Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 1–6 1 Classics and Theology T HOMAS P. S CHECK Ave Maria University Ave Maria, Florida T HOSE who pay attention to the trends of modern Gospel interpretation notice a spectacular irony in the dominant contemporary paradigm for the exegesis of the Gospels.Today Catholic Scripture scholars generally dismiss patristic exegesis because it is too allegorical.1 Supposedly the Fathers did not read the text “literally” enough, and so they can be safely ignored.Yet the predominant way of reading the Gospels today is essentially a new form of allegorical exegesis which does not call itself that. R. Bauckham has recently authored a monograph that expresses serious criticism of this dominant paradigm.2 Bauckham observes that the sustained attempt since the late 1960s to take seriously the claim that each Gospel addresses the specific situation of a particular Christian community has had two main characteristics: (1) the development of more or less allegorical readings of the Gospels in the service of reconstructing not only the character but the history of the community behind the Gospel; and (2) the increasingly sophisticated use of social-scientific methods for reconstructing the community behind each Gospel. Bauckham observes that modern exegetes typically interpret the characters and events in the Gospel story as representing groups within the community and experiences of the community. For example, the disciples in Mark 1 The programmatic statement for the American guild was made in 1967 by R. E. Brown, who judged as a failure the attempts by Henri Cardinal de Lubac and Jean Cardinal Daniélou to give great value to patristic exegesis as exegesis and declared confidently: “I think we must recognize that the exegetical method of the Fathers is irrelevant to the study of the Bible today.” “The Problems of the Sensus Plenior,” Ephemerides Theologica Lovanienses 43 (1967): 463. 2 R. Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). 2 Thomas P. Scheck stand for proponents of a theios-aner Christology that Mark is fighting within his community; the relatives of Jesus represent the Jerusalem Jewish Christian leaders; Nicodemus stands for Christians whose inadequate Christology prevents them from making a complete break with the synagogue; the successful mission of Jesus and the disciples to Samaritans in John 4 is supposed to reflect a stage in the history of the Johannine community when it engaged in successful mission to Samaritans. Bauckham ponders what such imaginative and conjectural reconstructions must look like from the perspective of an outsider: The many different reconstructions throw some doubt on the method, which to a skeptic looks like a kind of historical fantasy. It is difficult to avoid supposing that those who no longer think it possible to use the Gospels to reconstruct the historical Jesus compensate for this loss by using them to reconstruct the communities that produced the Gospels. All the historical specificity for which historical critics long is transferred from the historical Jesus to the evangelist’s community.The principle that the Gospels inform us not about Jesus but about the Church is taken so literally that the narrative, ostensibly about Jesus, has to be understood as an allegory in which the community actually tells its own story.3 However valid one may judge the new allegorical approaches to the Gospels criticized by Bauckham to be—and I myself judge them to be minimally valid—it is hardly legitimate to describe what these modern scholars are doing as “literal historical exegesis.”The text’s literal historical meaning is precisely what these interpreters are aiming to transcend. One wonders about the integrity of the scholarly principles involved here, since to an outsider a double-standard appears to be at work: modern exegetes are permitted to turn the Gospels essentially into parables about early Christian communities.Yet their method is still defined as “literal exegesis.” Simultaneously ancient Christian exegesis is dismissed as irrelevant because it is allegedly “more-than-literal,”“pre-critical,” and arbitrary. And yet, the ancient exegetes assumed the primary truth of the literal historical meaning of the Gospels. Against the backdrop of such contemporary allegorical trends in Gospel interpretation, the first strength I shall call attention to with regard to Pope Benedict’s exegesis of the Gospels in Jesus of Nazareth is its literal and straightforward way of reading the narratives.4 The Pope 3 Bauckham, The Gospels for All Christians, 19–20. 4 Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, translated from German by Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007). Classics and Theology 3 conceives the historical-critical method to be an indispensable tool for the exegete and theologian, precisely because the very essence of biblical faith concerns real historical events. The Bible does not tell stories symbolizing supra-historical truths, but is based on history that took place here on earth.“Historical fact is not an interchangeable symbolic cipher for biblical faith, but the foundation on which it stands” (xv). It seems to me that the Holy Father’s approach to the historical-critical study of the Gospels is consonant both with the corrective Bauckham is summoning the modern guild to undertake, and also with the magisterial tradition of the Catholic Church. Jesus of Nazareth displays to us what post-Vatican II Catholic exegesis might have looked like had Dei Verbum been implemented. Rather than conjectural theories about the imagined community of the beloved disciple, or about the “Q” school, or about the Lukan community, Catholics might have been fed solid exposition of the Gospel narratives and the doctrinal implications of these narratives. The pope’s main idea is that the Jesus of the Gospels, of all four Gospels, is the real historical Jesus. He wants to close the gap between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, since the Gospel history is datable history, and Gospel events are real historical events. Jesus brought us God when he appeared on earth. It is He, and not the theological construction of the early Church, who has revealed to us the face of the God of Israel, the mystery of Trinitarian love.To the charge that such an approach is “fundamentalist,” since it takes the Gospels at face value, the Holy Father says that people who say things like that dogmatically assume that God cannot act in history and that no exegesis counts but their own. Related to this theme is the discussion of the “Johannine Question” in chapter 8. The Holy Father rightly insists (against a disturbing tendency of some modern interpreters) that John 1.35, 40; 13.23; 18.15–16; 19.26, 34–35; 20.2–10; 21.7 cannot be deemed to be completely irrelevant to the discussion of authorship.“If the favorite disciple [an unhappy translation] in the Gospel expressly assumes the function of a witness to the truth of the events he recounts, he is presenting himself as a living person. . . . Otherwise the statements we have examined, which are decisive for the intention and the quality of the entire Gospel, would be emptied of meaning” (223).The tentative suggestion is made that the historical tradition behind the Fourth Gospel traces to John the son of Zebedee, but the actual composition may have been by “John the presbyter” as his transmitter and mouthpiece, and a sort of literary executor of the favorite disciple.This theory is not the same as the traditional view, which attributes authorship to John the apostle and son of Zebedee.The Pope follows Hengel’s and Bauckham’s theory of authorship by “John the Thomas P. Scheck 4 presbyter,” an imaginative conjecture based in my judgment on a misreading of the Papias texts preserved in Eusebius. For Eusebius so intensely disliked the author of the Apocalypse for his chiliasm that he was only too glad to find it possible to assign authorship to a John other than the apostle. Scholars have not been sufficiently critical of Eusebius in this regard.5 But either way, whether composed by John the apostle and son of Zebedee, or by another eyewitness named “John the Presbyter,” the Fourth Gospel ultimately goes back to eyewitness testimony about the real doings and sayings of the real historical Jesus. I value the Holy Father’s exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount and the way he has brought out the implicit Christology of Jesus’ words. This section contains an interesting dialogue with Rabbi Jacob Neusner, the theme of which is Jesus’ disturbing claim to be the Torah and the implicit Christology that is embedded in Jesus’ claims. There is also present throughout this book, as everywhere else in the Holy Father’s writings, a constant engagement with the thought of the Church Fathers. They are not always given the last word in exegesis, since we continue to learn more things about history that were inaccessible to them, but they are always invited to sit at the table of the exegetes.As we have noted above, this openness and docility to the voice of the Fathers is a strength that distinguishes Pope Benedict’s approach to New Testament exegesis from the vast majority of modern Catholic exegetes. Consider the interesting observation made by Cardinal Ratzinger concerning the “ecumenical” Scripture commentary project, Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar. He wrote: In this it is interesting that Protestant exegetes refer back more strongly to their ‘Fathers’ (Luther, Calvin) and draw them in as contemporary partners in dialogue into the struggle to understand scripture than do Catholic exegetes, who seem to a considerable extent to be of the view that Augustine, Chrysostom, Bonaventure and Thomas cannot contribute anything to exegesis today.6 The deep prejudice against patristic exegesis that exists in the modern guild of Catholic scripturists was revealed to me in a glaring way recently when I did a careful study of the changes and alterations of the Jerusalem Bible (1966) that have been introduced into the New Jerusalem Bible (1985, ed. H.Wansbrough).The 1985 edition uses the 1966 edition as its 5 See D.A. Carson and D. Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 234. 6 “Luther and the Unity of the Churches,” in New Essays in Ecclesiology (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 106. Classics and Theology 5 template, but the contributors have systematically deleted the majority of the discussions of patristic exegesis that are found in the footnotes of the original edition, especially in footnotes to texts that the Fathers viewed as foreshadowings of Christ and the Trinity. Clearly the discussions of the Fathers proved to be an embarrassment to the Catholic editors in a way that is not reciprocated by Protestant exegetes. A third strength of Jesus of Nazareth is the author’s intensive and extensive knowledge of Scripture.The book begins with a detailed discussion of Deuteronomy; throughout the book Old Testament passages are intensively engaged and discussed as foundational background to understanding the New Testament. This is how New Testament exegesis should be done, and, of course, such a procedure should not be remarkable for a study of the Gospels.The only problem is that several recent scholars have noticed that modern Catholic scripturists lack an extensive and intensive knowledge of the Bible. For instance, J. O’Keefe and R. Reno recently noted: “Most contemporary biblical scholars are not, in a strict sense, scholars of the Bible.They are experts who specialize in certain books of the Bible or historical periods in which various portions of it were written.”7 I doubt these authors would be able to make the same criticism of Pope Benedict. Likewise, L.T. Johnson has recently revealed some of the secrets of the guild’s confessional:“And it must be said, to our shame, that many contemporary exegetes, even scholars, simply do not know the contents of the Bible.”8 No honest reader of Jesus of Nazareth will be able to say such things of the author. In summary, the strengths of this piece of exegesis of the Gospels are (1) the literal, straight-forward manner of reading the narratives about Jesus as opposed to the modern tendency to read the Gospels as allegories about the early Church; (2) the way the Church Fathers are invited to the table of the exegetes; (3) the author’s extensive knowledge of the whole of Scripture. I found two mistakes in the text: On page 178, I believe the Holy Father intended the Gospel of Luke (9.54) rather than John in reference to the stormy temperament of James and John. On page 225 the Holy Father dates the death of Papias to around 220.This should be 120. N&V 7 John J. O’Keefe and R. R. Reno, Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christ- ian Interpretation of the Bible (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 24. 8 L.T. Johnson and W. S. Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship:A Construc- tive Conversation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 112. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 7–18 7 Gospel Hermeneutics in Joseph Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth G EOFFREY WAINWRIGHT Duke University Divinity School Durham, North Carolina W HILE Jesus of Nazareth bears on its title page the binome “Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI,” the author himself in his foreword disclaims any exercise here of the papal Magisterium; rather the work is “solely an expression of my personal search ‘for the face of the Lord’ (cf. Ps 27:8).”1 The book is perhaps all the more interesting on that “autobiographical” account, for it distills a lifetime’s reading of the Gospels in the Church by a man who is first and foremost a believer, who then has ministered as a teacher, a preacher, and a pastor.Thus we have an exemplary engagement with the Scriptures that is placed in service to others who also “wish to see Jesus” (cf. Jn 12:21). My aim here is simply to display the hermeneutical principles and procedures practiced by Joseph Ratzinger and the results that he now places before his readers in the modestly expressed confidence that they, too, may benefit directly from them and perhaps also be encouraged—within the communion of the Church and under its guidance—to follow the same methods in their own reading of the Bible.To bring out these methods and purposes of the author, we may follow up two or three hints that he himself does not develop in a theoretical way at the places where they formally occur.The first hint is dropped in the foreword to this book and concerns “the old doctrine of the fourfold sense of Scripture”: “The four senses of 1 Joseph Ratzinger/Benedikt XVI, Jesus von Nazareth, Erster Teil: Von der Taufe im Jordan bis zur Verklärung (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2007); Joseph Ratzinger/ Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans. Adrian J. Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007). Citations will follow the English translation; here p. xxiii. 8 Geoffrey Wainwright Scripture are not individual meanings arrayed side by side, but dimensions of the one word that reaches beyond the moment” (p. xx). A few years earlier, in his preface to the document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Jewish People and their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible (2001), Cardinal Ratzinger had written:“The recognition of the multidimensional nature of human language, not staying fixed to a particular moment in history, but having a hold on the future, is an aid that permits a greater understanding of how the Word of God can avail of the human word to confer on a history in progress a meaning that surpasses the present moment and yet brings out, precisely in this way, the unity of the whole.”2 Later in the present book he writes that we are to “read the Bible, and especially the Gospels, as an overall unity expressing an intrinsically coherent message, notwithstanding their multiple historical layers” ( Jesus of Nazareth, 191). Putting those hints together, it may be expected that Joseph Ratzinger will read the multi-faceted texts as canonical Scripture bearing a trustworthy witness to a comprehensive yet particular history of God with the world, into which the readers or hearers in their own multidimensionality are invited as part of a continuing community that is sustained by the Word of God. And in Jesus of Nazareth, in particular, he will be putting his reading at the service of others, in order to nourish an encounter with the Jesus who stands in the midst of the congregation gathered in his name (Matt 18:20; cf. Lk 22:27), whose purpose is to draw all men to himself ( Jn 12:32, always a favorite text of Ratzinger’s), and who already dwells in the hearts of believers as their very life (Gal 2:20).3 It will be in terms of the traditional “fourfold sense of Scripture” that I illustrate here the gospel hermeneutics of Joseph Ratzinger in his Jesus of Nazareth. The fourfold sense of the Scriptures is neatly captured in the medieval mnemonic verse, variously attributed to Nicholas of Lyra or Augustine of Denmark: 2 Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2002; here pp. 5–12. In that preface, Cardi- nal Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, recognized the problem of maintaining the internal unity of the Bible in the face of historical-critical exegesis: “The very concept of an interpretation of historical texts must be broadened and deepened enough to be tenable in today’s liberal climate, and capable of application, especially to Biblical texts received in faith as the Word of God. Important contributions have been made in this direction over recent decades.” In that same connection he alluded also to a previous document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (1993). 3 On various modes of Christ’s presence in the liturgical assembly, see Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §7—including this: “He is present in his word since it is he himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church.” Gospel Hermeneutics 9 Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia. Grounded in “what happened” historically (the gesta), we can further learn “what to believe, credere” (doctrinally),“what to do, agere” (ethically) and “where to head, tendere” (mystically and eschatologically). Throughout Christian history the successive generations have read the Scriptures with these ends in view, and it is appropriate that each new generation should in turn draw lessons from past readings in its own recourse to the canonical texts for guidance in understanding and application in the present situation. In expounding the Gospels, Joseph Ratzinger cites the doctrines and liturgies of the Church as well as the lives and writings of “the saints,” who are “the true interpreters of Holy Scripture” (78).These include here St.Augustine of Hippo (24, 207, 245), St. Benedict of Nursia (131), St. Francis of Assisi (77–79), St. Bernard of Clairvaux (87), St. Francis Xavier (162–63), St. Thérèse de Lisieux (76, 164), and St. Cyprian of Carthage, who is a special favorite of our author (131, 151–52, 156, 163–64, 166, 245). In the foreword to this first volume of his “portrayal of Jesus,” Joseph Ratzinger declares that he has “postponed for now” the treatment of “the infancy narratives” because it struck him “as the most urgent priority to present the figure and the message of Jesus in his public ministry, and so to help foster the growth of a living relationship with him” (xxiv). That was probably a prudent decision technically also, because those opening chapters of St. Luke and St. Matthew are a frequent target of the more skeptical biblical scholars, with whom Ratzinger knows that he will eventually have to deal—if only on account of their influence upon many contemporary readers of Scripture. In fact, then, Ratzinger begins his story of “what happened” with the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan at the hands of John the Baptist—an event which even the “historical critics” usually let stand because it contains a potential problem for what became Christian dogma—and which already the Evangelist recognized: “John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ ” (Mt 3:14).The very story of Jesus’ Baptism, as it happens and unfolds, contains vital clues to his identity and his work as they will be confessed by the Christian faith. As Ratzinger expounds it, Jesus’ Baptism “anticipated his death on the Cross”; it was “an acceptance of death for the sins of humanity”; and “the heavenly voice that calls out ‘This is my beloved 10 Geoffrey Wainwright Son’ over the baptismal waters is an anticipatory reference to the Resurrection” (18). Ratzinger draws upon “the Eastern Church, [which] has further developed and deepened this understanding of Jesus’ Baptism in her liturgy and in her theology of icons”: She sees a deep connection between the feast of the Epiphany (the heavenly voice proclaiming Jesus to be the Son of God: for the East the Epiphany is the day of the Baptism) and Easter. She sees Jesus’ remark to John that “it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3:15) as the anticipation of his prayer to the Father in Gethsemane:“My Father . . . not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Mt 26:39). (19) The liturgical hymns for the days immediately preceeding January 6 correspond to those for Holy Week, and “these correspondences are picked up by the iconographic tradition”: The icon of Jesus’ Baptism depicts the water as a liquid tomb having the form of a dark cavern, which is in turn the iconographic sign of Hades, the underworld, or hell. Jesus’ descent into this watery tomb, into this inferno that envelops him from every side, is thus an anticipation of his act of descending into the underworld: “When he went down into the waters, he bound the strong man” (cf. Lk 11:22), says Cyril of Jerusalem. John Chrysostom writes: “Going down into the water and emerging again are the image of the descent into hell and the Resurrection.” (19) “Has this ecclesiastical interpretation and rereading of the event of Jesus’ Baptism taken us too far away from the Bible?” is Ratzinger’s rhetorical question (20), and clearly the answer is “No,” as he proceeds to show from the best modern exegesis of a Joachim Jeremias or a Joachim Gnilka in relation to the words of John the Baptist on seeing Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! . . . I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained on him. . . . I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God” (cf. Jn 1:29–35). In the scene of Jesus’ Baptism, Ratzinger writes, “together with the Son, we encounter the Father and the Holy Spirit. The mystery of the Trinitarian God is beginning to emerge, even though its depths can be fully revealed only when Jesus’ journey is complete. . . . [T]here is an arc joining this beginning of Jesus’ journey and the words with which he sends his disciples into the world after his Resurrection: ‘Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (Mt 28:19). The Baptism that Jesus’ disciples have been administering since he spoke those words Gospel Hermeneutics 11 is an entrance into the Master’s own Baptism—into the reality that he anticipated by means of it.That is the way to become a Christian” (23). “To accept the invitation to be baptized now means to go to the place of Jesus’ Baptism. It is to go where he identifies himself with us and to receive there our identification with him.The point where he anticipates death has now become the point where we anticipate rising again with him. Paul develops this inner connection in his theology of Baptism (cf. Rom 6), though without explicitly mentioning Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan” (18–19). Thus Jesus’ Baptism as the original event (“what happened”), and its sacramental prolongation in Christian baptism, can be expounded for “what to believe” concerning the identity and work of Jesus, as well as “what to do” and “where to head”: “How can we who died to sin still live in it? . . . Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. . . .The return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6). While “The Baptism of Jesus” figures as “chapter one” in Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph Ratzinger has actually let it be preceded by an “initial reflection on the mystery of Jesus.” Jesus is “the prophet like unto Moses” promised in Deuteronomy 18:15.Whereas the “face-to-face” encounters of the first Moses with the Lord had their limitations (Exod 33:11; Deut 34:10; but also Exod 33:17–23), “[w]hat was true of Moses only in fragmentary form has now been fully realized in the person of Jesus: he lives before the face of God not just as a friend, but as a Son; he lives in the most intimate unity with the Father” (6). This “new Moses” will bring out the universal and eschatological dimensions of what God has begun with Israel—and indeed creation: Among all the paths of history, the path to God is the true direction that we must seek and find. Prophecy in this sense is a strict corollary to Israel’s monotheism. It is the translation of this faith into the everyday life of a community before God and on the way to him. (4) The disciple who walks with Jesus is thus caught up with him into communion with God. And that is what redemption means: this stepping beyond the limits of human nature, which had been there as a possibility and expectation in man, God’s image and likeness, since the moment of creation. (8) The identity of Jesus as the Son Incarnate is absolutely crucial to the “portrait” presented in Jesus of Nazareth, which itself constitutes an invitation to faith (the quod credas entails a credere in quem; the “what to believe” a “believe in whom” )—and, consequently, a summons to love as 12 Geoffrey Wainwright the “what to do” (the quid agas given in the “dual commandment” of Matthew 22:37), and a direction for “the way to look and go” (the quo tendas found in Jesus as “the way to the Father” according to John 14:6). While one or another of these interpretative strands may become the most prominent in different passages, Joseph Ratzinger characteristically weaves them all together in a harmonious pattern, with Christ himself as the fil d’or, or roter Faden as the Germans say. In the impossibility of working through the whole book along those lines, we will concentrate on chapter five: “The Lord’s Prayer.” In expounding the Beatitudes, and particularly the sixth, Ratzinger has already said that “it belongs to his [Jesus’] nature that he sees God, that he stands face-to-face with him, in a permanent interior discourse—in a relation of Sonship” (95); and now, in considering the Lord’s Prayer, we must “keep in mind that the Our Father originates from his own praying, from the Son’s dialogue with the Father” (133). Luke’s Gospel, in particular, significantly “places the Our Father in the context of Jesus’ own praying”: Jesus thereby involves us in his own prayer; he leads us into the interior of triune love; he draws our human hardships deep into God’s heart, as it were.This also means, however, that the words of the Our Father are signposts to interior prayer, they provide a basic direction for our being, and they aim to configure us to the image of the Son.The meaning of the Our Father goes much further than the mere provision of a prayer text. It aims to form our being, to train us in the inner attitude of Jesus (cf. Phil 2:5). (132) Concerning the structure of the Lord’s Prayer (“an initial salutation and seven petitions”), Ratzinger compares the sequence of the three “thou-petitions” and the four “we-petitions” to the two tablets of the Decalogue:“Essentially they are explications of the two parts of the great commandment to love God and our neighbor—in other words, they are directions toward the path of love” (134): The Our Father, then, like the Ten Commandments, begins by establishing the primacy of God, which then leads naturally to a consideration of the right way of being human. Here, too, the primary concern is the path of love, which is at the same time a path of conversion. If man is to petition God in the right way, he must stand in the truth.And the truth is: first God, first his Kingdom (cf. Mt 6:33). The first thing we must do is to step outside ourselves and open ourselves to God. Nothing can turn out right if our relation to God is not rightly ordered. For this reason the Our Father begins with God and then, from that starting point, shows us the way toward being human. (134) Gospel Hermeneutics 13 So, then, by the opening salutation of “Our Father who art in heaven,” we are shown “in whom we are to believe.” Saying “Our Father” locates us within the family of God, first of all in the sense that God “has created each individual human being” (137–38), and then that we are all to be drawn into Christ’s humanity, “and so into his Sonship, into his total belonging to God” (138). In this salvific sense, it is “[o]nly within the ‘we’ of the disciples [that we can] call God ‘Father,’ because only through communion with Jesus Christ do we truly become ‘children of God’ ” (141).Thus “[w]hen we say the word our, we say Yes to the living Church in which the Lord wanted to gather his new family” (141): In this sense, the Our Father is at once a fully personal and a thoroughly ecclesial prayer. In praying the Our Father, we pray totally with our own heart, but at the same time we pray in communion with the whole family of God, with the living and the dead, with men of all conditions, cultures, and races. The Our Father overcomes all boundaries and makes us one family. (141)4 The “in heaven” of the salutation in the Lord’s Prayer is, of course, taken not of “location,” but of “transcendence”: As Father, God is “the ultimate source of our being,” who “has thought and willed us from all eternity,” and to whom “all are meant to return” (142–43).“Hallowed be thy name” is then a recognition of worship due: God “puts himself within reach of our invocation. He enters into relationship with us and enables us to be in relationship with him.Yet this means that in some sense he hands himself over to our human world” (143).This has happened in the Incarnate Son, who has “manifested [God’s] name to men” (cf. Jn 17:6). And the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is a “plea” that God “himself take charge of the sanctification of his name, protect the wonderful mystery of his accessibility to us, and constantly assert his true identity as opposed to our distortion of it” (144–45). The second and third petitions declare God’s purpose and goal for creation: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In line with what he has said in an earlier chapter concerning Jesus’ first announcement of “the gospel of the kingdom of God” (46–63), Ratzinger presents the divine kingdom Christologically: “Jesus is the Kingdom of God in person.The Kingdom of God is present wherever he is present. . . .To pray for the Kingdom of God is to say to Jesus: 4 Keeping due proportions, Ratzinger disclaims writing an ecclesiological treatise: “[T]his book, being a book about Jesus, is primarily concerned with the Lord himself, and deals with the topic of the Church only insofar as it is necessary for a correct understanding of the figure of Jesus” (296). 14 Geoffrey Wainwright Let us be yours, Lord! Pervade us, live in us; gather scattered humanity in your body; so that in you everything may be subordinated to God and you can then hand over the universe to the Father, in order that ‘God may be all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28)” (146–47). “God’s will flows from his being and therefore guides us into the truth of our being, liberating us from self-destruction through falsehood. Because our being comes from God, we are able, despite all of the defilement that holds us back, to set out on the way to God’s will” (148–49).That way is personified in Jesus, who “came to do God’s will” (cf. Jn 4:34; Heb 10:5–10), who “accepts us, draws us up to himself, into himself ”; and “in communion with him we too learn God’s will” and are made “capable of the lofty height to which we are called” (150).Thus the “quo tendas” has both a mystical and an eschatological reference, “upwards and onwards” (cf. 49–50). The fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer appears as “the most ‘human’ of all the petitions”: the Lord “knows about our earthly needs” and “invites us to pray for our food and thus to turn our care over to God” (150). Joseph Ratzinger cites the post-Vatican II Missal to the effect that bread is “the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands”—and immediately adds that “the earth bears no fruit unless it receives sunlight and rain from above”: “This coming together of cosmic powers outside our control stands opposed to the temptation that comes to us through our pride to give ourselves life purely through our own power. . . . Such pride ends up destroying the earth” (151). Our earthly responsibility— under God—includes sharing our bread with others. St. John Chrysostom is quoted:“Every bite of bread in one way or another is a bite of the bread that belongs to everyone, of the bread of the world” (151). And St. Cyprian’s emphasis on praying for bread one day at a time is developed by our author so as to show the ethical and eschatological value of ascetical witness: We cannot ignore the people who trust so totally in God that they seek no security other than him.They encourage us to trust God—to count on him amid life’s great challenges.At the same time, this poverty, motivated entirely by commitment to God and his Kingdom, is also an act of solidarity with the world’s poor, an act that historically has created new standards of value and a new willingness for service and for commitment on behalf of others. (152) The scholarly Ratzinger deals with the exegetical ambiguity of the “mysterious” Greek adjective in ton arton ton epiousion—where one Latin translation reads panem quotidianum (“bread for the day”) and another panem crastinum (“bread for tomorrow”)—by drawing on a third: the Gospel Hermeneutics 15 panem nostrum supersubstantialem of St. Jerome’s Vulgate, which can unite “the bread we need in order to live” with “the future bread, the bread of the new world” by “pointing to the new, higher ‘substance’ that the Lord gives us in the Holy Sacrament as the true bread of our life” (154).To any charge that this may be “a false ‘theologizing’ of a word intended only in a straightforward earthly sense” the author replies that “it is necessary to keep in mind the larger context of Jesus’ words and deeds, a context in which essential elements of human life play a major role: water, bread, and, as a sign of the festive character and beauty of the world, the vine and wine.The theme of bread has an important place in Jesus’ message— from the temptation in the desert and the multiplication of the loaves right up to the Last Supper” (155; cf. 238–72). The interpretation given of the fourth petition is Christological to the core: “[M]an’s real food is the Logos, the eternal Word, the eternal meaning, from which we come and toward which our life is directed” (155–56); and the ethical and ecclesiological implications are not far to seek: “[W]hen we pray for ‘tomorrow’s’ bread today, we are reminded to live already today from tomorrow, from the love of God, which calls us all to be responsible for one another” (156). These lines are prolonged in the exposition of the fifth petition. Ratzinger has already said (136–37) that “the love that endures ‘to the end’ ( Jn 13:1), which Jesus fulfilled on the Cross in praying for his enemies, shows us the essence of the Father”—and “to become ‘sons’ ourselves” we are instructed to follow suit, as it were (cf. Mt 5:44–45).The fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer “presupposes a world in which there is trespass— trespass of men in relation to other men, trespass in relation to God” (157).The unceasing chain of guilt and retaliation can only be overcome by forgiveness: “God is a God who forgives, because he loves his creatures; but forgiveness can only penetrate and become effective in one who is himself forgiving” (157). “Forgiveness exacts a price—first of all from the person who forgives. He must overcome within himself the evil done to him; he must, as it were, burn it interiorly and in so doing renew himself.As a result, he also involves the other, the trespasser, in this process of transformation, of inner purification, and both parties, suffering all the way through and overcoming evil, are made new” (159).The cost to God of “the forgiveness of guilt, the healing of man from within” was “the death of his Son” (and Isaiah 53:4–6 is cited). If this seems implausible today, it is because we trivialize evil or because “our individualistic image of man” blocks our understanding of “the great mystery of expiation”: “We can no longer grasp substitution because we think that every man is ensconced in himself alone” (159). Ratzinger promises to return to 16 Geoffrey Wainwright these themes when he reaches the crucifixion of Christ the Incarnate Son. Meanwhile the fifth petition is at least a “moral exhortation” and a “daily challenge” but already “at its deepest core, . . . a Christological prayer”: It reminds us of the one who allowed forgiveness to cost him descent into the hardship of human existence and death on the Cross. It calls us first and foremost to thankfulness for that, and then, with him, to work through and suffer through evil by means of love. And while we must acknowledge day by day how little our capacities suffice for that task, and how often we ourselves keep falling into guilt, this petition gives us the great consolation that our prayer is held safe within the power of his love—with which, through which, and in which it can still become a power of healing. (160) The sixth and seventh petitions belong together, the latter giving a “positive twist” to the former (164). The sixth petition—“Lead us not into temptation”—receives a practical, almost colloquial exposition: When we pray it, we are saying to God: “I know that I need trials so that my nature can be purified. When you decide to send me these trials, when you give evil some room to maneuver, as you did with Job, then please remember that my strength only goes so far. Don’t overestimate my capacity. Don’t set too wide the boundaries within which I may be tempted, and be close to me with your protecting hand when it becomes too much for me.” (163) The perennial prayer for “deliverance from evil” acquires a contemporary ring in the face of today’s equivalent of “the dragon” of Revelation 12 and 13: Today there are on the one hand the forces of the market, of traffic in weapons, in drugs, and in human beings, all forces that weigh upon the world and ensnare humanity irresistibly.Today, on the other hand, there is also the ideology of success, of well-being, that tells us, “God is just a fiction, he only robs us of our time and our enjoyment of life. Don’t bother with him! Just try to squeeze as much out of life as you can.” These temptations seem irresistible as well. The Our Father in general and this petition in particular are trying to tell us that it is only when you have lost God that you have lost yourself; then you are no more than a random product of evolution. Then the “dragon” has really won. . . . This, then, is why we pray from the depths of our soul not to be robbed of our faith, which enables us to see God, which binds us with Christ. (165–66) Gospel Hermeneutics 17 In summary, Joseph Ratzinger invokes “Cyprian, the martyr bishop who personally had to endure the situation described in the Book of Revelation”: “When we say ‘deliver us from evil,’ then there is nothing further left for us to ask for. Once we have asked for and obtained protection against evil, we are safely sheltered against everything the devil and the world can contrive. What could the world make you fear if you are protected in the world by God himself?” (166, citing Cyprian, De dominica oratione, 19).That is the same confidence as St. Paul expresses in Romans 8:31–39. And “in this sense,” says Ratzinger, “the last petition brings us back to the first three: in asking to be liberated from the power of evil, we are ultimately asking for God’s Kingdom, for union with his will, and for the sanctification of his name” (167; cf. 134). For the remainder of this first volume Ratzinger takes us through the calling of the disciples; the parables of Jesus; the images, titles, and names that identify him; and Peter’s confession of him.The last “event” that our author expounds is the Transfiguration, which can be seen as a pendant to the Baptism. “The Transfiguration,” Ratzinger strikingly says, “is a prayer event; it displays visibly what happens when Jesus talks with his Father: the profound interpenetration of his being with God, which then becomes pure light. . . . The reality that he is in the deepest core of his being . . . becomes perceptible to the senses at this moment: Jesus’ being in the light of God, his own being-light as Son” (310).The Transfiguration reveals not only the identity of Jesus but also, like the Baptism already, presages the culmination of his saving work—and thereby offers the invitation, the summons, and the direction for our sharing in it by grace. He talks with Moses and Elijah about “the ‘exodus’ that he was about to accomplish at Jersusalem” (Lk 9:31; cf. Lk 24:26–27); and as the disciples go down from the mountain, they have to “learn once again that the messianic age is first and foremost the age of the Cross, and that the Transfiguration—the experience of becoming light from and with the Lord—requires us to be burned by the light of the Passion and so transformed” (315). If, recalling “Jesus’ garment of white light at the Transfiguration,” white garments will be worn by the saved (Rev 7:9, 13; 19:14), “[t]he garments of the elect are white because they have washed them in the blood of the Lamb (cf. Rev 7:14)”: “[T]his means that through Baptism they have been united with Jesus’ Passion, and his Passion is the purification that restores to us the original garment lost through our sin (cf. Lk 15:22)” (310). N&V Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 19–34 19 Pope Benedict XVI: A Biblical Portrayal of Jesus T HOMAS G. W EINANDY, O.F.M., C AP. Capuchin College Washington, DC P OPE B ENEDICT ’ S Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007) is a marvelous book. Its attractiveness lies not simply in the depth of its theology or in its clarity of expression, but also in the serene and prayerful manner in which it is written—a serenity and a prayerfulness that is conveyed to the heart and mind of the reader. This last comment must not be mistakenly interpreted to imply that this is fundamentally a book of meditations, no matter how spiritually beneficial this book may be to read. It is a robust theological work that addresses authentic contemporary biblical, historical, philosophical, and doctrinal issues, though some scholars may rightly feel that Benedict, at times, too quickly draws conclusions from somewhat inadequate or insufficient argumentation. Some scholars might quibble as well that Benedict quotes most frequently, both positively and negatively, authors of an older generation.Yet a close examination of his sources shows that Benedict is conversant with contemporary scholarship even if one would have appreciated his commenting on a particular scholar’s work. Nonetheless, what makes this book refreshingly unique is that all of the various academic and scholarly concerns are pondered from within the living household of faith—the confident and vibrant faith of the Catholic Church, to which Pope Benedict ardently adheres with a loving heart and inquiring mind.This book exemplifies the true meaning of the Augustinian dictum of “faith seeking to understand.” It is precisely because Benedict believes in Jesus that he is seeking to understand him more deeply. The beauty of this book, then, is its prayerful intellectual quest for a more profound biblical and theological understanding of Jesus 20 Thomas G.Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap. and, once the reader has discovered it, interior serenity and intellectual joy ensue. Jesus and Biblical Hermeneutics If the purpose of this book is to provide a more profound understanding of Jesus, the manner in which this end is achieved is equally important. For Benedict, the Bible is the fount of our knowledge of Jesus and the well to which the Church continually returns so as to quench her thirst for Jesus that is never fully satisfied. It is precisely here that, at the very onset of his study, Benedict takes up the fundamental issue of how the Bible is to be read and studied. If one’s philosophical presuppositions and historical methodology for reading the Bible are such that an authentic knowledge of Jesus is unattainable and further study will lead only to further unproven hypotheses about who Jesus is, then the Bible is no longer the wellspring of faith’s life, but rather it becomes a poisoned spring which first enfeebles and ultimately kills faith. While admitting that the historical-critical method has advanced our scholarly understanding of the Bible and its formation, Benedict notes that many contemporary studies of the biblical Jesus have not actually advanced our understanding of him, but rather they are “like photographs of their authors and the ideals they hold.” The impression is given that “we have very little certain knowledge of Jesus and that only at a later stage did faith in his divinity shape the image we have of him.”This situation is, for Benedict, critical. Faith’s “point of reference is being placed in doubt: Intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air” (all above quotations are from p. xii). Later, in an even more critical assessment of contemporary biblical scholarship, Benedict states: “The alleged findings of scholarly exegesis have been used to put together the most dreadful books that destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle the faith.” The foundational error resides within “the so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history . . .” (both quotations are from p. 35). What Benedict bluntly terms “the Antichrist,” with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism; he wants to convince us that only his kind of exegesis, the supposedly purely scientific kind, in which God says nothing and has nothing to say, is able to keep abreast of the times. (36) A Biblical Portrayal of Jesus 21 These are indeed strong words and such criticisms punctuate Benedict’s book throughout. By way of contrast, Benedict’s own biblical methodology and scholarly arguments, which are principally founded upon Vatican II’s Dei Verbum and the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (1993) and The Jewish People and Their Scriptures in the Christian Bible (2001), foster a much more confident approach for obtaining the truth contained within the biblical proclamation and thus a more reliable and objective understanding of Jesus. For Benedict, then, the historical-critical method cannot be abandoned, for the Christian faith is founded upon historical events.“Et incarnatus est—when we say these words, we acknowledge God’s actual entry into real history” (xv). However, the historical-critical method does not exhaust the interpretive task. While it is able to consider the various books of the Bible in their historical contexts and discern their various sources, “the unity of all of these writings as one ‘Bible,’ however, is not something it can recognize as an immediate historical datum” (xvii). For Benedict, the content of the Bible must not merely be interpreted historically but, above all, it must be interpreted theologically. “If you want to understand the Scripture in the spirit in which it is written, you have to attend to the content and to the unity of Scripture as a whole” (xviii). This means that, while the Bible is composed of many different “books” written in various historical eras in various literary genres, its unity is a theological datum.This theological datum is not imposed upon it, but is found within it. That theological datum is Jesus Christ himself, who unites both the Old and the New Testaments. This Christological hermeneutic, which sees Jesus Christ as the key to the whole and learns from him how to understand the Bible as a unity, presupposes a prior act of faith. It cannot be the conclusion of a purely historical method. But this act of faith is based upon reason—historical reason—and so makes it possible to see the internal unity of Scripture. (xix) Benedict is here providing some very significant and fruitful insights. Yes, we need to know what historical events took place, but it is only through faith that we recognize these historical events as divine revelatory actions and so are able to grasp, in faith, their theological significance as a whole. For Benedict, Jesus provides not only a historical unity to the Bible, in that all historical revelation leads to him and finds its completion in him, but he also simultaneously provides the theological hermeneutic for interpreting this historical unity, in that the historical 22 Thomas G.Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap. revelation prior to him can only be fully understood theologically in the light of its being completed in him.What is most novel and insightful is that Benedict argues that Jesus himself teaches us how we are to understand the unity of biblical revelation. He understood himself and his mission and so revealed his own identity and mission only from within the totality of this prior biblical revelation. Jesus embodies the whole of the Old Testament revelation. In his person he completes and in his mission he fulfills the Old Testament’s veiled, though originally intended, meaning and in so doing elevates it to a new level of clarity. Benedict’s above understanding allows him to do two things throughout the course of his book. First, because he sees the Bible as a unity, Benedict is eager to demonstrate the theological inter-relationship between the Old and the New Testaments, especially the manner in which New Testament revelation cannot be fully understood without a thorough understanding of the Old Testament, and, simultaneously, how the New Testament completes the Old and so provides a deeper understanding of it. Because he judges, in faith, that the Old and New Testaments contain the entire history of God’s revelatory action, Benedict is rejecting the oblique Marcionism contained in some contemporary biblical scholarship, which limits the meaning of a particular Old Testament book solely to its historical context. Second, again because of this biblical unity, Benedict is not afraid to interweave passages from a variety of biblical books, after the manner of the Fathers of the Church, so as to develop a theological point, particularly concerning the person and work of Christ. Some scholars may consider this the unjustified mixing of apples and oranges, but Benedict is convinced that, while there are many different authors from both covenants, together they are, each in their own distinct manner, professing and proclaiming one and the same Gospel. It is, therefore, completely fitting to knit their various revelatory truths into a configuration that does justice to the whole.Thus, for Benedict, “ ‘Canonical exegesis’—reading the individual texts of the Bible in the context of the whole—is an essential dimension of exegesis” (xix; cf. 191). Moreover, Benedict defends his own method of exegesis by stating: “I have merely tried to go beyond purely historical-critical exegesis so as to apply new methodological insights that allow us to offer a properly theological interpretation of the Bible” (xxiii). I have allotted a significant amount of space for presenting Benedict’s biblical and theological methodology because I believe that he has articulated a methodology that not only pertains to his own book, but also provides a Christian/Catholic alternative for doing theology. On the one hand, there is no doubt that this book’s primary concern is to enunciate an A Biblical Portrayal of Jesus 23 authentic biblical understanding of Jesus that supports the Church’s later doctrine development. On the other hand, one cannot help but sense that Benedict is also attempting, in this process, to rescue Scripture from a pseudo-academic environment where it has languished for decades and to return it to its proper environment, that is, the living household of faith, the Church.Thus, his method not only allows biblical scholars to be true to their exegetical principles, but it also provides them new opportunities to engage in authentic theological inquiry, something their own historicalcritical method hindered them from fully undertaking. For Benedict, biblical scholars ought not to be shackled by a method that does not allow them full and free access to the entire biblical text as a unity. Moreover, Benedict’s methodology once more allows systematic theologians (of which he is one) access to the biblical text. The Bible is no longer under the strict governance of an elite biblical academy, but now that the Bible is permitted to be interpreted from within a theological and ecclesial perspective, actual theologians can once more rightly claim it as their own. It is from within this methodological context that Benedict proceeds to examine in the body of his book key historical events and teachings within the life of Jesus as they are presented to us in the Gospels. Jesus: The New Moses Benedict begins his study with the Book of Deuteronomy where Moses promises the people that God will “raise up for you a prophet like me from among you” (Deut 18:15). Such a promise is necessary because the Israelites’ entrance into the Promised Land does not fully constitute their salvation. Israel must await a new Moses in whom their full liberation would be fulfilled. For Benedict, this new Moses “will be granted what was refused to the first one—a real, immediate vision of the face of God, and thus the ability to speak entirely from seeing, not just from looking at God’s back” (5–6; cf. 265). This new Moses would establish then a greater covenant. It is from within this context that Benedict believes that the prologue of John’s Gospel must be read.“No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” ( Jn 1:18). Jesus, as the new Moses,“lives before the face of God, not just as a friend, but as a Son; he lives in the most intimate unity with the Father” (6). Much later in his book Benedict will emphatically reiterate this same point.“Only the one who is God sees God-Jesus. He truly speaks from his vision of the Father, from unceasing dialogue with the Father, a dialogue that is his life” (265–66).What Jesus reveals is not, then, a product of human reasoning, but results from his human prayer, which is “a participation in this filial communion with the Father” (7). 24 Thomas G.Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap. Here Benedicts expresses for the first time, what I consider, the major theme of his book. Jesus is the incarnate Son of God who bestows upon all believers what he himself shares—a filial intimacy and knowledge of the Father. Benedict will orchestrate this signature theme under various modalities throughout the entirety of his book until it reaches its crescendo with the great “I am” of John’s Gospel. The Baptism of Jesus: Entering into the Depths of Sin Following the Gospel narratives, Benedict emphasizes Jesus’ historicity and so his communion with the whole history of humankind. In Luke, Jesus’ primogenitor is not father Abraham, as in Matthew’s Gospel, but father Adam.Thus Jesus is, literally, “the son of man” (10). Moreover, the baptism of Jesus highlights not merely his solidarity with some generic and sanitized form of humanity but precisely his solidarity with the sinful race of Adam. Benedict perceives already in Jesus’ baptism “a confession of guilt and a plea for forgiveness in order to make a new beginning” (17), and thus a foreshadowing of his death and resurrection. Looking at the events in light of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian people realized what happened: Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind’s guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross. (18) Benedict perceptively appreciates in Jesus’ baptism, to which the above alludes, the foreshadowing of what it truly means for Jesus to have assumed a humanity from fallen Adam in that he must bear the burden of sin to its ultimate end. Echoing Irenaeus, Benedict sees Jesus recapitulating, assuming within his own historical humanity, the whole of humankind’s sinful history. Furthermore, without any apology or even a slight questioning pause of the pen, Benedict appropriates a familiar, though controversial, von Balthasarian theme. He clearly acknowledges that Jesus, the son of Adam, enters into the domain of the devil. However, Benedict does alter the emphasis of this theme. His entering into the sin of others is a descent into the “inferno.” But he does not descend merely in the role of a spectator, as in Dante’s Inferno. Rather, he goes down in the role of one whose suffering-withothers is a transforming suffering that turns the underworld around, knocking down and flinging open the gates of the abyss. His Baptism is a descent into the house of the evil one, combat with the “strong man” (cf. Lk 11:22) who holds men captive. (20) A Biblical Portrayal of Jesus 25 Notice that Jesus’ descent into hell is not some passive event for Benedict. It is not simply or only the submissive experience of abandonment accompanied by its consuming anguish. Rather, for Benedict, Jesus descends into the domain of Satan in order to do combat so as to free humankind from hell’s captivity, that is, from the sufferings of sin, death, and damnation. Moreover, this descent into hell does not simply occur after Jesus’ death, but rather it “accompanies him along his entire journey. He must recapitulate the whole of history from its beginnings—from Adam on; he must go through, suffer through, the whole of it, in order to transform it” (26). Further on Benedict once again emphasizes that it is not only after his death “but already by his death and during his whole life, that Jesus ‘descends into hell,’ as it were, into the domain of our temptations and defeats, in order to take us by the hand and carry us upward” (161; cf. 99). Benedict is keenly aware that only if the Son of God, having become man of the sinful race of Adam, actually experiences the full effects of sin—temptation, suffering, and death—and so breaches sin’s very domicile, that is, hell, can he overthrow it and lift us up into the new abode of heavenly life.This journey of descent not only expressed Jesus’ love for us, but also the love of the Father in rescuing his Son from the demonic realm of sin and death. Jesus descended “into the abyss of death, into the night of abandonment, and into the desolation of the defenseless. He ventured this leap as an act of God’s love for men. And so he knew that, ultimately, when he leaped he could only fall into the kindly hands of the Father” (38). Already at Jesus’ baptism, where he first publicly begins his descent into the abyss, the love and protection of the Father were present. It is here, when Jesus first aligned himself with sinful humanity and assumed to himself its ultimate fatal consequences, that the Father sent forth his Spirit upon him and declared his identity as the beloved Son and as the Anointed One: his “kingly and priestly dignity were formally bestowed upon him for all time in the presence of Israel” (26). While Benedict does not shy away from the language of descent and even that of “descent into hell,” yet he gives to such notions a much more active and broader perspective than is normally understood. While Jesus may experience the depths of sin and the suffering that ensues from it, he turns such experiences into the means whereby he conquers sin and vanquishes death and so triumphs over Satan. It is here, though, that one would wish for some soteriological mechanism to come into play. How does the taking on of the sin and guilt of humankind and so suffering its effects even to the depths of hell bring about hell’s demise? Benedict does not clearly say. 26 Thomas G.Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap. I would argue that it is precisely in Christ’s love that this transformation occurs. In love the Son of God assumed our sinful humanity and on the cross assumed its curse to the end—even entering into the abyss. Moreover, he simultaneously on the cross offered, in love, his life as a sacrifice to the Father in reparation for all of humankind’s sin. He entered hell, then, as the one who so much loved his brothers and sisters in Adam as to assume their punishment as well as the one who lovingly offered his sinless and holy life to the Father on behalf of his sinful brothers and sisters. It is this twofold love that freed sinful humankind from hell’s condemnation and made it possible for humankind to be transformed into righteous sons and daughters of the Father after the likeness of Jesus, the Son. It will be fascinating to see if and how Benedict develops this theme in his second volume which will focus on the Passion narratives. Jesus and the Kingdom of God Whereas Jesus preached the coming of God’s Kingdom, Benedict notes, the apostolic Church proclaimed Jesus as the Christ.This was not a mutation of the original Gospel, but rather the Church’s awareness that the Kingdom of God is embodied in the person of Jesus himself. It is “not simply in Jesus’ physical presence that the ‘Kingdom’ is located; rather, it is in his action, accomplished in the Holy Spirit” (60). For Benedict, then, the Kingdom of God is not some human engineered utopia in which God ultimately disappears (cf. 54). Rather, in Jesus, “God has here and now entered actively into history in a wholly new way” (60). “What did Jesus actually bring, if not world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought?” Benedict’s biblical answer to these and similar questions echoes throughout his book. “The answer is very simple: God” (44; cf. 354).This understanding of the Kingdom of God is similarly perceived within the Sermon on the Mount, which Benedict perceptively interprets in a Christological manner. It is unanimously understood that Matthew portrays Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount as the new Moses. However, Benedict, in interpreting the Sermon, advances his theme that Jesus, as the Son of God incarnate, establishes an intimacy with God. Unlike the Israelites’ harrowing experience of God’s presence on Mount Sinai, God now “speaks intimately, as one man to another” (67). Moreover, the Beatitudes present “a veiled interior biography of Jesus” for they “display the mystery of Christ himself, and they call us into communion with him” (74). Jesus himself is the one who is poor in spirit, who is meek, who seeks for righteousness, etc., and, as such, he reveals his intimate union with God. Such intimacy is to be the life of the Church, who practices the Beatitudes, and A Biblical Portrayal of Jesus 27 of those who are her members.This is specifically seen in the Beatitude that the pure of heart will see God. For it belongs to his [Jesus’] nature that he sees God, that he stands faceto-face with him, in permanent interior discourse—in a relationship of Sonship. In other words, this Beatitude is profoundly Christological.We will see God when we enter into the “mind of Christ” (Phil 2:5). Purification of heart occurs as a consequence of following Christ, of becoming one with him. (95) As the above exemplifies, the more one draws closer to Jesus and thus to God the more one becomes truly human.The Sermon on the Mount teaches us “how to be a human being.” But to be such we must live “in relation to God” (128). If Jesus himself embodies the Beatitudes, which fulfill the Ten Commandments, he also, for Benedict, personifies and fulfills the Torah. Benedict notes the recognized reading that Jesus, when he states, “You have heard it said . . . but I say to you,” has appropriated to himself “the same exalted level as the Lawgiver—as God” (102). But, then, Benedict once more draws upon his constant theme.The Torah is holy because it comes forth from the all-holy God, but if Jesus, with a display of divine authority is altering the Torah, then he too must be the all-holy God. Jesus understands himself as the Torah—as the word of God in person. The tremendous prologue of John’s Gospel—“in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” ( Jn 1:1)—says nothing different from what the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount and the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels says. The Jesus of the Fourth Gospel and the Jesus of the Synoptics is one and the same: the true “historical” Jesus. (110–11) Here we observe how subtly, and yet unmistakably, the Synoptics profess the divinity of Jesus. It is not, as is often assumed within scholarly circles, that the Synoptics portray the earthly, human, historical Jesus while the Gospel of John divinizes him to the detriment of human historicity. Rather, Benedict clearly shows that, in a profound appraisal of the Gospels, both are proclaiming the same truth in different manners, and in so doing enhancing our understanding of who Jesus is. This bears itself out when Benedict comments on John 6 where Jesus proclaims that he is the true bread of life. While God gave the Israelites the manna in the desert, yet the real food that he gave them, of which manna is a symbol, was his words of life—the Torah. “So the Torah is ‘bread’ from God, then. And yet it shows us only the back, so to speak. It 28 Thomas G.Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap. is a ‘shadow.’ ‘For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world’ ( Jn 6:33)” (267). Jesus is the real bread of life and so Jesus is the fulfillment of the Torah. “The Law has become a person.When we encounter Jesus we feed on the living God himself, so to speak; we truly eat ‘bread from heaven’ ” (268).This finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Eucharist, where the eternal WordπTorah nourishes us on his resurrected body and blood. Jesus and the Our Father If the Sermon on the Mount reveals that Jesus is truly the Son of God and therefore demonstrates just how close God is to us, and also teaches us how to be human by being related to God through Jesus, the Our Father is at the heart of this revelation. Benedict astutely observes that normally thoughts precede our words. But this is not always the case when it comes to prayer. Here, especially in the Psalms and the liturgy, our words of prayer precede our thoughts—actually the words of the Psalms and the liturgy conform our minds to the truths expressed in such prayers and so we actually pray in conformity with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (cf. 130–31).This is also the case when we pray the Our Father. The Our Father, obviously, arose from Jesus’ own life of prayer, from his filial “dialogue with the Father” (133). Benedict observes the relationship between the Our Father and the Ten Commandments and so the intimate connection between the Old and the New Testaments and, in so doing, emphasizes once again that we can be human only in relationship to the Father. “The Our Father, then, like the Ten Commandments, begins by establishing the primacy of God, which then leads naturally to a consideration of the right way of being human” (134). While we pray to the Father, that address can only be made in Jesus because he “is ‘the Son’ in the strict sense—he is one substance with the Father. He wants to draw all of us into his humanity and so into his Sonship, into his total belonging to God” (138). The Our Father exemplifies a central Christian mystery.Through his humanity Jesus unites us to his own sonship and so provides the means to become children of the Father. “We are not ready-made children of God from the start, but we are meant to become so increasingly by growing more and more deeply in communion with Jesus. Our sonship turns out to be identical with following Christ” (138). Benedict understands our relationship to the Father in and through his Son to be the essence of what it means to be human and warns of the consequences of its absence. Commenting on the petition “deliver us from evil,” he states: “The Our Father in general and this petition in particular are trying to tell us that it is only when you A Biblical Portrayal of Jesus 29 have lost God that you have lost yourself; then you are nothing more than a random product of evolution” (166). The Parables as the Mystery of Jesus In introducing his chapter on the parables, Benedict once more highlights the paucity of much contemporary liberal biblical scholarship, though “in its day it was viewed as the ne plus ultra of scientific rigor and reliable historiography and was regarded even by Catholic exegetes with envy and admiration.”The reason is that it reduces the parables to entertaining morality tails and Jesus to that of a wise guru. Similar to the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, “this type of interpretation that makes Jesus a moralist, for all of its significant historical insight, remains theologically impoverished, and does not even come close to the real figure of Jesus” (both quotations from p. 186). Not surprisingly, Benedict once again, as he did when interpreting the Sermon on the Mount and the Our Father, recognizes that the parables concern the mystery of who Jesus is (cf. 188).With admirable insight Benedict also informs us that “it is on the Cross that the parables are unlocked” (190). Because this is such a marvelous insight, allow this lengthy quote. The parables speak in a hidden way, then, of the mystery of the Cross; they do not only speak of it—they are part of it themselves. For precisely because they allow the mystery of Jesus’ divinity to be seen, they lead to contradiction. It is just when they emerge into a final clarity, as in the parable of the unjust vintners (cf. Mk 12:1–12), that they become stations of the way of the Cross. In the parables Jesus is not only the sower who scatters the seed of God’s word, but also the seed that falls into the earth in order to die and so to bear fruit. (191) Jesus is the only beloved divine Son of the Father whom the vintners will kill, and yet his death will be the seed that bears much fruit. This same theme is woven into Benedict’s interpretation of the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, which he also reads in the light of the raising of Lazarus of Bethany. “Do we not recognize in the figure of Lazarus— lying at the rich man’s door covered in sores—the mystery of Jesus, who ‘suffered outside the city walls’ (Heb 13:12) and, stretched naked on the Cross, was delivered over to the mockery and contempt of the mob, his body ‘full of blood and wounds’?” (216–17) Moreover, as the rich man asked Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers because they would believe someone who rose from the dead, so Jesus is “the true Lazarus” (both of the parable and of the actual raising), who “has risen from the dead—and he has come to tell us so” (217). 30 Thomas G.Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap. In a manner reminiscent of the Fathers of the Church, Benedict has beautifully woven together various passages of Scripture so as to offer a deeper understanding of the parables and miracles, an understanding that enables us to discern the mystery of who Jesus is as the Son of God incarnate and of his passion, death, and resurrection. The Johannine Portrayal of Jesus Benedict’s study of the Synoptic Gospels covers approximately two-thirds of his book. One of his primary aims is to demonstrate that these Gospels, in many and various ways, truly do proclaim the divinity of Jesus. “Listening to the Synoptics, we have realized that the mystery of Jesus’ oneness with the Father is ever present and determines everything, even though it remains hidden beneath his humanity” (218). While this truth only gradually penetrated the hearts and minds of Jesus’ disciples, his opponents clearly perceived the significance of what Jesus was saying and doing, and they ardently rejected it as blasphemous. However, “in John, Jesus’ divinity appears unveiled” (219). It is precisely because Jesus’ divinity is so evident in John’s Gospel that many scholars have rejected its historicity. Benedict launches into a passionate, lengthy, and, ultimately, effective defense of its historicity (cf. 218–38). For Benedict, the disciple whom Jesus loved has not abandoned history, but, through prayerful reflection, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he has faithfully presented the words and actions of Jesus and in so doing has penetrated their inner meaning and significance. “Just as Jesus, the Son, knows about the mystery of the Father from resting in his heart, so too the Evangelist has gained his intimate knowledge from his inward repose in Jesus’ heart” (222–23). In response to those who argue that John’s Gospel does not bear witness to history, but is intended simply to strengthen the faith of the early Church, Benedict perceptively queries: What faith does it “testify” to if, so to speak, it has left history behind? How does it strengthen faith if it presents itself as a historical testimony—and does so quite emphatically—but then does not report history? . . . A faith that discards history in this manner really turns into “Gnosticism.” It leaves flesh, incarnation—just what true history is— behind. (228) Having defended the historicity of John’s Gospel, Benedict discusses four Johannine images—that of water, vine and wine, bread, and the shepherd. It is not possible to comment in detail on all or any one of these images. Nonetheless, it is not surprising, given the established pattern of his book, that Benedict perceives that all of these images have A Biblical Portrayal of Jesus 31 to do with Jesus, as the Son of God incarnate, granting access to his Father in the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the images of water, vine and wine, and bread find their fulfillment in the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist. Through Baptism the Christian is united to Christ, the vine, and so comes to share in the new life of the Holy Spirit as a child of the Father. Likewise Jesus, the vine, continually nourishes this life through the Eucharist. Benedict perceives that those who follow Jesus as the shepherd have access to the Father through him. This is why the Church is commissioned to preach the Gospel to all nations and peoples:“There is only one Shepherd” (284). Peter’s Profession and the Transfiguration Having examined a variety of Jesus’ teachings and actions by and through which he revealed the mystery of himself as the Son incarnate, Benedict focuses on two events that lie at the heart of this mystery—Peter’s profession of faith and the Transfiguration.While, throughout his book, Benedict has linked the Incarnation with the cross, he now deepens this connection in a most thoughtful manner. Benedict first notes that Jesus questions his disciples about his identity as he sets out to Jerusalem—the journey of the cross—a journey that his disciples must also undertake if they are to be his faithful followers. This provides the context of Jesus’ query:“Who do the people say that I am?” While the responses of John the Baptist, Elijah, and Jeremiah are all prophets, yet they all prefigure some form of suffering and death as well as the eschatological events through which Israel would be restored. Nonetheless, while they may approximate who Jesus is, they fall far short. Jesus is more than just a prophet. For Benedict this distinction is crucial within the context of global religions. “Today it is fashionable to regard Jesus as one of the great religious founders who were granted a profound experience of God” (293). However, such an understanding is always a human experience that, at best, obtains fragments of divine truth. “The individual decides what he is going to accept from the various ‘experiences,’ what he finds helpful and what he finds alien.There is no definitive commitment here” (293). Peter’s confession elevates Jesus to a unique and singular status that differs in kind from the founders of other religions. While Benedict notes that the wording of Peter’s confession differs in the three Synoptics, the real issue is not in attempting to sort out which one is authentically the historical, the ipsima verba Petri. Rather, it is to grasp, in faith, the truth that the Gospels are proclaiming. Scholars discern two ways of interpreting Peter’s confession, which they often see as opposed to one another—as expressing Jesus’ ontological nature or as 32 Thomas G.Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap. expressing his role or function within salvation history. For Benedict, Peter’s profession is both. In all three forms his profession states something that is “ ‘substantive’—you are the Christ, the Christ of God, the Christ, the Son of the living God” (298).Yet, this proclamation of who Jesus is must equally be understood within its salvific context—the mystery of the cross and resurrection. Benedict concludes: At certain key moments, the disciples came to the astonishing realization: This is God himself. They were unable to put all this together into a perfect response. Instead they rightly drew upon the Old Testament’s words of promise: Christ, the Anointed One, Son of God, Lord.These are the key words on which their confession focused, while still tentatively searching for a way forward. It could arrive at its complete form only when Thomas, touching the wounds of the Risen Lord, cried out, in amazement: “My Lord and my God” ( Jn 20:28). . . . Only by touching Jesus’ wounds and encountering his Resurrection are we able to grasp them [Thomas’ words], and then they become our mission (304–5). While Peter rightly professed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, he did not place such a profession in relationship to the cross and so his faith was defective.“Jesus’ divinity belongs with the Cross—only when we put the two together do we recognize Jesus correctly” (305). There is an intimate connection between Peter’s profession of faith and the Transfiguration. Benedict notes that Peter’s profession would have occurred on the great Day of Atonement, the one day of the year where the high priest would have solemnly pronounced the name of Yahweh.This reinforces the interpretation that Jesus is truly God as well as his mission being inherently tied to the cross.The following week would then be the Feast of Tabernacles, the Transfiguration occurring on the final day of the feast. Luke sets the Transfiguration within the context of Jesus praying. For Benedict, the Transfiguration “displays visibly what happens when Jesus talks with his Father: the profound interpenetration of his being with God, which then becomes pure light. In his oneness with the Father, Jesus is himself ‘light from light’ ” (p. 310). Unlike the light that shone upon Moses, the light of the Transfiguration comes forth from within Jesus himself. While it would appear that Peter’s remark about setting up three tents, one for Jesus and one each for Moses and Elijah, is but confused nonsense, Benedict sees it as a direct reference to the Feast of Tabernacles itself. God dwelt within the Tabernacle, but now through the Incarnation, God literally “has pitched the tent of his body among us and has thus inaugurated the messianic age” (315). Moreover, as the holy cloud, the shekinah, hovered over the Tent of Meeting displaying the presence of God, so now “Jesus is A Biblical Portrayal of Jesus 33 the holy tent above whom the cloud of God’s presence now stands and spreads to ‘overshadow’ the others as well” (316). As noted earlier, the Father’s exhortation to listen to his Son, who is flanked by Moses and Elijah, both indicates his continuity with the Torah and the Prophets as well as his being the new Torah and the fulfillment of God’s promises. The Identity of Jesus Benedict brings his book to a close by examining the titles of Jesus which clearly identify him as God, such as “Christ,” “Lord,” “Son of Man,” “the Son,” and the “I Am”. Here I want briefly to reflect on the title “Son” and the “I Am”. Benedict rightly notes that one must distinguish the title “Son of God” from that of “the Son,” which Jesus himself employs. In the Prologue John sets the context for Jesus’ use of the title.“No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” ( Jn 1:18).The truth of this statement, Benedict again states, arises out of Jesus’ prayerful filial dialogue with the Father.“At the same time, it also becomes clear what ‘the Son’ is and what this term means: perfect communion in knowledge, which is at the same time communion in being. Unity in knowing is possible only because it is a unity of being” (340). It is this biblical understanding of the term “Son” along with other biblical evidence that Benedict has provided throughout his book that rightly gives rise to the Council of Nicea’s homooúsios. “This philosophical term serves . . . to safeguard the reliability of the biblical term” (320). Jesus’ self revelation is most strikingly seen in his use of “I am.” This phrase was first used in Exodus 3:14 where God reveals his name as “I am who I am.” God designates himself as “I am.” Deutero-Isaiah emphasizes that the Israelites will know that “I am he” (Is 43:10). For Benedict, when Jesus says “I am,” he is not simply placing himself alongside of the Father, but “because he is the Son, he has every right to utter with his own lips the Father’s self-designation” (348). However, Jesus’ self-designation as God by appropriating to himself the very name of God,“I am,” also reveals that as God incarnate he is to die on the cross.“When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he” ( Jn 8:28).As Benedict states: “On the Cross, his Sonship, his oneness with the Father, becomes visible. . . .The burning bush is the Cross.The highest claim of revelation, the ‘I am he,’ and the Cross of Jesus are inseparably one” (349). It must not be thought that Jesus’ use of the “I am” is exclusive to John’s Gospel and so historically suspect. It is also found in the Synoptics, though in a less conspicuous manner. For example, in Mark, Jesus walks on the water as he approaches the disciples on the stormy lake.They are fright- 34 Thomas G.Weinandy, O.F.M.Cap. ened at his sight, but he assures them: “Take heart, it is I [I am he]; have no fear” (Mk 6:50). Benedict observes that within the Bible men are overwhelmed with fear when confronted by the presence of God. “It is this ‘divine terror’ that comes over the disciples here. For walking on the waters is a divine prerogative: God ‘alone stretched out the heavens, and trampled the waves of the sea,’ we read in the book of Job ( Job 9:8; cf. Ps 76:20 in the Septuagint version; Is 43:16).The Jesus who walks upon the waters is not simply the familiar Jesus; in this new Jesus they suddenly recognize the presence of God himself ” (352). Personal Relationship with Jesus In his book Benedict is keen, as all the above demonstrates, to show that, because of his unique relationship with the Father, Jesus is the eternal Son of God incarnate. Moreover, what also becomes evident in so many ways throughout this book, as the above also exemplifies, is that this relationship is available to those who believe in Jesus. In an almost Protestant Evangelical fashion, Benedict stresses that it is through our personal relationship with Jesus, our friendship with Jesus, by means of faith and the sacraments, that we come to share in his own personal relationship with the Father (see, for example, xii, xxiv, 24, 138). This, I believe, is significant. It reveals Benedict’s pastoral awareness that contemporary men and women are seeking personal relationships that are authentic and loving. For Benedict, this human “personalism” can only be obtained if one first has a personal relationship with Jesus, who allows one to share in the divine life of the Father through the love of the Holy Spirit. It is through our sharing in the life and love of the Trinity that we can truly share our lives with one another in love. As Benedict states: In the end, man needs just one thing, in which everything else is included; but he must first delve beyond his superficial wishes and longings in order to learn to recognize what it is that he truly needs and truly wants. He needs God.And so we now realize what ultimately lies behind all the Johannine images: Jesus gives us “life” because he gives us God. He can give God because he himself is one with God, because he is the Son. He himself is the gift—he is “life.” (353–54). In providing the reader with an authentic biblical portrayal of Jesus, Benedict has offered the reader an opportunity to meet Jesus himself, and, in so doing, allowing the reader to come to a deeper personal relationship with him. Benedict has learned from Jesus himself that this is the true purpose of theology and the hoped for goal of faith—to encounter N&V the living God in Christ Jesus. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 35–66 35 A “New Synthesis”: Joseph Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth W ILLIAM M. W RIGHT IV Duquesne University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania S EVENTEEN YEARS before his election to the papacy, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delivered his 1988 Erasmus Lecture on the state of biblical scholarship as a discipline within the Church.1 Ratzinger began his remarks by identifying several weaknesses in historical biblical exegesis as it was practiced within the Church at the time.2 Since this lecture, many of Ratzinger’s diagnostic observations have become commonplace within biblical studies, such as the recognition of a reader’s locatedness and the shaping effect of theological and philosophical presuppositions on exegetical conclusions. Instead of abandoning historical criticism, Ratzinger proposes a renovation of the method, which “takes into account both the undeniable insights uncovered by the historical method, while at the same time overcoming its limitations and disclosing them in a thoroughly relevant hermeneutic.”3 Such a project would I want to thank Rev. Radu Bordeianu, Bogdan Bucur, Fr. Sean Kealy, C.S.Sp., Damon McGraw, and Bill Thompson-Uberuaga for their comments on drafts of this work. 1 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger,“Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today,” in Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, ed. R. J. Neuhaus (Grand Rapids:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), 1–23. 2 Among the problems Ratzinger identifies are the following: an overriding focus on reconstructing the history behind the biblical text to the neglect of what the text itself claims; the aversion to Scripture from many systematic theologians; fundamentalism; the disregard for the text’s original setting by ideological critics, who openly employ the Bible to advance a political agenda. See Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 1–5. 3 Ibid., 5–6. 36 William M.Wright IV enable a more fruitful reintegration of historical biblical studies with Christian faith and practice and thus create a more properly Christian approach to biblical interpretation. According to Ratzinger, the path to improving biblical exegesis does not lie in practicing better critical analysis according to the current methods or in the interpreter striving to be more objective (in the sense of being unbiased). Rather, the historical-critical method itself needs to be assessed at its most basic, philosophical level.4 Ratzinger thus proposes “a criticism of criticism,” which examines the history of modern exegesis to illustrate the shaping effect of theological and philosophical pressures on the conclusions of modern exegetes.5 Ratzinger follows through on this proposal by discussing the theological premises which guided the formcritical work of Dibelius and Bultmann. In the final section of the lecture, Ratzinger makes some positive suggestions for what he calls “a New Synthesis.”6 This program of a philosophically renovated historical criticism would be more open to the text’s claim and not exclude certain possibilities (such as divine intervention in the world) on philosophical grounds. Other features of this program include the consideration that events are meaningful in themselves, an awareness of the exegete’s location within the Church community, and the acceptance of the Church’s faith as an interpretive key, not an impediment, for understanding Scripture. Nearly twenty years after this lecture, Joseph Ratzinger produced the first volume of his Jesus of Nazareth.Throughout this essay, I will refer to the author of this book as Joseph Ratzinger rather than with his papal name “Benedict XVI” because Ratzinger did not write this book as an exercise of his papal authority. Ratzinger specifies that this book does not constitute magisterial teaching, but rather it is his own work and position as a believer and theologian.7 In this book, Ratzinger focuses on selected events in Jesus’ life from his baptism to the Transfiguration as presented in the canonical Gospels. The book resists a simple generic categorization, for it does not correspond straightforwardly to conventional categories such as historical Jesus study, critical Gospel commentary, or a spiritual meditation on Scripture. And yet the answer given to the genre question can significantly impact 4 Ratzinger states, “At its core, the debate about modern exegesis is not a dispute among historians: it is rather a philosophical debate” (“Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 16). 5 Ibid., 4–7, 22. 6 Ibid., 17–23, quotation from 17. 7 Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, trans.A. J.Walker (New York: Doubleday, 2007), xxxiii. A “New Synthesis” 37 the overall assessment of Ratzinger’s work. Ratzinger states that this book constitutes “an expression of my personal search ‘for the face of the Lord’ (cf. Ps 27:8).”8 In this project, Ratzinger blends together intellectual acumen, a deep, prayerful spirituality, and pastoral insight to articulate a richly layered meditation on the figure of Jesus, who reveals the meaning of human existence. It is, I propose, Ratzinger’s substantive effort to carry out the “New Synthesis,” which he articulated in the Erasmus Lecture. In order to categorize Ratzinger’s project appropriately and so understand it, I will begin with his programmatic remarks about his interpretive approach to the Gospels, illustrating them with actual examples of his practice. From here, I will turn to Ratzinger’s interpretation of Christ’s life, focusing on several of its key aspects. In the final section, I will discuss some of the larger issues raised by Ratzinger and suggest some possibilities for further research. Understanding Ratzinger’s Project Ratzinger’s Interpretive Principles As he did in the Erasmus Lecture, Ratzinger operates with a generally positive evaluation of historical biblical criticism in Jesus of Nazareth.9 Ratzinger allows the historical-critical method and many of its conclusions to frame his own project. He remarks programmatically (and somewhat sweepingly) that he assumes “everything that the Council and modern exegesis tell us about literary genres, about authorial intention, and about the fact that the Gospels were written within the context, and speak within the living milieu, of communities.”10 At times, Ratzinger follows through on this programmatic statement and incorporates conclusions of this sort into his interpretation. He acknowledges that conflict with synagogue groups shaped the Gospels of Matthew and John but does not appear reflected in Luke.11 When introducing his chapter on the Sermon on the Mount, Ratzinger discusses how the Lukan account of the Sermon differs from the Matthean in emphasis and theological concern.12 8 Ibid., Jesus of Nazareth, xxiii. 9 Ratzinger makes the following statement regarding historical biblical scholar- ship: “I write with profound gratitude for all that [modern exegesis] has given and continues to give to us. It has opened up to us a wealth of material and an abundance of findings that enable the figure of Jesus to become present to us with a vitality and depth that we could not have imagined even just a few decades ago” ( Jesus of Nazareth, xxiii). 10 Ibid., xxi. 11 Ibid., 181. 12 Ibid., 68–69. 38 William M.Wright IV It would definitely be a category mistake to consider this book as Ratzinger’s attempt at historical-critical exegesis. As readers of his other writings can recognize, Joseph Ratzinger is a very biblically grounded theologian, who frequently employs Scripture as a primary source for his theological thinking.13 However, Ratzinger himself is not a specialized biblical exegete, and in this work, he does not try his hand at historicalcritical analysis (à la Schillebeeckx).14 Ratzinger insists quite plainly that his goal “is not to counter modern exegesis,” and he does not wish “to enter into the debates of historical-critical research.”15 He acknowledges that much of his interpretation does not conform to the norms of conventional biblical scholarship and admits that many of his conclusions “[go] beyond what much contemporary exegesis . . . has to say.”16 Instead, Ratzinger relies frequently, although not uncritically, on the work of various biblical scholars.17 Ratzinger’s choice of interlocutors in biblical scholarship is somewhat curious. Many of his interlocutors are from a past generation, such as Bultmann, Cullmann, and Jeremias, and most of the biblical scholarship he consults is German. He draws on an ecumenical range of scholars, mostly Catholic and Protestant, and his most sustained engagement with any contemporary biblical scholar is with Jacob Neusner. Some of Ratzinger’s claims and choices pertaining to critical issues are questionable. For instance, he claims that Galatians was written to a Jewish Christian audience, whereas Galatians 3:3 suggests a community made up of converts from Gentile paganism.18 13 For discussions of Ratzinger’s theological use of Scripture, see Francis Martin, “Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, on Biblical Interpretation:Two Leading Principles,” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 285–314; Scott W. Hahn,“The Authority of Mystery: The Biblical Theology of Benedict XVI,” Letter and Spirit 2 (2006): 97–140. 14 Cf. Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, trans. H. Hoskins (New York: Seabury Press, 1979); idem, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord, trans. J. Bowden (New York: Crossroad, 1981). 15 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xxiii and 365, respectively. 16 Ibid., xxiii. 17 For instance, Ratzinger’s discussion of the Fourth Gospel’s authorship draws heavily on Martin Hengel’s The Johannine Question. But Ratzinger disagrees with Hengel both on the identity of the Beloved Disciple and the extent to which the Fourth Gospel reflects the historically reliable, eyewitnessing of the Beloved Disciple. See Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 220–35; Martin Hengel, The Johannine Question, trans. J. Bowden (Philadelphia:Trinity Press International, 1989). 18 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 100. Elsewhere, however, Ratzinger speaks of the Galatians as coming from an “atheistic past” (implying that they were nonJewish). See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology, trans. Sr. M. F. McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 69. A “New Synthesis” 39 Also, when surveying the major symbols of the Fourth Gospel, he omits any discussion of light and darkness.While Ratzinger often incorporates modern exegetical conclusions, they usually do not have a far-reaching impact on his interpretations. Ratzinger considers historical-critical analysis to be a necessary prerequisite for Christian exegesis.19 He invokes God’s activity in salvation history as the rationale for this conclusion. Since God has acted in the course of real historical events, a historical mode of investigation is appropriate to exegesis. Invoking Dei Verbum §12 and the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s 1993 document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, Ratzinger argues that the Incarnation requires that history be studied and taken seriously as constituent to Christianity. Ratzinger’s insistence on the foundational character of historical-critical study for Christian exegesis seems to be directed against a Gnostic/Hegelian exegesis in which the biblical narratives are read as expressions of ahistorical, speculative truths.20 While the historical-critical method may be a necessary foundation and starting point, Ratzinger does not consider it to be all-sufficient or comprising the entirety of Christian biblical interpretation.21 He identifies several defects in the historical-critical method, which need to be overcome for it to be more serviceable in a Christian hermeneutic. First, the historical-critical method studies the biblical text solely as an object from the past. By virtue of its methodological concern with originative historical contexts, the historical-critical method cannot by itself make the biblical text speak as a present reality.22 If the Bible is to be read as God’s Word, 19 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xv–xvi. 20 Ratzinger’s argument that historical-critical exegesis provides inoculation against Gnosticism approaches that of Hans Urs von Balthasar. See Kevin Mongrain, The Systematic Thought of Hans Urs Von Balthasar: An Irenaean Retrieval (New York: Herder & Herder, 2002), 118–23. While Ratzinger does identify a disregard for history as “Gnostic” ( Jesus of Nazareth, 228), he does not explicitly name Hegel. Nevertheless, the identification of Hegel and his philosophical reading of Scripture as Gnostic has been pursued in recent scholarship. On the identification of Hegel as Gnostic, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, introduction to The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies, trans. J. Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981–1990), 1–11, esp. 4–5; Cyril O’Regan, Gnostic Return in Modernity (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001) 1–22; idem, “Balthasar and Gnostic Genealogy,” Modern Theology 22 (2006): 609–50; Mongrain, Systematic Thought of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, 133–53. For a discussion of Hegel’s Gnostic reading of biblical narrative, see Cyril O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994) 151–69. 21 For Ratzinger’s programmatic discussion of the limitations in the historical-critical method, see Jesus of Nazareth, xvi–xviii. 22 As Ratzinger states, the historical method’s “very precision in interpreting the reality of the past is both its strength and its limit” ( Jesus of Nazareth, xvi). William M.Wright IV 40 its meaning and voice must be heard in the reader’s present. Ratzinger also notes that the interpretive significance of the canon is not a properly historical-critical concern. The study of individual biblical books in their historical contexts does not require attention to the theological relationship between them as comprising a unified, canonical Scripture. Second, since historical-critical exegesis treats the biblical text as the product of historical processes and language, there is often little concern for the transcendent.While Ratzinger does not make the connection explicit in Jesus of Nazareth, this critique corresponds to his identification of implicit Kantian influence in exegesis.23 In the Erasmus Lecture, Ratzinger argues that Kantian epistemology, with its claim that the object of knowing is the phenomenon and not the Ding an sich, has unnecessarily restricted the scope of biblical exegesis. With a Kantian epistemological structure, Ratzinger writes, “comes the restriction to the positive, to the empirical, to the ‘exact’ science, which by definition excludes the appearance of what is ‘wholly other’.”24 Consequently, there arises the tendency to forego consideration of God’s appearance or activity in human events and to focus solely on empirically verifiable historical processes. Any posited appearance of God within human events must in principle be something else, which is empirically accessible. Ratzinger states, “What might otherwise seem like a direct proclamation of the divine can only be myth, whose laws of development can be discovered.”25 Ratzinger develops this kind of critique in his treatment of Jesus’ second temptation in Matthew 4:5–7. Ratzinger understands this temptation, in part, as an exegetical dispute over the identity of God. He interprets Satan’s use of Psalm 91:11–12 and Jesus’ response with Deuteronomy 6:16 (cf. Matt 4:6–7) as centering on the temptation to force God to conform to a particular human request or condition in order to prove himself. Ratzinger connects this temptation with the exegetical tendency to make the human being or any contemporary system into the standard for judging the biblical claim. As Ratzinger writes, a “common practice today is to measure the Bible against the socalled modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history.”26 This approach, Ratzinger argues, cannot but fail to hear God through the Scripture: the “arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable of 23 Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 15–16. Cf. Hahn, “Authority of Mystery,” 103–5. 24 Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 15. 25 Ibid., 16. 