N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 1 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 1–15 1 Aquinas on the Priest: Sacramental Realism and the Indispensable and Irreplaceable Vocation of the Priest ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P. St. John’s Seminary Brighton, Massachusetts The Priest as Head, Shepherd, and Bridegroom T HE C HURCH today uses biblical language to describe the unique identity of the Catholic priest. Aquinas uses another biblical term to define the priest: mediator. He finds warrant for this usage in the New Testament book that offers the most explicit instruction on the priest and on which Aquinas was one of the few medieval theologians to comment: The Letter to the Hebrews. Aquinas explores the grace to be a priest through the prism of the place that the priest occupies within the ecclesial community: Christ brings divine gifts to men, and he reconciles the human race to God.1 Aquinas identifies mediation with the special character that the sacrament of Holy Orders confers on the priest.2 Thus the subtitle for this essay: Sacramental Realism. To understand what is real about the sacraments, we first need to recall why we need sacraments. “Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause.”3 More than 35 years ago, these words were written by the American author, Flannery O’Connor.Were she alive today, Miss O’Connor no doubt would have dropped the qualifier “secular.” For she would have discovered that not a few 1 See Summa theologiae IIIa q. 22, art. 1. ` 2 See Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1582. 3 Quotations from Flannery O’Connor are taken from her collection of letters published under the title, Habits of the Heart. N&V_win10 .qxp 2 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 2 Romanus Cessario, O.P. Catholic theologians spread the belief that there is no cause “in the actual life we live” for Redemption. This realization of our present circumstances should especially concern the priest and the seminarian. The priest discovers his raison d’être, his very cause for being, in the Redemption. Everything that he does is meant either to draw men to the Redemption or to strengthen the Redeemed in their grace. Were Jesus Christ not the sole Redeemer of the world, the priesthood would represent a heartless joke. Men giving everything up in order to sustain an illusion. It is true that even widespread beliefs, whoever sows them, about the absence of a cause for Redemption can not eliminate the Redemption won by Christ. Nor can it eliminate the need for priests. The “cause” remains whether we recognize it as a cause or not.What is more important, the Redemption won by the Blood of Christ remains whether one receives it or not. In like manner, the priesthood abides whether people recognize the need for it or not. It has been held that God will never allow the priesthood to disappear.There will always be someone on the face of the earth to hand on to a next generation what he himself has received from the Apostles. In God’s providence, the Church in the United States has not reached the point where one has to search for an authentic bearer of the apostolic tradition. Most dioceses and clerical religious institutes still celebrate priestly ordinations annually. Indeed, recent reports indicate a very small increase in the number of priests and seminarians. Those, however, who today present themselves for priestly ordination must confront the general circumstance that Flannery O’Connor has observed, even as they display by their willingness to become priests her buoyant optimism founded on a key truth of Catholic and divine faith. She expresses this conviction with the clarity that poets achieve: “I think that the Church is the only thing that makes the terrible world we are coming to endurable.” It belongs especially to the priest to ensure that the people of each generation recognize that the Church is the only thing that makes this terrible world endurable and that they proceed to embrace her rule, her teachings, and her sacraments.The priest accomplishes this sacred mission when, as Head, he governs effectively that portion of the Church confided to his care. He realizes this objective when, as Shepherd, he teaches clearly the full truth about the moral life. He completes this vocation when, as Bridegroom, he loves those for whose eternal well being he has been given responsibility.Without the legitimate exercise of divine governance prefigured in the “dominion” over creation that God confided to Adam, the world would not be a better place, as the secular N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 3 The Vocation of the Priest 3 myth suggests, it would return to the original chaos. Without sound instruction in the moral life, the world would not discover greater freedom, as the secular myth suggests, it would, as another poet puts it, become a place of internecine warfare.Without priests who love people as Christ loves them, the world would just plain fall apart. Aquinas links the stability of the Christian religion and therefore of the world to the hypostatic union:“If,” he says,“the human nature is not united to the Word in person, it would not be united at all.To hold this would be to abolish belief in the Incarnation and to undermine (“subruere”) the entire Christian faith.”4 What does this analysis inspired by Aquinas and Flannery O’Connor say about priestly formation and those who are involved immediately in enabling it? Miss O’Connor provides a clue to answer this question. She wrote in one of her letters, “If you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time you struggle to endure it.” I don’t know whether Flannery O’Connor had been exposed to the teachings of Saint Josemaria Escrivá. But the phrase “to cherish the world” reminds me of one of his better known essays,“On passionately loving the world.” In any event, the message is clear: the priest must proceed with an eye to cherishing the world that he wants to redeem. He cannot lament the world.This axiom holds true however much the cause for Redemption in the actual lives that people live comes startlingly to his attention. Warrant for this posture is found at the end of the creation narrative:“And so it happened, God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good” (Gen 1:31). This goodness remains in the consummation of Christ’s priesthood: for Christ, observes Aquinas who quotes Hebrews,“is a high priest of the good things that have come to be.”5 Once the seminarian and priest begin to cherish the world, then they will discover the freedom to redeem the world. He will find the cause for Redemption in the lives that people live, that is, their sins, an invitation to preach to them the Good News of Jesus Christ. Above all, the priest will find new satisfaction in his vocation inasmuch as he will come to appreciate the indispensability of his Headship, his Shepherding, and his Bridal love in a world that mistakes power for authority, relativism for moral truth, and egoism for love.This noble vocation imposes grave responsibilities on those who aspire to it and who exercise what they have already received. Each must examine his conscience: does the responsible exercise of priestly authority suffer from my lack of fortitude? Does the charge to instruct in the moral life provide me with an excuse to tinker with moral 4 Summa theologiae III, q. 2, a. 2. 5 See Summa theologiae III, q. 22, a. 5, quoting Hebrews 9:11. N&V_win10 .qxp 4 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 4 Romanus Cessario, O.P. truth? Finally, the tough one. Does my pledge to love as Christ loves suffer diminishment when I find myself unloved? We will be helped in this particular examen on priestly virtue by a final instruction from Flannery O’Connor: “There is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism.”Thomists surely may say the same about “Sacramental Realism.” The priest stands as a prophet of Christian realism. Indeed, O’Connor’s phrase “nothing harder or less sentimental” affords, in my view, a glimpse into the reason that only the male of the species—“male and female he created them”—are admitted to priestly ordination.Women of course also must stand as witnesses to Christian realism. But they do it differently. Saint Scholastica wanted the consolation of her saintly brother for a little longer than he wanted to provide it. She prayed and God took her side.A downpour came, and Saint Benedict and his monks could not return back up the hill to Monte Cassino. Gregory the Great records this incident in his Dialogues, his life of Benedict. He presents Scholastica as a bearer of the feminine genius ante nomen. Women also hold an indispensable and irreplaceable vocation in the world and in the Church. Their vocation, however, does not extend to the priesthood. Still, priest and seminarian can learn from Saints Benedict and Scholastica.We can imitate their measured, patient approach to the construction of the good. Europe was not tamed over night. But monasteries of men and women have left their mark on our civilization. After all, without Benedictine monasteries, it would be difficult to imagine what form the Church that priests are called to serve would take.We also would not today enjoy the same Thomas Aquinas that the Dominicans received. He came to them away from Monte Cassino. The Priest and Preaching in the Church The Church charges her bishops to preach the truth of the Gospel.6 Preaching therefore stands at the summit of the priest’s daily activities inasmuch as the preaching of the Gospel precedes the confession of faith and the enactment of the sacraments. Preaching, faith, and sacraments establish the pattern of priestly life and devotion. Because diocesan priests form firstly and foremostly the collaborators with the local Bishop, the diocesan priest bears the responsibility of communicating to the world, especially to those in his parish, divine Truth.Within the limits established for him, no one else enjoys the authority to discharge this saving activity. The Church describes the task of the priest to preach divinely revealed truths about God and man as a munus —gift and burden.Aquinas observes that one etymology of the Latin word for priest, sacerdos, comes 6 See the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, §25. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 5 The Vocation of the Priest 5 from the two Latin words “sacra” and “dans.” The priest communicates sacred things, God’s things, divine gifts to the people.The background for this exegesis is found in Malachi 2:7: “The lips of the priest are to keep knowledge, and instruction is to be sought from his mouth.” The Benedictine abbot, Blessed Columba Marmion (1858–1923), wrote once of the priesthood of Jesus Christ that it remains the case that the “privilege of this priesthood is to ensure the return of creation in its entirety to the Master of all things.”7 The thought is daunting.To return all that God made to him, the Master of all things. To restore. To transform. To elevate. These actions represent the privilege of Christ’s priesthood.“The return of creation in its entirety” occurs mystically each time that a priest celebrates the Eucharist. In a way that surpasses our understanding and which is generally ignored by contemporary theology and catechesis, each Mass (whether a congregation is present or not) effects a change in all that exists, the material world, the spiritual world, and the composite creature, man. At the altar, the priest touches every part of creation. When he enacts the Eucharistic transformation of those material elements that come from both the earth and the work of human hands, he makes everything that God created holy. So we pray in the Third Eucharistic Prayer:“Haec Hostia nostrae reconciliationis proficiat, quaesumus Domine, ad totius mundi pacem atque salutem.” May this sacrifice of our reconciliation, we beg you, Lord, advance the peace and well being of the whole world. There exists a duty incumbent on the priesthood that precedes logically if not ontologically the celebration of the Eucharist. St. Paul signals this obligation when he exclaims: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news!”The text is found at Romans 10:15. St Paul refers to the feet of the priest, whereas the prophet Malachi refers to his lips. Both evoke a priest who brings to his people divine truth. Preaching is not ordered firstly and foremostly to stirring up the sentiments of believers, making hearts strangely warmed. It is not ordered to supply ersatz psychological counseling on how to get along in life without too much chagrin. It certainly is not ordered to providing your hearers with an Everyman’s guide to the academic exegesis of the text assigned to be proclaimed on a given day in the Church of Christ. Preaching is ordered to return creation to the Master. In its entirety. This challenge is more than daunting. Just think of all the things that go wrong. Think of the mistakes people make. Think of the errors that men try to validate. No wonder the priest can never go it alone. To return everything to the 7 See his Christ,The Ideal of the Priest (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), chap. 1, p. 17. N&V_win10 .qxp 6 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 6 Romanus Cessario, O.P. Master, the priest must remain united with the Church.When the priest remains a faithful collaborator with his bishop, the “return” that preaching effects is accomplished infallibly. Again, Blessed Marmion: It remains the case that the “privilege of this priesthood is to ensure the return of creation in its entirety to the Master of all things.” Why is preaching indispensable for the return of creation in its entirety to the Master of all things? To answer this question, we need first to consider another:What else besides the acceptance of a common truth can ensure harmony in creation? Whence comes the model for this harmony, this reconciliation of all things in Christ? The answer is simple. The divine Wisdom. The Logos. That is why this reconciling work falls to the Catholic priest. Only he is configured to the eternal Word by reason of the ontological bond that he enjoys with the Incarnate Son. So we must conclude that the communication of divine wisdom belongs to the priest by divine right. He is, if you will, ordained to preach. Contemporary discussions about lay preaching tend to miss this quite important point. Strictly speaking, there is no lay preaching in the Church of Christ. Only those configured to Christ receive the divine wisdom so that they can announce the good news. No wonder the late Pope John Paul II directs that the priest “approach the word with a docile and prayerful heart.”8 It remains the case that the “privilege of this priesthood is to ensure the return of creation in its entirety to the Master of all things.” Preaching constitutes a burden for the priest. Restoring Babel is not easy. The Genesis (11:1–9) account of the Tower of Babel graphically illustrates the need for the “return of creation to the Master of all things” that the priesthood of Jesus Christ makes possible.“Let us then go down and there confuse their language, so that one will not understand what another says” (Gen 11:7). The collapse of Babel, note well, represents a fracture of truth only not a division of languages. Because after Babel men did not each behold the same truth, Babel sets men one against the other. Friendship is thus destroyed. By definition, friends see the same truth. The preaching of the Gospel is not ordered to restore the human race to a common language, if one ever existed, but to restore all people to a common truth. Pastoral charity, the third burden of the priest after preaching and the sacraments, is ordered to unite the human race in one friendship. Aquinas takes pains to point out that the priesthood of Christ not only removes the “macula culpae,” that is, the stain of sin that turns hearts away from God, but also satisfies the “reatus poenae,” that is, the liability for punishment that Christ’s atonement expiates. 8 See Pastores Dabo Vobis, §26. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 7 The Vocation of the Priest 7 Babel also represents the hubris of the human spirit.The specific arrogance expresses itself in the assumption that making progress justifies whatsoever human activity, even when the progress constitutes a presumption against the Master of all things.Thus the word of the Lord: “nothing will later stop them from doing whatever they presume to do” (Gen 11:6). Put into the language of today, Babel reveals the penchant in the human race to relativize truth and to let political power guide the course of world events. Political power both threatens and cajoles. No one is immune from its pull. So the words in the Gospel of Mark that Christ addresses to every Christian believer take on a special meaning for the priest and seminarian: “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels” (Mk 8:38). No priest should aspire to make Christ ashamed of him. For it remains the case that the “privilege of this priesthood is to ensure the return of creation in its entirety to the Master of all things.” The Priest, Moral Instruction, and Reconciliation The truth about human living and the moral guidance that is required to ensure that one lives a happy and godly life comes infallibly from the Church of Christ. Priests are ordained to serve as communicators of sound moral instruction. Again, Aquinas develops his theology of the priesthood from the text of Malachi, “Legem requirunt ex ore eius.” “ ‘They shall seek the law at his’—that is, the priest’s—‘mouth.’ ”9 No wonder that the Church reminds her pastors and bishops: “It is our common duty, and even before that our common grace, as pastors and bishops of the Church, to teach the faithful the things which lead them to God, just as the Lord Jesus did with the young man in the Gospel.”10 Moral instruction provides more than ethical guidance for individuals. The Church instructs nations about the Law of the Lord.The priest takes on the challenge of speaking the full truth about important goods such as human life, sexual activity, and the establishment of just relations among peoples and nations. Law and reconciliation.These are the occupations of the priest that Aquinas identifies as constitutive of priestly identity, the specific mediation of the priest. We should reflect on the nature of the priestly office as one of reconciliation. For “only priests who have received the faculty of absolving from the authority of the Church can forgive sins in the name of Christ.”11 9 Summa theologiae III, q. 22, a. 1. 10 Veritatis Splendor, §114. 11 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1495. N&V_win10 .qxp 8 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 8 Romanus Cessario, O.P. From time to time, we discover perspectives on Christian living that expose what is difficult in Christian virtue.The reason for this exposure may be found in the Passion of Christ. The whole Christian tradition describes the Passion and death of Christ as the most difficult of those deaths suffered for the sake of righteousness. Even when it may appear that other martyrs endured harsher or more painful deaths, the saints point out that Christ’s sufferings remain the most exquisite inasmuch as he is a divine person. In his human nature, Christ experiences the sufferings of the cross to a maximal degree because of the unique sensitivity to truth and goodness that his human soul enjoyed. In the end, we confront the reality that human reason controls even the felt experience of suffering.The more refined the person, the more acute the sufferings. Why did God surrender his Son to the most acute sufferings? One could hypothetically expose the same question by asking, “Why did not God avail himself of someone of reduced capacity to experience sufferings?”This of course was the case with the sacrifices and holocausts of the Old Law.The paschal lambs offered throughout the period of the old law did not enjoy the capacity to regret or, for that matter, to fear their fate.To reply to an objection that Christ is identified with none of the animals— buck goat, she goat, or calf—used under the old law as sin offerings, Aquinas refers to Origen’s Commentary on John 6:33: “although various species of animals were offered under the Old Law, the morning and evening sacrifice offered each day was a lamb.This signified that the sacrifice of the lamb, that is of Christ, was to be the consummation of all other sacrifices.”12 God sends his very own Son,“the lamb of God” ( Jn 1:29).A Lenten weekday preface calls to mind the motive for this redemptive Incarnation:“As we recall [during the season of Lent] the great events that gave us new life in Christ, you [Loving Father] bring the image of your Son to perfection within us.”The “great events” that this preface refers to include the most bitter passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The short answer to why Christ had to endure the maximal sufferings in order to restore and to perfect in us his very own image is simple to state: the sin of Adam, the sin of nature, the original sin. Put more precisely, the magnitude of this original sin requires the maximal satisfaction. As Flannery O’Connor has reminded us, people forget easily about original sin. The problem, however, is this: original sin is one problem that oblivion does not make go away. It is at this juncture of sin and redemption that I like to locate the vocation of the priest, especially the diocesan priest who is obliged to confront the effects of original sin in the people confided to 12 Summa theologiae III, q. 22, a. 4, ad 3. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 9 The Vocation of the Priest 9 his care.The prophetic burden of the Catholic priest is foreshadowed in the words of the prophet Daniel when he reminds the people of the old law: “Justice, O Lord, is on your side” (Dan 9:7). Daniel’s prayer for mercy should ring fresh in our ears. Especially since we have One greater than Daniel here.“Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ I did not come to call the righteous but sinners” (Mt 9:13). Both Testaments bear witness to the truth that God’s justice does not pass away. Jesus had to suffer the most because of the widespreadness of sin in the world. He had to suffer most because of the attachment to sin that remains even in the baptized. He had to suffer the most because people like you and me needed the very Savior that God in his mercy sent. There is good news in Christ’s most bitter sufferings for our sins: St. Francis de Sales (1567–1622), one of the first outstanding diocesan priests of the modern period, urges that whatever the degree or nature of our sins and shortcomings, we should not judge even ourselves.“Our Saviour has bequeathed the Sacrament of Penitence and Confession to His Church, in order that therein we may be cleansed from all our sins, however and whenever we may have been soiled thereby.Therefore, my child, never allow your heart to abide heavy with sin, seeing that there is so sure and safe a remedy at hand.”13 The priest can announce this spiritual maxim with great profit. In fact, one could argue that a young man would want to spend his life telling people about the consolation that only Christ brings to the world and to themselves. We are discussing the indispensable and the “irreplaceable” vocation of the diocesan priest in the life of the Church, as Pope Benedict has expressed it.14 Moral instruction remains indispensable to the happy lives of individuals, as well as the good ordering of the societies that people form.We have reflected on what is required of the Savior of the world to 13 St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, part 2, chap. 19. 