Christ, only then does this subject
become “person” in the full theological sense of that term. The sacramental presence of the Spirit of love in the family draws its members into
the mission of Christ and thus into the exchange of love between the
Father and the Son.
Chapter four looks from this core of the mystery of the family toward
living it out in “The Trinitarian Mission of the Family at the Dawning of
the Third Christian Millennium.” If the family is to live its mission to the
full, moral teaching alone is not enough. The family’s life springs ultimately from the event of Christ and the gift of the Spirit, not from mere
moral norms. “Consequently, it is the duty of a spirituality of the family
to cultivate the ‘theological’ consciousness of the family members, that is,
the consciousness of a personal relationship with God which constitutes
the foundation of their dignity and the source of their capacity for gift in
Christ’s image” (60). Human love in the family is taken into the service
of the mutual relation of love, gift, and glorification between the divine
persons. Here one can see the deep Johannine roots of Balthasar’s and
Ouellet’s Trinitarian anthropology. “Whatever you ask for in my name I
will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son” ( Jn 14:13). “In
this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my
disciples” ( Jn 15:8). “All who are mine are yours, [Father,] and yours are
mine, and I am glorified in them” ( Jn 17:10).
Divine Likeness is an outstanding book. Ouellet brings a powerful
systematic mind to bear on the issues, a mind nourished by the Catholic
tradition from Scripture and the Fathers to the present, especially John
Paul II and Balthasar. At the same time, it is animated by prophetic
warmth in proposing to families their mission at the dawning of the new
Millennium. The following critical remarks do not detract in any way
from this overall positive judgment.

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933

In Ouellet’s reading, John Paul II’s thesis that the communion of
persons in the family is an image of the Trinity contradicts Augustine and
the tradition that follows him, particularly Thomas Aquinas. In John Paul
II, he points out,“The specificity of the analogy is centered on communion” (34). It is unfortunate that he does not point in a similarly precise
way to the specificity of the analogy in the position discussed and
rejected by Augustine and Thomas.
When one examines that position, one sees an important difference.
The specificity of the analogy is centered on the relations of origin in the
family, not on the communion of persons.The position lines up these relations of origin one by one with the relations of origin in the Trinity: God
the Father corresponds to Adam as father and to human fathers in general;
God the Son corresponds to the children begotten by Adam, as children,
and to human children in general; God the Holy Spirit corresponds to
Eve, inasmuch as she proceeded from Adam, not by way of generation, but
in some other way, just as the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father without being the Father’s Son. (Strictly speaking, this third correspondence
holds only for Eve; all other human mothers are begotten.)
John Paul II does not focus on these relations of origin in the family,
but on personal communion.This is why he does not posit a one-to-one
correspondence between persons in the Trinity and in the family. He
does suggest a certain correspondence between the Holy Spirit and one
specific member of the family, but it is the child rather than the mother.
Mutual love is fruitful. In the love between Father and Son, the Holy
Spirit is this fruit. In the love between man and woman, children are.Yet
John Paul II does not attempt to line up father and mother with the
other two persons in the Trinity, the Father and the Son. In this way, the
divine image he proposes is essentially different from the divine image
rejected by Augustine and Thomas.
Ouellet himself points to two texts in Augustine’s Tractates on John in
which Augustine establishes an analogy between the communion of
human persons who are “of one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32) and the
communion of the divine persons who are one God. It is here in Augustine’s work that one can find the real connection with John Paul II.
Although Augustine does not de facto speak about “image” in these passages,
he could do so de iure.
A similar point applies to many texts by Thomas Aquinas. For example, in his commentary on Jesus’ prayer, “Holy Father, preserve them in
your name, which you have given me, so that they may be one as we are
one” ( Jn 17:11),Thomas says:

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They are preserved for this goal, namely, to be one. For, our entire
perfection consists in the unity of the Spirit.“Take every care to preserve
the unity of the Spirit by the peace that binds you together” (Eph 4:3).
“How good and joyful it is when brothers dwell in unity!” (Ps 133:1).
But he adds, “as we are one.”There is a difficulty in this.They are one
in essence; therefore we will also be one in essence. But this is not true.
Response:The perfection of each being is nothing other than a participation in the divine likeness. For we are good to the degree in which
we are made like God. Our unity, therefore, is perfective precisely in the
degree to which it participates in the divine unity. Now, there is a
twofold unity in God, namely, the unity of nature (cf. “The Father and
I are one,” Jn 10:30) and the unity of love in the Father and the Son which
is the unity of the Spirit. Both of these are in us, not in equality of rank,
but by a certain likeness.The Father and the Son are numerically of one
nature, but we are one in nature according to our kind. Again, they are
one by a love that is not derived from the gift of someone, but [by a
love] that proceeds from them. For the Father and the Son love each
other by the Holy Spirit, but we by a love in which we participate as
something derived from a higher source [that is, from the Holy Spirit].
(Thomas Aquinas, Lectures on John, ch. 17, lect. 3, Marietti §2214)

Thomas does not explicitly address the question whether the unity of the
Spirit among human beings is an image of the corresponding unity in the
Trinity, but he does call it a “likeness,” the term coupled with “image” in
Genesis 1:26. When one examines it, this “likeness” in the unity of love
fulfills all the requirements listed by Thomas for an “image” in the full
sense as a specific likeness of its exemplar (ST I, q. 93, a. 2).
There is a second point at which Ouellet seems to see too much
contrariety in the theological tradition, namely, in the closely related
development of the theology of marriage. He suggests that a naturalistic
and legalistic conception of marriage was overcome by the “personalist
revolution” (61) that began before Vatican II and took clear shape in the
pontificate of John Paul II.
In defining the essence and mission of the family by love and not first
by procreation, the pope . . . claims to be returning to “the very roots of
reality” (Familiaris Consortio §17).This position marks an important step
toward the personalistic recasting of the Christian doctrine of marriage
and the family. It places the three traditional values of marriage—procreation, faithful love, and sacramental signification—in the line of fruitful
conjugal love and no longer in that of procreation as a distinct end. (61)

It is not necessary to read this text as an attack on the doctrine of the
hierarchy of ends in marriage, and in particular of procreation as the

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primary end of marriage, although the phrase “no longer” could be read
as suggesting such an attack.Wojty?a strongly affirms the doctrine of the
primary end (see Love and Responsibility, 68); and in his Theology of the
Body, John Paul II reads Gaudium et Spes as reaffirming the traditional
hierarchy of ends (see Theology of the Body, 127:3).
Divine Likeness leaves the impression that the theological tradition was
not fully aware of the centrality of love in marriage.This impression, which
is widely shared among contemporary authors, may be due in large part to
looking in the wrong place for the tradition’s understanding of love in
marriage, namely, in the formal treatises about marriage.These treatises are
for the most part meant to prepare future pastors for their work. It is more
fruitful to look in another place, namely, mystical writings and commentaries on the Song of Songs, the most frequently commented on book of
the Bible in the Middle Ages. A fruit of this tradition can be seen in the
rich spousal theology of Matthias Josef Scheeben (1835–88). Scheeben
shows the wealth of personalist understanding of marriage available to
Catholic theology in the nineteenth century. John Paul II himself seems to
have drawn the core of his vision of marriage from the spousal and Trinitarian theology of St. John of the Cross, in which the gift of self plays such
a key role, in accord with the statement repeated three times by the bride
in the Song of Songs, “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (Song 2:16). “I
am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” (Song 6:3).“I am my beloved’s,
and his desire is for me” (Song 7:10). Here too, the tradition is more coheN&V
sive than Ouellet suggests.
Michael Waldstein
International Theological Institute
Gaming, Austria