26 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 35. A “New Synthesis” 41 finding him.”27 The extent to which modernity makes humanity the measure is the same extent to which it deafens itself to God’s voice. Third, Ratzinger calls attention to the hypothetical character of many conclusions in historical-critical exegesis. Given the historical and cultural distance between any modern interpreter and antiquity, high degrees of certitude are not possible when the Bible is studied historically as an artifact of the past. In a statement evocative of the Erasmus Lecture, Ratzinger states “some hypotheses enjoy a high degree of certainty, but overall we need to remain conscious of the limit of our certainties—indeed, the history of exegesis makes this limit perfectly clear.”28 Two examples from Jesus of Nazareth illustrate Ratzinger’s claim. First, he calls attention to Bultmann’s influence on twentieth century Johannine scholarship. He notes that much contemporary Johannine scholarship has abandoned Bultmann’s argument for a Gnostic redeemer myth as a source and conceptual background for the Fourth Gospel. Ratzinger suggests that the sharp turn away from Bultmann shows “how little protection the highly scientific approach can offer against fundamental mistakes.”29 Second, Ratzinger introduces his chapter on the parables by discussing the contributions of Jülicher, Jeremias, and Dodd to parables study.30 He argues that works of Jeremias and Dodd, which highlight (in their respective ways) the eschatology in parables, shows the inadequacy of Jülicher’s Liberal interpretation of Jesus as a teacher of Enlightenmentfriendly morality. This episode from the history of parables research “enables us to glimpse the limits of liberal exegesis, which in its day was viewed as the ne plus ultra of scientific rigor and reliable historiography.”31 In both of these cases, Ratzinger argues to the tentative character of certain historical-critical conclusions by appealing to the history of interpretation. As in the Erasmus Lecture, Ratzinger finds value in studying the history of modern exegesis because it brings to light the ways in which an exegete’s time, location, and theological assumptions shape exegetical conclusions.While historical-critical exegesis can provide valuable insights, it cannot provide much by way of certain knowledge, a claim which in times past it was often purported to provide. To overcome these limits of the historical-critical method, Ratzinger incorporates other interpretive principles into his reading of the Gospels. First, Ratzinger consciously employs the Church’s faith as a hermeneutical 27 Ibid., 37. 28 Ibid., xvii. 29 Ibid., 220. 30 Ibid., 183–88. 31 Ibid., 186. William M.Wright IV 42 key for reading Scripture. He believes that the Gospels present the truth about Jesus, which the Church has come to articulate in doctrine and practice. The adoption of Christian faith as a hermeneutical key rather than an impediment to genuine knowledge about Jesus places Ratzinger at odds with the originating impulses of historical biblical criticism. As Ratzinger stated elsewhere about Reimarus and his kind of critical exegesis: “Jesus was to be sought, not through dogma, but against it, if one wanted to arrive at a historical knowledge of him. Historical reason became the corrective of dogma; critical reason became the antipode of traditional faith.”32 Ratzinger’s use of faith as a hermeneutical guide corresponds to the classical Christian use of the regula fidei as both the lens and standard for interpretation. This use of faith as a hermeneutical principle is a very significant move for Ratzinger. It compensates for two deficiencies Ratzinger discerned in the historical-critical method. First, it positions Ratzinger to counter the Kantian influence in biblical studies and modern thinking. He had criticized the Kantian shape of modern exegesis, which restricts itself to historical, empirically verifiable matters to the exclusion of God’s transcendent activity in human affairs. However, many tenets of Christian faith involve particular events and people in the course of salvation history.33 Implicit here is Ratzinger’s affirmation that faith is a genuine and legitimate form of knowledge.34 What is known by faith should have a legitimate bearing on historical reasoning.Thus, a fundamental issue in Ratzinger’s adoption of faith as an interpretive principle is the relationship of faith and reason, and specifically, historical reasoning. As will be discussed later, the legitimacy of faith-knowledge significantly shapes Ratzinger’s understanding of the relationship of Jesus and the Gospels. Second, reading from the standpoint of faith enables Ratzinger to take the canon as being hermeneutically relevant.35 Following on Dei Verbum §12 and 16, Ratzinger holds that the Gospels should be read within the unity of the Testaments, which witness to the one divine plan of creation and redemption. Ratzinger, therefore, sees great value in a canonical crit32 Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 92. Cf. Hahn, “Authority of Mystery,” 103–5. 33 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “On the 100th Anniversary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission: Relationship between Magisterium and Exegetes” (May 10, 2003), available at www.vatican.va/roman_ uria/congregations/cfaith/pcb_documents/ rc_con_cfaith_doc_20030510_ratzinger-comm-bible_en.html. 34 Cf. Martin,“Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, on Biblical Interpretation.” On this point, Martin refers (286 n.1) to Ratzinger’s “Relationship between Magisterium and Exegetes.” 35 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xviii–xix. A “New Synthesis” 43 icism, which reads the individual parts of the canon in light of the context created by the whole.A canonical reading of Scripture, Ratzinger affirms, is “an essential dimension of exegesis . . . [which] carries it [that is, historical-critical exegesis] forward in an organic way toward becoming theology in the proper sense.”36 Canonical reading moves exegesis into theology because it creates the space for a Christocentric reading of Scripture. Such an understanding of Scripture “sees Jesus Christ as the key to the whole and learns from him how to understand the Bible as a unity.”37 Along with the explicit assumption of the Church’s faith, Ratzinger also embraces his locatedness within the Church as an interpretive principle. In the Erasmus Lecture, Ratzinger acknowledged the active role played by readers in the interpretive process: they read from within a context and are shaped by various theological and philosophical presuppositions. Objective (that is, unbiased) neutrality is not possible in the interpretive process.38 Since unbiased, a-contextual reading is impossible, the Christian exegete “must realize that he does not stand in some neutral area, above or outside history and the church.”39 The Christian exegete reads Scripture as a member of a faith community. Reading the Bible within the Church also preserves its character as Scripture.40 Ratzinger had stated that the historical-critical method was unable to address the present significance or the transcendent meaning of biblical compositions. However, when the biblical compositions are read within the context of their ecclesial reception, they are read as Scripture, God’s Word for people in all times. By reading the Bible as Scripture within the Church, the claim of Scripture as God’s Word for his people can be voiced and heard in the present. For Ratzinger, reading within the context of the Church includes not only the contemporary faith community, but also the Church’s tradition, the faith community over past generations.41 Here, Ratzinger’s ressourcement 36 Ibid., xix. 37 Ibid., xix. 38 As Ratzinger puts it,“Pure objectivity is an absurd abstraction. It is not the unin- volved who comes to knowledge; rather interest itself is a requirement for the possibility of coming to know” (“Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 7). While Ratzinger recognizes the role of the subject in interpretation, he also wants to guard against interpretation collapsing into complete subjectivity, in which the subject sees and hears only himself in the text. 39 Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 22. 40 See Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xx–xxi. 41 Compare the following statement of Henri de Lubac in his preface to the first volume of Medieval Exegesis:“To a certain extent, the consciousness of a community of faith that exists between myself and those whose thought I am studying is quite well able to keep me from looking at my object from the outside.There is no reason why this shared faith should not allow me to reach the very heart 44 William M.Wright IV theology stands out. He reads Scripture with an eye toward the interpretations of the Church Fathers. For instance, Ratzinger’s interpretation of the Our Father in Matthew 6:9–13 is heavily conditioned by Cyprian’s treatise On the Lord’s Prayer.42 He also gives considerable attention to the Fathers’ exegesis in his interpretation of three Lukan parables.43 However, like de Lubac, Ratzinger does not advocate a return to premodern exegesis as a kind of nostalgic retreat from modernity.44 He acknowledges the many differences between modern and premodern exegesis and acknowledges that in many cases the latter “bypasses the text.”45 While Ratzinger acknowledges that many premodern interpretations are no longer viable, he views the Fathers as providing many theologically rich readings of Scripture. For instance, Ratzinger reports that the Church Fathers often interpreted the Good Samaritan’s help for the wounded traveler as a figure of Christ’s ministering to a wounded, sinful humanity.While some aspects of this interpretation need not be retained, Ratzinger applauds the basic interpretive rendering of the story. He writes the following: [T]he great vision that sees man lying alienated and helpless by the roadside of history and God himself becoming man’s neighbor in Jesus Christ is one that we can happily retain, as a deeper dimension of the parable . . . [and] the mighty imperative expressed in the parable is not thereby weakened, but only now emerges in its full grandeur.46 The interpretations of the Church Fathers are worth taking seriously because of the theological insights which they derive from Scripture.Where viable, these theological interpretations constitute for Ratzinger a legitimate working out of scriptural meaning:“In some sense it reflects an inner potentiality in the text and can be a fruit growing out of it as from a seed.”47 of my object and thus come to a true understanding of it.” Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis:Volume 1—The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. M Sebanc (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), xxii. 42 See Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 128–68. 43 See ibid., 194–217, esp. 199–201, 205–7, 209–11. 44 Ratzinger makes the following statement: Exegesis “cannot simply retreat back to the Middle Ages or to the Fathers and place them in blind opposition to the spirit of the present age. [But] . . . One can hardly dismiss the exegesis of the Fathers by calling it mere ‘allegory’ or set aside the philosophy of the Middle Ages by branding it as ‘precritical’ ” (Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 16). Cf. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, xx–xxi. 45 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 199. 46 Ibid., 201. 47 Ibid., 199. A “New Synthesis” 45 Ratzinger argues that the interpretive move to read Scripture through the Church and its Tradition is consonant with Scripture itself. He observes, “The Scripture emerged from within the heart of a living subject—the pilgrim People of God—and lives within this same subject.”48 The books of the Bible were produced by individuals, who were all located within a faith community. This faith community was and is constituted by its relationship with God, who speaks and acts towards them.This historical, transgenerational relationship with God is what makes the believing community the People of God. Moreover, Ratzinger calls attention to what is frequently called “inner-biblical exegesis”: the process by which earlier texts are reread and interpreted in later biblical texts.49 Much biblical writing, then, is the product of the faith community’s interpretive tradition. The interpretive traditions of Israel and the New Testament Christians are intrinsic to the biblical books themselves.Therefore, reading the Bible within the context of the believing community, which includes that community’s interpretive tradition, is nothing more than object-appropriate reading. Ratzinger’s hermeneutics are classically Christian. He provides a faithfilled reading of Scripture and sees the two Testaments as a unity, the principle of which is God’s redemptive action in Christ. He embraces the rule of faith as a hermeneutical key and reads within the boundaries of the Church as a faith community, past and present. Categorizing Ratzinger’s Project Ratzinger begins his foreword by mentioning several Jesus books from the early to mid twentieth century, which were based on the Gospel presentations and quite amenable to Christian faith and piety.50 He contrasts these faith-friendly Jesus books with certain (unspecified) historical Jesus works from the 1950s. Ratzinger evaluates this latter kind of Jesus book quite negatively.51 These works create a gap between Jesus “as he really was” as a historical figure and what the Church believes him to be, that is, the distinction between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith.” Ratzinger finds these historical Jesus books to be intellectually unsatisfying. As the many contradictory reconstructions of the historical Jesus illustrate, 48 Ibid., xx. 49 The classic work on this topic is Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); cf. Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xviii–xix. cites the following as examples: “Karl Adam, Romano Guardini, Franz Michel Willam, Giovanni Papini, and Henri Daniel-Rops” ( Jesus of Nazareth, xi). One may speculate as to whether Ratzinger envisions his own work to be a twenty-first century updating of this kind of Jesus book. 51 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, xi–xii. 50 He William M.Wright IV 46 this kind of research has created little academic consensus and much confusion about Jesus’ identity. Echoing Albert Schweitzer’s famous statement, Ratzinger writes, “[These historical Jesus books] are much more like photographs of their authors and the ideals they hold.”52 This cacophony of Jesus scholarship has created a state of skepticism—even among ordinary believers—over the very possibility of knowing Jesus in any respect. Having genuine knowledge of Jesus is crucial for Ratzinger because, as I will discuss later, the primary goal of this book is to help foster a loving, personal relationship between human beings and Jesus. Ratzinger seemingly envisions his book as an alternative to the kind of Jesus scholarship that is hostile or detrimental to Christian faith. Yet, it would be a category mistake to call this book a historical Jesus reconstruction (at least in the conventional sense of the category). Ratzinger does not attempt to get behind the Gospel narratives to construct a portrait of Jesus, which differs in some degree from the Gospel presentations. On the contrary, Ratzinger states quite plainly,“I trust the Gospels.”53 He believes that the canonical Gospels faithfully and accurately present Jesus as he truly was and is.And yet Ratzinger can state the following:“I wanted to portray the Jesus of the Gospels as the real,‘historical’ Jesus in the strict sense of the word. [And] I am convinced, and I hope the reader will be, too, that this figure is much more logical and, historically speaking, intelligible than the reconstructions we have been presented with in the last decades.”54 Thus, while Ratzinger does not try to reconstruct the historical Jesus behind the Gospels, he claims to be interested in the “historical” Jesus. Lest this position be taken as pre-modern naïveté, Ratzinger acknowledges that the Gospels were composed within community contexts and the evangelists exercised compositional creativity in shaping their presentations of Jesus. His treatment of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel illustrates well his incorporation of these conclusions into his interpretation.55 Ratzinger recognizes that the interpretive activity of the Fourth Evangelist was a major factor in his Gospel’s presentation of Jesus. Ratzinger associates this interpretive activity with the instances of “remembering” in the Fourth Gospel (2:17, 22; 12:14–16; cf. 16:13) through which the Paraclete brings the disciples to a deeper, spiritual understanding of Jesus’ life.56 Ratzinger 52 Ibid., xii. 53 Ibid., xxi. 54 Ibid., xxii. 55 Ibid., 220–35. 56 On the association of the disciples’ remembering and the post-resurrection activ- ity of the Paraclete, see also William M.Wright IV,“The Theology of Disclosure and Biblical Exegesis,” The Thomist 70 (2006): 395–419, esp. 404–11. A “New Synthesis” 47 argues that the substance for this “remembering” is the evangelist’s own witnessing of events in Jesus’ life.57 Through the activity of the Paraclete upon him, the Fourth Evangelist composed his Gospel within an ecclesial context to disclose the inner truth of Jesus’ words and deeds.58 The presentation of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, then, is an unabashedly interpretive account of Jesus’ life, not a disinterested recounting of factual data. With respect to Jesus’ discourses in John, Ratzinger can make the following claim:“If ‘historical’ is understood to mean that the discourses of Jesus transmitted to us have to be something like a recorded transcript in order to be acknowledged as ‘historically’ authentic, then the discourses of John’s Gospel are not ‘historical.’ ”59 However, since historical events which the evangelist himself witnessed provide the substance for his Spirit-guided, interpretive activity, the presentation of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel nevertheless remains faithfully moored in Jesus’ historical life. Ratzinger continues: the Fourth Gospel asserts that “it has correctly rendered the substance of the discourses, of Jesus’ self-attestation in the great Jerusalem disputes, so that the readers really do encounter the decisive content of this message and, therein, the authentic figure of Jesus.”60 Ratzinger thus maintains that the real, historical Jesus can be heard and known through the mediation of communities and the evangelists’ compositional activity. The Gospel narratives do not obscure Jesus, but rather they bring his enduring significance to light. Instead of seeing the unfolding of apostolic tradition as corruptive or distorting, Ratzinger takes it to be the faithful outworking and interpretation of Jesus’ teaching and work—a decision which runs contrary to what J. Z. Smith calls “the Protestant historiographic myth.”61 57 The remembering of Jesus in the New Testament Church is becoming an increas- ingly substantial topic in Jesus research. Among the variations on this topic, see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses:The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); Markus Bockmuehl, Seeing the Word: Refocusing New Testament Study, Studies in Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 167–88; James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Christianity in the Making 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). For a recent survey of several works in this category, see Terrence W.Tilley,“Remembering the Historic Jesus—A New Research Program?” Theological Studies 68 (2007): 3–35. 58 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 233. 59 Ibid., 229. 60 Ibid., 229. 61 Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity, Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 43. See also Luke Timothy Johnson, “What’s Catholic about Catholic Biblical Scholarship? An Opening Statement,” in The 48 William M.Wright IV A certain tension thus runs through Ratzinger’s handling of the Gospel material. Ratzinger acknowledges the distance between the Gospel presentations and the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and yet he also maintains that the Gospels present his authentic voice and person. While Ratzinger does not explicitly claim this, I suspect that the issue in his approach is not the process of Gospel composition or form criticism. Rather, for Ratzinger, the issue is epistemology and, in particular, the relationship between faith and historical reasoning. As mentioned previously, Ratzinger holds to the Catholic axiom that faith is a genuine form of knowing.62 Ratzinger has discussed in other writings how the epistemological status of faith-knowledge became the subject of critique and rejection with the shift to modernity.The empiricist and scientific trend of the modern shift admits as legitimate only that knowledge which can be empirically verified.63 Since it cannot be empirically verified, the knowledge of faith cannot be considered epistemically legitimate. Moral and religious matters become confined to the realm of individual subjectivity.The historical-critical method of biblical exegesis developed within this philosophical horizon. Critical historiography was taken to approximate the methods of the empirical sciences.64 Assuming the premises of this epistemological system, critical historiography and historical-critical exegesis could produce knowledge that was scientifically verifiable and thus epistemologically acceptable. Ratzinger argues that this quasi-scientific characterization of historical-critical work does not hold. Citing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Ratzinger remarks “our knowing never reflects only what is objective, but is always determined by the participation of the subject as well, by the perspective in which the questions are posed and by the capacity of perception.”65 Since all interpretation involves the perspective Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive Conversation, by Luke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, S.J. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 9–34. 62 Cf.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 2. 63 Pope Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections,” (September 12, 2006), available at www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_ xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_2006 0912_university-regensburg_en.html. As Kant himself writes in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics,“the objective reality of these [metaphysical] concepts . . . and also the truth or falsity of metaphysical assertions cannot be discovered or confirmed by experience.” Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, trans. P. Carus and J.W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1977), §40, p. 35. 64 Benedict XVI,“Faith, Reason and the University.” Cf. Ratzinger,“Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 6. 65 Ratzinger, “Relationship between Magisterium and Exegetes.” Cf. Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 6–7. A “New Synthesis” 49 and location of the reader, to exclude things known by faith a priori is not an interpretive gain for the Christian reader. As Ratzinger puts it, “Faith itself is a way of knowing.Wanting to set it aside does not produce pure objectivity, but comprises a point of view which excludes a particular perspective.”66 Faith is a legitimate source of knowledge, and bracketing out this knowledge does not place the reader in a more hermeneutically desirable position for ascertaining the truth of things. Faith, as a genuine form of knowledge, includes certain truth claims pertaining to specific persons and events in salvation history. Ratzinger brings the knowledge that he has from faith to bear on historical questions of Jesus and the Gospels. For Ratzinger, it is a fundamental component of faith that the Gospels truthfully present the reality of Jesus:“That Jesus—in all that is essential—was effectively who the Gospels reveal him to be to us is not mere historical conjecture, but a fact of faith.”67 This faith claim leads Ratzinger to read the Gospel presentations as being true and faithful to Jesus of Nazareth as he was. However, the faith-knowledge that Ratzinger brings to his study is neither irrational nor incompatible with historical reasoning.68 Often employing the work of other scholars, Ratzinger does take a stand on various historical issues, such as the authorship of the Fourth Gospel and the historical implausibility of the Liberal interpretation of Jesus as a teacher of individualized morality, on historical grounds. But his historical reasoning is shaped by his faith-knowledge. For Ratzinger, a fully informed study of Jesus includes the knowledge of things known by faith as well as the data which can be known by historical reasoning. In the words of J. A. DiNoia, “Since a complete account of the events narrated in the Gospels must include a reference to the divine agency and intentions at work in them, it is only in the light of faith that the events of Christ’s life can be understood in their historical reality as such.”69 66 Ratzinger, “Relationship between Magisterium and Exegetes.” 67 Ibid.This is affirmed by the Second Vatican Council:“Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy maintained and continues to maintain, that the four Gospels just named, whose historicity she unhesitatingly affirms, faithfully hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up.” Dei Verbum §19, cited from Austin Flannery, O.P., ed., Vatican Council II:The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents—Volume 1, new revised edition, 1992 (Boston: St. Paul Books & Media, 1975–1992), 761. 68 As Ratzinger states with respect to seeing the Testaments as a unity, centered on Christ, this belief “presupposes a prior act of faith. . . . But this act of faith is based upon reason—historical reason” ( Jesus of Nazareth, xix). 69 J. A. DiNoia, O.P., “Review of John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus,” Pro Ecclesia 2 (1993): 122–25, quotation from 125. 50 William M.Wright IV A meta-issue throughout Ratzinger’s handling of the Gospel material is the scope of rational discourse. For Ratzinger, the modern shift unduly limits the scope of reason by excluding God and theological knowledge. As he stated in his Regensburg Address, what is needed now is a “broadening [of] our concept of reason and its application. . . .We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons.”70 By incorporating the knowledge of faith into his historical and literary work, Ratzinger looks to expand the scope of rationality and thus defend the status of faith as a legitimate and rational mode of knowing. And so, Ratzinger couches biblical interpretation within an epistemology broader than that of positivist empiricism and Kantianism. Ratzinger does not want to reject the indisputable intellectual gains of modernity any more than he wants to reject historical-critical exegesis. However, Ratzinger sees both as being limited and requiring expansion.This requires the creation of the philosophical space for the transcendent action of God in the course of human events and the legitimate knowledge to be had about it. Ratzinger’s engagement with the “historical” Jesus reflects a profound Catholic commitment to the harmony of faith and reason, and in particular, historical reasoning.While faith and reason are distinct, they are not independent of each other as God is the one source of truth obtained by both. As is the case with philosophical reasoning, faith does not obscure historical reasoning but gives it direction and illumination. In the quest for the truth about Jesus, the knowledge of faith ought to be integrated with historical analysis and the interpretive process. To summarize thus far, Ratzinger wants to start his study of Jesus from a historical-critical foundation, which takes seriously the historical, incarnate reality of Jesus. At the same time, Ratzinger goes beyond historicalcritical analysis by reading within the Church community, including its faith and tradition. His interpretive stance is open to the transcendent intervention of God in the course of human events and enables a canonical, Christocentric reading of Scripture. The combination of these elements constitutes Ratzinger’s interpretive approach. Consequently, the best categorization for Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth is neither historical-critical exegesis nor a historical Jesus reconstruction. Rather, it is a work of Christian theological exegesis. As he himself remarks, “this book presupposes historical-critical exegesis and makes use of its findings, but it seeks to transcend this method and to 70 Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason and the University.” A “New Synthesis” 51 arrive at a genuinely theological interpretation of the scriptural texts.”71 Jesus of Nazareth is Ratzinger’s substantive attempt at the “new synthesis,” a Christian, ecclesial hermeneutics. Ratzinger’s Theological Interpretation of Christ’s Life If Jesus of Nazareth is Ratzinger’s theological interpretation of selected Gospel episodes, what can be said about the portrait of Jesus that emerges? I will focus on three aspects which are fundamental to his interpretation of Jesus. Jesus’ Place within the Context of Israel and Its Scripture Of utmost importance for Ratzinger is the place of Jesus within the Scriptures and story of Israel. On numerous occasions, Ratzinger interprets Jesus’ words and deeds by placing them within their Jewish context or in light of the Scriptures. He interprets Jesus’ calling of the Twelve as a sign of the eschatological ingathering of the twelve tribes of Israel—the restored People of God.72 He discusses the apocalyptic context for the title “Son of Man” and argues that Jesus’ use of the title in conjunction with his Kingdom preaching constitutes Jesus’ own interpretation of Daniel 7.73 Ratzinger also roots Jesus’ Kingdom of God preaching within biblical and post-biblical trajectories concerning the manifestation of YHWH’s sovereignty.74 He reads the Sermon on the Mount and the debate over the Sabbath observance as Jesus’ interpretation of Scripture. Attention to Jesus’ Jewishness and place within the history of Israel is important to Ratzinger for several reasons. First, Ratzinger thinks that this is a historically accurate claim: Jesus is best understood historically within his contemporary Jewish context.Throughout the book, Ratzinger carries on a multi-faceted argument against Harnack and the biblical exegesis of Liberal theology. A particular feature of this exegetical tradition, which Ratzinger disputes, is its construal of the relationship between Jesus and Judaism.75 For Harnack and similar exegetes, Jesus’ intentions and teaching run strongly against that of his Jewish contemporaries. According to this understanding, the Judaism of Jesus’ day is the stereotypical Spätjudentum: a decrepit legalism, overly preoccupied with ritual and empty formalism. 71 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 365. 72 Ibid., 171. 73 Ibid., 325–27. 74 Ibid., 56–58 75 Ibid., 51, 106–7.The argument against Harnackian scholarship appears in much of Ratzinger’s recent work. For instance, see Joseph Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, trans. H.Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 52 William M.Wright IV Jesus rejects this religious thinking and teaches individualized morality over and against community identity and cultic practice. Jesus thus appears to anticipate post-Enlightenment, Liberal theology, which, after Kant, values morality as the principal contribution of religion.According to Ratzinger, interpreting Jesus as embedded within his Jewish context is more historically sound than the Harnackian/Liberal interpretation of Jesus as a teacher of individualized morality.As Ratzinger intimates, it is much more difficult to explain Jesus’ crucifixion if his historical ministry consisted in teaching individualized ethics.76 Second, the placement of Jesus in the context of Israel allows Ratzinger to interpret Jesus within the overarching divine plan of redemption. Ratzinger’s theological interpretation of Jesus in light of Israel follows from his use of the canon as a hermeneutical principle. The canon leads Ratzinger to understand God’s activity in Israel as part of a historical process of salvation, witnessed to by both Testaments, which leads up to and includes Jesus. Ratzinger argues that Jesus does bring something new and unique to the unfolding divine economy. Ratzinger discerns much of this in Jesus’ interpretation of Torah in the antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:17–48) and the dispute over Sabbath observance.77 Ratzinger sees in Jesus’ interpretation an implied claim to divine authority to interpret Torah as he does. Jesus’ authority and claim take precedence over that of Torah. Moreover, Jesus’ teaching on certain parts of Torah, such as the loosing of Sabbath observance, enables these teachings to be moved from a specifically Jewish social context to a more universalized context. Within this context, “it is not the universally binding adherence to the Torah that forms the new family. Rather it is adherence to Jesus himself.”78 Ratzinger argues ardently that Jesus’ activity should not be taken as deprecating or condemning what was present in Judaism.With respect to the antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount, Ratzinger states, Jesus “recapitulates and gives added depth to the commandments of the second tablet, but he does not abolish them.”79 Jesus’ interpretation does depart from Jewish religious observance, but this newness should not be understood as 2003), 90–95; idem, preface to The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible, by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, available at www.vatican.va/ roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/pcb_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020212 _popolo-ebraico_en.html; Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason and the University.” 76 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 186, 324. 77 Ibid., 99–127. 78 Ibid., 115. 79 Ibid., 70. Elsewhere, Ratzinger says of Jesus’ relationship with Israel: Jesus “was and remained a Jew; that is, he linked his message to the tradition of believing Israel. He did not abandon the Old Testament as something antiquated and now A “New Synthesis” 53 a sharp disjunction with Israel and its Scripture. Indeed, Ratzinger roots Jesus’ universalizing and radicalizing interpretation of Torah in Scripture itself and specifically the universal exhortation for Israel to be the light to the nations.80 By interpreting Torah as he does, Jesus acts with divine authority to extend Israel’s God to the Gentile nations. As Ratzinger puts it, Jesus builds “a renewed Israel, which does not exclude or revoke the old [Israel], but steps beyond it into the domain of universality.”81 Ratzinger’s insistence on the Jewish context for Jesus enables him to navigate between what he sees as two untenable theological poles.82 First, Ratzinger is anxious to resist Harnack’s neo-Marcionism. A Harnackian interpretation interprets Jesus as sharply departing from his Jewish background and context. For Ratzinger, Jesus’ Jewish context is not simply a background for Jesus to reject as it is for Harnack. Rather, it is an essential context for understanding Jesus and his work. Jesus cannot be understood apart from the history and Scriptures of Israel. Both Israel and Jesus are part of the same divine plan of salvation. While Ratzinger does not explicitly claim this, recognition of Jesus’ Jewishness and place within the context of Israel also helps preserve the unity of the orders of creation and redemption, which are threatened by this Marcionite/Gnostic hermeneutic. Appreciation for Jesus’ Jewishness also contributes to Ratzinger’s valuation of historical reality against this Gnosticisizing trend to read Scripture as expressing ahistorical, abstract truths.As a contemporary example of this trend, Ratzinger cites the tendency to interpret Scripture as not having a bearing on contemporary social realities. The second theological possibility that Ratzinger wants to avoid is “a false legalism,” which he identifies with political theology.83 Ratzinger affirms that Jesus’ teachings have undeniable and definite implications for ordering Christian living and social relations in the world. However, he is quite emphatic that Jesus’ teachings should not be read as providing a detailed social program. He writes the following: While the Torah presents a very definite social order, giving the people a juridical and social framework for war and peace, for just politics and superseded. He lived in it and, in doing so, revealed his meaning: his message was the creative referral of tradition to its original foundation” (Principles of Catholic Theology, 95). 80 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 21–23, 116–17. 81 Ibid., 66. 82 Ibid., 119–22. 83 Ibid., 51–54; 121. Ratzinger does not name many specific examples of the political theologies, which he critiques. As a result, his critique on this point runs the risk of becoming something of a “straw man” argument. William M.Wright IV 54 for daily life, there is nothing like that to be found in Jesus’ teaching. Discipleship of Jesus offers no politically concrete program for structuring society.The Sermon on the Mount cannot serve as a foundation for a state and a social order.84 As mentioned previously, Ratzinger sees Jesus’ loosing of Sabbath observance as a universalization, which moves certain elements of Torah from a specifically Jewish social context. Jesus’ teaching (especially his Kingdom of God preaching) possesses a transcendent universality which resists identification with any earthly social order. Thus, in a very Augustinian way, Ratzinger insists, “No kingdom of this world is the kingdom of God, the total condition of mankind’s salvation.”85 Ratzinger sees political theology as identifying the Gospel too closely with a specific political and social order. To make this move of political theology, according to Ratzinger, would be to bind the Gospel too closely to a specific social and political context and thus deprive the Gospel of its universality and transcendence. On his reading, Ratzinger sees political theology as a contemporary heir to the tendency in Galatians to move from the transcendent universality of the Gospel back to the social specificity of Torah observance. Another danger that Ratzinger detects in political theology is the potential it creates for the co-opting of Jesus’ Kingdom of God teaching by political and social ideologies, which divest its specifically Christian content in the name of secular humanism. While Ratzinger does not name specific examples, he sees this de-Christianizing and secularizing interpretation of the Kingdom of God teaching in some post-Conciliar Catholic theology.86 Another important implication of Jesus’ Jewishness is Ratzinger’s concern for the filial relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Ratzinger rejects the stereotype of Spätjudentum and strives to portray ancient Judaism in a very positive light. He insists that Jesus does not abolish Torah or the covenant with Israel. While Jesus’ interpretations have a universalizing component, Ratzinger sees them as following upon certain trajectories in Scripture itself. Ratzinger’s concern for JewishChristian relations appears quite clearly in his extended and honest dialogue with Jacob Neusner.87 Ratzinger does not engage Neusner in order to rebut him. Rather, he holds Neusner up as a genuine dialogue 84 Ibid., 114. 85 Ibid., 43–44. 86 Ibid., 53–54. 87 Ibid., 103–22. See Neusner’s response to Ratzinger in Jacob Neusner, “Renew- ing Religious Disputation in Quest of Theological Truth: In Dialogue with Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth,” Communio 34 (2007): 328–34. A “New Synthesis” 55 partner, an example for the respectful, loving engagement with the other’s religion while remaining committed to one’s own. On several occasions, Ratzinger states that Christians can learn much from Jews and Jewish practices. He singles out the Jewish respect for Sabbath as modeling the respect Christians should have for the Lord’s Day. He also calls attention to the importance of family/kinship relations, which the Sabbath socially reinforces for Jewish communities.88 Christian recognition of Jesus’ intrinsic Jewishness can provide substance continuing to foster positive Jewish-Christian relations, dialogue, and mutual respect. A very significant text for Ratzinger’s interpretation of Jesus is Deuteronomy 18:15, which speaks of the prophet-like-Moses whom God will raise up for Israel.89 The expectation of a future prophet-like-Moses, Ratzinger contends, gave rise to later salvific hopes for a new Exodus and consequently a new Moses.According to Ratzinger, Moses’ intimate relationship with God makes his roles as prophet and covenant mediator especially unique:“YHWH spoke to Moses face-to-face as a man spoke to his friend” (Exod 33:11; cf. Num 12:18; Deut 34:10). Moses’ special relationship with God constitutes the foundation of his activity and prophetic ministry in particular. From the basis of his relationship with God, Moses communicates God’s will for people’s lives. The prophet-like-Moses would be like Moses in “his immediate relation with God, which enables him to communicate God’s will and word firsthand and unadulterated.”90 Ratzinger states that while God spoke with Moses face-to-face, Moses was not permitted to see God directly as Exodus 33:18–23 suggests. For reasons not specified, Ratzinger claims that the prophet-like-Moses would not have the same limitations. The new prophet would have “a real, immediate vision of the face of God and thus the ability to speak entirely from seeing, not just from looking at God’s back.”91 Needless to say, Ratzinger identifies the prophet-like-Moses as Jesus. Significant is how Ratzinger frames the ministry of Jesus vis-à-vis Moses. With both figures, the foundation of their ministries is an intimate relationship with God.This leads to the second major aspect of Ratzinger’s interpretation: the centrality of Jesus’ communio with the Father. 88 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 108–9, 121. 89 Ibid., 1–8. 90 Ibid., 5. 91 Ibid., 5–6. 56 William M.Wright IV Jesus’ Communio with the Father Ratzinger thinks that the key to understanding Jesus is his interior union with God the Father.92 Citing John 1:18, Ratzinger states that Jesus’ direct and intimate relationship with the Father defines him in part as the prophet-like-Moses:“He lives before the face of God, not just as a friend, but as a Son; he lives in the most intimate unity with the Father.”93 Again and again, Ratzinger cites Jesus’ interior relationship with the Father as the foundation of his mission and identity. Everything that Jesus says and does proceeds from this communio between the Father and the Son.94 Ratzinger singles out Jesus’ personal prayer as giving special insight into his filial relationship with God the Father.95 He interprets Jesus’ prayer as the intimate interaction of love between Jesus and the Father. Jesus’ prayer reveals his own identity to be defined fundamentally by his relationship with the Father. Citing texts such as the Father-Son Q saying (Luke 10:21–22; Matt 11:25–27) and Jesus’ priestly prayer in John 17, Ratzinger contends that Jesus’ relationship with the Father is the basis for his title “Son.” Jesus exists in this complete selfless relation with the Father. The same reciprocal relationality of communio defines God the Father as the Father of the Son.Therefore, when Jesus prays, he shows forth in his humanity the ongoing, personal exchange of love within the Trinity. Ratzinger writes, in his prayer, “Jesus’ human consciousness and will, his human soul, is taken up into that exchange, and in this way human ‘praying’ is able to become a participation in this filial communion with the Father.”96 The interior relationship of Jesus and the Father, manifested in Jesus’ human prayer, reveals the Trinitarian nature of God to be dynamic relationality of love between Persons.97 Jesus seeks to incorporate humanity into his communio with the Father. Ratzinger interprets much of Jesus’ teaching in light of this invitation for people to share in his communio with the Father. Given the importance 92 This conclusion appears in his other theological writings. It is brought out clearly in Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Behold the Pierced One:An Approach to a Spiritual Christology, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 13–46. 93 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 6. 94 Ratzinger writes,“Jesus is only able to speak about the Father in the way he does because he is the Son, because of his filial communion with the Father” ( Jesus of Nazareth, 7). 95 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 7–8, 128–68, 170–71, 344. Cf. Ratzinger, Behold the Pierced One, 15–32. 96 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 7. 97 Ratzinger writes,“Jesus’ prayer is different from the prayer of a creature: It is the dialogue of love within God himself—the dialogue that God is” ( Jesus of Nazareth, 344; emphasis in the original). A “New Synthesis” 57 Ratzinger sees in Jesus’ own prayer, communio themes pervade his interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer.98 Ratzinger observes that in Luke, Jesus’ prayer precedes his selection of the Twelve and his teaching of the Lord’s Prayer. By teaching the disciples to pray, Jesus invites his disciples into his prayer and thus to share his own communio with the Father. Ratzinger writes, “Jesus thereby involves us in his own prayer; he leads us into the interior dialogue of triune love; he draws our human hardships deep into God’s heart.”99 By entering into Jesus’ prayer, disciples share in his filial relationship with the Father.This is what enables the disciples to address God as “Father” in the Lord’s Prayer. Contra Harnack, Ratzinger interprets the teaching of Jesus as having a strong communal dimension. Ratzinger reads the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3–12 as having both Christological and ecclesiological dimensions, a move evocative of the Augustinian doctrine of totus Christus.100 Ratzinger observes that many of the virtues and characteristics in the Matthean version of the Beatitudes are applied elsewhere (in some manner) to Jesus.101 The Beatitudes can thus be read as speaking to attributes and characteristics of Jesus himself.The Beatitudes also articulate the way of life for Christ’s disciples, living under God’s sovereignty (that is, in the Kingdom of God). Since the Beatitudes reflect Christ himself, the life of discipleship appears as an ongoing process of being conformed to Jesus and thus being drawn more deeply into his filial relationship with God. By incorporating human beings into his filial relationship with the Father, Jesus incorporates them into God’s family and establishes community among them.102 The visible structures and practices of Christian life embody this communio with Jesus, which is a sharing in his own communio with the Father.As Ratzinger succinctly puts it with respect to the Lord’s Prayer, “Only within the ‘we’ of the disciples can we call God ‘Father’, because only through communion with Jesus Christ do we truly become ‘children of God’.”103 By taking Jesus’ filial relationship with the Father as his starting point, Ratzinger systematically integrates Trinitarianism, Christology, and ecclesiology all around the category communio. 98 Ibid., 128–68. 99 Ibid., 132; cf. 138. 100 Ibid., 74. On totus Christus in Augustine, see Michael Fiedrowicz, general intro- duction to Expositions of the Psalms 1–32, by Augustine, trans. M. Boulding, O.S.B., Works of St. Augustine 3.15, ed. J. E. Rotelle, O.S.A. (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2000), 43–60. 101 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 74. 102 Ibid., 115–17. 103 Ibid., 140–41. 58 William M.Wright IV An important theological consequence of attaching such foundational significance to Jesus’ communio is the grounding of Christology in Jesus himself.The importance of this point for Ratzinger comes to light when contrasted with the Harnackian/Liberal portrayal of Jesus. For Ratzinger, if the Harnackian/Liberal interpretation of Jesus as a teacher of individualized morality is correct, then the early Church’s faith-filled presentation of him in the New Testament is not true and faithful to Jesus as a historical individual. The Harnackian interpretation not only makes a distinction between the “Jesus of history” and “Christ of faith,” but it posits a very wide gap between them. The “Christ of faith” has little to do with Jesus himself, and it originates in the creative and liturgical life of early Christian communities—a major tenet of form criticism. Contrary to this point of view, Ratzinger approaches the Gospels with Catholic faith as a hermeneutical key, which leads him to affirm the basic trustworthiness of the Gospel accounts. On historical grounds, Ratzinger argues that it makes good sense to understand Jesus as a significant figure, who had a powerful impact on his contemporaries beyond that of a moral teacher.104 Appreciation for the powerful impact of Jesus on his contemporaries helps explain his crucifixion by the Romans and the early Church’s preservation and interpretation of his words and deeds. Ratzinger’s interpretive decision about Jesus’ communio influences his conclusions about the role of early Christian communities and tradition in shaping the Gospels. For instance, Ratzinger argues that while the presentation of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel has been shaped by the Paraclete and took shape within an early Church context, it remains historically grounded in the eyewitness testimony of the Beloved Disciple.The eyewitness testimony of the Fourth Evangelist is crucial for Ratzinger because it anchors John’s theological interpretation in the historical reality of Jesus rather than in the creative impulse of his community. When examining the “Son of Man” sayings, Ratzinger reports a trend to divide Son of Man sayings into three different categories, all of which have a different originating Sitz im Leben.105 For Ratzinger, this construal runs the risk of artificial distinctions and does not account for the powerful impact of Jesus himself. Ratzinger follows with his own position: “[T]he greatness, the dramatic newness, comes directly from Jesus; within the faith and life of the community it is further developed, but not created. In fact, the ‘community’ would not even have emerged and survived at all unless some extraordinary reality had preceded it.”106 104 Ibid., 324. 105 Ibid., 322–25. 106 Ibid., 324. A “New Synthesis” 59 Ratzinger readily acknowledges the role of early Christian communities in shaping and interpreting Jesus material. But he denies the creative power of the early Christian communities to invent a historically disconnected portrait of Jesus. According to Ratzinger, this is neither appropriate to the tenets of Christian faith nor does it make good historical sense. For Ratzinger, the evangelists and the early Church communities develop and interpret something that in some form was already present. The Gospel presentations of Jesus do not originate in the fabricating activity of early Christian communities, but in Jesus’ communio with God the Father. The Personal Relationship with Jesus While much will be said about its theological merits, Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth is fundamentally a pastoral and spiritual exercise. At the close of his foreword, Ratzinger explicitly states his purpose in writing: “[I]t struck me as the most urgent priority to present the figure and the message of Jesus in his public ministry, and so to help foster the growth of a living relationship with him.”107 The primary goal of Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth is for its readers to cultivate and deepen a personal relationship with Jesus. All the intellectual energy and argumentation throughout the book ultimately serve this pastoral and spiritual end. On several occasions, Ratzinger presents the voice of Jesus in the Gospels as speaking to the present reader through the text. When discussing the calling of the Twelve by name, Ratzinger remarks, “God knows us by name and he calls us by name.”108 The contemporary voice of Jesus sounds throughout Ratzinger’s interpretation of the three Lukan parables. In his interpretation of the shepherd in John 10, Ratzinger states, “In his Incarnation and Cross he brings home the stray sheep, humanity; he brings me home too.”109 Ratzinger also brings the voice of Jesus to bear on various contemporary situations. He interprets the Parable of the Good Samaritan in light of the situation in many African nations which are beset by poverty and violence like the robbed and wounded traveler in the parable.110 On several occasions, Ratzinger moves from the exposition of various Gospel episodes to an examination of conscience based on the teachings contained in them.111 107 Ibid., xxiv. 108 Ibid., 177; emphasis added. 109 Ibid., 286. 110 Ibid., 198–99; cf. 33–34. 111 For example, Ratzinger does this in the course of his analysis of Jesus’ tempta- tions ( Jesus of Nazareth, 25–45) and in his treatment of the “Hallowed be thy name” statement in the Lord’s Prayer (ibid., 144–45). William M.Wright IV 60 In stressing the personal relationship and present significance of Jesus, Ratzinger reads the biblical text as the Word of God, which can speak powerfully and meaningfully to people in the present. While the Bible can be studied as a historical artifact quite profitably, it must be received within the ecclesial context of faith for God’s Word to sound through it. The light of faith allows Ratzinger to discern things about Jesus which transcend the scope of historical reasoning. For instance, when discussing the origin of the Lord’s Prayer in Jesus’ communio, Ratzinger states that the Lord’s Prayer “embraces the whole compass of man’s being in all ages and can therefore never be fully fathomed by a purely historical exegesis, however important this may be.”112 Even more important for Ratzinger is his belief that Jesus is not only a figure of the past. Ratzinger does not read the Gospels as if they were narrating the life and teaching of someone who only lived and died in the first century. Rather, he reads the Gospels with the strong conviction that Jesus is very much alive, present, and relevant to the world today. Jesus, who lived in the first century and lives today, can truly be encountered through the reading of Scripture and his voice can be heard through it. By encountering Jesus through the pages of Scripture, one can consequently grow in a personal relationship with him. The premise underwrites and shapes Ratzinger’s entire project. Ratzinger’s concern for building cultivating personal relationships with Jesus also informs his arguments against rival theological positions. From a pastoral point of view, Ratzinger criticizes Harnackian/Liberal scholarship on Jesus because of the damage it can do to people’s faith. In his introduction, Ratzinger observes that the confusion created by much historical Jesus research has threatened the possibility of any knowledge and thus relationship with Jesus. As Ratzinger puts it, “Intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air.”113 One of the more telling examples that Ratzinger cites in this regard is Vladimir Soloviev’s portrayal of the Antichrist as a distinguished historical-critical exegete from Tübingen.114 Ratzinger cites this example to illustrate a deep Christian uneasiness with this brand of Liberal exegesis, which can be detrimental to faith. Ratzinger also takes a passing swipe at the ways in which biblical scholarship can mute the transformative power of Scripture. In his exposition of the first Matthean Beatitude, Ratzinger cites St. Francis of Assisi 112 Ibid., 133; cf. 78. 113 Ibid., xii. 114 Ibid., 35–36. Ratzinger also opens his Erasmus Lecture with the same example from Soloviev; cf. Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 1. A “New Synthesis” 61 as an example of a performed exegesis. Francis’ embrace of spiritual (and material) poverty illustrates the power of God’s Word to shape lives in very radical ways for holiness. He briefly contrasts Francis’ non-academic, practical interpretation with the character of much academic biblical scholarship. Ratzinger comments, Francis “simply wanted to gather the People of God to listen anew to the word—without evading the seriousness of God’s call by means of learned commentaries.”115 The contemporary presence and relevance of Jesus also contributes to Ratzinger’s response to contemporary, atheistic secularism, which excludes any consideration of God and religion from the public arena. Ratzinger had cited the exclusion of the transcendent and the restriction of knowledge to empirically verifiable history as exegetical consequences of Kantian epistemology. Seemingly for Ratzinger, contemporary atheistic secularism is a working-out of the basic epistemological and metaphysical structures of Kantianism on a social level.116 Some of Ratzinger’s strongest criticism of contemporary secularism appears in his treatment of the parables. In Ratzinger’s interpretation of the Parable of the Tenants, when he attends to the tenants’ willful disregard for the vineyard’s owner, Ratzinger writes,“Isn’t this precisely the logic of the modern age, of our age? Let us declare that God is dead, then we ourselves will be God.”117 Similarly, he interprets the libertinism of the prodigal son as exemplifying the contemporary definition of freedom as radical autonomy.118 According to Ratzinger, this understanding of freedom as radical autonomy is both selfalienating and self-destructive. As in the parable, Ratzinger prescribes the return to God as the remedy for a modern humanity, which has become alienated from itself by forgetting God. By returning to God, Ratzinger argues, human beings will rediscover the truth about themselves as beloved creatures invited to participate in the divine Trinitarian communio through a personal relationship with Jesus of Nazareth. 115 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 79. 116 While he focuses on Hobbes and Spinoza, John Milbank likewise discerns a rela- tionship between the development of historical-critical exegesis and the development of the modern secular sphere. See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990), 12–20. 117 Ibid., 257. Elsewhere, Ratzinger interprets the serpent’s temptation in Genesis 3 in terms of the creature’s desire to be the creator. See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “In the Beginning . . .”:A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, trans. B. Ramsey, O.P. (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 1985), 75–95, esp. 84–89. 118 Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 204–5. 62 William M.Wright IV Concluding Observations Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth is still a work in progress. On the basis of what he has published in the first volume, I wish to comment briefly on three aspects of Jesus of Nazareth which ought to generate further theological discussion.The first point concerns the association that Ratzinger makes between the historical-critical method and the Incarnation. Ratzinger argues that the historical-critical method is “indispensable” for Christian exegesis because of the historical reality of the Incarnation.119 God has acted in the course of specific historical events and therefore historicalcritical exegesis is required to grasp that divine activity.Also informing this claim is the notion that historical-critical exegesis, by virtue of its concern for history and compositional origins, can defend against a Gnostic exegesis, which reads the biblical texts as relating ahistorical, speculative truths. However, the claim that the Incarnation requires a specific set of exegetical procedures warrants further scrutiny.120 The issue in question requires further categorical precision. Ratzinger never defines what he exactly means by the “historical-critical method” in either the Erasmus Lecture or Jesus of Nazareth. He treats the “historical-critical method” as a unity, whereas it more appropriately designates several exegetical procedures.121 Furthermore, Ratzinger sometimes uses “the historical-critical method” interchangeably with “the historical method.” Ratzinger does not define the latter category either, but he seemingly understands it as a synonym for the former. For present purposes, I will define “the historical-critical method” as the combination of text, source, form, and redaction criticisms.122 What remains unclear is why the historical reality of the Incarnation necessarily requires the use of these specific interpretive procedures such that without them Christian exegesis becomes defective.Text, source, form, and redaction crit119 Ibid., xv.This claim is likewise made in the 1993 Pontifical Biblical Commission document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (Boston: St. Paul Books & Media, 1993), 35. 120 I am indebted to a similar argument in Lewis Ayres and Stephen E. Fowl, “(Mis)reading the Face of God: The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church,” Theological Studies 60 (1999): 513–23. See also A. K. M. Adam,“Docetism, Käsemann, and Christology:Why Historical Criticism Can’t Protect Christological Orthodoxy,” Scottish Journal of Theology 49 (1996): 391–410. 121 So too Ayres and Fowl, “(Mis)reading the Face of God,” 516 n.10. 122 The 1993 Pontifical Biblical Commission document Interpretation of the Bible in the Church describes “the historical-critical method” in terms of procedural steps. One can infer from its discussion that it is comprised primarily of text, source, form, and redaction criticism. See Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, 39–40; cf. Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., Scripture, The Soul of Theology (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1994), 19–24. A “New Synthesis” 63 icisms are, after all, principally methods for textual analysis, not for doing history. Christian faith believes that God has revealed himself in the course of human events, which are historically and culturally located. Historical exegesis rightly treats the biblical books as products of ancient contexts. In doing so, this kind of analysis is helpful for elucidating the sense of biblical writings within those historical and cultural contexts of origin.This is the role assigned to historical study of the Bible in Dei Verbum §12. However, there is a distinction between studying the communicative claim of biblical texts as ancient compositions and affirming the reality of God’s activity in the course of human events.123 Theologically, the former may presuppose the latter. Historical-critical exegesis can analyze texts and hypothesize about pre-textual composition processes, but it cannot provide much by way of certain historical knowledge about the reality of textual referents (a claim that Ratzinger himself makes).124 The variety of historical Jesus reconstructions and the widely divergent appraisals of the historical worth of Old Testament narratives attest to this. Historical knowledge and genre considerations have a strong and invaluable bearing on discerning the kind of truth claim made by a text. But questions about textual reference, the signifying function of written words, and how readers access the things presented by words are philosophical ones and need to be addressed at the “meta-level.”125 The Christian claim that God has acted and revealed himself in the course of human events does require that the historical realism of those 123 Cf. Johnson, “What’s Catholic about Catholic Biblical Scholarship?” 17–19. 124 Alvin Plantinga highlights the hypothetical character of much historical-critical analysis and its weak argumentative force in his “Two (or More) Kinds of Scripture Scholarship,” in “Behind” the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation, ed. C. Bartholomew, C. S. Evans, M. Healy, and M. Rae; Scripture and Heremeneutics Series 4 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 19–57; reprinted from Modern Theology 14 (1998): 243–77. 125 While space prohibits further discussion, I suggest Robert Sokolowski’s phenomenological analysis of words and things as a helpful resource for thinking about these questions. See Robert Sokolowski, Presence and Absence:A Philosophical Investigation of Language and Being (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 99–115; idem, Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 187–209, 213–25; idem, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 77–87, 108–11, 157–59. Sokolowski has brought his analysis to bear on biblical exegesis in his theological writings. See Robert Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason: Foundations of Christian Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 119–32; idem, Eucharistic Presence:A Study in the Theology of Disclosure (Washington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 138–58. For a secondary discussion, see Wright,“Theology of Disclosure and Biblical Exegesis,” 396–404. 64 William M.Wright IV events, such as the Incarnation, be affirmed and taken seriously. But I do not see why text, source, form, and redaction criticisms are the necessary or preferred way for doing this. Ratzinger is clearly aware that historicalcritical exegesis is not a philosophically and theologically neutral method. He points out many of its methodological shortcomings, and his constructive modifications aim at refitting the method for a theologically robust Christian hermeneutic. Perhaps further consideration is due to alternative ways of taking seriously the historical reality of the Incarnation. For example, one may consider the critical realism proposed by N. T. Wright’s historical Jesus work, which does not make far reaching use of conventional historical-critical methods.126 Also, As Ayres and Fowl have indicated, the premodern Christian exegetical tradition provides many examples of interpreters who staunchly affirmed the humanity of the Incarnate Word but without the rationale or methods employed by later modern exegetes.127 In light of these alternatives, a more spacious category, like “historical method,” may be more appropriate for the argument that Ratzinger wants to make about historical realism.128 This category creates the space for affirming the integrity of historical realities and the historical contexts of biblical compositions while not unduly locking Christian exegesis into a foundation of text, source, form, and redaction criticism. A second area for further consideration is Ratzinger’s use of faithknowledge as a legitimate epistemological resource for exegesis.This may very well prove to be the most controversial (but also the most fruitful) component of Ratzinger’s project. For Ratzinger, the structures of Christian faith require that it make truth claims regarding specific historical and material realities. To deny this capacity to Christian faith would be a Gnostic move, for “this opinion [that is, Gnosis] disembodies the faith and reduces it to pure idea.”129 Ratzinger’s appropriation of faith-knowledge 126 See N.T.Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 3–144. However,Wright’s historical method of critical realism is itself not above critique. For a trenchant critique of Wright’s historical method, see Luke Timothy Johnson,“A Historiographical Response to Wright’s Jesus,” in Jesus & the Restoration of Israel:A Critical Assessment of N.T.Wright’s “Jesus and the Victory of God,” ed. C. C. Newman (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1999), 206–24. 127 Ayres and Fowl,“(Mis)reading the Face of God,” 521–27. If one were to press the issue, admission of historical-critical exegesis as the necessary, sine qua non, starting point for Christian exegesis would implicitly render the entire Christian exegetical tradition (prior to the historical-critical method) as incarnationally inadequate. 128 See the slight different take in Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 7–10. 129 Ratzinger, “Relationship between Magisterium and Exegetes.” A “New Synthesis” 65 as an interpretive resource must be seen within his larger argument about the scope of human rationality and the undue restrictions placed on it in modernity. According to Ratzinger, faith-knowledge and accurate historical reasoning, while distinct, are nevertheless fundamentally compatible. In some ways, Ratzinger can be read as applying to the domain of historical reasoning what Aquinas prescribed as the relationship between sacra doctrina and other scientiae.130 Ratzinger’s use of faith-knowledge to shape historical reasoning immediately raises the question of disciplinary boundaries. Ratzinger seems well aware of this point. In a 2003 address to the Pontifical Biblical Commission, he cites the example of Galileo and the early twentieth century statements of the Pontifical Biblical Commission as instances which prompted the rethinking of the nature of faith claims about particular historical and material matters.131 In the same address, Ratzinger envisions the relationship between historical reasoning and faith-knowledge as somewhat dialectical, with the tension between them perhaps never being completely resolved. Ratzinger wants to provide historical reasoning with a space to operate under its own principles, but he does not want to exclude the things known by faith from the reasoning process.132 Ratzinger’s incorporation of faith-knowledge as an epistemological resource should prompt Christian biblical interpreters, especially those within an ecclesial context, to consider carefully the relationship of faith and reason in interpretation. A third point for future consideration deals with the relationship between theological studies and exegesis. In Jesus of Nazareth, Ratzinger has provided a model of a possible future direction for the theological enterprise.With virtually every academic discipline (including theology) becoming hyper-specialized, Ratzinger’s program is a substantive effort at reintegrating different theological disciplines.The integrative character of 130 Aquinas affirms the capacity of sacra doctrina to judge the truth claims of other scientiae: “[T]he knowledge proper to this science [sacra doctrina ] comes through revelation, and not through natural reason.Therefore it has no concern to prove the principles of the other sciences, but only to judge them.Whatsoever is found in other sciences contrary to any truth of this science, must be condemned as false.” Summa theologiae I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 2; cited from St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 3 vols., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, Inc., 1947–1948), 1:4. 131 Ratzinger, “Relationship between Magisterium and Exegetes.” 132 Similar to Gilson and the issue of a “Christian philosophy,” the question arises as to what is the appropriate categorization for historical reasoning done in light of Christian faith. Does history cease to be history if it incorporates things known by revelation? I owe this observation to a conversation with Bogdan Bucur. 66 William M.Wright IV Ratzinger’s program points both biblical scholars and theologians to the sometimes dangerous practice of interdisciplinary work.There is always a risk of dilettantism when one crosses boundaries into intellectual areas in which one is not a trained specialist. But if theology is to be practiced as a holistic discipline and is to avoid further fragmentation into a state of virtual incoherence, its practitioners must be willing to cross disciplinary boundaries.133 Jesus of Nazareth is an integration of philosophical thinking, attention to the Tradition’s authorities, liturgical practice, ecclesial identity, moral living, and spirituality, all of which are centered on a reading of Scripture. Moreover, this theological interpretation aims at the continuing transformation of human beings through a contemplative exploration of the mystery of God. In this way, Ratzinger has articulated a veritable neoPatristic vision of theology, which speaks to contemporary situations without nostalgic retreat. It is a genuine exercise in ressourcement theology. In light of these points, I do not think that Ratzinger wrote this book primarily for an academic audience. While he does touch on some academic matters (such as the history of exegesis), Ratzinger does not engage in extensive theological debate with other scholars in this book. There are no footnotes, nor much technical discussion, a noticeable departure from his other theological writings. Rather, the implied reader of the book seems to be any reader who desires to foster a relationship with Christ. Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth does have implications for scholarship, but its most important contribution will lie in transformed lives of its readers. Given his stated intentions and purpose in writing this book, the real measure of success for Ratzinger’s project will not be determined by scholarly peers as much as by the ordinary readers, who grow in their relationships with Christ as a result of sharing in Ratzinger’s N&V search for the face of the Lord. 133 As another example of positive strides being made at integrating theology and exegesis, one may cite the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible Series, edited by R. R. Reno et al., which features biblical commentary written by theologians. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 67–106 67 Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology M ICHEL R ENÉ B ARNES Marquette University Milwaukee,Wisconsin Introduction I T IS STRANGE to observe that the most substantial account of Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology remains that of Jules Lebreton in his 1928 Histoire du Dogme de la Trinité, volume two.1 Aspects of Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology—particularly his teaching on the Holy Spirit2—have been studied before Lebreton and after, but with few significant attempts to situate specific topics within a comprehensive account of Irenaeus’s teaching on the Trinity. My purpose in this essay is to describe Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology as thoroughly as I can, short of a monograph, by close readings of what I regard as key passages in Irenaeus’s writings, and by situating that theology within the context of Trinitarian theologies of the second half of the second century A.D. I will examine the central themes that Irenaeus himself announces, and I will examine the role of theological concepts that Irenaeus utilizes as givens, the conceptual “atoms” and “molecules” that go to build up the elements of Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology.3 1 Jules Lebreton, Histoire du Dogme de la Trinité des origines au concile de Nicée (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne, 1928).Volume one was published in 1912. 2 Two treatments stand out: H. B. Swete’s The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, also published in 1912, has a ten-page chapter on Irenaeus’s pneumatology. Originally published by MacMillan and Company, London, 1912, it has been reprinted by Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, 1996. J.Armitage Robinson’s Introduction to his 1920 English translation of Irenaeus’s Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching (London: SPCK, 1920) includes an insightful and lengthy discussion of Irenaeus’s pneumatology; see pages 24–68. (This work is available online at www.ccel.org/ccel/irenaeus/demonst.) 3 I wish to thank my anonymous reviewer for his or her helpful comments. Because this essay was written during my sabbatical, away from any academic library, I 68 Michel René Barnes The first and most important of these is spirit, which was for the first two centuries of Christian theology the principal term for naming the divine (as it was in late Second Temple Judaism and Hellenistic philosophy.) The statement in John 4:24 that “God is spirit” is a clear example of how fundamental “spirit” can be in theology of the early Common Era, for John’s statement is not a judgment peculiar to the theology of the fourth gospel: it expresses a generally recognized truth.When early Christians want to speak about the divinity of Jesus, they speak of the “Spirit” that has taken flesh.4 The divine is Spirit, and one talks about God by recognizing that he is Spirit. There are, as we shall see, other terms for identifying divinity, but the “first” term for Christians is Spirit. In the Hellenistic era the theological meaning of the term “spirit” is determined predominantly by its sense in Stoic philosophy.5 In particular, that God is Spirit and has/is a Logos is a basic, well-known, and influential Stoic doctrine during the first and second centuries of Christianity.6 Spirit, then, plays a significant role in the logic of Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology; indeed, Irenaeus marks the end of an era in Christian Spirit theology, for the Monarchian controversy that follows close upon him triggers a change in how “economic” theologians use the concept.7 must thank my circle of “Irenophile” graduate students at Marquette University who volunteered research and logistical support: Anthony Briggman (who is presently writing his dissertation on Irenaeus’s pneumatology), Michael Harris, Jackson Lashier, and Daniel Lloyd. I am also grateful for the help of Chad Gerber. 4 See, for example, Epistle of Barnabas 7.3, which speaks of Christ’s flesh as “the vessel of the Spirit”; Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnians 3.3, “Christ united in Spirit to the Father”; and Second Clement 9.5, “Christ being first, Spirit. . . .” The equation of divinity with Spirit is so ubiquitous in the early Church that Harnack’s term for the primitive Christian doctrine of a pre-existent divine agent who descends and lives in flesh is “pneumatic Christology” (which he contrasts with “adoptionist Christology.”) See History of Dogma I.III.4. Certainly the equation of divinity with spirit is common to Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tatian, and the Shepherd of Hermas, as well as Irenaeus. 5 “The Stoic ideas [on pneuma] had an enormous impact on the minds of scientists and philosophers during the first three centuries B.C. They were intensified and modified during the first centuries A.D. by the spread of the fundamental beliefs of the monotheistic religions. Pneuma was identified with the divine spirit, and its omnipresence became identical with the omnipresence of God.” Samuel Sambursky, The Physical World of Late Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959/1987), 4. 6 “In Chrysippus’ system, pneuma becomes equivalent to god and equivalent to divine reason: either nous or logos.” Michael Lapidge, “Stoic Cosmology,” in The Stoics, ed. John M. Rist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 161–85; here p. 170. 7 The Monarchian (“modalist”) theologies of the late second and early third centuries are not often recognized for what they were: pneumatological heresies.The Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 69 All the Apologists speak of the Second Person as the “Word,”8 and through their knowledge of the Jewish and pagan philosophical treatments of the term they gain a sense of what it says about his identity and associated actions. By understanding “Word” to include some of the meanings given it in Jewish and pagan philosophical literatures, it is possible for Christians to connect in exegesis scriptural passages that would otherwise have nothing in common with “Word” in the prologue of John. The Christian understanding of the identity of the Word is increased by recognizing that he is referred to in scriptural passages like “God said, Let there be light” (Gen 1:3), “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made” (Ps 33:6), and “The Word of the Lord said, Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” ( Jer 1:5.) The creative actions the prologue attributes to the Word in John are identified and amplified by scriptural passages such as Genesis 1:3, Psalm 33:6, and Jeremiah 1:5, as well as by philosophical senses from other writings.This train of thought, and the results it produces in Christian theology of the Second Person, is what is meant by “Logos theology.” Irenaeus has a definite “Logos theology,” that is, a Christology based upon an understanding of the spiritual Word active in the cosmos, and which identifies the divine in the Incarnation as that same spiritual Word.9 Any understatement of Irenaeus’s “Word Christology” would distort our appreciation of the content of his Monarchians identify divine Spirit with God (the Father) alone, and the divinity in Jesus is the divine Spirit, the Father. As Ronald Heine says, “it is the concept of spirit, not Logos, which links Father and Son. Father and Son are one inseparable spirit. The spirit was made flesh in the virgin. This spirit was the Father.” “The Christology of Callistus,” Journal of Theological Studies 49 (1998): 56–91; here p. 64.To distinguish this Monarchian theology from later varieties I call it “Spirit Monarchianism.” 8 I use the anachronistic term “Second Person” because it does not appear in any of the texts I will discuss and conceptually belongs to another era in Christian Trinitarian theology. Irenaeus, in particular, does not use any word that resembles “person.” However, the virtue of the phrase is, for me, that it stands outside the language of second-century theology and cannot be mistaken by the reader as one of Irenaeus’s trinitarian terms I am commenting upon. The content and referent of the titles “Word,” “Son,” and “Christ,” among others, are precisely what are in question in the writings I treat in this essay. Careful attention to which title specifically is used by an author and under what circumstances is an essential part of my method. Scholarship which treats “Son” and “Word” as interchangeable titles for Irenaeus is of limited accuracy and utility. The title “Third Person” is likewise helpful for signaling when one is speaking of the Holy Spirit rather than the divine Spirit. 9 The Stoic understanding of divine Spirit and Word brings these two concepts together, and, under its influence, there is no opposition in theology between Spirit and Word. Spirit theology supports Word theology;Word theology is a specialization 70 Michel René Barnes Trinitarian theology, but, as will be seen, Irenaeus does not begin his account of the Trinity by identifying “Word” as the proper and exclusive title of the Second Person. The best known application of philosophical concepts to secondcentury Christian teaching on the Word is perhaps “two-stage” Logos theology.10 This account of the origin and generation of W/word is used by Christians to speak of the eternal existence and the generation of the Word. Irenaeus rejects “two-stage” Logos theology as a way of providing this description; indeed he largely rejects the propriety of offering any such description, but he otherwise accepts Logos Christology and develops it beyond its previous understanding among the Apologists. (About the Word Irenaeus is more Johannine than John!)11 However, to have a strong Logos theology does not necessarily mean that one has a weak Spirit theology:12 the two can be two aspects of the same theology, as is the case in Stoic thought, as it is in the Gospel of John. The interconnection in Irenaeus’s theology of Spirit and Word, the logical connection between the two, is one reason why I speak of the Stoic influence upon his thought.13 The Johannine influence is obvious. Irenaeus’s pneumatology has been the subject of much sympathetic study for more than a hundred years. For some past scholars, the history in Spirit theology.The Gospel that announces the existence of God’s Word is the Gospel that proclaims that God is Spirit. 10 “Two-stage” Logos theology builds from the Stoic distinction between the interior word in the mind and the word expressed in speech. In the Christian adaptation of this model, the Word exists within God, and at the moment of creation, when God speaks (“Let there be light”), the Word takes on a distinct existence. This theology provides for continuity of nature between Father and Word, describes the generation of the Word, and asserts the eternal existence of the Word, though without supporting an eternal distinct existence. It is taught by all the Apologists, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian. See Jean Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, trans. John Austin Baker (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1973), 345–86. 11 Irenaeus consistently uses “Logos” for the Second Person throughout his writings, and regularly develops his theology of the Second Person from the content of the concept of Logos.The same cannot be said of the Gospel of John. See Bernhard Mutschler, Irenäeus als johanneischer Theologe (Münster: Mohr Siebeck, 2004). 12 Despite what G.W. H. Lampe and others maintained, because the opposition was and is false. For Lampe’s opinion, so representative of a school of modern liberal theology, see God as Spirit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 116 (for example). 13 Too often it is imagined that Irenaeus possessed the “virtue” of ignorance of high Greek culture, especially philosophy and rhetoric. Irenaeus’s knowledge of Greek philosophy is summarized by Robert M. Grant in “Irenaeus and Hellenistic Culture,” Harvard Theological Review, 42 (1949): 41–51. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 71 of the theology of the Holy Spirit in the early Church goes from Paul to Irenaeus (as if Luke’s pneumatology were a kind of subset of Paul’s.) In ways Irenaeus’s pneumatology is wide-ranging and profound: Swete says that Irenaeus was the first to recover and appreciate Paul’s doctrine of the role of the Holy Spirit in perfecting and regenerating humanity in the life to come. “Irenaeus,” Swete says, “has on this point caught the inspiration of S. Paul more nearly than any of his predecessors or contemporaries.”14 In other ways, the virtue of Irenaeus’s pneumatology is its relative clarity (for example, in his tripartite anthropology, or if compared to the “spiritual” anthropology of Shepherd of Hermas.) But there are significant parts of Irenaeus’s pneumatology that are simply conventional in their articulation and content: the most important example of this would be his doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the source and agent of prophecy.The most common and fundamental early Christian understanding of the distinctive activity of the Holy Spirit is as source and agent of prophecy; such an understanding is, not surprisingly, also the most common and fundamental Late Second Temple understanding of the distinctive activity of the Holy Spirit.The proportion of Irenaeus’s comments on the Holy Spirit as prophetic agent in all he has to say about the Holy Spirit puts him well within this trajectory. However, I am not here interested in any of the aspects of Irenaeus’s pneumatology listed in this paragraph, and I name them only to acknowledge that it is not my intention to give a comprehensive description of Irenaeus’s pneumatology.15 In this essay I am concerned with what might be called Irenaeus’s “high” pneumatology, that is, a theology which attributes to the Holy Spirit the same functions by which the Word-Son is shown to be divine.16 For Irenaeus, the most important distinguishing function or activity of God is creation.This statement may seem obvious given that in the Against Heresies Irenaeus is writing a polemic against the Gnostics (who deny that the highest God creates); but beside the fact of Irenaeus’s response to radical dualism there is the era’s commonplace—which Irenaeus embraces as 14 Swete, Ancient Church, 93–94. 15 The work that is usually cited in scholarly footnotes on Irenaeus’s pneumatology is Hans-Jochen Jaschke, Der Heilige Geist im Bekenntnis der Kirche: eine Studie zur Pneumatologie des Irenäus von Lyon im Ausgang vom altchristlichen Glaubensbekenntnis (Münster: Aschendorff, 1976.) Jaschke’s purpose is not to provide a new understanding of Irenaeus’s pneumatology—his understanding is largely that of Lebreton, Rousseau, and Orbe—but to suggest that the form of Irenaeus’s pneumatology (i.e., governed by the regula, or “credal”) is important for later pneumatology. 16 In the case of Irenaeus, I understand the criteria for the “divine” activities equated with those of God the Father, and an existence described as like the Father’s and unlike the angels’. 72 Michel René Barnes his own—that “What we mean by ‘God’ is ‘creator.’ ”17 This commonplace owes nothing to the Gnostic controversies, either as it appears in the theological and philosophical culture of the time, or as it appears in Irenaeus’s theology. Irenaeus’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit as creator is tied to an exegetical tradition that begins in Second Temple Judaism, that is, midrashim on Psalm 33:6 (and not Gen 1:2b), but his doctrine does not owe its origins to that tradition, at least not directly. My understanding of the chronology of Against Heresies is that the first two books were written in sequence, separately, but close in time.18 Some of book three may have been written at about the time of book two.The majority of book three belongs chronologically and conceptually with books four and five; books four and five belong to the same “sitting.” I am of the opinion that the Demonstration was not written before the majority of Against Heresies,19 or, more specifically, the Demonstration as we have it did not exist before the majority of Against Heresies had been written. The reader will find several occasions in which differences between doctrines in books of Against Heresies and the Demonstration make more sense if the Demonstration is later. In my account of Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology I have followed the sequence in which he expressed his doctrines. For example, in the first two books of Against Heresies Irenaeus has no significant Word Christology, but there is such a Christology in book three and consistently in books four and five. I try to articulate Irenaeus’s point in any given passage without reaching forward to a part of the work that did not exist when Irenaeus wrote the passage 17 As articulated by Philo, On the Change of Names 29, “ ‘I am thy God’ is equiva- lent to ‘I am the Maker and Artificer.’ ” 18 A note on abbreviations: AH stands for Against Heresies, or, Irenaeus himself called it, The Exposure and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So-called. The only complete English translation of this work remains that in the Ante-Nicene Fathers series, which I abbreviate as ANF, with the volume and page number.There is a nine-volume critical edition (of the extant Latin translation), with French translation and copious notes, by A. Rousseau in the Sources Chrétiennes series. Irenaeus’s second extant work has various titles in English translations: Robinson called it The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching; Smith, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching; and Behr, On the Apostolic Preaching.These are all the same work. I use Robinson’s title and translation, and abbreviate it as Demonstration or Demo. I prefer the title Demonstration in part because I believe Irenaeus’s work begins a Christian genre that is later manifested in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Demonstration of the Gospel. 19 John Behr, the most recent English translator of the Demonstration, thinks that the work pre-dates Against Heresies: see his The Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 112; and St. Irenaeus of Lyons—On the Apostolic Teaching (Crestwood, NY: St.Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997). Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 73 at hand, although I do not wholly succeed at keeping this method, nor is every explanation of mine formed by these limits. I freely reach back to an earlier part of the work to help explain a specific passage under examination. When I turn to the subject of Irenaeus’s theology of the Holy Spirit I begin where the content of that theology can best be revealed, which means, generally speaking, moving backwards in Against Heresies and then returning to the last two books. If I err in judgment about the chronology of the parts of Against Heresies—a tentative business at the best of times20—my account of the elements of Irenaeus’s theology should still stand since I am working from the literary sequence of the entire work, not from the chronological strata—even though I believe that, in the case of Against Heresies, these two overlap substantially. Scholarly accounts of Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology are usually built upon the following judgments and presuppositions. First, Irenaeus’s thought on the Trinity takes its fundamental form as polemic against the Gnostics: the continuity of his theology with previous Trinitarian theology is assumed, and is descriptively limited to Justin and Theophilus.21 Second, Irenaeus speaks of the Trinity almost exclusively from the “economic” perspective:22 it makes sense to use the categories “immanent” and “economic” when describing Irenaeus’s theology; the fact that there is no such distinction in Gnostic Trinitarian theology (where the economic and the immanent are one and the same) does not figure. Third, the key metaphor for conceptualizing the unity of Word and the Holy Spirit with the Father is “the hands of God”: this language describes 20 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Against Heresies was the subject of various source-critical hypotheses, principally by German scholars. The general hypothesis was that some books of the AH (particularly the early ones) were built up by Irenaeus editing previously existent small writings against the Gnostics and Marcion. (Friedrich Loofs maintained that the AH was built up from at least five different sources.) The hypothesis of Irenaeus as the redactor of several, disparate works, not all of which agree with one another, is now regarded as a dead letter. Another way in which Irenaeus’s writings have been worked through using “Scripture studies” methodologies is Adelin Rousseau’s retrotranslation into the “original” Greek of the Armenian text of the Demonstration. Some good can come from this, but in the end we do not have, and cannot produce, Irenaeus’s Greek text. See Joseph P. Smith’s lucid summary of the literary history of the Demonstration in St Irenaeus—Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 16 (New York: Paulist Press, 1952), 3–12. 21 John Behr is a notable exception to this specific presupposition: see his The Way to Nicaea. 22 See Basil Studer’s strong reading of “two hands” theology as well as the “ladder” of Trinitarian revelation in his Trinity and Incarnation:The Faith of the Early Church, trans. Matthias Westerhoff (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), 60–62. 74 Michel René Barnes the cosmological work of the Son and Spirit, and may provide a logic for the immanent as well as economic Trinitarian theology of Irenaeus. Fourth, the Son is the visible God; the Father is the invisible God revealed in the Son: the character or mechanism of that sight by the Apostles, and by those after, is not examined. Fifth, Irenaeus does not much discuss the causal origins of the Son and Holy Spirit: this fact has no consequences. Sixth, it is meaningful to use “person” language for Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology:23 “spirit” language is not significant. By and large, my own account of Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology is not built upon these judgments, and certainly none of the presuppositions figure in my reading. I am, however, greatly interested in the content of the fourth judgment, namely, that the Incarnate Son is the “visible of the invisible Father.”24 Irenaeus against the Gnostics: God the Simple Mind In his argument with the Gnostics Irenaeus does not only deconstruct the theology of radical dualism, he offers a positive description of God. That description emphasizes the noetic nature of God. He is a simple, uncompounded Being, without diverse members, and altogether like, and equal to himself, since He is wholly understanding, and wholly spirit, and wholly thought, and wholly intelligence, and wholly reason, and wholly hearing, and wholly seeing, and wholly light, and the whole source of all that is good—even as the religious and pious are wont to speak concerning God.25 But since God is all mind [nous], all reason, all active spirit, all light, and always exists one and the same . . .26 Irenaeus’s language can be paralleled in earlier authors: Athenagoras says that God “is complete in himself, unapproachable light, perfect order, spirit, power, and reason”; Theophilus says about God (the Father), “If I call him Word, it is because he is the first principle; or Mind, it is as his 23 See, for example, Denis Minns, Irenaeus (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994), 38–55. Minns provides a good illustration of how all these judgments and presuppositions come together to provide an account of Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology. 24 Surprisingly, Réal Tremblay is not concerned with explaining how the Incarnate Son makes the Father visible. His primary concern is with reading Irenaeus’s doctrine of the invisible Father revealed in the visible Son as anti-Gnostic. See La manifestation et la vision de Dieu selon Irenée de Lyon, Münsterische Beitrage zur Theologie, Heft 41 (Münster: Ascendorff, 1978). 25 AH II.13.2, ANF I.374. 26 AH II.28.4, ANF I.400. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 75 Thought; Spirit, from his breath; Wisdom, by which he begets; and Power, from his activity.”27 Daniélou emphasizes the fact that all of these terms are applied to the Father as God; neither Athenagoras nor Theophilus is speaking about the Second Person.28 Irenaeus’s own understanding of the terms is clear: But God being all Mind, and all Word [Logos] both speaks exactly what He thinks, and thinks exactly what He speaks. For His thought is Word and Word is Mind, and Mind comprehending all things is the Father Himself.29 Some confusion can arise if the reader assumes that when Irenaeus speaks of Word he is speaking of the Second Person (or the “proto”-Second Person.) God is Word, as he is Mind, Spirit, and Power. These are, as Daniélou points out, “all designations of the divine nature.”30 It is not because the Second Person is “God’s Word [Logos]” that he is God, but because he is Word he is God, for only God is Word.The Second Person, as God, may rightly be called “Word” in some habitual way without necessarily identifying him as the Word that God has or is.We see in Irenaeus’s writings a movement toward identifying “Word” as the proper title for the Second Person—Irenaeus clearly prefers the title—influenced certainly by John’s prologue and possibly Philo (or a tradition like Philo’s.) Irenaeus’s need to identify a Second Lord that is distinct from the Father leads him towards identifying the Second Person with Word (since he is not yet comfortable with pre-existent “Son” language and has no neutral term like “Second [Person]”). Irenaeus moves to the point where he can say,“God is Spirit, and the Word was with God, is God (is Spirit), and took flesh.”There is thus an appropriation of “Word” to the Second Person, but it is not always to be pressed by the reader, as though Irenaeus wrote in the third or fourth centuries. In the early books (one, two, and parts of three) of Against Heresies, for example, it is certainly not to be pressed; in the later books the ambiguity is gone, and Irenaeus has a strong “Word Christology.” In the early books, however, Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology is articulated principally in terms of the divine Spirit and Mind.31 All noetic terms—including Word—take their significance by being spoken about God. 27 The Athenagoras quotation is from Plea 10; the Theophilus quotation, To Autoly- chus I.3. 28 Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, 350. 29 AH II.28.5, ANF I.400. 30 Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, 351. 31 The comparison of God’s Word with the spoken word does not recommend to Irenaeus the doctrine of a “proper” association of Word with the Second Person. 