14 “The Role of Priests Is Irreplaceable.”Vatican City, 17 Sep 2009 (VIS)—“This morning in Castelgandolfo the Holy Father received a group of prelates from the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (Northeast 2), who have just completed their ‘ad limina’ visit. Highlighting the functions of the various members of the Church, the Pope explained how ‘the particular identity of priests and laity must be seen in the light of the essential difference between priestly ministry and the “common priesthood.” Hence it is important to avoid the secularisation of clergy and the “clericalisation” of the laity.’‘In this perspective,’ he went on,‘the lay faithful must undertake to give expression in real life—also through political commitment—to the Christian view of anthropology and the social doctrine of the Church. While priests must distance themselves from politics in order to favour the unity and communion of all the faithful, thus becoming a point of reference for everyone.’ Benedict XVI indicated that ‘the lack of priests does not justify a more active and abundant participation of the laity. The truth is that the greater N&V_win10 .qxp 10 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 10 Romanus Cessario, O.P. rectify the disorders that sin introduces into us and into our communities. One reason for the practice of clerical celibacy is that the man who will go forth to combat Satan and his wiles needs himself a special source of spiritual strength that chaste celibacy provides.15 Celibacy sets a man apart. Or should.The celibate priest takes the time to discover the depth of what the Gospel teaches about human happiness. He becomes an expert in beatitude. So he is able to teach with authority, an authority that comes from his priestly ordination, about the happy life. Not only is he able, but he is bound. “It is our common duty, and even before that our common grace, as Pastors and Bishops of the Church, to teach the faithful the things which lead them to God, just as the Lord Jesus did with the young man in the Gospel.”16 But the Lord does not only teach the way to happiness, he shows us the way to happiness in his own person, as Saint Thomas Aquinas says at the start of the tertia pars of his Summa. For the priest, this showing takes on special significance in the sacrament of Reconciliation. Priests are indispensable and irreplaceable for forgiving sins in the name of God, which is the only real form of forgiveness. For “only priests who have received the faculty of absolving from the authority of the Church can forgive sins in the name of Christ.”17 Without this forgiveness readily available in the world, there is no imagining what will overtake the People of God and, ultimately, the human race. The Priest, Communion, and the Eucharist It is at the Eucharist that priests exercise in a supreme degree their sacred office.18 Christ confides to his priests the most sacred of the gifts that he bestows on his Bride, the Church. There is no greater dignity on earth the faithful’s awareness of their own responsibilities within the Church, the clearer becomes the specific identity and inimitable role of the priest as pastor of the entire community, witness to the authenticity of the faith, and dispenser of the mysteries of salvation in the name of Christ the Head.The function of the clergy is essential and irreplaceable in announcing the Word and celebrating the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist. . . . For this reason it is vital to ask the Lord to send workers for His harvest; and it is necessary that priests express joy in their faithfulness to their identity.”VIS 090917 (480). 15 At the 150th anniversary of the death of the Cure of Ars, which the Church is currently (2009–2010) commemorating with the Year for Priests, Benedict XVI indicated that St. John Mary Vianney “continues even now to be a model for priests, especially in living a life of celibacy as a requirement for the total giving of self, expressed through that pastoral charity which Vatican Council II presents as the unifying centre of a priest’s being and actions.”VIS 090917 (480). 16 Veritatis Splendor, §114. 17 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1495. 18 See Lumen Gentium, §28. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 11 The Vocation of the Priest 11 than the one that a man receives when he is ordained.This dignity originates not in the man’s own human qualities or even in his legitimately recognized virtues, but in the ability, sacramentally established, to bring God down to earth. The priest acts in the person of Jesus Christ. This vicarious activity requires that God unites the priest to the very Person of Christ in a way that the Church describes as “ontological.”That is, in his very being. “In this bond between the Lord Jesus and the priest, an ontological and psychological bond, a sacramental and moral bond, is the foundation and likewise the power for that ‘life according to the Spirit’ and that ‘radicalism of the Gospel’ to which every priest is called today and which is fostered by ongoing formation in its spiritual aspect.”19 More than anything else, this ontological bond is required because of the words that the priest and he alone can pronounce, “This is my body,” “This is my blood.” Aquinas places the priest and the Eucharist within the context of the Resurrection. When he asks whether the priesthood of Christ will remain forever, he replies to the objection that the saints no longer require the sacraments as follows: “The saints in heaven will have no further need of Christ’s priestly atonement; yet they still depend on Christ, cleansed of their sins though they are, for their glory derives from him.”20 The liturgical readings assigned to the Easter season introduce us into the grace to be a priest.The mystery unfolds on two levels. One is historical: The Acts of the Apostles recounts the beginning of the Church. Therein the priest discovers his pedigree, his genealogy, his heritage:“We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). So replied Peter to the Sanhedrin when the latter tried to persuade the Apostles to stop proclaiming the power of the Risen Christ. It is from this apostolic witness that the priest finds his bearings. Because he receives from bishops what they themselves receive from the Apostles, the priest recognizes that his vocation makes no sense outside of the historical continuity that the Church enjoys with those who were witnesses to Christ’s resurrection: “The God of our ancestors raised Jesus, though you had him killed by hanging him on a tree” (Acts 5:30). As a result, the Catholic priest finds himself inserted into a sacred history. He exists because of a grace that exists outside of history. Call it Resurrection time. To live in Resurrection time means that the priest can never fully explain himself in purely historical, horizontal, temporal categories.After all, what is time? Simply a measure of motion.We learn this from Aristotle: “Tempus nihil aliud est quam numerus motus secundum prius et 19 Pastores Dabo Vobis, §72. 20 Summa theologiae III, q. 22, a. 5, ad 1. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM 12 Page 12 Romanus Cessario, O.P. posterius.”21 Many things that the priest is counseled to observe reflect his unique, sacred, graced relationship to the temporal. Celibacy of course affords the best example.The priest removes himself from the rhythms of marriage, in all their complexity, so that Christ’s people can encounter a man whose heart and mind are set exclusively on God, his Truth, his mysteries. People today do not talk much about celibacy for contemplation. The fact of the matter is that the Christian tradition considers it the principal reason for the Bishop and priest and monk to forego marriage. Marriage is a thing of this earth.Very much of this earth. Indeed, even the most sanctified of marriages remains of this earth. Married life is pleasurable, but it is also distracting from pondering those revealed truths that can only be received in the purity of faith. Clerical attire is another.The priest dresses differently. Black suits and collars. Cassocks. Sacred vestments. This apparel is not a uniform. What the priest wears provides external signs of his priestly consecration. Removing them without a clear and compelling reason creates ambiguity in the minds of the people and, in all likelihood, in the mind of the priest. Evangelical “simplicity” is another.22 The priest lives outside the ordinary attachments of the consumer society inasmuch as he knows that his real treasure resides in a place that only the Resurrection allows entry. Ecclesial obedience also reveals that the priest cherishes his privileged relationship with the local bishop. Once we understand the message of the Acts of the Apostles, we find ourselves in a position to say some of the things that the priest is not. In a word, he is none of those things whose existence depends exclusively on the temporal, that is, on the measure of motion. The priest is not a sociologist. Sociology represents one large effort to measure the collective motion of peoples. Informative though it may be, the priest cannot operate in sociological categories.They limit him, and eventually reduce him. This is not a hypothesis, but unfortunately the sad experience of those priests who, after the Second Vatican Council, wrongly assumed that the call to sanctify the saeculum, the temporal order, meant embracing mainly those categories intelligible only to the temporal order. The priest is not a politician. Politics is the art of governing the temporal order.Well, canon law reminds us that the priest is not a politician.23 The one who exercises spiritual governance and headship cannot at the same time exercise civil governance. In the modern world at least, this arrangement does not work. Historians debate whether it once worked in the 21 See Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, lectio 17, no. 10. 22 See CIC, can. 282 ¶1. 23 See CIC, can. 285 ¶3. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 13 The Vocation of the Priest 13 periods of caesaropapism. Note that it is not the pragmatism of modern politics that alone prohibits the priest from being a politician.The reason lies in the stricture that politics puts on walking in Resurrection time. No political authority enjoys access to “the one who comes from above” ( Jn 3:31). The priest is not a psychological social worker. Modern psychology acknowledges solutions that are time-bound. Freud is criticized for having an archeology of the human psyche but not a teleology, an eschatology, and so no openness to transcendence. Much confusion exists about the place that psychology holds in Catholic life. This is the case because many of the words that psychologists employ are those that come from the Gospels: love, unity, peace, joy, even forgiveness, although this quality of soul is difficult for even well-trained psychologists to engender in those patients whose only hope remains here below. “The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things” ( Jn 3:31). The second level of the Easter mystery unfolds in St John’s Gospel. John the Evangelist. John the Divine. John whose symbol is the eagle because the ancients recognized that his revelations soar to the heights like the proverbial bird of Jove. The Gospel of John informs the priest about his true identity. The priest who dwells in Resurrection time is sent to reveal the Trinity. This is the lesson that Nicodemus discovered when he asked about rebirth. No rebirth in the order of nature, nothing of the temporal, no coming twice out of the womb.The rebirth that the priest brings comes in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Baptism. Grace. Virtues, gifts, beatitudes. All the supernatural things, the gifts, that come from above. So the priest keeps his eyes set upon the Paschal mystery. He looks at the things that are above where the risen Christ measures, if there exists a measure, Resurrection time.“. . . for their glory derives from him.”24 John the Divine is also John the Celibate.That’s why he receives Mary. That’s why he is the one to administer the sacraments to Mary. There exist representations of St. John the Evangelist giving holy communion to Mary.The privilege of the priest that surpasses all other considerations is the holy Eucharist. What psychologists seek to help people find, the Eucharist bestows through the hands of the priest. This is what the Church teaches: The Eucharist remains in this world the inalienable source of charity and unity. It is not a ritual act in which certain persons so inclined choose to participate. When the Mass is offered, the first beneficiary is God. He receives again the pleasing interior sacrifice of his only Son. From this sacrifice, flows the graces that the world needs to 24 Summa theologiae III, q. 22, a. 5, ad 1. N&V_win10 .qxp 14 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 14 Romanus Cessario, O.P. survive. Peace and joy follow upon love and unity. Without one or the other, there is not a chance of any individual finding the tranquility of order or the permanent exhilaration that true joy produces in the human spirit. If there is a reason for why the diocesan priest is both indispensable and irreplaceable the foundation for this reason will be disclosed in the celebration of the Eucharist.Without the priest, there is no Eucharist. Without the Eucharist, the world cannot survive. The Eucharist of course exists in time. The priest receives from the bishops the power to consecrate that Christ confided to his Apostles on the night before he died. But the Eucharist belongs to both levels of the Paschal mystery, that is, the one represented by the Acts of the Apostles as well as that represented by the Gospel of John.The Eucharist provides a pledge of eternal life. This pledge is more of a down payment than a promissory note. The more that the priest shapes the Christian people with his Eucharistic caring, the more the Christian community begins to look like a group ready for heaven. The more the human community soars, if you will. Like an eagle. Celebrating the Eucharist reveals what is unique about the Catholic priest. Eucharistizing, sacrificing, celebrating the sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood defines the man who wants to be a priest. So those who aspire to the priesthood must start by learning to love the Eucharist. Better to put oneself in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament for thirty minutes than to mull in your head, alone in your room for hours, whether one should be a priest or not.This pondering is also served by taking up the life of chaste celibacy now. Chastity in relationships to be sure. Purity, also, in conduct with one’s person. Easter makes the thought that a young man can live without procuring sexual pleasure bearable. When the Lord, at night, undertakes his celebrated exchange with Nicodemus, he consoles him with the news that God’s grace is both true and sufficient: “For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God. He does not ration his gifts of the Spirit” ( Jn 3:34). Celibate love opens the heart of a man so that he remains as receptive as possible to the unrationed Spirit, so that a man once ordained abides in Resurrection time, so that the priest will announce to the world the one Truth that makes it endurable. Unchastity and impurity becloud one’s vision and sully one’s hands. Neither circumstance renders a man well disposed to receive the Eucharist. Mortal sins prohibit receiving the Eucharist. In this discipline that the Church establishes for Eucharistic communion, we catch a glimpse of the profound sacramentality that the Eucharist exercises in the world. In a word, the Eucharist changes us. Unlike ordinary food that we assimilate, N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 15 The Vocation of the Priest 15 the Eucharist is meant to assimilate us into its substance.When this happens, we find ourselves conformed to the Risen Lord.When this conformity that the sacraments of Easter, especially baptism, make possible reaches the whole world, we achieve the consummation of all things. It is worth more than one lifetime to become an irreplaceable instrument of a grace that is so indispensable. To forego wife and family is nothing compared to the supreme value that the spiritual man recognizes each time that he celebrates the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Mass gives sacramental expression, as long as the Church remains a pilgrim, to the interior sacrifice of all those who belong to Christ. It is this interior sacrifice that abides for ever among the saints: “Now Christ, by his passion, won the glory of resurrection, not in virtue of the sacrifice of the victim, since this was done to make reparation for sin, but in virtue of the act of worship of his by which, under the influence of his love, he submitted with humility to his passion.”25 Aquinas could have given no better descripN&V tion of what the Roman Catholic priest is about. 25 Summa theologiae III, q. 22, a. 4, ad 2. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 16 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 17 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 17–32 17 The Studiousness of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet C HRISTOPHER B LUM Thomas More College Merrimack, New Hampshire Entre toutes les passions de l’esprit humain, l’une des plus violentes, c’est le désir de savoir. —Sermon sur la Mort, 22 March 1662 “L ET ME tell you, my God, how I squandered the brains you gave me on foolish delusions.”1 St. Augustine knew from bitter experience that if man’s desire to know is to serve him, it must be bridled by the will and ruled by reason, must be subject, that is, to the virtue of studiousness.2 It is a virtue that, being particularly foreign to our temper, is difficult for us to understand. For in the long years since T. S. Eliot mourned the passing of the “wisdom we have lost in knowledge,” we have so immoderately partaken of encyclopedic learning that we are almost sure to have a habit of curiosity rather than one of studiousness.3 If we seek, then, to recover the true ideal of studiousness, the true mean with respect to the desire to know, we would do well to turn to the witness of the tradition. One exemplary model of this virtue comes to us from the age of Louis XIV in the person of the great orator Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet. In his day, Bossuet was widely recognized as one of the most learned churchmen in Europe.Today he is little known outside of Francophone 1 Augustine, Confessions, I.17, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin, 1961), 37. 2 See, for instance, St.Augustine, On the Profit of Believing, §22, trans. C. L. Cornish, in Basic Writings of St. Augustine, ed. Whitney J. Oates, 2 volumes (New York: Random House, 1948), I:414. 3 T. S. Eliot, “Choruses from ‘The Rock,’ ” in Collected Poems, 1909–1962 (New York: Harcourt, 1970), 147. On the danger of curiosity and need for the cultivation of studiousness, see Paul J. Griffiths,“The Vice of Curiosity,” Pro Ecclesia XV (2006): 47–63, and Reinhard Hütter,“Intellect and Will in the Encyclical Fides et Ratio and in Thomas Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera 3 (2005): 579–602, at 592–96. N&V_win10 .qxp 18 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 18 Christopher Blum lands, which is lamentable, if for no other reason than that it indicates the loss of the riches of his oratory. For its sonorousness, for the beauty of its orderliness, and for its penetrating vision into the depths of the soul, Bossuet’s oratory endures as one of the highest achievements of the Catholic Baroque. And his erudition was by no means exhausted in rhetorical composition. As the tutor to the Dauphin in the 1670s and bishop of Meaux and royal advisor until his death in 1704, he was called upon to write a wide variety of pedagogical, pastoral, and learned works, from letters of spiritual direction to textbooks, to apologetic works of tremendous weight such as his Exposition of Catholic Doctrine (1671) and the History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches (1688). By the last decade of his life, when he was exchanging letters with Leibniz about the prospects of the reunion of the Protestants with the Catholic Church, Bossuet had become an honored voice of the living Catholic tradition: to the faithful, a champion, and to the nascent Enlightenment, a barrier to be overcome or cast aside.4 There are two reasons why Bossuet can serve us as a compelling model of studiousness.The first is that he defended and practiced the virtue at a time when it was being rejected by the new learning of the Renaissance. The virtues are not necessarily the stronger for being opposed, but when they are opposed, those who would uphold them are forced to reflect upon their ideals and practices with a sharpened awareness of them.The second reason is that Bossuet pursued wisdom within the context of an active life. From his early days as a Doctor of the Sorbonne until his death, his life of study and writing was always at the service of the pressing needs of the Church and of his roles as educator and pastor. In our day, similarly, most of those who pursue wisdom within the Catholic intellectual tradition do so not in the cloister, but in the academy, whose groves are not so well-suited to contemplative repose. And so, while Bossuet himself would tell us that if we wish to be studious we should imitate St. Bernard, St. Gregory, and St. Augustine, we may gain from him some insights more immediately applicable to our condition than from those who were more deeply rooted in the liturgical life and in religious community. Curiosity Becomes an Ideal The full meaning of the virtue of studiousness is difficult to appreciate without reference to the opposing vice of curiosity. In his discussion of the vice of curiosity, St. Thomas Aquinas points to four ways in which the natural desire for knowledge can become inordinate, that is, wrongly 4 See the classic characterization of Bossuet in Paul Hazard, The European Mind (1680–1715), trans. J. Lewis May (Cleveland:World Publishing Co., 1963), 198–236. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 19 The Studiousness of Bossuet 19 directed.The third of these will be our chief concern because it came to typify the new learning of the Renaissance: “when man desires to know the truth about creatures, without referring it to its due end, which is the knowledge of God.”5 It would be hard to imagine a more perfect embodiment of the vice than the new learning of the seventeenth century. Consider, for instance, Descartes’s prohibition of the search for final causes, or, more provocatively, the name Bacon gave to his imaginary academy, the College of the Six Days Works, a name suggesting that productive work and not contemplation was man’s highest good.6 For their audacity in digging down to principles starkly contrary to those of the Aristotelian tradition, Bacon and Descartes have long been numbered among its chief rivals. Principles, however, rarely spring to life fullyformed. They more often grow slowly in a soil prepared by gradual changes in practice. Around Bacon and Descartes stood an array of menof-letters and érudits, philologists and antiquarians, experimental philosophers, autodidacts and innovators, in a word, the curious. In the lives and works of these many inquirers the principles expressed by the more wellknown thinkers found their origin and their elaboration. Two texts from the late Renaissance are particularly helpful for laying bare the inordinate desire for knowledge that characterized the new learning: Gabriel Naudé’s Advis pour dresser une Bibliothèque (1627) and Pierre Gassendi’s Viri illustris Nicolai Claudii Fabricii de Peiresc, senatoris Aquisextiensis, vita (1641). Naudé, a librarian, and Gassendi, a cleric and philosopher, were both significant members of the emerging Republic of Letters; their works, accordingly, shed light upon the mentality of the men who prepared the ground for and welcomed the innovations of Bacon and Descartes. In these two treatises can be seen three common characteristics of the new learning: first, that the word curiosity had become the name of a positive character trait and even of an ideal; second, that the ideal consisted in the lack of restraint in the pursuit of knowledge; third, that new institutions were emerging to support and instantiate the new ideal. Naudé’s Advice for Fitting Out a Library was a courtly work, addressed by a savant to his patron, a member of the legal aristocracy who had been bitten by the love of books.Written with all the fervor of youthful conviction, Naudé’s essay proposed a refinement of the Renaissance cultural ideal: 5 Summa theologiae II–II, q. 167, a. 1:“Quando homo appetit cognoscere veritatem circa creaturas non referendo ad debitum finem, scilicet ad cognitionem Dei.” 6 See Descartes, Meditation #4 and Principles of Philosophy, I.28; Bacon, New Atlantis, in Francis Bacon, The Major Works, ed. Brian Vickers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 471. N&V_win10 .qxp 20 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 20 Christopher Blum the learned courtier’s books were not to be beautifully bound, artfully arranged, or magnificently housed, but useful, up-to-date, and numerous. In his Advice the forms of the word curious appeared regularly, most often when qualifying a book as curious, which served principally to indicate its rarity, but sometimes when directly referring to a scholar’s desire for knowledge. In those cases the term was not used with a negative meaning; one commentator has observed that Naudé used curieux as a synonym for docte (learned).7 Gassendi’s Life of Peiresc was written less from a desire to please a patron than from admiration for a celebrated member of the Republic of Letters whom Gassendi commended as a model for his “unquenchable thirst after knowledge” and his “unwearied care to advance all ingenious and liberal arts.”8 Here, too, the word curious was employed as a term of approbation, as when Gassendi said of the young Peiresc that “his most curious mind began to burn like fire in a wood.”9 For both Gassendi and Naudé, giving the word curious a neutral or even positive connotation accorded with their broader doctrine. Both scholars shared the conviction that the pursuit of knowledge should suffer no restraint. The emerging Renaissance ideal of curiosity was the precise opposite of Aquinas’s conception of studiousness. For Aquinas, studiousness owed its name to its secondary quality of removing the obstacles to learning posed by man’s distaste for the pains of study (labores inquirendi), but its essential function was to curb the desire for knowledge.“Studiousness,” he said, with his usual economy, “consists in restraint.”10 But the new learning was departing from the older, theological model of learning by seeking a different kind of universality. Thus Gassendi lauded Peiresc in these terms: “Being moderate in all other things, he seemed only immoderate in his desire of knowledge; and never man was more desirous than he, to run through the famous encyclopedia, or whole circle of the arts.”11 Naudé 7 Paul Nelles,“The Library as an Instrument of Discovery: Gabriel Naudé and the Uses of History,” in Donald R. Kelley, ed., History and the Disciplines:The Reclassification of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 41–57, at 44. 8 Gassendi, The Mirrour of True Nobility and Gentility: Being the Life of the Renowned Nicolaus Claudius Fabricius, Lord of Peiresk, trans.W. Rand in 1657, ed. Oliver Thill (Haverford, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2003), 11. 9 Ibid., 22. 10 ST II–II, q. 166, a. 2, ad 3: “Studiositas in refrenatione consistit.” 11 Gassendi, Mirrour, 280. I respectfully differ from the judgment of Lynn Joy, who sees “mixed admiration and regret” in this and similar passages in which Gassendi “reluctantly acknowledged” Pieresc’s immoderate desire for knowledge. See Lynn Sumida Joy, Gassendi the Atomist:Advocate of History in an Age of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 59. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 21 The Studiousness of Bossuet 21 made the lack of restraint in the pursuit of knowledge almost the measure of human happiness.“If it is possible to have in this world some sovereign good, some perfect and complete felicity,” then, he explained, it was to be found in a library of a learned man who, “does not desire books so that they might be the ornament of his dining room so much as the instruments of his studies.”With the right library, a man “might know all things, see all things, be ignorant of nothing”; he would be “the absolute master of this contentment, that he might arrange it according to his fantasies, enjoy it when he will, leave it when it please him, and, without suffering contradiction, without labor, and without pain he may instruct himself and know the most precise particulars.”12 To the partisans of the new learning, curiosity, the unchecked desire for knowledge, had become the name of a virtue. The desire for knowledge was a measure and rule unto itself. To divine what was the end of the knowledge so eagerly sought by Naudé and Gassendi’s Peiresc is not a simple matter. Both acknowledged the duty to use the truth to convert heretics, yet their thoughts were clearly elsewhere. Naudé gives us a clue in his judgment that collections of ancient sources are most valuable for a library because of “the brevity of our life and the multitude of things that one must know today in order to be placed in the ranks of learned men.” And the library was to have works by scholars of the present century, so that one could avoid being a pedant, that is, one who “disdains all the modern authors so that he might pay court only to a few of the ancients.”13 Membership in the Republic of Letters on good standing, it appears, was Naudé’s goal. On a similar note, Gassendi painted the copious learning of Peiresc as being its own justification. In his Life, after a bewildering chronicle of his friend’s interests, from the bones of saints to new stars, turtles to tulips, and Coptic manuscripts to Roman coins, he reported a conversation in which Peiresc had defended his antiquarian researches as worthy of praise because “they give light to the understanding of good authors,” assist in knowing “the circumstances of histories,” and cause “persons, things, and actions” to be “more deeply fixed in the mind.”14 One studies, then, in order to study with more understanding. Undergirding this reflexive justification is the unspoken premise that the best knowledge is that which is most recently acquired. Naudé’s concern to have the latest texts by the most current scholars was matched by Peiresc’s searching of the Mediterranean world for rare manuscripts, old in themselves, but new to 12 Naudé, Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque, edition of 1644 (Paris: Isidore Lisieux, 1876), 12–13. 13 Naudé, Advis, 43 and 47. 14 Gassendi, Mirrour, 292. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 22 Christopher Blum 22 the learned. If the merits of a bit of knowledge cannot be judged with respect to the object of the knowledge or the transformation that the knowledge effects in the knower, what remains is some quality that the knowledge brings with it, such as pleasure, usefulness, or fame, all of which are readily found in novelty.The most telling evidence that it was the love of the new that motivated Peiresc’s studies is that Gassendi told the story of his discoveries and experiences in chronological order, with one thing simply following another in time. There was no single great achievement or guiding inquiry for this new-model antiquarian, who studied the old in order to find the new. Institutions and practices soon embodied the love of novelty that colored the new learning. Naudé’s Advice, of course, was itself the blueprint for just such an institution, a new kind of library, whose end was not the fame of the patron but “public use,” and especially by the “least of men.”15 Wide use by many scholars being the sine qua non, the library’s collection was to be arranged so as to be most easily accessible. For Naudé, this meant that the order of the books was not a matter of principle but of practice. He was content to cleave to the established custom of separating volumes according to the various faculties of the university, but as the basis for the organization was now merely custom, “the traditional order of the disciplines” was placed “in a much weaker position.”16 Gassendi was less interested in the library than in the scholar who inhabited it. Peiresc had been more valuable than any collection of books; indeed, from Gassendi’s portrait one might conclude that he had been essentially a reference librarian. For Peiresc had been prompt in the service of the Republic of Letters: “he never stood considering, when occasion was offered to advance learning, and assist learned men.”The books themselves were merely tools; the inquirer was the maker. Accordingly, Peiresc spent more time in his later years acquiring rare books and manuscripts for his correspondents than he did in reading them himself.17 He stood at the heart of a vast correspondence network linking scholars from Alexandria to London, from Antwerp to Rome. Letter writing, the exchange of books, and conversations in libraries and salons: as the century wore on, these institutions grew and multiplied, to be joined by learned journals, academies of science, and, finally, coffee houses, all of them providing what one well-known journal of the day called “News from the Republic of Letters.”18 15 Naudé, Advis, 103. 16 Nelles, “The Library as an Instrument of Discovery,” 46. 17 Gassendi, Mirrour, 281, 288. 18 Pierre Bayle edited the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres from 1684 to 1687. On these developments, see Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 23 The Studiousness of Bossuet 23 It is a sign that our age is characterized by the struggle among principles born in the distant past that a latter-day Gassendi has arisen to newly recommend Peiresc as a model of “learned sociability” and as a pattern for the intellectual life.19 Yet he cannot be a model for anyone who believes the mind to have an end beyond the enjoyment of its own exercise. For what Gassendi’s Life and Naudé’s library both represented was a rejection of the traditional hierarchy of knowledge. In other tracts of the Renaissance, such as Léon Battista Alberti’s On Painting, Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Galileo’s Two New Sciences, individual pursuits had been declared to be autonomous, that is, neither ordered to nor directed by the truths contemplated by metaphysics and theology. In the works of Naudé and Gassendi, the practices and goals of the humanistic scholarly life as a whole were similarly set free.To their conception of the new learning, the virtue of studiousness was entirely irrelevant, because there was no hierarchy of studies and, consequently, there could be no harm in choosing the lower over the higher. At best, the new learning occasionally acknowledged the need for a kind of moderation in the pursuit of knowledge akin to the Epicurean’s care not to gorge himself. For the desire to know had become merely another passion of the soul, to be enjoyed in its operation like any other.20 Curiosity was no longer a vice; it had become the name of the passion. On this point, as on many others, it was Montaigne who summed up his age:“When the mind is satisfied, that is a sign of diminished faculties or weariness.”21 Bossuet’s Witness to the Virtue of Studiousness The Christian mind thirsts not for the endless quest, but for the peace of resting in God.“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully” (1 Cor 13:12).There was a promise of limitless knowledge in that first temptation, and similar chimeras have led countless souls astray through the ages.The most clearsighted of Christian teachers, therefore, have always followed St. Paul in seeing the mind as a glorious but unruly gift. Our “every thought” is to be taken “captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 2:5); we are to be “renewed in the spirit of our minds” (Eph 4:23). In his convictions about knowledge and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 119–55. 19 See Peter N. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven:Yale University Press, 2000). 20 See Descartes’s discussion of wonder in The Passions of the Soul, II.70–78. 21 Montaigne, “On Experience,” in The Essays: A Selection, trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin, 1993), 368. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 24 Christopher Blum 24 and learning, as in much else, Bossuet was a student of St. Paul. In chronicling his witness to the virtue of studiousness, it is necessary first to sketch the outlines of his life of study, then to consider his assessment of the threats posed by the new learning, before at last turning to his prescriptions for the right ordering of the desire to know. Like his contemporary Molière, whose nemesis he was, Bossuet was formed by the Ratio Studiorum, at a Jesuit school in his hometown of Dijon.22 His youth there was a serious one, as was often the case with the sons of the French judicial nobility. When he was eleven, his father was appointed to the Parlement of Metz, and Bossuet was left in Dijon in the home of his uncle, also a judge, and a formidable figure who made his nephew memorize verses of Virgil beyond those he was required to learn at school. It was in his uncle’s library that Bossuet happened upon the Latin text of the Holy Scriptures and thus, at fourteen, began a lifelong devotion to the Word of God. He left Dijon for Paris when he was fifteen, and passed from success to success, ending with his recognition as Doctor of the Sorbonne and his ordination to the priesthood, both in the spring of 1652. Already by his early twenties he had been introduced to the Republic of Letters in Paris at its twin poles, the fashionable Hôtel Rambouillet and the learned cabinet or study of the brothers Dupuy— frequented by Gabriel Naudé, among others—to which he had been recommended for his “taste for belles-lettres,” “grace,” and “ability to speak in public.”23 A recent biographer, and not a sympathetic one, has tried to see Bossuet as a “worldly young cleric” who knew from firsthand experience the attractions of Parisian society.24 But the documentary evidence that remains from this period of his life offers scant support for such a view.The Meditation on the Brevity of Life that he wrote on the eve of his ordination to the diaconate in 1648 bespoke an elevated piety and treated the sins of youth in conventional terms: “What then remains to me? Of lawful pleasures, a useless memory, of unlawful, a regret, a debt owed to Hell or to penance.”25 Also to be noted is the early influence of St.Vincent de Paul upon Bossuet, who made a week-long retreat under the saint’s direction prior to his priestly ordination, as well as the impos22 On Bossuet’s education, see Thérèse Goyet, L’Humanisme de Bossuet, 2 vols. (Paris: Klinckseick, 1965), I: 3–44. 23 Letter of Nicolas Rigault to the Brothers Dupuy,April 3, 1650, in Correspondance de Bossuet, nouvelle édition, eds. Ch. Urbain and E. Levesque (Paris: Hachette, 1909), I:415–18, at 417. 24 Georges Minois, Bossuet: Entre Dieu et le Soleil (Paris: Perrin, 2003), 39. 25 Bossuet, Méditation sur la Brièveté de la Vie, in Oeuvres Oratoires, édition critique de J. Lebarq, revue et augmentée par Ch. Urbain et E. Levesque, 7 volumes (Paris: Desclée, 1926), I:11. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 25 The Studiousness of Bossuet 25 ing achievements of his youth, which suggest that dissipation was never his flaw. To take the measure of Bossuet’s mind is the work not of a few sentences.26 As an introduction, however, one might do worse than to note the parallels between him and John Henry Newman. For all of the inevitable differences between one man rooted in the soil of Catholic France and another who spent half of his life discovering the Catholic Church, the similarities of their minds are striking. Each man was educated in the Classics, read and wrote Latin as if it were his mother tongue, and had a mind shaped by Virgil and Cicero. Each also mastered Greek.They were immersed in the writings of the Fathers of the Church; Bossuet was more indebted to St. Augustine, Newman to the Cappadocians, but both were Patristic in their sensibilities. Both were incomparable master writers, who composed effortlessly and powerfully in their native languages, whose respective geniuses each one lifted to new heights. Both were men of letters who kept abreast of the learned world, wrote works of controversy to stem the tide of what they perceived to be dangerous innovation, and were often consulted by their peers and regarded as trustworthy judges in matters aesthetic, moral, and theological. Both were lifelong churchmen who understood that their significant talents had been entrusted to them that they might make a serious use of them in the service of the people of God. Both were critics of the new learning and educators charged with transmitting the old. Both, finally, had minds trained to seek the end in all things by the careful study of the works of Aristotle. Just as some of the most piercing phrases in Newman’s work are to be found in the Parochial and Plain Sermons of his Anglican years, so also is Bossuet’s genius visible in the sermons he delivered from his late twenties to his early forties, when he was a canon of Metz and occasional preacher before the Royal Court. From his panegyric of St. Joseph (1656), his charge “On the Eminent Dignity of the Poor in the Church” (1659), and his “Sermon on Death” preached at Court during his Lenten series in 1662, to what is often said to be his masterpiece, his funeral oration for the Duchess of Orléans (1670), he composed a series of great works that secured his reputation as one of the most eloquent preachers in an age that cultivated refined taste in oratory. Few were published during his life, but since his death they have been endlessly reprinted and 26 The three authoritative studies of Bossuet consider him under only one aspect, each at great length: Goyet, L’Humanisme de Bossuet; Jacques Truchet, La Prédication de Bossuet (Paris: Cerf, 1960); Jacques Le Brun, La Spiritualité de Bossuet (Paris: Klincksieck, 1972). N&V_win10 .qxp 26 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 26 Christopher Blum anthologized and are still studied in the schools of the Fifth Republic, not much known for their interest in France’s Catholic past.Themes such as the hatred of the truth by free-thinkers and the necessity of preaching the Word of God are widespread among them. In one sermon in particular, however, the vice of curiosity forms the entire subject, the panegyric of St. Catherine of Alexandria, preached by Bossuet first in 1660. Bossuet’s exposition began, appropriately, with a commonplace.“Knowledge” is one of “heaven’s gifts,” but it is often “spoiled in our hands by the use that we make of it.” The body of the sermon consisted in three points, divided according to a passage from one of St. Bernard’s sermons on the Song of Songs. St. Bernard had identified three vices stemming from the improper pursuit of knowledge: curiosity, in those who seek to know “only that they might know”; vanity, in those who would know that they might be admired; and greed, in those who would know that they might become rich. Bossuet set the example of St. Catherine against these vices—all forms of curiosity on Aquinas’s accounting—showing in each case that right intention was the crucial cause of the proper regulation of the desire to know.Thus to “the curious,” who “fatten themselves with fruitless and idle speculation,” he explained that the “light” of knowledge was not given “only that you might enjoy seeing it” but to “conduct your steps and rule your will.” Christ is to be the ultimate object of our knowledge, and not merely as the truth, but also as “the way.”The vain he reminded that truth does not “belong to us,” for it is a gift from on high and it is destined for the service of others. Like St. Paul, we are not to “show forth our knowledge” for any other purpose than “to make known Jesus Christ.”And he placed before the avaricious, who study theology merely to gain a benefice, the example of St. Catherine, who “consecrated” her knowledge “uniquely to the salvation of souls.” The sermon concluded on a note of evangelical zeal:“And so, my brothers, may everyone preach the Gospel, in his family, among his friends, in his conversation . . . and may each of us make use of all his lights to win souls entangled by the world and to make the holy truth of God reign upon the earth.”27 Bossuet’s sermons often convey a similar sense of urgency, and especially on the subject of knowledge. The age of St. Vincent de Paul, the Jesuit martyrs of North America, and the Trappist reform was also the age of Montaigne and Peiresc, Molière and Naudé.There was a war being waged for the soul of France, with the “science of the saints” set against a “false wisdom, which, shutting itself within the walls of mortal things, entombs 27 Bossuet, “Panegyrique de Sainte Catherine,” in Oeuvres Oratoires, III: 548–74. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 27 The Studiousness of Bossuet 27 itself with them in nothingness.”28 Bossuet was not alone in seeing the danger. Pascal, whom he admired, inveighed against the tendency of the age to pursue “the bustle which distracts and amuses us” and saw in an “uneasy curiosity” the “chief malady” of mankind.29 And Racine came to see more harm than good in the world of letters, urging his son to form his mind by “rereading his Cicero” and warning him not to let his love for French books “inspire in him a distaste for more useful reading, especially that of works of piety and morals.”30 To Bossuet, the snares for the Christian mind were many. In an age of great preachers, there was the possibility of letting the ears be “flattered by the cadence and arrangement of the words” and failing to let “wisdom walk in front as mistress, eloquence behind as servant.”31 In an age of antiquarians and philologists, an “insatiable desire to know history” was emerging; some were even daring to treat “Jesus Christ as a subject for the inquiry of the curious.”32 In circles in which piety had become fashionable, some read the Port-Royal Bible “more on account of the translators than of the God who is speaking.”33 In an age when theological controversies were the common coin of the chattering classes—as witness the popularity of Pascal’s Provincial Letters— there was the danger of allowing oneself to be “carried off by the desire to know” in the premature reading of theological works.34 In each of these errors or excesses there was a common denominator of rebellion, sometimes subtle, sometimes open, against the order of divine wisdom. For “our reason,” Bossuet once explained in a letter to a close friend,“is reason only to the extent to which it is submitted to God.”35 28 Bossuet,“Sainte Catherine,” III:552, and “Oraison funèbre de la Duchesse d’Or- léans” (1670), in Oeuvres Oratoires,V:661. 