76 Michel René Barnes The Divine Life of Spirit32 For Irenaeus, radical dualism’s hierarchical genealogies introduce a separation or distance into the godhead. The sequential and hierarchical generation of the gods and aeons means that each exists “circumscribed by an immense interval which separates them one from another.”33 This “interval” is, in radical dualist theology, the ontological basis (or expression of ) the inferiority of each succeeding rank of super-celestial offspring: each degree of separation from the first cause produces offspring of diminished content and dignity compared to its antecedents. These topological and ontological distances produce an epistemological distance amongst the offspring: the first cause remains unknown and unknowable to its generation(s).The aetiology at work in the hierarchical genealogies produces offspring that are unlike their source. Irenaeus will have none of this “spatial” understanding of the godhead: it denies the simplicity of God, who is without compound, and is “wholly” whatever he is—“wholly understanding, and wholly spirit, and wholly thought, and wholly intelligence, and wholly reason, and wholly hearing, and wholly seeing, and wholly light, and the whole source of all that is good.”34 Moreover, and it is this latter point that grows in importance as Irenaeus continues, the spatial understanding denies the spiritual nature of God, for an important characteristic of God’s spiritual nature is the life of interpenetration and omnipresence.This is the life of Spirit.35 “Spirit” is, I will suggest repeatedly in this essay, the single most important concept for understanding Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology; indeed, according to Irenaeus, to deny God’s spiritual nature, directly or by implication, is the greatest blasphemy against God.36 The polemical purpose of Irenaeus’s emphasis on God as Spirit is to deny spatial language of God and His generation(s). Irenaeus understands 32 See A. D’Ales, “La doctrine de l’Esprit en saint Irénée,” Récherches de Science Religeuse XIV (1924): 497–538, who says, on his first page,“Dieu est Esprit: nul ne le sait mieux qu’ Irénée.” D’Ales, however, is principally concerned with the Holy Spirit, that is, the Third Person, and reads some occasions of “Spirit” as referring to the Third Person where I would see a reference to the divine Spirit. (These differences of interpretation occur principally over passages in the first two books.) 33 AH I.1.4, ANF I.360. For Irenaeus’s argument on “place” and “two [or more] gods” see William R. Schoedel, “ ‘Topological’ Theology and Some Monistic Tendencies in Gnosticism,” in Essays on the Nag Hammadi Texts in Honour of Alexander Bohlig, ed. Martin Krause (Leide: E. J. Brill, 1972), 88–108, here p. 99f. 34 AH II.13.3, ANF I.374. 35 Other important characteristics of Spirit are rationality and simplicity, both of which figure significantly in Irenaeus’s argument. 36 AH II.13.7, which I quote just below. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 77 God’s non-spatial and spiritual relationship with his offspring in terms of the indwelling of the offspring (i.e., the Word) in God the Father. The interior state of the Word is the basis for the equality of the Word with the Father as well as for the Word’s complete knowledge of the Father. The fact that the Father contains the Son (and Holy Spirit) affirms the spiritual nature of the Father: These [Son and Holy Spirit], then, cannot in such a case be ignorant of the Father, since they are within Him; nor, being all equally surrounded by the Father, can any one know Him less than another according to the descending order of their emission.And all of them must also in an equal measure continue impassible, since they exist in the bosom of their Father, and none of them can ever sink into a state of degeneracy or degradation. For with the Father there is no degeneracy. . . . [T]hose also who are within Him all equally partake of the Father, ignorance having no place among them. . . .37 If, indeed, He has filled all things, there will be no ignorance among them. . . . If, on the other hand, they say that He is [a] vacuity, then they fall into the greatest blasphemy; they deny His spiritual nature. For how can He be a spiritual being, who cannot fill even those things which are within Him?38 In short, for Irenaeus the spiritual nature of God the Father means that the causal relationship between the Father and the Son is non-spatial (and thus non-subordinationist—no descending hierarchies): it is the nature of spirit to contain and to inner-penetrate, and from within this spirit Word (and Wisdom) are sent out—“emitted”—as spirit themselves. (See below for additional comments on how spirit is “emitted.”) Irenaeus says nothing at this point to suggest that this emission accompanies the act of creating the 37 This argument has a special application and a general application. The special application is determined by the specific point that Irenaeus is making: the Son knows the Father because the Son is “in” the Father. The general application arises within Irenaeus’s greater argument against the Gnostic claim that creation gives no knowledge of the true God, and, as a result, one must gain “true knowledge,” falsely called, from other sources. The greater application is, in other words, the argument that the created cosmos is itself “in” God, for God is present as its container, and thus the created cosmos can give knowledge about God (in short, Romans 1:20, which, strangely, Irenaeus never quotes in the AH). 38 AH II.13.6–7,ANF I.374–75 (emphasis added). Something similar is said in Teachings of Silvanus 101. (There is enough common thought between Irenaeus and early Alexandrian Christian writings that at one time the thought was entertained that Irenaeus had read Clement of Alexandria! Now it seems the other way around is most likely, although even this hypothesis may not explain all the similarities. Compare, for example, Irenaeus’s use of “in the bosom” at Against Heresies III.11.5 and III.11.6 with Origen’s at Commentary on the Song of Songs I.2.) 78 Michel René Barnes cosmos (i.e., Genesis 1:1ff.)—indeed his argument would be weakened if this emission accompanied creation. Irenaeus’s point is that the Son originates from within the Father, and that this interior generation and existence makes it impossible to speak of any distance, ignorance, or weakness on the part of those generated. Later in Against Heresies Irenaeus continues to develop the non-spatial, inter-penetration existence within the divine Spirit. The divine spirit of the Word, received with full equality from the Father, itself penetrates the Father, and is never separated from him spatially. The Reciprocal Immanence of Father and Son I have already suggested that, according to Irenaeus, the Father’s and the Son’s mutual interpenetration is understood in light of their spiritual existence: it is a feature of spirit to “fill” and to “contain,” and to deny these actions of God is to deny His spiritual nature.39 Irenaeus takes for granted the Stoic commonplace that spirit fills and contains all space:40 the Stoic doctrine grounds and provides the logic for Irenaeus’s own teaching on the kind of existence characteristic of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (strangely, in this last case often only by implication.)41 Athenagoras had used the Stoic doctrine of spirit “containing” (rtméveim) in his doctrine that the Father and Son are “contained” in each other through the unity provided by the Spirit.42 Irenaeus teaches, 39 Schoedel,“ ‘Topological’Theology,” 90–97, shows that Irenaeus understood God as “containing, but not contained” and places that understanding within the context of the philosophy of Irenaeus’s era. 40 “We must remember that, although the Stoics believed in the corporeal nature of the pneuma, they came to regard it as something not akin to matter, but rather to force [dunamis]. It was their conception of a continuous field of force interpenetrating matter and spreading through space. . . .” Samuel Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (New York: Macmillan Company, 1959), 36. See also Philo in On the Giants 6 (27):“But now, the Spirit which is upon him is the wise, the divine, the indivisible, the undistributable, the good Spirit, the Spirit which is everywhere diffused, so as to fill the universe. . . .” 41 Gerard Verbeke discusses the Stoic content of Irenaeus’s understanding of spirit in his study L’evolution de la doctrine du pneuma (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1945), 332–33. 42 Athenagoras, Embassy 10, trans. Joseph Hugh Crehan,Ancient Christian Writers, vol. 23 (New York: Newman Press), 40. Crehan says in his note to this sentence, “The idea of considering the Spirit as the uniting power of the Father and the Son is here set forth for the first time in Christian theology. No doubt one can derive it from certain Johannine phrases, but Athenagoras has supplied it with its first technical terms” (132, n. 59). Crehan does not offer an explicit opinion on whether the Spirit uniting the two is the divine spirit or the [Holy] Spirit, but he seems to suggest the Holy Spirit. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 79 as we have seen, that the unity of God and His Word is an effect of their spiritual nature. Irenaeus also has, like Athenagoras before him,43 a doctrine of the Spirit of God pervading and containing the universe:44 And just as a cutting from the vine planted in the ground fructifies in its season, or as a corn of wheat falling into the earth and becoming decomposed, rises with manifold increase by the Spirit of God, who contains all things. . . .45 In both cases, Athenagoras and Irenaeus, the “Spirit of God” is God the Father (or perhaps “the divine”) not the Holy Spirit.46 Each time that Irenaeus speaks of the Word-Son existing in the Father he does so in order to support his assertion that the Son knows the Father and can thus reveal Him. One motivation for insisting that the Word knows the Father has already been discussed: to distinguish the Catholic Christian doctrine of the Word’s knowledge of God, His Source and Origin, from the Gnostic doctrine of the Aeons’ ignorance of their source and origin.47 The second reason for insisting that the Word knows the Father has already been broached: in order to reveal the Father, the Logos-Son must know the Father. This knowledge, it turns out, is the effect of the Word-Son’s unity with the Father, which Irenaeus describes primarily in terms of the Word-Son’s “reciprocal immanence” with the Father,48 and secondarily in terms of the Word-Son’s generation from the 43 For Athenagoras’s quotation, see Embassy 6. 44 In his Exhortation to the Greeks IV, Tatian distinguishes God as Spirit from the Stoic doctrine of divine Spirit: “God is a Spirit, not pervading matter, but the Maker of material spirits. . . . For the spirit that pervades matter is inferior to the more divine Spirit. . . .”Tatian, like Irenaeus, was a student of Justin Martyr. 45 Against Heresies V.2.3. ANF 528 (emphasis added); see also III.11.11. 46 Here is one occasion of my difference with D’Ales, “La doctrine de l’Esprit en saint Irénée,” who thinks that AH III.11.11 and V.2.3 refer to the Third Person: see his p. 500, especially note 13. 47 See AH II.17.8, ANF I.382: “It cannot therefore longer be held, as these men teach, that Logos, as occupying the third place in generation, was ignorant of the Father. Such a thing might indeed perhaps be deemed probable in the case of the generation of human beings, inasmuch as these frequently know nothing of their parents; but it is altogether impossible in the case of the Logos of the Father. For if, existing in the Father, he knows him in whom he exists—that is, is not ignorant of himself—then those productions which issue from him being his powers (faculties), and always present with him, will not be ignorant of him who emitted them, any more than rays [may be supposed to be] of the sun.” 48 The phrase—a good one—is from Lebreton’s Histoire du Dogme de la Trinite, i.e. vol. II, pp. 555–56. 80 Michel René Barnes Father.49 Here I am presently concerned with the Father’s and WordSon’s “reciprocal immanence” or interpenetration. In Against Heresies III.11.5 and 6, Irenaeus twice, within the space of ten lines, speaks of the Son Who is “in” the Father declaring the invisible Father and giving knowledge of Him.50 The chapter as a whole develops as exegeses on selected passages from John.51 The key passage for the doctrine of the Son “in” the Father is John 1:18:“No one has ever seen God: the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (RSV). [At the wedding feast of Cana—John 6:11—Jesus showed] that the God who made the earth, and commanded it to bring forth fruit, who established the waters, and brought forth the fountains, was He who in these last times bestowed upon mankind, by His Son, the blessing of food and the favour of drink: the Incomprehensible [acting thus] by means of the comprehensible, and the Invisible by the visible; since there is none beyond Him, but He exists in the bosom of the Father.52 For “no man,” he says,“has seen God at any time,” unless “the onlybegotten Son of God, which is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared [Him].” For He, the Son who is in His bosom, declares to all the Father who is invisible.53 Irenaeus’s exegesis of John 1:18 reflects his desire to maintain that the Word-Son’s presence in the Father is not pre-empted by the Incarnation. The anti-Gnostic motivation here is clear: matter does not interrupt or block the continuity between Father and Word-Son.54 A second motivation, less obvious perhaps but more fundamental to Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology, is to restate the truth about God’s and the Word-Son’s Spiritual 49 Irenaeus’s hesitancy to describe in any detail the aetiology of the Word-Son’s generation limits his ability to develop the implications of that generation. He does make a few deductions, such as the following:“It necessarily follows, therefore, both that he who springs from Him as Logos, or rather that Nous himself, since He is Logos, must be perfect and impassible, and that those productions which proceed from Him, seeing that they are of the same substance with Himself, should be perfect and impassible, and should ever remain similar to Him Who produced them” (AH II.17.7, ANF I.382). 50 ANF I.427. 51 For example, John 1:1, 1:10, 1:14, 1:18, 1:47, and 6:11. 52 AH III.11.5. 53 AH III.11.6 (emphasis added). 54 Later Irenaeus will argue that the cosmos had to be created by a good God, and to be good in itself, because a cosmos created by intermediaries—for example, angels—could not accept or bear the presence of the Word-Son. See AH V.18.1. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 81 nature: the Word-Son’s presence in the Incarnation does not pre-empt his presence in God the Father because Spirit is not bound by, nor localized in, place and distance. Therefore, in the Incarnation the Word-Son continues to dwell in the Father—“in His bosom”—and there is no ontological or epistemological distance between the two of them. There are also, in Irenaeus’s writings, passages which speak of the Father dwelling in the Son, most notably Against Heresies III.6.2: And again, when the Son speaks to Moses, He says, “I am come down to deliver this people.” For it is He who descended and ascended for the salvation of men.Therefore God has been declared through the Son, who is in the Father, and has the Father in Himself—He who is, the Father bearing witness to the Son, and the Son announcing the Father.55 Irenaeus is more interested in the message of John 1:18 (the Son is in the Father) than he is in, for example, John 14:10 (the Father is in the Son).56 However, the idea expressed in the above quotation—that the Father may be said to dwell in the Word-Son—is relevant to (and consistent with) Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology as I have sketched it, for the WordSon may thus be said to “contain” the Father (“containing” without “enclosing”). Only if the Word-Son is divine Spirit, too, could he be thought to be able to contain the Father.There is a mutual containment or immanence because of the common divinity of the two.Through his generation the Word-Son goes from “in the Father” to “the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son.” Both dynamics may be said to be indwelling, interpenetration, or reciprocal immanence, but in the second case the Word-Son’s full divinity and the equal activity of that Spirit is a cause of the indwelling. In his generation from the Father, the Word-Son goes “from” being contained by the Father “to” containing the Father as well as being contained by the Father. As I shall explain below, this passage “from” and “to” is the only transition the emitting of the WordSon involves.There is no movement. Generation: “From” but not “Out of ” Scholars regularly remark that Irenaeus avoids giving an account of the generation of the Word-Son and Holy Spirit from God the Father; such 55 ANF I.419. 56 Irenaeus quotes John 14:10 only once, and it is in support of the argument that there were no doctrines kept secret from the Apostles since they saw God in Christ. Irenaeus’s lack of interest in the doctrine expressed by John 14:10, the Father in the Son, marks his Trinitarian theology as being pre-Monarchian. 82 Michel René Barnes accounts strike him as the vanity-driven overreaching typical of the Gnostics.57 However, in Against Heresies II.13.8, while criticizing Gnostic speculation, Irenaeus gives the reader a brief glimpse of his understanding of the generation of the Word. The Gnostics teach the production—emission—of Aeons (e.g., Logos, Zoe) in a sequence; the proper sequence of the emission of these Aeons is a matter of doctrine among the different Gnostic schools. The Gnostics argue for the existence and identity of these Aeons by means of an analogy between the Nous, progenitor of the Pleroma, and human mental life: in humans is life, thought, feelings, etc., and so too in the Nous is Life and Thought, etc.These noetic existents are emitted by Nous sequentially, according to a logic: Life must precede Thought (for what is lifeless cannot think.)58 Irenaeus first rejects the Gnostic logic of emissions—“those who transfer the generation of the word to which men give utterance to the eternal Word of God”—on the grounds that it introduces heterogeneity in God and denies his simplicity: [T]hey conceive an emission of Logos, the Word after the analogy of human feelings, and rashly form conjectures respecting God. . . . But in Him who is God over all, since He is all Nous and all Logos, as I have said before, and has in Himself nothing more ancient or late than another, and nothing at variance with another, but continues altogether equal, and similar, and homogeneous, there is no longer ground for conceiving of such production in the order just mentioned.59 57 Lebreton observes, La Trinité 2:554, that Irenaeus’s reserve has been judged “excessive” by some scholars, and in a footnote (1) he refers to Harnack’s severe judgment on Irenaeus for his habitual silence. Modern apologists for Irenaeus’s reserve attribute it to the anti-Gnostic character of his work which, they seem to suggest, could have allowed no other response on his part. However, Irenaeus’s caution has precedent in a context which has nothing to do with radical dualism. David Winston notes that Philo declined to use specific causal language to describe the Logos’s origin. “[W]hen it comes to the Logos itself, he [Philo] prefers to use verbs which clearly imply that it is a divine emanation without actually so designating it.” David Winston, Wisdom of Solomon, Anchor Bible Commentary Series 43 (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1979), 185. Perhaps Irenaeus belonged to a tradition which, however Hellenized, maintained a reticence about the origins of the Word based upon a judgment about Scripture.The judgment that a theologian is “Hellenized,” as Irenaeus clearly is, often involves the presupposition that Hellenized thought is by its nature explicit and without reticence. Philo proves this assumption wrong. 58 For theologies that can be built upon non-radical dualist understandings of the hierarchical—vertical or horizontal—generation of Life and Thought, see Chaldean Oracles, Porphyry, and Marius Victorinus. 59 AH II.13.8, I.375 Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 83 In short, there are in God/Nous no multiple divine noetic states in queue for emission. The second reason Irenaeus has for rejecting the Gnostic “psychological analogy” is that with it they teach a beginning and a duration of existence for each of these emitted Aeons. Irenaeus says repeatedly, and quite strongly, that the Word, who is God ( John 1:1), was with God always ( John 2). The logic of Irenaeus’s theology of the generation of the Word is determined by the fact that God and His offspring are by nature Spirit. Whatever is said about God cannot run contrary to the reality or nature of Spirit. In particular, if we think about the generation of the Word we cannot think of a transition in the life of the Word from “in” God to “out” of God, since these are spatial notions which cannot be applied to Spirit. As spirit, the Word is always entirely “in” God and “outside” of God. We must completely purge our thoughts of any place-related notions of causality. The Word is so completely and perfectly present “here” and “there” that we must think of a continuous presence, distinguished not according to place by activity, not in any sort of either/or localization.60 When the Word is generated from the Father, he is not by that fact removed from previous indwelling “in” the Father.61 When the Word is present “in” union with the flesh, he is not by that fact removed from any “where” he was before. The Word is in the Father, in the cosmos, and, later, in the flesh of Jesus.The “kinds” of unity or presence 60 T. S. Eliot once said that criticizing the Essays of Montaigne was like throwing a hand grenade into a fog; Irenaeus could say that a spatial generation of the WordSon would be like pushing a cloud. (In neither case would the author properly be taken literally.) 61 In his article, “The Theogony of Theophilus,” Vigilae Christianae 42 (1988): 318–26, Carl Curry says in his account of Theophilus’s theology of the Logos,“To say that the Logos was present in a certain place might cause one to question how the Logos could be found somewhere and be always ‘innate in the heart of God’ (2.10, 22). Theophilus does not satisfactorily answer this question” (320). Curry identifies in Theophilus’s thought the same non-spatial description of the Logos that I have identified in Irenaeus’s, and he expresses the same puzzlement over how Theophilus could say such things as scholars have expressed over Irenaeus’s silence. My theory of the significance of the Stoic doctrine of pneuma for Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology provides an explanation for the puzzling statements by Irenaeus that are similar to puzzling statements by Theophilus, but I cannot now say whether my theory of the importance of the concept of pneuma in Irenaeus’s theology applies equally to Theophilus. The interesting thing about Curry’s remark is that he is speaking about Theophilus’s failure to make his “deep logic” and connections clear, a failure that occurs even given Theophilus’s philosophical background (usually assumed to exceed Irenaeus’s). 84 Michel René Barnes differ in each case:62 the Word is not “in” the flesh the way he is “in” the Father, nor is he “in” the flesh the same way that he is “in” the cosmos, but each presence does not exclude or even modify the continuing reality of the others.63 The Word-Son is in the Father (in one way) and in the cosmos creating and ordering (in another): the change in how we speak about “where” the Word-Son “is” is simply—and no more or less than— our change of focus as we reflect upon the economy of salvation. We remember and tell that the Word-Son is from the Father, that the WordSon created the cosmos, and that the Word-Son took on flesh for our sake.The sequence of places where the Word-Son “is” is an effect of the episodic happening in history and in the telling—a fact which is dramatized in the Demonstration, with its structure of narrative cycles. Here it may be useful to make an apparently minor point about Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology: it has no word to answer “two (or three) what?”64 The need which drives that question does not appear in Irenaeus’s thought, much less does an answer.We may at some point speak of the limitations of Irenaeus’s thought on the Trinity, but we cannot say that we understand that thought until we understand how his Trinitarian theology has a logic with no intrinsic need for “person” (etc.). The strength of Irenaeus’s description of the Trinity via the concepts and logic of Spirit’s reciprocal immanence or interpenetration is its faithfulness to the fact that God is Spirit: in particular, that God is not localized in a place, that the generation of the Word-Son does not occur through any kind of topological separation, and that the Father and WordSon remain united (in the sense of co-inherent) even during the Incarnation. One limitation of the reciprocal immanence doctrine is that it makes little conceptual use of sonship (although the title “Son” is used in great abundance).65 Similarly, the reciprocal immanence doctrine allows but 62 Irenaeus could find an introduction to the “kinds” of unity or the different indwelling presences of spirit in the Stoic distinctions among the different kinds of unity, tenor, physique, soul and rational soul. The Stoic distinctions among these kinds of unity were well known in the early Common Era. Philo reports these distinctions at God’s Immutability 35–36. 63 As an analogy: according to the Stoics, the existence of a tension field at one point in spirit does not prevent the existence of a tension field at another point in spirit. 64 That is, he has no theological notion or term that corresponds to, for example, Tertullian’s “persona.” 65 In chapter five of the Demonstration Irenaeus explains the propriety of the name “Son” on the basis of the actions of the Word. Irenaeus does not otherwise introduce the title “Son” as an article of Christian belief—that is, in the regula—until chapter six.The relevant part of Demonstration 5 is worth quoting at length here: Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 85 does not significantly utilize (much less embrace) the traditional language of the “sending” and “descent” of the Word-Son. Finally, when spirit language is used in support of a reciprocal immanence doctrine, there are fewer linguistic resources for talking about the Holy Spirit specifically.Any remedy to these limitations would require Irenaeus to speak in the aetiological language he so associates with the Gnostics, which he will not do, and so the “reciprocal co-inherence” language of Spirit remains dominant. The Word of the Spirit For Irenaeus, the divine presence in the union of the Incarnation is the Word, the same Word who, in the beginning, created and gave order to the cosmos.The one who acted in the heavens to create is the same one who acts on earth to save.When the Gospels speak of Jesus acting, it is the Word who acts.66 The depth of Irenaeus’s theology of the Word can be illustrated by citing his exegesis of John’s story of Jesus and the man born blind (i.e., John 9:3ff.) in Against Heresies V.67 Irenaeus recognizes the connection to the formation of Adam described at Genesis 2:7 when, at John 9:6, Jesus “Thus then there is shown forth One God, the Father, not made, invisible, creator of all things; above whom there is no other God, and after whom there is no other God. And, since God is rational, therefore by (the) Word He created the things that were made, and God is Spirit, and by (the) Spirit He adorned all things: as also the prophet says:‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and by his spirit all their power.’ Since then the Word establishes, that is to say, gives body and grants the reality of being, and the Spirit gives order and form to the diversity of the powers; rightly and fittingly is the Word called the Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God.” Robinson, trans., Demonstration, pp. 73f. (emphasis added). That “gives order and form “ suggests Wisdom is a straight-forward deduction; that “gives body and grants the reality of being” suggests a Son is not a straight-forward claim. Jean Daniélou may provide the explanation, however, when he refers to Athenagoras’s Plea 10,“The Son came forth from God to give form and actuality to all material things. . . .” Daniélou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, p. 348 (emphasis added); similarly from Theophilus, Ad Auto. II.10: “The Word of God is also His Son. . . .” p. 353. 66 The identification of the Word as the one who acts in Jesus is already present in Book III.When Irenaeus describes the baptism at the Jordan—a very important event in the ministry of Jesus in Irenaeus’s eyes—he says that the Father anointed, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Word. In Matthew’s account, which Irenaeus quotes, the Father says, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Irenaeus glosses the passage:“[T]he Word—Who is the Savior of all, and the ruler of heaven and earth, who is Jesus, as I have already pointed out, who did also take upon him flesh, and was anointed by the Spirit from the Father— was made Jesus Christ. . . .” AH III.9.3, p. 423. 67 Irenaeus is the first author to cite John 9, unless one thinks that the Clementine Homily XVI predates him. 86 Michel René Barnes makes clay from spit and dirt.The clay points to “the original fashioning, how it was effected, and manifesting the hand of God to those who can understand by what hand man was formed out of the dust.” It was the Word who formed the man in his mother’s womb, just as it was the Word who formed Adam.68 Jeremiah, Irenaeus says, testifies (at 1:5) that the Word of God formed us in the womb: “this very same Word formed the visual power in him who had been blind from birth; showing openly who it is that fashions us in secret, since the Word himself had been made manifest to men.”69 In short, the same Word who formed Adam, who has formed all humans in wombs, was present before the blind man and restored his sight. My point here is not that Irenaeus always speaks of the Word when treating the creation of man; he does not, and, in particular, when he uses “two hands” language he almost always identifies those hands with “the Son and Holy Spirit.” My point is to show how Irenaeus relates the life and work of the Incarnated Word to the life and work of the pre-Incarnated Word, a relationship which we perhaps take for granted, so many centuries later, but which marks Irenaeus’s theology as a finely nuanced model for a Christology of the Word.70 Justin Martyr’s Logos theology is, in comparison, limited in its scope, and is distinguished only for the presence of a “two-stage” model of the generation of the Word, and by the continuity he illustrates between Jewish and Christian use of the title. To say that Justin’s theology of the Word, which attributes all truth and virtue in the world to the Word, is “limited in its scope” may, I admit, seem bizarre and indefensible to some readers.71 Like the Gospel of John, Justin attributes cosmological activities to the Word, but he (again like the Fourth Gospel) does not speak of Jesus in His earthly ministry as the Word.72 Irenaeus does. Irenaeus makes 68 One expects a “two hands” reference, but it is not there. 69 AH V.15.3, p. 543. 70 The key passage, much discussed by scholars, is chapter 43; see especially Adelin Rousseau, “La doctrine de saint Irenée sur la preexistence du fils de Dieu dans Dem. 43,” Muséon 89 (1971): 5–42. 71 Ernest Evans says, in Tertullian’s Treatise Against Proxeus (London: SPCK, 1948), 33, that the term Logos is “no fundamental element” in Justin’s thought. Justin never cites the prologue to John, and “in the Dialogue he paraphrases kócoy into kócoy siy kocijǵ.” “Son is nearer to his mind than Word” (34). It is Tatian whose thought “is based on kócoy rather than ti> óy or cémmgla and that the kócoy concept is essential to his argument” (35). 72 In the Second Apology II.6, Justin says, “[A]nd His Son, who alone is properly called Son, the Word, who also was with Him and was begotten before the works, when at first He created and arranged all things, is called Christ” (ANF I.190). Here Justin gives priority to the title/relationship “Son”—it is the Son who is called “Christ.” Passages in Irenaeus where “Son” is given priority over Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 87 the Word described in the Prologue the explicit subject of actions and events described in the body of the Gospel. However, if we look to the Demonstration, the concept (and not simply the title) of Son figures more directly in Irenaeus’s exposition than it did in the Against Heresies, and Spirit theology is proportionately less present in the Demonstration.The latter work includes a number of statements of the eternal existence of the Son, particularly in chapter 43, where Irenaeus understands that the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1 means,“A Son in the beginning God established, then heaven and earth.” For Irenaeus this passage parallels John 1:1, and he concludes that “In the beginning was the Word” shows with certainty “that the Word, who was in the beginning with the Father, and by whom all things were made, this is His Son.”73 This brings us to another key passage in the Demonstration, chapter 47, where Irenaeus says, “The Father is Lord and the Son is Lord, and the Father is God and the Son is God, for that which is begotten of God is God.And so in the substance and power of His being there is shown forth one God.”74 This is one of Irenaeus’s strongest statements of the full divinity of the Second Person, and the strongest statement of the full divinity of the “Son” specifically. In particular, the language of “[Son] born of God is God” is remarkable, for it has no precedent in Irenaeus’s writings. The closest Irenaeus comes to some kind of “X from X” statement is to critique some understandings of the “fire from fire” model for divine generation. Similarly, there is no prior occurrence of the statement that the Father and Son are one God in the being and power of their nature in all of Irenaeus’s writings. Irenaeus never uses the argument, “If a common power, then a common essence or nature.” To the best of my knowledge, outside of Demonstration, chapter 47, this argument is first offered in writings against the Monarchians (either by Tertullian in his Against Praxeus or by Hippolytus in his Against Noetus, depending on which work one judges to be the earliest.) The presence in the Demonstration of either “born of God is God” or one “being and power [and therefore His nature]” is therefore remarkable and somewhat puzzling. The appearance of both arguments side by side leads me to this judgment: either these lines in chapter 47 are the product of Irenaeus encountering anti-Monarchian polemic and incorporating it; or these two arguments are the product of a sympathetic Armenian translator with Nicene beliefs “improving” Irenaeus’s theology. Stated baldly, “the Father and Son are “Word” are rare, and, as I just pointed out, at AH III.9.3 Irenaeus says that it is the Word who is anointed, that is, made the “Christ.” 73 Robinson, trans., Demonstration, p. 109. 74 Ibid., p. 112. Michel René Barnes 88 each Lord, the Father and Son are God” can, from a post-Nicene perspective, seem problematic. To say, “God born from God” and “one essence, one power” glosses the previous statements as Nicene orthodoxy. The Word Reveals the Father One of the distinctive features of Irenaeus’s theology is his understanding that humans can know only through the senses, through the visible and material; this is true of humans because they were created visible and material. The means by which the Word-Son reveals the Father is the material condition taken in the Incarnation; the content of that revelation is the Father who dwells within the Son. And through the Word Himself who had been made visible and palpable, was the Father shown forth, although all did not equally believe in Him; but all saw the Father in the Son: for the Father is the invisible of the Son, but the Son the visible of the Father. And for this reason all spoke with Christ when He was present [upon earth], and they named Him God.75 The Word-Son’s revelation of the Father does not begin at the Incarnation, but has occurred in stages since the creation. Irenaeus understands each stage of creation to be a stage in the revelation of God the Father; since the Logos-Son is the creative agent of God, it is the Logos-Son who causes God to be revealed. In each stage the Word-Son reveals God using material instruments or artifacts. The Word’s progressive revelation, in material mediums, of God the Father culminates in the Incarnation. By the creation of the cosmos itself, the Word reveals God the Creator; and by means of the creation of the world [He declares] the Lord the Maker of the world; and by means of the formation [of man the Word declares God to be] the Artificer who formed him; and as Son [the Word declares God to be] the Father who begat the Son. . . .76 The Son’s visibility, which for Irenaeus is the same as His materiality, is the necessary means for making the invisible known to the visible, the immaterial known to the material, for humans know and learn through material senses.Without that visibility and materiality, God—as well as his Word— would remain incomprehensible. If our salvation lies in our knowledge of God, then it is only through material means that our salvation can be accomplished, since it is only through material means that we can know 75 AH IV.6.6, ANF I.469. 76 Ibid. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 89 God. God can be known only through sensibles, which range from the created cosmos to his actions in history to his imperfect image (man), and, finally, to the perfect Image, his Word in flesh. Although man’s true life consists in the knowledge of God, without sense perception he remains ignorant of God. The great revelation the Incarnation brings is that the invisible and immaterial God is seen in the visible and material flesh of Jesus. (Strangely, Irenaeus does not cite John 14:9–10 for this.) Irenaeus offers no epistemology, no description of knowledge, beyond the statement that all rational beings know according to their natures: for example, angels, being spiritual and not material, know intellectually. Whatever further thoughts Irenaeus might have had on epistemology are left unsaid, and all that we know is Irenaeus’s strict empiricism, which, indeed, might have been the single form of human knowledge he recognized. This strict empiricism needs to be kept in mind as one follows Irenaeus’s statements on God the Father being seen in the Incarnated Word. What does Irenaeus mean by “see”? We can say that it is not an imaginary or abstracted “vision” of God or of Christ, nor is it the action of Christ that “images” the Father, nor is it identified with a postponed eschatological vision of the risen and glorified Christ. The reader takes from Irenaeus the impression that God is seen in Jesus with the same kind of vision as that by which I see my wife, that is, the empirical sight of Jesus, seen as everyone is seen.77 When the apostles looked at Jesus they saw God in the normal sense of the word “see.”They saw the Father in the only way he could be seen by humans, that is, through his indwelling in the Incarnated Son.78 The Incarnation also brings to sight the invisible Word, and by gazing upon Jesus the apostles saw him.79 There is no other content to that vision that must be supplied by deduction, or 77 Who could see God in Christ? Those who knew and believed the promises to the prophets that God would walk among us, and could recognize that Jesus fulfilled the prophets’ announcements of details of the Savior’s birth and mission, would know, then, that they were indeed looking upon God united to man.The kind of exegetical identification of Jesus as the Messiah that is the subject of Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho looms large for Irenaeus, as does the very work by Justin. In Irenaeus’s understanding some kind of exegetical identification happened amongst Jesus’ first followers (given the example of Jesus himself, who identified himself through these means). 78 For the Johannine background of Irenaeus’s doctrine, see the excellent “Jesus: ‘The One Who Sees God,’ ” by Marianne Meye Thompson, in Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. David B. Capes, April D. DeConick, Helen K. Bond and Troy A. Miller (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008), 215–26. 79 AH IV.6.3, ANF I.468. Michel René Barnes 90 deferred in time. The vision of God presented to those who, speaking historically, saw him is like (but better than) the vision Adam and Eve had of God walking in the garden. Moses did not see God: nor did Elijah, nor Ezekiel, nor any of the prophets: they saw God revealed in similitudes, created representations of himself, peculiar to the moment and chosen in accordance with the full economy of salvation, for “God is seen when He pleases, by whom He decides, when He decides, and in whatever form He decides.”80 The vision of God does occur in a true and complete form by sight of the Incarnate Word, who dwells in the bosom of the Father and thus is one with the Father and who can reveal him as no theophany ever did. This sight of Jesus, the Incarnate Word, walking the streets of Jerusalem and talking with His followers, is the recapitulation of the sight of God walking in the garden and talking to Adam and Eve. “And for this reason all spoke with Christ when He was present [upon earth], and they named Him God.”81 To look at Jesus is to see God: this is an action of our senses, not of our faculty for deduction.The “historical vision” is sufficient for Irenaeus (who never saw Jesus) because those who did see Jesus lived not further in time from him than someone’s grandfather. I personally have mental images—visual “memories”—of combat in Italy during the Second World War because of my father’s vivid recollections, for he was there. Moreover, Irenaeus understands the Church as that community in continuity with those who saw Jesus and called him “God.” Lebreton82 suggests Ignatius’s Epistle to Polycarp 3.2 as a precedent (and possible source) for Irenaeus’s doctrine of our soteriological need for the immaterial to become material, the invisible to become visible: Be more diligent than you are now. Mark the seasons. Await Him that is above every season, the Eternal; the Invisible, who became visible for our sake ; the Incorporal and the Impassible, who suffered for our sake and who endured in all ways for our sake.83 A potentially more interesting testimony is Celsus’s, as he is closer in time to Irenaeus. 80 AH IV.20.5, ANF I.489. 81 AH IV.6.6, ANF I.469. In its other particulars this paragraph is a restatement of what Irenaeus writes in AH IV.20.10–11,ANF I.490–91. Irenaeus himself quotes John 1:18 in IV.20.11. 82 La Trinité, 2:558 n. 1. 83 Emphasis added. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 91 Since God is great and difficult to see, He put His own Spirit into a body that resembled ours, and sent it down to us, that we might be enabled to hear Him and become acquainted with Him.84 Celsus reports with the rough edge of the hostile witness he admittedly is, although, despite this hostility, he renders the Christian doctrine more “normal” (to him) by stating it in terms borrowed from Plato: God is great and difficult to see (see equals know ). But otherwise the report is accurate, even to the point of including a detail that is not always obvious in early Christian writing: that the divinity that enters the body is the “Spirit of God.”85 From Celsus’s remarks we see that the role of a “visible God” was understood outside Christian theology, and we can also glimpse how a statement like “the Spirit of God in a human” could be understood in a modalist fashion. What Spirit Can Mean I said earlier that a weakness in Irenaeus’s use of Spirit language to describe the Trinity is that it offers few resources for talking about the Holy Spirit specifically. I can summarize the widespread role Spirit language plays in Irenaeus’s theology before discussing his theology of the Holy Spirit. “Spirit” is used by Irenaeus for the divinity of the Father, of the Word, and of the Holy Spirit, as well as for the divine presence in Jesus in the Incarnation, to name or specify the Holy Spirit, and to name or specify the highest element in human tripartite anthropology (i.e., body, soul, and spirit ), which in itself may or may not be understood by Irenaeus to be other than the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, insofar as each is called “Spirit.” Most of these different uses can be found, for example, in a passage from Against Heresies V.9.3. The flesh, therefore, when destitute of the Spirit of God, is dead, not having life, and cannot possess the kingdom of God: [it is as] irrational blood, like water poured out upon the ground. And therefore he says, “As is the earthy, such are they that are earthy” [1 Cor 15:48]. But where 84 Against Celsus,VI.69. 85 Harnack’s summary of the strengths of “pneumatic” Christology reads like a description of Irenaeus’s theology: “The future belonged to this Christology because the current exposition of the Old Testament seemed directly to require it, because it alone permitted the close connection between creation and redemption, because it furnished the proof that the world and religion rest upon the same Divine basis, because it was represented in the most valuable writings of the early period of Christianity, and finally, because it had room for the speculations about the Logos.”Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. 1, trans. Neil Buchanan (New York: Dover Publications, 1958) I.III.4, p. 198. 92 Michel René Barnes the Spirit of the Father is, there is a living man; [there is] the rational blood preserved by God for the avenging [of those that shed it]; [there is] the flesh possessed by the Spirit, forgetful indeed of what belongs to it, and adopting the quality of the Spirit, being made conformable to the Word of God. And on this account he (the apostle) declares, “As we have borne the image of him who is of the earth, we shall also bear the image of Him who is from heaven.”What, therefore, is the earthly? That which was fashioned.And what is the heavenly? The Spirit.As therefore he says, when we were destitute of the celestial Spirit, we walked in former times in the oldness of the flesh, not obeying God; so now let us, receiving the Spirit, walk in newness of life, obeying God. Inasmuch, therefore, as without the Spirit of God we cannot be saved, the apostle exhorts us through faith and chaste conversation to preserve the Spirit of God, lest, having become non-participators of the Divine Spirit, we lose the kingdom of heaven; and he exclaims, that flesh in itself, and blood, cannot possess the kingdom of God. It seems useful for me to gloss this passage to draw out the various senses Irenaeus attaches to the term. I hope the reader will forgive any tediousness on my part. I will begin with Irenaeus quoting Paul. “ ‘As we have borne the image of him who is of the earth, we shall also bear the image of Him who is from heaven.’What, therefore, is the earthly? That which was fashioned.And what is the heavenly? The Spirit.” Irenaeus here quotes First Corinthians 15:49, where Paul contrasts the first Adam, a man of dust, with the second Adam, Christ, the man from heaven.The passage in Paul’s epistle is not without its own ambiguities in the use of “spiritual” but it is clear that the “second Adam” is Christ. Irenaeus has supplied a word for the pre-existent One who comes from heaven when he says that the heavenly is “the Spirit.” (We might more easily expect “Lord,” “Son,” or “Word.”) Irenaeus then says,“As therefore he [Paul] says, when we were destitute of the celestial Spirit, we walked in former times in the oldness of the flesh, not obeying God; so now let us, receiving the Spirit, walk in newness of life, obeying God.”We expect the “celestial spirit” to be a reference to the Holy Spirit, and “receiving the Spirit” to refer to baptism. But “celestial spirit” could continue the connotation from the previous sentence’s glossing of First Corinthians 15:49 (the heavenly Spirit), and the Spirit that we were formerly destitute of but “we have now received” can refer to the divine spirit in Christ, who walked among us in the Incarnation. Finally, “Spirit” in other of the sentences likely means the Holy Spirit, with a possible identification between that Spirit and the [S]pirit constituent, with flesh and soul, of our human nature. From this passage in Against HeresiesV.9.3, and from others in Irenaeus, Lebreton concludes, “This imprecision of language [regarding “spirit”] Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 93 creates in Irenaeus, as in other authors of his era, confusion or at least obscurity; [as the passage from V.9.3 illustrates] . . . the word ‘spirit’ can sometimes mean the Holy Spirit and sometimes the divine nature of the Son.”86 Ambiguities in Irenaeus’s language do exist and they impose real limits on attempts to give an account of his theology. Irenaeus’s words on the Spirit did not travel well—which may be why they had so little effect in third- and fourth-century Christianity.With the beginning of the third century and with the Monarchian controversies, Catholic communities began to move away from the multivalent use of “spirit,” with its continuities of referent (divinity, the divine in Christ, the Holy Spirit, our Spirit, etc.). Irenaeus’s use of “spirit” sits on the far side of the Monarchian controversy; his Trinitarian theology represents the pinnacle of “economic” theology before it confronts Monarchianism, with the result that sometimes his theology is expressed in language that a Monarchian would find convivial.87 Irenaeus’s pneumatology was less aided and more hindered than was his Christology by his dependence upon the metaphysics of Spirit and by his sparing use of causal language. The strength of Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology of the Holy Spirit came from other ways of talking about God, namely, from the notion of God as creator and from the late Second Temple association of the Spirit of God with the act of creating. The Origin of the Holy Spirit The remainder of this essay is concerned with the ways in which Irenaeus may be said to have a “high” pneumatology, that is, may be said to have a theology which attributes to the Holy Spirit the same functions by which the Word-Son is shown to be divine.88 In books one through three of Against Heresies, where Irenaeus gives a muted but real description of the origin of the Word, he establishes the uniqueness of the Word as a generation from God and as eternal. While in books one through three of Against Heresies God is said to create through his Word, it is not until book four that Irenaeus identifies the Holy Spirit as Wisdom and as 86 Lebreton, La Trinité 2:573. 87 My point here is that Irenaeus was no Monarchian, while Callistus was, but that some of Irenaeus’s expressions were susceptible to a Monarchian interpretation. John Behr has argued the contrary: that Callistus was no Monarchian, and that his theology “stood within the tradition represented by Irenaeus.” The Way to Nicaea, 145. I side with Heine, “The Christology of Callistus,” against Behr. 88 In the case of Irenaeus, I understand the criteria for the “divine” activities equated with those of God the Father, and an existence described as like the Father’s and unlike the angels’. (I do not assume that seraphim and cherubim are angels.) 94 Michel René Barnes co-creator.89 Similarly, it is not until book four that Irenaeus introduces the famous image of God’s “two hands” to describe the Word/Son and Wisdom/Holy Spirit as co-creators of Adam. These doctrines remain consistent from book four through book five and into the Demonstration. Until the middle of book three of Against Heresies, Irenaeus’s pneumatology is similar to Justin’s; from the middle of book three to the Demonstration his pneumatology is very much like Theophilus’s.90 The strong account in the first three books of Against Heresies of the Word as “mapping” or containing the whole content of God, as the single offspring,91 and as co-creator is not matched by a comparable account of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, Irenaeus’s arguments that the Word contains the whole content of God and is the single offspring of God make it difficult for him to speak in similar terms of the Holy Spirit, if he wanted to. When, in the last two books of Against Heresies, Irenaeus does articulate a theology of the Holy Spirit as co-creator and as the Wisdom of God, he nonetheless never furnishes any description of the Holy Spirit’s generation from God (as Spirit or as Wisdom) nor of the content/nature of divine Wisdom (in its relationship to the content/nature of God.) There is nothing comparable, for example, to Athenagoras’s description of the Holy Spirit’s origins: The Holy Spirit Himself also, which operates in the prophets, we assert to be an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun.92 89 D’Ales, “La doctrine de l’Esprit en saint Irénée,” 500 n. 12, points out that the identification of the Holy Spirit with Wisdom occurs in Theophilus, who cites the same supporting Scripture texts as Irenaeus. Lebreton calls the identification of Wisdom with Holy Spirit an “orientale” (i.e., from Asia Minor) Christian tradition, which he contrasts with the Alexandrian identification of Wisdom with the Word. See Lebreton’s “La théologie de la Trinité chez Clément d’Alexandrie,” Récherches de Science religieuse 34 (1947), 55–76, 142–79; here p. 160. On the “Alexandrian” identification, see A. H. B. Logan, “Origen and Alexandrian Wisdom Christology,” in Origeniana Tertia, ed. R. P. C. Hanson and Henri Crouzel (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1985), 123–29. 90 A good argument can be made that “Irenaeus acquired To Autolycus by the time he penned AH 3.22.4 through 3.24.1” and that the pneumatology of those later works—that the Spirit is creator, that the Holy Spirit is Wisdom—depends upon Irenaeus reading Theophilus. See Anthony Briggman,“Dating Irenaeus’ Acquisition of Theophilus’ Correspondence To Autolycus: A Pneumatological Perspective,” Studia Patristica (forthcoming). 91 Articulated against the Gnostic theology of multiple emissions. 92 Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians X, ANF II.13. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 95 The closest Irenaeus comes to a description of the origin of the Holy Spirit is en passant when he quotes Proverbs 8:22, “The Lord created me the beginning of His ways in His work.” If we read Justin’s use of the same passage, we see that the point of the text for Justin is not that it describes the origins of Wisdom (i.e., created), but that it establishes that Wisdom “was begotten by the Father before all things created; and that that which is begotten is numerically distinct from that which begets. . . .”93 In a similar way, Irenaeus uses the passage to establish that the Holy Spirit (Wisdom) pre-exists creation and is a co-creator.94 Any reader familiar with patristic Trinitarian theology will recognize Proverbs 8:22 as a central text in the controversies of the fourth century. It is this passage from Proverbs that Arians and anti-Nicenes will focus upon in their argument that the Son (whom all sides recognize by the title “Wisdom”) is a creature: “In the beginning of His ways the Lord created [jsífeim] me [i.e.,Wisdom]. . . .” But second-century exegetical hermeneutics is not fourth-century exegetical hermeneutics. Wisdom’s full speech, 8:22–26, is a complex, ambiguous and interesting description of her origins. God “established” (e’ lekiot~ m) and “brought forth/made” (poiei~ m) ~ Wisdom “in the beginning” (e’ m a’ qvg ). Wisdom was “generated/born” ~ 95 (cemma m) by God. No second-century reader could imagine that God performed four separate actions upon Wisdom, so the four verbs must be understood as synonyms; if any of the four verbs can be said to govern the sense(s) of the other three, it is certainly the meaning of the last term— cemma~ m—that governs the reading of jsífeim, e’ lekiot~ m and poiei~ m.The density of causal language in the scriptural passage supports an exegetically based account of Wisdom’s origins.When Tertullian cites Proverbs 8:22 in Against Praxeus 6, he explicitly exegetes it in the manner I have suggested: he first cites 8:22ff., and then glosses it with,“establishing and begetting, of course, in his [God’s] own consciousness.”96 In Against Praxeus 6 (etc.) Tertullian is interested in giving an account of the origins of Wisdom; it is 93 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 130, p. 264. (The passage is one of a number of texts from a Testimonia that Justin cites to build his argument for two powers in heaven.) Justin has nothing to say about Wisdom being “created,” only that the text witnesses to Wisdom existing before all created things. 94 Irenaeus does not appeal to Wisdom 7:25–26, which does describe the aetiological origin of Wisdom. Forty years later Origen will make the passage the centerpiece of his account in On First Principles of the Son’s origin (as Wisdom). 95 Tertullian is working from his own reading of the LXX, not from a vetus. 96 Tertullian, Against Praxeus, trans. Evans, p. 94.19 for the Latin and p. 136 for the translation: “in sensu suo scilicet condens et generans.” 96 Michel René Barnes this sort of elaboration that is lacking in Irenaeus.97 It is important to understand that while it is true that Irenaeus’s arguments against Gnostic doctrines of the emissions of Aeons pre-empt whatever account of the origin of the Holy Spirit he might have developed out of his own theological “logic,” it is also the case that he seems unacquainted with, and unable to imagine, the kind of argument offered by Athenagoras. One does not take from reading Irenaeus the sense that he has an aetiology of the Holy Spirit that he is, due to present circumstances, holding back in silence. The Holy Spirit Creates In the first three books of the Against Heresies, Irenaeus’s subject matter, including the scriptural passages he exegetes, are determined by the driving polemical motive of the work.The last two books of the Against Heresies have a different character to them: in these books Irenaeus seems to turn more freely to topics (and Scripture) that express his theology on its own terms. In this way, the last two books of the Against Heresies foreshadow Irenaeus’s theology in the Demonstration. Most of what I will have to say about Irenaeus’s theology of the Holy Spirit as creator owes to passages in either Against Heresies, books four and five, or the Demonstration. The passages from Irenaeus that I will first discuss include one from Against Heresies II, at one of the rare occasions in which Irenaeus does cite Genesis one.98 Against Heresies II.2.4–5 has an early articulation by Irenaeus of thought that he will treat again in Demonstration, chapter 5. The first passage does not contain a pneumatology; the second one does. The two passages are otherwise clearly related to each other in subject matter (creation) and in Scripture citations, and thus it is the doctrinal differences between the two that I find remarkable. The first passage, Against Heresies II.2.4–5, follows, with observations: 5. For this is a peculiarity of the pre-eminence of God, not to stand in need of other instruments for the creation of those things which are 97 Evans, in Against Praxeus, pages 216–19, has an excellent discussion of the role of Proverbs 8:22 in Tertullian’s theology, and, as well, a useful list of second-century expositors of the scriptural text. Evans, page 218, remarks that Tertullian “is almost the last to make positive use of it: later writers needed to interpret it allegorically.” 98 One is stunned to discover the almost complete lack of interest on Irenaeus’s part in the six days in Genesis one.The only passage in the Genesis one account that receives any serious attention, or figures with any significance, in Irenaeus’s theology is Genesis 1:25–26; that passage—it cannot be denied—is very important for Irenaeus. It is, as we shall see, Genesis 1:25–26 that is the occasion for the well known Irenaean description of the Word and the Holy Spirit as the “two hands of God.” Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 97 summoned into existence. His own Word is both suitable and sufficient for the formation of all things, even as John, the disciple of the Lord, declares regarding him:“All things were made by him, and without him was nothing made” [Jn 1:3]. Now, among the “all things” our world must be embraced. It too, therefore, was made by his Word, as Scripture tells us in the book of Genesis that he made all things connected with our world by his Word. David also expresses the same truth [when he says,] “For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created” [Ps 33/2:9]. Whom, therefore, shall we believe as to the creation of the world—these heretics who have been mentioned that prate so foolishly and inconsistently on the subject, or the disciples of the Lord, and Moses, who was both a faithful servant of God and a prophet? He at first narrated the formation of the world in these words: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” [Gen 1:1] and all other things in succession; but neither gods nor angels had any share in the work. Now, that this God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Paul the apostle also has declared, “There is one God, the Father, who is above all, and through all things, and in us all” [Eph. 4:6]. I have indeed proved already that there is only one God. . . . In this passage Irenaeus refers to these Old Testament and New Testament passages: Gospel of John 1:3, Psalm 33/2:9, Genesis 1:1 and Epistle to the Ephesians 4:6. The first two passages—John 1:3, and Psalm 33/2:9—are used to support the statement that God’s “own Word is both suitable and sufficient for the formation of all things”; in particular, suitable and sufficient for the formation of the world (in its cosmic, not local, sense.) Genesis 1:1 excludes the teaching that God was aided in the act of creation by gods or angels: it is this teaching by the Bythian dualists that is the nominal reason for Irenaeus’s statement at Against Heresies II.2.4–5 that the world was created by God alone using his Word.The passage ends with Irenaeus referring Ephesians 4:6 to God the Father as he identifies the one creator God with the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”There is no mention whatsoever of the Holy Spirit. Irenaeus leads with a New Testament Logos passage ( John 1:3—one of the very, very few New Testament passages that speak at all about creation), and then cites Old Testament material that supports a doctrine of the Word active in creation (Psalm 33/2:9).There is, then, similar testimony (i.e., both Testaments) to support belief in one creator God (Gen 1:1 and Eph 4:6.) Now we turn to the passage in chapter five of the Demonstration that revisits the interests of Against Heresies II.2.4–5: Thus then there is shown forth One God, the Father, not made, invisible, creator of all things, above whom there is no other God, and after Michel René Barnes 98 whom there is no other God. And, since God is rational, therefore by His Word He created the things that were made; and God is Spirit, and by the Spirit He adorned all things: as also the prophet says, “By the Word of the Lord, the heavens were spread out,And by the Spirit of His mouth all their power” [Ps. 33/2:6]. Since then the Word establishes, that is to say gives body and grants the reality of being, and the Spirit gives order and form to the diverse powers, rightly and fittingly is the Word called Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God.99 The Old Testament and New Testament passages clearly referred to by Irenaeus in the Demonstration, chapter 5 are Psalm 33/2:6, Ephesians 4:6, and Romans 8:15. The scriptural citations that are in common with Against Heresies II.2.4–5 are Psalm 33/2 and Ephesians 4:6, although this time Irenaeus cites verse six of Psalm 33/2 rather than verse nine. Psalm 33/2:6 is, of course, a key Holy Spirit as creator text with its signature “In the beginning the Word, and the Spirit” understanding of Genesis 1:1–3.100 Also, in this quotation Irenaeus refers Ephesians 4:6 to all three Persons of the Trinity: “because ‘above all’ is the Father, and ‘through all’ is the Word—since through Him everything was made by the Father— while ‘in us all’ is the Spirit.” John 1:3, cited in the Against Heresies II passage, does not appear at all in the Demonstration passage, and indeed could be said to be replaced by Romans 8:15, a quote that highlights the Holy Spirit. Moreover, the Genesis 1:1 passage drops away, seemingly superfluous to Irenaeus’s argument. Irenaeus has found a suitable authority in the new, Christian “Scriptures” for the doctrine that God is the creator, and he quotes the passage at both Against Heresies IV.20.2 and Demonstration I.4:“Truly, then, the Scripture declared, which says,‘First of all believe that there is one God, who has established all things, and completed them, and having caused that from what had no being, all things should come into existence. . . .’ ” The quoted passage is from Shepherd of Hermas. Sometime between the writing of Against Heresies II and IV, between the writing of Against Heresies II and The Demonstration, Irenaeus found a reason to change his theology. Now the Holy Spirit is understood to be an agent of creation together with the Word. The first passage is an account of creation that identifies the role of the Word in the divine creative act.This account of creation that speaks only of God and His Word seems complete with only these two. The second 99 Robinson, trans., Demonstration, pp. 73f. 100 However, while Psalm 33/2:6 supports Irenaeus’s understanding that God created through the two, the Word and the Spirit, in Irenaeus there is no association of the passage with Genesis 1:2b, as there is in Theophilus’s writing, To Autolycus II.10. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 99 passage is an account of creation that identifies the roles of both the Word and the Holy Spirit in the divine creative act; the centering of creation on the Word that comes from John 1:3 is gone, and a passage (Eph 4:6) that was referred only to God the Father is now referred to the Three.The least that can be said about what happens in Demonstration 1.5 is that Irenaeus has felt the effects of, first, a theology of the Holy Spirit as creator centered on Psalm 33/2:6; and second, a “two agent” exegesis of creation, particularly the creation of man (at Gen 1:25–26). Irenaeus’s theology is marked by his assimilation and unification of these two theologies of creation.This assimilation and unification may be observed in Against Heresies IV and V, for the theology expressed in these two books is not determined simply by an easing of genre “limitations” but by developments in Irenaeus’s theology. (It is not the case that in books one and two, Irenaeus had a theology of the Holy Spirit as creator but declined, under the circumstances, to express it.) Throughout this process, throughout his writings, Irenaeus remains, however, either disinterested or unaffected by Genesis 1:1–2. The scriptural (LXX) passage that figures more decisively in Irenaeus’s strong statement of the Holy Spirit as creator is Psalm 33/2:6. In the two passages from the later writings just compared, where a statement of the Holy Spirit as creator is lacking, so is any reference to Psalm 33/2:6; where there is a statement of the Holy Spirit as creator, there is also the testimony of Psalm 33/2:6. Alternately, where Psalm 33/2:6 appears there is a statement of the Holy Spirit as creator; where it does not, there is no statement of the Holy Spirit as creator. Virtually every scholar who has written on the subject judges that Irenaeus believed the Holy Spirit participated in the act of creation. However, if this fact about Irenaeus’s pneumatology is largely uncontested, it is nonetheless one that is somehow puzzling for many scholars, who have felt that Irenaeus’s doctrine required particular attention and explanation in order to make sense of it.101 Irenaeus’s identification of the Holy Spirit with Divine Wisdom (from, for example, Proverbs) causes the same (or more) consternation or confusion among scholars than it causes among Theophilus’s commentators.102 The greater authority of 101 This dynamic is especially evident in treatments of Irenaeus’s “two hands” account of creation, as the reader will see below. 102 Swete introduces this identification simultaneously as Irenaeus’s loyalty to tradition and as his development of that tradition: “Irenaeus, however, while loyally accepting tradition, does not limit himself to it. Like earlier teachers of the second-century, he identifies the Holy Spirit with the Divine Wisdom of the book of Proverbs, and assigns to Him a place with the Divine Word in the cosmogony.” Swete, Ancient Church, 87. 100 Michel René Barnes Irenaeus, compared to Theophilus, makes his wisdom pneumatology all the more puzzling and problematic for these scholars. While this is not the place to discuss wisdom pneumatology with any substance, the fact needs to be stated clearly that one important way Irenaeus has for speaking about the Holy Spirit as creator is through the identification of the Holy Spirit with the Divine Wisdom.103 3. I have also largely demonstrated, that the Word, namely the Son, was always with the Father; and that Wisdom also, which is the Spirit, was present with Him, anterior to all creation. . . .104 Thus then there is shown forth One God, the Father, not made, invisible, creator of all things, above whom there is no other God, and after whom there is no other God.And, since God is rational, therefore by His Word He created the things that were made; and God is Spirit, and by the Spirit He adorned all things: as also the prophet says, “By the Word of the Lord, the heavens were spread out, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power” [Ps. 33/2:6]. Since then the Word establishes, that is to say gives body and grants the reality of being, and the Spirit gives order and form to the diverse powers, rightly and fittingly is the Word called Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God.105 These passages, along with Against Heresies IV.20.1, quoted just below, show Irenaeus’s identification of the Holy Spirit with Divine Wisdom. Beyond this basic remark, the most important comment to make initially about these passages is their traditional and familiar content: in particular, the appeal to Psalm 33/2 and the articulation of a doctrine of a “twoagent creation” by Word and Spirit. At this stage of his Trinitarian theology, Irenaeus, like Athenagoras, keeps the Trinitarian origins of creation central to his account of the origins of the cosmos. Again like Athenagoras, Irenaeus now has a clear notion of how the Word and Spirit act in creating. For one particular act of creation—Adam—Irenaeus supports the parallelism between Word and Spirit with the textual motif of “God’s [two] hands.” It was not angels, therefore, who made us, nor who formed us, neither had angels power to make an image of God, nor any one else, except the Word of the Lord, nor any Power remotely distant from the Father 103 Lebreton offers that Irenaeus may have identified the Spirit with Wisdom in order to import, as it were, a kind of Trinitarian superstructure to strengthen an Old Testament theology of the Holy Spirit which is otherwise vague and without vigor. Lebreton, La Trinité 2:569. 104 Here Irenaeus quotes Proverbs 3:19, 20; 8:22–25; and 8:27–31. 105 Robinson, trans., Demonstration, ch. 5, pp. 73f. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 101 of all things. For God did not stand in need of these [beings], in order to the accomplishing of what He had Himself determined with Himself beforehand should be done, as if He did not possess His own hands. For with Him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom and in whom, freely and spontaneously, He made all things. . . .106 “Two Hands of God” This notion of the Word/Son and Wisdom/Spirit as God’s hands has been commented upon often, and is a regular feature of scholarship on Irenaeus.107 I have a few small observations to make, but I think it would be useful first to share with the reader the passages in Irenaeus that have fascinated scholars for at least the last hundred years. To the passage quoted just above may be added the following:108 Now man is a mixed organization of soul and flesh, who was formed after the likeness of God, and molded by His hands, that is, by the Son and Holy Spirit, to whom also He said,“Let Us make man.”This, then, is the aim of him who envies our life, to render men disbelievers in their own salvation, and blasphemous against God the Creator.109 [S]o also, in [the times of] the end, the Word of the Father and the Spirit of God, having become united with the ancient substance of Adam’s formation, rendered man living and perfect, receptive of the perfect Father, in order that as in the natural [Adam] we all were dead, so in the spiritual we may all be made alive. For never at any time did Adam escape the hands of God, to whom the Father speaking, said,“Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.”110 Now God shall be glorified in His handiwork, fitting it so as to be conformable to, and modelled after, His own Son. For by the hands of the Father, that is, by the Son and the Holy Spirit, man, and not [merely] a part of man, was made in the likeness of God.111 106 AH IV.20.1, ANF I.487. 107 I do not know of any scholar who describes Irenaeus’s Trinitarian theology and declines to bring the “two hands” language into that description. 108 Lebreton, La Trinité 2:579–83, provides a list of all the occurrences of “creation by two hands” in Irenaeus’s writings: AH IV, pref. 4; IV, 20, 1;V, 1, 3;V, 5, 1;V, 6, 1;V, 15, 3–4;V, 16, 1;V, 28, 3; and Demo 11. Lebreton credits J. A. Robinson for identifying and commenting upon these passages in his translation of The Demonstration, pp. 51–53, and then adds that the Armenian for IV.7.4 speaks of “two hands.” Lebreton further remarks upon the fact that the expression does not appear in the first three books of the Against Heresies, unlike its frequent appearance in books four and five of Against Heresies. 109 AH IV. pref. 4, ANF I.463 110 AH V.1.3, ANF I.527. 111 AH V.6.1, ANF I.531. Michel René Barnes 102 And therefore throughout all time, man, having been molded at the beginning by the hands of God, that is, of the Son and of the Spirit, is made after the image and likeness of God. . . .112 First we note that in all cases the occasion for Irenaeus speaking of creation by the hands of God is Genesis 1:25–26, the creation of man in the image and likeness of God.As several scholars have pointed out, Irenaeus understands God to be speaking to the Son113 and to the Spirit—the “two hands”—when he says, “Let us make. . . .” The use of “God’s hands” language in referring to Genesis 1:25–26 is found earlier in First Clement 33:4, “Above all, as the most excellent and exceeding great work of His intelligence, with His sacred and faultless hands He formed man in the impress of His own image.”114 A similar midrash of Genesis 1:25–26 (with Genesis 2:7) is offered in Fourth Esdras 3:4–5: O sovereign Lord, did you not speak at the beginning when you formed the earth—and that without help—and commanded the dust and it gave you Adam, a lifeless body? Yet he was the workmanship of your hands, and you did breathe into him the breath of life, and he was made alive in your presence.115 We first note that there is a tradition antedating Irenaeus (indeed, antedating Christianity) that associates “made by God’s hands” with Genesis 1:25–26. In these writings, as in Irenaeus’s, the language of “made by God’s two hands” is used to describe the creation or formation of Adam and only that specific act of creation. “Made by God’s two hands” is not used to describe any other creative act from the six days.The association between “two hands” and the making of Adam probably owes to an exegetical emphasis on the description of Adam being shaped out of clay, with the supplied notion that God is like a potter. Now a potter uses his two hands to shape what he is making; God similarly used his two hands when he worked the clay and shaped Adam. One finds a strong exegetical interest in God as potter and man as taken from a lump of clay in the 112 AH.V.28.4, ANF I.557. 113 The “two hands” motif strengthens Irenaeus’s use of “Son” for the Second Person, since in almost every case the two hands are identified as “Son and [Holy] Spirit” instead of “Word and. . . .” 114 First Clement 33:4,The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, trans. Kirsopp Lake, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1912/1985), 65. 115 RSV (emphasis added). Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 103 Jewish writings The Wisdom of Sirach and Fourth Esdras 3:4–5, not to mention Paul, Romans 9:21ff.116 Secondly, we note that although the language of “the hands of God” seems scriptural in origin, and indeed could be supported from Scripture, Irenaeus never quotes any Scripture (LXX) to support the phrasing. For example, a number of psalms refer to the “work(s) of God’s hands”: for example, Psalm 8:3–8; Psalm 103. 28–30; Psalm 110:6–7; Psalm 137:8; and Psalm 138:7–10.117 These psalms are not used by Irenaeus. That neither Psalm 104 nor 139 is used by Irenaeus is especially striking given the reference to the Spirit of God in both these texts. In my judgment, Irenaeus intentionally avoids recourse to the psalms because he uses the phrase “the work of God’s hands” for the creation of man exclusively. Although no part of the phrase “the work of God’s hands” appears at Genesis 1:25ff., Irenaeus uses this theologoumenon only for the creation of man in the image and likeness of God. The psalms, by contrast, use this ~ ~ expression—sá e’´qca sx m veiqx m rot—for a wider variety of created things. Psalm 8, for example, says: [3] When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you hast established; [4] what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you attend to him? [5] Yet you have made him little less than God, and with glory and honor crowned him. [6] You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, [7] sheep and oxen, all together, and also the beasts of the field, [8] the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea. Similarly, Psalm 91:4 says, “You, O LORD, made me glad by Your work, and at the works of Your hands I will rejoice” and Psalm 110:7, “The works of his hands are truth and justice. . . .” In all these cases, the works of the Lord’s hands refer not to humanity but to something else. By contrast, 116 See John R. Levison, Portraits of Adam in Early Judaism: From Sirach to 2 Baruch (Sheffield: JSOT, 1988). 117 Psalm 103:29–30, with its invocation of God’s “face,” the spirit in us, and God’s spirit being sent forth—all these points together would seem to make the psalm one Irenaeus would find cogent. But he does not cite it. See also Isaiah 45:12a, “I made the earth, and created man upon it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens . . .” (A New English Translation of the Septuagint, corrected). 104 Michel René Barnes Irenaeus restricts the phrase “the work of God’s hands” to the creation of man; the psalms will not help him. For Swete, Irenaeus’s understanding of the Word and Spirit as the “hands of God” constitutes his Trinitarian theology. Swete says: “As the Hands of God, they are Divine and coequal. . . .”118 He goes on to say: “He [Irenaeus] does not speak of an eternal procession of the Son or the spirit from the Father; his strong antagonism to the Gnostic doctrine of emanations leads him to think of the Son and the Spirit as inherent in the life of God rather than as proceeding from Him; as the ‘Hands’ of God rather than His probolai. His controversy with Gnosticism leads him to dwell especially on the work of the Son and the spirit in the creation and in man.”119 However, Lebreton’s judgment is more typical of modern scholars: he understands Irenaeus’s “two hands” language to express the Spirit’s role in certain sanctifying functions, and he quotes approvingly from Theodore de Régnon to make this very point:120 “with one [hand] He makes, He models; with the other he polishes, perfects, brings to completion. . . .” The theology of Irenaeus’s “two hands” language is thus understood to distinguish the creative activity of the Word from the sanctifying activity of the Holy Spirit.121 Even if this were a satisfactory and tenable reading of the way Irenaeus uses the “hands of God”—and I do not think it is—it ignores those statements by Irenaeus in which the Holy Spirit is creative at a cosmological level.The judgment that Irenaeus’s “two hands” theology means that in his pneumatology the principal and characteristic activity of the Holy Spirit is sanctification (“polishing, perfecting, bringing to completion”) follows from the presupposition that Paul’s pneumatology is the standard by which early Christian theologies of the Holy Spirit are to be interpreted.While it is indeed true that Irenaeus is influenced by Pauline pneumatology122 —in fact, that Irenaeus is the first patristic author who shows any clear signs of Paul’s pneumatology—this does not mean that Irenaeus’s pneumatology follows the “logic” of Paul’s pneumatology. 118 Swete, Ancient Church, 88.Whether the “two hands” language supports a positive judgment that Irenaeus has a theology of the co-eternity of the Three is a debated issue in recent scholarship. The position in older scholarship was that Irenaeus had a theology of the eternal, separate existence of the Word and Holy Spirit, that is, he was not a modalist. I agree. 119 Ibid., p. 93. 120 Lebreton, La Trinité 2:583. 121 Ibid. 122 See Andrew Gregory, The Reception of Luke and Acts in the Period before Irenaeus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), who argues that Irenaeus is the earliest source of clear quotations from Luke-Acts. Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology 105 Conclusion Irenaeus’s description of the Father builds from the Father’s existence as Spirit. Most importantly, the Father is rational, possessing a Nous and Logos; is not bound by place, distance, or borders; and any “generation” cannot accurately be conceived as a generation “from” that means “out of.” The Logos of the Father is himself Spirit: his reality as God follows from his existence as Spirit; his reality as individual follows from his being a knowing subject. The same may be said for the Holy Spirit (the “Third Person” of the Trinity.) The Word has his beginning “in” the Father, and he remains in the Father whatever distinct existence he may have. In particular, the Son remains in the Father during the Incarnation. Because the Word is always in the Father he is the living Image of God, and manifests God through his union with the visible and material flesh.Through their reciprocal immanence the Father is in the Son even as the Son is in the Father, and, again, this interpenetration of Spirit(s) remains true in the Incarnation. What Irenaeus bequeaths to his readers—for example, Tertullian and Athanasius—is a robust theology of the Word.The appearance of the title “Word” (“Logos”) in the prologue of John provides the point-of-departure for a Word Christology that encompasses every aspect of Irenaeus’s theology of the Second Person, including both before and in the Incarnation. Irenaeus’s emphasis on Word develops the spiritual language for God-Mind, Word, etc.—that he uses of the Father in Against Heresies I and II. In the tradition within which Irenaeus speaks,Word has a definite role as an actor-agent at the cosmological level. Most importantly—and this goes to Irenaeus’s interest in developing John’s theology of the Word—Irenaeus can relate the life of the Word in the union of the Incarnation with the cosmological life of the Word and show the unity between the world God and his Word created and the world God through his Word saves. Jesus’ healing of the blind man is not a confrontation between the emissary of Spirit and the literal and figurative forces of darkness, but instead the Word doing in the world what he has always and everywhere done in the cosmos—creating, nurturing, and governing. The God and Father of the Word who saves us is the same God and Father of the Word who gives us life in the womb: Jesus’ God and Father is the Creator, for Jesus himself is the Word, the instrument and agent of that Creator. Irenaeus is not prepared to use aetiological language to provide a dense account of the identities (and origins) of the Son and Holy Spirit. The net result of Irenaeus’s by-passing of a causal account of the Holy Spirit’s origin (as opposed to the minimalist causal account of the Son’s origin) 106 Michel René Barnes is to leave the next generation with a pneumatology lacking a key support. Athenagoras’s pneumatology was more robust than Irenaeus’s insofar as it contained a fully articulated account of the origin of the Holy Spirit, but Athenagoras had almost no readers among Christians in the two centuries that followed him, while Irenaeus did, especially among the Christian communities of Alexandria and Asia minor. By the end of the second century we find that a noticeably subordinationist pneumatology takes hold in both Greek and Latin (that is, in Origen and in Tertullian, respectively) accounts of the Holy Spirit. It is not that Irenaeus’s pneumatology is single-handedly the cause of this “low” pneumatology, but that the limitations of his account of the Holy Spirit’s origins make way for a one-sided interest in the origins of the Word: there is no analogous articulation of the origins of the Holy Spirit.123 Certainly the “causes” of the weak pneumatology of the third and fourth centuries include the problematic use of “pneuma” to name divinity itself (as revealed in the Monarchian controversies), as well as the increasing separation and theological discontinuity between Christianity and Judaism (where continuity had produced a mixed quality of theology in any case). Irenaeus’s strong emphasis in Against Heresies IV–V and the Demonstration on the Holy Spirit as co-creator is lost, although we must acknowledge that the doctrine never had a widespread articulation in N&V early Christianity. 123 To see this difference of interest one need only compare the number of pages devoted by Origen in On First Principles to describing the aetiology of the Son’s origin to the number of pages devoted to describing the aetiology of the Holy Spirit’s origin. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 107–24 107 St. Thomas Aquinas on Education and Instruction L EO J. E LDERS, S.V.D. Rolduc Seminary Kerkrade,The Netherlands T HE TERM education as it is used now concerns the more basic and general modeling of the mind and behavior of the young, as it is dispensed by the parents at home, at primary and secondary schools, as well as during the first years of study at liberal arts colleges. More specialized training in the sciences is often called instruction. St. Thomas on Education and Instruction While in our modern language the difference between education and instruction is not always stressed and one can speak of continuing education of adults who attend refresher courses at colleges or summer schools, St. Thomas restricts the meaning of educatio to the first stages of the upbringing of children, whereas the content of later training is expressed by such terms as instructio, disciplina, and doctrina.1 When stating that the good of the offspring is the end of a marriage, he points out that giving life to children is only part of this good: education and instruction also belong to it. During the first years of an infant’s life the role of the mother will be preponderant, but later the father has an important task.2 From the fact that both parents are needed,3 he deduces that a marriage 1 Quodlibet II, q. 5, a. 1: “Debet enim pater filio non solum educationem sed etiam disciplinam, ut Philosophus dicit”; cf. Summa theologiae I–II, q. 100, a. 5, ad 4, etc. 2 De malo, q. 15, a. 1: “Postea ad patrem pertinet educare filium et instruere eum et thesaurizare ei in totam vitam.” 3 In IV Sententiarum, d. 27, q. 1, a. 1: “Requiritur solicitudo utriusque.” 108 Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. must be indissoluble.4 If the basic education is the task of the parents, others can assist them. As the birth of a child is facilitated by a midwife, schoolmasters also help in the education.5 The role of education in our everyday life has been transposed to the spiritual level: God adopted Israel, cared for its growth (that is, education), and exalted it,6 and, in a Christian perspective, we say that God created us, liberated us, and educated us.7 The terms instructio and instruere are frequent in the works of Aquinas. The instruction of children must be continued over the years, until they are fully grown.8 This instruction comprises teaching the simple things of daily life which a child when growing up must know, a basic formation in the liberal arts, sometimes a craft, but it has to do also with behavior and ethics. It aims at communicating knowledge and at directing the young to a good moral life.9 It comprises discipline and, where necessary, punishment. In addition, students may receive a special instruction in particular professions as well as in the sciences and philosophy. As is to be expected instructio is frequently used by Aquinas to signify the communication of divine truth in revelation, the teaching of Moses, the prophets, Christ, and the apostles. God revealed everything man needed to know in order to allow him to reach his true destination, but he did not reveal everything to everyone.10 To reveal the invisible realities God uses the properties of visible things.11 The incarnation of His Son is the summit of this teaching, for now man could receive this instruction from God himself in a human way.12 In countless texts Aquinas quotes the saying that whatever Christ did and worked is to our instruction.13 Christ came into the world to teach and to work miracles in view of the salvation of man.14 His work was continued by the apos4 ST II–II, q. 154; Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 122. Cf. In IV Sent., d. 33, q. 2, a. 1: “Matrimonium ex intentione naturae ordinatur ad educationem prolis, non solum per aliquod tempus sed per totam vitam prolis.” 5 ST III, q. 67, a. 7, ad 2. 6 In Isaiam, c.1, l.2. 7 Sermo dominicalis 1. 8 In IV Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 3A: “Quousque prolis ad perfectam aetatem ducatur”; ScG III, c. 122: “Post longum tempus . . . ad annos discretionis.” 9 In Coloss., c. 3, l.3: “Instructio duplex, ad cognoscendum verum; ad cognoscendum bona.” 10 ST II–II, q. 171, a. 4, ad 1: “Non tamen omnia omnibus”. 11 In II Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 3. Cf. ScG IV, c. 55. 12 ScG III, c. 154: “Secundum modum humanum.” 13 ST III, q. 40, a. 1, ad 3 passim: “Actio Christi fuit nostra instructio.” 14 ST III, q. 44, a. 1, ad 1: “Ad hominum scilicet utilitatem et instructionem”. Aquinas on Education and Instruction 109 tles and their successors.Those who received this divine revelation—the prophets and the disciples of Jesus—had to make it known also to future generations and, therefore, to put it into writing so that it would remain unchanged and pure in its original truth. This implies furthermore that there must be some institution empowered to interpret these texts.15 But besides this special instruction God instructs man also by the created things he made, which witness to Him,16 and this instruction through man’s natural reason is sufficient to acknowledge the Creator.17 Furthermore, many events in man’s life, in particular catastrophes and suffering, are a powerful reminder of his own weakness and of his final destination, and so contribute to his education. Considering created things is helpful for the instruction in the Christian faith,18 although there is a discontinuity between the natural and supernatural orders: however much one is instructed in the sciences, one will never arrive at knowing the things of the faith by one’s own natural powers.19 There are several levels of Christian instruction: catechesis before baptism; the instruction given on the occasion of the administration of the sacraments and the instruction on how to lead a Christian life; finally, the instruction on the profound mysteries of the faith and Christian perfection.20 In order to be instructed by the Church in the faith one’s intellect must be well disposed and one’s will and sense powers must be open to love.21 St. Thomas finally speaks of an instruction of the mind by the angels, who can propose certain objects to our mind by means of images in our imagination and can also reinforce the light of the human intellect. Docere: Teaching as a Privileged Form of Instruction By docere St.Thomas understands proposing to other persons the scientific knowledge one possesses. In several of his works he explains in detail the process of teaching.There is, indeed, a special problem in the transmission of knowledge: Is such a transmission possible because there is a continuity or even a unity between the mind of the disciple and that of the teacher? Or is teaching something like the communication of a quality, such as the heat of a stove which is spreading in the surrounding room? Or do we already have all knowledge from the beginning hidden at the 15 ScG III, c. 154. 16 In Psalmum XVIII, n. 5. 17 In Job, c. 33: “Deus unicuique sufficienter loquitur ad eius instructionem.” 18 ScG II, c. 2: “Consideratio creaturarum utilis est ad fidei instructionem.” 19 In III Sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 3, A, ad 2. 20 ST III, q. 71, a. 1, ad 3. 21 In 1 ad Corinthios, c. 2, l.1. 110 Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. back of our minds, so that learning is only a becoming aware of what one already knows? In the Quaestiones disputatae De Veritate, q. 11, a. 1, the Summa theologiae I, q. 117, a. 1, the Summa contra Gentiles II, c. 75, and some other texts,Aquinas mentions the philosophical opinions which underpin these theories.There is in the first place the theory according to which all concepts of sensible things come to us from outside our sublunar world, for instance from a general agent intellect, so that whatever happens in the sense faculties is no more than a preparation of the sensory substrate for these concepts.This theory is that of Avicenna, as St.Thomas explains in the Scriptum super III Sententiarum and elsewhere.22 According to Avicenna an intellect located on the outer circle of the sublunar world would infuse in each of us our concepts (dator formarum theory). Other authors, however, asserted that all concepts are already present in us, but are made manifest by the operation of outside agents, in analogy to the theory of Anaxagoras who said that all things are present in a piece of wood, a living being, or in any material substance. In a similar way John Damascene appears to have held that the virtues are naturally present in us.The theory of the inborn ideas is Platonic: coming to know something is no more than remembering what the soul had already seen in the world of ideas before it came into the human body. Thomas rejects both views: the first excludes all proximate causes and so demolishes a cosmic system where things are connected by an order of causality; the second opinion boils down to practically the same: some secondary conditions are the cause that concepts or the virtues are brought to our attention. The solution of the difficulties lies in a more elaborate theory of actuality and potentiality. Natural forms pre-exist in material things potentially and must be brought to actuality by an outside agent. Not only the Primary Cause can do so, but also created agents.The same can be said of the virtues, since they pre-exist in our natural inclinations only in a state of potentiality and must be actualized by actions in conformity with what virtues are inclined to. This applies also to the way in which scientific knowledge is acquired: certain seeds of it pre-exist in us, namely, the first concepts of the intellect which we come to know immediately by means of cognitive species which, with the help of the agent intellect, are abstracted from the sensory representations.This holds true also of the first statements (principles) which are grasped spontaneously.All further principles are derived from these first as from their seeds. The intellect acquires scientific knowledge when it comes to know particular truths which it first knew 22 In III Sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 2, q. l.2, sol. 2; De virtutibus in communi, a. 8. Aquinas on Education and Instruction 111 only in potency and in some general way. But this explanation must be refined: something can exist in a potential state in a dual way—in a fully equipped active potency, which is by its own power able to bring itself to full actualization (a sick person may become healthy by the natural forces of his body), and in a passive potency, when the intrinsic principle is not sufficient to bring about actualization (a volume of air or a piece of wood does not catch fire by itself). In the first case an outside agent will only function as an auxiliary cause, as a physician who gives some medicaments to a patient is an auxiliary of nature. But when something preexists only in passive potency, an outside agent must reduce it from potency to actuality, as heat applied to a piece of wood will ignite it. Scientific knowledge pre-exists in us in the first manner. Else one would not be able to acquire it by oneself, as nevertheless some persons have managed to do. However, Thomas goes into greater detail as to the way in which people can acquire knowledge by insisting on an analogy with the manner in which one can be cured: a sick person may be cured by his own physical powers; in a second way, by means of medicaments. Likewise it is possible that one acquires this knowledge all by oneself, and so he discovers things himself. In another way when he needs the outside help of a teacher becoming his disciple. In processes which happen by natural forces and in those which are caused by human work the same means are used. One can be healed in a natural way just by warm weather. Similarly a doctor may apply heat to the body in order to cure it.This is also the case in the process of learning, either by oneself or with the help of an instructor who proceeds in the same way as a person who seeks to gain knowledge by himself.This process is as follows: one applies general principles, evident by themselves, to determinate subjects, then draws some conclusions about particular things and goes on to the next question. He who is teaching someone will do the same: by means of sensible signs he manifests and conveys the process of reasoning taking place in himself. The disciple will then arrive at these conclusions with the help of the tools the master or teacher proposes to him. Just like a physician uses the natural forces of his patient’s body, a teacher addresses himself to the intellect of his student.This process is called “teaching” (docere). In this whole passage23 St. Thomas is dealing with scientific knowledge, understood as strictly demonstrative knowledge, which makes use of syllogisms to engender certitude. But one may propose to a student facts which are not included in the principles known as evident by themselves. 23 In the De veritate, q. 11 and the other texts referred to above. Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. 112 An example is the knowledge of facts as proposed in teaching geography and history.These facts are not contained in the first principles, but one may judge that they are in agreement with them. Before turning to a discussion of the numerous difficulties raised in the first part of this article, St. Thomas reminds the reader that, in a sense, God must be said to be our master and teacher, since He endows our mind with its intellectual light. In his answer to the third difficulty Aquinas explains that when the teacher uses sensible signs to evoke concepts and statements, the disciple must have some knowledge of the things these signs are about, although he ignores other aspects of them. If one explains to us what “man” means, we must have an idea of what a living being or a substance, or something at least existing as such, is. If a teacher wants us to understand an argument, we must know what the subject and predicate of the concluding statement mean and also know the principles on which the conclusion is based. The process of teaching is quite different from a simple transferring or pouring one’s knowledge into the mind of someone else. By proposing certain signs the teacher helps the mind of his pupil to form concepts of these things. In the Summa contra Gentiles24 Aquinas adds some further explanations. The scientific knowledge which the teacher calls up or produces in his student is numerically the same as his own with regard to the contents of what is known, but not in respect of the intelligible species.The work of a person who teaches can be compared to what one does in the arts. Teaching resembles what a medical doctor does when curing a patient: he makes use of what the natural processes in the patient tend to do, strengthening and supporting them. In this way a teacher follows the road a person himself takes when working to acquire knowledge, that is, by presenting to the student the evident principles. As a matter of fact, as Aristotle writes in the Posterior Analytics I, chapter 1, all knowledge comes about from pre-existing knowledge.The next step is to lead the student to see the conclusions which follow from the principles. The teacher helps the student by proposing examples which he can apprehend with the senses so that his imagination can form the images needed for intellectual knowledge. In the Summa theologiae25 St.Thomas revisits the same subject matter: 24 ScG II, c. 75. 25 ST I, q. 117, a. 1. 26 As it was understood on the basis of the Latin translation of his works. 27 This is the so-called intellectus possibilis, the intellect which has the concepts and forms judgments, not the intellectus agens, which according to St. Thomas trans Aquinas on Education and Instruction 113 Can a person communicate knowledge to someone else? Recalling the theory of Averroes,26 according to which there is one universal intellect27 of all men, so that in principle all concepts are in a common intellect, Thomas points out that in this view one only has to acquire the corresponding sense impressions in order to be connected with the thoughts in this super-intellect, so that there is not much left to do for a teacher. At best, he can bring someone else to arrange his sensible representations so as to be disposed to share the same thoughts.What is true in this view is that the contents of the scientific knowledge in the master and his disciple are the same, but the theory that there is one common intellect of all men is false.We should notice that in this text St.Thomas no longer mentions Avicenna. Indeed, for the purpose of the argument a reference to Averroes’s theory is more to the point. The other opinion mentioned is that of Plato, who assumed that the human soul enters the body equipped with ideas it brings with it from a previous existence near the world of the ideas.This theory implies that a disciple cannot really acquire any new knowledge from his master. The latter can only invite him to become aware of what is already stored in his mind. But St.Thomas has previously shown that this theory is wrong: not only is the explanation of our ignorance by oblivion utterly improbable, but experience also shows that we begin our intellectual itinerary with a blank mind, so that over the years we must acquire knowledge.28 The reasonable explanation of learning is that which draws on the theory of actuality and potentiality. Certain effects are produced in a subject entirely by the efficiency of an outside cause which reduces the subject from potency to act, without any cooperation by this subject itself (for example, the imposing of a form on a lump of clay). Other effects in a subject, however, are sometimes caused by an external agent, sometimes by the subject itself: it happens that a sick person is cured by natural processes in his own organism, but on other occasions he recovers his health with the help of medicaments. In the latter case the art of medicine imitates nature.29 Furthermore, the external agent is not the main cause, but assists the organism. forms the sensitive representations of the imagination to impress on the possible intellect the intelligible species, the starting point of the formation of concepts and of thought. 28 See ST I, q. 79, a. 2, and q. 84, a. 3 and a. 4. 29 The moderns would say: medication liberates natural forces or strengthens certain processes in the body. 30 A master is not absolutely necessary. One can also acquire scientific knowledge by one’s own efforts. Cf. In II De anima, l.11. Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. 114 Now scientific knowledge can be acquired by man himself, as is evident in the case of people who themselves discover scientific knowledge.30 This is possible because regarding the first principles everyone has a basis for scientific knowledge of the first principles. He then applies these principles to particular facts, which he observed with the senses. In this way he acquires scientific knowledge of what at first he did not know. An instructor or teacher follows the same way: he leads the disciple from what he already knows to the knowledge of what he does not yet know, (a) by presenting less general principles (which the disciple can understand and evaluate on the basis of the first principles he knows) or by proposing concrete examples;31 (b) by helping a disciple to proceed correctly in the process of thinking, by showing the relation of principles to the conclusions which can be drawn from them—a relation which the student himself would not have been able to see. The upshot is that a teacher provides only some support from outside, but that the natural light of the disciple’s intellect is the main cause of learning.32 In De spiritualibus creaturis33 St. Thomas explains that the thing known (res cognita) can be the same in the mind of the teacher and in that of his student, but that their respective acts of thinking are not identical. This somewhat shortened version of a text of the Summa theologiae completes the exposé of the De veritate on some points. Scattered over the works of St.Thomas we find additional observations on teaching. Obviously a teacher must possess the scientific knowledge he intends to communicate to a disciple.34 A sign that one really possesses scientific knowledge is that one can teach and produce in a disciple knowledge similar to that which one has oneself.35 However, in the course of time a teacher can advance in knowledge and discover new truth. A student can also make progress. In fact, a master does not propose all he knows to the student from the very start, but gradually unfolds the subject matter he is teaching.36 A student must be open-minded and welcome from the beginning what the master tells him, even if he cannot fully comprehend everything: perfect understanding will come later.37 31 A student who can grasp the truth as it is proposed by his master has a sharper mind than one who needs many sensible examples (ST II–II, q. 174, a. 2). 32 A similar explanation is found in the De spiritualibus creaturis, a. 9. 33 De spiritualibus creaturis, a. 9, ad 6. 34 ScG I, c. 13. 35 In I Metaphysicorum, l.1. 36 ST II–II, q. 1, a. 7, ad 2. 37 ScG III, c. 152: “Quando iam edoctus fuerit, eas (sc. conceptiones magistri) poterit intelligere.” His attitude is that of docilitas. 38 ST II–II, q. 124, a. 3, and III, q. 67, a. 2. Aquinas on Education and Instruction 115 St. Thomas has a high view of the task of teaching: he who teaches benefits many, and to teach is to render the students more perfect.38 Teaching others the truth is to be considered a sort of spiritual almsgiving.39 He even quotes a text of Dionysius, who says that teaching is sanctifying one’s students.40 There are also ethical requirements: the teacher must faithfully and zealously do his work.41 His words must be carefully measured so that he does not inflict any harm on the students.42 He may never teach anything contrary to the truth, but must present his doctrine according to what is fitting to a particular audience and in a particular time.43 When he sees that a student cannot follow him, he must make some distinctions and multiply examples.44 Finally, the relationship between a teacher and his students should be that between friends in a virtuous friendship. Students must be grateful: what they received cannot be measured in money. They should show lasting gratitude and respect, as they do to their parents.45 In another text he writes that a student must respect his master as an employee respects his employer or a soldier his commanding officer.46 The Order to Be Observed in Teaching Theology and the Philosophical Disciplines In his preface to the Summa theologiae Aquinas notes that in teaching theology a definite order must be observed in which its different parts are treated, but that this order is not always followed by every master. Often beginners are confused because of the multiplication of useless questions, so that in the Summa theologiae he wants to avoid this obstacle. Furthermore, a teacher must not lose the thread of his exposé because of unexpected problems which are brought forward;47 he should not needlessly repeat things, or follow text books which are not well ordered and create confusion.The Summa theologiae is an unsurpassed example of the order of subjects a master should observe when teaching theology. Different attempts have been made to reconstruct Aquinas’s leading thought in writing his text.According to M.-D. Chenu, the Neoplatonic scheme of exitus 39 ST II–II, q. 43, a. 7. 40 In De divinis nominibus, c. 3. 41 In Romanos, c. 12, l.2. 42 Expositio in Boetii De Trinitate, q. 2, a. 4, 1. 43 ST II–II, q. 43, a. 7. 44 De veritate, q. 9, a. 5. 45 In IX Ethicorum, lesson 1. 46 ST II–II, q. 103, a. 4. 47 ST I, prooemium: “Secundum quod se praebebat occasio disputandi.” 48 M.-D. Chenu, Introduction à l’étude de saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: 1954), 255ff. 116 Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. and reditus would have been decisive for the composition of the three parts of the famous book.48 Since God is the essential theme of theology, whatever is discussed (creation, man, human acts, sin, the incarnation, redemption, and glorification), is considered from the point of view of God and in relation to Him.49 The First Part considers God himself and created things such as they have been made by Him.The Second Part studies man’s return to God, his last end and his beatitude. Whereas the angels could attain their end by one act of their will, man must struggle over the years performing a great number of acts to do so. St.Thomas considers man’s acts as they must be seen in the light of his nature, created by God; he treats sin and the special help man receives to reach his end: the virtues, the law, and divine grace. Next the supernatural virtues and their counterparts, the vices, are studied in detail.While Part One of the Summa theologiae gives the objective facts about God, creation, and man, Part Two considers the answer man must give to his being called by God, the means at his disposal, and the difficulties he encounters.The Third Part of the Summa theologiae treats the particular way which sinful mankind must follow to reach God, namely Jesus Christ. This scheme is simple and allows us to consider all relevant subjects from the viewpoint of God and to integrate into theology the history of salvation, which begins in the heart of God and finds its achievement in the eschatological fulfillment of man and the world.50 This order is biblical rather than Neoplatonic. Sacred theology transcends any philosophical scheme.The Bible proposes divine revelation in this order: God; creation; man, who, despite all the gifts he receives, sins and gets himself into innumerable difficulties and a hopeless situation. But the Son of God comes to liberate and rescue him.51 In teaching the different philosophical disciplines a particular order must be observed. According to Plato this order is given with the division of reality as appears from the passage of the “divided line” in Book VII of the Republic. Plato proposed a tripartition of reality: sensible things in motion, unmoved mathematical objects, and the world of pure forms or ideas. From this tripartition it is only one step to the division of the theoretical sciences in Aristotle’s Metaphysics VI, chapter 1. After Plato’s death a division of 49 ST I, q. 1, a. 7:“Omnia autem pertractantur in sacra doctrina sub ratione Dei, vel quia sunt ipse Deus, vel quia habent ordinem ad Deum ut ad principium et finem.” 50 O. H. Pesch, “Um den Plan der Summa theologiae des hl.Thomas von Aquin,” Münchener theologische Zeitschrift 16 (1965): 128–37. 51 See A. Hayen, Saint Thomas d’Aquin et la vie de l’Église (Louvain/Paris: 1952). 52 St. Augustine ascribed it to Plato, although it probably was formulated in the Early Academy and taken over by the Stoics. Cf. De civitate Dei VIII, 4:“Proinde Plato utramque iungendo philosophiam perfecisse laudatur quam in tres partes Aquinas on Education and Instruction 117 philosophical disciplines in physics, logic, and ethics became widespread.52 This division influenced the respective positions of Isidorus,Alcuinus, and others, but in later ages Aristotle’s division into practical and theoretical sciences and the subdivision of the latter into physics, mathematics, and metaphysics/theology was accepted by many.53 One of the problems under which the twelfth-century authors labored was that of the precise relation between the liberal arts and the theoretical sciences. Historically the school curriculum comprising the seven arts, which played such an important role in medieval education, was prepared by the Sophists.54 But the systematic study of the seven liberal arts seems to have originated in Alexandria.The scheme appeared for the first time in the first century B.C.55 St.Thomas studied grammar and logic in Naples under Master Peter of Ireland, who begins his commentary on the Isagoge with a division of the sciences. In his Expositio in Boetii De Trinitate56 St.Thomas writes that the division into seven liberal arts is inadequate as a division of theoretical philosophy. He does not even enumerate the arts of the trivium and quadrivium, but vindicates the independence of philosophy, establishes the distinction between theoretical and practical sciences, and explains the nature of each of these. In the Faculty of the Arts of the University of Paris, philosophy came to dominate more and more; the arts were seen as merely preparatory. Mathematics, however, constitutes a problem: Aristotle places it between physics and metaphysics, whereas traditionally arithmetic and geometry are placed among the liberal arts. St.Thomas does not seem to rank mathematics among the philosophical disciplines, for in his commentaries on the Physics and the Metaphysics he does not attach much importance to mathematical considerations about the structure of the universe. But he does say that young students can more easily learn mathematics, since mathematical objects are abstracted from sensible things, distribuit: unam moralem, quae maxime in actione versatur; alteram naturalem quae contemplationi deputata est; tertiam rationalem qua verum determinatur a falso.” 53 It had been taught by Boethius and Cassiodorus. See the latter’s De artibus ac disciplinis litterarum, PL 70, 1167. 54 Hippias is reported by Plato, Protagoras 318E, to have taught arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (the so-called quadrivium). 55 See H.-I. Marrou,“Les arts libéraux dans l’antiquité classique,” in Arts libéraux et philosophie au Moyen-Âge. Actes du quatrième congrès international de philosophie médiévale (Paris:Vrin, 1969), 5–27, at 8ff. 56 Expositio in Boetii De Trinitate, q. 5, a. 1, ad 3. 57 In VI Ethic., lesson 7: “Rationes mathematicorum sunt rerum imaginabilium, sapientialia autem sunt pure intelligibilia. Iuvenes autem de facili capere possunt quae sub imaginatione cadunt.” Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. 118 and so their forms are represented by the imagination.57 The young can easily understand what is abstracted from sensible things but experience some difficulty in considering what leaves the sensible aspects of things entirely behind. Moreover, the young, when studying difficult and abstract subjects, are often hampered by their impetuosity and turbulent activity.58 For this reason the study of ethics and metaphysics should be taught to those who have become more sedate and have acquired a greater experience of the principles underpinning human actions.59 Certain students, however, are by nature and/or by practice and habituation more open to the study of philosophy.60 Apparently the order in which the philosophical disciplines should be taught is the following: first a training in logic, which has a preparatory role.61 It is the art which allows us to make a correct use of our reason in thinking and arguing. Our intellect can direct our faculties, but it can also order and direct its own activity. Logic helps us to proceed in an ordered way and to avoid errors.62 Next follows the study of nature, which also comprises philosophical anthropology. An interesting point is that according to Aquinas the most valuable conclusion we reach in this discipline is that of the immateriality of the human mind and soul. In its turn, this conclusion is the stepping stone to enter metaphysics: when we have discovered that not every being is material, we are entitled to reflect on the (material) things which surround us in abstraction from their materiality, and so the study of being qua being has become possible. As to ethics, it should be taught to those who are mature and have some experience of human life. Commenting on what Aristotle writes in his Nicomachean Ethics, St. Thomas notes that those who cannot understand what their teacher says cannot assimilate the subject matter.This applies to civil and social ethics.63 On the other hand, they can study mathematics and the sciences.64 However, we must keep in mind that Aristotle’s view 58 Cf. G. P. Klubertanz,“St.Thomas on Learning Metaphysics,” Gregorianum 35 (1954): 3–17. 59 In VII Physicorum, lesson 6. 60 In VII Physicorum, lesson 6, n. 925 (7): “Quia multa perturbatio et multus motus est circa ipsos iuvenes,” but this unrest may quiet down either by natural factors (for example, aging) or “ab exercitio et consuetudine.” 61 In I Metaph., l.1, n. 32. 62 In I Analytica posteriora, lesson 1. 63 In I Ethic., c. 2, lesson 3, n. 38: “Iuvenis non est conveniens auditor politicae et totius moralis scientiae quae sub politica compehenditur.” 64 In VI Ethic., lesson 7, n. 1208. 65 Aristotle, Ethica nicomachea, 1103b27: ethics does not aim at giving us knowledge but at making us virtuous persons. Aquinas on Education and Instruction 119 of ethics differs somewhat from that of Aquinas. For Aristotle ethics is an exclusively practical science,65 in which the virtue of prudence plays a predominant role. It is obvious that most young people do not yet possess this virtue. St. Thomas, on the other hand, weakens the statement that ethics is totally practical and also stresses that it aims at conveying knowledge, although not exclusively so.66 This implies that the principles on which our moral life rests can be taught to younger people who are perhaps more prone than adults to follow their instincts and passions.67 In his introduction to the commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, St. Thomas considers human intellectual work from the viewpoint of order. Order is twofold: that of the parts of a whole to each other, and that of beings and actions to their end.The latter is more important. Now there is an order which man does not make but only considers, as he does in the natural sciences. A second type of order is established by our reason in its own work, that is, in thinking and reasoning. A third order is that imposed by reason on the acts of our will; a final order is that which man brings about in his external work, such as in building, cultivating the land, and in the fine arts. In this way Aquinas presents a grandiose ideal to any teacher, instructor, and master, namely, to help the disciples and students to bring about the order of reason in their experience and perception of the surrounding world, in their own thinking and reasoning, in their behavior, and, finally, in the seal of reason they impress on things and their transformation. The Methods to Be Used in the Teaching of the Different Sciences The question of the method to be used in the study of a science had considerable importance for St. Thomas. He not only examined (in his commentaries on the works of Aristotle) which is the method the Stagirite used in a particular text, but he also devoted several pages of his Aristotelian commentaries to questions of methods to be used and presented a fairly complete treatment of these methods in the last question of his Expositio in Boetii De Trinitae.As Aristotle himself indicated, the methods vary according 66 In I Ethic., lesson 3: “Finis enim huius scientiae non est sola cognitio ad quam forte pervenire possunt passionum sectatores, sed finis huius scientiae est actus humanus, sic ut et omnium scientiarum practicarum.” 67 Cf. In IV Ethic., c. 15, l.17, n. 872 (“Quia scilicet iuvenes propter fervorem aetatis vivunt secundum passiones”) and In VIII Ethic., l.3, n. 1571 (“Vivunt secundum quod feruntur a passionibus”). Now, the text quoted in note 65 says that even those who follow their passions may be able to assimilate the theoretical part of ethics. 68 Cf. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1094b22–27, and Ars rhetorica III, c. 1. 120 Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. to the subject matter studied.68 Although Aristotle does not appear to have written a treatise on the methods to be used in the different sciences, he was not unaware of the problem. In his works one can find scattered remarks on how to proceed in the various sciences.69 In Physica, chapter 2, he describes the method to be used in natural philosophy. In the De partibus animalium and in the De caelo,70 he points out that we must first collect the facts (the phenomena) and then discover the theory which accounts for them.71 In general his position is that we proceed from what is best known to us to what is less so.72 Repeatedly he stresses the distinction between the method which argues from the causes to their effects (propter quid) and that which goes from the effects to their causes. In his short treatise De Trinitate, Boetius has some remarks on the methods to be used in the philosophical disciplines, remarks which were to some extent taken over and exploited in the following ages.73 Turning now to St. Thomas Aquinas, one can say that his fundamental method in all scientific studies is that of an openness to reality—a careful consideration of things and the strict submission of one’s intellect to what one observes, without any interference on the side of one’s imagination. In a next step, this general methodological attitude is further determined according to the subject matter of the different disciplines. In his commentary on the Physics of Aristotle, presupposing observation of the visible word as the starting point, he explains that one must proceed studying the causes and principles of things and events.While the mathematical disciplines study only the formal cause, the philosophy of nature examines the four causes of the phenomena.The reason is that it studies things subject to change; now, the four genera of causality are involved in generation and in movement.With regard to the study of the principles, one must study first the most universal among them, since they contain 69 Cf. J. Burnet, The Ethics of Aristotle (London: 1900), introduction, xxxi ff.; W. Jaeger,“Aristotle’s Use of Medicine as a Model of Method in his Ethics,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 77 (1957): 54–61; J. Donald Monan, Moral Knowledge and its Methodology in Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), passim. 70 De partibus animalium, 639b5–10; De caelo, 306a5–17. 71 See W. D. Ross, Aristotle’s Physics, 456–58; G. E. L. Owen,“Sihémai sa uaimo´lema,” in Aristote et les problèmes de méthode (Louvain: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 1961), 83–103; J.-M. LeBlond, Logique et méthode chez Aristote (Paris:Vrin, 1970). 72 Cf. St.Thomas, In I Ethic., lesson 4:“Oporteat incipere a magis cognitis, quia per notiora devenimus ad ignota.” 73 On his sources and the subsequent medieval discussion, see L. Elders, Faith and Science.An Introduction to St.Thomas’s Expositio in Boetii De Trinitate (Roma: Herder, 1974), 85–90. 74 In I Physicorum, c. 1, lesson 1. Aquinas on Education and Instruction 121 the more determinate principles.We acquire the knowledge of the principles by means of an analysis or reduction.74 A good example of this way of proceeding is the analysis of the generation and corruption of material substances which leads us to conclude that bodies are composed of primary matter and substantial forms. In his De Trinitate, question 6, Boetius writes: “In naturalibus igitur rationabiliter, in mathematicis disciplinabiliter, in divinis intellectualiter versari oportebit, neque deduci ad imaginationem, sed potius ipsam inspicere formam.” St. Thomas explains the rationabiliter of Boetius as characterizing the ordinary, natural manner of thinking of the human mind. In fact, we proceed from the knowledge of sensible things, and go from there to that of intelligible realities which for us are less knowable, although they are more cognizable in themselves. In the second place, it is proper to the human mind to reason from one thing to the next.This is very obviously what is done in the natural sciences, for we proceed from the knowledge of effects to that of their causes, and that in a twofold way: (a) analyzing a general essence (for example, “animal”) to establish its properties or the different species contained in it; in this analysis one does not consider extrinsic causes; (b) reasoning at the level of extrinsic causes and explaining or demonstrating a thing or an event by individuating its cause which is wholly external to it. Now this second way of proceeding is particularly characteristic of natural philosophy. Although in the first part of the philosophy of nature we follow mostly the method (modus) indicated in (a), namely resorting to the analysis of the intrinsic causes, in the subdivisions of the particular philosophy of nature according to the three species of movement,75 we look for extrinsic causes, while in the study of living beings, the approach by means of intrinsic causes is again very much present. In the analysis or reduction (resolutio) we must keep in mind that arguments which conclude from effects the existence of their proper causes are certain. However, we cannot always be certain when arguing from the cause to its effect, since the causal action can be interfered with or the subject ill-disposed to undergo this causal influence. In a reduction one arrives first at the most general causes, later at the more particular causes. In his search of the causes of things and processes, the philosopher also resorts to the final cause of things and events.76 Since he knows that nature does nothing in vain, he tries to explain certain things and processes looking for their usefulness. For example, the organs in the body of living beings serve a 75 Namely locomotion, qualitative change, and the processes typical of living beings. 76 In II Physicorum, lesson 11. 122 Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. purpose. Some have argued that in such cases one supposes finality in nature and that, consequently, the philosophy of nature is based on suppositions more than on total certitude.77 But Aquinas uses the word suppositio not only in the sense of what we call an assumption or hypothesis, but also in the sense of certain knowledge based on perception.78 Boethius uses the term disciplinaliter to characterize the method used in mathematics. In his day, disciplina denoted knowledge acquired by instruction.79 Following Aristotle, St. Thomas argues that mathematics possesses greater certitude than natural philosophy and theology,80 since beings considered by it are less complex; one abstracts from movement and sensible qualities to study the quantitative aspect of material things.81 It yields greater certitude than even metaphysics, since although the latter studies being in abstraction from matter, its starting point is always concrete, material reality. For this reason it is easier to study mathematics, and this discipline should be taught prior to natural philosophy.82 The method in metaphysics is that of reduction (resolutio); that is, the metaphysician goes from the consideration of effects to that of their causes, from the less universal to the more universal, from multiplicity to unity,83 and so it may be called an activity of the intellect qua intellect rather than of the intellect qua ratio.84 With regard to the method to be used in ethics, according to Aquinas one must keep in mind that ethics considers human acts in so far as they are ordered to the end of man. In doing so it adds the connotation of “moral” (or “immoral”) to acts which in philosophical anthropology are 77 W.Wallace,“St.Thomas’s Conception of Natural Philosophy,” in La philosophie de la nature de saint Thomas d’Aquin, ed. L. Elders (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1982), 27. 78 In I Phys., lesson 1, n. 18: “In natural science one supposes that material things move, at least some of them.” 79 See H.-I. Marrou, “Doctrina et disciplina dans le langage des Pères de l’Église,” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi 9 (1934): 5–25; M.-D. Chenu, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 25 (1936): 686–92. 80 However, the Latin certus is not an exact equivalent of the Greek of Aristotle’s text, the source of Boethius. 81 Expos. in Boetii De Trinitate, q. 6, a. 1. 82 In VI Ethic., lesson 7, n. 1211. 83 Cf. In Metaph., prooemium; In II Metaph., lesson 1. 84 Cf. L.-M. Régis, “Analyse et synthèse dans l’œuvre de Saint Thomas,” in Studia mediævalia in honorum R. J. Martin (Brugge: De Tempel, 1948), 303–30; L. OeingHanhoff, “Die Methoden der Metaphysik im Mittelalter,” in Die Metaphysik im Mittelalter. Abhand. des 2. intern. Kongress f. mittelalterl. Philosophie, ed. P. Wilpert (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1963), 71–91. See also L. Elders, Sobre el método en Santo Tomás de Aquino (Buenos Aires: Sociedad Tomista Argentina, 1992). Aquinas on Education and Instruction 123 studied from a different viewpoint. However, not all norms and moral qualifications can be deduced from man’s last end. There are numerous intermediary ends. In ethics one should proceed by formulating rules of conduct on the basis of the fundamental inclinations of our nature, such as to keep oneself in life and in good health, to live with others in a community, to develop one’s knowledge, to respect one’s parents and to determine the goal of human life.These first principles of moral life are known immediately. But derived rules are based on experience and rest on a sort of induction.85 This induction in ethics is based on what commonly happens, for example, that children suffer when parents have a divorce. Comparing one’s actions with a general rule belongs to what St. Thomas calls the modus compositionis, a synthetical movement of the mind, which goes from the simple or single to the composite and the whole.This modus compositionis concerns above all the work of the virtue of prudence which applies rules to concrete cases. One discovers the goodness of the principles formulated (for example, one must live in a friendly and helpful relationship with others) because of the effects. For example, unstable marital unions impair the education of the children. Therefore, parents should stay together in a peaceful and loving relationship. From experience we also know that neglect of one’s health leads to sickness, incapacity to work, and misery, so that it is our duty to take good care of ourselves. In this way experience helps us to formulate rules for our behavior. The secondary principles or rules for our conduct result from a reasoning process; for example, driving a car after drinking too much is dangerous, so we must abstain when we must drive. It is superfluous to say that experience plays a most important role in determining the line of conduct we must follow. However, the road one has to follow may differ according to the persons involved and the circumstances surrounding our actions, so that often total certitude cannot be reached as to what it is best to do.86 As appears from the examples, to formulate more particular rules of conduct in agreement with the basic requirements of our nature and our last end it is of decisive importance to possess the virtues.When they are present, a moral judgment about what to do in particular cases will be greatly facilitated. It follows that education for a virtuous life by habituating the young to behave well is paramount, more than scientific instruction about man’s duties.87 The 85 Cf. In II Ethic., lesson 11, n. 137. On the method used in ethics see L. Elders, De ethiek van Thomas van Aquino (Oegstgeest: Colomba, 2000), 16–20. 86 ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4: “In operativis non est eadem veritas vel rectitudo practica apud omnes quantum ad propria.” 87 In I Ethic., l.16, n. 189; ST I–II, q. 63, a. 1 and a. 2. 124 Leo J. Elders, S.V.D. education of the young to virtuous behavior needs the example of parents and teachers. Examples of virtuous behavior impress the young more than words.88 If everyone must edify his fellow men by the example of his behavior, this applies even more to those whose life is exposed to the view of all and who are supposed to direct others.89 In fact, examples of perfect behavior lead the young to practice the virtues.90 At the supernatural level, God revealed himself to the patriarchs and the prophets, and through them he instructed Israel,91 giving it his Law,92 and educating it toward the fuller revelation which Christ was to bring.93 The entire life and all the teachings of Christ are an instruction for us. The entire New Testament presents the doctrine taught by Jesus and his apostles. The grace of the Holy Spirit continues this instruction in the hearts of those who believe in the Son of God.94 Christ and the saints95 give us an example of how to conduct our lives.96 The Church continues to educate and to instruct the Christian people in the doctrine of Christ and to be the teacher of all the nations. Those who are called to educate the Christian people must themselves possess a fuller knowledge of God and his plan of salvation; they must be able to confirm or to prove what they say and explain it in a way adapted to the hearers.97 This instruction will be completed in eternal life, when God manifests his innermost being to the blessed,98 and so all education and instruction will reach its term. N&V 88 ST I–II, q. 34, a. 1: “Magis movent exempla quam verba.” 89 In IV Sent., d. 38, q. 2, a. 3, C, ad 2:“Quilibet tenetur ad hoc quod aedificet prox- imum exemplo suo.” In particular those “quorum vita in exemplum aliorum est posita.” 90 ScG III, c. 135. 91 ST I–II, q. 105, a. 4. 92 ST I–II, q. 90, prooemium. 93 ScG III, c. 154: “Videmus post Christi incarnationem evidentius et certius homines in divina cognitione esse instructos.” 94 ST II–II, q. 52, a. 1, ad 3. 95 In III Sent., d. 17, q. 1, a. 3: “Sanctorum exempla nos ad caritatem excitant.” 96 Ibid. 97 ST I–II, q. 111, a. 4. 98 ST II–II, q. 171, a. 4, ad 2: “Perfecto autem divinae revelationis erit in patria.” Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 125–52 125 Contemporary Lessons from the Proslogion T HOMAS G. G UARINO Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey T HE MARKED emphasis in contemporary philosophy and theology is squarely on the fact that, as human beings, we are deeply shaped and conditioned by the intricacies and practices of our societies, cultures, and languages. Human rationality is profoundly contextualized and circumscribed, rather than autonomous and neutral. As such, we only know ourselves and the world in and through antecedent norms and suppositions; there exist no pre-linguistic givens.We should avoid speaking, then, of “universal reason” or of “autonomous reason” as if there subsisted some pocket of reality not deeply defined by all of these interlacing emphases. This insistence on human embeddedness in culture, language, and tradition finds support in a broad variety of philosophical perspectives. For a long time now, Hans-Georg Gadamer and his disciples have been involved in unmasking the worldless, traditionless, Cartesian subject of the Enlightenment, with its truncated understanding of historicity and the nature of interpretation. Gadamer himself, of course, was hermeneutically developing many of the themes first broached by Heidegger in Being and Time, especially the latter’s jeremiad against those ignoring our enmeshment in the “worldhood of the world,” the profound embeddedness that Dasein is always tempted to bury in the unremitting search for absolute and unencumbered certitude and first principles. Wittgenstein, too, reacting against an untenable positivism, stressed our culturally constituted norms and language-games, hoping to press the point that reality is linguistically and socially mediated; that is, meanings are determined by forms of life and particular practices rather than by neutral, autarkic, universal standards. Thomas Kuhn’s influential manifesto, The 126 Thomas G. Guarino Structure of Scientific Revolutions, introduced many of these same themes into the philosophy of science: we are profoundly theory-laden; different standards lead inexorably to incommensurable paradigms; words are not attached to objects in ways that are unproblematic; and there is no neutral, sub-linguistic way of describing evidence.1 All of these thinkers, of course, were responding to the pretensions of Enlightenment modernity, with its positivistic notion of rationality, with its imperious Cartesian/Kantian subject taken as the fundamentum inconcussum for knowing, and with its naïve and insolent claims to unsullied objectivity. This view, deeply accenting our contingency and “situatedness,” our immersion in tradition, culture, history, society, and language, has served to expose the inadequacies of positivism and radical empiricism, to overturn the Enlightenment notion of unconditioned reason, and to dethrone the idea that human rationality is exercised “apart” from a world of historical contingencies. This stress on human embeddedness has also given rise to the now frequently encountered phrase “it’s interpretation all the way down.”2 By this is meant that one never has bare facts or facta bruta; reality, rather, is always interpreted reality, every seeing is an appropriative “seeing as,” and there exists no purely neutral level of observation, nor any unconditioned exercise of human rationality. Kuhn, one of the foremost proponents of the maxim, interpreted it in a very strong sense, arguing that, since every interpreter is deeply theory-laden, we cannot know the world “in itself.” The phrase “in itself ” is, in fact, meaningless, Kuhn contended, because there is no “higher viewpoint” or neutral Archimedean platform surpassing the theory-ladenness and embedded status of actual observers.3 Insofar as the scientist has access 1 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). Kuhn has discussed many of these themes more recently in The Road Since Structure, ed. James Conant and John Haugeland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 2 For example, Brice Wachterhauser avers, “We seem to be in the uneasy position of having to admit that interpretation goes, as it were, ‘all the way down.’ ” “Getting it Right: Relativism, Realism and Truth,” in The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, ed. Robert J. Dostal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 52–78, at 53. Stanley Hauerwas says similarly, “[I]t is contingency all the way down,” taking this phrase as indicating that we cannot “. . . secure truth against the contingency of our existence.” Performing the Faith (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2004), 21. Gianni Vattimo goes to the root of the maxim, eulogistically citing Nietzsche’s well-known comment: “There are no facts, only interpretations.” After Christianity, trans. Luca D’Isanto (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 49. 3 Since the phrase “in itself ” is meaningless for Kuhn, he rejects the correspondence notion of truth as implausible. See The Road Since Structure, 95, 99. Of course, there is a sense to the phrase “it’s interpretation all the way down” that Lessons from the Proslogion 127 only to interpretations, he or she is dealing with the world as a constructed entity, that is, the world as it appears, rather than the noumenal world itself. It is no surprise, then, that Kuhn has referred to himself as a “dynamic Kantian,” and, at times, approximates a position close to relativism, without committing himself to it.4 When theologically utilized and applied, these issues—the embeddedness of reason, our socio-cultural conditioning, our situated and “traditioned” status, and the invocation of the phrase “it’s interpretation all the way down”—have a determinate goal. With Kuhn, Gadamer, and others, this theological position wants to discredit the autonomous, worldless knowing championed by modernity. But it does this, often enough, in service to the affirmation that claims to scientific “objectivity,” to “rigorous” rationality, are just as contingent, embedded, and “traditioned” as claims made by the Christian faith.There is, in other words, no “higher perspective” or, to use a different metaphor, no “fundamental ground” from which Christianity can be judged. There exist only different, culturally and linguistically constituted paradigms and points of view. One cannot apply Enlightenment criteria in judging truth and falsehood, as if they alone represent “objectivity” while religious claims are “sectarian” because, in point of fact, all truth emerges from the tightly woven bonds of culture, history, and language.All claims to truth, then, reflect contingent perspectives; there exist no universal, neutral, non-contextual warrants to which one may appeal. Any attempted imperialism by Enlightenment criteria is here exposed as philosophically unfounded, illusory, and even coercive. Varying theological approaches, even while differing among themselves, agree on several of these fundamental principles. Now in this argument for human embeddedness, and in this legitimate reaction against a universal, neutral philosophy, there appear to be certain casualties or, at least, forgotten dimensions.Among these are ideas such as “nature” or, perhaps better, “universal natural realities.” Does the idea of nature not take a backseat if we are deeply, if not entirely, embedded in and conditioned by history, culture, and tradition? How would one does not convey the idealistic connotations found in Kuhn’s work. For the maxim can also mean that all knowing is inexorably exercised in determinate circumstances, that one indefeasibly sees the world “in and through” one’s own language and culture and that knowing, therefore, is necessarily within a distinct visual angle, a particular perspective that allows a limited but actual grasp of states of affairs. The phrase, then, can be taken as equivalent to the unobjectionable position that all understanding involves interpretation. For a more extended discussion, see Thomas G. Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology (New York: T. & T. Clark, 2005), 176–79 and 188–90. 4 See The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 206–7. 128 Thomas G. Guarino discern such a nature, even if it existed? One wonders, too, about warrants for arguments. Can there be any universal appeals, even in principle? Or must all appeals be offered within local, contextualized,“background” knowledge? Natural theology is also a likely casualty here because it contends that some arguments are available to all observers, at least potentially, regardless of their contingent circumstances. But given this strong emphasis on our “situated” milieux, can one adduce the kind of universal warrants that natural theology has traditionally needed? A reading of natural law, too, seems to be here impaired, since the norms it implies could only with great difficulty be accorded an integrity and relative autonomy beyond their particularized socio-cultural context. If not proscribed entirely, these elements are at least considerably weakened or obscured precisely because they seem to imply a sphere of universality, a sphere common to all, or open to all even apart from, or better, even within, the enveloping dimensions of historical contingency and sociocultural embeddedness. Anselm’s Achievement: A Recent View A good argument colligating several threads indicating the historical, cultural, social, and linguistic circumscription of human life and thought is offered by Brad Kallenberg’s insightful reflections on Anselm’s argument for God in the Proslogion.5 Anselm is a good choice for this discussion because the Benedictine’s work has sparked generations of controversy. Surely he must be one of the few thinkers simultaneously characterized as having both rationalist and fideist tendencies.6 I would like first to discuss Kallenberg’s article, itself representative of several recent theological trends, then offer an alternative reading of Anselm’s work, and, finally, show why Anselm’s careful balancing of nature and embeddedness has been important to the Catholic tradition in the past and remains relevant for theology today. I will briefly summarize Kallenberg’s essay, hoping to do justice to his legitimate concerns. Kallenberg contends that Anselm is best read through Wittgenstein. By this he means that Anselm offers a good example of the 5 Brad J. Kallenberg, “Praying for Understanding: Reading Anselm through Wittgenstein,” Modern Theology 20 (October 2004): 527–46. Page numbers in the text refer to this essay. 6 For the charge of rationalism, see Gilson’s indictment of Anselm’s “recklessness” in his attempt to give a rational demonstration for revealed truths (targeting Anselm’s rationes necessariae ): Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938), 26. For Anselm as fideist, see the sustained argument in Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1960). Lessons from the Proslogion 129 Wittgensteinian claim that knowledge and practice are internally related. His brief, then, is that Anselm’s proof for God, as proposed in the Proslogion, “works,” that is, is convincing, only if one shares something of Anselm’s embeddedness, his religious context, that is to say, if one enters Anselm’s prayerful circle (527).The crucial point here is that rationality is deeply related to one’s epistemic context; that is, one’s embeddedness, one’s practice, one’s way of life, will deeply condition, if not entirely determine, one’s ability to grasp an argument, including the one tendered by the monk of Bec. Only those who share the practice of prayer can be rightly said to share the sense of Anselm’s words (528), for knowing is a “rule ordered skill”; that is, one knows from within a particular tradition, where one is already an “insider” in its linguistic conventions. Since meaning is deeply related to context and use, only those with a certain fluency in terminology can properly understand Anselm’s discussion. Consequently, the warrants Anselm adduces in his well-known argument for God are only understandable by those who share something of his life, language, and practice. Claims to, and warrants for, knowledge are necessarily context-specific. Our human socio-cultural-linguistic contingency necessarily militates against warrants that are universally applicable. It is for this reason that Kallenberg opens his article by noting that he found it “appalling” when an (unnamed) professor said he was interested only in “publicly accessible” arguments for God’s existence (527). Kallenberg wishes to make clear that this notion of “publicness” is philosophically naïve since we are deeply embedded observers. Appealing to public warrants, thereby bypassing particular forms of life, makes little sense since we cannot appeal to subjects in isolation from their lived contexts. Kallenberg adduces the plentiful evidence offered by Anselm in order to buttress this strong emphasis on the interrelationship among practice, language, and knowledge. For example, Anselm says in the preface to the Proslogion that the title he originally gave to his argument was “Faith Seeking Understanding,” a fit indication of the nature of the work.7 Then, too, one must take account of the unmistakable context of Anselm’s “proof ”: his asceticism, his regimen of prayer and fasting, his imploring God about his vices. To the claim that Anselm’s argument is, indeed, meant to convince the “fool” of Psalm 53, Kallenberg responds by transforming Karl Barth’s earlier argument that Gaunilon is not, in fact, the insipiens of the psalm, but is, in actuality, catholicus pro insipiente, 7 Anselm, Proslogion, in S. Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt (Edinburgh:Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1946), I, p. 94, line 7. All citations will be given from Schmitt’s critical edition of Anselm’s works, citing volume, page, and line.Translations are my own. 130 Thomas G. Guarino that is, a monk entirely fluent in Christian life, thought, and language.8 Essential here is the claim that the particularity of Christian belief and practice determines one’s understanding of the argument and thus any knowledge of God that it may yield. What may be concluded after briefly reviewing Kallenberg’s perceptive discussion? The author is, from a theological point of view, clearly rejecting the modern project wherein faith needs to be legitimated by reason, particularly an imperious and autonomous reason. In this sense, Kallenberg is rejecting the project which has affinities with the medieval movement known as Radical Aristotelianism, one of the motivating forces for Gregory IX’s letter to the theology masters at Paris in 1228 and for the condemnations by Etienne Tempier of 1277.9 Reason cannot be a “wider” or “broader” context than faith itself, as if human rationality could see matters, to keep the spatial image, from a “higher” perspective. Christian faith does not need “alien” norms, or an “autonomous” reason (even if such existed) separated from the life of Scripture and the Church, to provide validation for its belief in God. Faith is under no obligation to meet foreign epistemic requirements which ultimately seek to tie the Church to an extrinsic bed of Procrustes. Trying to legitimate the truth of the biblical narrative by reason is especially futile now that universal and unconditioned rationality has itself been philosophically discredited. Here we see a certain convergence between present-day philosophical themes on embeddedness and neo-Barthian concerns that philosophy not seek to colonize theology by means of an overarching, non-biblical narrative.10 Both currents of thought have reservations about universal 8 Anselm himself notes that Gaunilon is no actual fool but catholicus pro insipiente in I, p. 130, lines 4–5. Kallenberg argues that while the psalm does indeed aver that the fool thinks there is no God, it does not necessarily mean the fool does not have conceptual fluency with the term “God” but only that he acts in such a way that bespeaks God’s inexistence. 9 For a recent commentary on Tempier’s letter and the condemned propositions, see David Piché and Claude LaFleur, La condemnation parisienne de 1277 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1999). For Gregory IX’s letter, see Enchiridion symbolorum, ed. Heinrich Denzinger and Peter Hünermann, 37th ed. (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1991), n. 824. Also, John Wippel, Mediaeval Reactions to the Encounter Between Faith and Reason,The Aquinas Lecture (Milwaukee: Marquette University, 1995), 14–28. 10 It is unsurprising that throughout Kallenberg’s essay, one hears strong Barthian echoes. Barth, too, wants to discourage any reading of Anselm that allows for the knowability of God isolated from the specific context of faith.As he remarks, one cannot seek the intellectus fidei “anywhere outside of or apart from the revealed Credo of the Church and certainly not apart from or outside of Holy Scripture.” Barth, Anselm, 41. Lessons from the Proslogion 131 dimensions of rationality and nature, with one emphasizing human “situatedness,” the other railing against “alien” warrants apart from the Church. The contemporary accent on the riveting influence of humanity’s historical, socio-cultural, and linguistic circumscription here licenses a tu quoque argument: all are situated and contextualized, both rationalists and Christians. There exists only faith-guided rationality (whatever that faith may be); participatory commitment is intrinsic to all understanding. So our holding onto validating norms specific to Christian faith is no more “sectarian” than the alleged “neutrality” of modernity. Kallenberg, moreover, rightly calls attention to Wittgenstein’s claim that knowledge and practice are internally related. One part of this assertion is that the anterior subjective disposition of the knower necessarily affects the known. Kallenberg wishes to overcome here, as Kuhn and Gadamer earlier had, Enlightenment positivism’s obscuring of just this point. Surely a congeries of elements—education, prior tradition, personal interests, natural talent, cultural background, ideological predisposition, a life of sinfulness or holiness—all have some purchase on any knower, thereby entering the cognitive equation. John Henry Newman, for example, clearly recognized this in apologetics, claiming that any argument will necessarily be affected by the disposition of the one addressed.11 But how far do we push this notion that the subjective disposition of the knower, the theory-laden subject, determines the known? Do we push it as far as Kuhn (whose affinities with Wittgenstein were self-noted), where one must make a distinction between the noumenal world in itself and the constructed world in which scientists (and by extension theologians) work? Are there not elements that are open to all rational observers, even if such observation will, necessarily, be accommodated within particular horizons? Are there not elements of “presentation” open to all? Is there, then, in this reading of Anselm, something of a devaluation of the autonomy and integrity of human reason? It can legitimately be protested that there is no such devaluation. It is simply a matter of pointing to the conditioned subject as opposed to the neutral Cartesian subject. But Anselm is clearly not defending an autarkic, Cartesian being. He is defending a humanum, that is, a universal human nature and reason, which, in principle, is able to grasp his argument. Can we speak of such 11 “A mutilated and defective evidence suffices for persuasion where the heart is alive; but dead evidences, however imperfect, can but create a dead faith.” John Henry Newman, “Faith and Reason Contrasted,” in Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford, sermon X, 200, cited in Avery Dulles, Newman (London: Continuum, 2002), 30. For a fuller discussion of the role of the anterior disposition in Newman, see Dulles, 48–63. 132 Thomas G. Guarino a nature, with certain formal dimensions of constancy across history and culture even in and through embeddedness? And does Kallenberg’s reading of Anselm eclipse the concept of a universal human nature, even if it rightly points to our embedded existence? Taking a cue from Kallenberg’s study, I would like to examine certain aspects of Anselm’s work, with an eye to the monk’s understanding of how nature and practice are interlaced.While Kallenberg is surely correct to accent Anselm’s religious context and so is legitimately attentive to the connections between his life and discourse, his practice and knowledge, I will argue that the monk of Bec subtly interweaves culture and nature so that the latter is not dissolved in the maw of socio-cultural-linguisticreligious particularity and practice. Anselm’s Argument There is no need to recount Anselm’s proof. It is well-known to all and has been the subject of countless commentaries.12 Further, what essentially interests us is not its validity as a general argument, but its approach or method, which has direct relevance to contemporary debates on human nature and rationality. My contention is that Anselm carefully balances the relationship of knowledge to beliefs, practices, and prior commitments with the concomitant recognition that some arguments are available to all, at least in principle, on the basis of the universality of human nature. Of the religious context of Anselm’s proof, there can be little argument. Not only is the Proslogion entitled Fides quaerens intellectum, it begins with a long prayer to the living God, before whom Anselm prays in confidence, even while acutely aware of his sins. God is glowingly alive for Anselm, near to him in his immensity, even though the Benedictine is acutely conscious of both his own finitude and sinfulness.At the end of chapter one,Anselm utters his famous Augustinian plea, ultimately drawn from the Vetus Latina edition of Isaiah 7:9, part theological manifesto, part imploring prayer:“For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this I believe, that ‘unless I believed, I would not understand’ ” (I, p. 100, lines 18–19). One cannot doubt, then,Anselm’s situation: his immersion in Christian faith; his embeddedness in a monastic, contemplative setting; his ordered and rigorous life of prayer; his interlocutors who are fellow Benedictines sharing his easy fluency with Christian ideas and 12 For classical and recent exegeses, see Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Also, Michel Corbin, Prière et raison de la foi: Introduction à l’oeuvre de saint Anselme de Cantorbéry (Paris: Cerf, 1992). Lessons from the Proslogion 133 concepts. It is concrete Christian faith and life that clearly determine every aspect of Anselm’s existence. He prays that God give him some knowledge, despite the smoke of vice that assails him. Anselm, we can fully agree, is reasoning within, not outside of the house of faith. He moves within a living tradition, indwells a thick culture of Christian life and discourse. And this heritage yields deeply fruitful knowledge. But can one conclude baldly, as Barth earlier insisted and as Kallenberg appears to concur, “When we consider the connection which Anselm held to be necessary between theology and prayer, we put our finger on the condition of the intelligere. . . .”?13 For isn’t it exactly Anselm’s brief that some (formal) knowledge of God is possible by all, even those not engaged in the life of prayer? That some knowledge of God is available, at least potentially, to all inquirers, even to those unaware of the name “God”?14 Anselm’s argument has an integrity and logical structure which, in principle, are available to those who share neither a life of prayer nor faith itself. So while it is true that philosophy is not the foundation of Anselm’s life, it is equally true that his faith gives rise to philosophical reflection, a reflection that has its own relative autonomy and integrity, that is, always ultimately related to God but meant to appeal to human reason apart from specific belief, apart from an “insider’s” intrasystemic knowledge.15 The proof arises from within faith, as virtually every proof for God does, but it seeks to stand on its own, sola ratione, on the basis of the relative autonomy of human nature.16 13 Barth, Anselm, 35. 14 In chapter one of the Monologion, for example, Anselm envisions a person who has never even heard about God, much less has conceptual fluency with the term, but is, nonetheless, able to convince himself or herself about many issues concerning the divine nature, even sola ratione (I, p. 13, lines 1–11). 15 John D. Caputo is surely right when he says that Anselm’s argument does not move from “cognitive degree zero to infinity” and that Anselm offers his argument “on his knees”; however, by accenting only the circular movement of Anselm’s thought, Caputo obscures the fact that the Proslogion’s argument has an independent integrity intended to be available even to those without faith. See his On Religion (New York: Routledge, 2001), 39 and, with similar intent, his Philosophy and Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 2006), 15. 16 The integrity of Anselm’s argument was earlier defended by Henri Bouillard and by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who were engaged with Barth’s interpretation of the Proslogion. Both theologians were dissatisfied with Barth’s exegesis of Anselm; at the same time, they wished to place a decided accent on what Balthasar calls “the full realization of the true philosophical act,” which is found only in theology.This “realization” will be discussed below. See Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, v. 2, trans. Andrew Louth, et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1984), 233. For Bouillard on the relative autonomy of the argument, see Karl Barth: Parole de Dieu et Existence 134 Thomas G. Guarino It is true that the context of Anselm’s argument is always faith. But it should not be forgotten that at the very outset of the Proslogion Anselm states, I began to ask myself if one could discover a single argument which is ad se probandum, i.e., an argument requiring no other proof than itself alone and which by itself would demonstrate that God truly is. (I, p. 93, lines 6–7) The point of the proof is to demonstrate, as Anselm says, that Deus vere est, that God truly exists. He is seeking a single argument apart from Scripture and tradition, appealing to us on the basis of our common humanity.17 The criteria of legitimation for Anselm’s argument are meant to be universal; they are not to be restricted to a particular context or language game. Just here, one is reminded of Anselm’s earlier comment in his prologue to the Monologion: his Benedictine confreres have asked for an argument which does not rely on the authority of Scripture, but only on the “necessity of reason” (I, p. 7, lines 7–10). The fool, as Anselm observes in chapter two of the Proslogion, says in his heart there is no God, as Psalms 14 and 53 attest. But even the insipiens must understand the phrase “someone greater than which cannot be thought,” even if he denies that such a being exists (I, p. 101, lines 7–9). Of course, at just this point, Anselm makes his appeal for the necessary existence of id quo maius cogitari nequit (I, p. 102, line 10). However one judges the argument’s validity, it is clearly meant to be available to all, even those not inducted into the particularities of Christian life, thought, and prayer.As Anselm says at the conclusion of chapter three:“Why does ‘the fool say in his heart that there is no God,’ when it is manifested to the rational mind that you are the greatest of all that exists? Why unless he is simple and a fool?” (I, p. 103, lines 9–11). Later in the dialogue, Gaunilon, speaking on behalf of the insipiens, insists that he cannot form the idea of a being than which a greater cannot be conceived. To this objection Anselm sharply replies that the matter is clearly otherwise, appealing to participationist thought: Everyone can see that a lesser good is similar to a greater good, insofar as it is good. Indeed, it is open to every Humaine, 2 vols. (Paris:Aubier, 1957), vol. 2, 152–54. In this essay, I try to advance and re-contextualize their analyses. 17 Of course, Anselm is not naïve about nature, as if it exists in a state of undiluted autonomy, for he says that the image of God, which has been effaced by vice and the smoke of sin, must be “renewed and reformed within me” (I, p. 100, lines 14–15).And in a striking chapter seventeen, he tells us that the “senses of his soul have become dulled and brittle by the weaknesses of sin” (I, p. 113, lines 14–15). Lessons from the Proslogion 135 rational mind that by ascending from the lesser goods to the greater goods, we can form a notion of a being greater than which cannot be thought (I, p. 137, lines 14–18). Anselm intends his argument to have a philosophical force clearly open to all. It is no surprise, then, that at the end of chapter four,Anselm concludes,“If I were unwilling to believe you exist, I would not be able not to understand that it is so” (I, p. 104, lines 5–7). Anselm is transparently appealing to reason as it exists in all human beings. Even if reason is necessarily embedded in particular circumstances, he thinks his argument addresses universal dimensions of human nature.18 Anselm is not, let us hasten to add, legitimating faith by neutral or disengaged reason, in the sense that reason now sublates faith in a kind of philosophical Aufhebung. Though clearly proceeding from faith, he offers an argument that possesses its own integrity. He does not limit his proof to those who offer praise to the biblical God or even simply to those who are aware of him; he is saying that philosophy has a relative autonomy which exists even apart from belief. And Anselm is clearly citing warrants attainable, at least potentially, by all, even if, as we shall see, specific contexts are not without considerable importance.Anselm’s argument, then, occurs in a “second moment,” reflecting in faith on what can be known without faith.There is an integrity, autonomy, and logical structure of the argument that is intelligible on the basis of universal realities with trans-cultural dimensions. One does not need the “insider” knowledge of Anselm’s unique monastic context to see the structure of the proof; what holds the argument together, rather, is the very humanum, the nature of humanity. He refers to the formal structures of human existence, remoto Christo or sola ratione, not to deduce revealed truths, of course, but to provide an argument that is publicly and intersubjectively available. Even though Anselm is insisting that his argument for the existence of id quo maius cogitari nequit is accessible to those who do not share intrasystemic Christian belief, who do not have conceptual fluency with Christian terms, who are not cultural-linguistic “insiders,” nonetheless he does place a decided accent on experiential embeddedness, thus indicating the close relationship between knowledge and epistemic context. While Anselm would argue that there are formal dimensions of reasoning characteristic of human nature, he recognizes that these elements are deeply affected by contingent circumstances. In a well known passage Anselm asserts that the one who does not believe will not understand, thereby 18 To the argument that reason itself is simply another language game, itself shaped by founding commitments and background beliefs, Anselm would answer, I believe, that there continue to exist discernable universal elements in and through human embeddedness. 136 Thomas G. Guarino indicating that social context and participated practice is intrinsically related to, deeply internal to, knowledge: Whoever does not believe will not understand. For the one who does not believe will have no experience and the one who has no experience will not know. For, indeed, just as experience surpasses the hearing about things so, in the same way, the knowledge of one who experiences surpasses the knowledge of one simply hearing about things.19 In this passage, we see Anselm’s insistence on performative knowledge, a knowledge yielded by one immersed in a unique way of life. Experience, for Anselm, offers a vigorous, participated knowledge that enfleshes, enriches, and ripens the weaker knowledge available through argument alone. Appeals to natural human realities may offer a certain formal knowledge of God, but it is only within the house of faith, within the experience of concrete discipline, within the thick culture of Christian life, that one comes to know God in a vigorous and robust way. One recognizes here a self-involving knowing at work, a knowing understood as performance, practice, appropriation, and self-involvement superseding that which is available by way of arguments appealing to universal dimensions of rationality. Henri Bouillard argued that this accent on experiential knowing in Anselm has affinities with observations made by Maurice Blondel. As Blondel says in his classic work L’Action,“We cannot arrive at God, affirm him truly . . . have Him for ourselves, except by belonging to Him and by sacrificing all the rest to Him. . . .”20 Here, Blondel wishes to accent the experiential, participative, performative dimensions of knowing. R. Garrigou-Lagrange denounced this as a non-cognitive approach to knowledge, veering toward voluntarism and depriving truth of a sufficient foundation in the purely intellective order.21 But Anselm (and 19 Epistola de incarnatione Verbi (II, p. 9, lines 5–8). This passage was important to the investigations of both Balthasar and Bouillard, particularly in their attempts to overcome, by accenting the cognitive significance of “living faith,” a certain species of apologetical rationalism. For Balthasar, see The Glory of the Lord, vol. 2, 216–17. For Bouillard, see Karl Barth: Parole de Dieu et Existence Humaine, vol. 2, 166. 20 Maurice Blondel, Action (1893: Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice), trans. Oliva Blanchette (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 404.The relationship between Anselm and Blondel was explored by Bouillard in Blondel and Christianity, trans. James M. Somerville (Washington: Corpus Books, 1969), 196–201. 21 For a recent account of the exchange between Blondel and Garrigou-Lagrange on truth and knowledge, see Richard Peddicord, The Sacred Monster of Thomism (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2005), 61–79. Lessons from the Proslogion 137 perhaps Blondel as well) intends to protect a knowledge of God potentially open to all, however formal, together with a fuller moment that resonates more clearly with the claim that epistemic warrants for truth are answerable to particular forms of life. Anselm preserves, then, the moment of “nature,” of universal, human realities, even while insisting that a “performative” and “vital” understanding of God requires something more than discursive argument. We may say that this embedded, experiential dimension “enfleshes” and renders “living” the formal autonomy of the proof itself. Natural theology is here brought to fruition in religious and even mystical experience. The citation from Blondel makes us think, perforce, of the anterior disposition of the inquirer in knowing, raising again the knotty question of the relationship between practice and knowledge.This is the recognition that human rationality is necessarily shaped and tutored by many factors, that knowledge and experience have some internal relationship. It is the motivating force behind Pascal’s well-known aphorism, “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know,” his contrast between l’esprit de finesse and l’esprit de géométrie, and his distinction, if not cleavage, between le Dieu d’Abraham, d’Isaac et de Jacob and le Dieu des philosophes.22 Newman, Pascal, and Blondel rightly found the prevailing tenets of modernity unable to account for the fullness of human experience. But while their insights helped to unmask an illegitimate rationalism, they do not overturn the Anselmian notion that all persons are potentially able to recognize an argument for God’s existence sola ratione. I say potentially because subjective disposition, as noted earlier, will by necessity have some effect on the extent to which any argument is grasped as compelling; surely this is the case when we are speaking of an argument for God’s existence or a discussion of natural law. Is the intelligibility of arguments such as these necessarily tied, then, to performative, existential commitment? Anselm would surely hesitate before offering an unqualifiedly affirmative answer precisely because to do so would jeopardize the very notion of an argument theoretically available to all on the basis of a universal humanum. For Anselm insists that his argument is, indeed, open to all rational creatures, sternly rebuking Gaunilon for claiming he cannot see the logic of the proof. But Anselm would also recognize, with Newman and Blondel, that the efficacy of such arguments has some profound relationship with humanity’s spiritual sensibility. What is clearly evident here is the very tight nexus conjoining nature, culture, and history. There exists, undoubtedly, a web of suppositions, 22 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans.W. F.Trotter (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003), n. 277. 138 Thomas G. Guarino background beliefs, historical conditions, and ideological commitments that affect the noetic situation—what Kuhn short-handedly called theory-laden observation. But amidst this welter of contingencies, are we still able to have universal arguments open to all? Is some connaturality required between the warrant and the inquirer? And if so, does this entirely eviscerate Anselm’s “public” claims? Arguments for God’s existence, whether Anselmian, Thomistic, Cartesian, or Lonerganian, seem not to be demonstrative in a mathematical sense. The same may be said of natural law reasoning. At the same time, these exercises in discursive logic are intended to be publicly available, possessing a legitimate, if relative, autonomy. I think it is correct to conclude that Anselm’s proof, and others like it, while retaining a formal validity, have a “performative” dimension only within the circle of faith. In and of themselves, they lack the more efficacious and comprehensive knowledge yielded by experience, praxis, and action. This does not, however, denigrate the cognitive penetration which the arguments attain, but recognizes that their effectiveness may only be fully acknowledged by those exercising a reason tutored by practice and experience. Perhaps one finds something similar to this in Lonergan’s own proof for God’s existence. In chapter nineteen of Insight, he offers a finely proportioned argument for God’s actuality based on the intelligibility of the existing real.23 In a later work, Lonergan states that Vatican I’s famous definition argues for a human potency rather than an actuality, a quaestio juris rather than a quaestio facti. He concludes,“I do not think that in this life people arrive at natural knowledge of God without God’s grace, but what I do not doubt is that the knowledge they so attain is natural.”24 This seemingly enigmatic phrase resonates with the Anselmian insight that there is a structure of the argument that has its own integrity and autonomy, even if the argument only fully “lives” for those within the participated Christian life. Because of this careful balance in Anselm, between the relative autonomy of the philosophical argument and the self-involving, “performative” knowledge gained by experience, we can say that Anselm would not likely endorse Stanley Hauerwas’s strong Barthian claim that “natural theology is unintelligible divorced from a full doctrine of God.”25 Nor 23 Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 692–99. 24 Ibid.,“Natural Knowledge of God,” in A Second Collection, ed.William F. J. Ryan and Bernard J.Tyrrell (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1996), 133. 25 Stanley Hauerwas,“Connections Created and Contingent,” in Grammar and Grace: Reformulations of Aquinas and Wittgenstein, ed. Jeffrey Stout and Robert MacSwain Lessons from the Proslogion 139 would Anselm agree with the claim that one needs insider, religious knowledge to know something of the divine existence. Of course, Hauerwas, with Barth, appears unwilling to make any commitment to “nature,” fearful that this will introduce into theology a foreign, secular element determinative of revelation, sanctioning, in the process, a realm of religious truth “beyond” the one explicitly revealed by Christ and so, finally, marginalizing central Christian teachings.26 But Anselm does not intend to ground Christianity in a neutral, autonomous reason. His project is clearly rooted in the fides quaerens intellectum, as he insists at the outset of the Proslogion. At the same time, he recognizes that there exists a relative autonomy of philosophical argument which retains its integrity even when originally formulated within the context of explicit faith.27 What is clearly visible in Anselm, then, is the attempt to balance his prayerful context, his thick Christian and monastic tradition, with a publicly available argument. He neither reduces his argument to those who share his life of prayer and discourse, nor does he make Christian (London: SCM Press, 2004), 75–102, at 75. See also Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2001), 15.At the same time, we can fully agree with Hauerwas’s statement that those who have invoked Aquinas to argue that “ ‘natural theology’ is a necessary first step to sustain theology based on revelation have distorted Aquinas’ understanding of Christian theology.” Both Aquinas and Anselm begin with the fides quaerens even if their arguments are meant to have a relative autonomy and integrity. I am also sympathetic with Hauerwas’s larger point that “natural” reasoning, improperly utilized, leads to a pale civic Deism and civic morality far from the vibrant faith of Israel and the Church. But can we conclude that deficiencies in cultural practice necessarily mean that the insights of natural theology and natural law offer only an essential disparity with revealed truth? 26 This, of course, is the Barthian objection that Catholic theology substitutes “being in general” for God’s revelation, thereby offering knowledge of God otherwise than in faith. See, for example, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, trans. G.T.Thomson (Edinburgh:T. & T. Clark, 1949), 39–44, and II/1, trans.T. H. L. Parker, et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), 168–69 and 231. For a nuanced update of the Barthian position, see Colin E. Gunton, Act and Being (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 4–6. This hesitancy about nature extends, logically, to natural law. For a recent analysis offering a positive account of the Protestant, and particularly Reformed, tradition on natural law reasoning (despite Barthian claims to the contrary) see Stephen J. Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). 27 Hauerwas does say, “Like Anselm, Aquinas knew that revelation comes first and that provability and the insights gained from the proofs only second.”This statement indicates that Hauerwas is well aware of the primacy of revelation in the medieval construal of the faith/reason relationship; it is not clear to me, however, that Hauerwas recognizes that the proofs are intended to possess a relative autonomy and integrity even apart from explicit Christian faith. See Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe, 165. 140 Thomas G. Guarino practice incidental to a living knowledge of God. I think one can safely say that Anselm is cautious on the relationship between practice and knowledge, without denying its importance. Anselm recognizes the relative autonomy of human reason, without turning reason into a neutral epistemological platform. Nature, Relative Autonomy, and the Tradition Like Anselm, Catholic theology has held for the possibility of knowledge of God that is available to all inquirers apart from participation in the life of faith, apart from “insider” knowledge, even if this falls short of performative knowing.28 Anselm’s defense of this human potentiality is itself representative of a traditional Catholic emphasis on “nature” or natural human realities, on the relative autonomy of philosophy, and on the possibility of warrants that are publicly available. This customary accent has been simultaneously combined with the recognition that the life of embedded, participatory faith opens up a world of understanding that reason alone cannot penetrate. More recently, the traditional approach has also become cognizant of the profound effects of society, culture, and history on human life, being, and knowing. Let us hasten to add, therefore, that a distinction between nature and culture or nature and grace is not intended to inscribe two easily separable tiers. One finds, rather, tightly entwined strands of history, nature, culture, and grace. Examples of this relationship between universal realities and human embeddedness are drawn in a pointed way in several statements of John Paul II. In the encyclical Fides et Ratio, for example, the pope argues that philosophy and reason have an autonomy that cannot be suppressed (comprimere) by the content of revelation (§79).29 His intention here is 28 On the difficulty of actually knowing something of God by way of human reasoning, one need only consult the comments of Aquinas in Summa contra Gentiles I, ch. 4 and Summa theologiae I, 1, c.The precise affirmation of Vatican I on this question has long been the subject of debate. Still important is Hermann Pottmeyer’s classic exegesis of the conciliar definition, Der Glaube vor dem Anspruch der Wissenschaft (Freiburg: Herder, 1968). The relator of Dei Filius, Vinzenz Gasser, emphasized that the definition regarded a human potency (posse), not an actuality, although Gasser himself claimed it would be difficult to identify a human possibility that had never been actualized (Mansi, 51, 278D). Denys Turner has recently offered an exegesis of Vatican I, arguing that it is a matter of Christian faith that God’s existence is rationally demonstrable, although he, too, accents possibility over actuality. See Faith, Reason and the Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 29 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, in Acta apostolicae sedis, 91 (1999), 5–88; English translation in Origins 28 (October 22, 1998), 317–47. See the supporting comments found at §§48 and 67. Of course, John Paul II also makes clear that philosophy Lessons from the Proslogion 141 transparent: the philosophical order has a relative autonomy in and of itself, even “apart from” revelation. So ardently does the pope defend this position that he eschews, at least theoretically, the traditional term for philosophy as the ancilla theologiae, not because it is mistaken, but lest it give the impression that nature and philosophy do not have a legitimate sovereignty within their own estate (§77). Reason, even as wounded, has an authentic, if not total, independence. The pope strongly defends this position, I think, because he wants to uphold the capabilities of human nature, precisely in recognition of the universal humanum which characterizes the being of men and women. The implications of this defense become clear in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor wherein the pope insists that the person, while embedded in various dimensions of society and culture, is not exhausted by those elements. There is, in fact, a universal humanum which is distinct from socio-cultural mores or customs: It must certainly be admitted that the person always exists in a particular culture, but it must also be admitted that he or she is not exhaustively defined by that same culture. Moreover, the very progress of cultures demonstrates that there is something in humanity which transcends those cultures.This “something” is precisely human nature: this nature is itself the measure of culture and the condition ensuring that human beings do not become the prisoner of any culture, but assert their personal dignity by living in accordance with the profound truth of their being. (§53)30 The universality and relative autonomy of nature, of a metaphysical dimension of humanity, is here clearly affirmed without denying, of course, our embedded and conditioned existence.A similar point may be found in the pope’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae. This document teaches that the gospel of Jesus Christ is intrinsically linked to certain conclusions in the moral order even if many of the same conclusions may be reached on the basis of arguments disengaged from the context of faith. So the encyclical states that the gospel of life “despite the negative consequences of sin . . . can also be known in its essential traits by human reason” (§29).31 This is not to make the untenable claim that reason subsists within a natura pura outside of the domain of grace (or culture); has no ultimate “self-sufficiency” and must itself undergo “profound transformations” in light of the truths of faith (§§75, 77). This is why one most fittingly refers to philosophy’s real but relative autonomy. 30 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, in AAS 85 (1993), 1133–1228, at 1176, §53 English translation in Origins, 23 (October 14, 1993), 297–334, at 314. 31 John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, in AAS 87 (1995), 401–522, at 434, §29 (emphasis in the original); English translation in Origins, 24 (April 6, 1995), 689–727, at 700. 142 Thomas G. Guarino it is to affirm that arguments may be made regarding the moral order which have a rational validity even apart from full-blooded, intrasystemic Christian belief. Of course, these arguments would surely be strengthened by belief, but they are neither unintelligible nor lacking in cogency without them. In other words, we may affirm that there exists only one supernatural order of grace. But within this order, “natural” arguments can be made on the basis of reason alone, that is, arguments having a logical structure, a universal value, and a rational validity independent of faith, even though never independent, ultimately, of the estate of grace. Evangelium Vitae, of course, is relying on aspects of natural law reasoning. Just here, however, we must acknowledge the careful symbiosis between universal human realities and “participatory” thought. Natural law cannot be reduced to a kind of rationalism that fails to take account of either the embeddedness of the inquirer or the anterior subjective disposition and inclinations of the knowing person. As noted earlier, these elements will necessarily have some purchase on the success of any argument, including those concerning God’s existence and natural law. Faith itself will serve to strengthen, concentrate, and illuminate one’s grip on what is provided on the basis of natural human reason.32 The Anselmian oscillation between universal natural realities and human embeddedness offers a model, perhaps, of what Evangelium Vitae intends. For the Proslogion is elaborated within a robustly theological context, but presents an argument having its own integrity in the natural order, apart from explicit faith. It is intended to have a universal validity, without relying upon “insider” knowledge. It is on the basis of natural human realities that one can invoke arguments that are, in principle, available to all even while realizing, to mark the essential Anselmian caveat, that experience, that is, embeddedness in Christian life and faith, will offer a performative, enfleshed knowledge surpassing what is attained on the basis of nature alone.33 The encyclical then, like Anselm, is The Origins translation, however, does not italicize the remarks found in the authentic Latin text. 32 It is no surprise that in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI affirms that the Church “argues on the basis of reason and natural law,” that is, on the basis “of what is in accord with the nature of every human being.” Deus Caritas Est, in AAS 98 (2006), 217–52, at 239, §28; English translation in Origins 35 (February 2, 2006), 541–57. Serge-Thomas Bonino, in his fine analysis of the encyclical, argues persuasively that the entire document reflects an attempt to balance properly the interrelated spheres of nature and grace, eros and agape, justice and charity, state and Church. See “ ‘Nature et grâce’ dans l’encyclique Deus caritas est,” Revue Thomiste 105 (2005): 531–49. 33 Robert Sokolowski subtly expresses the kind of relative autonomy that is proper to natural law reasoning:“We might also tend to look to revelation for the more Lessons from the Proslogion 143 saying that epistemic warrants for particular moral teachings are not limited only to specific forms of life, even if the “traditioned” life of grace and Christian practice would surely strengthen one’s grasp on its teaching. This entire Anselmian dynamic between the universality of nature and human embeddedness within tradition brings to mind the dialogue between Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar.Though the debate is over fifty years old, its lessons remain instructive. For the core issue was the balancing of natural human realities with historical embeddedness, which played itself out under the rubric of nature and grace.To summarize briefly: Barth severely criticized the entire Schleiermacher-Ritschl-Hermann axis of liberal Protestantism, as well as the analogia entis of Catholicism because both, he alleged, seek to establish a philosophical starting point outside of faith that, in turn, becomes determinative of the content of faith.34 The fear was that some “universal,” some “context,” broader and deeper—to use spatial metaphors—than the faith itself was being preliminarily established. The perceived danger was that some philosophical concept of nature constituted a general prolegomenon into which “faith” was inserted at just the proper point. Church teaching, in this instance, becomes secondary to philosophical positions that now imperiously claim to warrant the legitimacy of Christian beliefs. The transparent concern here is that a generic “common nature” becomes the properly “foundational” idea, with revelation taken simply as a subset of a pre-existing philosophical category. Athens, then, is taken as normative, while Jerusalem is simply a religious manifestation of a wider “Athenian” culture. Barth’s fear was of an alien, philosophical a priori setting the agenda, so to speak, for Christian faith. Balthasar answered Barth by conceding to him every point about the priority of grace; there exists only the unicus ordo supernaturalis, the one and only supernatural order of sin and grace in which humanity is embedded. At the same time, Balthasar defended at length the relative autonomy of the natural order, meaning by this phrase that inscribed within the supernatural sphere is the order of creation. It is only “relatively” autonomous because it always exists within the one estate of God’s graciousness; but it is, indeed, autonomous because it possesses a certain freedom, a certain definitive communication of the true ends of things. . . . [And] it is true, of course, that revelation will often declare certain natural human practices to be good and others to be bad, but these things also have their natural visibility, and one can argue more persuasively about them if one brings out their intrinsic nobility or unworthiness, their intrinsic rightness or wrongness, as well as the confirmation they receive from revelation.” Sokolowski, “What is Natural Law? Human Purposes and Natural Ends,” The Thomist, 68 (2004): 507–29, at 524 (emphasis added). 34 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, x. 144 Thomas G. Guarino “nature” in and of itself and distinct from God. Balthasar conceded that nature is always, to some extent, a theological concept because the beatific vision is the goal of creation and all nature is oriented towards this telos. Further, there exists no surgical procedure for “removing” the order of creation from its embeddedness in the singular, concrete order of grace. But a certain autonomy of nature is necessary in order to protect the realm of creatureliness, which itself is the baseline concept for the very possibility of revelation. It is true, Balthasar agreed, that theology is always a scientia de singularis, a reflection on the concrete events of salvation history. But within this concrete order we find room for universal concepts, categories, and being itself.35 Natural human realities constitute one of these concepts, even if nature must always be thought of as a “second moment” within the fides quaerens intellectum, but which nonetheless possesses its own comparative autonomy. It is no surprise that Balthasar defended the universality and integrity of nature even while reserving particular venom for Hegel and Idealism, with their attempts to overcome speculatively the concretissimum of salvation history. For Balthasar saw clearly that the emphasis on nature is not, as Barth feared, an attempt at the conceptual integration of Christianity by something other than revelation itself. It is hardly the philosophical imperialism reminiscent of an earlier Radical Aristotelianism, which Balthasar strongly opposed in its later philosophical incarnations.36 But if both popes and theologians have emphasized, with Anselm, the relative autonomy of philosophy and nature as well as the integrity of argumentation not requiring specific induction into the Christian community, then why, we may ask, has this defense been so important to Catholicism? One significant reason for this advocacy of universal human realities is the necessary convergence of philosophy with theological truth. Christian doctrine, in its most authoritative statements, is understood by the Church as universally, trans-culturally, and trans-generationally true. But if, in fact, Christian affirmations are enduringly true amidst very different societies, cultures, worldviews, and perspectives, then what notion philosophically supports this doctrinal constancy and meaning invariance over the course of cultures and centuries? How, in other words, does one find in the “natural” order a proper resonance with what the Church holds by faith, namely, 35 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991), 384. 36 Balthasar argues, for example, that God can never be assigned a place within a pre- existing system as he is with Hegel’s Geist, Schopenhauer’s Wille or Schelling’s intellektuelle Anschauung. Revelation, on the contrary, in the words of Mary’s Magnificat, “deposuit potentes de sede.” Balthasar, Love Alone, trans. A. Dru (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 34. Lessons from the Proslogion 145 the substantial continuity of Christian teaching in and through historicity, change, difference, and socio-cultural “otherness”? It is precisely because of the Church’s belief that faith and reason are deeply conjunctive realities that John Paul II in Fides et Ratio argued that theology needs philosophy to “confirm the intelligibility and universal truth of its claims” (§77). Such philosophies are required because they must substantiate in the philosophical order (such as the very possibility of the universally and abidingly true and the very possibility of meaning invariance) the logic of Catholicism’s doctrinal affirmations by way of revelation. This is to suggest that reason, in its own relatively autonomous domain, must be able to confirm certain aspects of the universal truth of revelation. If it were unable to do so, then Christian doctrine and theology would appear irrational, thereby violating nature and transforming faith into merely authoritarian belief.37 It is no surprise, then, that the pope called for a philosophy with a commodious “metaphysical horizon,” one that is able to fulfill its officium congruum, or “proper stewardship,” precisely because this kind of philosophy has at its center an ability to account for unity within multiplicity, identity within difference, continuity within change. How else to explain, in the philosophical order, doctrinal constancy, universality, and perdurance (which stand at the very heart of Catholicism) in a world of incommensurable and highly variable customs, norms, and mores? This traditional defense of the relative autonomy of philosophy and nature helps to explain Benedict XVI’s direct and sustained attack on “dehellenization” in his Regensburg lecture of September, 2006.Against a certain anti-metaphysical sentiment emerging from the Reformation and against a Hebraic/Hellenistic split championed by Adolf von Harnack in Das Wesen des Christentums, the pope strongly insists that Christianity cannot be severed from the heritage of Hellenistic inquiry. Benedict wishes to argue, like Anselm, that reason retains something of its independence and autonomy, precisely as a faculty of human nature, apart from explicit Christian belief. How else could there exist, as he states, “mutual enrichment” between the Christian faith and philosophy?38 How else could he 37 In other words, one cannot simply argue for the substantial continuity of Christian truth on the basis of the gospel of grace, absent confirming philosophical warrants, without lapsing into an untenable fideism.The other option, intelligible on its own grounds but a significant departure from the prior tradition, is to claim that the teachings of the Church are, in fact, limited in their socio-cultural scope and necessarily have wide meaning-variance over the course of times and cultures. 38 See Benedict XVI, “Regensburg Academic Lecture,” Origins 36 (September 28, 2006), 248–52, at 250. Benedict’s comment recalls the claim of Fides et Ratio that faith and reason offer each other mutual support as well as mutually purifying critiques (§100). 146 Thomas G. Guarino so ardently insist on the conjunctive confluence between the language of being of ancient philosophy and the language of faith of revelation?39 The legitimate assertion of human embeddedness in socio-cultural networks, as well as within the unicus ordo supernaturalis, does not mean the loss of the autonomy and integrity of nature, even if universal natural realities participate in this tightly-knit web of human and divine dimensions. As earlier noted, to recognize the relative autonomy of philosophy and nature is not to assert that the truth of the gospel is now “secured” by an “alien” philosophical integration, the secular Aufhebung that neo-Barthians fear. Anselm’s emphasis is on the “second moment” of philosophical integrity within the fides quaerens. It recognizes, as John Paul II insists in Fides et Ratio, the legitimate autonomy of philosophy even while indicating that such thinking has no ultimate self-sufficiency.40 This lack of self-sufficiency means that philosophy must, in the last analysis, be theologically measured. Insofar as theology is a scientia de singularis (and surely the Incarnation is preeminently illustrative of this), Christian embeddedness always has prior39 One finds this confluence in the Regensburg lecture and even more transpar- ently in Ratzinger’s earlier work Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster (London: Search Press, 1969), 94–104 (which appears in the footnotes of the redacted Regensburg text). In this earlier work, Ratzinger speaks of belief as “wedded to ontology.”The “I am” of Exodus 3:13 finds resonance in the “I am” texts of the Gospel of John (8:24; 8:58); here, the primacy of the existing real, of being itself, so prized by ancient philosophy, comes to fulfillment in Christ. Ratzinger, then, would have little interest in a facile condemnation of “ontotheology” if this term is understood simply as the invocation of being-language within theological reflection. Ontotheology is properly condemned if the philosophical notion of being is taken as an a priori and univocal horizon which limits the appearance of God. But Ratzinger is arguing here, as much of the tradition before him, for a proper reciprocity between ontos and theos, with revelation, of course, as the leading partner and with God understood as analogically related to created being. 40 See Fides et Ratio, §75. Bruce Marshall recently has written, “When Aquinas speaks as a teacher of Catholic truth, which is to say all the time, he rejects the very idea of an autonomous philosophy.” Marshall, “In Search of an Analytic Aquinas,” in Grammar and Grace: Reformulations of Aquinas and Wittgenstein, ed. Jeffrey Stout and Robert MacSwain (London: SCM Press, 2004), 55–74, at 55. With this we can agree but with a few further words of explanation. It is undeniable that Aquinas begins from the auditus fidei and so from the fides quaerens. But he also thinks that philosophy has a certain real but relative autonomy (paralleling the kind of quasi-autonomy found in the Proslogion ) as indicated by his strong respect for philosophy in its own order and his concern that Christian faith not be repugnans ad rationem. Thus, while Aquinas is undoubtedly always a teacher of Catholic truth, he believes that philosophy may marshal arguments for God’s existence on the basis of causal and participationist metaphysics, absent any “insider” knowledge of Christian faith. Lessons from the Proslogion 147 ity in the order of truth. Jerusalem, indeed, takes precedence over Athens. But there needs to be ancillary scaffolding in the philosophical order to ensure that there exists a conjunctive coherence between faith and reason.41 For philosophy, in its own order, must offer support for theological conclusions lest theology appear simply to be a free-floating act of faith, unrelated to human reason and dependent, therefore, on authority alone.To say this is to recognize that knowledge and practice are related, but without undermining the kind of understanding available to nature, precisely as Anselm had argued. George Lindbeck, for example, speaks of the world absorbed into the biblical narrative, rather than the Bible being absorbed by the heteronomous standards of secular thought. In one sense this is surely true, for philosophy cannot seek to be the aggressively hegemonic partner in the faith/reason relationship.42 But neither can philosophy lose its proper autonomy by being absorbed into theology—just as nature cannot be entirely absorbed into culture. Another issue importantly related to the defense of natural human realities and the integrity of philosophical reasoning is the existence of an area which may be shared by Christians, by people of other faiths, and by those of no faith at all, an area that we may call the relatively autonomous secular. By this is meant the agora in which natural virtue is cultivated, in which publicly available arguments may be made from natural law as well as from natural theology.Anselm himself, of course, is quick to call attention to how vice obscures his own intellect and leads to faulty reasoning. Even here, however, he offers a discourse with its own integrity, an argument intended to be accessible to all reasonable inquirers, even if those with experience, that is, with participatory knowledge, walk in a brighter light. But the secular can only exist as a comparatively autonomous arena of shared theory and science, if, in fact, philosophy and nature themselves 41 One thinks, in just this regard, of Aquinas’s campaign against Radical Aristotelian- ism on the question of the nature of the intellect (which dispute centers, ultimately, on the faith/reason issue).Against the monopsychism of Siger of Brabant,Aquinas intends to show that there is a diversity of intellect in diverse beings. In his forward to the work, Thomas states that this could easily be shown simply by relying on the truth of the Christian faith (which is always normative). But he will display the nature of the error by arguing on philosophical grounds alone. Here we have a strict parallel with Anselm: the context is surely Christian belief, but the argument has a philosophical integrity and quasi-autonomy in and of itself. See Thomas Aquinas, On the Unity of the Intellect Against the Averroists, trans. Beatrice H. Zedler (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1968), 22. 