29 Pascal, Pensées, no. 168, 618, trans. Honor Levi (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 45, 136. 30 Racine’s letters to his son of October 14, 1693 and October 3, 1694 in Oeuvres Complètes, II: Prose, ed. Raymond Picard (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 540 and 552. 31 Bossuet,“Sermon sur la Parole de Dieu,” (1661) in Oeuvres Oratoires, III: 626–27. 32 Bossuet, Traité de la Concupiscence (first published posthumously in 1731), in Oeuvres Complètes de Bossuet, ed. Abbé Guillaume, ten volumes (Lyon: Briday, 1879), IX: 554; “Panégyrique du Bienheureux François de Sales” (1660), in Oeuvres Oratoires, III: 578. Bossuet was not alone in his condemnation of curiosity for historical knowledge; see Michele Rosellini, “La curiosité pour l’histoire dans la formation intellectuelle au XVIIe siècle,” in Gérard Ferreyrolles, ed., La Représentation de l’histoire au XVIIe siècle (Dijon: Editions Universitaires de Dijon, 1999), 51–76. 33 Bossuet to the Maréchal de Bellefonds, letter of December 1, 1674, in Correspondance, I:334. 34 Bossuet to Bellefonds, letter of July 7, 1673, in Correspondance, I:293. 35 Bossuet to Bellefonds, letter of February 8, 1674, in Correspondance, I:307. N&V_win10 .qxp 28 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 28 Christopher Blum The vision that recognizes the characteristic faults of the age is valuable, but still more so is the one that perceives the true excellence of virtue. Bossuet was not merely a critic of curiosity, nor even a theorist of studiousness; he was a defender and exemplar of the virtue. In his expression of the ideal, his elaboration of its practices, and his own pursuit of wisdom there are three principal notes to the virtue of studiousness: the necessity of moral virtue for the search for truth, fidelity to the tradition of the Church, and the ordination of knowledge to the common good. Bossuet set forth studiousness as an ideal in his funeral oration for his mentor, Nicolas Cornet, Doctor of the Sorbonne. As Grand-Maître of the theology faculty, Cornet was responsible for having drawn the famous “Five Propositions” from Cornelius Jansen’s Augustinus that formed the basis of the ecclesiastical and royal censures of Jansenism and were a source of controversy for decades. Bossuet’s oration was not published in his lifetime, and its textual integrity has been questioned. Jean Calvet, for instance, declined to place it in the same company as the later and more famous funeral orations, reckoning Bossuet’s praise for Cornet as cast in “conventional terms.”36 If lacking in drama, the oration does paint a portrait of a Christian scholar almost the precise opposite of Gassendi’s Life of Peiresc. Cornet was just as selflessly devoted to his studies as the Provençal antiquary had been, but added ascetic practices to single-mindedness. Bossuet lauded his innocence and modesty, his rejection of luxury and his generosity to the poor, and—unheard of excellence—his steadfast refusal of preferment.“Imitate his virtues, practice humility as he did, love obscurity as he loved it.” Unlike Peiresc, Cornet checked his desire for knowledge and made it serve the Church. “The first duty of a man who studies sacred truths,” Bossuet explained,“is to know how to distinguish the places where it is permissible to enter from those where we must stop short, and to remember the narrow limits by which our intellect is bounded.”The wise man knows how to “moderate the fire of that restless mobility that causes in us that intemperance and sickness of knowing, and to be wise soberly and according to measure.” Cornet, accordingly, shunned “refined chicanery and the subtlety of vain distinctions” and instead devoted himself to St. Augustine, whom he held to be the “most enlightened and profound of all the doctors,” and also to “the school of St. Thomas.” His fidelity to the tradition of the Church was matched by his spirit of service. He “consecrated his understanding to the 36 Calvet, Bossuet: l’homme et l’oeuvre (Paris: Hatier-Boivin, 1941), 10. It is to be noted that Urbain and Levesque concluded with “certitude” that the “discourse as a whole belonged to Bossuet, though there were reserves to be made about the details.” Oeuvres Oratoires, IV:471. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 29 The Studiousness of Bossuet 29 Faith and his memory to the eternal memory of God,” and spoke as an oracle and with gravity amidst the tumult of the dispute over grace, when he was “consulted by all of France.” In sum, this “hidden treasure” was also a “public treasure.”37 With less eloquence and insistence upon the moral virtues, but with greater precision about the intellectual life, Bossuet composed two brief treatises for clerical protégés, which, taken together, provide a summary of his views on theological education. The first was a treatise written in 1670 for the young Cardinal de Bouillon,“On Style and the Reading of the Fathers of the Church for the Formation of an Orator.” Here Bossuet wrote with sovereign confidence about the means by which to attain a “figurative” and “ornate” style. Demosthenes in the Greek and Cicero in the Latin were his models. From the “few books” he had read in French, he recommended those by Pascal and Racine, but like Racine, counseled that reading in the vernacular was to be done “without abandoning other, serious reading; one or two pieces suffice to give an idea” of the style. Far more important, even for “forming style” was to “understand the thing, to penetrate the basis and the end of it all,” which was to be done by “knowing very well” the Old and New Testaments. Here, too, he warned against a certain excessive curiosity: “I have learned by experience that when one attaches oneself stubbornly to penetrating the obscure passages instead of passing them by, one wastes on difficult questions time that should have been spent reflecting upon what is clear, which is what forms the mind and nourishes piety.”The Fathers, finally, were the essential guides, and among them, St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom: “The former raises the mind to great and subtle considerations, and the latter draws it back and fits it to the capacity of the people.” To the theological treatises of Augustine and the sermons of Chrysostom, he added St. Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule, explaining that “these works” were to be read “for the sake of forming a body of doctrine.”38 Five years later, Bossuet’s counsel took the form of a letter “On the Studies that Ought to Follow the Licentiate.” Here again, for a different clerical student and at greater length, he sketched a program of reading Holy Scripture and the Fathers of the Church.The treatise is significant for containing a statement of Bossuet’s understanding of the academic forms of his day. The studies for the licentiate he held to be strictly 37 Bossuet, “Orasion funèbre de Nicolas Cornet” (1663), in Oeuvres Oratoires, IV: 470–93. On Cornet’s influence upon Bossuet, see LeBrun, Spiritualité de Bossuet, 42–46. 38 Bossuet,“Sur le Style, et la lecture des Pères de l’Eglise pour former un orateur,” in Oeuvres Oratoires,VII: 13–20. N&V_win10 .qxp 30 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 30 Christopher Blum preliminary; they were “exercises for disputation” that instructed in a “few questions” but did not “compose a body of doctrine.” At that level, the ancient texts of the Fathers were read only in extracts, and therefore gave only “slim and confused knowledge.” With one’s licentiate behind him, the student could devote more time to the “reading of the ancients,” that he might “penetrate their sentiments and attempt to conciliate them, and, finally, to search for the tradition of the Church.”This experience of apprenticeship to the Fathers is what “properly makes a body of doctrine and merits the quality of doctor.” It is what allows the student to “give an account, on each dogma and question, of what was the sentiment of the Fathers of the Church.”39 What is crucial to note here is that Bossuet understood theological studies to have a determinate end, which might be expressed by the biblical injunction “to account for the hope that is within you” (1 Pet 3:15). To attain that end was a duty for a preacher, whose office was to fulfill the divine command to teach the faith: “it is the fear of judgment that makes preachers ascend into the pulpit.”40 It was the same clarity about the end of studies that shaped Bossuet’s years as tutor of Louis XIV’s son, the Grand Dauphin. Bossuet described his aims and practices in a letter to Pope Innocent XI, which he composed towards the end of his tenure. De Institutione Ludovici Delphini deserves to be placed in a select company of Christian pedagogical works, and might fruitfully be compared to St. Basil’s Address to Young Men on Reading Greek Literature. Just as St. Basil exhorted his hearers to attend first to the “care of the soul,” so also Bossuet made the three words piety, goodness, and justice the “principles” to which referred “everything that we have given [the Dauphin]. He saw that everything came from this source, that everything tended to that point, and that his studies had no other object than to make him able to acquit himself of all of his duties with ease.”41 In his catechism and elementary religious instruction, the Dauphin learned “to love Jesus Christ; to embrace him in his infancy, to grow with him, obeying his parents and making himself agreeable to God and to man.” After having “read and reread the Gospels,” he passed to the Old Testament, and, for “diversion,” to the lives of the Fathers and martyrs. In his study of grammar, he was made to read pagan authors, but “without ever straying 39 Bossuet, “Ecrit de Bossuet sur les études qui doivent suivre la licence,” ed. E. Levesque, Revue Bossuet 1 (1900): 11–20, at 14. 40 Bossuet, “Sur la Prédication Evangélique” (1662), in Oeuvres Oratoires, IV: 177. The comment was based upon II Corinthians 5: 10–11. 41 St. Basil, Address to Young Men on the Reading of Greek Literature, in Anton Pegis, ed., The Wisdom of Catholicism (New York: Random House, 1949), 20. Bossuet, De Institutione Ludovici Delphini, in Oeuvres Complètes,VII: 348. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 31 The Studiousness of Bossuet 31 from our design, which was to hand on piety and good morals at the same time as civil prudence.” To this end the Dauphin read many historical works, but he was not allowed to “descend into minutiae or follow curiosities”; rather he concentrated on the study of customs and laws and exemplars of the craft of kingship, especially St. Louis,“absolutissimi regis exemplar.”42 In the words of Thérèse Goyet, “never was a single subject, at any moment, studied without a view of its ends.”43 In his own life as a scholar Bossuet conformed to the practices he recommended and imposed upon his royal charge. Like many great preachers and scholars and countless contemplatives through the ages, his mind was formed by Holy Scripture, which he knew from memory. He took with the utmost seriousness the call to submit his own mind to that of the Fathers, whom he read systematically in the 1650s as a canon of Metz, again in the 1670s, and for a third time later in life in response to the challenge of Biblical criticism.44 Perhaps only a celibate could really hope to imitate his single-mindedness and industry; it seems probable that, like Newman, he was capable of reading with attention for upwards of eight hours a day.45 What makes Bossuet more approachable and even a relevant model is the decade he spent as the Dauphin’s primary instructor. All through his forties, this orator of consummate mastery revisited the texts that had formed him in his youth, taking an indifferent student line by line through Caesar and Virgil.The Discourse on Universal History remains as a testament to the benefits that accrued to Bossuet from his rereading and teaching, and his funeral oration for the Prince de Condé amply proves that his eloquence did not suffer from the trial. In an age when partisans of the new learning such as Gabriel Naudé and Pierre Gassendi were advancing the ideal of a life spent in the limitless pursuit of any sort of knowledge whatever and assisting in the creation of institutions dedicated to just such a project, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet resolutely defended the necessity of restraint in the pursuit of truth and dedicated himself to the perpetuation of the traditional practices of Christian studiousness.Today, heirs to Naudé, Gassendi, and Peiresc speak freely of their role in what is called the “production of knowledge” and glory in projects that would make whole libraries accessible in digital form to 42 De Institutione Ludovici Delphini, in Oeuvres Complètes,VII: 347–54. 43 Goyet, L’Humanisme de Bossuet, II: 103. 44 See the comments of Jean Calvet, La littérature religieuse de François de Sales à Fénelon (Paris: Editions Mondiales, 1956), 265–66, 278–79. 45 Newman’s diaries recording the details of his studies are reproduced in volume 1 of The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. Ian Ker and Thomas Gornall, S.J. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 32 6:37 AM Page 32 Christopher Blum anyone at any time.To those who believe that the mind is a gift given to us that we might come to know God, it is becoming plain that “the intellectual appetites” demanded by “the contemporary academy” are “corrupt,” and that fidelity to the Catholic intellectual tradition demands the recovery of practices of “religious reading.”46 The example of Bossuet can provide some markers for the path to that recovery. First, his awareness that curiosity was an imminent and serious danger is itself instructive. The recovery of what has been called “the intellectual custom of the Church” will require critical reflection upon the practices of learning and teaching.47 Without that critical reflection, the structures of contemporary academic culture will continue to encourage individual scholars to pursue their private career goals in such a way as to make curiosity and narrow specialization the more likely result of their endeavors than studiousness and wisdom.48 Second, Bossuet’s counsel and practice of the reverent rereading of Holy Scripture and apprenticeship to the Fathers of the Church provides a vivid model of the restraint that is studiousness. The desire to know can be properly restrained only when it is properly directed, when we most keenly seek the best and highest kind of knowledge, putting in the second place or even setting aside knowledge of lower things. For Bossuet, the duty to preach and to teach the Faith kept his life of studies rightly ordered.Yet as the Dauphin’s tutor, he was forced to return to those elementary subjects and subordinate sciences that occupy much of our attention and that indeed need to be mastered before one is ready to ascend to higher subjects. Bossuet’s pedagogical principles and practices show that even in the lower subjects, he kept his sight trained on those which were above, and thus was true to Hugh of St.Victor’s saying that “our objective” in learning “ought to be always to keep ascending.”49 N&V 46 Paul J. Griffiths,“The Vice of Curiosity,” 48; and see his Religious Reading:The Place of Reading in the Practice of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Ronald McArthur, “Saint Thomas and the Formation of the Catholic Mind,” in The Ever-Illuminating Wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 123–43. 48 See Alasdair MacIntyre, “The End of Education: The Fragmentation of the American University,” Commonweal (October 20, 2006): 10–14, and at greater length, “Catholic Universities: Dangers, Hopes, Choices,” in Higher Learning and Catholic Traditions, ed. Robert E. Sullivan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 1–21. 49 Hugh of St.Victor, The Didascalion of Hugh of St.Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts, trans. Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 133. 47 See N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 33 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 33–53 33 Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Interpretation of the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas* A NGELO C AMPODONICO Università degli Studi di Genova Genoa, Italy Introduction A S SHOULD be expected of every good theologian, the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar has a solid philosophical framework.1 The influence of Thomas Aquinas on the formulation of Balthasar’s theology and * Translation by Joseph G.Trabbic of “Il pensiero filosofico di Tommaso d’Aquino nell’interpretazione di H. U.Von Balthasar,” Medioevo 18 (1992): 187–202. 1 We will adopt the following abbreviations for the works of H. U. von Balthasar: Glory 1: The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1: Seeing the Form, trans. E. Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983). Glory 2: The Glory of the Lord, vol. 2: Studies in Theological Styles: Clerical Styles, trans. A. Louth, F. McDonagh, and B. McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984). Glory 4: The Glory of the Lord, vol. 4: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity, trans. B. McNeil, A. Louth, J. Saward, R. Williams, and O. Davies (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989). Glory 5: The Glory of the Lord, vol. 5: The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, trans. O. Davies, A. Louth, B. McNeil, J. Saward, R. Williams (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991). Theo-Drama 2: Theo-Drama:Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 2: Dramatis Personae: Man in God, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990). Theo-Drama 4: Theo-Drama:Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 2: The Action, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994). Theo-Logic 1: Theo-Logic:Theological Logical Theory, vol. 1: Truth of the World, trans. A. J.Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001). Theo-Logic 2: Theo-Logic:Theological Logical Theory, vol. 2: Truth of God, trans. A.J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004). Explorations 1: Explorations in Theology, vol. 1: The Word Made Flesh, trans. A. V. Littledale and A. Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989). N&V_win10 .qxp 34 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 34 Angelo Campodonico philosophy is clear and shows that Balthasar regarded him with perhaps more esteem than any other theologian in history. His references to Aquinas’s thought are many and span the entire range of his vast oeuvre.2 Although Balthasar never wrote an essay exclusively devoted to him, the Swiss thinker offers an original interpretation of Aquinas’s thought variously marked by the influence of other Thomistic scholars of diverse orientations, namely, Przywara, Rahner, de Lubac, Gilson, Pieper, and Siewerth. In general it can be affirmed that the influence of Thomas on the “style”3 and framework of Balthasar’s theology prevents it from shying away from the analogy of being, despite the considerable presence of authors such as Hegel4 and Barth.5 This emerges above all in the space that philosophy assumes next to theology in his thought and in the typically Thomistic equilibrium between the two,6 and further in the metaphysical conception of the relation between God and the world. Thomas’s “Style” Like his master de Lubac, Balthasar “reads” the thought of the great scholastics of the thirteenth century, and in particular, that of Thomas, in continuity with the Fathers. For Thomas, as for the Fathers, the work of theology and philosophy takes place in the general framework of sapientia christiana.7 Explorations 2: Explorations in Theology, vol. 2: Spouse of the Word, trans. A. V. Littledale, A. Dru, B. McNeil, J. Saward, and E. T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991). 2 It should be noted that in considering the inspiration that Balthasar took from Thomas, it is difficult to distinguish what is an interpretation of the authentic thought of Aquinas from what is a personal re-elaboration of themes originally found in Aquinas’s writings. 3 Of course, it is Balthasar himself who uses the expression “theological style.” A style, properly speaking, is only the expression (expressio) of the impression (impressio)—Balthasar borrows these terms from Bonaventure—that the splendor of a form leaves on the one who perceives it and who is always also captivated by it. Beauty and, therefore, style are not given outside of this fundamental nucleus. 4 Ultimately, Balthasar’s notion of a “revelation in history” that manifests itself through different persons has, in my view, its origin in Hegelian historicism. 5 The influence of Karl Barth, whom Balthasar knew personally and about whom he wrote an important study, emerges in the latter’s emphasis on the complete gratuitousness of God’s revelation. 6 Balthasar, Theo-Logic 2:78:“However disabled and darkened we judge the participation of man’s spirit in the truth shining upon the mind from God (Augustine) or in the first principles of truth and goodness (Thomas), natural man knows what ethics and practical reason are, and the man of the Old Testament knows, in addition to that what the right relation to the living God ought to be.” 7 See my volume Salvezza e verità. Saggio su Agostino (Genova: Marietti, 1989), 142–43, 157–59. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 35 Hans Urs von Balthasar on Aquinas’s Philosophy 35 In particular, Balthasar reveals the influence of the Greek more than the Latin Fathers on Aquinas’s thought, especially Denys and John Damascene. It is not the drama of Augustine that emerges in Aquinas so much as the vision of the hierarchic,“liturgical,” and “sacramental” cosmos of a Denys.8 Thus Balthasar also accentuates the distance that separates Thomas from the intellectualistic late scholasticism of the fourteenth century.The temptation of late scholasticism (which, according to Balthasar, is sometimes present in Aquinas) is that of attempting to answer all the questions, even the idle ones, without ever sorting out and subjecting the questions themselves to discussion.9 Balthasar distances himself from some of the different interpretations of Thomas’s thought that have appeared over the centuries: on the one hand, he distances himself from the Second Scholasticism, which impoverished Aquinas’s conception of being, consigning the actus essendi to oblivion and with it the transcendentals convertible with being; on the other hand, Balthasar is also critical of the Maréchalian and Rahnerian scholasticism of the twentieth century, which, interpreting Thomas in the light of modern transcendentalism, ran the risk of an “anthropological reduction.”10 Given these general premises, we will now consider in detail some of the fundamental themes of the Balthasarian interpretation of Thomas, privileging those which appear to us to be more original and fruitful. The 8 Balthasar, Glory 2:148. 9 Cf. Balthasar, Theo-Drama 4:458: “Whereas High Scholasticism had made the mistake of thinking that it had to give an appropriate answer to every inquisitive question, however untheological, now in the theology of its imitators, such questions are multiplied beyond all bounds; the answers become more and more hairsplitting as the legitimate rational method of a Thomas is increasingly distorted into an unbearable rationalism by the overweening deductions of a ‘theology of conclusions.’ G. Siewerth, in his presentation of this process, spoke of it ‘advancing into the divine ground,’ because the ratio, abandoning all restraint, thinks itself empowered and authorized to plumb the ultimate mysteries of God. In the end this leads to Hegel’s God, who is without all mystery: behold the door to atheism.” And Explorations 1:208: “There are any number of theses deserving development which the Fathers initiated, and which, subsequently, as theology became systematized, were held unsuitable, unimportant, and so left in abeyance, a process of exclusion carried further, and with rapidity, in Scholasticism from the late Middle Ages to the present.What a wealth of material is to be found in Thomas, what a variety of approaches and aspects he suggests, how numerous the hints and promptings scattered at random through his works, compared with the dry bones of a modern textbook!” 10 On this point the influence of Gustav Siewerth on Balthasar is quite important. Relevant texts of Siewerth are his Das Schicksal der Metaphysik von Thomas zu Heidegger (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1959) and Die Analogie des Seienden (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1965). N&V_win10 .qxp 36 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 36 Angelo Campodonico organization of these themes seems somewhat problematic. I believe it would be more appropriate in the present context to adopt a kind of “inductive” approach, beginning from a consideration of human experience, which is thus more consonant with the demands of philosophy, even if a deductive approach, more distinctly theological, would also be possible. Integral Experience The first theme on which Balthasar dwells in his reading of Thomas’s “philosophy” seems particularly original. The synthetic human experience is an experience of finitude, but also an experience above all of relationship, of harmony, of convenientia with reality in its entirety. It is the intentional openness of thought and of desire (anima est in quoddamodo omnia ) in fact that renders the experience of limitedness possible. Such a perspective allows us to overcome both a view that is objectivistic or naturalistic, that is to say, “cosmocentric,” and one that is subjectivistictranscendental or “anthropocentric.”The point of synthesis of this experience of harmony, of ordo between human beings and the reality which encompasses them, is that which the Bible calls the “heart.”The heart is an openness to the transcendental dimensions spoken of in classical thought: being, truth, goodness, beauty. As Thomas often notes, these dimensions intersect and interpenetrate each other in human experience. In particular, there is no love without knowledge, just as there is no knowledge which is not shot through with desire. It is worth citing an ample and significant passage of Balthasar in this connection: It is not by means of one isolated faculty that man is open, in knowledge and in love, to the Thou, to things and to God: it is as a whole (through all his faculties) that man is attuned to total reality, and no one has shown this more profoundly and more thoroughly than Thomas Aquinas. According to Thomas, what is involved here is an attunement to being as a whole, and this ontological disposition is, in the living and sentient being, an a priori concordance (con-sensus as cum-sentire, “to feel with,” here prior to the assentire,“to assent to”). In the animal this occurs instinctively, but in man this accord is from the outset bound up with a certain spiritual delectation (Ia-IIae 15, 1c and ad 3). The inclination to the “thing itself ” (inclinatio ad rem ipsam), evoked by a most intimate kinship with it, is characterized as a “feeling” or “sensing”—an experiential contact— insofar as the feeler is by his nature attuned to what is felt and, therefore, as-sents and con-sents to it (“accipit nomen sensus, quasi experientiam quandam sumens de re cui inhaeret, inquantum complacet sibi in ea.” Ibid., c).This ontological concordance, therefore, and the affirmation and joy in being which are implied by it, lie at a much deeper level than the delectatio which naturally accompanies all the individual spiritual acts which are N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 37 Hans Urs von Balthasar on Aquinas’s Philosophy 37 ordered to their proper object and which proceed from the storehouse of that primal and original consonance, whether this natural delectatio consists of spiritual or sensuous delight or joy, depending on its specific acts and their objects. Such attunement to being on the part of the feeling and experiencing subject is, consequently, also prior to the distinction between passive and active experience: in the reciprocity which is founded on openness to reality there is contained both the receptivity to extraneous im-pression and the ex-pressing of the self onto the extraneous.Thus the fundamental act of feeling (the “primal feeling”) consists of the consent (con-sensus) both to suffer the extraneous impressions and to act upon the extraneous, and both of these are equally the cause of primal joy. By comparison with this most profound level of reality, the opposition between (joyful) desire and defensive fear is itself secondary: for this opposition has to do with particular existents, with particular proportions or disproportions between subject and object; it does not directly touch the relationship as such with being. But God is not a particular existent; rather he reveals himself out of and within the depths of being, which in its totality points to God as to its ground. For this reason what has been said above applies first of all to God, in a way which is, of course, conditioned by the analogy of being between God and the creature.11 As is highlighted at the end of the passage just cited, human experience—despite the fact that it always derives its primary evidence from the senses12—is, in the end, openness to the Absolute, harmonious relation with God, but not, of course, in an ontologistic sense.13 There is in experience an implicit knowledge of God (omnia naturaliter appetunt Deum implicite, non autem explicite [De veritate, q. 22, a. 2])14 and an implicit love of God (omnia appetendo proprias perfectiones appetunt ipsum Deum [ST I, q. 6, 11 Balthasar, Glory 1:244–45. [Translation slightly altered. —Trans.] Cf. Glory 2:107: “Augustine lays the foundation for a major thesis of Thomas Aquinas when he says,‘I know that I can only know if I am alive, and I know this all the more certainly in that I become more alive by knowing’ (De vera religione, 97). ‘You did not prefer something else to life, you preferred a better life to a particular life’ (De libero arbitrio, 1.17). It is a law which determines both the intensification and foundation of existence.‘To be in order to be alive, to be alive in order to understand’ (Soliloquia, 2.1).There is in the cogito that which is fundamentally self-evident to the eye of the mind: the recognition of precedence, a preference for the higher and better which entails risk and choice. . . .” Cf. Glory 1:294–96. 12 Cf. Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 12, a. 12:“[T]antum se nostra naturalis cognitio extendere potest, in quantum manuduci potest per sensibilia.” 13 Cf. Balthasar, Glory 4:394–95: “Detaching esse and its transcendental truth from God frees Thomas of any suspicion of ontologism, as if God were thought of, however unconsciously, as the first thing known.” 14 Cf. Balthasar, Theo-Logic 2:103 ff. N&V_win10 .qxp 38 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 38 Angelo Campodonico a. 1, ad 2]).15 “God’s quality of ‘being implicit’ is nothing other than his form of revelation in the created world: revealed in an ever-greater concealment.”16 The distinction between the level of the implicit—or experience—and the level of the explicit—or reflection—is fundamental for Thomas.17 Once God is known, it is also possible in experience to forget about the creature who is permitted to ascend to him:“Consequently, when a thing is known by means of a resemblance existing in its effect, the cognitive motion can pass over immediately to the cause without thinking about the thing.This is the way in which the intellect of a person still in this life can think of God without thinking of any creature.”18 Being is the principal transcendental without which the other transcendentals could not subsist. Nevertheless, Balthasar makes it quite clear that without the co-presence of the other transcendentals, being could not adequately manifest itself to us.19 Although a certain rationalistic scholasticism tended to neglect the different transcendental perspectives on being, this was certainly not the case for Thomas. Let us consider in detail the other three transcendentals.20 Balthasar observes apropos the beautiful (which Aquinas does not explicitly number among the transcendentals):“Thomas described being as a ‘sure light’ for what exists.Will this light not necessarily die out where the very language of light has been forgotten and the mystery of being is no longer allowed to express itself? What remains then is a mere lump of existence, which, even if it claims for itself the freedom proper to spirits, nevertheless remains totally dark and incomprehensible even to itself. The witness borne by being becomes untrustworthy for the person who can no longer read the 15 Cf. ibid., 99. Cf. Glory 1:162: “For Thomas, neither Christian doctrine nor the miracles that attest to it would say anything to man without the interior instinctus et attractus doctrinae (In Joh., ch. 6, 1, 4, n. 7; In Rom., ch. 8, 1, 6), which he also calls inspiratio interna and experimentum. This is but a new formulation of the Augustinian trahi (being drawn by love’s gravitational pull), which for Thomas now becomes the gravitational pull of being itself.” 16 Balthasar, Glory 1:450 [My own translation. —Trans.]. 17 Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible, trans. D. L. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 50. 18 De veritate, q. 8, a. 3, ad 18. 19 Cf. Balthasar, Theo-Logic 1:7. It is not by chance that the theme of the transcendentals, of their articulation and convertibility, which is taken over from Thomas, is the organizing principle of Balthasar’s opus magnum, namely, the trilogy comprised by the Logic, the Aesthetics, and the Theological Dramatics. 20 In regard to unity as a transcendental, see Balthasar, Theo-Logic 1:156:“We do not know what unity is in truth; we are acquainted with unity only in the irreversible duality of universal unity and particular unity, and we can never make these two aspects coincide.We can never lay hold of what unity is above this duality.” N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 39 Hans Urs von Balthasar on Aquinas’s Philosophy 39 language of beauty.”21 And again:“If the verum lacks that splendor which for Thomas is the distinctive mark of the beautiful, then the knowledge of truth remains pragmatic and formalistic. The only concern of such knowledge will then merely be the verification of correct facts and laws, whether the latter are laws of being or laws of thought, categories or ideas.”22 For Thomas, the beautiful represents, in a certain sense, the splendor of being, of its truth (splendor veri), that about being which enchants us. It is not an accident that beauty constitutes a synthesis of the true and the good. In fact, pulchra dicuntur quae visa placent.23 It is not because it is loved that something is beautiful, but rather it is loved because it is beautiful in itself.The relation to the cognitive faculties is what distinguishes the beautiful from the good and makes it shine forth from the true as pulchritudo veritatis.This last aspect corresponds to the particular charism of Aquinas: maxima pulchritudo humanae naturae consistit in splendore scientiae.24 There is no explicit theological aesthetics in Thomas, but there is a philosophical aesthetics.Thomas’s treatment of the beautiful is influenced, on the one hand, by Denys, by his conception of integritas, of claritas, and of consonantia, and, on the other, by an Aristotelian current: “With Albert both strands of the aesthetics of antiquity—the Aristotelian one of harmony and the Plotinian one of light, which had never formed a proper opposition—converge effortlessly; with Ulrich [of Strasbourg] Denys once more gains the upper hand; with Thomas the true balance is found through his metaphysics of esse and essentia and his emphasis on secondary causality which made that possible.”25 Thomas’s aesthetics are intimately connected with his metaphysics of being and, in particular, with his conception of ordo, of consonantia, of harmonia,26 of the debita proportio, of the convenientia, and of the commensuratio between creatures that points to the Creator:“from the fact that all things interpenetrate, each in the other in a reciprocal order, it follows that they are ordered to a single ultimum.”27 In regard to this, Balthasar observes that “in Thomas the definitive aesthetic 21 Balthasar, Glory 1:19. [Translation slightly altered. —Trans.] 22 Ibid., 152. [Translation slightly altered. —Trans.] 23 “Those things are called beautiful which please when seen” (ST I, q. 5, a. 4, ad 1). 24 “The pinnacle of the beauty of human nature consists in the splendor of knowl- edge” (De malo, q. 4, a. 2, obj. 17). [In the 2003 Oxford University Press English edition of the De malo, by Richard Regan and Brian Davies, this text appears in q. 4, a. 2, II, obj. 2. —Trans.] 25 Balthasar, Glory 4:385–86. 26 Cf. Aquinas, In Div. Nom. 4, lect. 8: “Proportiones autem in sonis vocantur harmoniae, et per quamdam similitudinem, proportiones convenientes quarumcumque rerum harmonia dicuntur.” 27 Ibid., 44, lect. 5. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 40 Angelo Campodonico 40 concepts do not center around ‘form’ (with its essential parts and interior light) but have to be concepts implying comparative relation: ordo, ordinatio, dispositio, proportio, proportionalitas. . . . [T]he creature itself is essentially a proportio between esse and essentia, so that its relation vis-à-vis God becomes a ‘relation of a relation,’ what Thomas calls proportionalitas, a suspension of a suspension (Schwebe einer Schwebe).”28 The transcendental “good” reveals itself, thanks to appetitus and voluntas, in the movement toward beings. Insofar as the good is coincident with the end of the action, it constitutes, according to Thomas, the first principle of the practical use of reason. The good, making freedom possible as free will (libertas minor) and as fulfillment (libertas maior), opens up the “dramatic” dimension of being and of human existence. If this dimension is not developed, being does not fully reveal itself to human beings.29 In the end the true (omne ens est verum ) represents the transparent and luminous dimension of being—that through which being reveals itself to human reason. Love is more primordial than truth (it makes the drive toward the true possible), but in human beings it does not manifest itself apart from the true.30 In this regard, Balthasar observes: According to Thomas, truth is primarily in intellectu, in the judgment of the mind, which, however, could not judge if things did not disclose themselves to it in the truth of their being, as the first volume [of the Theo-Logic] demonstrated at length in discussing the inseparability, indeed, the mutual intensification, of spontaneity and receptivity, of abstractio and conversio ad phantasmata, of laying hold and letting be, of synthesis and analysis. And insofar as freedom already plays a decisive role in truth, in that responsibility makes no sense without ethics, the cleavage returns undiminished in the sphere of the good. Over against the Thomistic bonum est in rebus [good is in things], which as such, that is, as beings, are appetibles [appetible], stands the norm of being good and good action in the subject. And yet, what offers itself to be loved and what selflessly communicates itself in its striving converge beyond themselves. Even in the cleavage that traverses their worldly form, the transcendentals necessarily pervade one another, yet, in virtue of this same cleavage, hence, of their “finitude,” they point together beyond themselves. In other words, as the natural unfoldings of ens completum et simplex sed non subsistens, they all together contain a super-finite, super-essential aspect by which they point to their origin, their conservation, and their end in God.31 28 Balthasar, Glory 4:408–9. 29 It should be noted that in this context Balthasar incorporates twentieth-century dialogical thought. 30 Cf. Balthasar, Theo-Logic 1. 31 Balthasar, Theo-Logic 2:183–84. [Translation slightly altered. —Trans.] N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 41 Hans Urs von Balthasar on Aquinas’s Philosophy 41 Finally, in regard to the transcendentals in their interconnectedness, Balthasar says: If Christianity brought the ancient philosophy of the human spirit— insofar as it is openness to the whole of being and thus to its transcendental properties (unity, truth, goodness, beauty)—to its fulfilment, this was only possible because ancient thought had the theion present to it in being, even if only by analogy. Post-Christian thought, which rejects such a presence as “Christian” presumption, will also want to reject antiquity’s openness to being in all its totality (or like Heidegger exclude the theos because it is a Christian element).Thus it will narrow the true and the good, within a purely anthropological perspective, to plain “interest.” Interest, however, while it is an accompaniment of the good, is not its center.And it is impossible to abstract from the latter for the sake of a “pure” cognition. For the true is “in its way an aspect of the good” (Thomas) because in both aspects, being shows itself to be self-giving (and hence profoundly beautiful).32 From Being as “Gift” to Being as Freedom Being, the fundamental transcendental and the first evidence of the intellect, constitutes, as habens esse (that is, insofar it is as actuated by the act of being), a gift, something which is not owed. It reveals a fundamental dimension of gratuity, of love, which Thomas highlights,33 and has to do first of all with human beings themselves, those who pose the question about being. It is not by chance that the theme of being in Balthasar is intimately connected with that of love,34 of the person, of the Thou. On the basis of Thomas’s ontology it is possible to draw together a synthesis of the instances of transcendentality, in the classical sense, and those of personalism and dialogical thought.35 Such a synthesis is given in the experience of 32 Balthasar, Theo-Drama 2:424–25. 33 Cf. ST I, q. 21, a. 4:“The work of divine justice always presupposes the work of mercy; and is founded thereupon. For nothing is due to creatures, except for something preexisting in them, or foreknown. Again, if this is due to a creature, it must be due on account of something that precedes. Again, since we cannot go on to infinity, we must come to something that only depends on the goodness of the divine will—which is the ultimate end.” 34 In regard to the theme of being (esse ) as gift and love, cf. Balthasar, Glory 4:374; 5:440, 626, 636, 647. 35 “Now man exists only in dialogue with his neighbor. The infant is brought to consciousness of himself only by love, by the smile of his mother. In that encounter, the horizon of all unlimited being opens itself for him, revealing four things to him: (1) that he is one in love with the mother, even in being other than his mother, therefore all being is one; (2) that love is good, therefore all Being is good; (3) that love is true, therefore all Being is true; and (4) that that love evokes N&V_win10 .qxp 42 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 42 Angelo Campodonico love. It can be legitimately affirmed on the basis of the Thomistic text that being is love and love is being:36 “Being itself is a similitude of the divine goodness,”37 and “things . . . insofar as they exist, bear the likeness of the divine goodness.”38 In one of the last writings in which he presents his thought in a synthetic way, Balthasar points out in regard to being that “[man] exists as a limited being in a limited world, but his reason is open to the unlimited, to all of Being.The proof consists in the recognition of his finitude, of his contingence: I am, but I could also, however, not be. Many things that do not exist could exist. Essences are limited but Being is not. This scission, the real distinction of St.Thomas, is the source of all the religious and philosophical thought of humanity.”39 To an ontological consideration, in fact, each being is reducible to two co-original fundamentals: the act of being (actus essendi or esse)40 and essence (essentia ). Balthasar notes: Every attempt at tidily dividing these two spheres [essence and existence] is doomed to failure by their indivisible interrelation.The intellectual model of “metaphysical” composition out of diverse parts and elements is inadequate to explain finite being. We can account for it, then, only by consistently invoking the phenomenon of polarity. Polarity means that the poles, even as they are in tension, exist strictly through each other. This is probably nowhere more conspicuous than in the polarity between essence and existence in finite being.The two poles co-inhere in an intimate unity that constitutes the irresolvable mystery of created being. Indeed, this unity is so intimate that it frusjoy, therefore all Being is beautiful. We add here that the epiphany of Being has sense only if in the appearance [Erscheinung] we grasp the essence that manifests itself [Ding an sich].The infant comes to the knowledge, not of a pure appearance, but of his mother in herself.That does not exclude our grasping the essence only through the manifestation and not in itself (St. Thomas).” Balthasar, My Work in Retrospect, trans. K. Hamilton et al. (San Francisco: Communio Books/Ignatius Press, 1993), 114–15. 36 “The sign of the God who empties himself into humanity, death, and abandonment by God, shows why God came forth from himself, indeed descended below himself, as creator of the world: it correspnds to his absolute being and essence to reveal himself in this unfathomable and absolutely uncompelled freedom as inexhaustable love.This love is not the absolute Good beyond being, but is the depth and height, the length and breadth of being itself ” (Balthasar, Love Alone, 144). 37 “Ipsum esse est similitudo divinae bonitatis” (Aquinas, De veritate, q. 22, a. 2, ad 2.) 38 “[R]es . . . in quantum sunt, divinae bonitatis similitudinem gerunt” (Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 65). 39 Cf. Balthasar, My Work in Restrospect, 112. [Translation slightly altered. —Trans.] 40 Cf. Balthasar, Glory 4:374. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 43 Hans Urs von Balthasar on Aquinas’s Philosophy 43 trates every attempt to define one pole as the seat of mystery and to lay hold of the other as if it were devoid of it. . . . Each pole can in some respect be grasped, but in being grasped it always immediately points beyond itself to the other pole as what has not yet been grasped.41 In regard to one of the two poles of the fundamental polarity of every being, namely, esse and esse commune—the common and intimate perfection of all beings, Balthasar observes: Thomas, here at his most competent, and free from the suspicion of any dependence on Denys, will designate as ens commune or esse, that which for him is neither God nor the sum of all individual worldly entia nor (what finally suggests itself) a conceptual abstraction (conceptus entis), but the first created reality proceeding from God, by participating in which all beings really are, something “abundant, simple, not-subsisting,” “universal,”“flowing,” participating in an infinite manner and thence in itself infinite, lending form inexhaustibly, which however is distinguished from God by the fact that God subsists in himself, while being only subsists in finite beings. This being which Thomas uniquely discerned with his sharp sight and comprehensively defended but which was intended by Denys when he described being-in-itself as the first procession from God, and which without doubt was intended by the other scholastics when they explained it as the object of metaphysics: this being is creaturely reality insofar as it is seen and conceived as the all-embracing manifestation of God. It is therefore a theophanic being, in the classical but also in the thoroughly Pauline sense (Rom 1:18–21; Acts 17:22–29), to which unity, truth, goodness, and beauty do not belong as properties possessed at one’s own disposal—how could they since this being does not subsist as such?