42 George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia:Westminster, 1984), 135. I have discussed how faith must “measure” philosophy in “ ‘Spoils from Egypt’ Yesterday and Today,” Pro Ecclesia 15 (Fall 2006): 403–17. 148 Thomas G. Guarino have a quasi-autonomy. The vitality of situated faith cannot exclude the realm of the secular, even if it enfleshes and supersedes it. Jürgen Habermas recognized this aspect of Catholic thought when he noted that Catholic theologians have traditionally had a less troubled relationship with the lumen naturale.43 And it is precisely because of this “natural light” of reason that Catholics have been able to offer arguments in the public square for the intelligibility of God and for the natural visibility of universal moral principles. Insofar as we live in a society far more pluralistic and multivalent than that of Anselm, we need to ask if arguments that are not context specific, that have public, intersubjective warrants, are not even more necessary today.44 As noted at the outset of this essay, many contemporary thinkers wish to emphasize that meaning is mediated by one’s participation in a culturallinguistic community. All knowledge gained by individuals, therefore, is deeply informed by social practice and local custom. Further, the criteria by which such knowledge is judged, the epistemic warrants for truth, are internal to the communities themselves. Since modes of social life and discourse possess an internal logic, they are not subject to external criteria and verification. It is a deep affinity with just these themes that one sees in the interpretation of Anselm tendered by Kallenberg and that one detects throughout Hauerwas’s thought. For both, the accent is on the meaning and identity given within the practices of the robust, engaged, and participated life of the Christian Church.This approach has the significant merit of repairing some of the damage caused by the bloodless subject of modernity.The danger, however, is that it obscures the relative autonomy of nature and of philosophy; it also appears to abandon the notion of a humanum, of a universal human nature, and of arguments that appeal, in principle, to all human beings.The tension that Anselm keeps alive in his own thought and that is defended in the later tradition (even if this devolves, at times, into a strict disjunction) between the ontological constancy of nature and the specificity 43 See Jürgen Habermas,“Transcendence from Within,Transcendence in this World,” in Habermas, Modernity and Public Theology, ed. Don S. Browning and Francis Schüssler Fiorenza (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 231. 44 Of course, Habermas, too, is a great defender of public reason. But inasmuch as Habermas wants all validity claims to be cognitively redeemed by public warrant, he would have little use for Anselm’s attempt both on the grounds that religious discourse (even when speaking philosophically) has an a priori teleological view and arguments resting on elements of a universal humanum (which Habermas generally associates with the untenable Kantian being deconstructed by Heidegger) do not adequately account for the historically, culturally, and linguistically embedded subject of our post-transcendental, post-metaphysical age. Lessons from the Proslogion 149 of embeddedness is thereby impaired.Anselm recognizes that the fullness of meaning and knowledge is mediated through experience, through the life and practices of the community, but he also argues that there is a prior givenness of meaning available through the humanum itself. The universal order of natural human realities and the embedded orders of salvation and culture are thereby kept in delicate balance and strict tension. By arguing on the basis of evidence available to all inquirers, even while speaking of the vital, enfleshed knowledge available through experience, Anselm is acknowledging the relative autonomy of the natural order; reason has an integrity and universality in its own sphere. Does this mean reason and nature are “unconditioned?” Surely this cannot be the case insofar as every person is necessarily embedded in socio-cultural-linguistic traditions. But can there be universals that are operative in and through perspective and situatedness? Anselm is an example of one who seeks to appeal to a universal humanum even while his careful approach is far distant from the Enlightenment subject of absolute autonomy. Conclusion There is a legitimate attempt on the part of many thinkers today to redeem reason from Enlightenment rationalism, to repair the damage wrought by modernity with its misguided defense of a neutral, autarkic subject, a subject existing apart from the embeddedness of human traditions and socio-cultural conditions, what Charles Taylor has described as the “ontologizing of the disengaged perspective.”45 In actual fact, there is no irreducible ahistorical rationality, no Archimedean platform outside time and history; there exists neither life nor consciousness without protention and retention, without presuppositions and anticipations. Much contemporary philosophy, then, is a therapeutic attempt to unmask this neutral subject of modernity, thereby recognizing the conditioned, situated, embedded, traditioned nature of human existence. Postmodern and hermeneutical thought (both philosophical and theological) have rebelled against this rationalist, Enlightenment point of view. It is reflected, for example, in John Milbank’s representative comment that one cannot now contrast the alleged “particularist obscurantism of religion” with the universality of the human.46 One cannot do so because postmodernity has exposed this kind of universality as nothing more than the allegedly unconditioned subject of modernity. 45 Charles Taylor,“Engaged Agency and Background in Heidegger,” in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles B. Guignon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 317–36, at 323. 46 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), 260. 150 Thomas G. Guarino But should this legitimate exposure of the implausible worldless subject of the Enlightenment, hammered home by Heidegger’s insistence that history cannot be buried under the cloak of immutability and by Wittgenstein’s accent on the subject who participates in a cultural-linguistic community, demand a flight from the kind of metaphysical reasoning that accents a universal humanum or physis characteristic of Anselm and a significant part of the tradition? Should the emphasis on participatory reasoning exclude a common essence or eidetic (eidos) form? Should the excesses of modernity mean that Catholicism abandons universal natural human realities? And does jettisoning the Enlightenment subject mean we should also jettison the relative autonomy of philosophy? Anselm seeks to circumvent the Scylla and Charybdis that threaten to overcome the proper balance between nature and culture, between nature and grace by avoiding, on the one hand, a devaluation of the relative autonomy of philosophy and natural human realities and, on the other, a rationalism that fails to understand the intimate relationship between knowledge and practice.While recognizing the unique knowledge given through the life and culture of the Church,Anselm holds that the Church herself is not the only locus of meaning and intelligibility. He suggests that there is some (formal) knowledge of God potentially available to all rational observers (even if this lacks the performative vigor of experience) beyond explicitly Christian sources. Warrants for the truth about God (and, in the case of natural law, for the intrinsic worthiness of actions) are available on the basis of reason as well as through the participated life of the Church. This is not to say, it bears repeating, that one seeks warrants outside faith to justify faith. It is to say that some knowledge of God is, in principle, available to all, even if the practices of the Church enflesh this knowledge, making it vital, robust, and performative. One states this even while acknowledging the profound interlacing of nature and culture, of natural human realities with their embedded and situated character. Gaudium et Spes recognized this when teaching that “wherever human life is involved . . . nature and culture are quite intimately connected” (§53). A distinction is possible between the two even if one may also legitimately speak of an ontological reciprocity. I address this question, a traditional one in Catholic theology, because of the contemporary emphasis, displayed in writers such as Hauerwas, Kallenberg, and many others, of the strong relationship between knowledge and practice, fueled, often enough, by the contemporary philosophical accent on the embedded, traditioned subject. Surely what is right in this is the vigorous reclamation of Christian identity as opposed to the pallid universalism of modernity. But this decided accent has brought a Lessons from the Proslogion 151 reaction against the traditional Catholic stress on a universal humanum as well as the relative autonomy of philosophy.The reaction is understandable. For if hermeneutical and postmodern thought (in its manifold variations) has taught one lesson well, it is the danger of a rationalist, conceptualizing objectivism that devalues the heteromorphous nature of life and discourse, the enveloping dimensions of historicity and culture, of alterity and difference. But the correlative danger is a lapse into a contemporary either/or: either universalist modernity or situated postmodernity. But such an antinomy is too starkly posed.As everyone knows, Catholic theology cast off a wooden neo-scholasticism that too sharply divided nature/grace, reason/faith, and philosophy/theology, a thinking itself abducted by Enlightenment themes, strictly separating the two spheres. Theology eventually rebelled against this modality which ignored not only the congeries of elements involved in human knowing, but also the circuminsession of nature and grace. This is the stream of thought represented by Pascal, Newman, Blondel (and later de Lubac), who reacted against an untenable rationalism by displaying dimensions and horizons of human being and knowing that modernity (and its theological Doppelgänger ) overlooked and devalued. But if, at one time, theology needed to be rescued from manualist rationalism, evacuated of ideas such as theoryladen interpretation and situated reason, the danger today may be that by accenting just these dimensions, the truth offered by reason to all inquirers, available on the basis of a shared nature, is obscured. In jettisoning the excesses of modernity, then, we must beware the danger of jettisoning universal natural realities whose defense long predates the Enlightenment. Anselm may stand on the precipice between the early Church and the high Middle Ages, but he can hardly be understood as a harbinger of modernity or of Cartesian rationality except in the most attenuated sense. As with many therapeutic remedies in theology, a reparative counter-narrative may list too far in the other direction. Does the contemporary accent on human embeddedness, at least in some of its formulations, eclipse a proper understanding of natural human realities? The rationality proper to Catholic theology is a careful interweaving of universal and contingent elements, of nature and grace, of reason and revelation, of human potentiality and participatory knowing. Anselm’s argument in the Proslogion is a model of balance and proportion on just these matters. Does this contemporary invocation of Anselm constitute another flight to the pre-modern, a flight (and recovery) visible, for example, in the keen interest in Pseudo-Dionysius found in thinkers such as John Milbank and Jean-Luc Marion, and discernible in the return to 152 Thomas G. Guarino patristic exegesis championed by various present-day projects? Does offering a medieval thinker’s reflections as a significant model for understanding the relationship between the universal humanum and contextual embeddedness not also smack of antiquarianism? I do not think this is the case. It is, rather, the recognition that there has been in the tradition of Catholic theology a great respect for the relative autonomy of nature, creation, and reason, an autonomy that, properly understood, protects the proper integrity of natural human knowledge as well as the distinctions between philosophy and theology, nature and grace, nature and culture. Anselm, I suggest, offers substantial theological lessons on these points, N&V even (and perhaps especially) today. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 153–74 153 Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word in the Homilies on Leviticus A NDREW H OFER , O.P. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana I N HIS apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI begins the section on the homily with these sober words: “Given the importance of the word of God, the quality of homilies needs to be improved.”1 His concern is that the liturgical homily should “foster a deeper understanding of the word of God, so that it bear fruit in the lives of the faithful.”2 Recalling Sacrosanctum Concilium and Dei Verbum, Pope Benedict asks homilists “to preach in such a way that the homily closely relates the proclamation of the word of God to the sacramental celebration and the life of the community, so that the word of God truly becomes the Church’s vital nourishment and support.”3 Mindful of this need, we can return to the tradition for examples of preaching God’s Word for the people’s benefit. Origen of Alexandria in this regard arguably holds a certain pride of place. Less than three months after signing Sacramentum Caritatis, Benedict XVI devoted two Wednesday I am grateful to John C. Cavadini, Matthew Levering,Austin G. Murphy, O.S.B., and an anonymous referee for helpful comments. 1 Pope Benedict XVI, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, On the Eucharist as the Source and Summit of the Church’s Life (promulgated on February 22, 2007), §46. (On a related note, the recent Synod of Bishops, which took place October 5 through 26, 2008, was dedicated to “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.”) 2 Ibid. 3 Cf. Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §52 and Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, §21. 154 Andrew Hofer, O.P. general audiences to catechesis on this “true ‘maestro’.”4 On April 25, 2007, in reviewing aspects of Origen’s life and his theological achievement, the pope considered that Origen offers “a perfect symbiosis between theology and exegesis.”5 Besides highlighting Origen’s careful reading of Scripture, textual work in the Hexapla, and systematic commentaries, Pope Benedict spoke of the Alexandrian doctor’s preaching. “[E]ven before his ordination to the priesthood,” the pope says,“Origen was deeply dedicated to preaching the Bible and adapted himself to a varied public. In any case, the teacher can also be perceived in his Homilies, wholly dedicated as he was to the systematic interpretation of the passage under examination, which he analyzed step by step in the sequence of the verses.”6 The pope then continued with Origen’s three-pronged biblical preaching for the people’s edification in the faith: Also in his Homilies, Origen took every opportunity to recall the different dimensions of the sense of Sacred Scripture that encourage or express a process of growth in the faith: there is the “literal” sense, but this conceals depths that are not immediately apparent. The second dimension is the “moral” sense: what we must do in living the word; and finally the “spiritual” sense, the unity of Scripture which throughout its development speaks of Christ.7 In the following week’s address, Benedict XVI continued his reflection on Origen, this time focusing on Origen’s doctrine on prayer and the Church. For the latter, the pope selected Origen’s ninth homily on Leviticus and particularly his teaching on the priesthood of the laity contained therein.8 Given Pope Benedict’s call for better preaching and his treatment of Origen as one who can teach us, this essay unites these two aspects by exposing Origen’s theology of preaching. While some may regard preaching and teaching as quite distinct, Origen considered himself in preaching as a didaskalos, or teacher, for no term particularly designated the preacher in his day.9 With an unparalleled knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures, Origen, the consummate teacher, preached several hundred 4 Benedict XVI, general audience in St. Peter’s Square, April 25, 2007.Translation found in “Origen: life and work,” L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, May 2, 2007, p. 12. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Benedict XVI, general audience, May 2, 2007.Translation found in “Origen: the teaching,” L’Osservatore Romano,Weekly Edition in English, May 9, 2007, p. 3. 9 Pierre Nautin, Origène: Homélies sur Jérémie, vol. 1 (Homilies 1–11), Sources Chrétiennes (SC) 232 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1976), 152. Nautin’s treatment of “Origène Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word 155 homilies, rather than compose additional biblical commentaries, because of his great desire for what he considered to be the goal of preaching: the edification of the Church.10 Eusebius reports that only after Origen turned sixty did he feel that his powers were sufficient to allow stenographers to record his public talks (dialexeis).11 Therefore, the homilies we have result from decades of intensive labor over Scripture by this most brilliant mind. Only 279 of his homilies remain, most preserved in Latin translation.12 The number extant, although a fraction of Origen’s preaching, is remarkable considering that very few homilies have survived from the time before Origen.13 Known as the Church’s most influential exegete, loved and imitated or hated and excoriated, Origen should be ranked no less than pre-Nicene Christianity’s most significant preacher after the apostolic era. Many specialists on the history of preaching and on Origen offer profuse praise.Thomas K. Carroll calls Origen “the first and foremost of all Christian homilists.”14 David Dunn-Wilson remarks, “Above all else, Origen is the prince of exegetical preachers.”15 William G. Rusch regards Origen as certainly “one of the most impressive homilists in the history of the church.”16 Henri de Lubac, S.J., speaks of Origen the preacher in these terms: “Everywhere he is Teacher, man of the Church, attentive to the present situation, concerned Prédicateur,” 100–91, offers an important discussion. Although seemingly not familiar with Nautin’s work,Werner Schütz also has a useful study of the sermon in Origen’s writings. See his Der christliche Gottesdienst bei Origenes, Calwer Theologische Monographien (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1984), 82–119. In this section, Schütz treats the following four areas: the nature and function of the sermon, scriptural interpretation in the sermon, the role of the listeners in the sermon, and the sermon and rhetoric. 10 Cf. the comment of Rufinus and Origen’s own distinction between commentaries and homilies as treated below, 156–57 and 161. 11 Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia Ecclesiae 6.36.1. Cf. Henri Crouzel, Origen:The Life and Thought of the First Great Theologian, trans. A. S.Worrall (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), 29, where he discusses interpretations of what this means. 12 Only twenty-one are preserved in Greek.The Latin translations were completed by Jerome and Rufinus. 13 Crouzel lists as extant from the time before Origen only the homily called 2 Clement, On Pascha by Melito of Sardis, Clement of Alexandria’s Quis dives salvetur, the De Antichristo, and some fragments of Hippolytus. See Crouzel, Origen, 29. 14 Thomas K. Carroll, Preaching the Word, Message of the Fathers of the Church 11 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1984), 42. 15 David Dunn-Wilson, A Mirror for the Church: Preaching in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids, MI:William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 37. 16 William G. Rusch, s.v. “Preaching,” in The Westminster Handbook to Origen, ed. John Anthony McGuckin (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 177–78, at 178. 156 Andrew Hofer, O.P. about the duties and needs of souls.”17 However, others give a more guarded assessment. For example, Joseph Trigg notes Origen’s complaint that his congregation’s members were not listening or not wanting to hear what he had to say.18 Trigg comments, “Although his thoughtful homilies pointedly address moral and spiritual concerns, Origen evidently was not a preacher who could (or necessarily wanted to) control a congregation like John Chrysostom or Augustine.”19 This essay focuses on Origen’s theology of preaching, or more precisely “the ministry of God’s Word,” found in his Homilies on Leviticus, which Pope Benedict recalled for the priestly dignity of all the faithful.20 Origen preached these sixteen homilies in Caesarea probably between 239 and 242 on what some consider to be the most difficult of scriptural books to preach.21 Yet before we approach this set of homilies, a preliminary caution must first be given. These Greek homilies have been preserved only in a Latin translation by Rufinus, who thought the original too homiletic! 22 Rufinus observes that Origen preached “not so much with the intention of explanation as of edification.”23 In looking back on his translation of various homilies, Rufinus says that he especially 17 Henri de Lubac, Histoire et Esprit: L’intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène, reprinted in Complete Works 16 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2002), 126:“Partout il est Docteur, homme d’Église, attentif à la situation présente, soucieux des devoirs et des besoins des âmes.” This is found within de Lubac’s “Le point de vue du prédicateur,” 125–38. 18 Cf. Origen, Homilies on Genesis 10.1 and Homilies on Jeremiah 20.6. 19 Joseph W. Trigg, Origen, The Early Church Fathers (London: Routledge, 1998), 40. Origen’s preaching does not display the rhetorical flourish expected in the greatest orators. Nautin writes, “En résumé, on voit qu’Origène connaît les règles classiques de composition d’un discourse et qu’il prend avec elles beaucoup de liberté.” Nautin, introduction in SC 232: 121. 20 I am using the text of Marcel Borret, S.J., Origène: Homélies sur le Lévitique, vol. 1 (Homelies 1–7) and vol. 2 (Homelies 8–16), Sources Chrétiennes 286–87 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1981). A convenient English translation is Gary Wayne Barkley, Origen: Homilies on Leviticus 1–16, Fathers of the Church 83 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1990). Having consulted published translations, I have made my own translation of these homilies and other texts, unless otherwise noted. For the phrase “ministerium verbi Dei,” see, for example, Homilies on Leviticus 5.7 (SC 286: 238). 21 For this dating and a remark about the difficulty to preach on Leviticus, see the introduction in Borret, Origène: Homélies sur Le Lévitique, vol. 1, 11–62, esp. 12 and 52. 22 Rufinus, Praefatio atque epilogus in explanationem Origenis super epistulam Pauli ad Romanos, ed. Manlio Simonetti, Tyrannii Rufini Opera, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 20 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1961), 276–77. 23 Rufinus, Epilogus (CCSL 20: 276). Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word 157 made changes to the homilies on Leviticus, where Origen spoke in a hortatory manner. “For this reason I took the trouble to fill in things lacking,” Rufinus explains, “lest the striking and unanswered questions, which in the homiletic style of speaking he often had, generate weariness for the Latin reader.”24 This Latin adaptation detracts from our appreciation of Origen in the act of preaching, but it should not wholly prevent us from deriving aspects of Origen’s authentic ministry of God’s Word.25 By studying the Homilies on Leviticus, we can take Origen as a model preacher to assist the Church now in making Scripture better understood and bear fruit in the lives of God’s priestly people. Origen’s Preaching on Leviticus: Letter and Spirit My argument that Origen can teach us about preaching the Word of God runs quickly into opposition. As Origen’s preaching ministers and completes his scriptural interpretation, one would not likely accept Origen’s theology of preaching if one rejects his treatment of the Bible. R. P. C. Hanson’s view epitomizes the modern critique: Origen was generally speaking not seriously restrained by the Bible; he knew very little about the intellectual discipline demanded for the faithful interpretation of biblical thought; his presuppositions were very little altered by contact with the material in the Bible. . . . Where the Bible did not obviously mean what he thought it ought to mean, or even where it obviously did not mean what he thought it ought to mean, he had only to turn the magic ring of allegory, and—Hey Presto!—the desired meaning appeared.26 24 Ibid. 25 For assessments of the benefit of studying Origen’s homilies, recognizing limita- tions imposed by Rufinus’s translation, see Barkley, Homilies on Leviticus, 23, where he concurs with Ronald Heine, Annie Jaubert, and Henri de Lubac on the genuineness of Origen’s thought in the homilies. Similarly, see Robert J. Daly, S.J., who thinks that the homilies can be used as guides to Origen’s thought, in his “Sacrificial Soteriology in Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus,” in Studia Patristica 17, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone, Eighth International Conference on Patristic Studies, 1979 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982), 872–78, at 871. For Daniélou’s reservation on the translated homilies’ inaccuracies, see Jean Daniélou, S.J., Origen, trans. Walter Mitchell (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), x–xii. 26 R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory & Event: A Study of the Sources and Significance of Origen’s Interpretation of Scripture, with an introduction by Joseph W. Trigg (Louisville, KY: Wesminster John Knox Press, 2002), 371. Trigg’s introduction to this reprint of Hanson’s 1959 work provides an update on Origen studies biased toward Hanson’s critique against de Lubac. In fact, Frances W.Young calls Hanson’s portrayal “the standard English account of Origen’s exegesis.” See her Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), 3. 158 Andrew Hofer, O.P. Much of the rest of this essay will implicitly answer Hanson’s objection by considering how biblical images control and thoroughly inform Origen’s ministry of God’s Word.Yet, it can be conceded to Hanson that Origen does not offer a modern “historical” approach to Leviticus.27 Rather, Origen accepts the letter as containing something that initially cannot be seen.This approach has currency in contemporary approaches to reading, including reading Leviticus. For example, Jewish scholar Jacob Milgrom begins his commentary on Leviticus in the following way: Values are what Leviticus is all about.They pervade every chapter and almost every verse. Many may be surprised to read this, since the dominant view of Leviticus is that it consists only of rituals, such as sacrifices and impurities. This, too, is true: Leviticus does discuss rituals. However, underlying the rituals, the careful reader will find an intricate web of values that purports to model how we should relate to God and to one another.28 Milgrom relies in part upon Mary Douglas’s anthropology beyond his own rabbinic and historical-critical training; but more importantly for the present purpose his view expresses a wider phenomenon of seeking textual readings of what underlies the letter.29 Milgrom’s own teaching at a Protestant seminary in Germany made him think, “Leviticus would be useless to seminary students in preparing their sermons.”30 Indeed, the third book of the Pentateuch poses challenges too often deemed insurmountable for the Christian pulpit.31 Origen, on the other hand, demonstrates an enthusiastic love for preaching Leviticus and seeks to win his listeners over to the mysteries contained in this book of 27 John David Dawson considers Hanson’s critique to be the fullest elaboration of Erich Auerbach’s negative assessment against Origen’s allegorical hermeneutic. For Dawson’s own response to Auerbach on figural reading and history, see his Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 83–137, esp. 125–26 concerning Hanson. 28 Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics, A Continental Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2004), 1. 29 For the work of Mary Douglas, see especially her Purity and Danger (London: Routledge, 1966) and Leviticus as Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 30 Milgrom, Leviticus, xii. 31 This assessment derives from not merely the anecdotal, but the structural. The Roman Catholic lectionary, proven influential for other Christian lectionaries, has only two truncated readings from Leviticus in its three-year cycle of Sunday readings. Moreover, their appearances on the Sixth Sunday of Year B and the Seventh Sunday of Year A come at a time often passed over in the transition between the Ordinary Time before Lent and the Ordinary Time after the Easter Season. For example, in 2008 the Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time was celebrated immediately Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word 159 the Law.32 He finds that one who is still an infant in spirit gladly hears books such as Esther, Judith,Tobit or the commandments of Wisdom.“But if the book of Leviticus is read to that one,” Origen says, “the mind is continually offended and refuses it as if it were not its own food.”33 Although realizing the common people’s lack of attention and refusal to accept the Word in Leviticus, Origen does not reserve this book to some gnostic elite or discard it. Rather, the Homilies on Leviticus demonstrate Origen’s attempt to overcome these obstacles and move his people further into spiritual maturity. He does this first by connecting what his people hear with what is experienced in Christ himself. For Origen’s careful listener in the Church, the letter of Leviticus communicates through a spiritual interpretation the Word of God that is none other than Jesus Christ.34 Origen’s allegory to discover the hidden meaning is unabashedly at the service of Christ, and not Christ at the service of allegory.35 In his introduction to the first homily, Origen announces his incarnational interpretation of Scripture and applies it to Leviticus.36 The preacher begins: before Ash Wednesday and the Sundays of Ordinary Time resumed with the Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time on June 1. 32 “The chief task of a Christian preacher on Leviticus,” comments Robert L. Wilken,“was to ensure that the book was not ignored and continued to be read. This could only be done by making it intelligible and applicable to the lives of Christians. Its language, its images, as well as its ideas, had to find a place in Christian practice and belief.” Wilken, “Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus and Vayikra Rabbah,” in Origeniana Sexta: Origen and the Bible, Acts from the Sixth Origenian Colloquium, Chantilly, 1993, ed. Gilles Dorival and Alain le Boulluec (Leuven: University Press, 1995), 81–91, at 89. 33 Origen, Homilies on Numbers 27.1 (SC 461: 272). 34 De Lubac emphasizes that the Word in Scripture and the Word incarnate are not two Words, but the same Word for Origen. See de Lubac, Histoire et Esprit, 336. Origen’s exegesis of course has been the subject of numerous studies since de Lubac’s 1950 classic. Here, I simply want to refer to the lucid case made more broadly about the Christological reading of patristic exegesis in John J. O’Keefe and R. R. Reno, Sanctified Vision:An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible (Baltimore, MD:The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). 35 In an interesting but unsatisfying argument, Patricia Cox Miller’s inverted conclusion makes Origen’s Christological reading awaken the mind to the allegory of poetics. See her “Poetic Words, Abysmal Words: Reflections on Origen’s Hermeneutics,” in Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy, ed. Charles Kannengiesser and William L. Petersen, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity, vol. 1 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 165–78. 36 Cf. de Lubac, “Les Incorporations du Logos,” chap. 8 in Histoire et Esprit, esp. 339–40. De Lubac comments on the opening of the first homily on Leviticus: “Dans la lettre de l’Écriture, le Logos n’est donc point incarné d’une façon 160 Andrew Hofer, O.P. Just as in the last days the Word of God, clothed with flesh from Mary, came into this world and there was one thing which was seen in him and another which was understood—for the appearance of flesh was evident in him to all, but knowledge of his divinity was given only to the few chosen ones—so too when the Word of God is brought forth to humans through the prophets or the lawgiver he is brought forth not without proper clothing.37 Both the incarnation and Scripture have veils that cover the Word within them. In regards to Scripture, the veil is the letter whereas the “spiritual sense hiding inside is experienced as divinity.”38 As for Leviticus, Origen summarizes its letter as treating various sacrificial rites, different offerings, and the priestly ministries—an assessment agreeable to historical-critical methods today. Origen then counts blessed those eyes that see the divine spirit and blessed those clean ears of the inner person that hears. For otherwise, Origen says, one will perceive in these words merely the letter that kills (cf. 2 Cor 3:6). Origen intensifies this in a later homily on Leviticus: “For even in the Gospels, it is the letter that kills. Not only in the Old Testament is the killing letter observed.There is even in the New Testament the letter that kills the one who does not spiritually perceive the things said.”39 This not only summarizes Origen’s spiritual interpretation; it also stakes the mission of the preacher. The one who explains the words of Scripture does so as a matter of life and death—the letter kills. Origen compares himself with Susanna. If he submits himself to the presbyters who follow the letter of the Law, then in Susanna’s words, “It will be death for me” (Dan 13:22). But if he does not, then he would still not escape the wicked presbyters and it would mean sinning against the Lord. That would be not simply Origen’s death, but the death of all those who hear the Word. Origen encourages his listeners to stay faithful to the Lord under this threat of death so that the “Church, having already turned to proprement dite comme il l’est dans l’humanité de Jésus, et c’est ce qui permet de parler encore de comparaison; déjà néanmoins il y est vraiment incorporé, il y habite lui—même et non pas seulement quelque idée sur lui, et c’est ce qui autorise à parler déjà de sa venue, de sa presence cachée.” 37 Homilies on Leviticus 1.1 (SC 286: 66); cf. Acts 2:17. 38 Homilies on Leviticus 1.1 (SC 286: 66). 39 Homilies on Leviticus (SC 286: 338). This may in part lie behind Augustine’s De spiritu et littera, which influenced Thomas Aquinas’s famous phrase in Summa theologiae III, q. 106, a. 2: Unde etiam littera Evangelii occideret nisi adesset interius gratia fidei sanans. Such a reading points to the relationship between literal and spiritual interpretations with law and grace, and so Scripture’s spiritual interpretation should have great bearing upon the theology of grace. Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word 161 the Lord, may know the truth of the Word of God enveloped by the covering of the letter.”40 After praying for the Holy Spirit’s removal of every cloud and darkness in order to see the spiritual knowledge of the Law, Origen provides an insightful description of his homiletic purpose. Therefore, as we are able, let us relate briefly a few things from many, not striving after the explanation of single words—for this is done in a writer’s leisure—but making known things that pertain to the edification of the Church.We would rather give opportunities for the understanding of listeners than write down an extensive exposition, according to what is written, “Give an opportunity to the wise, and the wise will be wiser.”41 Origen later in these homilies repeats the distinction between edifying the Church and providing a detailed explanation in commentaries.42 The preacher must know the true meaning of the Scriptures and communicate it to the listeners, viewed as “wise.” Precisely because his preaching is the edification of the Church, Origen’s homilies bolster the listening Christians to perceive the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures for a greater awareness of God’s work in their lives. It can be emphasized that the spiritual meaning is conveyed only through the letter. Our continuing exploration of the Homilies on Leviticus demonstrates the seriousness with which Origen accepted the letter in order to derive spiritual meaning for the faithful. In fact, all of his homilies are thoroughly imbued with careful textual links suggesting that the letter when properly treated does not kill, but conveys the Spirit’s life.43 Against Hanson’s reading of Origen, Origen’s theology of preaching, as 40 Homilies on Leviticus 1.1 (SC 286: 68). 41 Homilies on Leviticus 1.1 (SC 286: 70); cf. Prov 9:9. 42 Homilies on Leviticus 7.1 (SC 286: 298). For some differences between Origen’s homilies and commentaries, see Éric Junod, “Wodurch unterscheiden sich die Homilien des Origenes von seinen Kommentaren?” trans. from French by Marianne Mühlenberg, in Predigt in der Alten Kirche, ed. Ekkehard Mühlenberg and J. van Oort (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1994), 50–81. See especially his treatment “Zweck der Homilien ist die selektive Erklärung des biblischen Textes mit dem Ziel,‘die Kirche zu erbauen’ ” in 62–74. 43 Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., astutely comments, “It is too often forgotten that spiritual exegesis, Origen’s and others’, is based on an utterly literal reading of the texts.” Lienhard, “Origen as Homilist,” in Preaching in the Patristic Age: Studies in Honor of Walter J. Burghardt, S.J., ed. David G. Hunter (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 36–52, at 46. For an important defense of Origen’s position concerning the literal sense, see de Lubac, Histoire et Esprit, 92–138. 162 Andrew Hofer, O.P. communicating the spiritual interpretation, is thus inseparable from the letter of Leviticus. Indeed, Origen frequently fills his teaching with biblical images that cannot be removed from the spiritual doctrine.44 These images pertaining in their letter to the priestly regulations of ancient Israel spiritually signify Christ and the lives in Christ of his faithful ones, the nation of priests.The selection of terms studied here comes from Leviticus, whose letter for Origen is “as the flesh of the Word of God and the clothing of his divinity.”45 The first section is devoted to sacrifices and offerings (as “the flesh of the Word”), the second to various garments (as “the clothing of divinity”). In each section, select homily passages are critically examined through these images in order to communicate and exemplify Origen’s doctrine of the ministry of God’s Word. Given Origen’s debt to Philo in interpreting Leviticus, the Philonic model is briefly mentioned at the end of the section on sacrifices before we proceed to consider Origen’s use of clothing imagery. Sacrifices and Offerings The Book of Leviticus begins with the Lord calling Moses and speaking to him from the tent of meeting about how the people of Israel should make an offering to the Lord. It then takes up the first instruction of a whole burnt offering from the herd (Lev 1:3–9). Again, to orient Origen’s preaching for our context today, we can hear first from Jacob Milgrom: “This first chapter of Leviticus ostensibly discusses the burnt offering. However, the current that runs beneath the technical description of the offering reveals much about the emerging Israelites’ efforts to distinguish their religion from the pagan religions that existed at the same time.”46 For Origen, the “current that runs beneath the technical description of the offering reveals much” about Christ and the priestly act of preaching in the present. From the very details of Leviticus’s narrative, Origen in the midst of speaking of Christ as the burnt offering constructs his theology of preaching for the Church gathered around the living Word.47 Subsequently, Origen gives the moral sense for believers in 44 For a book running over 800 pages on images in Origen’s ecclesiology, see F. Ledegang, Mysterium Ecclesiae: Images of the Church and Its Members in Origen, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 156, trans. F. A.Valken (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001). 45 Homilies on Leviticus 1.1. 46 Milgrom, Leviticus, 21. 47 For an analysis of the first homily, see Gaetano Lettieri, “Omelia I: Il sacrificio del Logos,” in Omelie sul Levitico: Lettura origeniana, ed. Mario Maritano and Enrico dal Covolo, Biblioteca di Scienze Religiose 181 (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 2003), 15–47. Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word 163 Christ to offer their own flesh by a reasonable service (cf. Rom 12:1).48 But in the former case, notice how Origen appropriates the sacrificial language to describe the ministry of God’s Word. I myself think that the priest who removes the hide of the calf offered in a whole burnt offering and takes away the skin by which its members were covered is the one who removes the veil of the letter from the Word of God and lays bare its insides, which are the members of spiritual intelligence. He also places these members of the interior word of knowledge not in some base location, but in one high and holy, i.e. he lays them upon the altar. He opens the divine mysteries not with unworthy people living a base and earthly life, but with those who are the altar of God, in whom the divine fire always burns and the flesh is always being consumed.49 Such a statement can help us understand the sacrificial character of preaching for Origen, a topic that deserves closer attention. For example, Robert J. Daly, S.J., has studied the Homilies on Leviticus for their sacrificial theme. He writes, “In these homilies (once Jewish and pagan priesthood are excluded) Origen, when speaking of priesthood, has in mind either the priesthood of Jesus Christ or the priesthood of every true Christian. There is no mention of the office of a class of specially ordained hierarchical Christian priests.”50 I do not dispute Daly’s recognition of Origen’s overwhelming concern for Christ’s priesthood and the universal priesthood of the faithful; I do point out that precisely in this concern Origen frequently presents a priestly ministry of God’s Word that brings Christ the great priest and the priestly people together. Restriction of priesthood to only the two categories of Christ and every true Christian does not do justice to the rich complexity of Origen’s understanding of priesthood, and particularly the priestly sacrifice of teaching 48 On Origen’s pneumatic (usually called spiritual) and psychic (usually called moral) readings of Leviticus 1:1–5, see Elizabeth Ann Dively Lauro, The Soul and Spirit of Scripture within Origen’s Exegesis,The Bible in Ancient Christianity, vol. 3 (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, Inc., 2005), 163–75. Dively Lauro gives an engaging account of how Origen employs these two higher senses together in his preaching for the benefit of his people. 49 Homilies on Leviticus 1.4 (SC 286.78–80). 50 Robert J. Daly, S.J., “Sacrificial Soteriology in Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus,” in Studia Patristica 17, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone, Eighth International Conference on Patristic Studies, 1979 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982), 872–78, at 875. 164 Andrew Hofer, O.P. Scripture.51 Origen himself exercises this priestly role by interpreting Leviticus to the Church within a liturgical setting.52 Leviticus further specifies in its first chapter that priests should separate the whole burnt offering limb by limb before adding the firewood. Origen explains that this separation occurs when the priest “can explain in order and discuss with proper distinction” the Gospel’s portrayal of contact with Christ in threefold fashion.53 The priest must discuss the causes of these things for those beginning, those progressing in the faith, and those already perfect in Christ’s knowledge and love. Thus, the animal is separated “limb by limb.”The addition of the firewood occurs, for Origen, when the preacher treats not only Christ’s bodily virtues but also his divinity. For all should understand that the whole burnt offering of Christ’s flesh through the wood of the cross unites heaven and earth, the human and the divine.54 Origen’s third homily treats Leviticus 5. When speaking on the guilt offerings mandated from one who sins against the holy things of the Lord, Origen actualizes this as the example of what preaching is and the fact that people sin against what they have heard in preaching. Knowing that he is a sinner, Origen says,“Nevertheless, because the dispensation of the Lord’s Word has been entrusted to me, I seem to have the holy things of God committed to me.”55 Origen understands these holy things as the money of Matthew 25:27. He dispenses the holy things so that they may multiply in the lives of the people. But when the faithful people sin against the holy things through forgetfulness of what they heard, they return without a multiplication. Origen thus makes clear the productivity that is to occur in the daily Christian life that comes from listening to and enacting the homily. Again, Origen emphasizes the priestly role of the preacher as a steward dispensing God’s gifts and expecting a profitable return. 51 Cf. Pamela Bright, s.v.“Priesthood,” in The Westminster Handbook to Origen, ed. John Anthony McGuckin (Louisville, KY:Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 179–81. Bright recognizes six distinct considerations of priesthood for Origen, not including the ordained priesthood, which Bright acknowledges that Origen presumes. 52 Thomas K. Carroll notes that Origen preached before his ordination (as Pope Benedict more recently notes), but Carroll confusingly adds a dichotomy: “as preacher he remained more prophet than priest.” See his Preaching the Word, 42. For Origen, preaching is eminently priestly. 53 Homilies on Leviticus 1.4 (SC 286: 80). For Origen’s Gospel portrait here, see Matthew 9:20, Luke 7:44, 7:46, and John 13:25, 21:30. 54 Another important treatment of the whole burnt offering appears in Homilies on Leviticus 9.9. 55 Homilies on Leviticus 3.7 (SC 286: 148). Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word 165 In his fourth homily, when speaking on Leviticus 6:1–6, Origen finds that it is written about the fire for sacrifice:“the fire will always burn upon the altar and not be extinguished.” Origen actualizes this in preaching how each believer is called to be a priest, a favorite theme inspired by Isaiah 61:6 and 1 Peter 2:9. “If therefore,” Origen preaches, “you want to exercise the priesthood of your soul, never let the fire depart from your altar.”56 In a later homily, Origen makes known that people not only have the altar’s fire in the soul, but also the animals. Origen proclaims that those living reasonably in faith as Abraham’s descendants have herds of cattle, sheep, and goats as well as the birds of the sky within them to offer up as sacrifice. But the faithful have so much more than altar, fire, and animals within them. Origen asks the people,“Do you wish to hear further something about your very self, lest perhaps thinking little and lowly things about yourself you neglect your life as something vile?”57 He tells them that they have the Son of God and the Holy Spirit within them. In short, Origen actualizes the sacrifices of Leviticus within the souls of the Christian faithful so that they can consider the awesome hidden dignity that God has given them in their ability to offer priestly sacrifice. When addressing the sin offerings described later in Leviticus 6, Origen reads that everyone who touches the offering will be sanctified. He gives multiple interpretations of this, emphasizing how different people touch the flesh of the Word. He then applies this to the one who examines the inner realities and can explain their hidden mysteries. In a moving self-referential passage, he states: And we, if we were to have such an understanding, so that we may understand particular things which are written in the law, to discern with a spiritual interpretation, and to draw out the covered sacrament of any passage in the light of a more subtle knowledge—if we were able to teach the Church so that nothing from these things read would remain ambiguous, nothing left obscure—perhaps it could be said about us that we touched the holy flesh of the Word of God and were sanctified.58 Such a statement witnesses to the sanctification of preachers in their calling to interpret God’s Word for the people. Also on Leviticus 6, Origen discusses the sacrifice of fragments for an odor of sweetness to the Lord and what it means in this same homily’s rich theology of preaching. “I think the fragments of the priests are understood,” reflects Origen, “when the priests break the letter of the 56 Homilies on Leviticus 4.6 (SC 286: 180). 57 Homilies on Leviticus 5.2 (SC 286: 212). 58 Homilies on Leviticus 4.8 (SC 286: 190–92). 166 Andrew Hofer, O.P. Law; the hidden, inner spiritual food is brought out from the letter so that the listening crowds are refreshed.”59 He makes a comparison with Christ’s miracle of the feeding of five thousand: “Just as also the Lord is said to have done in the Gospels, where he blessed the loaves and gave them to the disciples and they distributed the pieces to the crowds.When they had all been satisfied, it says that they filled up twelve baskets of fragments.This is therefore the sacrifice of fragments, when we discuss in small pieces the holy things of the law so that we may take the pure, spiritual food from them.”60 Granted that Origen does not have the leisure of a commentary’s minute explanation, he as a preacher still discusses the holy things “in small pieces,” verse by verse. In Homily 5, Origen continues with the image of bread because of Leviticus 7 and its regulation to offer sacrifice together with loaves of leavened bread in salutary offerings. Origen considers that the leaven symbolizes the human doctrine that should be avoided (cf. Matt 16:6). He then applies this to preaching. The human doctrines of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics should be avoided as leaven. In their place, Origen says, “lucid speech and the splendor of eloquence and the reason for disputing should be rightly ordered for the ministry of God’s Word.”61 Here we can deduce that Origen wants the preacher not simply to set aside merely human resources, but to transcend them for their highest expressions. Again, he prefers lucid speech to grammar, the splendor of eloquence to rhetoric, and reason for disputing to dialectics. In other words, the goals of these human disciplines are transformed when applied to Origen’s chief concern—the ministry of God’s Word. Continuing his discussion of the salutary offerings, Origen quotes Leviticus 7:15: “It will be eaten in the day and nothing should remain from it in the morning.” This prompts him to compare this with other injunctions concerning time in the Law, such as the command that the Passover sacrifice should be offered in the evening that nothing should remain from the flesh in the morning (cf. Exod 12:6, 10). Origen links this prohibition to Ezekiel’s assertion,“Even yesterday’s meat never entered my mouth” (cf. Ezek 4:12). From this careful attention to the letter, Origen declares the meaning for a spiritual teaching in the Church: Hear this, all you priests of the Lord, and understand more attentively the things said. The flesh, which is set aside from the sacrifices for the priests, is the Word of God, which they teach in the Church. For this 59 Homilies on Leviticus 4.10 (SC 286: 198). 60 Homilies on Leviticus 4.10 (SC 286: 198–200); cf. Matt 14:15. 61 Homilies on Leviticus 5.7 (SC 286: 238). Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word 167 reason, they are reminded by mystic figures so when they begin to bring forth speaking to the people they may not bring forth something from yesterday—that they should not proclaim old things which are according to the letter—but they should always bring forth new things through the grace of God and always find spiritual things.62 Later in this same homily, Origen comments on the instruction of Leviticus 7 concerning the portions of priests from the salutary offering (salutaris hostia, which more frequently appears as “peace offering” in translations from the Masoretic text). Again, Origen is explicit about the need to interpret the Law for the edification of those hearing it. Otherwise, why would one read it in Church?63 Applying Leviticus 7 within his ministry of God’s Word, Origen gives a long and important sentence:“If, therefore, the priest of the Church, through words, and doctrine, and his great concern and work of vigilance, could convert a sinner and teach that one to follow a better way so as to return to the fear of God,” the sinner should bring the priest a “salutary offering” in thanksgiving to God.64 This does not mean that the converted should pay the preacher! Rather, the salutary offerings are the parts described in Leviticus 7, now parts not of an animal sacrifice but of the faithful themselves who are sacrificed.Their breast and right limb, which the Law commanded to be given to the priest, are offered back to the priest to express how the priest’s labor had converted them from evil thoughts so that they may see God. Before concluding this section, we note Jean Laporte’s assessment from his study of Philonic models in Origen’s teaching on sacrifice: “For the explanation of Origen’s doctrine of sacrifice the best methodology is to recognize his real models in his sources, i.e., Leviticus as interpreted by Philo. Origen repeats Philo’s teachings on sacrifice without much alteration.”65 Yes, Origen is heavily indebted to Philo, as for example we can read in Philo that “the true altar of God is the thankful soul of the wise 62 Homilies on Leviticus 5.8 (SC 286: 242). For an application of this in twentieth- century theology, see Hans Urs von Balthasar’s conclusion to his “Priestly Existence,” trans. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. in Explorations in Theology II: Spouse of the Word (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 373–419. For further analysis in Balthasar’s theology of preaching, see Andrew Hofer, O.P., “Proclamation in the Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Worship 79 (2005): 20–37, esp. 32–33. 63 Homilies on Leviticus 5.12 (SC 286: 260). 64 Homilies on Leviticus 5.12 (SC 286: 260). 65 Jean Laporte,“Sacrifice in Origen in the Light of Philonic Models,” in Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy, ed. Charles Kannengiesser and William L. Petersen, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity, vol. 1 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 250–76, at 274. 168 Andrew Hofer, O.P. person.”66 But this comment “without much alteration” at the end of Laporte’s study seems exaggerated. Origen’s interpretation differs in important respects from Philo’s treatment of the Word, not least of which is Origen’s constant Christological interpretation.67 Indeed, Laporte knows that according to Philo the mediation of Word between God and humans vanishes away, that the Word does not have a distinct individual or “personal” existence for Philo, and that the Word did not become flesh as Jesus Christ with the scriptural and soteriological meaning that Origen understands from the incarnation.68 Particularly pertinent to the present study, Philo does not develop an understanding of the preacher’s sacrificial role within the ministry of God’s Word. Philo himself is not preaching to an assembly of common people gathered when he gives his learned study. Moreover, Philo’s reliance on Moses the lawgiver and his emphasis on the interiority of the wise person do not elicit reflection on ministering the Word to the faithful in the same way as is found in Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus. For Origen, the priestly ministry of God’s Word forms an integral part of interpreting the Levitical sacrifices for the Church’s benefit. While more could be said, this brief treatment can serve to exemplify Origen’s original use of sacrifices and offerings for his theology of sacrificial preaching. I have concentrated on the first five homilies because Origen follows the letter of Leviticus, which treats the various types of sacrifices and offerings in its first seven chapters.To complement this part, we now approach even more briefly another image of Leviticus that Origen finds essential in discussing the proclamation of the Word. The Clothing As we already saw in Origen’s opening to Homily 1, the clothing metaphor has a particular prominence in Origen’s thought.69 The Word of God took the clothing of the letter in order to approach human beings. This covering both permits and requires a sacrificial teaching to 66 Philo, On the Special Laws I.52.287 (Philo VII: 266 in Loeb). Cf. Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 1.4, treated above. 67 Cf. Frances M.Young’s study of Origen’s similarities with and differences from Philo in her The Use of Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers from the New Testament to John Chrysostom, Patristic Monograph Series 5 (Cambridge, MA: The Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, Ltd., 1979), 120–26. Most importantly,Young writes,“But Origen’s scheme is quite different because all sacrifices are regarded as types of the sacrifice of Christ” (123). 68 Cf. Laporte, “Sacrifice in Origen,” 260. 69 Homilies on Leviticus 1.1. Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word 169 uncover the spiritual meaning. Now we consider how Origen treats the priestly vestments described in Leviticus so as to have a further appreciation for his ministry of God’s Word. For Origen, priests must be properly clothed to meet the needs of their people and the priestly people must be properly clothed in order to advance to God. In Homily 4, Origen connects the commands for priestly attire from Leviticus 6 with the Lord’s injunction, “Let your loins be girded” (Luke 12:35). The priest ought always to be girded with purity. However, Origen knows from Leviticus 6 that the priest takes off his linen garments needed for the sanctuary and puts on other garments to go outside. Applying this to preaching, Origen sees that the priest should change his clothes depending upon the audience, as did Paul.When Paul was with the perfect, as placed in the holy of holies, he put on the robe of perfection. For Paul says, “We speak wisdom among the perfect” (1 Cor 2:6).When going out to the people, Paul changes this robe and puts on one far inferior, as in saying, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). Jesus Christ, the “high priest of the good things to come” (Heb 9:11), also had different sets of garments. To the people he spoke in parables, but to his disciples he explained them (cf. Matt 13:34; Mark 4:34). Ultimately, Origen then sees the Levitical regulation of garment changing as something especially appropriate to Christ. He ends this section not with an emphasis on being clothed for the sanctuary, but with an emphasis on being found worthy to be with Christ the high priest who is himself clothed for the sanctuary. Origen bids his people that together they may be found worthy to hear Christ’s words, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God” (Matt 13:11).70 Therefore, Origen uses this clothing metaphor for a homiletic principle of accommodation or condescension, which in fact raises those lower to be united with Christ himself, clothed in heaven’s sanctuary. In Homily 6, concerning the clothing of the high priest and the priests, Origen offers several insights about the task of the preacher through a meditation on the garments specified by the Law.71 Origen reads from Leviticus, “He placed upon him the logium,” that which is rational, “and he placed upon the logium communication and truth, and 70 Homilies on Leviticus 4.6. 71 Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., includes a translation of this homily in his Ministry, Message of the Fathers 8 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1984), 58–69. His introduction is quite brief and says that this selection shows Origen to be “a determined allegorist” (57). 170 Andrew Hofer, O.P. he placed the miter on his head” (Cf. Lev 8:8–9).72 For Origen, the logium, is a sign of reason’s wisdom. But wisdom is not enough; the high priest must have communication in order to hand on what he knows to the people. Moreover, his communication is accompanied by truth, so that “truth may always remain in his every word.”73 This sequence leads to the miter, on which the name of God is engraved (cf. Exod 28:32, 36).74 This shows that the knowledge of God surpasses all things known about creation. Now, who can know these wondrous things and do them? Origen says that it is his listener! He preaches,“For you are also able, as we have often said.”75 He qualifies with a series of “ifs” to explain what is expected of his listener as baptized and consecrated. It is noteworthy that he speaks of his listener clothed with two garments, “of the letter and of the spirit,” thus making that one “pure in flesh and spirit.”76 This testifies to Origen’s strong belief that preaching incorporates the audience to be along with the preacher, together aspiring to the heights of divine knowledge, while still retaining both letter and spirit.77 Origen describes priests and teachers as those who beget their children, as did Paul, “in Christ Jesus for the Gospel” (1 Cor 4:15; cf. Gal 4:19).78 Origen considers that the girdles, or thigh coverings, given to the priests signify that teachers of the Church sometimes abstain from begetting because they know that their hearers would not bear fruit.Their seed would die and so would not yield offspring. As support for his interpretation that teachers should sometimes not teach because of the unworthiness of hearers, Origen quotes the Gospel: “Do not give what is holy to dogs” (Matt 7:6). Precisely within this homily on clothing, Origen says that anyone who aspires to be high priest should imitate Moses and Aaron. Of them it is said,“They did not depart from the tabernacle of the Lord” (cf. Lev 10:7). Origen asks, what was Moses’ work? He names two things, the same two that are the work of the high priest: to learn something from God and to teach the people.The high priest learns something from God by reading the Scriptures and frequently meditating on them. As for the high priest’s 72 Homilies on Leviticus 6.1. Leviticus 8:8–9a in the RSV reads, “And he placed the breastpiece on him, and in the breastpiece he put the Urim and the Thummim. And he set the turban upon his head.” 73 Homilies on Leviticus 6.4 (SC 286: 284). 74 Homilies on Leviticus 6.5. 75 Homilies on Leviticus 6.5 (SC 286: 288). 76 Homilies on Leviticus 6.5 (SC 286: 288). 77 Cf. Carroll, Preaching the Word, 43 for a slightly different emphasis. 78 Homilies on Leviticus 6.6. Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word 171 teaching, Origen preaches, “But let him teach those things which he learned from God, not from his own heart, nor from a human mind, but things which the Spirit teaches.”79 But before leaving his point, Origen remembers a third thing that Moses does. Drawing upon the description of Israel’s battle against Amalek, Origen sees that Moses does not rush into the battle. Rather, he prays. As long as he prays, Israel prevails against the enemy. The Church’s priest must likewise pray unceasingly so that the people under the priest may defeat the invisible Amalekite armies, that is, the demons, for those who want to live in Christ should fight these armies. Therefore, we can infer that the teacher must not only meditate upon the Scriptures but also assiduously pray for his people who hear him. Elsewhere in the Homilies on Leviticus Origen makes clear that effective preaching demands also the prayers of the people so that their teacher may receive the Word in the opening of his mouth (cf. Eph 6:19).80 Origen resumes his attention to clothing in Homily 9 when addressing Leviticus 16.81 He emphasizes that those preparing to enter the holy place must put aside their sordid clothes and put on clean garments of the priesthood. If they do not don the priestly garments and perform the other necessary preparations before approaching the altar, they will die. Origen says,“This passage touches us all, because what the Law says here pertains to all.”82 The Law commands how priests, that is, all of Origen’s listeners, ought to approach the altar.The altar, Origen teaches, is where prayers to God are offered; the dirty clothing of uncleanness, vices, and stains of passion must be removed in preparation. Origen then asks, “Or are you ignorant that the priesthood has been given also to you, i.e., to all the Church of God and to the people of believers?”83 Quoting 1 Peter 2:9, Origen says in a rhythm of words that conveys the vibrancy of his homily: “You have the priesthood because you are a priestly nation, and therefore you ought to offer God an offering of praise, an offering of prayers, an offering of mercy, an offering of purity, an offering of righteousness, 79 Homilies on Leviticus 6.6 (SC 286: 296); cf. Ezek 13:2. 80 Homilies on Leviticus 6.1. Cf. Homilies on Leviticus 12.4. For an insightful and suggestive study, see Daniel Sheerin,“The Role of Prayer in Origen’s Homilies,” in Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy, ed. Charles Kannengiesser and William L. Petersen, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity, vol. 1 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 200–14. 81 For an analysis of this homily, see Teresa Piscitelli Carpino, “Omelia IX: I due capri,” in Omelie sul Levitico: Lettura origeniana, ed. Mario Maritano and Enrico dal Covolo, Biblioteca di Scienze Religiose 181 (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 2003), 77–109. 82 Homilies on Leviticus 9.1 (SC 287: 72). 83 Homilies on Leviticus 9.1 (SC 287: 72). 172 Andrew Hofer, O.P. an offering of holiness. But so that you may offer this worthily, it is necessary for you to be in clean garments separated from the common garments of the rest of humanity.”84 It is this ninth homily on Leviticus that Pope Benedict chose for a selection to make Origen accessible for the Church today. Moreover, the pope himself did not abandon Origen’s use of Leviticus’s terms for clothing and other priestly symbols when making his own point to elucidate Origen’s teaching. Rather, from his own study of the homily Benedict XVI says, Thus, on the one hand, “girded” and in “priestly attire” mean purity and honesty of life, and on the other, with the “lamp ever alight”, that is, faith and knowledge of the Scriptures, we have the indispensable conditions for the exercise of the universal priesthood, which demands purity and an honest life, faith and knowledge of the Scriptures. For the exercise of the ministerial priesthood, there is of course all the more reason why such conditions should be indispensable. These conditions—a pure and virtuous life, but above all the acceptance and study of the Word—establish a true and proper “hierarchy of holiness” in the common priesthood of Christians.85 Arguably in their respective preaching, Origen and Pope Benedict share the same concern as Leviticus in its sacrificial rites, different offerings, and priestly ministries. That is holiness.86 But unlike historical studies that may leave Leviticus only in antiquity, Origen and Benedict XVI find that the Word of God in Leviticus is alive and active for all the faithful called to the surpassing dignity of being holy as a priestly people. The Conclusion of Bearing Fruit Origen knows that he has opposition to his understanding of preaching. In his last homily on Leviticus, he comments on Leviticus 26:4 where it says that if the people live in accordance with the commandments, the 84 Homilies on Leviticus 9.1 (SC 287: 72–74); cf. Heb 13:15. Origen continues the sentence saying that the people must also have the divine fire that Christ came to bring. 85 Benedict XVI, general audience, May 2, 2007. “Hierarchy of holiness” is a remarkable term deserving much greater attention. 86 Robert L.Wilken states:“Much to Origen’s credit he saw that Leviticus was not irrelevant to Christian life and piety. Embedded in its regulations and prescriptions he discovered a theme that is central to the New Testament, namely ‘holiness’. From Leviticus he learned that holiness was not first and foremost a moral or ethical category, but a divine quality.” Wilken, “Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus and Vayikra Rabbah,” 89–90. Origen on the Ministry of God’s Word 173 Lord will give rain and make the trees of the fields bear fruit.87 Origen in a characteristic move gives an actualization of the verse. He preaches, “We have within our very selves the trees of the fields which produce their fruit.”88 Does Origen at this point notice groans and sighs of a skeptical assembly? He takes their perspective: “Perhaps the hearer says, ‘What is this word-finder doing again? Why does he seek words from whatsoever place so that the explanation of the reading runs away? How will he teach that trees and woods are within us?’ ”89 Having voiced the objection, Origen quotes Matthew 7:18: “A good tree cannot produce evil fruit and an evil tree cannot produce good fruit.” Once this connection is established, Origen explains to the people how they can bear the fruits of the virtues in their hearts. He concludes, “If, therefore, we keep the commandments of God, having received the rain of the Word of God, about which we spoke above, even the trees which were planted in the fields of our soul and in the plain of our heart will also bear joyful fruit of good sweetness.”90 Origen did not win everyone over to his understanding of preaching the Scriptures, either in his own time or in ours. R. P. C. Hanson was certainly not convinced that Origen understood the Bible or taught what the Bible says. However, many people through the ages, such as Benedict XVI, appreciate the “joyful fruit of good sweetness” found in following Origen’s ministry of God’s Word. Origen preached so that the Church may be built up. He labored over the letter so that the priestly people may advance from the letter to spiritual understanding, without abandoning the letter—as we have seen in this consideration of sacrifices and clothing. Origen exemplifies the pope’s exhortation that the liturgical homily should “foster a deeper understanding of the word of God, so that it bear fruit in the lives of the faithful.”91 Pope Benedict gives this expressed wish for those who hear about Origen:“I invite you—and so I conclude—to welcome into your hearts the teaching of this great master of faith. He reminds us with deep delight that in the prayerful reading of Scripture and in consistent commitment to life, the Church is ever renewed and rejuvenated.”92 In the desire to 87 For an analysis of this homily, see Manlio Simonetti, “Omelia XVI: Origene inventore di parole,” in Omelie sul Levitico: Lettura origeniana, ed. Mario Maritano and Enrico dal Covolo, Biblioteca di Scienze Religiose 181 (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 2003), 135–47. 88 Homilies on Leviticus 16.4 (SC 287: 276). 89 Homilies on Leviticus 16.4 (SC 287: 276). 90 Homilies on Leviticus 16.4 (SC 287: 276–78). 91 Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, §46. 92 Benedict XVI, general audience, April 25, 2007. 174 Andrew Hofer, O.P. see the Church edified, “this great master of faith” concludes his homilies with a doxology.93 By doing so, Origen directs the assembly’s attention to the Word in praise.This essay’s last letter, in that spirit, comes from the end of one of Origen’s homilies on Leviticus. And therefore, in meditating on these things day and night, recalling them in memory, being constant and vigilant in prayer, let us entreat the Lord so that he may deign to reveal and show us the knowledge of these things which we read, how we may observe the spiritual Law not only in understanding but also in deeds, and that we may merit to obtain spiritual grace, being enlightened through the Law of the Holy Spirit, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and power forever and N&V ever. Amen.94 93 For a study of Origen’s conclusion to the homily, which is almost always explic- itly Christological in its doxology, see Nautin, Origène: Homélies sur Jérémie, vol. 1, 129–31. 94 Homilies on Leviticus 6.6 (SC 286: 296); cf. Psalm 1:2, 1 Pet 4:11, and Rev 1:6. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 175–216 175 Eucharistic Adoration in the Personal Presence of Christ: Making Explicit the Mystery of Faith by Way of Metaphysical Contemplation1 R EINHARD H ÜTTER Duke University Divinity School No one eats that flesh without first adoring it. . . Not only do we not commit a sin by adoring it, but we do sin by not adoring it. —S T. A UGUSTINE 2 Of all devotions, that of adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the greatest after the sacraments, the one dearest to God and the one most helpful to us. —S T. A LPHONSUS L IGUORI 3 Introduction T HE ROMAN C ATHOLIC Church in the United States and elsewhere has in recent years experienced nothing less than quite a remarkable 1 An earlier version of this essay was presented on May 22, 2008, the eve of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi (according to the Roman liturgical calendar) at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, during the conference “Philosophy and Liturgy: Ritual, Practice, and Embodied Wisdom.” The essay is dedicated to the blessed memory of the heroic witness of St. John of Cologne, O.P. and his Companions. 2 Cited by Pope Pius XII, Encyclical Letter Mediator Dei (1947), §130: “[N]emo autem illam carnem manducat, nisi prius adorauerit . . . , et non solum non peccemus adorando, sed peccemus non adorando” (CCL 39, 1385, lines 23–26). This passage from Augustine’s Ennarationes in Psalmos 98:9, as famous as it is difficult, has been invoked at least twice by Pope Benedict XVI in the context of encouraging the practice of Eucharistic adoration. First in his address to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005 (AAS 98 [2006], 44–45) and then again in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (2007), §66. 3 Visite al SS. Sacramento e a Maria Sanctissima, Introduction: Opere Ascetiche, Avellino 2000, 295, as cited in Pope John Paul II’s 2003 encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §25. 176 Reinhard Hütter resurgence of devotion to the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament outside of the celebration of the Mass. In this essay, I will, first, attend to the liturgical practice of Eucharistic adoration; second, adumbrate the intentionality inscribed in the liturgical practice itself; and third, undertake a re-reading of the Thomist doctrine of Eucharistic transubstantiation. I intend to submit this doctrine as one profound proposal of a philosophical hermeneutics in the service of theology, a proposal that offers a comprehensive interpretation of the mystery of Christ’s lasting, real, substantial and hence personal presence in the reserved Blessed Sacrament.Two introductory caveats are called for. First, there is a fundamental assumption I will not argue for in this article, but simply will presuppose: in the Catholic Church it is an ancient,4 venerable, and universally held principle that the Church’s living tradition of prayer serves as a genuine guide for her faith5 as authentically interpreted by the Church’s Magisterium.6 Hence, in the following I take the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament to be an authentic liturgical practice of the Catholic Church and, furthermore, since it has been embraced, affirmed, regulated, and encouraged by the Church’s Magisterium, not only to be licit, but indeed surpassingly commendable. The following consideration is therefore neither apologetic—that is, interested in defending this particular instantiation of the Catholic faith and practice against possible Protestant criticism and likely secular detraction; nor is the following consideration ecumenical in nature—that is, intended to contribute to a possible future consensus on the matter of Eucharistic adoration. Rather, my intention here is strictly hermeneutical, roughly along the lines of fides quaerens intellectum. Like any other Christian liturgical practice, Eucharistic adoration can and indeed should become the topic of faith seeking understanding. Every person encountering or involved in this liturgical practice might want to ask, what is going on and how does one make explicit its most central implication, Christ’s abiding substantial and hence personal presence in the reserved Blessed Sacrament? 4 The famous formula “ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi”—later abbrevi- ated into “lex orandi, lex credendi”—is first to be found in the anti-Pelagian “Indiculus” (chapter) that was probably put together by Prosper of Aquitania in Rome some time between 435 and 442. See Denzinger-Hünermann §246 (Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 40th ed., ed. Peter Hünermann [Freiburg: Herder, 2005], 118). 5 See Vatican II, The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, §10 and §33; in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils:Volume II (Trent–Vatican II), ed. Norman P. Tanner, S.J. (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 823 and 827. 6 See Pope Pius XII, Mediator Dei (1947), AAS 39 (1947), 540f. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 177 Now, the second caveat. Because Christ’s abiding and lasting presence in the Eucharistic elements has been affirmed by the Catholic Church’s Magisterium often and in manifold ways, and at the same time has been regarded as integral to the mystery of faith, any theological interpretation of this mystery that draws upon philosophical categories or a comprehensive metaphysics, that is, a comprehensive philosophical interpretation of all that exists, nevertheless remains nothing but a way of making explicit what remains antecedently and inexhaustibly the mystery of faith.7 An interpretation of this mystery is, hence, fundamentally different from “making sense” of it along the lines of resolving a philosophical puzzle—an attempt that a genuine mystery of the faith will always and consistently frustrate. Consequently, even the most profound instantiation of making philosophically explicit what the act of faith assents to about the mystery of faith ever makes exhaustive or even indisputable sense of the mystery so that the act of faith might become a redundant add-on. For the intentionality of the liturgical practice, as well as the act of faith entailed in it, essentially transcends the scope of making philosophically explicit this mystery of faith.8 In the following paragraphs I wish to reconsider one particular tradition of philosophical interpretation that makes explicit Christ’s lasting substantial and hence personal presence in the reserved Blessed Sacrament—the Thomistic account. While the majority of contemporary philosophers might disqualify the metaphysical approach taken by the Thomist tradition as simply not being “à jour,” hermeneutically re-considered, this philosophical interpretation makes explicit the liturgical practice’s most central 7 Cf. the explicit emphasis on the mystery of faith in the opening pages of Pope Benedict XVI’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, §6: “ ‘The mystery of faith!’With these words, spoken immediately after the words of consecration, the priest proclaims the mystery being celebrated and expresses his wonder before the substantial change of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, a reality which surpasses all human understanding. The Eucharist is a ‘mystery of faith’ par excellence: ‘the sum and summary of our faith’ [Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1327].” 8 I am drawing here upon a most helpful distinction employed by Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Maritain, and Thomas G.Weinandy: “Maritain states that where there is mystery ‘the intellect has to penetrate more and more deeply the same object.’ The mystery, by the necessity of its subject matter, remains. . . . Many theologians today, having embraced the Enlightenment presupposition and the scientific method that it fostered, approach theological issues as if they were scientific problems to be solved rather than mysteries to be discerned and clarified. However, the true goal of theological inquiry is not the resolution of theological problems, but the discernment of what the mystery of faith is.” Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 31–32 (emphasis in the original). 178 Reinhard Hütter implication and at the same time remains invulnerable to the single most frequently raised charge against the liturgical practice itself—namely, that it reflects and promotes a misplaced focus on some kind of “thing-like” presence of Christ and consequently perpetuates a reductive reification, and hence a disconcerting distortion of Christ’s personal Eucharistic presence. I shall proceed by offering first a brief word on the history of the slow emergence of the practice of Eucharistic adoration in the life of the Catholic Church; second, a rough adumbration of the practice itself together with its intentionality; third, a reconsideration of some central tenets of Aquinas’s metaphysical way of making explicit the substantial presence of Christ presupposed by and entailed in Eucharistic adoration; and fourth, by way of a methodological postscript, an initial consideration of the proper relationship between theology, philosophy, and liturgy. The Emerging Liturgical Practice of Eucharistic Adoration9 While the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species has arguably been recognized since apostolic times, and while we find early witnesses to the practice of the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament with the desert fathers and with St. Basil, the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament may have begun only in the sixth century in the Cathedral of Lugo, Spain. Certainly, from the eleventh century on, we can observe an increasing prevalence in devotion to the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the tabernacle, and we know that by the twelfth century, St. Thomas Beckett is known to have prayed for King Henry II before the “majesty of the Body of Christ.” The feast of Corpus Christi, instituted by Pope Urban IV in 1264, gathered much of the emerging Eucharistic piety into one feast that gave it focus and expression, and in the fourteenth century, in many monastic communities, the custom emerged to pray the Liturgy of the Hours in front of the exposed Blessed Sacrament. A new development beyond the feast of Corpus Christi, namely the widespread regular worship by the laity of the Holy Eucharist outside of Mass, arose from the traditional Forty Hours Devotion which originated in the early sixteenth century in Milan, Italy, and was probably a commemoration of the forty hours Christ’s body lay in the tomb between his death and resurrection. In 1592, Pope Clement VII gave formal recognition to the devotion and decreed it to be observed in the churches of Rome. In 9 In the following section I rely on the useful works of John A. Hardon, S.J., The History of Eucharistic Adoration: Development of Doctrine in the Catholic Church (Oak Lawn, IL: CMJ Marian Publishers, 1997) and of Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R. and James Monti, In the Presence of Our Lord:The History,Theology, and Psychology of Eucharistic Devotion (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997). Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 179 various stages it spread throughout the Catholic Church: There were Perpetual Eucharistic Associations starting in seventeenth century France and Men’s Nocturnal Adoration Societies beginning in Rome in 1810 that both spread internationally. In 1857, the Forty Hours Devotion was first approved for the diocese of Baltimore, and in 1868 it was extended to all the dioceses of the United States. Most recently, the worship of the Holy Eucharist outside of Mass has been reaffirmed in the documents of liturgical reform issued subsequent to Vatican II.Analogous to the development of doctrine, we can witness in the case of Eucharistic adoration the slow, but organic development of a particular liturgical practice. Although the historical development of this practice is much richer and more complicated than the outline I have provided here, what does seem indisputable is the fact that the contemporary liturgical practice of Eucharistic adoration emerged from an early practice of reserving the consecrated elements. From there it developed through various stages into an increasingly widespread liturgical practice in the Catholic Church, a practice10 that has been repeatedly encouraged and promoted by the Magisterium.11 Explicit Magisterial Confirmation of Eucharistic Adoration Because an integral component of the ongoing traditio of any liturgical practice in the Catholic Church is the way the Church’s Magisterium theologically interprets and thus doctrinally confirms the liturgical practice, we would be in error if we were to regard the magisterial interpretation as somehow simply extrinsic to a proper understanding of the liturgical practice itself. The single most significant doctrinal confirmation in recent times of Eucharistic adoration was the last encyclical letter of the late Pope John Paul II from 2003, Ecclesia de Eucharistia. Allow me to indulge in a somewhat longer citation from this encyclical letter as 10 In the following, I understand “practice” roughly along the lines that Alasdair MacIntyre introduced the concept as being a distinct, describable, and inherently meaningful matrix of actions that are ordered to and regulated by an end that is intrinsic to the practice. I extend this concept analogically to a liturgical rite in order to capture its characteristics as distinct from poiesis (where the activity is a means to an end extrinsic to it) and from theoria or contemplation (where the activity is one essentially of the intellect alone). 11 In his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis from February 22, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI explicitly states: “With the Synod Assembly . . . I heartily recommend to the Church’s pastors and to the People of God the practice of eucharistic adoration, both individually and in community” (§67). More recently, on May 7, 2008, when at the end of the general audience Pope Benedict XVI greeted the sisters of the Order of Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, he renewed his call for Eucharistic adoration (www.zenit.org./article-22517?|=english). 180 Reinhard Hütter section 25 is utterly essential for an understanding of the doctrinal signpost that any authentic philosophical hermeneutics of Eucharistic adoration will need to respect: The worship of the Eucharist outside of the Mass is of inestimable value for the life of the Church.This worship is strictly linked to the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The presence of Christ under the sacred species reserved after Mass—a presence which lasts as long as the species of bread and wine remain—derives from the celebration of the sacrifice and is directed toward communion, both sacramental and spiritual. It is the responsibility of Pastors to encourage, also by their personal witness, the practice of Eucharistic adoration, and exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in particular, as well as prayer of adoration before Christ present under the Eucharistic species. It is pleasant to spend time with him, to lie close to his breast like the Beloved Disciple (cf. Jn 13:25) and to feel the infinite love present in his heart. If in our time Christians must be distinguished above all by the ‘art of prayer,’ how can we not feel a renewed need to spend time in spiritual converse, in silent adoration, in heartfelt love before Christ present in the Most Holy Sacrament? How often, dear brothers and sisters, have I experienced this, and drawn from it strength, consolation and support! This practice, repeatedly praised and recommended by the Magisterium, is supported by the example of many saints. Particularly outstanding in this regard was Saint Alphonsus Liguori, who wrote:“Of all devotions, that of adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the greatest after the sacraments, the one dearest to God and the one most helpful to us.” The Eucharist is a priceless treasure: by not only celebrating it but also by praying before it outside of Mass we are enabled to make contact with the very wellspring of grace. A Christian community desirous of contemplating the face of Christ in the spirit which I proposed in the Apostolic letters Novo Millenio Ineunte and Rosarium Virginis Mariae cannot fail also to develop this aspect of Eucharistic worship, which prolongs and increases the fruits of our communion in the body and blood of the Lord.12 This whole understanding of Christ’s Eucharistic presence builds upon two further fundamental aspects of the Church’s doctrine. The first pertains to the meaning of the Eucharist itself: “The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed” (1 Cor 11:23) instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his body and blood.The words of the Apostle Paul bring us back to the dramatic setting in which the Eucharist was born.The Eucharist is indelibly marked by the event of the Lord’s 12 Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §25. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 181 passion and death, of which it is not only a reminder but a sacramental re-presentation. It is the sacrifice of the Cross perpetuated down the ages. . . .The Church has received the Eucharist from Christ her Lord not as one gift—however precious—among so many others, but as the gift par excellence, for it is the gift of himself, of his person in his sacred humanity, as well as the gift of his saving work. Nor does it remain confined to the past, since “all that Christ is—all that he did and suffered for all men—participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times.” When the Church celebrates the Eucharist, the memorial of her Lord’s death and resurrection, this central event of salvation becomes really present and “the work of our redemption is carried out.”13 The second pertains to the particular kind of Christ’s presence under the sacramental species: Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, must firmly maintain that in objective reality, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the consecration, so that the adorable body and blood of the Lord Jesus from that moment on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine.14 Arguably, the most salient aspect to be made explicit by way of a philosophical hermeneutics of the mystery of the Eucharistic sacrifice and the ensuing Eucharistic adoration is the unique presence of Christ “under the sacramental species of bread and wine.” An Instance of the Contemporary Practice of the Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament In order to get a better sense of what is entailed in this practice, let us turn to one particular contemporary instantiation of it.Very soon after his installation in the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina, Bishop Michael F. Burbidge instituted a “First Friday Vocations Holy Hour” in Sacred Heart Cathedral in Raleigh. Since I have regularly taken part in this holy hour I would like to offer a brief description of this particular instantiation of the liturgical practice of the exposition and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The structure of the liturgical rite is simple and straightforward: exposition, liturgy of the word, Litany of the Holy Eucharist and Lord’s Prayer, benediction, and reposition. 13 Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §11. 14 Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §15, citing Pope Paul VI’s Solemn Profession of Faith from June 30, 1968. Reinhard Hütter 182 After the entrance procession into the cathedral nave of the bishop and the clergy, the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament takes place. In a solemn act of transferal, the bishop, wearing cope15 and humeral veil,16 carries the Blessed Sacrament, also covered by the humeral veil, from the tabernacle to the altar and places it in the monstrance17 on the altar while the congregation kneels. Then the bishop kneels before the altar. After incense18 has been placed in the thurible,19 the bishop incenses the Blessed Sacrament while the congregation sings two stanzas of the hymn “Verbum Supernum Prodiens” (“The Word from Heaven Now Proceeding”),20 a hymn composed by Thomas Aquinas for the office of the feast of Corpus Christi.21 A period of silent prayer concludes the opening part of the liturgy of exposition. A communal prayer opens the subsequent liturgy of the word, which includes a first reading from Scripture, the recitation of the responsorial 15 A cope is an ornate, cloak-like vestment that clergy wear over a white alb and a stole at Benediction and processions. 16 A humeral veil is a scarf-like liturgical garment about eight or nine feet long and two or three feet wide. It is worn over the shoulders. The presiding minister covers his hands with the ends of the veil so that it, not his hands, touches the monstrance at Benediction or during procession of the Blessed Sacrament. 17 A monstrance is a sacred vessel used for the exposition and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. 18 Incense is granulated or powdered aromatic resin that, when sprinkled on glowing coals in a thurible (censer), becomes a fragrant cloud of smoke that symbolizes prayer rising to God. 19 See footnote 18. 20 The two stanzas sung are: O salutaris Hostia Quae coeli pandis ostium. Bella premunt hostilia; Da robur, fer auxilium. O sacrifice for our salvation Heavenly Gates You open wide. Our enemies press hard around us. Give us strength; our help provide. Uni trinoque Domino Sit sempiterna gloria: Qui vitam sine termino, Nobis donet in patria. Amen. To the One and Triune God, Be glory and eternal praise. May He grant us life forever And to our home our souls upraise. The English translation here provided is taken from The Aquinas Prayer Book:The Prayers and Hymns of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. and ed. Robert Anderson and Johann Moser (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2000), 99. 21 See “Officium de Festo Corporis Christi ad mandatum Urbani Papae IV dictum Festum instituentis,” in Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula Theologica, vol. 2 (Rome: Marietti, 1954), 275–81; 279. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 183 psalm, and a period of silent prayer and meditation with subsequent Gospel acclamation, Gospel reading, and a homily.An extended period of silent prayer and meditation is concluded by communal intercessions that complete the liturgy of the word. The following major part of the rite is called the Litany of the Holy Eucharist. It comprises a litany in which Christ is addressed with many attributes that name central aspects of his life, death, and resurrection, and in which he is beseeched with the words “Lord, have mercy,” “Christ, hear us,” and “Christ, graciously hear us.” The litany is concluded with the following prayer: Most merciful Father, You continue to draw us to Yourself Through the Eucharistic Mystery. Grant us fervent faith in this Sacrament of love, in which Christ the Lord Himself is contained, offered and received. We make this prayer through the same Christ our Lord. Then the Lord’s Prayer follows. At its conclusion the bishop approaches the altar, genuflects, and then kneels while the congregation also kneels. As the bishop kneels, the congregation sings two stanzas of the hymn “Pange, Lingua, Gloriosi” (Acclaim, My Tongue, This Mystery)22 (also composed by Thomas Aquinas for the office of the feast of Corpus Christi)23 and the bishop incenses the Blessed Sacrament.After the hymn the bishop rises and offers the following prayer: 22 The two stanzas are: Tantum ergo Sacramentum Veneremur cernui: Et antiquum documentum Novo cedat ritui: Praestet fides supplementum Sensuum defectui. So great a sacrament, therefore, Let us revere while kneeling down. Let old laws yield To this new rite. Let faith, not sense, Conviction ground. Genitori, Genitoque Laus et iubilatio, Salus, honor, virtus quoque Sit et benedictio: Procedenti ab utroque Compar sit laudatio. Amen. Praise and jubilation to the Father Honor, virtue, blessing to the Son; And to the One Who proceeds from both In equal measure may praise be sung. The English translation here provided is taken from The Aquinas Prayer Book, 91. 23 Thomas Aquinas, “Officium de Festo Corporis Christi,” 275f. 184 Reinhard Hütter Lord Jesus Christ, you gave us the Eucharist as the memorial of your suffering and death. May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood help us to experience the salvation you won for us and the peace of the kingdom where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. After the prayer the benediction takes place.The bishop puts on the humeral veil, genuflects, covers his hands with the ends of the veil so that, once again, the veil, not his hands, touches the monstrance, then takes it and makes the sign of the cross with the monstrance over the congregation, in silence. After the benediction the reposition of the Blessed Sacrament takes place. The bishop returns to the front of the altar, kneels, and leads the assembly in the Divine Praises,24 after which he removes the Blessed Sacrament from the monstrance, covers it with the humeral veil, and by way of a solemn transferal from the altar, reposits the sacrament in the tabernacle. The bishop and the clergy bow to the altar and leave the cathedral while the congregation sings the hymn “Holy God, we praise thy name.”25 24 The Divine Praises are as follows: Blessed be God. Blessed be His Holy Name. Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man. Blessed be the name of Jesus. Blessed be His Most Sacred Heart. Blessed be His Most Precious Blood. Blessed be Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy. Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception. Blessed be her glorious Assumption. Blessed be the name of Mary,Virgin and Mother. Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse. Blessed be God in His angels and in His Saints. 