—but with which it rather, insofar as they adhere to it, refers to the primordial ground of being which replicates itself in it in an image: ipsum esse est similitudo divinae bonitatis.42 Although there is a certain primacy of the act of being over essence in each being, since without this act the being would not exist, it is nevertheless true that essence—and Balthasar firmly emphasizes this—is never reducible to the act of being: Let us take as our starting point the fundamental form that difference displays in the creaturely realm: there is a real (that is, capable of being 41 Balthasar, Theo-Logic 1:105–6. The Balthasarian theme of “polarity” as constitu- tive of every finite being probably derives from Guardini. Cf. Romano Guardini, Gegensatz: Versuche zu einer Philosophie des Lebendig-Konkreten (Mainz: MatthiasGrünewald Verlag, 1925). 42 Balthasar, Glory 4:374. [Balthasar quotes from De veritate, q. 22, a. 2, ad 2:“Being itself is a likeness of the divine goodness.” —Trans.]. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 44 Angelo Campodonico 44 gathered from the existent [Seiendes ] itself) difference between esse, which signifies aliquid simplex et completum sed non subsistens,43 and the finite essence in which it attains subsistence. However, this difference must not be understood as the fitting together of two parts to form a whole. Neither aspect is ever conceivable without the other. “The poles, even as they are in tension, exist strictly through each other.This is probably nowhere more conspicuous than in the polarity between essence and existence.”44 We can lay hold of nonsubsistent being [Sein] only in what factually exists (even if we were to imagine a purely possible essence, in the same act we would have to conceive the possibility of its existence as well); a finite creature is such in virtue of the fact that it subsists. “Strictly speaking, being cannot be said to be. Only something that is in virtue of being can be said to be” [De divinis nominibus, ch. 8, lect. 1]. And the whole is said to be created (it is not as though the essence were a mere idea of God that he then realized by adding being to it: Ipsa quidditas creari dicitur (De potentia, q. 3, a. 5, ad 2). The fact that being pours itself out into the plurality of creatures as both actual (simplex completum ) and nonsubsistent and that it cannot be apprehended (let alone solidified in a concept) except in this outpouring, reveals it to be the pure and free expression of the divine bonitatis and liberalitatis.This goodness and liberality aim at the necessary plurality and manifoldness of created essences, since nonsubsistent being could not attain to subsistence in one essence without being God. . . .45 The determinateness of being is not in fact implicit in the notion of the act of being.Thus both principles are originative, although they require, each in its turn, a common transcendent origin. The actus essendi, that principle which gives existence to all beings, is “in suspension” because it is transcendent (“other” than beings) and, at the same time, immanent in respect to beings. Esse “is at once both total fullness and total nothingness: fullness because it is the most noble, the first and most proper effect of God, because ‘through being God causes all things’ and ‘being is prior to and more interior than all other effects.’ But being is also nothingness since it does not exist as such, ‘for just as one cannot say that running runs,’ but rather that ‘the runner runs,’ so one cannot say that ‘existence exists.’ ”46 Thus esse presents something “disproportionate” in itself and so points toward a Donator, a Cause of being. Essence, however, points toward a Fullness of perfection and of determinacy in a personalistic sense which was thought ab origine. In regard to determinacy it is observed that: 43 Cf. Aquinas, De potentia, q. 7, a. 2, ad 7: “[B]eing is not subsisting but inherent.” 44 TL, I, p. 158 f. 45 Balthasar, Theo-Logic 2:182. 46 Balthasar, Glory 4:404. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 45 Hans Urs von Balthasar on Aquinas’s Philosophy 45 [t]he indifferentia of the abundance which is characteristic of the Being of the existent entity radically excludes every form of planning within Being in order to actualize itself in substance through a determinate ascending sequence of stages of essential forms, which contain it first as “vessels” and then (as Heidegger says) finally shepherd it. For the “plans” lie in the entity and not in Being, however true it may be that there are no entities that do not participate in Being. Thus all those forms of interpretation must be rejected as “oblivious of Being” which conceive of the totality of the essential reality of the world as the (self-) explication of Being: whether Being (God) explicates itself statically in a world as the unitive implication of all entities (Plotinus, Nicolas of Cusa, Böhme), or whether Being (God) as the non-subsisting epitome of all entities actualizes itself dynamically through a world (Fichte, Hölderlin as philosopher, Schelling, Hegel, the early Soloviev).47 Given these premises, the Absolute must be thought as Subsisting Being,48 as Efficient Cause of esse, and, simultaneously, as Infinite Essence, Highest Perfection, Origin of all finite determinations. It must also be thought as creative Freedom, thus in a “personalistic” sense, since this is the maximum perfection to be found among creatures. In Balthasar’s view the “limits” inherent in the diverse determinations of beings (which must no longer be thought as something negative)49 and the “gift” of existence 47 Ibid., 5:620. Cf. from the same passage: “And correspondingly, the category of ‘expression’ must be rejected as a precise statement of the relationship between Being which prevails without substance as abundance, and the participating entity; for ‘expression’ presupposes a responsible decision to express oneself, which Being as such does not make, because it attains such decisiveness only within the existent spirit. Only in an analogical sense (which however is not considered in the systems mentioned above) can it be said that every form of actuality—whether as individual existent or world totality—expresses something of the fullness of reality (but precisely without the latter’s expressing itself.” 48 Cf. Balthasar, Theo-Logic 2:134–35, n. 10: “J.-L. Marion seems in his two works L’idole et la distance (Paris: Grasset, 1979) and Dieu sans l’être (Paris: Fayard, 1982) to concede too much to the critique of Heidegger and others and to disregard the passages where Siewerth and even Thomas define bonum as the intrinsic ‘self-transcending’ of esse. This does not mean that we must (like the late Hengstenberg) leave esse (rightly understood) behind us as something penultimate—which, in any case, is an impossibility for thought.True, only the absolute goodness of God can make sense of something like a nonsubsistent act of being (for finite beings). Nevertheless, however much this act of being is a “likeness of God” in the world (Siewerth), it does not flow forth (emenat) from somewhere above the Divine Being, which, as we have sufficiently shown, is itself the abyss of all love.” 49 Balthasar, Glory 4:403–4: “[A]nd the essences of things must not appear as simply the fragmentation of reality in the negative sense, but must be seen positively as posited and determined by God’s omnipotent freedom and therefore are grounded in the unique love of God. . . . [I]t is precisely when the creature feels itself to be N&V_win10 .qxp 46 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 46 Angelo Campodonico are only explicable in light of the Absolute Freedom.50 As Thomas affirms: “Sunt autem differentiae entis possibile et necessarium, et ideo ex ipsa voluntate divina originator necessitas et contingentia in rebus . . . sicut a prima cuasa, quae transcendit ordinem necessitates et contingentiae.”51 separate in being from God that it knows itself to be the most immediate object of God’s love and concern; and it is precisely when its essential finitude shows it to be something quite different from God, that it knows that, as a real being, it has had bestowed upon it that most extravagant gift—participation in the real being of God.” 50 Working within a fundamentally Thomistic framework, Balthasar elaborates his own via to God, the main steps of which are the following: (a) In being present to myself, two things are discovered together: the irreducibility or the absolute inparticipatability of my “I” (which is rendered possible by the act of being which actuates me as an individual) and the unlimited participatability of the act of being as such. The same experience of being reveals both of these aspects. (b) I am this singular and unrepeatable being, but only if I allow innumerable others to be singular and unrepeatable. (c) I experience my freedom (the first pole of freedom as free will) insofar as (1) I am a determinate and irreplaceable being and (2) I am open to being in all its plenitude. (d) As a finite being I must adhere to being in order to actualize myself (the other pole of freedom as libertas maior ). Nevertheless, I cannot take possession of being but need that being so that I might be considered good. Only in this way can being fulfill me. (e) That being which is the first of the transcendentals does not satiate my desire but generates a spurious infinity. (f) Through a human “I” that addresses itself to my “I” an Absolute “I” manifests itself. There is in being the promise of a donator (donatore ). This donator would be free from the limits of essence but would not need to be indeterminate since it is from the richness of being that the determinateness of essences and the “I’s” of spiritual beings are derived. (g) The self-possession of finite freedom contains a moment of absoluteness, a “finite infinity,” which, however, is neither capable of taking possession of its own origin (insofar as finite freedom exists as “given”) nor of reaching its telos, even though it seek all the goods and values (whether personal or otherwise) of the world. Because freedom is both autonomy and infinite movement toward its source in God, infinite freedom constitutes the innermost essence of finite freedom. See, for example, Balthasar, Theo-Drama 2:189–334 passim. (h) My freedom can only be satiated by a subsistent and infinite being that contains all the riches of being in itself and is infinite freedom. Only that which is at the same time absolute Being and absolute Freedom can give space to my freedom. 51 “[T]he possible and the necessary are differences of being and the necessity and contingency in things originates in the divine will itself . . . and yet the first cause transcends the order of necessity and contingency” (Aquinas, In peri hermeneias, 14, 22). Cf. Balthasar, Theo-Logic 1:240–41 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 47 Hans Urs von Balthasar on Aquinas’s Philosophy 47 In regard to the divine names Balthasar takes account of both cataphatic and apophatic theology. While showing that the latter always presupposes the former,52 he gives special emphasis to Thomas’s expression:“The highest point of human knowledge of God is to know that we do not know him since God’s being exceeds what we can comprehend.”53 Aquinas’s negative theology is, first and foremost, situated in the Dionysian tradition. Among the divine attributes, Balthasar pays particular attention to— together with being as pure Act of existence—freedom, which is decisive in Aquinas’s thought but perhaps not sufficiently emphasized by him.54 Nevertheless, in regard to divine freedom Balthasar specifies that “[i]t is both superfluous and self-contradictory to look,” as Schelling does, “for a further reason behind that which grounds everything.”55 God’s freedom cannot but coincide—according to the logic of Thomas’s thought—with the actuality of his essence, which is identical with his esse. Trinity and Creation In Balthasar’s view, God’s freedom in creating the world is closely connected with the divine Trinitarian life. Since in God there is a Trinitarian life (in him essence coincides with a subsisting relation) he has no need to complete himself by creating the world. Balthasar shows the decisive importance of the Trinity-creation connection, present in Thomas but typically neglected by successive scholastic theology:56 If, within God’s identity, there is an Other, who at the same time is the image of the Father and thus the archetype of all that can be created; 52 Cf. Aquinas, De potentia, q. 7, a. 5: “Intellectus negationis semper fundatur in aliqua affirmatione. . . . Nisi intellectus humanus aliquid de Deo affirmative cognosceret, nihil de Deo posset negare.” [“Negation is always based on affirmation. . . . Unless the human mind knew something positively about God, it would be unable to deny anything about him.”] 53 Cf., for example, Balthasar, Theo-Logic 2:100. Balthasar references De potentia, q. 7, a. 5, ad 14. 54 Cf. Balthasar, Glory 4:406–7:“The metaphysics of Thomas is thus the philosophical reflection of the free glory of the living God of the Bible and in this way the interior completion of ancient (and thus human) philosophy. It is a celebration of the reality of the real, of the all embracing mystery of being which surpasses the powers of human thought, a mystery pregnant with the very mystery of God, a mystery in which creatures have access to participation in the reality of God, a mystery which in its nothingness and non-subsistence is shot through with the light of the freedom of the creative principle, of unfathomable love.” 55 Balthasar, Theo-Drama 2:255. 56 Cf. G. Marengo, Trinità e creazione: Indagine sulla teologia di Tommaso d’Aquino (Roma: Città Nuova, 1990). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 48 Angelo Campodonico 48 if, within this identity, there is the Spirit, who is the free, superabundant love of the “One” and of the “Other,” then both the otherness of creation, which is modeled on the archetypal otherness within God, and its sheer existence, which it owes to the intra-divine liberality, are brought into a positive relationship to God. Such a relationship is beyond the imagination of any non-Christian religion (including Judaism and Islam), for wherever God (even in the person of Yahweh and Allah) can only be the One, it remains impossible to discover any satisfactory explanation of the Other. In these circumstances, philosophical reflection (which never truly occurred in Judaism or Islam) inevitably conceives the world, in its otherness and multiplicity, as a fall from the One, whose blessedness is only in itself.57 According to Balthasar, Aquinas’s conception of creation, the fruit of his speculative effort, admirably safeguards both the transcendence of the Absolute and the value of the autonomy of the creature. In this conception the created being stands as in suspension before a free God who holds it in being. The creature is even able to desire to unite itself with the Creator without being constrained to negate itself in its essence. Balthasar notes that “where the immanent analogy of being between actus essendi and essentia does not deepen to a transcendental analogy of being between God and the world, it annuls itself by becoming identity and pays the price that it now needs to reconcile within itself the most contradictory elements—as is the case with Giordano Bruno.”58 For Thomas, however the act of being is analogical and thus adapts itself to the diversity and richness of the real. And this is so because, although the act of being is accessible to the human intellect within the temporal dimension, it transcends the temporal insofar as it is non-subsisting and participated, pointing beyond itself to the subsisting Act of being, from which it freely emanates and which also founds the order of “essential” determinations. On this understanding, God is the Act of being, not a being, not a substance like creatures. He is the Foundation, but the world cannot be rationalistically deduced from him. In Aquinas’s thought the relation of intrinsic analogy of attribution that is established between God and the world preserves the analogy between beings within the world, which is attested to by experience. According to Balthasar, the absence in Heidegger of the “great analogy” fails to preserve in its conception the “lesser analogy.” The result is a univocal conception of being. Balthasar makes a further clarification in regard to the “ontological difference” between being and existents in Thomas:“This mode of thought 57 Balthasar, Theo-Logic 2:180–81. 58 Balthasar, Glory 5:449. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 49 Hans Urs von Balthasar on Aquinas’s Philosophy 49 does not, as Heidegger says, reduce the difference ‘to a mere distinction, to the potency of our intellects’—that only happens when a pedantic scholasticism turns the mystery into a ‘real distinction,’ etc. But for Thomas this structure remains the sign of the intermediate non-absoluteness, speaking in Christian terms, of creatureliness: for how can a non-subsisting act of being generate subsisting beings from itself alone, and how are the essences to acquire a closed and meaningful form? Both these questions therefore point to a subsisting and absolute being, God, who both offers a share in his abundance of being (in the actus essendi illimitatus) and also from his absolute power and freedom (which as such presupposes nothingness as the locus of the ability to create) devises the forms of essences as the recipients if this participation in being.”59 The “ontological difference,” which is, according to Thomas, constitutive of finite being, is minimized by thinkers after him:“The period following Thomas was not able to sustain this state of tension and either reduced esse to a supreme and completely empty essential concept, which—as pure being ‘there’—can be derived, abstracted, effortlessly from essences: this is rationalism; or it so consolidated esse in itself that it coincides with God and now generates essences from itself in the divine cosmic process: this is pantheistic idealism.”60 The one way leads to positivism: [W]hen being is simply being “there,” something simply posited in a colorless, valueless way, it is robbed of its transcendental fullness, [it] is in itself neither true nor good nor beautiful and this immediately affects the natures to whom it gives its “thereness”—as we shall see later. And the second response also leads, in a roundabout way, to the same self-destruction of philosophy (as the transition from Hegel to Feuerbach shows). For if being necessarily generates itself in finite natures, it must itself be finite and so turn into the potentiality of man, with the result that finite man is greater than what he thinks in his philosophy. Man remains in both cases the question-mark left over behind reality, as the only “glory”— questionable yet worthy of our questions—which is left.61 As has already been noted, in Balthasar’s view not even Heidegger— insofar as he forgets the ontological difference—is able to free himself from the anthropocentrism that characterizes modernity: Heidegger . . . who belongs to the post-Christian age, revokes the Christian distinction between limitless non-subsisting being and limitless subsisting being. He creates the notion of a super-conceptual actus 59 Balthasar, Glory 5:446. 60 Ibid., 4:405. [The translation is my own. —Trans.] 61 Ibid., 4:405–6. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 50 Angelo Campodonico 50 essendi which renders itself temporal within essences, by attributing to it the properties of the subsisting (divine) act. And because the former must be radically annihilated in order to attain temporal expression, this nothingness, which makes the subjective-objective “illumination” (Lichtung) possible, becomes an attribute of absolute being. In other words: Heidegger identifies the negations of the classical, Christian doctrine of God (as “negative theology”) with the nothingness of the act of being which constitutes the world.The consequence of this is that once again (as with Eriugena, Eckhart, and Nicolas of Cusa) God has need of the world if he wishes to make explicit his own implications, so that no analogia entis prevails in the distinction between being and existent, but rather an identitas which both generates the distinction and embraces it at the same time. Heidegger initially denied that being stands in “need” of the existent in order to become itself, although later he affirmed it in ever clearer terms.62 The Thomistic conception of the analogy between God and the world is consistent with his Christology. The Christ-event, insofar as it is an immediate synthesis of transcendence and immanence, makes it possible to clarify the creative relationship.The order of redemption reinforces that of creation.The analogy/Christology connection, the order of creation/order of redemption, of an essentially Augustinian and Thomistic type, constitutes the framework of the philosophy and theology of Balthasar. As we saw before, in Thomas’s metaphysical conception of the world and, therefore, of man, there is a decisive space of autonomy. Of this autonomy Balthasar observes:“The appearance of limitation is unavoidable, since the creature is given a nature which is not as such divine—Deus non intrat essentiam rerum creaturarum (De potentia, q. 3, a. 5, ad 1)—and hence too its own area of operation, which becomes all the more ‘autonomous’ the nearer a being is to God—quanto aliqua natura Deo vicinior, tanto minus ab eo inclinatur et magis nata est seipsam inclinare (De veritate, q. 22, a. 4). . . .This ‘nearer’ can signify God’s more generous gift of freedom, which includes the risk of drawing Lucifer’s response—or it can signify the insight, on the part of limited freedom, that it can only cast off these limits and attain to complete freedom by progressively drawing nearer to God.”63 This ambivalence of human freedom determines the dramatic character of historical events.The drama of sin and redemption, of the response of faith and charity, and of contemplation and action are inserted here.64 Here opens the space of Thomas’s and Balthasar’s theology. 62 Ibid., 5:447. 63 Balthasar, Theo-Drama 2:272. 64 Balthasar has given ample consideration to the relationship between contemplation and action in Thomas, above all in his commentary on Summa theologiae II–II, questions 171 through 182. Cf. Vollständinge, ungekürzte deutsch-lateinische Ausgabe der N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 51 Hans Urs von Balthasar on Aquinas’s Philosophy 51 Twentieth-Century Thomism and the Originality of Balthasar’s Interpretation What, in the end, is the contribution that Balthasar’s interpretation of Thomas’s philosophy makes to twentieth-century Thomism? Balthasar’s historiographical contribution is his view of Aquinas’s philosophy as original but not self-contained and as standing in continuity with the Church Fathers and with other scholastics.This way of regarding Aquinas contrasts with a certain Neo-Thomism while being consonant with more recent and more prudent scholarship. Moreover, Balthasar’s reading has the merits of a certain “German” interpretation of Thomas (attentive to the romantic and idealist sensibility), which avoids putting his thought on the same level as a rationalistic scholasticism.65 And Balthasar does this, however, without running the risks of a certain transcendental reading66 that impoverishes the approach to being and the gratuitousness and unpredictability of being and of revelation, which distinguish Aquinas’s thought.67 Perhaps one Summa Theologica II–II, Band 23, Besondere Gnadengaben und die zwei Wege menschlichen Lebens kommentiert von Urs von Balthasar (Heidelberg: Kerle-Pustet, 1954). Cf. Balthasar, Explorations 1:238–39: “Though [Thomas] placed the religio mixta above the purely contemplative, he made the vita eremetica higher than the vita socialis, since ‘the perfect man is sufficient to himself,’ however much the vita socialis was necessary to bring him to his perfection. It is astonishing how long it took for me to see that this self-sufficient perfection, to be Christian, must be, in a mysterious sense, a life fruitful for the Church, radiating out into the apostolate.The lack of this perception makes the arguments of the Fathers and the Scholastics for the superiority of contemplation not fully convincing. . . . Admittedly the fruit of contemplation cannot be assessed in the terms of this world. That part of it that Thomas saw, the effect on teaching and preaching, is only a small one.The greater part of it remains hidden in the mystery of God’s action, in the invisible action of grace over the entire Church, indeed the whole of mankind.” 65 In this regard Balthasar’s interpretation has affinities with those of Josef Pieper and Gustav Siewerth, for example. 66 Cf. Balthasar, Glory 5:462:“The ontological distinction (between finite and infinite existence) is most clearly held by Descartes in his theory that man’s reason is finite while his will (striving, eros ) is infinite: a Platonic idea, mediated by the Franciscan school, which finds expression in Kant in the distinction between pure and practical reason and in the modern Christian Kantian school (including the superseding of Kant: Blondel, Maréchal, Marc, Rahner, inter al. ) as the distinction between conceptual knowledge and the infinite dynamism of the spirit, représentation and affirmation.” 67 Cf. Angelo Scola, Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Theological Style, trans. J.T. and A. C. T. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 27–28:“The central place and, above all, the nature which transcendentals enjoy in Balthasar’s thought indicate how far removed this thought is from the Kantian-idealist concept of transcendental.This is one of the differences that explains the serious divergence in opinion which, at a certain point in their lives, separated Rahner and Balthasar. In effect, for N&V_win10 .qxp 52 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 52 Angelo Campodonico explanation of the difference between Balthasar’s and transcendental Thomism’s interpretations of Aquinas is to be found in the fact that Balthasar’s interpretation is influenced, in a moderate way, by Hegel, the later Schelling, the later Heidegger, and by twentieth-century Jewish dialogical thought, while the interpretation of transcendental Thomism is guided largely by Kant, Fichte, and the early Heidegger. Taking a look back at what we have reflected on in this essay, there seem to be three essential themes in the Balthasarian interpretation of Thomas’s philosophy: (1) the theme of the experience of being as a convenientia of man and the world and the necessity of the different transcendental approaches for having this experience of being; (2) the structurally “polar” character of finite beings particularly evident in the polarity of the act of existence and essence—here Balthasar opposes both “essentialism” and a certain excessive emphasis on the act of existence at the expense of essence;68 (3) the “gift” character of both essence and the act of existence, which necessarily refers us, by force of metaphysical participation, to a God who is Being, Freedom, and Love—here Balthasar opposes an excessively intellectualistic interpretation of Aquinas’s metaphysics that was quite prominent at the beginning of the twentieth century. What is perhaps a shortcoming of the Balthasarian reading of Thomas, or, from another point of view, its merit, is its lack of consideration of the argumentative, logical-Aristotelian dimension of Thomas’s thought. Balthasar, of course, is well aware of this aspect of the Angelic Doctor’s thought. In fact, Balthasar observes how the unity of intellectual rigor and a certain piety in Thomas has affinities with Goethe—another author dearly loved by Balthasar: “Goethe was just as much a lone fighter in his Rahner, following Kant, the transcendental is, for all intents and purposes, never truly worked out thematically. In a certain sense it can be said that for Rahner the movement toward being through the transcendental positively requires as its condition that little time be spent analyzing the transcendentals in contingent beings.The path is that of abstraction from the concrete in which being appears. For Balthasar, precisely the opposite is true: the more deeply I delve into the transcendental in the individual essences in which being reveals itself, the more deeply do they reveal being to me. The essence is a fragment in which being subsists; it will never be able to deplete being, but in this essence being reveals itself and its transcendentals. Just as being is predicable analogically, so are the transcendentals. Balthasar’s genius will show itself in the extraordinary elaboration of this principle.” 68 This is occasionally the risk in the interpretations of Thomas proposed by E. Gilson and C. Fabro. In my view, while maintaining the inseparability of the two principles, in any being we must affirm the priority of the act of being over the essence inasmuch as we can cognize essences only because they manifest themselves to us in beings in act, which are actuated by the act of existence. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 53 Hans Urs von Balthasar on Aquinas’s Philosophy 53 age as Thomas Aquinas had been when he sought to combine exact intellectual research and intellectual work with a reverentially pious perception of the divine presence in the cosmos. For without uniting the two, there N&V can be no attitude objective enough to do justice to existence.”69 69 Balthasar, Glory 5:363. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 54 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 55 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 55–87 55 Accrued Eyes and Sixth Digits: Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Cajetan on Christ’s Single Esse and the Union of Natures S HAWN C OLBERG University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana T HOMAS AQUINAS devotes the first fifty-nine questions of the Summa theologiae’s tertia pars to a discussion of Christ, who as “our way to God,” completes the tripartite organization of the work.1 Coming to question 17, he offers a sustained discussion of Christ’s single esse and vigorously defends Christ’s status as a single subject in whom two natures are united. In the sed contra to article 2, he writes: “Everything is said to be a being [ens ], inasmuch as it is one, for one and being are convertible. Therefore if there were two beings [esse ] in Christ, and not one only, Christ would be two and not one.”2 The contention that Christ can only have one esse—inasmuch as he exists as a single entity—can seem like a mere technical or metaphysical verification of a larger scriptural and religious truth: that Christ is a single person. Thomas’s affirmation in this question, however, performs remarkable conceptual work. As becomes evident in question 17 and the remainder of the expansive treatise on 1 In the prologue to question 2 of the prima pars,Thomas indicates the basic struc- ture of the Summa: “Because the chief aim of sacred doctrine is to teach the knowledge of God, not only as He is in Himself, but also as He is the beginning of things and their last end, and especially of rational creatures, as is clear from what has been already said, therefore, in our endeavor to expound this science, we shall treat: (1) Of God; (2) Of the rational creature’s advance towards God; (3) Of Christ,Who as man, is our way to God.” St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 2, prologue. All English translations are taken from Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benzinger, 1947). 2 ST III, q. 17, a. 2, sed contra. N&V_win10 .qxp 56 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 56 Shawn Colberg Christ, Christ’s single esse ultimately informs the most critical theological implications of Thomas’s Christology, such as Christ’s status as a fullygraced human being, his ability to perform both divine and human actions, and the way that Christ as one person properly navigates Christological heresies such as Nestorianism or monophysitism. Beyond these centrally important outcomes of a functioning Christology, a single esse informs Christ’s soteriological significance for believers by securing his ontological status as the means of return and the source of efficacy for the sacramental life of the Church. Thomas’s position on Christ’s esse has historically invited criticism. Thomas himself knew of potential critiques as evidenced in Summa theologiae as well as the quaestiones disputatae that broach this topic. Certain late medieval theologians, most notably John Duns Scotus, directly dispute Thomas’s contentions and conclusions about single esse, and some criticisms have been maintained and enlarged by modern scholars.3 Interpreters of Thomas also produced defenses of the single esse argument. Perhaps most notable among these is the Summa commentary by Tomasso de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, which outlines the structure of Aquinas’s position while developing lines of defense against Scotus and others. The present study examines and promotes the theological significance of Thomas’s single esse doctrine through two lines of investigation. It first exposits Thomas’s mature teaching on single esse in its proper context and with reference to related treatments of the same subject.To that end, this study will outline the foundation of Thomas’s mature teaching as found in Summa theologiae (ST ) III, q. 17, aa. 1–2 and, where useful, in his works in the Scriptum super Sententiis III, d.VI, Quodlibetal Question IX, 2, and the disputed question De unione Verbi incarnati. Having noted Thomas’s construction and defense of single esse, the study secondly will introduce Cajetan’s reception and defense of Aquinas, particularly as it directly rebuts criticisms from Scotus; it will explicate the structure, objections, and solutions proposed in Cajetan’s commentary on ST III, question 17 while consulting an unedited sermon on the mode of union in order to amplify Cajetan’s own position. Attention will also be given to the wider 3 See for example Richard Cross’s essay “Aquinas on Nature, Hypostasis, and the Metaphysics of the Incarnation,” The Thomist 60 (April 1996): 171–201, especially 191 and 201–2; his book The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (London: Oxford, University Press, 2002) contains more detailed criticisms of Thomas’s part-whole analogy for the hypostatic union and his theory of subsistence in esse. For a criticism of Thomas’s use of suppositum to preserve Christ’s single esse, see Thomas V. Morris, “St. Thomas on the Identity and Unity of the Person of Christ: A Problem of Reference in Christological Discourse,” Scottish Journal of Theology 35 (1982): 419–30. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 57 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 57 Christological and theological commitments at stake in Thomas’s teaching on single esse as a reminder that question 17 cannot be isolated from a host of larger theological claims held by the author. Indeed Christ’s esse does not merely satisfy a metaphysical consideration of the mode of union in the Incarnation; rather, it provides a conceptual foundation on which to understand the import of Christ’s saving mission and its consequences for the life of grace. Aquinas: Christ as Single Subject with a Single Esse Question 17 of the tertia pars,“Of Christ’s Unity of Being,” does not stand on its own; rather, it gains significance from its location within Thomas’s treatise on Christ (ST III, qq. 1–59). It falls within a larger section (qq. 16–26) which Thomas refers to as “those things which follow on this union” and a smaller section (qq. 16–19) which he calls “what belongs to Christ in himself.”4 The former title suggests that the insights of question 17 depend on questions 2 through 15, “the mode of the union of the Word Incarnate,” and particularly question 2, “the union itself.” Here Thomas indicates that before one can speak consistently about “what belongs to Christ in himself,” one must first understand the way in which Christ is both divine and human.The reader should therefore expect that question 17 is indebted to its predecessors, especially question 2. Moreover, following questions 16 through 26, Thomas completes the treatise on Christ with a second broad section entitled “those things which were done and suffered by the Savior, God Incarnate.” Question 17 can be understood as a prefatory question to the extended discussion of Christ’s life as revealed in Scripture in questions 27 through 59. Indeed, question 17 belongs to the first 26 questions, which attempt to elucidate “the mystery of the Incarnation itself,” and by adducing the proper terminological and conceptual tools for understanding the Incarnation, one can then plumb the meaning of “those things which were done and suffered by the Savior” because one can now speak, as accurately as human language will permit, of the mystery of God becoming a human being.5 4 These headings can be found in the paragraph which prefaces question 16 as a kind of mini-prologue. 5 One could speak at length about the location of Christ in the tertia pars. Here I have confined myself to the more immediate context of question 17, although much more could be said about the relation of Christology to the exitus-reditus pattern of the Summa and Thomas’s view of God’s providential movement of created things to the ends which God intends for them.While M. D. Chenu’s work provides an overall view to the structure of the Summa theologiae, Jean-Marc Laporte, S.J. provides a focused study of Christology in the Summa theologiae; see “Christ in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: Peripheral or Pervasive,” The Thomist 67 (2003): 221–48. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 58 58 Shawn Colberg Question 17 is notable for its brevity and use of sources. It contains a scant two articles. This seeming dearth could suggest Thomas’s conclusions are inevitable (and therefore short) consequences of earlier discussions, but it may also indicate that he feels constrained in what he can say about Christ’s unique esse. Also, question 17 does not use authorities as frequently or in the same way.Thomas quotes no Scripture passages and the Fathers only sparingly (in this case Augustine twice and Nazianzen once) while relying more heavily on his own philosophical convictions about person (as hypostasis or suppositum), essence, and existence. This shift in use of authorities indicates that Thomas is cultivating different ground in question 17. Article 1 asks “whether Christ is one or two,” and it affirms the reality that there is both something singular and something plural in Christ.The task falls to Thomas to properly locate Christ’s being vis-à-vis his two natures and one person. He accomplishes this with concision in the sed contra; quoting Boethius, he writes,“Whatever is, inasmuch as it is, is one. But we confess that Christ is.Therefore Christ is one.”6 Thomas fortifies this assertion by arguing that Christ’s concrete human nature cannot be predicated of him in the abstract because the person of Christ is the divine person of the Word, and in the abstract, the Word does not naturally possess a human nature. Rather, the Word assumes a concrete human nature to himself in the Incarnation, but not as something inherent to his utterly simple essence and existence as God.7 Given that human nature cannot be predicated of Christ (whose suppositum is the Word) in the abstract, there is no duality that can be predicated of his being; Thomas writes: “But because the two natures are not predicated of Christ, except as they are signified in the suppositum, it must be by reason of the suppositum that one or two be predicated of Christ.”8 Christ’s two natures are predicated of him “in the suppositum,” which is the person of Christ, and his suppositum is singular (although in the concrete it possesses two natures) both before and after the Incarnation. This singularity of the suppositum establishes that Christ is a single subject. The question of whether Christ may be called one or two may seem pedantic or at least self-evident to many, but Thomas reminds his readers 6 ST III, q. 17, a. 1, sed contra. 7 Here it is useful to note that in the corpus Thomas reminds his readers that in God existence and essence are the same, but that this does not hold with any creature. He explicitly references ST I, q. 29, a. 4, ad. 1, where he argues that God’s essence and existence are one and simple; this position is also found in ST I, q. 3, aa. 3–4 and in De ente et essentia, 5:1–3. 8 ST III, q. 17, a. 1. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 59 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 59 that his conclusion protects Christology from Nestorianism in either its more obvious ancient form or its more subtle and contemporary redevelopment. He recalls that some of his relative contemporaries “placed two supposita in Christ and one Person, which, in their opinion, would seem to be the suppositum completed with its final completion.”9 These peers (probably followers of the homo assumptus opinion as outlined by Peter Lombard) attempted to posit two “completed supposita” (as connected with Christ’s two natures) and one person in Christ, and they described him thus: two in the neuter and one in the masculine.10 Others who might explicitly support a Nestorian position would posit two persons and two supposita in Christ and so describe Christ as two in the neuter and two in the masculine. Both of these positions, in Thomas’s mind, ultimately fall into heresy because, contra the Council of Chalcedon, they in some way affirm two subjects in Christ.11 Thomas, in ST III, q. 2, a. 3, already affirms the almost synonymous character of person and suppositum so that it is impossible to say that Christ is one person and two supposita.12 The only remaining possibility is Thomas’s own 9 Ibid. 10 Thomas uses “neuter” and “masculine” to indicate Christ in the abstract and in the concrete. He writes: “[F]or the neuter gender implies something unformed and imperfect, whereas the masculine signifies something formed and perfect” (ST III, q. 17, a. 1). For the homo assumptus opinion of the Lombard, see his Sententiae III, d. 6. 11 The relevant part of the decree from the Council of Chalcedon (451) reads: “[O]ne and the same Christ, Son, Lord, unique; acknowledged in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation—the difference of the natures being by no means taken away because of the union, but rather the distinctive character of each nature being preserved, and [each ] combining in one Person and hypostasis—not divided or separated into two Persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ.” Taken from “The Chalcedonian Decree,” trans. Henry R. Percival, in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward R. Hardy (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), 373, emphasis mine. 12 For example, he uses hypostasis and suppositum almost synonymously as he deploys and interprets a passage from the Council of Ephesus; he writes: “And this, too, was condemned with the approval of the Council of Ephesus (part iii, can. 4) in these words: ‘If anyone ascribes to two persons or subsistences such words as are in the evangelical and apostolic Scriptures, or have been said of Christ by the saints, or by Himself of Himself, and, moreover, applies some of them to the man, taken as distinct from the Word of God, and some of them (as if they could be used of God alone) only to the Word of God the Father, let him be anathema.’ Therefore it is plainly a heresy condemned long since by the Church to say that in Christ there are two hypostases, or two supposita, or that the union did not take place in the hypostasis or suppositum. Hence in the same Synod (can. 2) it is said:‘If anyone does not confess that the Word was united to N&V_win10 .qxp 60 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 60 Shawn Colberg position: that Christ is one person and consequently has one suppositum so that he is one in the neuter and one in the masculine.The decision to affirm Christ’s oneness—through a single suppositum—not only supports his unity of being, it prevents inadvertent heresy. Question 17 is not the first time in the Summa theologiae that Thomas has concerned himself with the potential problems of Nestorianism for Christology. Rather, in ST III, q. 2, a. 6 he considers Nestorianism, along with Eutychianism, in greater detail, rejecting recent forms of Nestorianism which he detects in two of the three opinions on the mode of the Incarnation offered by Peter Lombard (cf. Sententiae III, d. 6). He writes: But some more recent masters, thinking to avoid these heresies, through ignorance fell into them. For some conceded one person in Christ, but maintained two hypostases, or two supposita, saying that a man, composed of body and soul, was from the beginning of his conception assumed by the Word of God. And this is the first opinion set down by the Master. But others desirous of keeping the unity of person, held that the soul of Christ was not united to the body, but that these two were mutually separate, and were united to the Word accidentally, so that the number of persons might not be increased.And this is the third opinion which the Master sets down.13 The first opinion of the Lombard, often called homo assumptus, holds that there is one person, Christ, in whom there are two supposita—one human and one divine. In the third, often called the habitus opinion, one person is affirmed, and to maintain it, the person of Christ does not assume a complete human nature but rather receives a human soul and human flesh separately and accidentally as two garments.Thomas regards both opinions as Nestorian by their affirmation of accidental union between what is divine and what is human in Christ. He writes: “But both of these opinions fall into the heresy of Nestorius; the first, indeed, because to maintain two hypostases or two supposita in Christ is the same as to maintain two persons, as was shown above. . . . But the other opinion falls into the error of Nestorius by maintaining an accidental union.”14 For Thomas, homo assumptus always affirms two supposita, which negates the possibility of hypostatic union (or union in subsistence); this leaves no other option than to posit a non-substantial union. Habitus implies an accidental union of separate parts flesh in subsistence, and that Christ with His flesh is both—to wit, God and man—let him be anathema’ ” (ST III, q. 2, a. 3). 