25 This somewhat detailed description of one particular liturgical instantiation of Eucharistic adoration seems to be warranted in light of the fact that even in this ecumenical day and age most non-Catholic Christians are in grave danger of misunderstanding or misconstruing this liturgical practice. John Henry Newman made famous an egregious case of misconstrual in mid-nineteenth century Birmingham, England. In his rightly acclaimed Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England Addressed to the Brothers of the Oratory in the Summer of 1851, he has made immemorial in the sixth lecture the observations that a “young Protestant Scripture Reader” gathered from attending a single time the liturgy of Eucharistic benediction at the Oratory chapel in Birmingham. Instead of citing the outlandish misconstrual itself—quite worthwhile to read—I will offer Newman’s own brief description of the benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. For his account bears Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 185 In the course of participating in this particular liturgical rite of Eucharistic adoration for more than a year, I must admit it has become second-nature and is, next to the Eucharistic liturgy itself, undoubtedly the most important communal liturgical practice I am involved in. Over time, it has taught me to appreciate more deeply the Eucharist itself, and in and through it the unfathomable personal presence of Christ in his Eucharistic self-giving by way of his body and blood. Furthermore, the regular participation in this rite of Eucharistic adoration has tangibly increased my desire for sacramental communion and encouraged an ever deeper contemplation of the salvation wrought by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Also, having been drawn ever deeper into the intentionality of eloquent witness to the organic continuity between one particular form of the liturgical practice of Eucharistic adoration in the 1850s at the Oratory chapel in Birmingham and another, though more elaborate, instantiation of this liturgical practice at the Cathedral of Raleigh, N.C., in the years 2006/07: “I need hardly observe to you, my Brothers, that the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is one of the simplest rites of the Church.The priests enter and kneel down; one of them unlocks the Tabernacle, takes out the Blessed Sacrament, inserts it upright in a Monstrance of precious metal, and sets it in a conspicuous place above the altar, in the midst of lights, for all to see. The people then begin to sing; meanwhile the Priest twice offers incense to the King of heaven, before whom he is kneeling. Then he takes the Monstrance in his hands, and turning to the people, blesses them with the Most Holy, in the form of a cross, while the bell is sounded by one of the attendants to call attention to the ceremony. It is our Lord’s solemn benediction of His people, as when He lifted up His hands over the children, or when He blessed His chosen ones whom He ascended up from Mount Olivet.As sons might come before a parent before going to bed at night, so, once or twice a week the great Catholic family comes before the Eternal Father, after the bustle or toil of the day, and He smiles upon them, and sheds upon them the light of His countenance. It is a full accomplishment of what the Priest invoked upon the Israelites,‘The Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord show His face to thee and have mercy on thee; the Lord turn his countenance to thee and give thee peace.’ Can there be a more touching rite, even in the judgment of those who do not believe in it? How many a man, not a Catholic, is moved on seeing it, to say ‘Oh, that I did but believe it!’ when he sees the Priest take up the Fount of Mercy, and the people bent low in adoration! It is one of the most beautiful, natural, and soothing actions of the Church—not so, however, in the judgment of our young Protestant Scripture Reader, to whom I now return.” John Henry Newman, Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England, ed. Daniel M. O’Connell, S.J. (New York:The America Press, 1942), 195f. If the cryptic reference to the “young Protestant Scripture Reader” does indeed arouse the reader’s desire to know what he thought was going on, I can only say: “Tolle, lege! Pick it up and read it!” The reader will encounter a rather bizarre instance of anti-Catholic prejudice, not all together untypical for nineteenth century England and, I fear, not completely beyond the range of possibilities even in this ecumenical era. 186 Reinhard Hütter this liturgical practice, I increasingly realized that it was I who was being re-focused while the liturgy unfolded. Why? Because the intentionality inscribed into the liturgical practice is its utter transparency to Christ’s real, substantial, and hence personal presence. Three Kinds of Christ’s Presence: By Way of the Divine Essence, by Way of the Mission of the Holy Spirit, and by Way of Christ’s Substantial Personal Presence, Body, Soul, and Divinity The nature of Christ’s real, substantial, and personal presence presupposed in the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament can be distinguished from two other kinds of presence of Christ, two kinds of presence that indeed are both implicitly entailed in the practice of Eucharistic adoration. However, neither one of these two kinds of presence are definitive of the adoration of the reserved sacrament—though skeptics of and opponents to this kind of liturgical practice would accept at most only these two kinds of presence to obtain in it. However, the liturgical rite of the solemn exposition of the Holy Eucharist has inscribed in the very structure of its intentionality26, its constitutive liturgical gestures and words of adoration—especially the genuflecting, the kneeling, and the particular set of liturgical actions around the solemn exposition and reposition of the Blessed Sacrament, the prayers, and hymns—a quite unique kind of Christ’s presence (one that is specifically different from the other two kinds of presence). There is, first, the general presence of the triune God in all creatures by way of the one divine essence.27 This kind of presence can in principle, 26 While the intentionality of the rite is embedded in its structure, that is, in the words of the prayers and litanies, as well as in all the gestures and liturgical actions from the side of the presiding minister and the congregation, for this intentionality to be properly effective, it depends upon the intentional submission to it by each participant in this liturgy. That is, as—and to the degree to which—the participants, by way of the act of faith, intentionally conform themselves to the liturgical rite, so does the structural intentionality embedded in the rite come into effect. In short, representing the intentionality of the rite in the context of a classroom demonstration in a seminary course on liturgy or in the context of a movie or theater play does not bring per se the structural intentionality embedded in the rite into effect. 27 For a classical formulation and defense of this kind of presence of the Creator in the creature, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 8, a. 1: “God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident; but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately, and touch it by its power; hence it is proved in Physic. vii that the thing moved and the mover must be joined together. Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be His proper effect; as to ignite Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 187 however rarely de facto, be recognized by way of a sustained act of metaphysical contemplation, that is, without an explicit act of faith.28 There is, second, the presence of Christ where two or three are gathered in his name, a presence arguably mediated by the mission of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.This kind of presence is recognized by way of an explicit act of faith, that is, the intellect’s assent, prompted through grace by the will, to embrace Christ’s promise to be thus present. And, of course, the liturgical practice of the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament includes both of these kinds of presence. For it involves obviously the being and activity of creatures, and it is at the same time quite obviously a gathering of the faithful in Christ’s name. However, while undoubtedly essential to this liturgical practice, neither kind of presence is the characteristic and defining feature of Eucharistic adoration. Rather, the structural intentionality embedded in the specifics of the liturgical actions, prayers, and hymns surpasses both kinds of presence. For the intentionality of the liturgical practice in all its components is solely focused by the Blessed Sacrament itself. I shall briefly elaborate this claim. The liturgical gestures, actions, prayers, and hymns indicate two things. One, divine worship (“before whom every knee shall bend”) of the unique personal presence of Christ is essentially connected to his Eucharistic self-gift, a presence that is not limited to or by the liturgy of Eucharistic adoration itself, but antecedes it and continues after its completion (entailed in the sacrament’s exposition and reposition). Pope Benedict XVI puts the matter succinctly in Sacramentum Caritatis: “In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us; eucharistic adoration is simply the natural consequence of the eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church’s supreme act of adoration. . . .The act of is the proper effect of fire. Now God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being. . . .Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing. . . . Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.” All citations from the Summa theologiae (ST) in English are taken from the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Summa theologiae (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948). The Latin original offered in the notes is taken from Sancti Thomae de Aquino, Summa theologiae, 3rd ed. (Turin: Edizioni San Paolo, 1999), which offers an improved version of the Leonine edition. 28 For a defense of such a possibility and the severe limitations of its de facto realization, see the discussion in my essay “The Directedness of Reasoning and the Metaphysics of Creation,” in Paul J. Griffiths and Reinhard Hütter, eds., Reason and the Reasons of Faith (London/New York:T, & T. Clark International, 2005), 160–93. 188 Reinhard Hütter adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself.”29 Two, the Blessed Sacrament is, indeed, utterly central in this act of worship. For the Blessed Sacrament provides the proximate focus of the liturgical practice. However,“focus” may not be understood along the lines our intellectual gaze usually operates.30 For the liturgical rite does not engender a focused intellectual gaze upon the Eucharistic host as a distinct, integral “object” or “thing” that arrests the intellectual gaze, as any other small, distinctly discernible sensible object at mid-range distance might do. For such an arresting of the intellectual gaze, the Eucharistic host, as we will see later, lacks the necessary substance. Rather, precisely as “the natural consequence of the eucharistic celebration,”31 the liturgical practice by way of faith alone produces a transportation of the intellectual gaze beyond the range of what is perceptible to the senses to Christ’s substantive personal presence in his Eucharistic self-gift.The proximate focus of what is accessible to the senses, then, by holding the senses in suspense, directs the intellectual gaze to the substance of the sacrament, that is, the undiminished personal identity of Christ, body, soul, and divinity. However, the very substance of Christ, body, soul, and divinity, does not allow the intellectual gaze to arrest at some distinct point “behind” what is perceptible to the senses, but rather, the intellectual gaze is aided by the assent of faith. This then continues to draw the intellectual gaze further and further into the luminous night of an ineffable and surpassing substantial presence that the intellect, in virtue of the assent of faith, can darkly apprehend but never fully comprehend. What kind of philosophical hermeneutics is able to make explicit the characteristic feature of this particular kind of divine presence that is definitive of Eucharistic adoration? Eucharistic adoration seems to call for a philosophical interpretation that is able to conceive of the particular kind of presence that is definitive of this liturgical practice as one essentially independent of the liturgical rite of adoration itself; that is, a kind of presence that antecedes and hence gives rise to the liturgical practice and also continues after its conclusion. Moreover, Eucharistic adoration seems to require also a philosophical interpretation that is capable of making explicit the genuine sign-character of the Blessed Sacrament, as well as the 29 Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, §66. 30 For an astute phenomenological analysis of the intellectual gaze, for which I have great sympathy and from which I have learned considerably, see Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being, trans.Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 31 Sacramentum Caritatis, §66. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 189 abiding personal somatic presence of Christ integral to the sacrament in such a way that even the slightest intimation of idolatry is absolutely avoided.That is, what is worshipped in the liturgical practice of Eucharistic adoration must need be essentially divine, and the intention of the worshippers must need be focused by and drawn into the abyss of Christ’s abiding personal presence itself—body, soul, and divinity—and not be arrested by the visible features of the material object. Hence, the intellect of the worshippers must somehow behold, not what is materially constitutive of the creaturely sign, but—precisely by way of the sign—the very substance of the One who is worshipped in the liturgical practice. I would like to submit that Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysical way of making Christ’s Eucharistic presence explicit fulfills all of these requirements.32 Thomas Aquinas: Metaphysical Contemplation in Service of Making Intellectually Explicit a Mystery of Faith For Thomas Aquinas, sacramental conversion in the Eucharist is a mystery of faith in the strict sense.That is, it depends completely on divine revelation as unfolded by way of sacra doctrina. And sacra doctrina, according to Thomas, is constituted by nothing else than the simplicity of faith that rests on divine authority and embraces the truth as proposed in sacra pagina, Scripture.This fundamental understanding of revealed truth being essentially a participation in the scientia Dei et beatorum finds a terse expression in Summa theologiae III, q. 75, a. 1, the opening article of the question on sacramental conversion: The presence of Christ’s true body and blood in this sacrament cannot be detected by sense, nor understanding, but by faith alone [sola fide], which rests upon Divine authority. Hence, in Luke xxii, 19: This is My body, which shall be delivered up for you, Cyril says: Doubt not whether this be true; but take rather the Saviour’s words with faith; for since He is the Truth, He lieth not.33 32 I regard Jean-Luc Marion’s profound and stimulating reflections on the Eucharist and on Eucharistic adoration in the Horse-texte of his God Without Being (161–97) as compatible with my re-reading of Thomas and the Thomist tradition. The issues of difference pertain to matters of dispute between a phenomenological approach indebted to Husserl’s idealist turn and an approach indebted to what some have termed the “philosophia perennis.” For an excellent recent introduction to the latter from which I have learned much, see Benedict M. Ashley, OP, The Way toward Wisdom: An Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). 33 ST III, q. 75, a. 1:“[V]erum corpus Christi et sanguinem esse in hoc sacramento, non sensu deprehendi potest, sed sola fide, quae auctoritati divinae innititur. Unde super illud Luc. 22, [19], Hoc est corpus meum quod pro vobis tradetur, dicit 190 Reinhard Hütter It is deceptively simple but profoundly significant what Thomas is doing here: first, he is alluding to Christ’s words of consecration according to the Gospel of Luke.34 The dominical words themselves, taken in the sensus literalis, constitute the initial point of departure.35 Second, this point of departure is itself received, since it represents the Church’s own understanding of the sensus literalis. In order to make this crucial point plain,Thomas cites St. Cyril of Alexandria, who enjoins the readers of his own commentary on the Gospel of Luke to take Christ simply at his word, because he is the truth: “Doubt not whether this be true; but take rather the Saviour’s words with faith; for since He is the Truth, He lieth not.”36 That is,Thomas lets the one authority among the Fathers who is most intimately associated with the dogma of Chalcedon make the fundamental point about Who is speaking about Himself. Third, we can observe here how Thomas displays what he calls the subalternate character of sacra doctrina as scientia in ST I, q. 1, a. 2: [S]acred doctrine is a science, because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed [scientia Dei et beatorum]. Hence, just as the musician accepts on authority [tradita ] the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God.37 Consequently, in our instance, the first move of sacra doctrina as the subalternate scientia of us wayfarers short of the beatific vision is, by way of the Cyrillus: Non dubites an hoc verum sit, sed potius suscipe verba Salvatoris in fide: cum enim sit veritas, non mentitur.” 34 “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And likewise the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’ ” (Lk 22: 19–20 [RSV]). 35 Aquinas’s point here is far from unreflectively naïve, as in some regrettably “premodern” sense which we see ourselves forced to transcend toward some higher, critical perspective. Rather, the Church’s understanding, that is, traditio itself, reads this text as Deus ipse loquitur. Hence, when modern historical-critical exegetes are intent upon reconstructing the words of consecration as early post-Easter tradition and not as the words of the “historical” Jesus himself, their work is to be gratefully received into a deeper theological understanding of the very apostolic paradosis whence arose the New Testament. For this is precisely what traditio is all about: the reception of God’s Word in the Church that is Christ’s body. 36 Patrologia Graeca, vol. 72, p. 92. 37 ST I, q. 1, a. 2: “Et hoc modo sacra doctrina est scientia: quia procedit ex principiis notis lumine superioris scientiae, quae scilicet est scientia Dei et beatorum. Unde sicut musica credit principia tradita sibi ab arithmetico, ita doctrina sacra credit principia revelato sibi a Deo.” Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 191 Church’s understanding—traditio—the reception of a truth (that is, of a communication of the scientia Dei et beatorum ) that is not to be interpreted in light of some other more authoritative, profound, or illuminating text of Scripture itself. Rather, Christ Himself speaks, Christus ipse locutus est. While God, being Scripture’s ultimate author,38 surely speaks by way of and through all of Scripture, so the dominical words are exceptional, since they directly appeal to the immediate assent of faith. Remember that Thomas understands faith as adhering to the First Truth. In ST II–II, q. 5, a. 3, ad 2 he states: [F]aith adheres to all the articles of faith by reason of one mean, viz., on account of the First Truth proposed to us in the Scriptures, according to the teaching of the Church who has the right understanding of them.39 According to the Church’s right understanding of the first truth, that is, according to the doctrina Ecclesiae, in Luke 22:19 “the First Truth proposed to us in the Scriptures” speaks Himself, and St. Cyril’s theological judgment (together with St. Hilary’s and St.Ambrose’s teaching as adduced in the sed contra) represents for Thomas paradigmatically “the teaching of the Church that has the right understanding of [the Scriptures].” Hence, in the third part of the Summa theologiae, in the opening article on the question of the conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ,Thomas asserts up front that sacra doctrina is first and foremost the act 40 of faith adhering to the First Truth in the concrete instance of its selfcommunication as apostolically mediated and interpreted by the doctrina Ecclesiae. It is this divinely revealed, and doctrinally received and mediated, principium that forms the indispensable starting point for the subsequent metaphysical contemplation. Hence, the truth of faith is emphatically not established by the ensuing metaphysical contemplation; rather, having been established by the First Truth Himself as taught by the doctrina Ecclesiae, metaphysical contemplation solely makes explicit the mystery of faith. For Thomas and the Thomist tradition, the truth of faith does not depend on a successful metaphysical defense or even proof; rather the revealed truth itself elicits the metaphysical contemplation which makes explicit the truth’s 38 ST I, q. 1, a. 10: “[A]uctor sacrae Scriptura est Deus.” 39 ST II–II, q. 5, a. 3, ad 2: “[O]mnibus articulis fidei inhaeret fides propter unum medium, scilicet propter veritatem primam propositam nobis in Scripturis secundum doctrinam Ecclesiae intellectis sane.” 40 For doctrina not as a “thing” but an act, see Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, “That the Faithful Become the Temple of God,” in Reading John with St.Thomas Aquinas, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 293–311. 192 Reinhard Hütter inherent intelligibility as a mystery of faith and contributes to a more comprehensive and penetrating intellectual reception of it. Making Explicit: Metaphysical Contemplation An elucidation of the metaphysical contemplation in Aquinas is in order here. Referring to Thomas’s commentary on the Neoplatonic Liber de causis, Ralph McInerny identifies three “disarming assumptions” that capture Thomas’s understanding of philosophy in a nutshell.They are: (1) that all philosophers are in principle engaged in the same enterprise; (2) that truths he has learned from Aristotle are simply truths, not “Aristotelian tenets”; and (3) consequently that such truths as one finds in Neoplatonism or anywhere else must be compatible with truths already known. This is the basis for saying that Thomism is not a kind of philosophy.41 Hence, it would be profoundly wrong, although not at all uncommon, to assume that Thomas submits a “theory” of the Eucharistic conversion. Rather, always proceeding conceptually from what is easier to what is more difficult to understand,Thomas analogically extends the “natural hearing,” the inquiry into material being and subsequently into immaterial being as undertaken in Aristotle’s Physics and extended in his Metaphysics, in order to guide the metaphysical contemplation into what remains irreducibly a mystery of faith, the intellectus, however, inevitably having to take departure, by analogical extension, from the world we know.42 Consequently, in the present intellectual context one can never recall often enough that—as John Wippel aptly put it—Thomas holds first and foremost in his theory of knowledge that “the order of thought is based upon the order of reality and reflects it. Because words in turn reflect thoughts, by attending to distinctive modes of predication we may ultimately discern different modes of being.”43 Differently put,“supreme and 41 Ralph McInerny, Praeambula Fidei:Thomism and the God of the Philosophers (Wash- ington, DC:The Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 175, n. 6. 42 In its document “On the Interpretation of Dogmas,” the International Theolog- ical Commission reminds us unequivocally that this very procedure is indeed of an enduring importance for the interpretation of the mysteries of faith: “It was already the First Vatican Council which taught that a deeper insight into the mysteries of faith may be possible in considering them by way of analogy with natural knowledge and relating them to the ultimate goal of human beings (DS 3016).” Origins 20/1 (17 May, 1990), 13. 43 John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 216. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 193 diverse modes of predication (as expressed in the predicaments) . . . follow from and depend upon supreme and diverse modes of being.”44 Hence, according to Thomas, we discover these supreme modes of being precisely by attending to the diverse modes of predication.45 The classical locus where Thomas exposits on this fundamental insight of Aristotle is in his commentary on Book III of Aristotle’s Physics, in lecture 5 (#322): [Being] is divided according to the diverse modes of existing. But modes of existing are proportional to the modes of predicating. For when we predicate something of another, we say this is that. Hence the ten genera of being are called the ten predicaments. Now every predication is made in one of three ways. One way is when that which pertains to the essence is predicated of some subject, as when I say Socrates is a man, or man is an animal.The predication of substance is in this way.46 The predicament “substance” connotes what subsists in itself. Differently put, of any existing thing, substance connotes nothing apart from the thing, but the thing itself. Every finite substance has need of further perfections, called accidents, which are connoted by the remaining nine predicaments of Aristotle’s list. That is, substance and accident must be treated in mutual relation, since accident is a principle that complements 44 Ibid., 211. 45 “The mode or way in which words signify does not immediately follow upon the mode of being of such things, but only as mediated by the way in which such things are understood. To put this another way, words are likenesses or signs of thoughts, and thoughts themselves are likenesses of things, as Thomas recalls from Bk I of Aristotle’s De interpretatione” (Wippel, op. cit., 211). That is, “Thomas follows Aristotle in singling out being as it exists outside the mind and is divided into ten predicaments. . . .Therefore, in whatever ways being is predicated, in so many ways is esse signified, that is, in so many ways is something signified to be” (Wippel, op.cit., 212). For an excellent analysis of this complex matter, see also John P. O’Callaghan, Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn:Toward a More Perfect Form of Existence (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003). 46 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, trans. Richard J. Blackwell, Richard J. Spath, and W. Edmund Thirlkel (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1999), 160 (#322):“Ad horum igitur evidentiam sciendum est quod ens dividitur in decem praedicamenta non univoce, sicut genus in species, sed secundum diversum modum essendi. Modi autem essendi proportionales sunt modis praedicandi. Praedicando enim aliquid de aliquo alstero, dicimus hoc esse illud: unde et decem genera entis dicuntur decem praedicamenta.Tripliciter autem fit omnis praedicatio. Unus quidem modus est, quando de aliquo subiecto praedicatur id quod pertinet ad essentiam eius, ut cum dico Socrates est homo, vel homo est animal; et secundum hoc accipitur praedicamentum substantiae” (In III Phys., lectio 5 [#322]). 194 Reinhard Hütter substance and together with it, through their common existence, constitutes the individually existing thing. In short, substance is not a separable thing by itself, but a metaphysical co-principle in composition with all its attributes. Hence, substance cannot be without at least some accidents. If we were to consider substance in general, this would suffice. But in Eucharistic conversion we deal with the conversion of material substances.47 And because of this, we need to attend to the one accident necessarily proper to any material substance: quantity. Quantity is a determination of being which gives extension to a material substance, hence “dimensive” quantity. Without quantity, a material substance would have no distinguishable parts, no parts outside of parts (partes extra partes). Everything would “flow into each other” in the sense that there would be no spatial relationship anymore between the parts.48 While quantity gives to material substance its dimensions, its intrinsic measure by way of the order of parts, the parts themselves are constituted and sustained by the substance itself.49 The latter circumstance reminds us that, indeed, quantity modifies the being of substance by giving it the extension of space and hence relates intrinsically to the substance. Consequently, quantity is not something apposed into the closest proximity to substance. Rather, quantity is of the substance as the first of the other accidents that inhere by way of quantity in the substance. We can begin to see now the central role the predicamentals substance and quantity play in Thomas’s metaphysical elucidation of the theological truth that indeed nothing less than the whole Christ is contained under this sacrament. However, might Thomas’s concentration on the predicamentals substance and quantity in the elucidation of the Eucharistic mystery not be ever so 47 Immersing myself seriously in the arresting details of Thomas’s demanding meta- physical contemplation of the Eucharistic conversion as a trans-substantiation in the strict metaphysical sense would go far beyond the scope of this particular essay. For a penetrating analysis of the metaphysical details of transubstantiation as well as a superb defense of Aquinas’s position on this matter, one I completely concur with, see Stephen Brock, “St. Thomas and the Eucharistic Conversion,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 529–65. 48 Leo J. Elders, S.V.D., Die Naturphilosophie des Thomas von Aquin (Weilheim-Bierbronnen: Gustav-Siewerth-Akademie, 2004), 75. He is drawing his image from John of St. Thomas, Cursus Philosophicus I, Log., p. II, q. XVI, art. 1, 466: “In sententia S.Thomae propria et formalis ratio quantitatis est extensio partium in ordine ad totum, quod est reddere partes formaliter integrantes. Unde remota quantitate, substantia non habet partes integrales formaliter in ratione partis ordinatas et distinctas.” 49 John of St.Thomas, Cursus Philosophicus I, Log., p. II, q. XVI, art. 1 (Paris:Vivès, 1883), 464: “[Q]uantitas dicitur praebere partes integrales substantiae, non constituendo illas, sed ordinando inter se. Et haec ordinatio accidentalis est.” Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 195 subtly reductive in that such a concentration ultimately distracts from the fact that Christ’s sacramental presence is a fundamentally personal presence? Might not the focus on “substance” and “quantity” give rise to a Eucharistic “essentialism” that obscures the fact that Christ’s presence is irreducibly personal? In order to address this question we must realize first of all that the terminus of the Eucharistic conversion is the substance of Christ’s body in its respective present state.At the Last Supper, Christ was present to the twelve apostles in his natural mode as the incarnate Son of the Father instituting the Eucharist and thereby marking the very beginning of “his hour,” his self-oblation to the Father on the Cross for the sake of “the many.” His substantial, corporeal presence in the sacrament was that of his natural body in its concrete state at the beginning of his passion. At each subsequent celebration of the Eucharist after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, Christ’s sacramental presence is that of his glorified bodily existence in heaven. Christ’s body and blood are accompanied (concomitari) by all that is really associated with them in his everlasting glorified state: in virtue of Christ’s human nature, his human soul, and in virtue of the hypostatic union, the divinity of the Logos. Through real concomitance, due to the integral subsistence of the risen Christ in heaven, nothing less than the whole person of Christ is in the Blessed Sacrament. Because Thomas is absolutely unequivocal on this matter, it is worth citing him at length on this crucial point: It is absolutely necessary to confess according to Catholic faith that the entire Christ is in this sacrament.Yet we must know that there is something of Christ in this sacrament in a twofold manner: first, as it were, by the power of the sacrament; secondly, from natural concomitance. By the power of the sacrament, there is under the species of this sacrament that into which the pre-existing substance of the bread and wine is changed, as expressed by the words of the form, which are effective in this as in the other sacraments; for instance, by the words—This is My body, or This is My blood. But from natural concomitance there is also in this sacrament that which is really united with that thing wherein the aforesaid conversion is terminated. For if any two things be really united, then wherever the one is really, there must the other also be: since things really united together are only distinguished by an operation of the mind.50 50 ST III, q. 76, a. 1: “[O]mnino necesse est confiteri secundum fidem Catholicam quod totus Christus sit in hoc sacramento. Sciendum tamen quod aliquid Christi est in hoc sacramento dupliciter: uno modo, quasi ex vi sacramenti; alio modo, ex naturali concomitantia. Ex vi quidem sacramenti, est sub specibus huius sacramenti id in quod directe convertitur substantia panis et vini praeexistens, prout significatur per verba formae, quae sunt effectiva in hoc sacramento sicut et in ceteris: 196 Reinhard Hütter Since the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ are really united and only distinguished from each other by an operation of the human mind, it would be theologically misguided from the very outset to drive a wedge—and thus create a false dichotomy—between the substantial and the personal presence of Christ in the sacrament. The presence in the sacrament of the substance of Christ’s body and the substance of Christ’s blood entails by way of real concomitance the real substantial presence of Christ’s undiminished humanity, body and soul; and the real presence of the undiminished substance of Christ’s humanity, in virtue of the hypostatic union with the Divine Word, entails the personal presence of the Logos; and the latter, by way of a mediated concomitance, indeed entails, due to the circumincession of Father, Son, and Spirit, also the personal presence of the Father and the Spirit.51 Hence, all that is intrinsic to Christ’s personhood in virtue of the incarnation (his undiminished concrete humanity, body and soul) as well as all that is constitutive of his personhood in virtue of the divine Sonship (the subsistent Trinitarian relations) is present in the sacrament. On the basis of the principle of real concomitance,Thomas holds that the whole Christ is contained under each species of the sacrament; however, in each case differently. Under the species of the wine, by the power of the sacrament, only the substance of Christ’s blood is present, and because of real concomitance, his body, soul, and divinity. Under the species of the bread, by the power of the sacrament, only the substance of his body is present, and because of real concomitance his blood, soul, and divinity. Let us be mindful at this point that none of this is, of course, to be misunderstood, and hence all too quickly dismissed, as the allegedly typical way of the “scholastics” carrying matters to the extreme, but rather as a faithful and straightforwardly literal interpretation of Christ’s word’s of consecration at the Last Supper. The explanatory power of the predicamentals “substance” and “quantity” becomes surpassingly evident when in the third article of question 76 Thomas discusses the way in which it is to be taken that the whole puta cum dicitur, Hoc est corpus meum. Hic est sanguis meus. Ex naturali autem concomitantia est in hoc sacramento illud quod realiter est coniunctum ei in quod praedicta conversio terminatur. Si enim aliqua duo sunt realiter coniuncta, ubicumque est unum realiter, oportet et aliud esse: sola enim operatione animae discernuntur quae realiter sunt coniuncta.” 51 This latter extension of concomitance is, I think, rightly held by Reginald GarrigouLagrange, O.P. in his De Eucharistia accedunt De Paenitentia quaestiones dogmaticae Commentarius in Summam theologicam S.Thomae (Rome: Marietti, 1943), 148, a position that in principle we can find also in Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1951), 479–82. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 197 Christ is entirely under every part of the species of bread and wine. Consider the second objection in order to feel the full force of the issue at stake, for this objection presses quite appropriately what the real presence of the concrete physical nature of Christ’s body does indeed entail: [S]ince Christ’s is an organic body, it has parts determinately distant; for a determinate distance of the individual parts from each other is of the very nature of an organic body, as that of eye from eye, and eye from ear. But this could not be so, if Christ were entire under every part of the species; for every part would have to be under every other part, and so where one part would be, there another part would be. It cannot be then that the entire Christ is under every part of the host or of the wine contained in the chalice.52 In his response,Thomas properly extends his use of the principle of real concomitance. By the power of the sacrament, the substance of Christ’s body is in the sacrament; because of real concomitance, the dimensive quantity of Christ’s body is also there—the latter, as we came to understand earlier, indeed being indispensable for the proper constitution of a material substance. Consequently, Christ’s body is in this sacrament per modum substantiae, substantially, that is, “not after the manner of dimensions, which means, not in the way in which the dimensive quantity of a body is under the dimensive quantity of a place.”53 The explanatory power of the metaphysical principle of substance and its ontological precedence in relation to all the accidents, including dimensive quantity, carries far. Let us consider Thomas’s response to the second objection: The determinative distance of parts in an organic body is based upon its dimensive quantity; but the nature of substance precedes even dimensive quantity. And since the conversion of the substance of the bread is terminated at the substance of the body of Christ, and since according to the manner of substance the body of Christ is properly and directly in this sacrament; such distance of parts is indeed in Christ’s 52 ST III, q. 76, a. 3, obj. 2: “[C]orpus Christi, cum sit organicum, habet partes determinate distantes: est enim de ratione organici corporis determinata distantia singularum partium ad invicem, sicut oculi ab oculo, et oculi ab aure. Sed hoc non posset esse si sub qualibet parte specierum esset totus Christus: oporteret enim quod sub qualibet parte esset quaelibet pars; et ita, ubi esset una pars, esset et alia. Non ergo potest esse quod totus Christus sit sub qualibet parte hostiae vel vini contenti in calice.” 53 ST III, q. 76, a. 3: “[C]orpus Christi est in hoc sacramento per modum substantiae, idest, per modum quo substantia est sub dimensionibus: non autem per modum dimensionum, idest, non per illum modum quo quantitatis dimensiva alicuius corporis est sub quantitate dimensiva loci.” 198 Reinhard Hütter true body, which, however, is not compared to this sacrament according to such distance, but according to the manner of its substance. . . .54 In an additional step of deepening his argument,Thomas shows in which way we can understand that indeed the whole dimensive quantity of Christ’s body is in the sacrament. We find the crucial axiom he applies already in the sed contra of article four of question 76: The existence of the dimensive quantity of any body cannot be separated from the existence of its substance. But in this sacrament the entire substance of Christ’s body is present. . . . Therefore the entire dimensive quantity of Christ’s body is in the sacrament.55 In his response, Thomas draws upon the by now familiar distinction between what is present by the power of the sacrament and what is present because of real concomitance. Vi sacramenti, the conversion is terminated at the substance of Christ’s body and clearly not at the dimensions of the body for, after all, the dimensive quantity of the bread clearly remains after the consecration. Applying the axiom of the sed contra that the existence of the dimensive quantity of any body cannot be separated from its substance, he then adds the following: “Nevertheless, since the substance of Christ’s body is not really deprived of its dimensive quantity and its other accidents, hence it comes that by reason of real concomitance the whole dimensive quantity of Christ’s body and all its other accidents are in this sacrament.”56 In the response to the first objection he puts the decisive point even more succinctly: Since, then, the substance of Christ’s body is present on the altar by the power of this sacrament, while its dimensive quantity is there concomi54 ST III, q. 76, a. 3 ad 2: “[I]lla determinata distantia partium in corpore organico fundatur super quantitatem dimensivam ipsius; ipsa autem natura substantiae praecedit etiam quantitatem dimensivam. Et quia conversio substantiae panis directe terminatur ad substantiam corporis Christi, secundum cuius modum proprie et directe est in hoc sacramento corpus Christi, talis distantia partium est quidem in ipso corpore Christi vero, sed non secundum hanc distantiam comparatur ad hoc sacramentum, sed secundum modum suae substantiae. . . .” 55 ST III, q. 76, a. 4, sed contra:“[Q]uantitas dimensiva corporis alicuius non separatur secundum esse a substantia eius. Sed in hoc sacramento est tota substantia corporis Christi. . . . Ergo tota quantitas dimensiva corporis Christi est in hoc sacramento.” 56 ST III, q. 76, a. 4:“Quia tamen substantia corporis Christi realiter non denudatur a sua quantitate dimensiva et ab aliis accidentibus, inde est quod, ex vi realis concomitantiae, est in hoc sacramento tota quantitas dimensiva corporis Christi, et omnia alia accidentia eius.” Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 199 tantly and as it were accidentally, therefore the dimensive quantity of Christ’s body is in this sacrament, not according to its proper manner (namely, that the whole is in the whole, and the individual parts in the individual parts), but after the manner of substance [ per modum substantiae ], whose nature is for the whole to be in the whole, and the whole to be in every part.57 The presence of the dimensive quantity of Christ’s body per modum substantiae is possible because dimensive quantity relates intrinsically to substance. Hence, in order to obtain after the manner of substance, dimensive quantity does not require what is the manner of dimensive quantity, namely the relation to a place. In the body of the fifth article of question 76 Thomas gives a somewhat less condensed description of dimensive quantity realized according to its proper manner:“Every body occupying a place is in the place according to the manner of dimensive quantity, namely, inasmuch as it is commensurate with the place according to its dimensive quantity.”58 And it is quite obvious that according to the proper manner of dimensive quantity it is impossible for two dimensive quantities naturally to be in the same subject at the same time. But it is not impossible at all for the dimensive quantity of the bread after the consecration to remain commensurate with the place it occupies while the dimensive quantity of Christ’s body is present per modum substantiae, after the manner of substance. Eventually the Thomist school had to unfold Thomas’s teaching by developing a more explicit answer to the question of how one can metaphysically account for dimensive quantity to subsist solely per modum substantiae. Unfolding the tacit entailments of Thomas’s teaching became necessary in light of different philosophical conceptualities giving rise to variant theological doctrines that emerged and spread in the centuries subsequent to Aquinas’s death, conceptualities that in one way or another would identify substance itself with its property of quantitative extension and, in consequence, had strongly to compromise the genuine, whole presence of the dimensive quantity of Christ’s body. 57 ST III, q. 76, a. 4, ad 1: “Quia igitur ex vi sacramenti huius est in altari substan- tia corporis Christi, quantitas autem dimensiva eius est ibi concomitanter et quasi per accidens, ideo quantitas dimensiva corporis Christi est in hoc sacramento, non secundum proprium modum, ut scilicet sit totum in toto et singulae partes in singulis partibus; sed per modum substantiae, cuius natura est tota in toto et tota in qualibet parte.” 58 ST III, q. 76, a. 5: “Omne autem corpus locatum est in loco secundum modum quantitatis dimensivae, inquantum scilicet commensuratur loco secundum suam quantitatem dimensivam.” 200 Reinhard Hütter The late medieval school of the via moderna—largely indebted to the thought of William of Ockham and eventually identified by its opponents simply as the “Nominalists” (Nominales)—came to regard material substance to be extended per se and not by way of being informed by the absolute accident of quantity. For Ockham there obtains no real distinction between substance and quantity. Quantity, rather, has a purely nominal status; that is, quantity is a connotative term that stands for substance in its aspect of extension.59 Consequently, Ockham has to explain how after the consecration, the substance of Christ’s body becomes present without being quanta, without parts outside of parts and the consequent natural order of parts (ordo partium). This is his solution: Because “quantity” is a notion purely connotative to substance it can be removed without any real change in the underlying subject. And so, while the connotative notion of quantity is removed, Christ’s body is nevertheless definitively present under the host and each of its parts. Hence, the natural parts of Christ’s body have to interpenetrate each other and, consequently, the natural order of parts (ordo partium) is dissolved. From the point of view of Thomas’s teaching, the Ockhamist position fails to maintain the integrity of the dimensive quantity of Christ’s body in the sacrament and consequently fails to make explicit the presence of the whole Christ in the sacrament.60 While substance was a key notion in René Descartes’s swiftly spreading philosophy, the notion underwent a profound transmutation in his doctrine. Inspired by the clarity and certainty of mathematics, Descartes searched for a new philosophy whose foremost criterion was the clarity and distinctness of ideas. Disregarding in a not all together unproblematic way the long tradition of metaphysical inquiry on this matter, he defined substance as a thing that exists in such a way that it needs no other thing for its existence. In light of this criterion he identified two kinds of substance: one intellectual, the other material. Thought constitutes the 59 See Gordon Leff, William of Ockham: The Metamorphosis of Scholastic Discourse (Manchester: Manchester University Press;Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975), 207–13. 60 For an extensive analysis of the excruciatingly detailed discussion Ockham provides on this matter in his philosophical and theological works, see Erwin Iserloh, Gnade und Eucharistie in der philosophischen Theologie des Wilhelm von Ockham: Ihre Bedeutung für die Ursachen der Reformation (Steiner: Wiesbaden, 1956), 174–283, esp. 186–202 for the discussion of the problem in Ockham’s commentary on Lombard’s Sentences, and 202–53 for a discussion of his position in his later De sacramento altaris. For a discussion of Ockham’s doctrine more sympathetic than Iserloh’s highly—and I think rightly—critical commentary, see Gabriel Buescher, O.F.M., The Eucharistic Teaching of William Ockham (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute; Louvain: E. Nauwelaerts, 1950), esp. 65–93. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 201 nature of the intellectual substance, and spatial extension (length, breadth, depth) the nature of corporeal substance.61 The consequent identification in reality of substance and quantity does not come as a surprise: “There is no real difference between quantity and the extended substance; the difference is merely a conceptual one, like that between number and the thing which is numbered.”62 Cartesian theologians, especially in France and Italy, began to apply this deceptively simple, but indeed radically changed notion of substance to the doctrine of Eucharistic conversion.63 According to Descartes’s new understanding of corporeal substance, Christ’s substantial presence in the 61 René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), Bk. 1, sections 48–53. Cf. esp. the following paradigmatic statements: “I recognize only two ultimate classes of things: first, intellectual or thinking things, i.e. those which pertain to mind or thinking substance; and secondly, material things, i.e. those which pertain to extended substance or body” (Principles of Philosophy, Bk. 1, section 48, p. 208). “A substance may indeed be known through any attribute at all; but each substance has one principal property which constitutes its nature and essence, and to which all its other properties are referred. Thus extension in length, breadth and depth constitutes the nature of corporeal substance; and thought constitutes the nature of thinking substance” (op. cit., section 53, p. 210). 62 Principles of Philosophy, Bk. 2 , section 8, p. 226. In this particular work of Descartes, one can observe without difficulty the shift from a metaphysical consideration of the principles of reality as modes of being to the philosophical analysis of conceptions or ideas that take on the character of mental images. Such a transformation of metaphysical principles of being into univocal mental conceptions guided by the criterion of “ocular clarity” leads unavoidably to the loss of the metaphysical principle of substance itself in relationship to the accidents, and with it to a profound lack of understanding of the nature and function of predicamentals, as well as the real distinction between substance and quantity in a sensible thing. “When they make a distinction between substance and extension or quantity, either they do not understand anything by the term ‘substance’, or else they simply have a confused idea of the incorporeal substance, which they falsely attach to corporeal substance; and they relegate the true idea of corporeal substance to the category of extension, which, however, they term an accident. There is thus no correspondence between their verbal expression and what they grasp in their minds” (op. cit., Bk. 2, section 9, p. 226f). 63 For details of this intricate and theologically not at all unproblematic position, see Jean-Robert Armogathe, Theologia cartesiana: L’explication physique de l’Eucharistie chez Descartes et dom Desgabets (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977); idem, “Cartesian Physics and the Eucharist in the Documents of the Holy Office and the Roman Index (1671–76),” in Receptions of Descartes: Cartesianism and anti-Cartesianism in early modern Europe, ed.Tad M. Schmaltz (London/New York: Routledge, 2005), 149–70; and Tad M. Schmaltz, Radical Cartesianism:The French Reception of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), esp. 34–74. 202 Reinhard Hütter sacrament is conceived the following way: after the consecration, the dimensive quantity of the bread and the wine cannot remain (and with it none of the other accidents of bread and wine), for two corporeal substances cannot, of course, occupy the same space at the same time. According to the Cartesian theologians, what is present after the consecration is nothing but the glorious body of Christ per se. In order to veil the surpassing holiness of Christ’s bodily presence and also in order not to deter the faithful from communion, God provides the sensible effects of bread and wine to the sensory organs. According to a different view defended by other Cartesian theologians, it is Christ’s body that provides the sensible effects of bread and wine by taking on new surfaces similar to those of bread and wine. Furthermore, the Cartesian theologians hold that in virtue of being a corporeal substance, after the consecration Christ’s body has to be locally extended. Consequently, by way of some mode of contraction or condensation it must be reduced to the circumscriptive extension of what has the visual appearance of a host or wine in a chalice. In light of these alternative positions, one might begin to appreciate in hindsight the profundity of Thomas’s teaching that the dimensive quantity of Christ is in the sacrament by way of natural concomitance after the manner of substance. In view of the considerable metaphysical and theological problems entailed in the Nominalist and the Cartesian positions, the Thomist school engaged in a deeper metaphysical investigation.Very much by way of extrapolating Thomas’s metaphysical principles,Thomist theologians inquired how it is possible and what it means for dimensive quantity to be there by way of natural concomitance after the manner of the substance. The resulting metaphysical development of Thomas’s teaching comprises three central elements: (1) Because there obtains a real distinction between the principles of substance and quantity, material substance requires quantity as its absolute first accident. (2) Because local extension presupposes some distinction of parts from other parts, it is possible to distinguish between the essence of quantity, which is to have parts that are different from other parts, that is, “outside of other parts,” and the specific property of quantity, which is local extension.The Thomist commentators tended to identify the former as the ratio formalis, or the primary formal effect of quantity (ordo partium in toto), and the latter as the secondary formal effect of quantity, the ordo partium in loco or ubi et situs. (3) Substance as such is indivisible, and hence a substantial form or a separate substance (angel) has no capacity of local extension. Every material substance, however, has intrinsically—that is, in virtue of being a material substance—parts that are different from and hence outside of other parts, as well as a specific order among the parts, and consequently the capacity to be divided into parts and Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 203 to be locally extended.While really distinct as a co-constitutive principle, in reality this essence of quantity is inseparable from a material substance. For quantity is the absolute accident of material substance. Hence the essence of quantity obtains in virtue of its relation to substance alone, that is, it obtains always per modum substantiae, after the manner of substance. In its normal, locally extended existence, the manner of dimensive quantity always already presupposes the essence of quantity to obtain per modum substantiae, that is, the distinction of parts from other parts and the intrinsic (though not yet locally realized) order between them to obtain after the manner of substance. And hence it is not intrinsically impossible for what is ontologically a distinct (though not independent) principle of the constitution of material substances in virtue of divine first causality to subsist solely after the manner of substance. By unfolding one aspect of Thomas’s teaching in this particular way, the Thomist school was able to continue to hold (contrary to the Nominalist position) that the whole Christ, including his undiminished dimensive quantity, is indeed in the sacrament, and (contrary to the Cartesian position) that the Eucharistic species maintain their properly realized dimensive quantity in their local space, while Christ’s body has its properly realized quantitative dimension in Christ’s glorified state in heaven alone. In summary: According to John of St. Thomas and other Thomist commentators, the primary formal effect of quantity, ordo partium in toto, specifies the order of distinguishable parts as a whole. This order (in which consists the essence of quantity) gives rise to a really distinct determination, the secondary formal effect, the ordo relationis, that is, the ordo partium according to their relative position or situation to other parts in space (ubi et situs).64 Because the ordo partium in toto can be considered 64 Josephus Gredt, O.S.B., Elementa Philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae.Vol. 1: Logica/ Philosophia Naturalis (Freiburg/Barcelona: Herder, 1961), 145–46:“Definitio quantitatis . . . stricte autem sumpta pro quantitate praedicamentali definitur: ordo partium in toto. In qua definitione ‘ordo’ positionem significat partium extra partes, ita ut quantitas etiam definiri possit: accidens tribuens subiecto habere partes extra partes quoad se. Ordo, in quo consistit quantitatis essentia, non est relatio ordinis, sed fundamentum huius relationis; est ordo fundamentalis, i.e., fundamentum relationis secundum prius et posterius. Quantitas igitur duo continet: multitudinem partium, et huius multitudinis ordinem secundum positionem, quatenus partes ponuntur extra partes secundum prius et posterius. . . . Quare quantitas praedicamentalis multitudini superaddit ordinem positionis secundum prius et posterius.” Ibid., 252:“THESIS X: Effectus formalis primarius quantitatis seu eius ratio formalis est ordo partium in toto, effectus formalis secundarius est ubi et situs seu ordo partium in loco. Hic effectus secundarius distinctus est realiter et separabilis a primario.” Ibid., 252, §315: “Effectus formalis primarius seu ratio formalis est constitutivum metaphysicum quantitatis. Quantitas enim utpote accidens definitur 204 Reinhard Hütter indeterminately, there obtains the logical separability and consequently the separability of modes of being between the primary formal effect of dimensive quantity and its secondary formal effect. At this point, we can mark two vital results of this all too sketchy account of the predicaments “substance” and “quantity” in the teaching of Thomas and the Thomist tradition. First, substance is not a mere conceptual name in the modern, nominalist sense—that is, a sheer linguistic pointer of the intellect’s intentionality to some “Ding an sich.” On the contrary, substances connote entities that subsist in their own existence—“unde solae substantiae proprie et vere dicuntur entia”65— entities that address the intellect, and are formally received by it. Second, Thomas’s teaching on material substance allows for the real distinction between the primary formal effect of quantity (ordo partium in toto) and its secondary formal effect (ordo partium in loco). That is, even under the sacramental species of bread and wine, it is by way of the primary formal effect of quantity that the substance of Christ’s body and the substance of Christ’s blood are really present in their concrete particularity as this substance and as that substance. This substantial presence does, however, emphatically not pertain to the ordo partium in loco (ubi et situs).66 While the substance of Christ’s body and blood are present without deficiency of substance (which includes the primary formal effect of quantity, the ordo partium in toto), no further accidents need to be realized for the substantive, real presence of Christ’s body and blood to obtain. On the other hand, the Eucharistic species maintain their dimensive quantity, per ordinem ad subiectum, ad substantiam. Quare indicando, quid primo faciat in substantia formaliter (per modum causae formalis), indicatur eius essentia metaphysica.” Ibid., 254, §318:“ordo partium in toto potest considerari indeterminate, et tunc est effectus formalis primarius quantitatis.” I am indebted to Romanus Cessario, O.P., for introducing me to the distinction between the first formal effect of quantity and its second formal effect. 65 ST I, q. 90, a. 2: “Illud autem proprie dicitur esse, quod ipsum habet esse, quasi in suo esse subsistens: unde solae substantiae proprie et vere dicuntur entia.Accidens vero non habet esse, sed eo aliquid est, et hac ratione ens dicitur; sicut albedo dicitur ens, quia ea aliquid est album. Et propter hoc dicitur in VII Metaphys., quod accidens dicitur ‘magis entis quam ens.’ Et eadem ratio est de omnibus aliis formis non subsistentibus.” 66 Hence, it is crucial to remember that, when he distinguishes between substance and quantity in ST III, q. 76, a. 1, ad 3,Thomas is concerned with the specific entailments of the ordo partium in space, that is, the secondary formal effect of quantity, the ordo partium in loco (ubi et situs). Because of the increasing identification between substance and quantity in later Scholasticism, the Thomist tradition had to emphasize increasingly the distinction between the primary formal effect of quantity (ordo partium extra partes) and the secondary formal effect of quantity, dimensive quantity. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 205 that is, their specific ordo partium in loco, as sustained by the primary formal effect of the quantity of bread and the quantity of wine. And because quantity is not identical with substance, the logical separability of the two allows for the possibility that the primary (ordo partium in toto) as well as the secondary (ordo partium in loco) formal effects of quantity are sustainable without the substance in which quantity inheres.67 Since all the other accidents inhere in substance by way of dimensive quantity, their sustainability is consequent upon the separate sustainability of dimensive quantity.68 What tangible difference does this distinction make? Consider the following argument advanced by Sylvester of Ferrara, the profound commentator of Thomas’s Summa contra Gentiles (ScG) on Thomas’s discussion of how the body of Christ (as a proper material substance) can be in multiple places. Here is Thomas’s text from ScG IV, ch. 64, par. 5: [T]he body of Christ in His own dimensions exists in one place only, but through the mediation of the dimensions of the bread passing into it its places are as many as there are places in which this sort of conversion is celebrated. For it is not divided into parts, but is entire in every single one; every consecrated bread is converted into the entire body of Christ.69 67 ST III, q. 75, a. 5, ad 1: “[S]icut dicitur in libro De causis, effectus plus dependet a causa prima quam a causa secunda. Et ideo virtute Dei, qui est causa prima omnium, fieri potest ut remaneant posteriora, sublatis prioribus.” See also John of St. Thomas, Cursus philosophicus I, Log., pt. II, q. XVI, a. 1; p. 463: “Caeterum oppositum hujus manifestavit nobis sacrosanctum Eucharistiae mysterium, in quo manet quantitas, quae antea erat panis, ut oculis videmus, et non manet substantia panis, ut fides docet: distinguitur ergo et separatur quantitas a re quanta. Respondent Nominales quantitatem substantiae non manere, cum ipsa enim evanuit; sed manere quantitatem qualitatum caeterorumque accidentium extensorum. Sed contra est, quia ibi sunt plura accidentia.Vel ergo unumquodque habet suam quantitatem distinctam, vel datur aliqua communis omnibus. Si datur aliqua communis omnibus, illa distinguitur etiam a substantia, quae ibi non est; ergo distinguitur quantitas a re quanta.” For a detailed discussion of this particular aspect of Thomas’s doctrine and of the sustainability of Thomas’s teaching on the accidentia sine subiecto remanentia, see the instructive essay by Petrus Sedlmayr, O.S.B.,“Die Lehre des hl. Thomas von den accidentia sine subjecto remanentia—untersucht auf ihren Einklang mit der aristotelischen Philosophie.” Divus Thomas (F) 12 (1934): 315–26. 68 Cf.Thomas’s nuanced discussion of this complex matter in ST III, q. 77, a. 2. 69 Translation from Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles. Book Four: Salvation, trans. Charles J. O’Neil (Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 262. (“Corpus enim Christi per suas proprias dimensiones in uno tantum loco existit: sed mediantibus dimensionibus panis in ipsum transeuntis in tot locis in quot huiusmodi conversio fuerit celebrata: non quidem divisum per partes, sed integrum in unoquoque; nam quilibet panis consecratus in integrum corpus Christi convertitur.”) 206 Reinhard Hütter Advancing a succinct version of the distinction between the two effects of quantity, Sylvester of Ferrara comments thus: The effect of quantity is twofold.The one effect is completely intrinsic to that which has quantity [as it pertains to the metaphysical order of the constitution of a material substance; R.H.], that is, quantification [esse quantum], divisibility into parts, and the order of parts as a whole. The other effect is in some manner extrinsic [as it pertains to the physical order of material substances relating qua quantity to other material substances; R.H.], namely insofar as quantity pertains to the thing in the outward order, that is, insofar as it corresponds to another distinguishable quantity and the parts of the one correspond to the location of the parts of the other quantity. The first effect is necessarily and per se proper to quantity.The second effect, however, only pertains to quantity if it is ordered principally and per se to a place and toward extrinsic dimensions. Consequently, in the sacrament of the altar, the quantity of Christ’s body, existing under the dimensions of the bread, has the first effect. For the body of Christ is in itself divisible and has an order of parts as a whole. It does not, however, have the second effect. For the parts of Christ’s body do not correspond to the dimensive parts of the bread nor to the location of these parts, but the whole is under whatsoever part. Consequently it can be said that the body of Christ is under the dimensions of the bread in a divisible as well as an indivisible way, divisible insofar as it has in and of itself divisible parts; indivisible, however, because its parts do not correspond to the parts of those dimensions, but rather the whole corresponds to whatsoever part, as is the soul as a whole in each part [of the body].70 70 My translation from Sancti Thomae Aquinatis Doctoris Angelici Opera Omnia iussu edita Leonis XIII P.M., vol. 15 (Rome: Leonine Commission, 1930), p. 208: “[D]uplex est quantitatis effectus. Unus est omnino intrinsecus subiecto quanto; scilicet esse quantum, et divisibilitas in partes, atque ordo partium in toto. Alius est aliquo modo extrinsecus, inquantum scilicet convenit subiecto in ordine ad extrinsecum; scilicet condividi alteri quantitati, et partes eius partibus loci correspondere. Primum convenit quantitati necessario et per se: secundum vero sibi non convenit nisi quando habet primo et per se ordinem ad locum et ad extrinsecas dimensiones. In sacramento Altaris quantitas corporis Christi, sub dimensionibus panis existens, habet primum effectum, quia ipsum corpus Christi est in seipso divisibile, et habet ordinem partium in toto: non autem secundum effectum habet, quia partes corporis Christi non correspondent partibus dimensionis panis neque partibus loci, sed totum est sub qualibet parte. Ex quo sequitur potest dici corpus Christi esse sub dimensionibus panis et divisibiliter et indivisibiliter; divisibiliter quidem, quia in seipso divisibilitatem partium habet; indivisibiliter autem, quia partes eius non correspondent partibus illarum dimensionum, sed totum cuilibet parti, sicut anima est tota in qualibet parte.” I am indebted to John F. Boyle for pointing me to this pertinent discussion of the matter in Sylvester of Ferrara’s commentary. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 207 Sylvester of Ferrara’s commentary allows us to see with greater clarity what indeed is entailed in Thomas’s own teaching.The full, undiminished identity of Christ’s body and blood are present under the dimensions of the Eucharistic species, yet without their proper dimensive parts spatially and hence locally realized. While the substance penetrates the whole, spatiality and locality pertain only to the dimensive parts of the Eucharistic species. Christ’s surpassing personal presence in the Eucharist has its indispensable anchor in the substantial presence of his body and his blood under the Eucharistic species. For, according to Thomas, nothing less and nothing more than Christ’s very humanity constitutes God’s surpassingly efficacious instrument of the salvation of humanity.71 Hence it is not only fitting, but necessary that Christ’s salvific presence in the Eucharist comes about by way of his crucified humanity—the incarnate Son’s utter self-giving to the Father in love, obedient to the point of death—sacramentally signified by His body and blood being separated from each other in the one Eucharistic sacrament.72 However, as already elaborated above, since Christ’s body and blood after the Eucharistic consecration are perfectly identical with Christ’s body and blood in heaven, they indeed are surrounded (concomitari) by all that surrounds them in the person of Christ in heaven, Christ’s human soul as well as His divinity.Through real concomitance, due to the integral subsistence of the risen Christ in heaven, nothing less than the whole person of Christ is in the Blessed Sacrament. Furthermore, Christ’s sacrificial selfgift “for the many” constitutes the unfathomable personal relation of Christ to everyone who desires to adore and receive him under the Eucharistic species of bread and wine. In short, because the Eucharistic presence of Christ in the sacramental form of his sacrificial self-gift is really substantial, it is surpassingly personal—the abyss of God’s love, given “for you.” The Integrity of the Sacramental Sign Lest the Thomist deployment of substance become seriously lopsided, that is, be wrongly received along the lines of a crude, non-sacramental 71 For an extensive discussion of this crucial aspect of Thomas’s Christology, see Theophil Tschipke, Die Menschheit Christi als Heilsorgan der Gottheit unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Lehre des heiligen Thomas von Aquin (Freiburg: Herder, 1940). Cf. the recent French translation: L’humanité du Christ comme instrument de salut de la divinité (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2003). 72 On this utterly central element of a proper understanding of the Eucharistic sacrifice, see the arguably two most profound as well as accurate twentieth century Eucharistic monographs secundum mentem S. Thomae: Abbot Vonier, O.S.B., A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist (Bethesda: Zacheus Press, 2003–4) and Charles Cardinal Journet, The Mass: The Presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross, trans.Victor Szczurek, O. Praem. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008). 208 Reinhard Hütter realism, I must hasten at this point to emphasize that in Thomas’s doctrine of Eucharistic conversion, the substantial presence of Christ in the sacrament does not at all occlude or thwart the abiding sacramental signification of the Eucharistic species. On the contrary, and contemporarily put, the Eucharistic species remain signs “all the way down.” Rather than arresting the intellectual gaze upon themselves, as things with a proper substance would do, they direct the intellectual gaze beyond themselves, because faith, in assent to the dominical words, forbids the intellect to follow the path of the senses by way of the Eucharistic species to absent substances. For, as Thomas reminds us, substance, as such, is not visible to the bodily eye, nor does it come under any one of the senses, nor under the imagination, but solely under the intellect, whose object is what a thing is. . . . And therefore, properly speaking, Christ’s body, according to the mode of being which it has in the sacrament, is perceptible neither by the sense nor by the imagination, but only by the intellect, which is called the spiritual eye. 73 Accordingly,Thomas stresses that indeed Christ’s body “can be seen by a wayfarer through faith alone [sola fide], like other supernatural things.”74 “For,” as Thomas argues,“the accidents which are discerned by the senses are truly present. But the intellect, whose proper object is substance . . . is preserved by faith from deception . . . because faith is not contrary to the senses, but concerns things which sense does not reach.”75 Hence the character of the sacrament as a sign abides from beginning to end. It is by way of the instrumental causality inherent in sacramental signification that bread and wine constitute the irreplaceable and indispensable starting point for the sacramental conversion, and that after the consecration, the remaining sacramental species continue to carry the sacramental signification of the Eucharistic conversion. In short, after the Eucharistic consecration, the sacramental sign—as long as it is able to signify, that is, as long as the modes of appearance of 73 ST III, q. 76, a. 7: “Substantia autem, inquantum huiusmodi, non est visibilis oculo corporali, neque subiacet alicui sensui, neque imaginationi, sed soli intellectui, cuius obiectum est quod quid est, ut dicitur in III de Anima. Et ideo, proprie loquendo, corpus Christi, secundum modum essendi quem habet in hoc sacramento: neque sensu neque imaginatione perceptibile est, sed solo intellectu, qui dicitur oculus spiritualis.” 74 Ibid. 75 ST III, q. 75, a. 5, ad 2 et 3:“[I]n hoc sacramentum nulla est deceptio: sunt enim secundum rei veritatem accidentia, quae sensibus diiudicantur. Intellectus autem, cuius est proprium obiectum substantia, ut dicitur in III de Anima, per fidem a deceptione praeservatur.” Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 209 bread and wine persist—continues to signify the real substantial presence of Christ. Hence, if the Eucharistic elements are reserved, Christ’s real substantial presence remains also. For the ending of the Eucharistic liturgy is without efficacious impact upon the substantial constitution of the reserved Blessed Sacrament. By way of the genuine sign-character of the enduring Eucharistic species the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament remains intrinsically linked to the Eucharistic liturgy and by way of the latter to the whole economy of salvation as it is symbolically gathered in the Eucharistic liturgy.76 Further, by way of Eucharistic conversion, the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is inherently linked to Christ’s abiding and lasting personal presence in the sacrament.Adoration simply means to come and give him personally and communally homage, to commune spiritually. At this point it would be most opportune to reconsider a set of traditional distinctions well established by Aquinas’s time that developed in a complex process of early medieval theological discourse: sacramentum tantum, the sign only; res et sacramentum, the thing and the sign; res tantum, the thing only. Thomas employs these terms consistently in his sacramental theology in the Summa theologiae.The first, the sign only, refers to what we know as the signification, that is, the species of bread and wine. The second, the thing and the sign, refers to the body and blood of Christ substantially present at the term of the Eucharistic conversion. Now, this is called res et sacramentum because not only is it the res which is signified by the sacramentum tantum, but the signified thing itself, Christ’s true body and blood, point beyond themselves and signify the res tantum, the spiritual effects of Eucharistic communion, that is, the specific sacramental grace of further incorporation into the mystical body of Christ, which is the perfect union of charity between the head and the body. Hence, rightly understood, Eucharistic adoration is nothing but a proper expression of the union of charity between Christ, the head, and the Church, his body, be it communally or individually. Aquinas’s interpretation makes explicit what the Church’s practice entailed long before: Christ’s abiding personal presence in the consecrated 76 On the mystery of the liturgy in relationship to the economy of salvation as it is gathered in the “eternal liturgy,” see Jean Corbon, O.P., The Wellspring of Worship, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), and on the liturgy as a world of effective signs, see Cyprian Vagaggini, O.S.B., Theologie der Liturgie, trans. August Berz (Zurich/Cologne: Benziger, 1959). For an excellent and exhaustive study on Thomas Aquinas’s own interpretation of the Eucharistic liturgy, see Franck Quoëx, “Thomas d’Aquin, mystagogue: L’expositio missae de la Somme de Théologie (IIIa, q. 83, a. 4–5), Revue Thomiste 105 (2005): 179–225 and 435–72. 210 Reinhard Hütter sacrament transcends the boundaries of space and time of each particular Eucharistic celebration. However,Thomas’s metaphysical contemplation of the Eucharistic mystery—as well as its conceptual development in the Thomist tradition—remains just that, a contemplation.The mystery is not replaced by “explanation.” The metaphysical contemplation of “making explicit” is never reduced to a merely analytic, puzzle-solving “making sense of.” For what is being attended to remains irreducibly a mystery. Hence a metaphysical contemplation such as the one advanced by Thomas is not a strictly probative argument for the truth of this mystery of faith, but a defensible—and possibly even the most apt—philosophical hermeneutics of the mystery. For Thomas’s metaphysical meditation makes explicit what the mystery entails ontologically, offers an account for its logical consistency, and defends its coherence as a supernatural reality. The normative interpretation of the mystery of Eucharistic conversion does not rest, however, with such a metaphysical contemplation, but with sacra doctrina, and that in the twofold way of “lex orandi, lex credendi,” in the organic unity of the development of the Church’s liturgy and the Church’s doctrine, both normatively inscribed in and traditioned by the canon of Scripture, the former, like the saints, emerging from the bosom of the Church’s life of prayer and the latter finding its proper expression in the Church’s teaching, properly determined by the Church’s Magisterium (the determinatio Ecclesiae). What a metaphysical contemplation like Thomas’s tends to make ontologically explicit remains conceptually rightly underdetermined by the liturgy itself, as well as by its magisterial definition. For not even the most profound metaphysical contemplation is ever able exhaustively to make explicit the mysterium fidei. Coda Hence it should not surprise us that Eucharistic adoration finds its most beautiful expression when metaphysical contemplation gives rise to doxological adoration, when the philosopher bursts out into praise: Adoro te devote, latens Deitas, Quae sub his figuris vere latitas: Tibi se cor meum totum subicit Quia te contemplans totum deficit. Visus, tactus, gustus, in te fallitur; Sed auditu solo tuto creditur. Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius. Nil hoc verbo veritatis verius. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 211 Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, Oro fiat illud, quod tam sitio, Ut te revelata cernens facie, Visu sim beatus tuae gloriae.77 A Methodological Postscript: Making Explicit the Operative Understanding of Catholic Theology, Philosophy, and Liturgy By way of a brief methodological postscript I would like to submit what I take to be the proper relationship between theology, philosophy, and the liturgy. This postscript is an attempt at clarifying some vital distinctions that are in grave danger of being disregarded in the recent interest that Anglo-American philosophers began to show in “liturgy,” most widely conceived, as a topic worthy of philosophical attention and analysis. Far from exhaustive, the following observations and theses merely serve as a first Denkanstoß. 1. “Liturgiology.” Traditionally in Catholicism, as well as in Protestantism, the interpretation of the Christian liturgy has been the proper task of theology (and in Orthodoxy it still is—Orthodox theology at its core being nothing else than a doctrinal unfolding of and contemplation on the divine liturgy) and that meant traditionally (before the fateful Protestant, “Berlin” type divisions into subfields—a development all too happily emulated by Catholic theology in the twentieth century) the task of what now is called “dogmatic” or “systematic” theology. Only in the early twentieth century, based on certain developments in the nineteenth century, did “liturgiology” (Liturgik/Liturgiewissenschaft) emerge as a distinct field of the study of Christian liturgies, a subfield that 77 Thomas Aquinas, “Adore te devote,” in The Aquinas Prayer Book, 68–71: Devoutly I adore you, hidden Deity, Under these appearances concealed. To You my heart surrenders self For, seeing You, all else must yield. Sight and touch and taste here fail; Hearing only can be believed. I trust what God’s own Son has said. Truth from truth is best received. Jesus,Whom now I see enveiled, What I desire, when will it be? Beholding Your fair face revealed, Your glory shall I be blessed to see. 212 Reinhard Hütter a. unsurprisingly comprises only very few, if any, Quakers and not all too many Pentecostals, but is dominated by Roman Catholic and Anglican scholars, and then well populated by those of Lutheran, Calvinist, or Methodist convictions; and b. operates methodologically in an eclectic way by historical, phenomenological, and anthropological approaches. I think it is fair to say that liturgiology as a distinctive, relatively recent subdiscipline of what is currently called “practical theology” finds itself still in an ongoing internal debate about the exact circumference and the inner coherence of its subject matter, the coherence of its various methodological approaches, and last but not least, the question of to what degree the descriptive, constructive, practical, and normative aspects of the discipline relate to each other. 2. Philosophy and Christian Liturgy. When philosophers turn to the liturgy as a topic of inquiry and analysis, we must reasonably assume that philosophy has a sui generis approach to the Christian liturgy, an approach formally distinct from that taken by theology (and/or from liturgiology). This assumption entails the need for the prior clarification of how theology and philosophy might differ essentially in regard to what is constitutive of them as distinct intellectual inquiries. In this essay, I proceeded on the basis of the Thomist understanding that theology proper as sacra doctrina is formally constituted by the scientia Dei et beatorum as primarily conveyed by Scripture and apostolic paradosis. However, it seems not completely clear to me whether there presently exists or ever existed significant agreement among philosophers about the nature and task of philosophy. It might indeed just be the case that various philosophers for various reasons— most likely recognizable and laudable, but implicit, theological reasons (and possibly from variant, incompatible perspectives)—make the Christian liturgy a topic of intellectual inquiry—which would in that case be a tacit version of fides quaerens intellectum. And as long as one is not able to settle on the proper formal objects constitutive of theology and of philosophy as distinct modes of inquiry, these implicit theological motives and interests behind such philosophical inquiries into the Christian liturgy will, in the best of all senses, make these philosophers theologians of sorts (which, of course, is not a bad thing at all). But this circumstance simply raises in a sharper way the fundamental question of what might be the distinct contribution of a properly philosophical inquiry into the Christian liturgy. Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 213 3. Catholic theology, liturgy, philosophy. Now, for the Catholic theologian—understood here in the precise sense of the vocation of the ecclesial theologian—the situation is somewhat different. For there is a relatively clear (albeit from time to time individually questioned and contested) understanding of how theology relates to Scripture, tradition, and the Magisterium.The task of a fruitful philosophical investigation in relationship to the faith and its proper interpretation by theology is not absolutely prescribed but properly circumscribed in the late Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter Fides et Ratio. What Fides et Ratio has in mind and wants to encourage is a philosophizing in the full metaphysical range of an inquiry in principle open to the transcendent, a philosophizing that complements the faith in that it supports the intellectus fidei ; in short, a Christian philosophizing in proper independence from the nature and task of theology proper as sacra doctrina. 4. A normative conditional. It seems to me that the only way for a Catholic theologian to envision a fruitful philosophical inquiry into the Christian liturgy is on the basis of the following conditional formulated by Ludwig Wittgenstein:“If Christianity is the truth, then all the philosophy about it is false.”78 I would like to submit that any philosopher who wants to focus on the Christian liturgy as a proper subject matter of inquiry needs to assume the truth of this conditional. In other words, as soon as philosophy is “about” the Christian liturgy in the sense that the latter must needs be “explained” in light of some comprehensive theory that allegedly conveys the presently closest approximation to the truth (let us say, “evolution”), such “philosophy about” is indeed false from the very outset. Only on the assumption that, in Wittgenstein’s words, “Christianity is the truth,” does it makes sense for the Christian liturgy to become a possible topic of philosophical inquiry.Why? For if, on the one hand, Christianity were inherently false, philosophy would lose a proper subject matter for sustained inquiry (because the Christian liturgy would quickly be unmasked as a collective act of self-deception or as a ruse). On the other hand, if the truth of Christianity could be bracketed in the very mode and procedure of inquiry, philosophy as an inquiry sui generis would simply disappear, because, after all, Religionswissenschaft for quite some time has been studying all kinds of religious convictions, practices, and rituals without any, even hypothetical, 78 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 89 (noted in 1949). 214 Reinhard Hütter commitment to whether what is studied indeed obtains in the way the religions investigated in such ways claim it to obtain. Hence, the Catholic theologian faced with these alternatives can do at least two things meaningfully. The Catholic theologian can (1) search for and draw upon a philosophical school that (a) is inherently open to the truth—claims of Christianity; that (b) allows for a clear differentiation between the theological and the philosophical task; yet also (c) allows for a proper constructive relationship between the two. (For the Catholic theologian the search for such a philosophy is properly circumscribed most recently by the encyclical Fides et Ratio). Furthermore, the Catholic theologian can (2) simply observe and analyze what philosophers say about the liturgy by (a) drawing theologically upon it as helpful forms of interpretation and clarification; or (b) rejecting it theologically as illegitimately reductive; or (c) engaging it philosophically as incoherent, unconvincing, or besides the point. 5. “Liturgy:” An equivocal, univocal, or analogical term? Next, the Catholic theologian will have to clarify the use of the notion of “liturgy.”When one looks at the extant variety of Christian worship across the full spectrum of Christian communions, the unavoidable question arises whether the notion “liturgy” simply is an equivocation, or whether it can at all be applied univocally across the board, or whether the only way to use it meaningfully is in an analogical way. Consider the following: For Quakers, on the one hand, there can be a proper communal worship without formal sermon or homily, without the singing of hymns, without formal, communal prayer, without communion. For the Catholic Church, on the other hand, the Christian liturgy in the full, proper, and legitimate sense is the celebration of the Mass, presided over in persona Christi by a validly ordained priest, a celebration that takes place in the visible, structural unity of the Church, which finds its concrete expression in the unity of the local church with the bishop, with all bishops, and with the see of Peter. Are these latter normative aspects intrinsic to the essence of Christian liturgy in its proper integrity and plenitude—as it indeed is a “given” to the Catholic theologian? Or are these aspects merely accidental and hence extrinsic to some univocal concept of “liturgy” that could yield an essence in light of which both of the above examples could be equally grasped as particular instantiations of “liturgy” and hence critically assessed over against the shared essence of liturgy? If philosophers were to assume such, Quaker theologians and practitioners as well as Roman Catholic theologians and practitioners Eucharistic Adoration and Metaphysical Contemplation 215 would rightly take umbrage at such a suffocating Hegelian embrace by a univocal concept (Begriff), and Wittgenstein would rightly decry such a notion as a dangerous approximation to the “philosophy about” that can only be false. For some such univocal concept of “liturgy” equally applicable to the Quaker meeting, as well as the Catholic Mass would render not only the concrete, incompatible points of each particular way of worship meaningless, but also the theological axioms, underlying each, vacuous. But then, “liturgy” obviously cannot be a pure equivocation either, because clearly intelligible disagreement seems to be possible between various Christian communions about the form, scope, and content of Christian worship.And intelligible disagreements always presuppose some prior agreements (and in the wake of ecumenism, indeed, a growing convergence on a variety of matters). These prior agreements, however, cannot have their root simply in a shared act of stipulation (“Let us agree to call the following a ‘liturgy’ . . .”), but in an indispensable, shared point of reference: the person and work (in late modern lingo, the “identity”) of Jesus Christ. Hence, any sound philosophical inquiry into Christian liturgy will have to acknowledge the priority of certain theological norms that cannot be philosophically adjudicated, settled, or put aside without simply destroying the proper subject-matter of inquiry and consequently turning into a false “philosophy about.” Moreover and more importantly, since “liturgy” does not seem to be used equivocally across its variety of instantiations, but since a univocal use of the term also does not seem to be defensible, for the Catholic theologian and philosopher,“liturgy” is unavoidably understood in an analogical way, that is, in the precise sense of the analogy by reference to a primary instance of Christian liturgy.This primary instance is nothing less than the heavenly liturgy as symbolically instantiated in the Eucharistic liturgy, the worship of “the Lamb who was slain,” in which together with the angels Christ’s body, the Church, participates, a body that comprises the living, the martyrs and saints in heaven, all the righteous ab Abel, as well as the souls in purgatory: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev 6:12) This heavenly liturgy shines forth from the Orthodox iconostasis, presents itself sacramentally in each celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy, and is continued prayerfully in the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.79 79 See Jean Corbon, O.P., The Wellspring of Worship (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005). 216 Reinhard Hütter 6. Catholic theology, philosophy, and the Eucharist. If it indeed obtains, as the Catholic Church holds, that at its core and in its essence Christian liturgy is identical with the Eucharist, and if indeed it obtains that it comprises the mystery of faith per se, the following also obtains: a. Any philosophical inquiry will need to rely upon the prior guidance of the apostolic paradosis, the canon of Scripture, tradition (comprising dogma and the Church’s living Magisterium), and theology in order be able to even approximate the subject matter properly instead of severely distorting or simply missing the very topic from the outset. b. An inquiry into a mystery of faith means that there are severe limitations to conceptual comprehension. c. Any inquiry into the mystery of faith proper will at best be a hermeneutic of making proximately explicit what is unfathomably entailed in the mystery. However, such an inquiry can never be expected exhaustively to “make sense” of the mystery of faith—as if it were a conceptual problem or puzzle open to some eventual resolution. d. For the Catholic theologian it is not insignificant that the Church’s Magisterium has over a long time privileged a particular philosophical tradition (comprising various schools, though) of inquiry and analysis in the Church’s proximate ontological interpretation of this mystery of faith (transubstantiation). Hence, in the reception and engagement of other philosophical approaches to and interpretations of the Eucharistic mystery, and especially of the Eucharistic conversion, the Catholic theologian will assess the best of the recent interpretive efforts submitted as analogous approximations by reference to a primary instance, this primary instance being what the Fourth Lateran Council termed as “transubstantiation” and what the Council of Trent reaffirmed to be N&V aptissime expressed in the notion of “transubstantiation.” Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 217–40 217 Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law J OHN F. X. K NASAS Center for Thomistic Studies University of St.Thomas Houston,Texas T HE USUAL meaning of “tolerance” is too weak to express the social good about which I am talking. Usually “tolerance” suggests that though I do not agree with you, I simply do nothing to hurt you. If you have ever been part of a backbiting community, then you know that this minimal sense of tolerance is no mean thing. But I want to speak about not mutual indifference but mutual assistance. In the latter case our fellows stand ready to help. And so one can presume on their part a good-will that does not automatically cast one’s works and actions in a suspicious light and does not strive to find “the fly in the ointment” of what we say. In short,“brotherly love” or “fraternity” better than “tolerance” expresses this undeniable component of the common good. In fact, one can claim that this component is more important to the common good than material things like fine buildings, hospitals, roads, power and sanitation systems, culture, etc., for from mutual concern these others will follow. In sum, the ideal of tolerance works from the assumption that our fellows are acting, or are capable of acting, from the best motives of conscience in coming to their decisions about the ultimate nature of reality and about appropriate human behavior. Human Dignity To understand how Aquinas’s natural law ethics better grounds tolerance in the sense of fraternity, one must first understand the basis for human dignity in Aquinas’s ethics. Like the Greeks before him,Aquinas locates the basis for human dignity in our rationality. At Summa theologiae I, q. 29, a. 3c, Aquinas famously remarks, “Person signifies what is most perfect in all 218 John F. X. Knasas nature—that is, a subsistent individual of rational nature.” But this common formula must be glossed for its power to be experienced. Often rationality is presented in terms of discursion, or syllogizing. So as rational, we are logic machines annoyingly spinning out one argument after another. But this description is a caricature. For in order to function, syllogisms require what logic calls middle terms. For example, in the syllogism “(1) Tom is a man, (2) Man is mortal, (3) Hence, Tom is mortal,” the middle term is “man.” It connects Tom with what we know about human nature so that we can conclude something about Tom. Some middle terms and what we understand about them may themselves be conclusions of syllogisms. But this process cannot be repeated indefinitely. Ultimately, there are middle terms known not by syllogism but by intuition or contemplation, also called intellection. Aquinas explains that the word “intellectus” is appropriate, for “intellectus” derives from the words “intus” and “legere” which together mean “to read into.”1 So buried within the traditional understanding of the human as rational is the more profound understanding of the human as “intellector.”To understand the dignity of the human as rational, one must understand the dignity of the human as an intellector. I want to illustrate the connection between human dignity and intellection by speaking about the first principle of practical reason. Aquinas discusses this principle in a famous text in his natural law ethics.The text is article 2, question 94 of the first part of the second part of his Summa theologiae. Few have noticed that the first practical principle is a call to be respectful and solicitous of ourselves and others.2 In short, the first practical principle is a call to love. Consequently, this text is especially relevant as a Thomistic basis for tolerance. Aquinas presents “The good ought to be done and evil avoided” as a per se notum, or self-evident, proposition that is the first principle of practical reason. By a per se notum proposition Aquinas says that he means a proposition in which the meaning of the predicate is contained in the meaning of the subject. How is Aquinas understanding “the good” so that the notion includes oughtness? By the good Aquinas also means the notion of being, the ratio entis, which the article mentions as the basis of the first principle of speculative reason—the principle of non-contradiction. It makes sense to call being “the good” because being is an eminently 1 Aquinas, De veritate, q. 1, a. 12. Also, De veritate, q. 15, a. 1. 2 Most Thomists regard the principle as merely formal. For a survey, see John F. X. Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003), 262, n. 22. Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 219 rich intelligibility. By an “intelligibility” I mean a commonality that can be grasped in the particular things presented by sensation. “Generic” commonalities lose some of the richness of the real because they abstract from the differences of particular things. For example, the commonality that we find in Tom, Dick, and Harry, and which we intend to express by the term “human,” does not include Tom’s pale complexion, Dick’s ruddy complexion, or Harry’s dark complexion. This lack of inclusion of the complexions is required to keep human nature common to all three individuals. The notion of being does not behave exactly like a generic notion. If being did not also include the differences of the particular things from which it is taken, then these differences would be reduced to non-being and a real plurality of things would cease to exist. At De veritate, q. 21, a. 1, Aquinas says that the differences of a generic intelligibility remain in the intelligibility implicitly and potentially.This characterization implies that with the intelligibility of being the differences remain implicitly but actually within the notion of being.3 Accordingly, at De veritate, q. 1, a. 1, the differences of being do not add to being from the outside but are said to “express” a mode of being. In the twentieth century a Thomist like Maritain can say: “Everything which divides [electrons and angels] from one another is the same being which I find in each of them— varied. I simply have to fix my attention on it to see that it is at once one and multiple.”4 Others like Phelan and Owens describe the intelligibility as a sameness-in-difference.5 For my purpose I note that as keeping the 3 James Anderson’s terminology from his The Bond of Being: An Essay on Analogy and Existence (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 256. 4 Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 213. 5 “[Analogy] is, indeed, a difference in the very likeness and a likeness in the very difference; not merely a mingling of likeness and difference wherein likeness is based upon a formal identity and difference is based upon a formal diversity.” Gerald B. Phelan, “St. Thomas and Analogy,” in G. B. Phelan Selected Papers, ed. Arthur G. Kirn (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967), 114. “Rather, the one concept that renders the things the same is the concept that renders them different. Conversely the concept that makes them different is the concept that makes them coincide under the one notion. Identity and yet differentiation by the one feature is the only way a notion can escape falling under either the one or the other of the two extremes, univocity and pure equivocity. To fall into the area dealt with by the present discussion [on analogy], the one notion must exercise both functions. It has to both unite and differentiate without the aid of any other concept.” Joseph Owens, “Analogy as a Thomistic Approach to Being,” Mediaeval Studies 19 (1957): 308–9. See also Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Houston: Center for Thomistic Studies, 1985), 88, n. 14. 220 John F. X. Knasas differences of things to itself, the notion of being has an unparalleled richness.This richness makes understandable the denomination of being as the good. Hence, humans have some idea of what the Scholastics called “the absolutely infinite” in contrast to “the relatively infinite.”The latter lacks nothing in a particular line. For example, a ribbon without ends is an infinite amount of ribbon. Yet it is still ribbon and as such lacking in many perfections. The absolutely infinite lacks no perfection, even no conceivable perfection and no degree thereof. The classical theist tradition has long used the absolutely infinite to characterize God. Hence, we have Anselm’s that-than-which-no-greater-can-be-thought, the rationalists’ actually infinite being, and Kant’s discussion of the ens realissimum and Vatican I’s Dei Filius description of God as “infinite in intellect and will and in every perfection.” Charles Hartshorne, a Whiteheadian philosopher, has criticized the understanding of God as absolutely infinite on the ground that some perfections are mutually exclusive.6 For example, something cannot have at the same time the perfections of being both red and green all over. But before this linking of the infinite with God, Aquinas linked the infinite with the notion of being. As Aquinas says, being is that into which we resolve all of our concepts and being is added to not by bringing in something from the outside but by “expressing” a mode of being. In the notion of being, the intellect discerns an intelligible source from which streams all perfections. Hartshorne’s objection applies to the perfections as expressed. He is remarkably incognizant of the intelligible ground out of whose depths the perfections arise. To apprehend being is to experience an earthquake in one’s intellectual life. Thereafter one is not the same. Everything becomes of interest, because every thing in its uniqueness gives one another look at the ratio entis, whose treasure contains this difference and who knows what else.The more different beings that one knows, the better does one see the sameness that contains them all. Nevertheless, one would be wrong to think that intellectual pursuit demands an explicit philosophical presentation of the above. Aquinas understands being as such an automatic abstraction from self-manifestly real things provided by sensation that the ratio entis can lie unnoticed in the depths of our conscious life and nevertheless have conscious effects. Such thinking about being goes a long way to explain why the non-contradiction principle (something cannot both be and not 6 Charles Hartshorne and William Reese, Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: 1963), 560, and Charles Hartshorne, Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of Metaphysics of Religion (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1976), 31–32. Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 221 be at the same time and in the same respect),7 which is about being, is selfevident to all, even those who never thought about the ratio entis. From his linking of being with the good,Aquinas elsewhere deduces two things. The first is a necessary and automatic volition consequent upon the intellect’s presentation of the ratio boni to the will. There is no moral necessity here because there is no freedom.The will acts automatically. According to Aquinas, the will automatically desires its proper object. At ST I, q. 82, a. 1c, Aquinas insists that natural necessity (necessitas naturalis) is not repugnant to the will. For just as the intellect of necessity adheres to first principles, so too the will necessarily adheres to the last end, which is happiness (ultimo fini, qui est beatitudo). But “happiness” here is the ratio boni, for elsewhere the last end is the object of the will (rationem finis, est obiectum voluntatis), and the object of the will is the ratio boni (ratio boni, quod est obiectum potentiae, ST I–II, q. 8, a. 2c).Aquinas reiterates the point by saying that the will “tends naturally” (naturaliter tendit, ST I–II, q. 10, a. 1) to the bonum in communi which is its object and last end, just as the intellect knows naturally the first principles of demonstration. Finally, that the ratio entis understood as the ratio boni engenders willing is also expressed in this Thomistic argument for will in God: From the fact that God is endowed with intellect it follows that He is endowed with will. For, since the understood good is the proper object of the will, the understood good is, as such, willed. Now that which is understood is by reference to one who understands. Hence, he who grasps the good by his intellect is, as such, endowed with will. But God grasps the good by His intellect. For, since the activity of His intellect is perfect, as appears from what has been said, he understands being together with the qualification of the good [ens simul cum ratione boni ]. He is, therefore, endowed with will. (ScG I, ch. 72) No empty or merely formal sense of the ratio boni could play these roles of igniting volition. Rather, it is the ratio entis that is playing the role of the ratio boni. The second implication of linking being with the good is the indeterminate disposing of the will before any individual thing that is only “a” good, not the good itself. 7 Note that Thomists describe the notion of being as a sameness-in-difference.This description does not say that sameness is the difference or that the difference is the sameness. To utter either of these would be to utter obvious contradictions. Rather, the Thomists claim that sameness was in the difference and that the difference was in the sameness. Neither of these claims is obviously a contradiction. 222 John F. X. Knasas So good is the object of the will. Therefore if the will be offered an object which is good universally and from every point of view, the will tends to it of necessity, if it wills anything at all; since it cannot will the opposite. If, on the other hand, the will is offered an object that is not good from every point of view, it will not tend to it of necessity. And since the lack of any good whatever is a non-good, consequently, that good alone which is perfect and lacking in nothing is such a good that the will cannot not will it: and this is happiness. But any other particular goods, in so far as they are lacking in some good, can be regarded as non-goods; and, from this point of view, they can be set aside or approved by the will, which can tend to one and the same thing from various points of view. (ST I–II, q. 10, a. 2c) Now the will is free, but moral constraint, or oughtness, still seems absent. Rather, what is present is an awareness of being equally and indifferently disposed to all finite goods (ST I–II, q. 10, a. 2).The issue remains: “How are we properly to configure being as the good so that precisely moral obligation, not necessary volition nor raw freedom, follows?” In that way one would understand “Good ought to be done” as self-evident, or per se notum. My resolution of the issue is the realization that Aquinas is not speaking of being as the good pure and simple, but of being as the good when present in the human through the human’s intellection.8 Among all the instances of being as the good, the human, through his intellection, has the good in an especially intense manner. Before such an instance we are free undoubtedly, but we are also morally constrained. In the human, the ratio boni burns more brightly than it does in other instances such as animals, plants, and minerals. Does not that fact issue to our freedom a command of respect and solicitude? In sum, the subject of the first practical principle should not be understood simply as the good but as the good intellected by the human. Aquinas’s philosophical explanation of the initial phenomenon of obligation stands in opposition to David Hume’s famous fact/value distinction. The eighteenth century British philosophical skeptic David Hume claimed:“Take an action allowed to be vicious: willful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case.”9 In short, calling an act “evil” denotes 8 See the discussion of Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles III, 112, and his Commen- tary on Lombard’s Sentences II, d. 27, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2m, in Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, 267–72. 9 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. III, 1, in David Hume:The Philosophical Works, vol. 2, ed. Green and Grose (Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1964), 245. Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 223 nothing in the act, nothing objective. “Evil” denotes something in us, something subjective, namely, our emotion of revulsion. Of course, for Aquinas another matter of fact exists in the act of murder.The victim is an intellector of being as the good. In light of that fact, the moral viciousness of killing is patent in the act itself. In striking at the person, the murderer is striking at the good. So the first rule of a moral life is to be respectful and solicitous of the human person. The moral life is a life of love. The human person is the lighthouse from which shines the good and to which we should direct our moral vessel. For example, the immorality of murder, theft, and lying is patent. In striking at the person, each of these actions strikes unseemly at the good. Also, our awareness of ourselves as intellectors of being creates the injunctions to do what respects our existence and to avoid what disrespects it, for example, abuse and suicide. Moreover, by its essentially unitive and procreative character the sexual embrace is unique among human activities. In one’s sexual partner and also in the procreative teleology of the sexual embrace, one is handling the good and so sexual activity ought to be exercised in the context of a committed monogamous relation, that is, of marriage. The fornicator and adulterer unseemly discard the ratio boni given in the sexual embrace. The evil of contraception is likewise evident. By striking at the procreative powers, contraceptors strike at the ratio boni in the offspring who is at least essentially, if not actually, present. Great lovers take this norm of respect and solicitude of the human person with deep seriousness.Their most important thing is other people, or life in society. Nothing should be substituted for people and their well-being, not hobbies, studies, pleasure, money, fame, etc. Pursuit of these things must always defer to the needs of persons.Aquinas’s conception of the human as an intellector of being also makes understandable the self-sacrifice involved in friendship. Following Aristotle,Aquinas roots friendship in self-love.10 Self-love is not an egotistic predicament. What I find loveable in myself, namely, the notion of being, is found in others. Being offers itself to all intellectors. Hence, my fellow is another self. In this context, my loss should not be looked at simply as another’s gain.To see the other as a friend is to see my loss for his sake as our gain. Love for self extended to others makes it possible to rejoice genuinely in their good fortune, even when that good fortune demands a sacrifice from us. Jealousy should have no place among people if they relate to each other as friends. And people should relate to others 10 See James McEvoy,“The Other as Oneself: Friendship and Love in the Thought of St.Thomas Aquinas,” in Thomas Aquinas:Approaches to Truth, ed. James McEvoy and Michael Dunne (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002). 224 John F. X. Knasas as friends if they view themselves as intellectors of being.The deep truth here is indicated by its contrary, namely, rejection and its lacerating effect of isolation. Since being is so intensely present in our fellows, then their rejection of us can appear as being’s rejection of us. And since being includes all, rejection can be experienced as total isolation. That is why, though we may disagree, we should always remain friends. In sum, the above shows that for Aquinas reality itself prompts us to love. His epistemology of intellectual abstraction from the real things given to us in sensation establishes confidence in the notion of being. Being is not a pipe-dream but a deep plunge into reality. Being’s engendered command for respectful and solicitous treatment of our fellows as intellectors of being rings in our awareness with the sound of truth. In Thomistic psychology, love is not to suffer a delusion. Reality itself provides the motivation.11 But as so relentlessly developed from the real, Aquinas’s ethics prompts another question. If we are structured as Aquinas says, why is human experience marked by so much hate and disrespect? Some explanation of how Aquinas can be so right and yet things can be so wrong is desirable. How does perversity enter the life of an intellector of being? This discussion is important not only as a complement to Aquinas’s philosophical psychology; the discussion will also be invaluable for grounding the possibility of dialogue with those who disagree with Aquinas’s natural law ethics. Such a dialogue is essential equipment for any would-be Thomists, as they ponder going forth into their cultural milieu. Hence, I turn to another natural law text: ST I–II, q. 94, a. 6. Its topic is whether the natural law can be obliterated from the heart of man. The remainder of the paper is my elaboration of its content. The Causes of Sin Aquinas first distinguishes within natural law the most common precepts known to all from secondary and more particular precepts that are conclusions following closely from the first principles.Aquinas’s characterization of the most common precepts lets one coordinate them with the selfevident principles of natural law mentioned back at question 94, article 2. Chief among them was “Good ought to be done,” which I glossed as “Be respectful and solicitous of intellectors of being.” The other precepts of question 94, article 2, for example, “Respect oneself,” “Respect one’s 11 For a comparison to Heidegger on “the Being of beings,” see my articles, “A Heideggerian Critique of Aquinas and a Gilsonian Reply,” The Thomist 58 (1994): 415–39, and “The Post-Modern Notion of Freedom and Aquinas’ Ratio Entis,” in The Failure of Modernism, ed. Brendan Sweetman (Mishawaka, IN:American Maritain Assoc., 1999), 212–27. Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 225 sexual partner,” “Respect one’s fellow members of society,” and “Respect one’s intellection,” express heightened encounters with a person, and so are reducible to my interpretation of “Good ought to be done.” Aquinas says that these most common precepts, taken universally, cannot in any way be blotted out from men’s hearts. However, their application to a particular action can be blotted out because of concupiscence or some other passion.What this brief remark means Aquinas explains at length in a classic text on the genesis of the sinful act: De malo q. 1, a. 3, with parallel passages at De veritate, q. 24, a. 8; Summa contra Gentiles III, ch. 10; and Summa theologiae I, q. 63, a. 1.Aquinas’s explanations are fascinating examples of a continued phenomenology of human consciousness. There are details of our psychology yet to be noticed, and these further details show how hate can blossom in a mind stamped by the intellection of being. I now turn to Aquinas on the causes of sin. The key idea of understanding how the will introduces evil into its choices is the will’s “non-consideration of the rule” (non consideratio regulae). What is this? First, the non-consideration cannot be a total and complete cognitive absence of the rule. If the non-consideration were a complete absence, then the will would do evil without any awareness that it was doing evil.This unawareness would mean that the will’s act was not a fault or a sin. Why? To sin means to do evil voluntarily. But voluntary action means action both with knowledge and with will. Hence, to sin the will must have some awareness of the object as evil, and this awareness requires some recognition of the rule. Second, neither can the rule be completely present in our awareness. A complete cognitive presence of the rule would extinguish from the object of an evil choice any and all appearance of good with the result that the object is impossible to choose. For Aquinas, a minimal condition for our willing anything, even something evil, is that the thing at least “appears” as good. Elsewhere, Aquinas gives his reason. His reason refers back to his psychology of willing that I described earlier:“The will naturally tends to good as its object.That it sometimes tends to evil happens only because the evil is presented to it under the aspect of good” (De veritate, q. 24, a. 8). In contrast to us in this life, the blessed in heaven in the beatific vision have the rule of the good completely present in their consciousness. Consequently, the blessed apprehend all other things as they should be apprehended. Evil appears as the evil that it is and good appears as the good that it is. Because evil always appears as it is, evil never exercises any attraction over the wills of the blessed. In short, for the blessed evil is never a possible object of choice. 226 John F. X. Knasas So, the non-consideration of the rule must mean an incomplete cognitive presence of the rule in virtue of which evil can appear as good though still be known as evil. In sum, Aquinas says,“[C]onsequently there cannot be any sin in the motion of the will so that it tends to evil unless there previously exists some deficiency in the apprehensive power, as a result of which something evil is presented as good” (De veritate, q. 24, a. 8). Now, what is the rule? Using what I have said in my above first section, the answer will be that the rule is the practical precept to be respectful and solicitous of the human understood as an intellector of being.The imperfect cognitive presence of this rule allows evil at least to appear as good and so make possible the evil choice. Earlier at De veritate, q. 24 , a. 8,Aquinas provides two reasons for this imperfect cognitive presence of the rule.The first reason is our passions, or sense appetites. The passions can arise so that what we saw as evil becomes only known as evil while taking on the appearance of good. For example, in my calm deliberation in the doctor’s office and in the light of the norm of respect and solicitude for the human, my continual selfabuse by stuffing myself with refined carbohydrates appears as the evil that it is. Yet when I pass a bakery and smell the wonderful products inside, there is a rush of sense appetite for what I intellectually know is bad for me. In the context of that passion, what I know from memory to be bad for me at least “appears” as good and this is sufficient for me to possibly choose it and so bring about a moral evil. I can do what I know to be wrong.The passion never obliterates my previous knowledge of the baked goods as evil even while they are appearing as good.Their appearance as good is the “erroneous judgment” that Aquinas says (De veritate, q. 24, a. 8) is necessary for the evil act. For humans the passions are a major source of evil acts. Because passions follow sense apprehension, we can be bombarded by things that incite all kinds of passions that invest something bad, because it is not in line with the first practical precept, with the appearance of good.This is even truer for us who live in a media culture. But passion cannot be the complete explanation for the non-consideration of the rule. Besides committing crimes of passion, we also commit cold-blooded murder. Moreover, for the theologian Thomas Aquinas, not only humans are sinners but also the angels are sinners. But angels are incorporeal beings and so lack the sense appetites that are the passions. In other words, what is the form of the non-consideration of the rule that applies to intellectual creatures as intellectual? Aquinas presents another way sin can take place. Since this way is more common, shared by us and by the angels, this way is the more profound explanation of how evil acts Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 227 of will can take place. Aquinas says that in this second case “sin does not presuppose ignorance but merely absence of consideration of the things which ought to be considered” (ST I, q. 63, a. 1, ad 4). And earlier in the De malo I, 3, text he says that for this mere absence of consideration the freedom of the creature suffices: “ad hoc sufficit ipsa libertas voluntatis.” By mentioning the creature’s freedom, Aquinas is referencing the will’s state of indifference to all finite things thanks to their profiling against being as the good. I discussed this state in the first section of my paper. I mentioned the state’s absence of obligation, or moral necessity. In this state I am before all things with complete indifference. I am in this state before I become aware of obligation, and I reside back into it after becoming aware of obligation.To use some terminology from computer programming, this state is my “default position.”The appearance of moral necessity as expressed in the first practical precept requires further concentration.This is understandable in terms of Aquinas’s epistemology. To initially grasp obligation, we have to grasp ourselves as intellectors of being as the good. But our cognitive attention is first directed to things. The knower is known subsequently by a reflection from things to the knower.12 This reflection is a mental effort over and beyond our original knowledge of things and the presence of the notion of being in them. So it is not strange for Aquinas to say at De malo I, 3 that the “soul does not hold nor is it able to actually hold always the rule.” We can let the thought of the rational creature as an epiphany of being slip out of focus. When that happens, we revert to the prior state of freedom. In that state things are no longer seen against the rule but seen only against the ratio entis.This will mean that things not good in relation to the rule will still appear good in relation to being. As such they are possible objects of choice, and if they are chosen, evil will be done. 12 See Aquinas’s Commentary on the Metaphysics XII, lect. 11, n. 2608, on Aristotle’s remark “But science, perception, opinion and thought always seem to be about something else and only indirectly about themselves.” Of course, as subsistent forms, angels know in the opposite manner.They first know themselves and their ideas and then other things. Hence, the “default” position of their awareness is different. It is a knowledge of creation that does not include the creator’s decisions about supernatural elevation.The divine announcement of those decisions is over and above the angel’s natural knowledge. Hence, things can appear as good to the angel while still being known as possibly out of sync with the Creator’s de facto providence. The angel would sin by choosing without regard and deference for the Creator’s designs. See ST I, q. 63, a. 1. For commentary see Appendix 2 in the Blackfriars’ translation of the Summa theologiae (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968), 311–20, and Jacques Maritain, The Sin of the Angel (Westminster, Maryland:The Newman Press, 1959). 228 John F. X. Knasas So the “defect” here is an absence of consideration of the rule. This “defect” is not so much a defect that it is an evil. A true evil is a lack of something that should be there, for example, lack of sight in a man, but not lack of sight in a rock. But the absence of consideration of the rule should be there so that the creature is free and freedom is a good.Yet the absence is not so natural that it escapes the will, for the will acts in this state with the knowledge that it could, and should, act with a consideration of the rule. By the above phenomenology we achieve a more balanced view of human nature than I presented.The first practical precept of respect and solicitude of the human is not so emblazoned in human consciousness that the first practical precept cannot slip from focus. Passions can distract us and our natural state of freedom can cause a lack of consideration. Both allow what we know to be evil to take on the appearance of good. That cognitive state sets the stage for a possible act of evil by the will. So it is no sure thing that humans will do the good. The Realism of Natural Law As interesting and as probing as the above is it still smacks of unreality. The reason for this impression is that the sinner about whom Aquinas is talking is someone who already knows Aquinas’s ethics. Now some humans may be this kind of sinner but what about most humans? Most seem to have no cognizance of the connection between “oughtness” and the human as intellector of being. So the drama of human life still escapes Aquinas’s analyses. Better to turn to an existentialist like Heidegger or Marcel or Kierkegaard to supplement what appears as a kind of naivety in Aquinas. In fact Aquinas forces the issue. Again, at ST I–II, q. 94, a. 6, Aquinas claimed:“As to common principles, the natural law, in its universal meaning, cannot in any way be blotted out from men’s hearts.” In article 2 he compared the first principle of practical reason to the first principle of speculative reason, the non-contradiction principle. But at q. 94, a. 2, the latter is a self-evident truth for us, not just in itself. Also, in article 4 Aquinas described the common principles both of speculative and practical reason as “equally known to all” (apud omnes, et aequaliter nota). Even apart from my metaphysical gloss of q. 94, a. 2, in our day can we agree that the primary precepts of Aquinas’s natural law are known to all? How do proponents of euthanasia respect their own existence? How do proponents of recreational sex acknowledge its procreative and unitive nature? How do institutions of higher learning continue to acknowledge the intrinsic value of knowing, never mind the truth about God? Finding answers to these questions will take us deeper into Aquinas’s philo- Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 229 sophical psychology.The intellectual character of Aquinas’s position should not be held against it, for Aquinas does not equate something being known quoad nos with one’s explicit acknowledgement of the item. Like the human heart that functions automatically but with conscious effects, so too the intellect can automatically abstract the notion of being and grasp it as the good. Such an automatic abstraction can go a long way to explain why people try to avoid contradiction, yearn for something that life cannot give, and experience freedom and also obligation. Evidently we know more than we are aware. Despite the quoad nos self-evident character of the primary practical precepts, Aquinas holds a dim view of the workings of the intellect. For example, in the Summa contra Gentiles he explains that it is not strange that humans act for sensual pleasures rather than intellectual ones because most humans lack intellectual experience. For this lack Aquinas appeals to his abstractionist epistemology. He says that external things are better known because human cognition begins from sensible things.13 Later in the same work at IV, ch. 52, he speaks of the “frailty of reason” (debilitas rationis) and of the predominance of the phantasms. But instead of contradicting Aquinas’s position that the primary precepts are known to all, these remarks produce a better understanding of Aquinas’s position. For one would be wrong to interpret these remarks to mean that the workings of the intellect are totally absent or that these workings have no experienced effects. Even on the level of sensation, we know more than we are aware. Sense has a focus that is narrower than its entire field. For example, my vision is giving me a crowd in which is my friend, yet my visual awareness may not yet include his face. For Aquinas a similar relation can exist between sensation and intellection. Even though our attention is focused on sensible things, our intellection has gone on to grasp commonalities of which we are still unaware. How else does one explain that we abide by the non-contradiction principle, are inevitably dissatisfied by finite goods, and know that we are free in respect to anything in our experience? These phenomena show that the notion of being haunts the human mind. A clever Thomist would seize upon each phenomenon to lead the person to realize something that the person in fact already knows—namely, the notion of being and the understanding of being as 13 “Nor do more persons seek the pleasure that is associated with knowing rather than the knowledge. Rather, there are more people who seek sensual pleasures than intellectual knowledge and its accompanying pleasure, because things that are external stand out as better known, since human knowledge starts from sensible objects.” ScG III, ch. 26, par. 16; as translated by Vernon J. Bourke, Summa contra Gentiles (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1975), Bk. III, Part 1, 109–10. 230 John F. X. Knasas the good. So much of Thomism is making the implicit explicit, to rob some language from Transcendental Thomism. Furthermore, our awareness of things and the intelligibilities that things contain is never so focused that all self-awareness is lost. Hence, we cannot but have some awareness of ourselves as intellectors of being. So, with avoidance of contradiction, yearning, and freedom, the phenomenon of obligation is another outcropping indicating the presence of the abstractum of being in the depths of human consciousness.Again, we know more than we are aware.While our attention is on sensible things, or phantasms, the intellect can be doing its own work with the mentioned results. So, a Thomist is not upset that most people appear to be living with no awareness of themselves as intellectors of being. In the Thomist’s contemplation of his fellows, the knowledge of themselves as intellectors of being is present and is explaining their inchoate sense of their own dignity.This inchoate sense of dignity appears in proponents of euthanasia who point out the indignity of a long, lingering, painful death. Even proponents of recreational sex acknowledge it when they insist that recreational sex is morally okay because “no one is getting hurt” and it involves only “consenting adults.” A Thomist will continue to regard euthanasia and recreational sex as morally abhorrent, but that dislike should not cause the Thomist to miss a concession to the Thomist’s understanding of the value of the human person. But furthermore, the Thomist’s understanding of human epistemology allows the Thomist to understand the genesis of the moral confusion.The opponent knows that he ought to respect himself and others but does not know why. And the opponent does not know why because the opponent still lacks an awareness of his apprehension of being as the good. The awareness is lacking because even though intellection has already discerned in external sensible things the notion of being, attention is focused on the sensible things. With only a superficial grasp of themselves, people can honestly believe that they are respecting their dignity when tragically they are not. So even though the primary precepts are per se notum quoad nos, that is, self-evident to all, it does not follow that all are explicitly aware of the meaning of the subjects. In the case of the primary precept,“The human ought to be treated with respect and solicitude,” the subject is the human person. In light of Aquinas’s abstractionist epistemology, is it not possible to have varying depths of understanding of this subject? Can it not be the case that we are intellectors of being long before we become aware of that fact? An affirmative reply would explain why most people experience obligation both to themselves and their fellows yet can be so regarding in what this obligation consists. That confusion would also explain Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 231 why these people go on to miss knowledge of the secondary precepts of natural law. Hence, at ST I–II, q. 94, a. 4, Aquinas mentions Caesar’s observation of the approval of theft among the Germans. The Germans permitted armed robbery of others outside the tribe. The basic reason appears to be their paranoid opinion that outsiders were potential enemies. This opinion is indicative of a shallow understanding of what lies in the depths of the human person. Metaphysics as Implicit Knowledge Aquinas’s distinction between what we know about ourselves and what we realize about ourselves helps us to understand another primary precept mentioned by Aquinas at q. 94, a. 2: “Divine truth ought to be sought.” Along with other primary precepts, Aquinas says that this one has universal truth and is per se notum quoad nos. But is it clear that God exists and, even if it is clear, is it clear that we ought to concern ourselves with knowing God? How does a primary precept about God arise in Aquinas’s natural law? Earlier in his Summa contra gentiles, Aquinas describes an ordinary knowledge of God possessed by all mature human beings.14 Perhaps it will answer my questions.This ordinary knowledge of God is a posteriori and appears to recount a primitive version of the teleological argument. Aquinas concedes that the argument has many shortcomings. For example, Aquinas notes that one does not yet grasp who or what is this orderer or if the orderer is one or many. On the strength of this argument, some identify the orderer with the heavenly bodies, the elements, or other human beings. But does not Aquinas’s concession contradict his thesis 14 “[W]hat seems indeed to be true, that man can immediately reach some sort of knowledge of God by natural reason. For, when men see that things in nature run according to a definite order, and that ordering does not occur without an orderer, they perceive in most cases that there is some orderer of the things that we see. But who or what kind of being, or whether there is but one orderer of nature, is not yet grasped immediately in this general consideration, . . . But this knowledge admits of a mixture of many errors. Some people have believed that there is no other orderer of worldly things than the celestial bodies, and so they said that the celestial bodies are gods. Other people pushed it further, to the very elements and the things generated from them, thinking that motion and the natural functions which these elements have are not present in them as the effect of some other orderer, but that other things are ordered by them. Still other people, believing that human acts are not subject to any ordering, other than human, have said that men who order others are gods.And so, this knowledge of God is not enough for felicity.” ScG III, ch. 38, par. 1; Bourke, trans., Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. III, Part 1, 125–26. 232 John F. X. Knasas that men are knowing God? None of the characterizations of the orderer are remotely similar to the God of Aquinas’s religious belief, who is spiritual, unique, and non-human.Would it not have been clearer for Aquinas to say that men fail to attain a knowledge of God? In other words, when a physicist discovers a new particle, he does not exclaim “God.”And if he did, we would think him strange. Hence, is not Aquinas odd to attribute man’s knowledge of God to man’s knowledge of the elements? In fact on another occasion in the Summa theologiae, regarding David of Didant’s identification of God with matter, Aquinas is uncompromising, if not uncharacteristically cruel, in his dismissal of David’s identification.15 Returning to the Summa contra gentiles, it is important to realize that Aquinas does not say that men reach something “like” God. Aquinas’s assertion is unqualified. Men reach God, even though they identify God with the mentioned non-divine instances. Consequently, when in the next chapter Aquinas introduces philosophical demonstrations to remove the errors, the removal does not consist in moving on to a higher being than those mentioned. Rather, the corrections consist in purifying through removal what the general reasoning had reached.16 So, before this text on an ordinary knowledge of God can be used to support a universal knowledge of the primary precept obliging us to know divine truth, some explanation of how the conclusion of the reasoning can be so wrong and still be right is required. Here a return to Aquinas’s abstractionist epistemology can be helpful. According to Aquinas, the errors in man’s ordinary knowledge of God are set aside by demonstration.The backward reference is important. Early in Book One Aquinas reserves these points of demonstration to the last part of philosophy to be learned, namely, to metaphysics.17 This 15 “The third error is that of David of Dinant, who most stupidly taught that god was primary matter.” ST I, q. 3, a. 8; as translated by Anton Pegis, The Basic Writings of St.Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, p. 35. 16 “On the other hand, there is another sort of knowledge of God, higher than the foregoing, and we may acquire it through demonstration. A closer approach to a proper knowledge of Him is effected through this kind, for many things are set apart from Him, through demonstration, whose removal enables Him to be understood in distinction from other beings. In fact, demonstrations shows that God is immutable, eternal, incorporeal, altogether simple, one, and other such things which we have shown about God in Book One.” ScG III, ch. 39, par. 1; Bourke, trans., Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. III, Part 1, 127. 17 “In order to know the things that the reason can investigate concerning God, a knowledge of many things must already be possessed. For almost all of philosophy is directed towards the knowledge of God, and that is why metaphysics, which deals with divine things, is the last part of philosophy to be learned.” ScG I, ch. 4; as translated by Anton Pegis, Summa contra Gentiles (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 233 assignment should mean that the ordinary knowledge of God is in some way metaphysical. Only as metaphysical could it successfully reach God, albeit imperfectly, as Aquinas claims. But can one possibly regard ordinary individuals to be in possession of Aquinas’s metaphysics?18 The key note in Aquinas’s metaphysics is his understanding of the existence of the thing. Unlike in our common usage, in Aquinas’s metaphysics “the existence of the thing” does not mean simply the fact of the thing nor is its second order talk for something else, for example, being in possession of form. Aquinas regards existence as a distinct principle or act composed with the individual substance to render the substance a being (ens), an existent. In fact the thing’s existence is sufficiently distinct to compare its composition with a substance with form’s composition with matter within the substance (ScG II, ch. 54). Aquinas employs the phrase “actus essendi,” the act of being, and the Latin infinitive “esse” as a noun, or substantive, to express his unique act-sense of the thing’s existence. It is not so much that Aquinas disagrees with the fact-sense of the thing’s existence, but rather that Aquinas insists that the fact-sense be deepened to include the act in virtue of which the thing is a fact.A thing is a fact in virtue of its actus essendi. A being or an existent qua a being or an existent is a habens esse, a possessor of the act of being. The relation of this act to the substance with which it is composed also bears mention. In respect to the substance rendered a being by composition with esse, esse is prior (prius), first (primus), most profound (profundius), and most intimate (magis intimum). Esse is the core around which the thing revolves. We are so accustomed to conceiving acts of a thing as items subsequent and posterior to the thing that the notion of an act basic and fundamental to the thing is strange. But if one is to correctly appreciate esse, usual ways of thinking must be suspended. As an act esse is an ipso facto dependent item. No act as an act, even the sui generis act that is esse, is found by itself. Rather, an act is found as in and of a subject. However, no chance exists to explain esse completely by the substance that is its subject. Substances that are complete explainers of an act are in some respect already in act. As a potency for its existential act, substance cannot position itself to completely explain its esse. Press, 1975) Bk. I, 67. In the just previous chapter naturally knowable truth about God includes the knowledge of his existence: “But there are some truths which the natural reason also is able to reach. Such that God exists, that He is one, and the like.” Pegis, trans., Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. I, 63. 18 For the Thomistic texts behind the many points in my summary description of Aquinas’s metaphysics, see my Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, chapters 6 and 7. 234 John F. X. Knasas The need for complete explanation in the case of esse drives the mind to conclude to a further being in which esse is not found as an act but as the very substance that is the further cause. Aquinas calls this further cause esse subsistens (subsistent existence), esse tantum (existence alone), and esse purum (pure existence). He also refers to it as Deus (God).Aquinas’s stated reason is God’s revelation to Moses in the Book of Exodus that God’s name is Ego sum qui sum: I am who am.19 As subsistent esse, the first cause of esse embodies the key component in Aquinas’s understanding of the notion of being, the ratio entis. Since the ratio entis is also the ratio boni, then the first cause is the pre-eminent epiphany of the good among all such epiphanies. If the human commands respect and solicitude because the human as an intellector of being is an epiphany of the good, then a fortiori the first cause does likewise. In the light of Aquinas’s metaphysics, to orient our moral compass to the divine instance is an obvious per se notum truth. This analysis also illustrates a profound opening in human subjectivity for the life of grace and its culmination in beatitude. But again, is it plausible to regard Aquinas’s metaphysics as a natural and automatic achievement that exists below the level of conscious articulation so that most will have a knowledge of God, imperfect as it is? The answer depends upon our access to the data in which are Aquinas’s key metaphysical notions.The setting up of things in various multiplicities is the standard procedure for the discernment of the thing’s acts.20 For example, because I find the water both hot and cold, I come to discern the various temperatures as acts of the water that in itself is temperature neutral. Moreover, I come to understand each of the instances as a composition of the water plus some temperature. Likewise, because I can find Tom both pale and ruddy, I come to discern the complexions as acts of Tom who in himself is complexion-neutral. But for Aquinas things are found not only in temperature and complexion multiplicities but also in existential multiplicities. Aquinas is an immediate realist in his understanding of sensation. Sensation provides not an image, a representation, 19 “This sublime truth Moses was taught by our Lord.When Moses asked our Lord: ‘If the children of Israel say to me: what is His name? What shall I say to them?’ The Lord replies:‘I am who am . . .Thou shalt say to the children of Israel: He who is hath sent me to you’ (Exod 3:13, 14). By this our Lord showed that His own proper name is He who is. Now, names have been devised to signify the natures or essences of things. It remains, then, that the divine being is God’s essence or nature.” ScG I, ch. 22, par. 10: Pegis, trans., Summa contra Gentiles, Bk. I, 121. 20 The following is a non-technical paraphrase of Aquinas’s approach to the actus essendi of a thing by the twofold operation of the intellect, namely, conceptualization and judgment. For the twofold operation of the intellect presentation, see Knasas, Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists, 182–96. Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 235 a picture of the real thing but the real thing itself. Consequently, the hot water or the pale Tom does not just really exist, in my sensation, it also cognitionally exists. The presentation of some thing in an existential multiplicity should drive the mind to understand the thing to be in itself existence neutral and to understand each instance as a composition of the said thing plus a real or cognitional existence in the sense of an act. The answer to the above question reduces to an answer to this question. Is the mentioned existential multiplicity available to the ordinary person? Certainly. No ordinary person doubts a real world in his sensation. No ordinary person questions the distinction between remembering his beloved in a memory versus being in the beloved’s presence when in her arms. Even though modern philosophy has run away from the immediate presence of the real in sensation, ordinary people continue to live according to that marvelous truth. Furthermore, ordinary people have sufficient presence of mind that none lack an awareness of their own sensation. Hence, they not only know real things, they know that they know real things. In other words, ordinary people not only sense real things, they also are aware that they sense real things. In short, there is every reason to think that the intellect not only discerns the notion of being, as I have claimed above, but that it also apprehends being in the sense of habens esse.The data is sufficiently available for the intellect to be led to the metaphysical distinction between a thing and its esse, even if our awareness is elsewhere. But upon a grasp of the composition, cannot the intellect go on to grasp the conclusion that the esse is caused? One conscious outcrop of this activity is Leibniz’s question of why there is something rather than nothing. As Heidegger points out at the start of his An Introduction to Metaphysics, the question steals upon us in moments of despair, rejoicing, and boredom. Looked at Thomistically, Heidegger’s remark makes sense. Common to these moods is the shutting down of our plans and designs so that we are left simply in the presence of things. But that hovering of things in our awareness bespeaks, as explained, an instability in existents that prompts Leibniz’s question. Aquinas’s metaphysics is as near as the sense realism of ordinary experience. In my opinion, another indication is Aquinas’s listing of identities for the orderers in this ordinary knowledge of God. All of these orderers are intensely related to the notion of being. I have already spoken about the relation of the person to the notion of being. But even the heavens would strike being upon us. Because of their gargantuan dimensions, only the notion of being would allow us to profile the heavens in our mind. But such an intense presence of the notion of being might lead one to confuse the 236 John F. X. Knasas heavens with the cause of being.As mentioned, the notion of being harbors causal implications. Causality goes with the notion of being. In an ordinary person these implications may not be sufficiently distinguished from the instance whose objectification makes the notion of being so necessary. But if the physically great requires the notion of being, so too does the physically small. Hence, Aquinas also mentions the elements as the identity of the orderer. To contemplate the physically small, everything else must be removed from our awareness. That move leaves the physically small alone with the notion of being. The heightened presence of being in the contemplation of minutiae could lead one to confuse the causal implications with the minutiae themselves. In sum, God can be confused with both the great and the small because the presence of the notion of being, in which there are causal implications, is so necessary for the contemplation both of the great and the small. It is no surprise that people basically divide into those who like the mountains and those who like the shore. One looks at the expanse of the sky, the other at vessels on the vast ocean. As the Thomist considers both observers, the Thomist believes that the genuine object of the contemplation is being and that their relaxation is some approximation of the happiness that would be achieved in knowing being itself. This look at how the primary precept to know the truth about God is evident to all is important for another reason. Even though Aquinas says that demonstration in philosophy removes the errors in this ordinary knowledge of God, philosophy does not end all disputes about God. Because of the intrinsic difficulty of the task, philosophy itself will contain massive error. In fact at ScG I, ch. 4, and ST I, q. 1, a. 1, Aquinas employs this observation to justify revelation non-redundantly including truths about God naturally knowable. So, no Thomist would be so naive to think that labors come to an end after dealing with “ordinary” humans. The Thomist knows that fellow philosophers will also pose problems. Aquinas’s admission of truths self-evident to all is not embarrassed by disagreement about those truths. Consider also that, as noted above at q. 94, a. 2,Aquinas also describes the first speculative principle, namely, “A thing cannot both be and not be at the same time,” as both self-evident and known to us. But as indicated from his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Aquinas is not so naive as to believe that disputers are non-existent. Aquinas knows that some deny the principle on the bases that contraries are seen to come from the same thing and that all opinions seem true.21 Aquinas’s admis21 Commentary on the Metaphysics IV, lect. 11 and lect. 12. Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 237 sion here, and his asserted parallelism between the speculative and practical areas at q. 94, a. 2, should mean that also the first practical principle is not so self-evident quoad nos that deniers are rendered non-existent. Aquinas deals with deniers of the non-contradiction principle by pointing out that if they affirm anything, then they deny that reality is contradictory.The only way to keep their denial is to say nothing, and so they reduce themselves to the level of plants. Transcendental Thomists especially claim that Aquinas’s opponents can justifiably be construed as Kantian philosophers who wish to limit necessary ways of thinking just to ways of thinking instead of ways of really existing. But the opponents, as well as Aquinas and Aristotle, all are realists. The premise assumed by all parties is that thought is determined by the real.That is why Aquinas insists that thought would be destroyed if reality is contradictory and that reality is consistent if thought is such. Following Aristotle, Aquinas also goes on to address the above two reasons for the opposing opinion. By distinguishing being in potency from being in act, the phenomenon of contraries emerging from the same thing need not imply a denial of the non-contradiction principle. Also, by noting how the sense organ can be affected by various dispositions, one can understand how different people would have different opinions. My point here and now is not to defend Aquinas’s replies. My point simply is to observe that Aquinas’s thesis of the to-us-self-evident character of the non-contradiction principle is congruent with opposition. Evidently, Aquinas’s position on the per se notum quoad nos character of some propositions is more nuanced than was at first presumed.Aquinas never understood the position to be open to embarrassment by opponents to it. Moreover, Aquinas’s opponents are articulate, and so proponents must appropriately meet them with counter articulation. It will not suffice simply to assert self-evidency. Conclusion So, the primary precepts of Aquinas’s natural law are both known to all and possess a universal truth. Yet understanding this correctly requires a precision. This precision concerns the differing depths of knowledge of the subject of the precepts. For example, all have a sense of obligatory respect and solicitude towards themselves and others. That sense of obligation is what cannot be eliminated from the human heart. But few grasp that that respect stems from the human’s status as an intellector of being. The disparity reduces to the fact that not all appreciate their own intellection.That failure, in its turn, is traced to the abstractive nature of intellection.What the intellect abstracts can be hidden from awareness by the 238 John F. X. Knasas data which is more out front in our awareness. Hence, some people can be honestly ignorant and confused about even the primary precepts of natural law. Their explicit knowledge of themselves can be so superficial that it will allow confusions about what is congruent or incongruent with human dignity. We need not ascribe to them an ill will nor bad habits, though as we have seen Aquinas is fully cognizant of these factors.Weakness of reason suffices.22 Moreover, even when sin darkens the intellect and the moral good is forgotten, the sinner can be called back to rectitude. Every sinful life will still present some effect of the intellection of being, for example, acknowledgement of non-contradiction, intellectual interest, yearning, freedom, and some sense of obligation. If sufficiently clever, a sympathetic Thomist can exploit any of these features of human consciousness to bring the sinner’s attention back to the moral life.True, unlike Plato, Aquinas does not equate knowledge with virtue.23 But 22 In his commentary on the third book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, at lecture 3, number 412, Aquinas agrees with Aristotle that universal ignorance does not excuse.As an example of universal ignorance Aquinas cites being ignorant of the norm that fornication is always wrong. Does Aquinas mean that everyone should know that fornication is wrong so that if they do not, then they are blameworthy? I do not think so. In the just preceding paragraph, number 411, Aquinas makes the context clear. The ignorance that does not excuse belongs to a man “having the use of reason” (homini habenti usum rationis). But in my text above in Section III, I thought that I showed that for Aquinas few men fit that description. Rather, among men there is a debilitas rationis (ScG IV, ch. 52) reflected in the fact that men abstractively draw their knowledge from phantasms. Hence, earlier (ScG III, ch. 26), phantasms, because they are more obvious, are described as occluding an awareness of intelligibilities.That is why most men lack intellectual experience and satisfaction so that sense pleasure is predominantly pursued. So I do not think that an analogy exists between ordinary people and a third grade student who is incorrectly doing simple addition. In the latter case you can presume enough reason to hold the student responsible for his errors. But grasping the natural law precepts correctly is not as simple as that. Some intellectual sophistication is required and few have that.The rest of men bumble around and only vaguely understand their dignity with the result that they tragically judge some actually bad behaviors to be congruent with that dignity. In the context of all that, I interpret the fact that Aquinas addresses their confusion intellectually as indicating that the confusion is not a moral one, as he does the proponent of fornication at ScG III, ch. 124, and the person in “universal ignorance” at De veritate, q. 24, a. 10. Aquinas also compares the “malas persuasiones” by which some can be ignorant of the secondary precepts to errors in speculative matters (ST I–II, q. 94, a. 6). But surely not all speculative errors are blameworthy. “Malas” does not have to mean “morally evil.” For example, there can be natural evil, “malum naturalis defectus” (cf. ST I, q. 19, a. 9). Sometimes the intellect leads the will astray instead of the will leading the intellect. 23 ST I–II, q. 77, a. 2. Tolerance and the Indelibility of Natural Law 239 Aquinas does hold that knowledge has an effect. That is why Aquinas argues that among the intellectual angelic substances, the number who remained firm is greater than the number of those who fell.24 The basic concepts of Aquinas’s natural law ethics are deeply expressive of tolerance in the sense of brotherly love. The subject of the first practical precept is not the good, the ratio boni, pure and simple. It is the ratio boni understood as intellected by the human. Before such an instance of the good, we are not simply free; we are also morally obliged.A respect and solicitude is called forth. A demand to live lovingly issues from understanding. But Aquinas’s natural law is not simply an ethics of what ought to be, or worse—a nice dream, a fairy tale. Despite all the disrespect for its precepts from malice and from weakness of reason, Aquinas’s natural law is also a report on reality. Aquinas thinks that the notion of being controls human psychology.Though not the entire story, the intellection of being is the central theme about the human. It is there when we are moral; it is there when we are immoral. It is there when we understand; it is there when we do not understand. Fundamentally and always, we face each other as fellow intellectors of being; that is the stage upon which human existence is played. Aquinas’s natural law ethics is based upon a philosophical psychology that is true of all kinds of humans. In the light of this psychology Thomists go out to meet their fellows. Thomists will find thick walls of cultures or philosophies, but the walls will not be impenetrable. Aquinas’s philosophical psychology provides a commensurating discourse. Being cannot be eliminated from the heart of the human. N&V 24 ST I, q. 63, a. 9. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 241–70 241 How Barth Got Aquinas Wrong: A Reply to Archie J. Spencer on Causality and Christocentrism T HOMAS J OSEPH W HITE , O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D.C. I N A RECENT issue of Nova et Vetera,Archie Spencer has claimed that Aquinas’s doctrines of causality and analogy are detrimental to Christian theology.1 This is particularly the case, he argues, with regard to Aquinas’s notions of God’s causality of creation, and the analogical names of God, which St. Thomas believes can be derived from creatures considered as God’s effects. More specifically, Spencer claims that this medieval causal metaphysics cannot withstand the challenge of Kant’s criticisms of classical metaphysics, and in a Barthian vein argues that Aquinas’s causal metaphysics inevitably leads to an anthropomorphic conceptual reification of God that obscures the true knowledge of God given uniquely in Christ. On one level it is odd, of course, that Spencer should choose to challenge Thomists to take seriously Karl Barth’s critique of “the analogia entis” or “natural theology” by underscoring the diagnostic truthfulness and historical irreversibility of the Kantian critique of Aquinas’s medieval understanding of divine causality and analogy. After all, in the spasms of modernity’s contemporary self-questioning, need we really affirm autoreflexively that the age of classical metaphysics is definitively vanquished? Indeed, one of the principal concerns of Thomists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was to refute the basic principles, conclusions, and cultural effects of Kantianism as intellectually flawed and illusory.2 1 See Archie J. Spencer,“Causality and the Analogia entis: Karl Barth’s Rejection of Analogy of Being Reconsidered,” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 329–76. 2 One need only briefly recall in this context the historical trajectory from Vatican I and its interpretation by the Thomistic Roman school of Kleutgen and others who 242 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Suggesting that a Thomist ought to submit to the metaphysical formulations of Kant is rather like presupposing that Frenchmen might wish to adopt English citizenship. In another sense, however, Spencer’s interrogation of Aquinas is more original, insofar as it is distinctly theological.And from this point of view, he is posing a question that is not sufficiently considered. What is the value, or disadvantage, in theological and Christological terms, of Aquinas’s use of an analogical metaphysics of causality, which he employs to speak about God’s causal activity of creation, as well as the divine names of God? Does this manner of thinking help or hinder (and if so, how) a more profound understanding of the divinity of Christ? And, if we may be permitted to turn the question around, what are the presuppositions of a theology that repudiates this form of thinking (one species of which is present in the thought of Karl Barth)? And what are the theological consequences of such a repudiation, including the Christological consequences? The question is not uninteresting, and yet is largely left unexamined—by Thomists, in part, surely, but perhaps especially by Barthians. In this essay I will not focus on the philosophical questions of Thomism and the Kantian critique of metaphysics, important though these may be.3 Instead, I would like to briefly re-present Spencer’s distinctly theological taught Leo XIII, to the modernist crisis and the Thomistic revival conducted under Pius X, to Cardinal Mercier and the Louvain school, to Maréchal’s, Rahner’s, and Lonergan’s diverse formulations of Thomism in critical response to Kant, to French Thomism’s aggressive writings in response to Kant from such authors as Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Jacques Maritain, and Étienne Gilson, etc. Unfortunately, Spencer makes no references to any of the arguments in these traditions of thought. 3 The questions are not unimportant, but rather, too important to try to resolve in an essay of this scope. I try to treat this issue, with references to contemporary literature, in my Wisdom in the Face of Modernity:A Study in Modern Thomistic Natural Theology (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, forthcoming). For the sake of brevity, one can note that the basic contrast between the two thinkers does not concern their views on knowledge of God or analogy per se, but starting points as regards epistemological realism, and knowledge of existence and causality in beings we experience immediately. If we understand the knowledge of the latter on Aquinas’s terms, then natural knowledge of God is possible. Not only did Kant not read Aquinas, his critique of metaphysics and knowledge of God as it stands in fact does not apply to Aquinas’s metaphysics in the terms in which the latter understands it, but rather to Enlightenment philosophers whose presuppositions differ vastly from those of Aquinas. Three points can be mentioned here to illustrate the contrasts between Kant and Aquinas, and the obstacles facing any critique of the latter through the prism of the thought of the former: (1) Kant affirms that all metaphysical notions are the results of a priori synthetic judgments and are pure concepts of understanding, pertaining immediately to the way in which the thinking subject organizes sensations Causality and Christocentrism 243 objections to Aquinas’s theories of causality, especially creative causality by God, as he understands them in light of the criticisms of Barth and internally and logically, but not immediately to the order of reality in itself. (See, for example, The Critique of Pure Reason, I, I, 2, trans. N. Smith [London: Macmillan, 1990], 120ff.; II, I, 1, esp. 368ff.) Aquinas, meanwhile, understands metaphysical thought to begin from first, indemonstrable principles that are epistemologically realistic, by which we gain judicative insight into the very nature and structure of existents around us, in what they are, and by virtue of their existence. If Aquinas is correct, then Kant’s critique is itself deeply flawed in its presuppositions. (2) Kant’s theory of natural theology as ontotheology affirms the usefulness of the concept of God, but merely as a regulative notion of reason permitting the construction of systematic knowledge based upon experience, ordering this knowledge in reference to a needed, ideal first principle that stimulates the deepening of human research. As is well known, then, Kant understands the Ontological argument to be at the base of all theistic speculative argumentation, such as that found in the cosmological argument (taken from the contingency of creatures), or the physio-theological argument (based upon the presence of teleology in creatures). For Aquinas, by contrast, analysis of the question of God cannot begin from notions of possible beings (which pertain to mentally immanent beings of reason), nor from the idea of a possible perfect being.The premises of Kant’s approach to any possible knowledge of God are therefore flawed. Instead,Thomistic arguments for the existence of God are a posteriori in nature, derived uniquely from the awareness of intrinsic ontological compositions and extrinsic dependencies that characterize the existence of the things around us (and ourselves).The philosophical question of the existence of God is justified by the consideration of the existence of the sensible world as we experience it, which itself suggests the necessity of a transcendent source for its existence. (3) Kant holds to the idea that God is signified by our most common notion of being and is understood by an additional difference added to this most general concept (such as the attribute of omnipotence, infinity, etc.). (See, for example, The Critique of Pure Reason, II, III,A 845–46/B 873–74, 661ff.) As known by our human thinking, God is intelligible as a subcategory of the broader “science” of being, even as the notion of God refers to that which is the condition of possibility for all possible being (the ultimate explanation of conceivable reality). We only know God, therefore, under the rubric of an extension of human concepts as a special instance of being among others. Aquinas, by contrast, insists that God is not an object of study within the subject of metaphysics, and the idea of God is not a logical or epistemological prerequisite for the metaphysical consideration of causality in creatures. Not only is God not a member of any genus of being. In addition, he can only be understood as the transcendent cause of the subject of metaphysics (ens commune), that is to say, as the cause of everything that depends for its existence on another, and who is himself uncaused. Therefore, God can be known to exist but remains incomprehensible and transcends every human science. At the heart of these three differences, there are radically different conceptions of our knowledge of being in realities that we experience, which in turn give rise to incompatible notions of metaphysics, causality, and analogy. Spencer’s assimilation of Aquinas’s sense of analogy to that of Kant’s (following Eberhard Jüngel) amounts to a very artificial and unconvincing flattening of the history of ideas. 244 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Eberhard Jüngel.Then, I would like to respond in two stages. First I will examine Barth’s theological objections to Aquinas’s theory of causality, and show why a number of these are either inaccurate, or theologically problematic. I will contrast Aquinas’s theory of creative causality, and non-generic, analogical predication with Barth’s own description of “Thomistic” thought, and will argue that in fact, only if one has a theory of analogical predication like the one Aquinas develops can one avoid the kind of generic assimilations of God to creatures that Barth himself (falsely) criticizes Aquinas for making. Aquinas offers clear solutions to a problem that Barth seems to have resolved only partially, and imperfectly. In fact, given his theoretical statements about analogy theory, it is inevitably Barth, and not Aquinas, who is in danger of assimilating God and creatures to a generically common set of features in a conceptually anthropomorphic fashion. Second, I wish to turn to the more fundamental theological question that Spencer’s criticisms raise. Why should Kant’s critique of causality help advance a theological program that wishes to be genuinely Christocentric, both ontologically and epistemologically? Kant, after all, offers arguments against the intelligibility and possibility of the Incarnation and the existence of grace that stem directly (and logically) from his epistemological presuppositions. Here in particular I will argue that the absence of a sense of the analogical causality of the Creator endangers, rather than accentuates, a true understanding of Christ as God, particularly as concerns right reflection on the “divine nature,” or “essence,” of Christ as distinct from his human nature. In fact, the Thomistic sense of analogy and causality serve precisely to understand the transcendence and otherness of the divine nature as unlike human nature, but also the intelligibility of human nature as like the divine nature. This is something Barth’s critique of Aquinas does not grasp adequately, but which is in fact essential for defending Chalcedonian doctrine against Kant’s arguments against the Incarnation.The reason for this is that such a view permits us to rightly understand the freedom of the divine nature to be present in humanity without rivalry to human freedom not despite but because of its transcendence, but also the capacity of human nature to receive the divine revelation due to its likeness to the divine nature, yet without being able in any way to anticipate or procure that presence. In short, Aquinas’s doctrine of analogical causality offers us crucial resources by which to respond to Kantian criticisms of Christianity in ways that Barthian thought does not. Causality and Christocentrism 245 I Spencer’s thesis claims that “Barth’s rejection of the analogia entis can be better understood in the light of his rejection of the Catholic understanding of causality that lies at the heart of the Thomistic doctrine of analogy.”4 Although Spencer wishes to take issue with recent rehabilitations of Erich Przywara’s work (by David Bentley Hart and John Betz), he is careful to claim that whether or not Barth really understood Przywara’s project accurately, he did consistently reject the “Thomistic conception” of the analogy of being, and for good reasons.5 For the sake of clarity, Spencer’s principal arguments can be divided into three. First, Spencer’s chief critique of Aquinas’s thought on creation and analogy takes aim at Aquinas’s use of the neo-Platonic principle of causal resemblance (“effects resemble their cause”), which was commonly discussed and defended in medieval scholasticism.The axiom is particularly problematic when applied to the relationship between creation and God. Influenced by Barth, Spencer affirms that within Aquinas’s thought this principle of causal resemblance “functions as a veritable metaphysics, a totalizing principle, a genus under which all else has its being, and by which we may know being.”6 Such thinking is problematic because it subsumes both God and creatures under the notions of “cause” and “being” together into a proportionally analogical form of conceptual reflection (a:b::c:d) in which a latent univocity is contained.7 This results in a conceptual anthropomorphism that understands God reductively (and problematically) in terms of creatures. God is understood as being and cause in a way that is at base reducible to the way we understand creatures as beings and causes, in which each have their respective place within a system of human making. This anthropocentric way of thinking displaces and obscures the true knowledge of God (in his genuine alterity and humanity) that comes from God’s free initiative in grace, through Christ alone. Second, Spencer claims that the structure of Aquinas’s thought needs to be understood in light of Immanuel Kant’s “demolition and reconstruction of the argument from causality” in his Critique of Pure Reason, and other works.8 The idea here comes not directly from Barth, but rather 4 Spencer, “Causality and the Analogia entis,” 330. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid., 331; 348–58. Spencer’s narrative on this point largely is derived from Barth’s treatment of these subjects in Church Dogmatics II, 1, 529ff. and III, 3, 89–154. All citations from the Church Dogmatics are taken from the English edition of G.W. Bromiley and T. F.Torrance (New York:T. & T. Clark, 2004). 7 Spencer, “Causality and the Analogia entis,” 345–46. 8 Ibid., 332. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. 246 from Jüngel.The latter thinker attempted to assimilate Barth’s criticism of Thomistic causality to a Heideggerian critique of Western metaphysics and theism as “ontotheology.” 9 Because Aquinas conceived of all causality in intra-worldly terms (that is, with God inevitably having to be portrayed as an ontic entity among other entities), therefore he could only conceive of God’s alterity and transcendence in terms entirely inconsistent with this world (that is, God as wholly other from the world). The only way that Thomism could affirm a real difference between God and the world as we experience it, then, was by formulating a radically apophatic conception of the divine essence, and divine causation. It is the antinomy of divine and human freedom that results from such thinking that Kant himself accurately diagnosed. If we can think God’s freedom in causal terms, then human freedom becomes unintelligible, and vice versa.The Kantian diagnostic at base entailed the insight that “cause-effect relations” are in fact constructions of the human mind permitting one to organize the data of empirical sense impressions, but that the scholastic tradition had illegitimately attempted to transfer these pure constructions of reason into the “trans-sensible” sphere. In turn, Kant made clearer something that was latent in the Thomistic tradition: once we have recourse to philosophical notions of causality to speak about God, God cannot be known in terms of the forms of this world, and God is banished from the sphere of empirical existence once and for all.10 A kind of systematic agnosticism results. “It was Scholasticism, as it followed Aquinas, that set the stage for this.”11 Third, then, it is Barth’s recovery of an authentic sense of theological divine “causality” that is called for, “a form of causal argumentation that is [exclusively] Christologically determined.”12 It is possible to speak of a certain analogy between God and creation, but only insofar as this likeness is revealed in faith (the analogia fidei of Barth), and not derived through philosophical speculation. This presumes that we understand God’s causality of creation only in light of “God’s self-revelation as the Father of Jesus Christ.”13 God is made known to us in his relation to the world as Creator only through the human life of Jesus Christ, and in the Son’s relation to the Father. Creation is never conceptualized except within the context of a theological study of God’s mystery of the election of humanity in Jesus Christ. 9 See, for example, Eberhard Jüngel’s God as the Mystery of the World, trans. D. Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), 277–80. 10 Spencer, “Causality and the Analogia entis,” 332. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. For the exposition of Barth’s views, see 359–73. Causality and Christocentrism 247 II Spencer’s basic claims are colored by some logical flaws and historical oversights. First, it is clear that the second charge of Spencer that I have noted above (taken from Jüngel) seemingly contrasts notably with the first (taken from Barth). We pass from the accusation against Aquinas of practicing univocal anthropomorphism to the charge of practicing equivocal agnosticism, and these are logically opposing charges. To attempt to harmonize them one would need to show, rather than presume, that Jüngel’s ambitious meta-narrative of Western metaphysical history (with Hegelian and Heideggerian points of historical dialectic and synthesis that are not overtly present in Barth’s thought) is truly consistent with Barth’s own views. However, this is far from evident and suggests an ahistoricism. Second, while Spencer’s assimilation of Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy and causality to that of Kant’s stems from Eberhard Jüngel’s well-known work, this argument fails to take into account the substantial amount of historical research conducted in the last few decades on the Enlightenment origins of Kantian and Heideggerian theories of ontotheology that differentiates the targets of their criticisms (and consequently their own presuppositions) from Aquinas’s genuine thought.14 It simultaneously ignores the classical Thomistic responses to the Humean and Kantian doctrines of causality.15 Here, however, I will not linger on these points, important though they may be, and will return instead to what I take to be the substantive 14 The contemporary French literature on the subject of Aquinas in relation to Kant and Heidegger is especially important. See, for example, Olivier Boulnois, Être et représentation (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), especially 457–515; idem, “La destruction de l’analogie et l’instauration de la métaphysique,” in Duns Scot, Sur la connaissance de Dieu et l’univocité de l’étant (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), 11–81; idem,“Quand commence l’ontothéo-logie? Aristote, Thomas d’Aquin et Duns Scot,” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 85–105; Jean-François Courtine, Suarez et le Système de la Métaphysique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990); idem, Inventio analogiae: Métaphysique et ontothéologie (Paris: J. Vrin, 2005); Jean-Luc Marion, “Saint Thomas d’Aquin et l’onto-théo-logie,” Revue Thomiste, 95 (1995): 31–66;Vincent Carraud, Causa sive ratio. La raison de la cause, de Suarez à Leibniz (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002);Thierry-Dominique Humbrecht, O.P., Théologie Négative et Noms Divins chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: J.Vrin, 2005). 15 A long list could be given here, but see, classically, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., God: His Existence and His Nature, vol. 1 (London: Herder, 1939), 100–6; 205–32; Étienne Gilson, l’Être et l’Essence (Paris: J. Vrin, 1981), 187–207; and, more recently, Denys Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Lawrence Dewan,“St.Thomas and the Principle of Causality,” in Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 61–80. 248 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. theological question under consideration.Why would Barthians choose to accept the validity of Kant’s critique of causality? What are the distinctly Christological advantages (or disadvantageous consequences) for the Barthian in his or her acceptance of the validity of Kant’s critique of causality? After all, if one loyally follows the presuppositions and arguments of Kant to their logical conclusions, they render impossible the intelligibility of the basic mysteries of Christianity, a fact that Kant himself insisted upon quite clearly.The Incarnation is not an intelligible notion, as it would attempt to locate a pure idea of moral responsibility that is an object of universal reason in a particular sensible form, and tangible narrative.This would necessarily limit in an artificial, non-speculative, and nonethical way the principle of transcendental, universal reason to only one of its figurative representations.16 Otherwise said, the moral absolute cannot be manifest in the sensible sphere because it pertains not to a transcendent reality that has taken flesh, but to the immanent life of human reason, which itself transcends the sensible. Likewise, if grace is a cause of the actions of the moral life, then the human causality by which human beings render themselves responsible is necessarily jeopardized by a kind of logical rivalry between divine causality and human causality that is introduced into any speculative account of human free action.17 On both these counts, the strictly equivocal character of all knowledge of God (equivalent to a speculative ban on any knowledge of God-philosophical or revealed) is mirrored by an aggressive univocity as concerns the presence of anything in the historical, sensible world that is subject to study by human reason. Everything that comes under the conditions of empirical knowledge has to be understood within the limits of reason alone, as it ordinarily functions both speculatively and practically in its categorical organization of sensible experience. Is a true Christological confession of faith compatible with such an epistemology? Clearly not, as Kant rightly points out.And this is due in part to the basic lack of a pattern of analogical thinking about existence in Kant’s own thought. What, then, are the reasons that Barth rejects a Thomistic account of “analogical causality” and under what conditions would he be willing to 16 See Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, “The Idea of Pure Reason”, Section I, A568/B596-A570/B598, where Kant makes this argument, implicitly but clearly aimed against any notion of the Incarnation. A modified form of the argument is given in Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans.A.Wood and G. Di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 6:60–6:66, in which the Christ-narrative is seen to have positive moral benefits, once it is reinterpreted in a demythologized, philosophical, and ethical form. 17 Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, 6:63–64. Causality and Christocentrism 249 entertain such a notion in order to speak about the relation between the world and God? Here I will return to a passage that Spencer discusses.18 It is a list of five conditions that Barth gives in Church Dogmatics III.3 for a right theological use of the analogical notion of causa to speak of God’s positing of creation, and the God-creature relation.19 In identifying the criticisms that Barth has of St.Thomas’s thought in this respect, I will first note several ways in which Barth seriously failed to understand Aquinas’s own doctrine of creation as “causality.” Second, I will argue that rightly understood, the doctrine of analogical creation as Aquinas sets it out is precisely the fashion that one might avoid the very errors of thought that Barth falsely accuses Aquinas of holding. The five criteria of Barth are the following: 1. First, a theological notion of causality may in no way be equated with a mechanical (post-Newtonian) concept of causality, as such a notion of causality would be inadequate to signify either the creative causality of God, or creaturely causality within the order of nature derived from God’s creative activity. Barth rightly notes that Aquinas did not affirm such a notion of causality, and that this notion is distinctly modern.20 2. Second, “if the term causa is to be applied legitimately, care must be taken lest the idea should creep in that in God and the creature we have to do with two ‘things.’ ”21 Barth equates reification of God through the concept of cause with the claim to be able to define God (that is, to pretend to have quidditative knowledge of what God is). If God and the creature are reified under the common concept of causality, as if one could “think and speak about them directly,” this leads man to think that God and creatures “and their relationship to each other [are] somehow below him.”22 That is to say, the human mind pretends to comprehend by its own powers God and his relation to creatures. Aristotle’s “dialectic of the causal concept”23 is to be suspected of leading to this form of thinking. Barth also sometimes intimates that the Thomistic notion of causality reifies both God and creatures within a common system of quantities, because the 18 Spencer, “Causality and the Analogia entis,” 364–73. 19 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III, 3, 94–107. 20 Ibid., 101. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 102. 23 Ibid. 250 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. oneness of God and the oneness of creatures are articulated as diverse “beings” within a common system.24 3. Third,“if the term causa is to be applied legitimately, it must be clearly understood that it is not a master-concept to which both God and creature are subject, nor is it a common denominator to which they may both be reduced. Causa is not a genus of which the divine and creaturely causa can then be described as species.When we speak about the being of God and that of the creature, we are not dealing with two species of the one genus being.”25 If causality is to be applied to God and creatures, it must be understood that because there is no common genus, there is no similarity between causality in God and causality in creatures, nor even any comparability between the two.The idea of such a similarity—which Barth attributes to the analogia entis of the Catholic tradition and explicitly to Thomism26—would unwittingly understand God and creatures within a “common genus” of causality, and God as a being relative to creatures. It is unable to safeguard the absolute unlikeness between both God and creatures, and between creatures and God.27 In fact, only through revelation is a similitude between both God and creatures and between creatures and God disclosed to human thought.28 This theological similitude can be called an analogia operationis or analogia relationis. Evidently for Barth, such “operations” and “relations” that are common to both God and creatures are not to be conceived of within a common genus. According to this theological analogy, “The divine causa, as distinct from the creaturely, is selfgrounded, self-positing, self-conditioning and self-causing [causa sui ].”29 4. Fourth, the notion of causality in theology may at no point be turned into “purely philosophical thinking,” as distinct from theological reflection on revelation, philosophy being understood as “projecting a kind of total scheme of things.”30 5. Fifth, divine and creaturely causality can only be understood within the narrative context of a distinctly theological reflection on the 24 See ibid., 102 and 104, where he intimates that philosophical analogies are only possible through a quantitative comparison of entities. See also the explicit claim to this effect in Church Dogmatics II, 1, 580. 25 Barth, Church Dogmatics III, 3, 102. 26 Ibid., 103. 27 Ibid., 104. 28 Ibid., 102. 29 Ibid., 103. 30 Ibid., 104. Causality and Christocentrism 251 divine economy, in which “God, the only true God, so loved the world in His election of grace that in fulfillment of the covenant of grace instituted at the creation He willed to become a creature, and did in fact become a creature, in order to be its savior.”31 If we abstract from this theological context to speak about God as a primary cause, we will no longer be speaking about the God of Jesus Christ, and will in fact introduce alien speculation into Christian theology that detracts from a realistic appreciation in faith of the similarity between God and the world revealed uniquely in Christ. If we list the criticisms of Thomist notions of causality from these pages that are either mentioned explicitly or intimated, we can find at least the following: 1. Thomist notions of causality tend toward a conceptual reification of God. 2. They place both God and creatures within a common intellectual system of quantification, such that the divine unity of God is conceived of as a quantity among other quantities, a numeric being and cause justifying or explaining other beings and causes. 3. Thomism attempts to think of God and creatures from within a common genus of “causality” and “being.” 4. Thomist notions of analogical causality are unable to safeguard the absolute unlikeness between both God and creatures, and between creatures and God. 5. Thomist notions of causality portray God as a being that is necessarily relative to creatures. 6. Thomistic metaphysics aspires to a “purely philosophical form of thinking” about God, one that would attempt to understand the deity “within a total scheme of things” derived from merely human projections, rather than divine revelation. 7. Thomist notions of causality seek in part at least to derive knowledge of God as a cause from non-biblical sources, and thereby introduce elements of reflection into theology that ignore or abstract from the God of Jesus Christ. In this sense, they adulterate our understanding of revelation and obscure the Christocentric character of all true knowledge of God. 31 Ibid., 105. 252 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. All of these claims are highly problematic, and despite Barth’s undisputed greatness as a thinker and theologian, most are fairly clumsy and suggest that Barth did not seriously engage Aquinas’s thought in any substantive way before writing about him. Here, I would like to attempt briefly to refute the first five claims by appealing to Aquinas’s own teachings (in contradistinction to Barth’s portrayal of Aquinas), and I will refer briefly to the last two in the next section of this essay. The most important and most problematic of the characterizations of Thomism concerns the third point immediately mentioned above: the idea that God and creatures might be understood in Thomism as species of a common genus by appeal to either the concept of being or of causality. Due to his rhetorical style, it is difficult to tell how aware Barth is of the depth of miscomprehension of classical and medieval thought that this characterization represents. Spencer, at any rate, repeats the charge as if it were unproblematic.Yet leaving aside for the moment any question of God, according to both Aristotle and Aquinas, as well other influential medievals such as Scotus and Suarez, being and causality, even in realities we experience immediately, are never themselves confined to realization within a single genus. To think that they could be is in fact to have fundamentally misunderstood one of the most basic structures of classical metaphysics, such that a charge like this one renders a serious dialogue between Thomists and Barthians nearly impossible. For contrary to this account being offered of the “analogia entis,” it is precisely against such an idea (of generic predication) that Aristotle focused upon the metaphysical truth that notions such as being, oneness, goodness, and truth (all of which he names explicitly in this respect) are not in any one genus of being, but said analogously of the diverse genera of being, by proportionality.32 32 See, for example, Metaphysics B, 4, 1001a4–29; E, 1, 1026a24–32; L, 4, 1070b1–3, 5–10; 5, 1071a24–36, and the helpful study of Enrico Berti, “Multiplicity and Unity of Being in Aristotle,” The Aristotelian Society 101 (2001): 185–207. In Nicomachean Ethics, I, 6, 1196a23–29 it is particularly clear that Aristotle is reacting against Plato’s theory of Forms with the conception that being and goodness are not in a genus:“Further, since things are said to be good in as many ways as they are said to be (for things are called good both in the category of substance, as God and reason, and in quality, e.g. the virtues, and in quantity, e.g. that which is moderate, and in relation, e.g. the useful, and in time, e.g. the right opportunity, and in place, e.g. the right locality and the like), clearly the good cannot be something universally present in all cases and single; for then it would not have been predicated in all the categories but in one only. . . . But of honor, wisdom, and pleasure, just in respect of their goodness, the accounts are distinct and diverse, the good, therefore, is not something common answering to one Idea. . . . Are goods one, then, by being derived from one good or by all contributing to one good, Causality and Christocentrism 253 Being is ascribed analogically to substances, natures, qualities, quantities, relations, operations, and so on because it is not reducible to any one of the categorical modes of being.33 The analogical and transcendental structure of being by its very nature implies the impossibility of the idea that being could be signified in a generic fashion. Furthermore, because there are four causes for Aristotle and Aquinas (formal, material, final, and efficient), causality itself is understood also without reference to one genus, and is understood only in a diversified fashion. What I have mentioned here refers, of course, only to created beings. When it comes to the question of signifying God analogically, even greater problems emerge with the Barthian portrait of St. Thomas. For, in fact, as Thomist historians commonly emphasize,Aquinas is quite insistent that even the transcendental notion of being (which is non-generic) only signifies the “common being” (ens commune) that is found in all creatures. It does not in itself signify God in any way, insofar as God is not a member of ens commune. Consequently, God is not an object within the science of being as such (such that he could be considered as a “being” alongside ontic creatures), but can only be approached tangentially by the human mind as the transcendent cause of all that exists.34 This is why we must say, for Aquinas, that not only is God not in a genus of being whatsoever (such as substance, or quantity, or operation, or relation), but he is not even a member of the set of all beings as such. He utterly transcends or are they rather one by analogy?” (trans.W. D. Ross, The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984]). 33 Aquinas, Duodecim Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio, V, lect. 9, 889–90: “Being cannot be narrowed down to some definite thing in the way in which a genus is narrowed down to a species by means of differences. For since a difference does not participate in a genus, it lies outside the essence of a genus. But there could be nothing outside the essence of being which could constitute a particular species of being by adding to being, for what is outside of being is nothing, and this cannot be a difference. Hence the Philosopher proved that being cannot be a genus. Being must then be narrowed down to diverse genera on the basis of a different mode of predication, which flows from a different mode of being; for ‘being is signified,’ i.e., something is signified to be,‘in just as many ways’ (or in just as many senses) as we can make predications. And for this reason the classes into which being is first divided are called predicaments, because they are distinguished on the basis of different ways of predicating. Therefore, since some predicates signify what (i.e., substance); some, of what kind; some, how much, and so on; there must be a mode of being corresponding to each type of predication. For example, when it is said that a man is an animal, is signified substance; and when it is said that a man is white, is signified quality; and so on” (Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, trans. J. P. Rowan [Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1995]). 34 See, for example, Aquinas’s explicit discussion of this in In Meta., prologue. 254 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. all that exists, all that is common to being, all that has being (signified variously as ens commune, or esse commune ). For the sake of clarity, it is helpful to cite one of Aquinas’s most trenchant texts on the matter, from Summa theologiae I, q. 4, a. 3, “Whether any creature can be like God?”: For since every agent reproduces itself so far as it is an agent, and everything acts according to the manner of its form, the effect must in some way resemble the form of the agent. If therefore the agent is contained in the same species as its effect, there will be a likeness in form between that which makes and that which is made, according to the same formality of the species; as man reproduces man. If, however, the agent and its effect are not contained in the same species, there will be a likeness, but not according to the formality of the same species; as things generated by the sun’s heat may be in some sort spoken of as like the sun, not as though they received the form of the sun in its specific likeness, but in its generic likeness. Therefore if there is an agent not contained in any “genus,” its effect will still more distantly reproduce the form of the agent, not, that is, so as to participate in the likeness of the agent’s form according to the same specific or generic formality, but only according to some sort of analogy; as existence is common to all. In this way all created things, so far as they are beings, are like God as the first and universal principle of all being.35 These observations also help us to understand why the charge made against Aquinas of assimilating both God and creatures to a system of quantities is intrinsically problematic. First, this would be to presume that unity as a transcendental notion was reducible to the genus of quantity, which is incompatible with what has been said above concerning transcendental notions. Quantity is a dimension of being intrinsically related to matter, and is only one categorical mode of being, while unity is coextensive with all that exists. All that has being is in some way one.36 Second, however, Barth’s charge presumes that when we attribute oneness or unity to God, we do so in a way that is identical with that of creatures. But precisely because God is not a member of ens commune—of those that have been given existence—his unity is utterly unlike that of creatures. 35 Emphasis added. All English translations of the Summa theologiae are taken from the 1920 English Dominican Province translation, Summa Theologica (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1947). 36 See Aquinas, In IV Meta., lect. 2, 561–63. Commenting upon the idea that being and unity are co-extensive, trans-categorial properties, Aquinas states (561): “Since being and unity signify the same thing, and the species of things that are the same are themselves the same, there must be as many species of being as there are of unity, and they must correspond to each other. For just as the parts of being are substance, quantity, quality, and so on, in a similar way the parts of unity are sameness, equality and likeness.” Causality and Christocentrism 255 Contrary to the claims of Barth and Spencer, God is in no way causa sui, and the attribution of that title to him (whether philosophically by Spinoza, or supposedly “theologically” by Barth) amounts to a problematic conceptual anthropomorphism. Because God is utterly un-derived and uncaused, therefore the unity of God is utterly unlike that of creatures, particularly in their quantitative dimensions.37 This leads to the refutation of the fourth and fifth points mentioned above.What Barth does not see in Aquinas is that for St.Thomas there is a non-reciprocity between the similitude attributed to creatures in relation to God, and the non-similitude attributed to God in relation to creatures. Aquinas is quite clear about this in ST I, q. 4, a. 3 (which I have quoted at length above), ad 3 and 4: Likeness of creatures to God is not affirmed on account of agreement in form according to the formality of the same genus or species, but solely according to analogy, inasmuch as God is essential being, whereas other things are beings by participation. [Therefore] although it may be admitted that creatures are in some sort like God, it must nowise be admitted that God is like creatures; because, as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. IX, 6): “a mutual likeness may be found between things of the same order, but not between a cause and that which is caused.” For, we say that a statue is like a man, but not 37 In ST I, q. 11, a. 3, c. and ad 2, Aquinas makes clear that unity in God is utterly unlike that of creatures because of the Creator’s simplicity: in contrast to all creatures he is uniquely individuated by what he is, and his nature is transcendent and incommunicable.“For it is manifest that the reason why any singular thing is ‘this particular thing’ is because it cannot be communicated to many: since that whereby Socrates is a man, can be communicated to many; whereas, what makes him this particular man, is only communicable to one.Therefore, if Socrates were a man by what makes him to be this particular man, as there cannot be many Socrates, so there could not in that way be many men. Now this belongs to God alone; for God Himself is His own nature, as was shown above (ST I, q. 3, a. 3). Therefore, in the very same way God is God, and He is this God. Impossible is it therefore that many Gods should exist” (ST I, q. 11, a. 3). Aquinas goes on to specify why God cannot be in a common genus with material quantities:“ ‘One’ which is the principle of number is not predicated of God, but only of material things. For ‘one’ the principle of number belongs to the ‘genus’ of mathematics, which are material in being, and abstracted from matter only in idea. But ‘one’ which is convertible with being is a metaphysical entity and does not depend on matter in its being. [It signifies the absence of multiplicity.] And although in God there is no privation, still, according to the mode of our apprehension, He is known to us by way only of privation and remotion.Thus there is no reason why a certain kind of privation should not be predicated of God; for instance, that He is incorporeal and infinite; and in the same way it is said of God that He is one” (ibid., ad 2). 256 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. conversely; so also a creature can be spoken of as in some sort like God; but not that God is like a creature. The reason for this is precisely because God is not in a common genus of creaturely existence, or even one who may be signified with creatures as “equally” participating in a transcendental characteristic.38 Rather, because he is the unique source of all else that exists, his being and nature are signified only by recourse to analogies of “causality” that respect his non-relationality to creatures and his incomparable dissimilarity with respect to creation.This understanding is in turn illustrated vividly in Aquinas’s discussion of creation as a form of causality in ST I, questions 44 and 45.There he underscores the fact that creation may not be understood as a form of change, as if God were a being among beings acting upon them (and being acted upon by them), as intra-worldly created causes do.When we consider the notion of God’s action of creation and the creature’s reception of being, while removing from our notion of causality all that pertains to change and mutual alteration, what alone remains are the notions of relation: God is the source of the very substance of the creature, who is therefore really relative to him in all that it is.39 Creation, therefore, is not something in the creature, not a historical process of change in a pre-existing substrate that God must cooperate with.40 Rather, creation is the very gift to the creature of existing per se, with all that in fact characterizes it.41 However, for this very 38 Which is one of Aquinas’s chief concerns in ST I, q. 13, a. 5 in refusing any use of the analogy of attribution in which God and creatures are understood as two instantiations of being that are both relative to a prime analogate, a more common conception of being. 39 See ST I, q. 45, a. 2, ad 2:“Creation is not change. . . . For change means that the same something should be different now from what it was previously. Sometimes, indeed, the same actual thing is different now from what it was before, as in motion according to quantity, quality and place; but sometimes it is the same being only in potentiality, as in substantial change, the subject of which is matter. But in creation, by which the whole substance of a thing is produced, the same thing can be taken as different now and before only according to our way of understanding, so that a thing is understood as first not existing at all, and afterwards as existing. But as action and passion coincide as to the substance of motion, and differ only according to diverse relations (Physics III, 3; 202b20), it must follow that when motion is withdrawn, only diverse relations remain in the Creator and in the creature.” 40 See ST I, q. 45, a. 2. 41 See ST I, q. 45, a. 3:“Whether creation is anything in the creature? . . . Creation places something in the thing created according to relation only; because what is created, is not made by movement or change. For what is made by movement or by change is made from something pre-existing. And this . . . cannot happen in the production of all being by the universal cause of all beings, which is God. Causality and Christocentrism 257 reason, there is no real relation between God and creatures, because God does not possess an identity that is in any way determined or perfected by his causation of creatures.42 Rather, the contrary is the case: creatures are caused by God because of who he is in his transcendent perfection, and God alone can create.43 Evidently, in such a form of reflection, there is no possibility of God being determined relative to creatures in his existence, nor of his needing to cause them to be in order to be God, nor of his causality as Creator stemming from something other than his eternally free wisdom and love. In fact, only if God’s causality is characterized in this radically transcendent fashion is it in fact possible to understand God’s creation as an entirely free gift, and the act of creation as truly contingent, that is to say, as something that is in no way compelled, but which derives uniquely from the entirely gratuitous initiative of divine goodness.44 This leads us at last to Barth’s first charge listed above: that the notions of causality and being implicitly lead theologians to reify in conceptual form a notion of “what” God is. But of course, precisely because of his doctrine of analogical causation, Aquinas insists that there is no quidditative (or reifying) way to characterize God. It is true that by the fact that creatures do resemble God as their cause, we can truly signify what God is substantialiter, in contradiction to the radical apophaticism of Maimonides (or Kant).45 Analogical predication of divine names is not radically equivocal, but signifies God in a true fashion. However, Aquinas (in seeming Hence God by creation produces things without movement. Now when movement is removed from action and passion, only relation remains, as was said above. Hence creation in the creature is only a certain relation to the Creator as to the principle of its being; even as in passion, which implies movement, is implied a relation to the principle of motion.” 42 See ST I, q. 45, a. 3, ad 2: “Creation signified actively means the divine action, which is God’s essence, with a relation to the creature. But in God relation to the creature is not a real relation, but only a relation of reason; whereas the relation of the creature to God is a real relation. . . .” 43 See ST I, q. 45, a. 5. 44 Aquinas states things succinctly in Lectura super Ioannem,V, lec. 3, 753:“For since the good alone is loveable, a good can be related to love in two ways: as the cause of love, or as caused by love. Now in us, the good causes love: for the cause of our loving something is its goodness, the goodness in it. Therefore, it is not good because we love it, but rather we love it because it is good.Accordingly in us, love is caused by what is good. But it is different with God, because God’s love itself is the cause of the goodness in the things that are loved. For it is because God loves us that we are good, since to love is nothing else than to will a good to someone. Thus, since God’s will is the cause of things, for ‘whatever he willed he made’ (Ps 113:3), it is clear that God’s love is the cause of the goodness in things” (Commentary on St. John’s Gospel, vol. 1, trans. J.Weisheipl [Albany, NY: Magi, 1980]). 45 See ST I, q. 13, a. 2. 258 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. contradiction to Barth’s characterization of him) also adds that God may not be signified in his perfection as a “cause of beings,” but only as the one in whom the perfections of all that is pre-exist in a most perfect and incomprehensible fashion.46 At the same time, because the fashion in which we think of God (the modus significandi of our concepts) takes its origin from creatures, therefore we cannot know God “quidditatively” as he is in himself.47 For Aquinas, we cannot know “what” God is.48 The similitude between creatures and God, then, safeguards the idea that God can be signified, but also includes the idea that God cannot be known in a reified fashion because he is known as Creator only through the medium 46 See ST I, q. 13, a. 2: “But as regards absolute and affirmative names of God, as ‘good,’‘wise,’ and the like, various and many opinions have been given. For some have said that all such names, although they are applied to God affirmatively, nevertheless have been brought into use more to express some remotion from God, rather than to express anything that exists positively in Him. Hence they assert that when we say that God lives, we mean that God is not like an inanimate thing; and the same in like manner applies to other names; and this was taught by Rabbi Moses. Others say that these names applied to God signify His relationship towards creatures: thus in the words,‘God is good,’ we mean, God is the cause of goodness in things; and the same rule applies to other names. Both of these opinions, however, seem to be untrue. . . . First because in neither of them can a reason be assigned why some names more than others are applied to God. For He is assuredly the cause of bodies in the same way as He is the cause of good things; therefore if the words ‘God is good,’ signified no more than, ‘God is the cause of good things,’ it might in like manner be said that God is a body, inasmuch as He is the cause of bodies. So also to say that He is a body implies that He is not a mere potentiality, as is primary matter. Therefore we must hold a different doctrine—viz. that these names signify the divine substance, and are predicated substantially of God, although they fall short of a full representation of Him. . . . So when we say, ‘God is good,’ the meaning is not, ‘God is the cause of goodness,’ . . . but the meaning is, ‘Whatever good we attribute to creatures, pre-exists in God,’ and in a more excellent and higher way. Hence it does not follow that God is good, because He causes goodness; but rather, on the contrary, He causes goodness in things because He is good.” (Emphasis added.) 47 See ST I, q. 13, a. 3: “Our knowledge of God is derived from the perfections which flow from Him to creatures, which perfections are in God in a more eminent way than in creatures. Now our intellect apprehends them as they are in creatures, and as it apprehends them it signifies them by names. Therefore as to the names applied to God there are two things to be considered—viz. the perfections which they signify, such as goodness, life and the like, and their mode of signification.As regards what is signified by these names, they belong properly to God, and more properly than they belong to creatures, and are applied primarily to Him. But as regards their mode of signification, they do not properly and strictly apply to God; for their mode of signification applies to creatures.” 48 See ST I, q. 3, prologue. Causality and Christocentrism 259 of his causation of creatures.49 The fact that God is named from creatures in the terms that Aquinas formulates from analogical causality is not the obstacle to a doctrine of divine transcendence, and an instigation to some form of conceptual idolatry, but is in fact the true safeguard against such idolatrous thinking, inspired by a true sense of divine transcendence. Ironically, in the absence of such a reflection, Barth’s own theological appeals to an analogia relationis or an analogia operationis run an even greater risk of understanding God in a common genus with creatures than anything Aquinas posits, precisely because, of course, “relation” and “operation” or “activity” are themselves categorical modes of being (that is, “genera” of being), and are not necessarily intrinsically analogical notions such as those of being, unity, or causality. Therefore, precisely in order to appeal to them in an analogical sense, it is necessary to underscore the difference between relation or operation with respect to God and these genera as they are found in creatures. In practice, it is simply impossible to do this without recourse to a notion of analogical causality that designates the utter transcendence of God in his operations and relations with respect to creatures. Whatever terms the Barthian might wish to use to talk about Godbeing, cause, relation, activity, or anything else—he or she is presumably going to have to clarify ways that these significations are not to be equated with our ordinary (philosophical) uses of the terms, yet how they still preserve some real signification that is not wholly unintelligible. Barth’s epigones, and perhaps Barth himself, think that the “philosophical” meaning of these terms is completely inapplicable to God, but that the terms have a “theological” meaning, given by revelation alone, which is true only for God. But what is this meaning? If we circumvent the redherrings of Barthian rhetoric, which is constantly playing off theology against philosophy, the answer—to the extent that one is given—turns out to be some kind of extension or qualification of ordinary (often “philosophical”) usage of terms. This would suggest that Barth and Barthians are just as committed to some sort of analogical naming of God from creatures as anybody else is. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? And so, unsurprisingly, we find Barth appealing to what are implicitly analogical senses of ordinary terms when speaking about God in the very passages in which he condemns the thought of “Thomists” for their appeal to analogy.50 Yet Barth’s own rhetoric seems to obscure this truth, 49 See ST I, q. 13, a. 1. 50 See, for example, Church Dogmatics III, 3, 103:“The divine causa, as distinct from the creaturely, is self-grounded, self-positing, self-conditioning, and self-causing. . . . [The] creaturely causa is not grounded in itself but absolutely from outside and 260 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. and his lack of systematic reflection on the topic leads him to do some analogical naming in a roughshod, improper way (for example, Barth’s Spinozist idea of God as causa sui—for as Augustine long ago pointed out, nothing, least of all God, can be the cause of its own existence).The irony is that the preservation of theological reflection against an anthropomorphic, generic assimilation of God to creatures, and the cultivation of an adequate conceptual respect for the utter transcendence of God both rely in practice upon a seasoned reflection on analogical discourse concerning being and causality, as well as categorical notions such as substance, nature, activity, relation, and so on. It might be that a more careful study of the texts of both Barth and Aquinas would reveal that there is on several levels a fundamental convergence of perspective, albeit one that Barth himself failed to appreciate. III To say all this leaves untreated, however, the last two of Barth’s criticisms of Aquinas on causality that I have listed above, both of which relate to the Christological character of our knowledge of God. It is true, after all, that while Aquinas and Barth in fact seem to agree in some sense on the transcendence of God and the corresponding dissimilarity between God and creatures, they also disagree (in principle, at least, whether or not in practice) on the question of the human capacity for a philosophical identification of divine names for God. For Aquinas, the human mind is able to identify perfections of created being that can be attributed to God in an analogical fashion, thereby properly signifying (however imperfectly) something of what God is in himself.This capacity does not derive from divine revelation as such, and is grounded in the natural aspirations of our human reason, even if the latter have been severely affected by the negative effects of original and personal sin.51 The concern of both Barth and Spencer seems to be that Aquinas’s importation of an alien metaphysical apparatus into the realm of theological reflection on Christ and revelation in fact risks undermining that therefore not at all without itself. It owes the fact that it is a causa and is capable of causare, not to itself but first of all to God, who created it and as the Creator still posits and conditions it, and then to the other causae of its own order, without whose conditioning or partial conditioning it would not exist.” Note, however, that Barth’s notion of God as causa sui does in fact obscure the genuine transcendence of God, and is an unwarranted anthropomorphism, lacking analogical rigor. 51 See the study by Reinhard Hütter,“The Directedness of Reason and the Metaphysic of Creation,” in Reason and the Reasons of Faith, ed. P. Griffiths and R. Hütter (Edinburgh:T & T Clark, 2005), 160–93. Causality and Christocentrism 261 reflection from within. It does so (1) with regard to our ontological speculation concerning Christ, as we might seek to understand both the divine and human “natures” of Christ by recourse to the metaphysics of divine causality.52 In doing so, we would assimilate the divine nature to a human, intra-worldly concept of nature (a kind of univocity of genus), and correspondingly would be obliged to maintain the transcendence of the divine nature of Christ only by negating the intelligibility of this nature in any terms resembling the human (a radical apophatism).53 In this way, we would implicitly banish the divine from the sphere of human existence and history, and not unlike Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy, would render the Incarnation unintelligible. (2) By introducing into theology the recourse to metaphysics we would initially abstract from the concrete narrative of revelation, the mystery of God’s triune identity, election in Christ, providence and Incarnation, and so on. This epistemological Pelagianism would seek to find God not where he is revealing himself (in Christ alone) but in works of alien human speculations that distort or obscure the true character of Scriptural revelation.54 Barth’s rejection of a distinctly philosophical reflection on causality and creation stems most profoundly, it seems, from concerns such as these. A Thomistic retort to this could readily be formulated as follows:Why does the Barthian presuppose the validity of the Kantian critique of classical metaphysics and the epistemological conditions for its warrant? Spencer, after all, simply announces to Thomists the authority of Kant’s critique without any philosophical defense of his views. This serves simply to obscure the real issue: that Barth and Barthians tend to import wholesale Kantian philosophical presuppositions into their theology without sufficient justification, despite their prohibition on an “autonomous philosophy” that is distinct from revelation. But why in fact should we consider the classical metaphysical tradition something alien to the right interpretation of Scripture when there is strong evidence to suggest that scriptural revelation itself (especially the Deuterocanonical works and the New Testament) is intrinsically affected by the Hellenistic context in which this revelation was given and composed? The metaphysical arguments of the Greek Fathers, Augustine, and Aquinas certainly can be understood to develop in logical continuity with the metaphysical presuppositions of the New Testament itself. Meanwhile, many of the philosophical speculations of Kant and Hegel that work to undermine the classical philosophical tradition in fact inevitably distort a right 52 See Barth, Church Dogmatics III, 3, 103, 105. 53 See Spencer, “Causality and the Analogia entis,” 371, 373. 54 Ibid. 262 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. understanding of the Gospel, and yet these same speculations deeply affect the project of Barth, even as they did the theologies of his liberal Protestant teachers, that he rejected in part. In this case, perhaps Barthians and not Thomists are the ones working in insufficiently examined dependence upon the conventional, non-Christian speculations of their age, and need to take the proverbial log out of their own eye. At any rate, careful arguments are needed rather than mere assertions. Here I would like to conclude this essay with brief reflections that might contribute to further discussion concerning Aquinas’s metaphysics, Barth’s Christocentricism, and Chalcedonian Christology. Barth has rightly insisted that the two natures of Christ cannot be conceived in a common genus, and Barthians rightly insist (against Kant) that we cannot conceive of the mystery of divine freedom and human freedom over against one another, such that the notions of the Incarnation, or of grace, would be cast as intrinsically unintelligible concepts, incompatible with our empirical and moral realism. I would like to suggest, then, (in a necessarily abbreviated fashion) three distinctly theological advantages of Aquinas’s doctrine of analogical causality precisely with regard to the Barthian concerns. First, it allows us to conceive of the two natures of Christ so as to understand the genuine transcendence of God the Son with respect to every genus of created nature, while simultaneously underscoring the immanent presence of the Son’s divine nature in history. Second, it allows us to affirm the genuine freedom of God to be truly present in history in the Incarnation as God without in any way introducing history into his own triune identity, that is to say, without God becoming intrinsically determined by creation in what he is from all eternity.Third, it allows us to understand why there can be no ontological rivalry between the divine freedom of God the Son and the human freedom of the Son made man. In each of these cases, recourse to the Thomist understanding of analogy and divine causality facilitates a speculative vindication of a Christological concern that is seemingly shared by Aquinas and Barth alike. The first of these points can be made fairly simply by returning to one of the arguments made above. “Nature” (like “relation” and “operation,” other concepts that Barth ascribes to God analogically) is itself historically associated with the classical genera of the categorical modes of being. It is, then, a “genus.”To attribute it to Christ in a twofold sense, as Barth wishes to do,55 without reducing the human and divine natures of Christ to a common genus of being, it is necessary to ascribe “nature” to 55 See in particular Church Dogmatics IV, 2, which develops notions of the divine and human “essences” of Christ in a systematic fashion. Causality and Christocentrism 263 God in a wholly non-generic sense. But such non-generic ascription is possible (as Aquinas shows) only because there is a merely analogical resemblance between created natures as we come to know them, and the transcendent nature of God. Precisely because God is the cause of all created natures to which he gives existence, his nature is as such outside of every created genus of being.56 Likewise, his divine nature utterly transcends our knowledge; therefore he cannot be considered as a being of a determinate kind among other beings. Does this arrangement not risk banishing the divine nature from the world altogether, precisely because of the dissimilitude between God and all intra-worldly natures? On the contrary, because God gives existence to all things as their transcendent cause, their existence is not alien to him, nor something “outside” of him, even if he utterly transcends them as their divine source. God’s creative causality does not effectuate a change in the creature, nor cause something in the creature, but is itself the source of the entire existence of the creature.Therefore, to paraphrase Aquinas, “God is everything as the cause of everything.”57 God is present to all things insofar as they exist.58 Far from being banished from the world by his transcendence, then, God, as Aquinas understands him, is uniquely imminent to all that is, without being identified with anything he has created.59 He is more intimately present to creatures than they are to themselves because of his transcendence as Creator.60 As a consequence, we can say that if Aquinas ascribes to Christ a “divine nature,” this implies that Christ’s deity is not something contained under the genus of nature that is proper to all creatures, and that by the fact that the Son’s nature is divine, he is present to all that exists in created history as 56 ST I, q. 3, aa. 4 and 5. 57 ST I, q. 4, a. 2 : “Since therefore God is the first effective cause of things, the perfections of all things must pre-exist in God in a more eminent way. Dionysius implies the same line of argument by saying of God (Div. Nom.V, 8):‘It is not that He is this and not that, but that He is all, as the cause of all.’ Secondly, from what has been already proved, God is existence itself, of itself subsistent. Consequently, He must contain within Himself the whole perfection of being.”The paraphrase is taken from Rudi Te Velde, Aquinas on God: The ‘Divine Science’ of the Summa theologiae (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2006), 65. See the excellent discussion of Aquinas’s understanding of our knowledge of God on pp. 65–93. 58 See ST I, q. 8, a. 1. 59 See ST I, q. 8, a. 2: “God fills every place; not, indeed, like a body, for a body is said to fill place inasmuch as it excludes the co-presence of another body; whereas by God being in a place, others are not thereby excluded from it; indeed, by the very fact that He gives being to the things that fill every place, He Himself fills every place.” 60 See ST I, q. 8, aa. 3 and 4. 264 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. God is present to his effects.61 The transcendence of Christ the Word is mirrored in his radical immanence with respect to all that depends upon him for its being, for “through him all things were made” ( John 1:3). This leads us to the second point: only because of the uniqueness of the form of causality that is proper to God as Creator is he alone free to “become” human, to assume a created nature hypostatically, without being in any way alienated from what he is eternally.The substrate of the hypostatic union is the existent person of God the Son.62 Therefore, if there is a hypostatic union, the causality entailed cannot transpire in a preexistent material subject in which change is effectuated. Rather, this union is the new presence of God in creation existing as a man, with a human soul and body.The subject is the Son.63 Just as creation does not effectuate a change in the creature, but gives existence to it, so too the Incarnation is not an intra-worldly change, but the gift of God existing in human flesh. Precisely because God alone can act at the level of existence in a causal fashion, therefore he alone can become incarnate in the being of man (at the deepest level of created reality) without ceasing to exist as God. It is truly God the Son (the author of life, in whom we live and move and have our being) who is present in history, yet without any loss of his deity that might somehow result from the Incarnation. Aquinas, in turn, stresses quite clearly that while the union of the Word incarnate is enhypostatic (taking place in the Person of the Son), it does not render the divine nature of the Son relative to his human nature. However, resulting from the union, his humanity now subsists in the divine being of the Son (or the esse personale of the Son) by virtue of its very existence. Consequently, the union does render the human nature of the Son absolutely relative to his divine nature.64 The non-reciprocity of 61 A point made explicitly in ST I, q. 45, a. 6, c. and ad 2. 62 See ST III, q. 2, a. 3. 63 See ST III, q. 17, a. 2: “Since the human nature is united to the Son of God, hypostatically or personally . . . and not accidentally, it follows that by the human nature there accrued to Him no new personal being, but only a new relation of the pre-existing personal being to the human nature, in such a way that the Person is said to subsist not merely in the Divine, but also in the human nature.” See the commentary on the subject of the existence of Christ by Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., S. Thomas D’Aquin, Le Verbe Incarné, vol. 3 (Paris: Cerf, 2002), Appendice 2, 391–402. 64 See ST III, q. 2, a. 7: “The union of which we are speaking is a relation which we consider between the Divine and the human nature, inasmuch as they come together in one Person of the Son of God. Now, as was said above (ST I, q. 13, a. 7), every relation which we consider between God and the creature is really in the creature, by whose change the relation is brought into being; whereas it is not really in God, but only in our way of thinking, since it does not arise from Causality and Christocentrism 265 relationality and similitude of the divine and human that are present in Aquinas’s doctrine of creation (and which Barth mischaracterizes) are carried over into his doctrine of the hypostatic union, with respect to the two natures of the God-man. This is a non-trivial matter, for if by contrast we remove the appeal to the analogy of creative causality from our understanding of the divine and human natures of Christ that are united in his person, then we must conceive of the union of God’s divine and human natures not in a transhistorical fashion (aided by recourse to an analogical doctrine of creative causality), but rather by appeal to a likeness from causal becoming in a pre-existent subject. The hypostatic union of the natures will then have to be “narrated” by a movement of the Son from being God alone into being human, understood after the fashion of the change from one specific state or contrary to another within a common genus, whether this be the genus of “nature,”“relation,” or “operation.” The non-relativity (and non-mutual reciprocity) of the divine and human natures will be lost. Instead, God will be understood in a narrative fashion, through historical becoming, as one who is eternally relative in his deity to the human nature of Christ.Therefore, the Incarnation will not be conceivable without ascribing history to the very life of God in se, and the very notion of the “immanent Trinity” will be threatened. Interestingly, this is precisely what we see in the post-Hegelian, Barthian inspired theologies of Jürgen Moltmann, Eberhard Jüngel, and Robert Jenson, all of whom reinterpret Chalcedonian Christology dramatically precisely by distancing themselves from classical metaphysical understandings of creation.65 It seems that something like this is present in Barth’s later thought as well, any change in God. And hence we must say that the union of which we are speaking is not really in God, except only in our way of thinking; but in the human nature, which is a creature, it is really.Therefore we must say [the hypostatic union] is something created.” Aquinas goes on in article 9 to affirm that the unity of the Incarnation is greater than any other created unity. 65 See the particularly clear statement of Eberhard Jüngel (God as the Mystery of the World, 346–47), in which he makes clear that the understanding of the Incarnation as a historical becoming of God toward man entails the notion of history and election as constitutive of the very life of God:“Where the economic doctrine of the Trinity speaks of God’s history with man, the immanent doctrine of the Trinity must speak of God’s historicity. God’s history is his coming to man. God’s historicity is God’s being as it comes (being in coming). We must ponder this seriously if we want to take God’s history with man seriously as an event in which God is God. In the process, of course, the immanent doctrine of the Trinity, which considers the historicity of God, must take seriously that God is our God.” 266 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. as Bruce McCormack has recently argued poignantly.66 And at this point, speaking from a Thomist point of view, one might argue that David Bentley Hart—in his writings on the “analogy of being”—has rightly questioned whether such theologies maintain in sufficient fashion a sense of the transcendence of God with respect to the history of the divine economy.67 After all, if God is only intelligible in himself as the triune God in relation to the historical economy (which includes moral evil, suffering, and death), then these latter attributes of history are also in some real sense intrinsically necessary to the developing identity of the historical God.68 In this case, the results of the abandonment of a classical metaphysics of divine causality are in fact disastrous, not only for the speculative contemplation of the Trinitarian mystery itself, but also for our ethical and soteriological understanding of the agency of God. Last of all, only a doctrine of analogical causality allows us to understand that there can be no rivalry whatsoever between the existence of created freedom and divine freedom, and consequently no rivalry between 66 See, for example, Bruce McCormack, “Karl Barth’s Christology as a Resource for a Reformed Version of Kenoticism,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 8 (2006): 243–51. 67 See David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 165: “The God whose identity subsists in time and is achieved upon history’s horizon—who is determined by his reaction to the pathos of history— may be a being, or indeed the totality of all beings gathered in the pure depths of ultimate consciousness, but he is not being as such, he is not life and truth and goodness and love and beauty. God belongs to the system of causes, even if he does so as its total rationality; he is an absolute causa in fieri, but not a transcendent causa in esse. He may include us in his story, but his story will remain both good and evil, even if it ends in an ultimate triumph over evil. After all, how can we tell the dancer from the dance? The collapse of the analogical interval between the immanent and economic Trinity, between timeless eternity and the time in which eternity shows itself, has not made God our companion in pain, but simply the truth of our pain. . . . Only a truly transcendent and ‘passionless’ God can be the fullness of love dwelling within our very being, nearer to us than our inmost parts, but a dialectical Trinity is not transcendent—truly infinite—in this way at all, but only sublime, a metaphysical whole that can comprise us or change us extrinsically, but not transform our very being. . . .Theology must, to remain faithful to what it knows of God’s transcendence, reject any picture of God that so threatens to become at once both thoroughly mythological and thoroughly metaphysical, and insist upon the classical definitions of impassiblity, immutability, and non successive eternity.” 68 Spencer spends a great deal of time criticizing Hart for his failure to comply with Barth’s doctrine of analogy. But why does he not take up the criticisms of Hart concerning post-Hegelian Trinitarian theology, and discuss whether these criticisms might have some merit? Causality and Christocentrism 267 the divine and human freedoms of Christ. Because he alone is the cause of the existence of creatures (in Aquinas’s qualified sense of the term “cause”), God alone is free to be present in and even as a creaturely reality without acting on that reality in the way a created cause would.That is to say, God alone can be freely present in the most intimate ontological depths of the reality he has created without acting extrinsically upon the creature by violence or alienation, and without therefore causing changes in the natural structure of the reality.69 In this sense, God the Son in his sovereign will and freedom can be intimately present in our world as man (even through the medium of the hypostatic union) without changing the essential structure of created human freedom.The presence of the divine will in Christ, on the contrary, liberates human freedom so that it can be fully itself.70 However, the Incarnation is not merely a question of God’s freedom, but also of his ordering wisdom with respect to a created nature that is “adequately proportioned” to represent him. In this sense, it is also essential that there exist a natural similitude between our created human nature and God in order for the Incarnation to take place. For only if there is a natural similitude of the rational nature of man to God is the human nature capable of becoming a vehicle for the gratuitous revelation of God’s divine life in human flesh. Only because the human nature of Christ is not wholly alien to his divine nature (that is, entirely dissimilar to it), but is in some sense similar to it, can the human nature of Christ become the medium for the reception of the mystery of God, without doing violence to what that nature is. Concretely, this transpires especially through the medium of human reason.71 Because God is not wholly alien to human thought and freedom, therefore the freedom of Christ can find its authentic fulfillment, perfection, and beauty in being utterly relative to God, that is to say, in knowing and doing the will of the Father.This will— that Jesus as God shares with the Father—is known by the Son made man through the medium of his human reason and the graces of his human intellect, and this in turn renders him free to do the divine will.72 Were there an absolute ontological dissimilitude between the human nature of 69 See ST I, q. 19, a. 4 and 8; q. 103, a. 6.This point contrasts spectacularly with the thought of Kant. See Brian Shanley, O.P., “Divine Causation and Human Freedom in Aquinas,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 72 (1998): 99–122. 70 This is why Aquinas emphasizes in ST III, q. 18, a. 4 (in a subtle correction to John Damascene) that Christ made truly human choices in view of the good, and in fact, made these choices more profoundly and freely than other human beings. 71 See ST III, q. 6, aa. 1 and 2. 72 Aquinas’s teaching in ST III, q. 18, a. 5 suggests that Christ’s earthly knowledge of God through the medium of the beatific vision makes him more perfectly human 268 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Christ and the divine nature, there would be simply no possibility of a cooperation of the human will of Christ with his divine will, as the revelation of the will of the Father would remain wholly alien and unintelligible to Christ’s human nature, even in the presence of divine grace. In point of fact, however, Christ’s human knowledge of his divine life shared with the Father deepens his human freedom by augmenting his human potential to love and to choose what is authentically good with wisdom. In this way it is the source of the unique freedom of Christ.73 IV If in the eschaton the theological lambs lie down with the theological lions, the Thomists will probably not have to surmount the fear of being eaten. They may have to acquire greater virtues of magnanimity and humility in the interim. Nevertheless, if what I have sketched out in the above essay (only too briefly) is correct, then Thomists are warranted in their spirited defense of the analogical metaphysics of divine causality as understood by Aquinas. When responsibly portrayed, that metaphysical account does not fall prey to the Barthian critique of divine causality as a system of ideas that falsifies a right understanding of the divine transcendence and immanence of God by introducing an alien system of philosophical speculation into divine revelation. Rather, it safeguards a true sense of the uniqueness of God with regard to any and every created reality, such that God may in no way be assimilated to the world of human creatures. But precisely for this same reason, God may be present in creation in a way that no created reality can be. Furthermore, this notion of causality does not supplant or distort the knowledge of God that comes through Christ and the mystery of the Incarnation. Rather, it allows us to understand more profoundly how it is God who is truly present in Christ historically, and who, without prejudice to either his divine transcendence or his human nature, truly acts in an integral way by virtue of both his divine freedom and human freedom. A deepened discussion between Barthians and Thomists should focus on the subject of Christ’s two natures, and the ways that the Chalcedonian tradition makes implicit use of an analogical discourse concernand free than we are. I have argued this in greater detail in my “Dyotheletism and the Instrumental Human Consciousness of Jesus,” Pro Ecclesia 17 (2008): 396–422. 73 Aquinas points out in ST III, q. 7, a. 13, ad 2 that the habitual grace of the soul of Christ is “natural” to him in a way that is unique among all men, insofar as it stems from his hypostatic identity as Son. It acts within the depths of his human nature so as to conform his human freedom with his divine will, and yet this is only “normal” for Christ, because he is the Son himself existing as man. Causality and Christocentrism 269 ing being and causality to reflect on the Incarnation of the Word. In this conversation, perhaps it is the thought of Aquinas, and not that of Kant, that has a more constructive role to play for the right formulation of thinking about the Christological deposit of faith.74 N&V 74 I would like to thank Bruce D. Marshall for comments on this essay that greatly helped to improve its argument. Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009): 271–94 271 Book Reviews The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology by Servais Pinckaers, O.P., edited by John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), xxiii + 430 pp. S INCE THE PUBLICATION of his magisterial The Sources of Christian Ethics (French, 1985; English, 1995), Servais Pinckaers has become widely recognized as a leading voice for renewing Catholic moral theology in the spirit of Vatican II. His voice gained in importance when he became involved in the writing of the moral section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the late 1980’s. But English-speaking readers longing to know more about the contemplative Dominican friar had little access to his large corpus. Readers, like this reviewer, who found Sources to be an oasis in the desert of contemporary Catholic moral theology were left thirsting for more. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus offer such readers further refreshment with this excellent collection of Pinckaers’s essays.The twenty essays span a period of 25 years, primarily representing Pinckaers’s mature thought after the French publication of Sources. This volume is a coup of translation—twelve of these essays have never appeared in English before— but also of collection and selection. The well-chosen sampling spans the most productive and constructive part of Pinckaers’s career.The essays are divided into five sections, on Thomistic method, on beatitude and Christian anthropology, on agency, on passions and virtues, and on law and grace. A helpful introduction and a comprehensive bibliography of Pinckaers’s writings assist the reader to situate these essays or to pursue Pinckaers’s work further. Pinckaers’s work models a renewed spirit for moral theology, a spirit that drinks deeply from the Fathers, from their engagement with the scriptures, and from the culmination of their thought in the thought of 272 Book Reviews Aquinas.The essays in the first section explore the wellsprings of such an approach, considering Aquinas’s example and characterizing moral theology as an ecclesial and spiritual discipline in conversation with philosophy, a prayerful flowering of the living tradition of the Church. Pinckaers seeks not to imitate Aquinas but to commune in mind and heart with him, through being “nourished by the same spiritual source” (24). What makes Pinckaers so unique and refreshing, and what makes his moral theology a plausible catalyst of renewal, is his determination not merely to assert Thomistic positions speculatively as if in a vacuum, but to help us recover lost wisdom through a historical account of how far we have strayed. A chapter on Dominican moral theology in the twentieth century tells us that Pinckaers learned what he calls the “historical method” in the Dominican house of study at La Sarte. Rather than reading Thomas through his later commentators, at La Sarte they sought to retrieve the problematics Thomas was addressing by reading him in light of the scriptures, the Fathers, and Thomas’s own historical context. Pinckaers discovered that this historical sensitivity went hand-in-hand with grasping the magnitude of the theological and philosophical distance between Aquinas’s setting and our own. Since his historical concern is anything but antiquarian, Pinckaers analyzes the chasm between Aquinas and us in order to refresh our vision of the moral life. We cannot appreciate all that Aquinas has to teach us without acknowledging, and seeking in select ways to overcome, that chasm. Pinckaers’s ability to keep all this in view lends a contemporary feel to his discussions of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century theologians and keeps his finger on today’s pulse: all his arguments engage a modern setting characterized by individualism, secularism, and the separation of many things once held together.This sort of approach, combining a historical method with a theologically motivated concern for retrieval, began to affect dogmatic and scriptural studies earlier in the twentieth century, and Pinckaers now urges moral theology to catch up (187). As readers familiar with Sources will expect, Pinckaers delineates the historical chasm by contrasting two types of morality, moralities of beatitude and moralities of obligation.These two types of morality represent competing anthropologies. By “moralities of obligation” Pinckaers means not all moral systems that privilege law, but moral systems stemming from a nominalist view of human freedom, which necessarily portray the field of moral action as a contest between freedom and law. Moralities of beatitude assume a different view of freedom: human freedom is oriented toward goodness and truth, so that the direction given by law points freedom toward the blessedness for which it longs. The Pinckaers Reader may Book Reviews 273 provoke an experience of déjà vu as Pinckaers invokes this distinction again and again in various contexts and for various audiences. But this deceptively simple tool packs enormous explanatory power. For example, this distinction clarifies why modern moral theology has tended to shrink the moral witness of scripture to the Decalogue and “passages of the New Testament which could be related to this, such as the teaching on the indissolubility of marriage” (49).What a morality of obligation neglects that a morality of beatitude could recover includes all the passages of scripture that answer to the question,“What is the blessed life?” This question echoes through a much broader array of texts. In particular, if we shift our focus from obligation to beatitude, the Sermon on the Mount recovers the moral limelight the Church Fathers granted it. The Sermon begins with a promise of beatitude, and it concerns not obligation, but exceeding what is called for, not external obedience, but a pure heart. So, Pinckaers explains, it “is ultimately incapable of assimilation by a moral theory centered on legal obligations and external acts” (371). Modern moral theologians have frequently consigned the Sermon to the realm of “spirituality,” but Pinckaers seeks to show how this separation between moral theology and spiritual theology, related to a preference for moralities of obligation, distorts scripture and Christian living. Although the editors offer this volume as a sort of ‘sequel’ to Sources, readers new to Pinckaers could begin with either book.What Sources offers that this collection does not is a sustained and comprehensive argument about what moral theology is, covering its nature, its sources, its historical development, and the fundamental orientation it needs for addressing the controverted questions of today.This collection instead is a set of sometimes overlapping essays aimed at distinct audiences and issues.What The Pinckaers Reader lacks in continuous scope it makes up for in depth and economy of formulation. In many of these essays, Pinckaers finds a more masterful voice, offering more incisive articulations of his main theses and painting his broad-canvas pictures with even more sure and penetrating strokes. One of the most striking examples is his brief but adept treatment of “Aquinas on Nature and the Supernatural.” Some readers will contend his position is too reminiscent of de Lubac, on whom Pinckaers wrote his S.T.L. thesis in 1952. But here in ten concise pages Pinckaers brings together his concern to recover Aquinas’s understanding of nature as driven by interior impulse toward the true and the good, his diagnosis of modern extrinsicism as rooted in an Ockhamite reconception of human freedom perched above nature and inclination, and his conviction that our nature and its longings come into clearest focus from the standpoint of its fulfillment through the work of grace. 274 Book Reviews Pinckaers’s concern for an integrated Christian anthropology is evident throughout, as for example in “Reappropriating Aquinas’s Account of the Passions.” Recovering the positive role of the emotions in the moral life is crucial to Pinckaers’s project, since he wants to articulate a view of the human being in which what delights us is not inherently morally suspect, as it is for Kant. Here he contrasts Thomas and most ancient moral philosophy, in which the emotions need guidance but are nonetheless integral to the spiritual nature of the human being, with Descartes and his successors, who divided soul from body and relegated the passions to the lower, physical realm. Pinckaers laments this shift. His analysis remains at the level of the history of ideas, but these ideas have consequences. The upshot here is that Descartes “laid the philosophical foundation of modern experimental psychology. . . . In short, Descartes contributed in a decisive way to dehumanizing the emotions” (281). In order to recover what Aquinas has to teach us, Pinckaers suggests we need to rehabilitate a number of concepts that have fallen into decline or disfavor. One such concept is the “image of God.” “Ethics and the Image of God” explores this concept in Augustine and Aquinas, proposing that for them the term “image of God” connects us to God and implies our orientation toward God, but that in the wake of nominalism the concept evokes our God-like freedom, a freedom that is freer the more it is cut off from God. The same distorted anthropology has also made us distrustful of the language of instinct. We have come to think that “the natural inclinations could only be blind, irrational, and threatening for freedom” and that instincts are “inferior and confined to human animality” (393f.). But Pinckaers rehearses the positive role of spiritual instincts in “Morality and the Movement of the Holy Spirit: Aquinas’s Doctrine of Instinctus.” As long as we remain on guard against all impulses that originate beyond our own subjectivity, we inhibit our ability to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, who makes us cry out to God in a holy instinct. While Pinckaers is immensely sympathetic with Aquinas, he is no slavish follower. He notes that Christian virtues do not always receive due prominence in Thomas, since Thomas organizes the virtues on a structure borrowed from philosophy (13). He insists that Thomas’s rational and precise style must be supplemented by recourse to the scriptures and the Fathers (19).And he visibly struggles to find the intelligibility for modern readers in Aquinas’s approach to the death penalty (161). The essay format affords Pinckaers the focus to explore medieval and modern texts in more illuminating detail than he could in Sources. In Book Reviews 275 “Aquinas’s Pursuit of Beatitude,” for instance, Pinckaers traces the shifting configurations of the question of beatitude from Thomas’s Commentary on the Sentences to the Summa theologiae. This exercise demonstrates that as Thomas’s thought developed, beatitude gained in importance and that a fundamentally evangelical perspective lies hidden behind the philosophical veneer of the first five questions of the Summa theologiae’s secunda pars. The essay format also offers Pinckaers the topical freedom to apply a rich variety of lenses to the momentous historical and theological developments he describes. Some essays let the contemporary context set the agenda—issues include human dignity, autonomy, and intrinsic evil—but then Pinckaers searches his ancient sources in an attempt to let their thoughts reframe the issue. In “Aquinas and Agency: Beyond Autonomy and Heteronomy?”, for example, Pinckaers explains how this false alternative is based on an assumed freedom of indifference at the heart of human subjectivity. The modern dilemma sets autonomy against revelation and universalism against Christian specificity. But Thomas’s universalism lies in the harmony he finds between the natural dynamism of reason’s inclination toward truth and goodness and the universalism of faith’s answer to that inclination. For him the New Law is the height of autonomous action and the fulfillment of universal human aspiration. Other essays assess recent developments in moral thought. “The Role of Virtue in Moral Theology” cites the rediscovery of virtue and explains Pinckaers’s understanding of virtue ethics and its advantages over more common modern approaches. Specifically, he highlights virtue ethics’ emphasis on internal actions, affectivity, and personal experience. In short, Pinckaers favors virtue-based approaches insofar as they offer a more adequate account of our agency than, say, procedural accounts of justice. In “Revisionist Understandings of Acts in the Wake of Vatican II” Pinckaers gives attention to the proportionalism of Peter Knauer and Louis Janssens. He explains from a historical perspective how these approaches amount to a sort of revolution within the casuistic system of post-Tridentine Catholic moral theology, which all proceeds against the backdrop of nominalism. Having failed to escape the worst aspects of the manualist system against which they rebelled, the proportionalists ended up reducing morality to something depersonalized and extrinsic and worse, distant from the Gospel. A couple of essays also celebrate and explore the moral theology of the Catechism and Veritatis Splendor. For example, “Conscience and the Virtue of Prudence” takes its cue from Veritatis Splendor’s concern to keep conscience and freedom oriented toward truth. Pinckaers asks,“How can conscience be formed so that we 276 Book Reviews can act according to the truth?” By laying bear the ways conscience and prudence are related, Pinckaers rescues conscience from its tendency to float freely in modern moral theology. Critics who saw shortcomings in Pinckaers’s treatment of scripture in Sources will find nothing to change their judgment here. Paul frequently emerges as a model for dealing with cases of conscience, but Pinckaers steers clear of biblical scholarship. Perhaps he aims for a more ecclesial and spiritual mode of interpretation, but in this case some engagement with professional exegetes could have helped Pinckaers intensify his argument for the ecclesial character of the moral life in Paul. Much of Pinckaers’s work is organized around the story of a ‘fall’ from moralities of beatitude to moralities of obligation. Although the distinction is speculatively powerful and seems historically compelling, more work is needed before the extent of its usefulness can be fully evaluated. The Pinckaers Reader helps to fill in the historical details with careful discussions not only of the central figures,Aquinas and Ockham, but also of Aberlard, Peter Lombard, Durandus, Capreolus, Suarez, Billuart, and others. One thing Pinckaers leaves undone is to examine how changing social formations provide the context for these developments. Pinckaers calls for moral theologians to return to the heart of Catholic moral theology by exploring, with the Fathers and Aquinas, the way the Christian Gospel answers to the human desire for happiness. This is an urgent task, and Pinckaers boldly points the way forward, recovering an ethics of virtue and beatitude in touch with the Gospel and breaking the spell of unsatisfactory modern alternatives. All who thirst for the renewal N&V of moral theology will relish this wonderful book. Christopher A. Franks High Point University High Point, North Carolina The Regensburg Lecture by James V. Schall (South Bend, IN: St.Augustine’s, 2007), 174 pp. S INCE HIS ELEVATION to the papacy, Pope Benedict XVI has addressed the nature and identity of God three times in three different media. In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, he told us that God is love; in his academic lecture at the University of Regensburg, he told us that God is reason; in his book Jesus of Nazareth, he told us that God is historical, manifested in the man Jesus.These are arguably the three teachings about God that only Christianity can bring together coherently. Now in his latest encyclical, Spe Salvi, Benedict teaches that the God revealed in Book Reviews 277 Jesus Christ and explained in his three previous teachings is the only sure hope for man. James Schall’s The Regensburg Lecture is part commentary, part meditation, and partially a springboard for Schall to elaborate on some of the issues addressed in the lecture. Schall argues that Benedict speaks at Regensburg on behalf of the proper relation between faith and reason and on the necessary conditions on the parts of both for a proper relationship between them.The lecture is an attempt by Benedict to address what he has called elsewhere “pathologies” of faith and reason, both of which have serious implications for the political order. The pathologies of reason originate in an unbalanced constriction of the scope of reason. Schall points out that Benedict says that philosophy must be open to “what is” (106), which includes that which reason might not be able to know solely from its own resources. In closing itself off to revelation, philosophy denatures itself. Benedict is also concerned about the pathology of reason because, as Schall says, revelation is addressed to reason: “Reason must be reasonable to grasp what revelation is about. This is why . . . that revelation must be itself concerned with not just any philosophic thought, but with philosophy oriented to what is” (19). Reason ought to be open to the fullness of faith, and not just the domesticated social scientific study of religion as advocated by, for instance, Adolf von Harnack (99–103). Pathological reason seeks to eliminate revelation as a source for the ordering of man’s life, while voluntarism or pathological faith seeks to subjugate reason utterly. Pathological reason attempts to eliminate what it considers the illegitimate encroachment of faith on public life.As Schall says, “Any attempt to claim that men by their own powers could create in this world what men really looked for with the aid of grace was not only folly, but dangerous” (72). On the other hand, pathological faith attempts to secure God’s transcendence by freeing him from any bonds, including those imposed by rationality. If God is de-coupled from reason, then he is not bound by his past commands or even his own nature. Pathological faith seeks to impose what it considers to be the absolute word of God, no matter whether it is rational or not. Schall points out, “A religion or ideology that finds the proper political forms outside of reason will, generally speaking, not allow the institutions of reason or of the economy to exist in their most open and free condition” (82). It is this imbalance that leads to violence, terror, and totalitarianism. Pathological faith, by denying that God is primarily reason, undercuts human reason by removing its divine grounds. Pathological reason also 278 Book Reviews leads to voluntarism by refusing to consider everything that is, thereby placing the human will over reality. As Schall observes of Benedict’s lecture, “Modern philosophy is seen in his lecture as a steady and gradual effort to eliminate any understanding of reason that would prevent man from doing whatever he wills” (16). This voluntaristic willfulness leads to what the pope calls “de-hellenization,” which is the removal of the idea, Greek in origin but actually universal, of understanding limited by nature. Schall comments, “I would take this pathology to mean that the pursuits of subjective good, as it has no objective limit, can take up extreme causes as if they were themselves the real human good. Deviant goods command the same enthusiasm and energy as real goods” (109). Dehellenization and voluntarism have the same end: to make the human will the arbiter of the good rather than reason tied to what is. As Benedict points out in Deus Caritas Est, the pathologies of reason and faith in the ancient world took two main forms: the divine madness of human eros unbounded by reason in the poets (he cites Vergil’s “omnia vincit amor”) (DCE 4), and the despair induced by the unerotic Aristotelian divine first principle, which nips human striving in the bud because of its unattainability (DCE 9). Both dehumanize, the first by exploitation, as in the temple prostitutes of the fertility cults, the second by the truncation of real human desires. It is only Christianity that provides a corrective to these pathologies, by grounding both erotic desire and logos in God, as Benedict says: “God is the absolute and ultimate source of all being; but this universal principle of creation—the Logos, primordial reason—is at the same time a lover with all the passion of a true love” (DCE 10). Reason and eros are firmly linked by being one in the divine essence. It is this which allows Benedict to argue for a genuine “autonomy of the temporal order” (DCE 28) in the second part of the encyclical. Reason has its own autonomy, although it must always be open to faith, for “faith liberates reason from its blind spots and therefore helps it to be ever more fully itself ” (DCE 28). By way of contrast, Schall notes, “No distinction between God and Caesar exists in Muslim states” (50). As Schall points out, Benedict proposes a different model:“The Catholic soul is not a divided soul.What is characteristically Catholic is the mind that pays full attention to truths of reason and revelation on the basis of the truth that they both belong to a coherent whole” (1). Speaking of Greek philosophy, Schall says, “There is a ‘harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the Biblical understanding of faith in God’ (#17).The word ‘harmony’ already indicates that things not the same somehow belong together in a higher whole” (53). Reason has its own legitimate order, but nonetheless ought not to close itself off from faith. Christianity, on this view, Book Reviews 279 is neither apolitical nor antipolitical, but properly transpolitical. He points out that Christian revelation “does not itself have a political philosophy other than the notion of things of God and things of Caesar. . . . Christianity, by not having a political program, implicitly acknowledged that the proper knowledge of political things, as derived from living experience by the philosophers and politicians, was itself legitimate” (82). As Schall recognizes, part of what drew attention to Benedict’s lecture was the outcry from Muslims about the content of the talk, particularly having to do with Benedict’s citation of the medieval Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, who questioned a Muslim interlocutor as to whether Muslims sanctioned violence in spreading Islam.The furious response from the Muslim world to Benedict’s use of Manuel II’s words to reopen his same line of inquiry shows the pertinence of the question in Schall’s view. He is careful to note that, although the aspect of the lecture that received by far the most attention was its engagement with Islam, the lecture is much broader in scope. It touches on the nature of a university, the role of philosophy in society, violence and God’s nature, the character and history of Europe, and a discussion of the three “waves of dehellenization” that, Schall points out,“sound like Leo Strauss’ three ‘waves’ of modernity” (90). He does not develop the point, but I wonder how apt the comparison to Strauss’s position is.There certainly are similarities; both Benedict and Strauss see that modernity begins with a conscious rejection of the premodern. In Strauss’s case, what is rejected is classical political philosophy with its varying degrees of confidence that man can know the good and therefore organize his common life ordered to that good in a regime. For Benedict, the rejection is of the relationship between faith and reason. Strauss does not necessarily see modernity as, at its heart, a rejection of Christianity, but rather as a rejection of the politics of Christendom. Benedict, on the other hand, identifies the beginning of dehellenization with the Reformation project of decoupling faith from philosophy, which the Reformers saw as two “alien system[s] of thought” (#33), which becomes radicalized in Kant, who denies faith “access to reality as a whole” (140). This radical separation denatures Christianity. In seeking to preserve the purity of biblical faith, the dehellenizers of the Reformation pulled the rug out from underneath Christianity. Strauss assumes that there can be no principled connection between Christianity’s account of faith and reason and Christianity’s account of politics. Strauss is closer to the dehellenizing Reformers in thinking that faith and reason are alien systems of thought. The book is based on a series of articles Schall wrote for the online journal Ignatius Insight, and was turned around very quickly.The rush to get the book to press sometimes shows, as the book can be both meandering 280 Book Reviews and repetitive. Most of the book’s apparent flaws can be ascribed to the clearly limited purpose Schall had in writing it: he wanted to start a conversation about a text he considers to be “one of the fundamental tractates of our time” (9). He therefore focuses on drawing out the lecture’s argument and only rarely elaborates or contextualizes. As Schall notes, the lecture’s brevity is one of its strong points. Still, a lengthier treatment could have served to flesh out the historical details Benedict relied on and alluded to in his argument, including the character of the encounter between apostolic Christianity and Greek philosophy, the history of Islamic-Christian engagement on issues of church and state and faith and reason, and other controverted points. Schall takes the widely reported Muslim reaction to the lecture as telling. Such rage and occasional violence in response to a university lecture shows, Schall thinks, that the Muslim world does not want to discuss the question of whether Islam is fundamentally rational or irrational. He bemoans the lack of engagement on the same rational level as the Regensburg lecture from the Muslim world. Perhaps because of the book’s quick publication, he seems to have missed the rather extraordinary open letter to the pope signed by 38 Muslim scholars and dignitaries sent on October 12, 2006, just three weeks after the Schall’s articles on Ignatius Insight appeared. The letter is very respectful, although firm in its attempted rebuttal. The signatories have been described as “a ‘who’s who’ of the learned leaders of ” Islam (David Warren, Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 22, 2006). Schall’s point still might be valid, but the book would have been improved with some engagement of this letter. Schall’s book is good for what it is: a learned conversation starter on an important speech by an important, insightful thinker, on a vitally important issue of our time. N&V Thomas P. Harmon Ave Maria University Ave Maria, Florida Philosophy between Faith and Theology: Addresses to Catholic Intellectuals by Adriaan Theodor Peperzak (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 216 pp. P EPERZAK ’ S EFFORT to locate philosophy between faith and theology is intended to serve both as an invitation and as a challenge. It is an invitation to the renewal of philosophy by turning less to academic shoptalk and more to basic questions about the meaning of life that provoked philosophic inquiry in the first place. It is a challenge not just to the Book Reviews 281 culture of intellectual cottage industries but to the cult of an autonomous and universal reason that has been favored by many a philosopher in the modern period. The invitation and the challenge are deeply connected. Try as some thinkers have done to establish foundations for their theories that are rigorously independent of their times or cultures (for instance, Descartes’s use of the idea of methodical doubt to establish an indubitable certitude), Peperzak argues that no philosopher can escape resorting to some sort of faith or trust in someone or something. His point is not that such faith or trust precludes the very possibility of attaining universally valid truths, but that explicit admission of a philosopher’s basic orientation and convictions about the meaning of life will provide a surer foundation than not for anyone’s claims to offer compelling reasons and cogent answers of a universally valid sort. The sense of faith that is thus in play for Peperzak is not just religious faith but more generally the trust or submission that we give to some sort of authority, whether it be to God, to another person, to one’s culture, or to the reality of one’s own experiences. The lived condition of a given philosopher’s culture, intellectual traditions, and chosen goals provides a context for any question that is posed, any hypothesis that is raised, and any methods that are used for seeking solutions to the problems that one selects for investigation. Somewhat like Pierre Hadot’s inclination to see the various types of ancient philosophy as diverse forms of spirituality, Peperzak argues for the inseparability between one’s theoretical work in philosophy and theology and one’s lived experience and basal assumptions about the meaning of life. His purpose in making a claim of this sort is not to undermine the possibility of ever reaching transcendent wisdom or timeless truths, but to recommend that there is a genuinely practical wisdom in having a conscious awareness of one’s faith commitments when trying to secure philosophy’s traditional objectives. For Peperzak, such a stance is simply a matter of truth in advertising. For philosophy to claim to be a matter of autonomous reason amounts to a kind of pretense about the philosophical project that is ultimately false. The essays brought together for this volume are offered especially for “Catholic intellectuals,” but they can be read with profit by a wider audience.While his concern here is generally with faith in the broad sense of one’s general orientation and commitments about the meaning of life, he often turns to faith in the narrower sense of Christian and specifically Catholic beliefs, both in the sense of spirituality (the approach to daily living that is implied by one’s faith) and of religion (the concrete form that one’s faith takes for worship, morality, and ecclesial life). In this 282 Book Reviews regard, the book is a bit repetitious, for the addresses that are gathered for this volume repeat the same themes again and again. But a number of the essays are strikingly attuned to the concerns of academic life, such as the sections on how to keep a Catholic university Catholic and how to inculcate a university’s mission commitment for new faculty who may not personally share the basic commitments that are still in some way professed by the institutional commitment of the university. In regard to the Peperzak’s own commitments in this volume, it is clear that he is a Catholic and a phenomenologist. Phenomenology has often found a home in Catholic universities, and there can be no doubt about its usefulness for certain projects, but presumably it would serve better as a complementary and enriching method rather than exclusively in the role of “first philosophy” that Peperzak urges for it here. By comparison, one might consider Pope John Paul II’s use of his own very distinctive brand of phenomenology to explore the subjectivity of the worker in Laborem Exercens, or the way in which he urges us to understand personal responsibility for our choices in The Acting Person and Veritatis Splendor, or the moral implications of spousal love and human sexuality in Love and Responsibility and Theology of the Body. Likewise, there are special insights that a phenomenological approach can generate when Dietrich von Hildebrand is investigating the ways in which the call of the virtues summon anyone who ponders them to live up to the essential structure of these ideals, or when Edith Stein is engaged in her marvelous discussions of empathy. But phenomenology as such, standing alone as a method, does not rise to the heights that a realist metaphysics can reach.There are certain limitations inherent in its strategy of methodologically bracketing off questions about being as independent of intentionality that make it a poor choice for first philosophy. John Paul II, for instance, does adopt a phenomenological approach to understanding cognition in terms of intentionality, but he repudiates the notion that consciousness at large can be grasped through the constructions of intentionality in the way that this idea was championed by, say, Husserl or Scheler. In the second chapter of Veritatis Splendor, for instance, one finally sees through the swirls of competing human motivation (phenomenologically described in the first chapter) the girders of Thomistic steel that are necessary to underpin the distinctions needed for moral philosophy. Or, in Love and Responsibility and in Theology of the Body one finds an attentiveness to the natural and supernatural symbolisms discernible in the body and marital love as well as an alertness to the structures of consciousness that phenomenology is so helpful in describing. Book Reviews 283 On the other hand, when one’s metaphysics is unclear, even one’s best phenomenological sensibilities will not be sufficient to come to the rescue. One can see this, for instance, in Edith Stein’s more speculative works such as On Endless and Eternal Being. The pages of that volume unfortunately manifest a certain confusion on the most pressing question of personhood. Her focus on how intentionality allows us to construct “person” and “nature” allows her to wander into an endless maze when trying to talk of “individual natures” and thereby imperils both the genuine uniqueness of persons and the commonness of human nature. Peperzak’s sallies in this volume against the excesses of secular philosophers and their vaunted claims for reason’s autonomy are admirable, especially by the directness of his attack on the efforts of secularists to make any appeal to a transcendent impossible. But the lack of a genuinely metaphysical outlook in this book weakens its constructive possibilities.Where a truly comprehensive metaphysics can secure a basis for compelling arguments for the existence of God through appropriate use the principles of sufficient reason and causality, Peperzak’s apparent unwillingness to go beyond the resources of phenomenology deprives him of the possibility of ever using some of the tools he most needs for the project he so wants to accomplish. One interesting place to see this problem is in his essay entitled “Provocation: Can God Speak within the Limits of Philosophy? Should Philosophers Speak to God?” where he reflects on divine revelation. He is certainly right when he urges that philosophers should be conscious of the dogmas of their own particular faiths. But Peperzak shows an astonishing optimism that all “faiths” converge on the same truth and the same salvation (see 19, 63, 81–84, 128, 192–93, et al.). It is hard to see how this position escapes relativism or is sufficiently mindful of some of the truly exclusive claims that a religion like Christianity makes, for example, in Christ as the unique mediator and only savior (see Dominus Jesus ). Rather, it would seem to be the case that holding certain dogmas as a requirement of one faith may well require that the dogmas of other faiths will need to be regarded as necessarily incompatible with the first. Given Peperzak’s insistence from the beginning of this book that philosophers, including religious philosophers, should be mindful of their faith commitments, this stock-taking should presumably include an acknowledgment of those commitments that inescapably exclude other commitments.What is needed for this project certainly does include a careful phenomenological awareness of one’s own patterns and predispositions to take certain stances on the meaning of life and other basic questions. But it also requires a metaphysical sensibility to the fact that divine self-revelation (as 284 Book Reviews coming from the very source of the universe) will have certain universal traits that cannot be simultaneously affirmed and denied. One might also wonder what place is left for theology when philosophy is described, as it is here, in terms of fides quaerens intellectum. Peperzak maintains throughout that the place of philosophy is between faith and theology, but his propensity to reduce theology to “the philosophy of theistic N&V faith” (e.g., 74) seems to risk collapsing some crucial distinctions. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J. Fordham University Bronx, New York Aquinas, Ethics and Philosophy of Religion: Metaphysics and Practice by Thomas Hibbs (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2007), xvi + 236 pp. T HOMAS H IBBS ’ S primary goal is to bring the metaphysical dimensions of Aquinas into dialogue with the revival of interest in the primacy of practice in the fields of ethics and epistemology. He believes that Aquinas offers a distinctively theological contribution to a set of debates over the relationship of theory to practice and further, that the contemporary interest in the Trinity, in creation, and the bestowal of the gift of being, and in the primacy of the virtue of charity, is transforming our understanding of how metaphysics is related to practice.The three central figures in the work are therefore St. Thomas Aquinas, Jean-Luc Marion and Alasdair MacIntyre. The latter has often been accused of being anti-metaphysical, indeed, even a relativist, by those who have just browsed through one or two of his works or who believe, as a matter of principle, that one must always begin the study of ethics with metaphysics and work down to the level of practice. Hibbs’s work is therefore a timely attempt to bring the recent scholarship on metaphysics and virtue ethics into dialogue. This is not the extent of his diplomatic efforts however. He also seeks to present the reader with a more “erotic” Aquinas than the standard depiction one receives from self-styled Aristotelian Thomists. Rather than getting bogged down in discussions about primary and secondary causality, Hibbs attempts to retrieve the more Platonic and Dionysian dimensions of Thomist metaphysics. He acknowledges that ‘misconceptions of the nature of metaphysical enquiry have infected certain strains of Thomism for many centuries’ and in particular, that there has been an eclipse of the erotic appeal of metaphysics and its pervasive deployment of aesthetic language. As an example of a total misconception he offers the tradition of reading Aquinas’s articulation of a hierarchy of sciences—physics, mathematics, and Book Reviews 285 metaphysics—as indicating a ranking in accord with degrees of abstraction. He argues that Aquinas says no such thing.While Aquinas lists metaphysics after mathematics this does not mean that for Aquinas mathematics is a path into metaphysics. In relation to the field of ethics more generally, Hibbs quotes with approval the following assessment of Joel Kupperman: A great deal of ethical philosophy of the last two hundred years looks both oversimple and overintellectualised . . . philosophers have treated morality as if each of us is a computer which needs a program for deciding moral questions. . . . Ethics . . . in this view is at work only at those discrete moments when an input is registered and the moral decision—procedure is applied. (16) Hibbs therefore takes issue with the reading of Thomist metaphysics (fostered by Eric Voegelin, among others) as a forerunner of modern rationalism.According to Voegelin, the metaphysics of Aquinas lent itself to being ossified into a propositional science of principles, universals and substances. Given the many highly popularized accounts of Thomism as primarily Aristotelianism with Christ brought in as a jig-saw piece to fill in a few aporia, it is not surprising that Voegelin and others started to view Aquinas as the rogue who built the slippery dip to eighteenth century rationalism. However Hibbs believes that this reading omits Aquinas’s notion of “reason as participant in an order that encompasses it and exceeds its grasp, the prominent role of erotic and aesthetic discourse throughout his metaphysics; the intimate connection, in his theology, between the Trinity as exemplar of human action and the development of a social ontology of individuals-in-relation, and the construal of ethics itself as a mimetic practice” (2). Hibbs notes that “in the culminating chapters of the first book of the Summa contra Gentiles, but especially in the treatment of creatures in the second,Thomas makes pervasive use of the language of beauty and that his goal is to inflame rather than satiate the human desire for God.” He suggests that this is the profound lesson of Thomas’s common and overlooked passages from Scripture:“Far from being an afterthought, they illustrate the inscribing of philosophical investigation into the narrative of Scripture, the passage of discursive reason into the language of prayer and praise as proper responses to the revealed gifts of beauty and goodness” (129). In short, Hibbs’s Aquinas sounds like music to Balthasarian, or at least Augustinian-Bonaventurian, ears. He offers an account of metaphysics which far from being focused on abstractions expressed in mathematical or quasi-mathematical language, is deeply personal. The young Joseph Ratzinger once remarked to a fellow seminarian that a summum bonum didn’t need a mother, and one suspects, without knowing for sure, that it 286 Book Reviews was a remark made after a presentation of Thomist metaphysics which left out the more erotic dimensions which Hibbs is endeavoring to retrieve. One of the strongest examples Hibbs offers of St. Thomas’s use of erotic language is taken from the Summa contra Gentiles II, 2: If the goodness, beauty and allurement of creatures thus entices human souls, then the divine font of goodness, compared to the small streams of goodness discovered in particular creatures, will draw totally to himself the aroused souls of human beings.Whence it says in the Psalms: They will become intoxicated from the abundance of your dwelling . . . and you will give them to drink from the torrent of your delight. Hibbs believes that the Summa contra Gentiles contains Aquinas’s most important reflections on the source, nature, and limits of metaphysics, and the relationship of metaphysics to practice:“the advantage of the method and structure of the Summa contra Gentiles is that it displays the achievements of and limitations to pagan wisdom, that is, of philosophical metaphysics in relation to Christian wisdom.” Moreover, its first three books should be seen as “a sustained philosophical moment within a remarkably complex theological pedagogy, as recovery of the created order for the purpose of a greater penetration of the divine” (108). Specifically, Hibbs proposes a modified account of the relationship between metaphysics and ethics, wherein Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of the Gift is complemented by the practice of what Alasdair MacIntyre, following Aquinas, calls “just generosity” (misericordia). According to MacIntyre the salient features of relationships that are informed by just generosity are “communal relationships that engage our affections.” In MacIntyre’s more recent works, including Dependent Rational Animals, Hibbs believes one can discover a metaphysics of participation and a theological teaching on the internal life of God as self-communicative love. He also believes that the same teaching, though much neglected, provides the foundation for Aquinas’s account of the natural law. He acknowledges that while the accent on participation is evident from the definition of natural law as a participation of the rational creature in the eternal law; the Trinitarian foundation is less palpable, until one asks in what sense the eternal law, which is identified as the divine reason itself, is a law. That is to say, how is it promulgated? He notes that Aquinas responds,“Promulgation occurs through word and writing; in both ways, the eternal law is promulgated, because the Divine Word is eternal and the writing of the Book of Life is eternal” (34). As a consequence, Hibbs argues that Aquinas’s emphasis on the access that we have to God through nature “does not set up a comprehensive Book Reviews 287 and self-satisfied philosophy of God.” Rather it is an acknowledgement of the first gift of creation: “Thomas explicates the ‘twofold mode of truth’ in pedagogical terms, as two ways in which God instructs, one through creation and another through revelation” (127). Thus, contrary to many received interpretations of Aquinas: The embrace of natural reason is not as an apologetic weapon to be deployed against secular rationalists or skeptics. Instead, it involves a recovery of the natural, created conditions of human knowledge and action. Far from being any sort of threat to faith, philosophy is made possible by the first gift of God in creation. Aquinas describes both supernatural and natural principles as “contained by the divine wisdom.” He speaks in thoroughly pedagogical terms. The knowledge of the teacher contains what is brought forth into the soul of the student by the teacher. . . .The cognition of principles naturally known is divinely given to us, since God himself is the author of our nature. (106) In this context Hibbs also makes use of the philosophy of Josef Pieper, whose influence is palpable in the first two encyclicals of Pope Bendict XVI. Pieper emphasized that faith has two dimensions: a belief about something and a belief in someone. In the case of religious faith, these two dimensions coalesce: God is both the one trusted and the one about whom we believe something. Hence, “faith is a type of personal knowledge, the goal of which is ‘communion with the eye witness’, a participation in the knowledge of the knower.” In the words of Deus Caritas Est: “truth is a person.” Hibbs also refers extensively to the work of Pieper on the necessity of a retrieval of prudence as a component of Christian moral life and of the proper education and transformation of the passions by the moral virtues. Here Hibbs suggests that Pieper’s Aquinas “offers a corrective and supplement to contemporary virtue ethics itself, which has failed to be sufficiently ambitious, systematic and comprehensive.” In other words, it still lacks what Elizabeth Anscombe called an adequate moral psychology. Hibbs suggests that any such development should include the following two principles: (a) that speculative activities must be conceived in terms of practices involving a set of virtues, and (b) that as one activity among many others in which human beings engage, speculative activities must be integrated by prudential judgment into other activities. Thus, with reference to the work of Marion, he concludes: As much as it may capture a certain and enduring experience in the religious life, Marion’s “confused bedazzlement” must give way to, or at least be understood within the context of, a set of virtuous practices.The 288 Book Reviews practice of virtue is a participation in the “form of life” proper to the gospel, which is itself a revelation of the fullness of being as beautiful and loveable. Of course, as Marion is at pains to remind us, these practices and the dispositions they seek to foster in us can never be reduced to habits in the Aristotelian sense.They never become attributes possessed autonomously by human agents.They are rather gifts whose sustaining centre is God. In this context, it would not be misleading to describe charity, which Aquinas identifies with the form of the virtues, as the “communing gap,” that is, in Marion’s terms, as “distance” (134). Hibbs also believes that in the teaching on God in the first book of the Summa contra Gentiles and especially in the use Aquinas makes of the teaching of Dionysius, we can uncover Aquinas’s profound interest in many of the issues that occupy Marion. He praises Marion for opening up neglected issues in Aquinas, especially that of idolatry and of the way in which metaphysics gives way, in theological discourse, to a praxis of praise. However, against Marion, he argues that Aquinas is right to insist that negations themselves will be aimless and utterly uninformative without presupposing some sort of affirmation, however imperfect: “Understanding of negation rests upon a certain affirmation. Unless the human intellect were to know something affirmatively of God, it would not be able to deny anything either.” Hibbs also believes that on the theme of eros, Aquinas is much closer to Dionysius than Marion is, since Marion’s understanding of eros is derived, at least in part, from Heidegger’s conception of the utter alienation of Dasein. A more erotic Aquinas brings the Thomist tradition into a closer position of engagement with the post-moderns since there are, as the author observes, numerous points of convergence between Aquinas and Nietzsche on aesthetics, metaphysics, and the rôle and limitations of reason. Hibbs suggests that the prominence of the language of eros and the beautiful in both authors has much to do with the sense of reason as enveloped within a larger context in which it participates as an incomplete part. Reason is not autonomous of faith in the sense of bearing no relationship to it. Similarly, one consequence of the Thomistic approach to eros as filtered through Pieper, is that there can be no autonomous artistic creation, since the artist herself is but a participation in a larger order. Aquinas’s metaphysics of participated actuality renders every creature artistic to some degree. As Norris Clarke writes: If every being turns out to include a natural dynamism toward selfcommunication through action, we can say truly, in more than a Book Reviews 289 metaphorical sense, that every being is naturally a self-symbolizer, an icon or image-maker, in some analogous way like an artist, expressing itself symbolically, whether consciously or unconsciously. . . . The selfsymbolizing tendency in all the finite beings we know turns out to be an imperfect participation or imitation of the inner being of God Himself, revealed to be supremely and perfectly self-symbolising in its eternal interior procession of he Son from the Father and the Holy Spirit from both. (136) Hibbs concludes that the different starting points, orientations and conclusions of Nietzsche and Aquinas only make more striking the parallel set of concerns each author investigates. Both authors must face questions concerning the nature and rôle of artistic creation, the sources of aesthetic experience, and the relationship between making and knowing. Overall this is an exciting work because it represents an attempt from within the Thomist tradition to engage with the dominant themes which flow through the tradition of the German Romantics. While some Thomists have dismissed the need for any such engagement, for as long as the values of the Romantics continue to have such a formative influence on Western culture, it would seem to be a rather urgent intellectual issue with important pastoral consequences. Readers may quibble with some of Hibbs’s judgments, such as whether Marion’s account of eros really is that far from Pieper’s, or whether Yves Simon had a better understanding of leisure than Pieper, or whether MacIntyre’s “wholesale dismissal of liberalism” was “hasty” (all of which are non-foundational judgments made in the work); nonetheless the work is a very timely intervention, beginning the process of retrieving the erotic dimensions of Aquinas. N&V Tracey Rowland John Paul II Institute of Marriage and the Family Melbourne, Australia Engrafted into Christ: A Critique of the Joint Declaration by Christopher J. Malloy (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 408 pp. CHRISTOPHER MALLOY presents a harsh critique of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. He writes,“In an effort to achieve full communion . . . neither side must shrink from the rigorous demands of intellectual honesty and confessional fidelity” (103). He suggests that Catholics were not honest enough to acknowledge the “original divide” that has always existed between Lutherans and Catholics and that still remains despite the apparent consensus of the Joint Declaration. Union, he maintains, can only 290 Book Reviews be achieved by Lutherans choosing to disagree with their confessional documents, abandoning the false positions in them, and accepting the true doctrine about justification which has been taught explicitly by the Catholic Church since the Council of Trent. Catholics do not have the option of abandoning anything in their magisterial documents, such as the canons of the Council of Trent.They can only try to explain them better to make them more palatable to their Lutheran brothers. The Joint Declaration is an official agreement on justification signed by representatives of the Catholic and Lutheran Churches in 1999.The fruit of almost forty years of ecumenical dialogue, it claims that a consensus on the basic truths about justification has been reached by Catholics and Lutherans and that remaining differences are not church-dividing. It was signed by Cardinal Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and Dr. Ishmael Noko, General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation.The signing received the public approval of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger (head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith). However, Malloy maintains that this approval of the Pope was “informal and nonauthoritative” (5). He asserts that such a document “short of specific and formal approval by the Papal see . . . command[s] no assent from the faithful” (5). Hence he considers himself as a Catholic theologian free to examine and criticize its claims. Malloy particularly objects to §41: “The teaching of the Lutheran churches presented in this Declaration does not fall under the condemnations from the Council of Trent. The condemnations in the Lutheran Confessions do not apply to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church presented in this Declaration.” He takes this paragraph together with §7—“the churches neither take the condemnations lightly nor do they disavow their own past”—to mean that there was never a substantial conflict between Lutherans and Catholics, but only a lack of understanding and difference of emphasis. Clearly, it is not true that there was never a substantial conflict, and Malloy is at his best with his sharp, clear explanations of the doctrine of the Council of Trent and its differences from Luther and the Lutheran confessional documents. However, the Joint Declaration can be read differently. Reading further in §7, the Joint Declaration says: “On the contrary, this Declaration is shaped by the conviction that in their respective histories our churches have come to new insights. Developments have taken place which not only make possible, but also require the churches to examine the divisive questions and condemnations and see them in a new light.” Certainly this statement cannot mean that the Catholic Church has changed anything in her essential doctrine since Trent. However, she has surely come to Book Reviews 291 some new insights, while a number of influential Lutheran theologians have explicitly distanced themselves from the Lutheran confessional documents. The Finnish school has criticized these documents for the forensic nature of justification and claimed that justification comes from the presence of Christ in the believer by faith. They claim to find this teaching in some of the writings of Luther.Whether or not this teaching is in Luther is surely not as important as the fact that these Christians are approaching the truth of the Catholic faith. There is no reason to hold Lutherans to “confessional loyalty.” In §13 the Joint Declaration says, “In light of this consensus, the corresponding doctrinal condemnations of the sixteenth century do not apply to today’s partner.” It is certainly tricky to find a truthful and diplomatic way of saying that Lutherans today are willing to disagree with certain things in their confessional documents and to accept what had seemed unacceptable in the Catholic doctrine when it has been explained in terms that they can understand in connection with Scripture texts, while Catholics cannot disagree with anything from their magisterial documents. However, Catholics can distance themselves from certain wrong emphases that Lutherans rightly discern in many Catholic sermons and pious writings. In part 1, Malloy crisply sketches the Catholic teaching on justification and its differences from Luther and the Lutheran confessional documents. His treatment of formal causality (and of the vital importance of the doctrine that the formal cause of justification is something inhering in the Christian, namely, sanctifying grace) is masterly. Likewise masterly is his summary of the four major points of division: the formal cause of justification (forensic or inherent?); damnable sin (does it remain or not after justification?); good works (can one increase in holiness through good works or not?); eternal life (is it merited in any way, or pure gift?). He describes the debates at the Council of Trent as well as the final document to make its doctrine clearer particularly on the issues of formal causality and double justice. In part 2, Malloy treats in detail the works of contemporary theologians attempting rapprochement. He discusses Hans Küng, the Finnish School, and Wolf hart Pannenberg.The Finnish school, led by Tuomo Mannermaa, is particularly fascinating. It consciously adopts Peter Lombard’s position that charity is the Holy Spirit himself dwelling in the soul, not a created habit. It does speak of grace as the extrinsic declaration by God of the sinner to be just but adds that this grace is always accompanied by Christ himself, as gift, which is an “internal good” (145).This union with Christ, who dwells in the Christian, transforms him into Christ, in a transformation that begins on earth and is perfected in heaven. It also stresses the 292 Book Reviews need for a continual flow of grace from Christ: “The Christian’s own righteousness is sufficient for salvation only when it is linked to the righteousness of Christ and flows as a continuous stream from it” (148). This view fits well with the Catholic doctrine of the mystical body of Christ. Part 3, the longest section, is Malloy’s critical analysis of the Joint Declaration. Two forms of hermeneutics were available for Malloy to use in his analysis, a hermeneutics appropriate to magisterial documents (“hermeneutics of the Spirit”) and the historical-critical method. He could have chosen to treat the Joint Declaration as a magisterial document, a part of the tradition of the Church.Then he would have been justified in explaining it by means of other parts of the tradition, just as Catholic Scripture scholars, following the custom of St. Augustine, use one part of Scripture to interpret another.This hermeneutics of the Spirit presupposes that there is one primary author of Scripture and Tradition, the Holy Spirit. Therefore all the books of Scripture and magisterial documents can be treated as in a deep sense one. Where one statement seems to contradict another, there must be some other way to understand it. Instead, Malloy uses the historical-critical method, situating the Joint Declaration only in the dialogues surrounding it, the preliminary documents, and other articles and books by participants and contemporary theologians of both confessions. After analyzing it carefully paragraph by paragraph, he claims that “the JD either deficiently represents or differs in substance from authentic Catholic doctrine” (389). He suggests that the only reason both Catholics and Lutherans could agree to it was its ambiguity. It was (purposely?) made so vague that both confessions could think it expressed their doctrines even though these doctrines are sometimes actually contradictory. Moreover the formulations in the Joint Declaration tend to look more like Lutheran than Catholic doctrine. Indeed he reads the Joint Declaration to affirm (though not without some ambiguity) the false Lutheran doctrine “that Christ’s righteousness [rather than an inhering justice, that is, sanctifying grace] is the sinner’s justifying righteousness” (276). After this serious accusation, part 4 contains Malloy’s own reflections on the significance of the differences between the Catholic and Lutheran understanding of justification for many further theological issues such as eschatology, soteriology, Mary, and the sacraments (in particular the issue of consubstantiation). This section contains an excellent discussion of happiness. Some Lutherans find the very desire for happiness sinful and any work for its sake much more so. As Malloy very adroitly shows, this view leads to many contradictions. Christian reality is reduced to trying and failing to obey God’s commandments, which have nothing to do with man’s fulfillment. Moral- Book Reviews 293 ity becomes moralism; nominalism follows with God arbitrarily issuing commands which man can never fulfill. Forensic justification makes happiness impossible; it leaves the sinner in hell. If hell is alienation from God because our heart is directed away from God, who is the only good which can satisfy our heart, what good could imputation of righteousness do us? We would still be in hell if our hearts were not united to God. There must be a change in our hearts.As Malloy says,“He restores sinners to life with himself by redirecting the sinner’s heart and mind to himself in whom alone the sinner can find true happiness” (321). In all, the book is brilliant, helpful in understanding the Catholic and original Lutheran positions better, exciting in its summary of the doctrines of the Finnish Lutherans and Pannenberg, penetrating in following the consequences of the original Lutheran doctrine in many further theological issues, but still flawed. It applies only the historical-critical method to analyze the Joint Declaration and mildly mocks those Catholic theologians who “undertake hermeneutical gymnastics in order to retrieve this document on behalf of Catholic tradition” (234).The issue is closely related to the status of the Joint Declaration. If it belongs to the magisterial teaching of the Church, then it is not “hermeneutical gymnastics” to interpret it in the light of other magisterial documents. Whatever its precise canonical status may be, the Joint Declaration can and, in the most charitable construal, ought to be read as part of the ordinary magisterium of the Church.A hermeneutics appropriate for a magisterial document is not out of place. One advantage of this approach would be that one can learn more from the Joint Declaration. How many Catholics have to listen to moralistic, Pelagian sermons Sunday after Sunday? How wonderful for them to hear instead,“In justification, the justified receive from Christ faith, hope, and love, and are thus taken into communion with him.This new personal relation to God is grounded totally in the graciousness of God and remains always dependent on the salvific-creative work of the merciful God, who remains faithful to himself and on whom one can therefore rely” ( Joint Declaration §27). In this hermeneutics of the Spirit, one could still point out ambiguities and express the hope that a clearer treatment of inhering justice could be reached. One could show that the consequences of what was clearly agreed upon must include a metaphysical change in the justified sinner. No magisterial documents are without ambiguity. They are all written by weak human instruments. Even the canons of the Council of N&V Trent could be much clearer on the nature of inhering justice. Susan Waldstein Ave Maria University Ave Maria, Florida