13 ST III, q. 2, a. 6. For the first and third opinions of the Lombard, see his Sententiae III, d. 6, ch. 2 and ch. 4. 14 ST III, q. 2, a. 6 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 61 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 61 of human nature to the divine Word which do not even constitute a human nature let alone a union in the suppositum of the Word.15 For our purposes, the problem of the homo assumptus opinion is particularly important because Thomas argues that two supposita eliminate a substantial union, leaving only an accidental one (by indwelling or some other means) to account for the unity of natures. This becomes vital in question 17, article 1 inasmuch as Thomas identifies the problem of Christ having two supposita “in the neuter” as tantamount to the position of homo assumptus.16 This same opinion will play an even more forceful role in question 17, article 2. As Thomas rejects the first and third opinions of the Lombard— regarding them as heretical—he also defines the second opinion as “orthodox truth.” The second opinion navigates between Nestorianism (two subjects united accidentally) and Eutychianism or monophysitism (two natures which become one after the Incarnation), and in doing so it maintains the Christian dogma by positing one hypostasis of the divine Word in whom two separate natures are united.17 Question 17 therefore not only negates heresy but expresses the positive dogma of the Church and that of the Lombard’s second opinion.The task of question 17, article 2 becomes explaining how human nature can be said to subsist in the one esse of the suppositum or hypostasis of the Word. 15 For Thomas’s view of the habitus opinion in particular, see Walter H. Principe’s “St.Thomas on the Habitus-Theory of the Incarnation,” in Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1274–1974: Commemorative Studies, vol. 1, ed. E. Gilson et al. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974), 381–418. 16 For further evidence of the relation of ST III, q. 2, a. 6 and III, q. 17, aa. 1–2, refer to Thomas’s Scriptum super Sententiis III, d.VI where, in question 2, article 1 Thomas asks, “Is Christ two in the neuter?” Here he points out the inherent danger of two supposita in the neuter and explicitly associates this danger with the first opinion. 17 Thomas initially quotes the Second Council of Constantinople and its affirmation of “a union of the Word of God with flesh, by composition, which is in subsistence.” He then goes on to conclude:“Therefore it is plain that the second of the three opinions, mentioned by the Master (Sent. iii, D. 6), which holds one hypostasis of God and man, is not to be called an opinion, but an article of Catholic faith” (ST III, q. 2, a. 6).Weisheipl notes that Thomas “was the first Latin scholastic writer to utilize verbatim the acts of the first five ecumenical councils of the Church, namely in the Catena aurea (1262–1267) and in the Summa theologiae (1266–1273).” James Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D’Aquino, His Life,Thought and Work (New York: Doubleday, 1974), 164. Both Weisheipl and Torrell agree that Thomas had access to the acta and gesta of these councils later in his career and that he possibly encountered and copied out a manuscript in the library at Monte Cassino; see Weisheipl, Friar Thomas, 164–65, and Jean Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas:The Person and His Work, vol. 1, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 140. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 62 62 Shawn Colberg Question 17, article 2 advances the single-subject argument from the first article, but Thomas here wrestles with the metaphysics which underlie affirming one esse and one subject in Christ.The sed contra presents the straight forward contention: “Everything is said to be a being inasmuch as it is one, for one and being are convertible.”18 It follows from the position established in article 1—“Christ is one”—that Christ must have one being or esse, yet this affirmation becomes more important and more controversial when Thomas distinguishes the meaning of Christ’s one esse in the corpus.19 Thomas has thus far associated esse with the act of existence which belongs properly to Christ’s suppositum, but in the corpus he allows that esse is related to both the suppositum and to Christ’s two natures; this allowance is necessary inasmuch as one can say that Christ is both divine and human. He writes: “Now being pertains both to the nature and to the hypostasis; to the hypostasis as to that which [quod ] has being—and to the nature as to that whereby [quo ] it has being.”20 The suppositum or hypostasis is that “which is”—quod est—or which has esse itself; it signifies the existing subject. The suppositum underlies everything, for instance, which constitutes Socrates, and only the whole person, Socrates, exists. Nature is that “whereby”—quo est—a thing exists; it signifies the quiddity (or essence) of a thing. Socrates exists as a 18 ST III, q. 17, a. 2, sed contra. 19 Here it should be noted that “esse” is the Latin infinitive of sum or “to be,” and when used as a substantive, esse refers to existence or the act of existence. Socrates has an esse —he has an existence. The word ens is also taken from sum in the participial form. Ens translates as “being” and as a verbal substantive it signifies a substantive that exists. Socrates is an ens —he is a being. Being (ens ) and existence (esse ) can therefore be distinguished; the former refers to a subject and the latter to a state. Socrates is a being who (somewhat redundantly) exists or has existence. Moreover, esse should be understood in reference to potency and act; it is esse which reduces a thing from potency to act in an Aristotelian framework; esse cannot therefore be subject to anything which is in potency but should be seen as that which actualizes created things. For further insights on Thomas’s understanding of esse, see E.A. Sillem,“Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Meaning of Esse,” The Downside Review 68 (1950): 414–39. 20 ST III, q. 17, a. 2, emphasis mine. For a further elucidation of the relation of suppositum and nature to esse, see Thomas’s Quodlibetal Question IX, 2, 2, where he writes: “Sed hoc esse attribuitur alicui dupliciter. Uno modo ut sicut ei quod proprie et vere habet esse vel est. Et sic attribuitur soli substantiae per se subsistenti: unde quod vere est, dicitur substantia in I Physic. Omnia vero quae non per se subsistunt, sed in alio et cum alio, sive sint accidentia sive formae substantiales aut quaelibet partes, non habent esse ita ut ipsa vere sint, sed attribuitur eis esse alio modo, idest ut quo aliquid est; sicut albedo dicitur esse, non quia ipsa in se subsistat, sed quia ea aliquid habet esse album.” Quaestiones Quodlibitales, ed. R. M. Spiazzi et al. (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1949). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 63 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 63 human being; his nature as rational animal defines the what-ness of his suppositum, and in that sense nature is related to esse as that “whereby” the suppositum exists. Here it is useful to note Thomas’s distinction between essence and existence. An essence can, in the abstract, be in potency before it is brought into existence; so in the abstract, the essence of Socrates (his human nature) exists in potency before he comes to exist.The essence is actualized by participating in esse ; esse, or existence, is that perfection which renders any potency, including the essence of Socrates, actual. Essence and existence are therefore distinct, and essence depends on esse for its actualization (and, typically, matter for its individuation). Understood as such, that which is potential can never be said to possess what is actual until it is actualized.Wherefore in the Summa theologiae’s question on divine perfection Thomas explains: “Existence is the most perfect of all things as that by which they are made actual; for nothing has actuality except so far as it exists. Hence existence is that which actuates all things, even their form.”21 As the principle which actualizes even essence (here discussed as form), esse is separate and more perfect than essence. When applied to nature, then, esse must be regarded as that which brings nature into act, and it follows that it is separate and more perfect. Question 17, article 2 further complicates the relations of suppositum and nature to esse by distinguishing two types of esse—“personal” and “accidental.” A suppositum possesses one personal esse; as that which constitutes a thing’s existence, it cannot be multiplied under any circumstances. Accidental esse is the being which a suppositum has in virtue of a certain accident; Socrates can be “white” and be a “musician” and thereby have two accidental esse (whiteness exists and musicianship exists) attached to his suppositum.They are “attached” inasmuch as they do not constitute the personal esse of Socrates but actually gain their esse from their attachment or inherence to personal esse in the suppositum. To reprise: a suppositum has one personal esse by which the suppositum exists and as many accidental and conjoined esse as it has accidental properties. Nature relates to these esse by defining their quiddity, and so a single nature exists “whereby” Socrates’s suppositum exists (as rational animal), and as many accidental esse (modes of existing in accidents) relate to Socrates’s suppositum as he has accidental characteristics (Socrates exists accidentally as white, as a musician, etc.). From this taxonomy, Thomas concludes: “But the being which belongs to the very hypostasis or person in itself cannot possibly be multiplied in one hypostasis or 21 ST I, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3, emphasis mine. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 64 Shawn Colberg 64 person, since it is impossible that there should not be one being for one thing.”22 The identification of one personal esse with one suppositum— and the specification that the esse be defined by one nature—indicates that an existing suppositum cannot logically be multiplied even by multiple natures. The impossibility of multiplying the personal esse of a suppositum seems to guarantee a single personal esse and a single personal existence in Christ.This defends against attempts to multiply Christ’s single subject on the basis of his two natures, and yet Christ’s single esse requires further support against more subtle claims by pseudo-Nestorian or homo assumptus proponents. For example, if Christ’s human nature possesses neither a personal esse nor an accidental esse (à la the habitus theory), then how can the human nature be said to exist? Thomas replies that Christ’s suppositum takes human nature to itself as “a constitutive part of the whole” of Christ. He likens Christ’s human nature to his suppositum as “being possessed of a head, being corporeal, being animated” is to the one being of Socrates.23 The addition and conjunction of “constitutive parts of the whole”—such as a head—do not add new being to the suppositum because they belong inherently to it. Indeed, the homo assumptus proponent might agree with Thomas to this point, but he would then reply that the human nature is assumed to Christ’s suppositum (which is the Word) subsequently or after the fact of its existence. The timing of the assumption implies that it cannot be likened to a head, without which a man cannot be constituted in the first place.Thomas, recognizing this wrinkle, describes the assumption of the human nature to Christ’s suppositum thus: And if it so happened that after the person of Socrates was constituted there accrued to him hands or feet or eyes, as happened to him who was born blind, no new being would be thereby added to Socrates, but only a relation to these, i.e. inasmuch as he would be said to be, not only with reference to what he had previously, but also with reference to what accrued to him afterwards.24 The human nature is added to Christ’s suppositum as if it was something which always belonged to the wholly constituted person. In that sense, just as an accrued eye does not convey a new esse to the healed man, so the human nature does not convey new esse to the suppositum (thereby multiplying its esse).The accrued human nature constitutes a “new relation” to 22 Ibid. 23 ST III, q. 17, a. 2. 24 Ibid. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 65 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 65 the pre-existing suppositum, which signifies something radically different (just as an accrued eye would for a blind man), but it cannot signify new esse.25 Thomas thus employs the language of “relations” to prevent the homo assumptus proponent from asserting any new esse in addition to the personal esse of the Word’s suppositum.Also, the accrued eye is simultaneously essential and non-essential.An eye belongs naturally, and so essentially, to a properly constituted human being, yet the man born blind was “wholly human” before the miracle, and afterwards, he remains unchanged in terms of his personal esse.Thomas thus uses the analogy of an accrued eye to indicate the way in which human nature brings no new esse to the divine suppositum because it is as if it always essentially belonged to Christ. Article 2 clearly pays great dividends against incursions of Nestorianism—classic or contemporary. Perhaps more impressively, however, it illumines the wide-ranging power of the union of natures in the person of the Word. In response to the second objection of the article—which argues for dual esse from the ontological disparity between divine and human natures—Thomas illustrates the great elevation and actualization that Christ’s human nature receives in its assumption to the suppositum of the divine Word. He writes: “The eternal being of the Son of God, which is the Divine Nature, becomes the being of man, inasmuch as the human nature is assumed by the Son of God to the unity of Person.”26 The Incarnate Son’s human nature, unlike other human natures which are instantiated in a human suppositum (such as Socrates) and participate in divine being for actualization, is conjoined to the Son of God as its suppositum, and it has being directly from divine being and not through a kind of participation.27 Jesus can be said to enjoy the personal esse of the Son of God. Recall again Thomas’s distinction between essence and existence; in this case the essence of Christ as a human being is made 25 The language of “relations” is telling; for just as relations imply no substance in the person of the Trinity, so “a new relation of existence” implies nothing substantial (having esse ) in the accrued human nature. For a potentially analogous account, see Thomas’s discussion of Trinitarian relations in ST I, q. 28, aa. 1–3. 26 ST III, q. 17, a. 2, ad 2. I owe the insight gained from this objection to Joseph Wawrykow, who indicated to me in conversation the importance of divine esse for the human nature. 27 Thomas explains that all creatures participate in divine esse as that by which they exist; in ST I, q. 44, a. 1 he writes: “Therefore all beings apart from God are not their own being, but are beings by participation. Therefore it must be that all things which are diversified by the diverse participation of being, so as to be more or less perfect, are caused by one First Being, Who possesses being most perfectly.” If this First Being is the esse by which the human nature of Christ exists, then it is necessarily the most perfect creature. N&V_win10 .qxp 66 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 66 Shawn Colberg actual by divine esse itself.While ipsum esse can hardly be defined, a notion of transcendent perfection can surely be attributed to it.28 This kind of existence makes Christ’s human nature wholly elevated and perfected; it makes Christ a perfectly graced human being whose human nature is fully actualized in view of its divine esse (ipsum esse or actus purus ). Christ, in his human nature, thus enjoys perfect use of his powers and acts as exemplar to all humankind. He personifies perfect moral actions by proper use of his natural capacities, which makes questions 26 through 59 of the tertia pars far more rich in their meaning.29 The human nature’s possession of divine esse extends to the realm of soteriology so much so that one can argue that human nature—in the spirit of Nazianzen—is fully assumed and thus fully healed.30 It also foreshadows the manner in which God will elevate the natures of all human persons—through the gift of sanctifying grace, which can be characterized as God’s uncreated gift of God’s own esse to humankind.31 Receiving such grace, human beings can follow and imitate “those things which were done and suffered by the Savior, God Incarnate” because their natures can be increasingly perfected like Christ’s human nature.Thomas’s protection of Christ’s single divine esse therefore assists his readers to understand Christ as their exemplar and savior—their way of reditus ad Deum. 28 For a discussion of the way that Thomas’s use of ipsum esse performs grammati- cal work, see David Burrell’s “Showing A Way:‘Esse,’ ” in Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), 42–54. Burrell concludes: “Aquinas manages to employ the identity ‘to be God is to be to-be’ to help him to go on to make the grammatical points he does about ‘God.’ And he does so without presuming that we know how to use this substantival [sic] form of ‘to be.’ That is, none of the statements he makes using ‘to-be’ are empirical or informative. Taken together, however, these statements themselves display an ordered use of ‘to-be’ ” (54). 29 For a discussion of how Jesus can be said to have grace in light of the hypostatic union of natures, see Joseph Wawrykow’s “Grace,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 192–222, especially 209–18. 30 Thomas tellingly reminds his readers of the fittingness of the Incarnation in the first question of the tertia pars. Particularly in article 2, Thomas outlines five primary ways in which the Incarnation could be called necessary (in the sense of “fitting”), and all these pertain to the salvation and eternal life of human beings through the saving work of the incarnate Word. 31 Sanctifying grace is the gift of God which unites human beings to God’s self and in doing so it necessarily heals (their sin) and elevates (their nature). The gift of sanctifying grace, in its effects, is therefore not unlike the gift of divine esse as the suppositum of Christ’s human nature inasmuch as that divine esse elevates Christ’s humanity and unites it to the divine Word. Thomas defines sanctifying grace in ST I–II, q. 111, a. 1. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 67 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 67 Thomas’s decision to limit Christ’s esse to the divine esse of the Son is vital.The addition of any personal esse from the human nature would actually deprive the human nature of its full actualization in the suppositum of the Word.That being said, some have raised objections against this “restriction” of esse in the human nature. On one side stand those critics who regard a human nature lacking its own esse as not fully human and lacking in personality. Instead, they often propose a homo assumptus-like account of the Incarnation where Christ assumes a human nature that exists independently of the divine nature, which, in most metaphysical accounts would require a separate suppositum in which the assumed homo could be said to have independent existence. On another (although not completely different) side stand critics who, from a purely philosophical or metaphysical vantage point, argue that something like a human nature, if it accrues to the suppositum of the Word, cannot simply be regarded like Thomas’s accrued eye; rather, the human nature must either be necessary (like a head) or unnecessary (like a fingernail); for them, the part-whole analogy fails to reflect the reality of the Incarnation.32 This philosophical critique often accuses Thomas of monophysitism insofar as the human nature possesses no proper esse of its own, and instead, it posits an accidental esse for the human nature in order to provide it some existence.33 Either one of the two aforementioned viewpoints erodes the deeper foundation which supports Thomas’s view.The former devolves into a proto-homo assumptus opinion which posits two separate subjects (leaving open the question of the mode of their union).The latter typically makes recourse to an accidental union for the human nature—thereby preserving its distinctive esse as accidental— 32 In his essay “Aquinas on Nature, Hypostasis, and the Metaphysics of the Incarna- tion,” for example, Richard Cross argues that the “part-whole” analogy which Thomas uses to discuss the union of the human nature to the Word leaves the human nature lacking any integrity of its own. He writes:“So we cannot conclude, on the basis of the discussion in Summa Theologiae III, q.2, a.2, that it is possible for a self-individuated nature to be a part of a suppositum (as opposed to being the whole suppositum). In other words, we cannot show that a self-individuated nature can be a part of a suppositum unless we show how a self-individuated nature can be part of a suppositum” (179, emphasis mine). Cross also writes: “If a concrete part is non-necessary (viz. accidental), then Aquinas ought to allow that it contributes esse to the concrete whole (the suppositum) of which it is a part” (194). 33 Concerning monophysitism, Cross writes:“In fact, just as Aquinas is unclear about the essential or non-essential status of a human hand, so too he is equivocal about the essential or non-essential status of the assumed human nature vis-à-vis the second person of the Trinity. Although Aquinas is always clear that he wants to reject a union of divine and human into one nature (i.e. some third type of thing), he sometimes uses language which suggests that his understanding of the hypostatic union fails to keep the two natures sufficiently distinct” (Cross,“Aquinas,” 191). N&V_win10 .qxp 68 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 68 Shawn Colberg which verges on the accidental union suggested by habitus theory. With these possible outcomes,Thomas leaves little room to accommodate their concerns, yet in his disputed question De unione Verbi incarnati he may indeed attempt to satisfy these questions. The Place and Influence of De unione Verbi incarnati The disputed question De unione Verbi incarnati is executed in four articles which ask with reference to Christ (1) whether the union was in nature or person, (2) whether there is one or two hypostases or supposita, (3) whether he is one or two in the neuter, and (4) whether there is only one esse. Written almost contemporaneously with the tertia pars of the Summa, the first three articles largely recapitulate the same findings articulated in Thomas’s Scriptum and Summa theologiae.34 Article 4 follows the argumentation of ST III, q. 17, a. 2 fairly closely but makes at least one additional affirmation.Thomas writes: And thus just as Christ is one simply on account of the unity of the suppositum, and two in a certain respect on account of the two natures, so he has one being simply on account of the one being of the eternal suppositum. But, there is also another being of this suppositum, not insofar as it is eternal, but insofar as it becomes a man in time. That being, even if it is not an accidental being, because man is not accidentally predicated of the Son of God, as was said above, nevertheless is not the principle being of its suppositum, but secondary.35 In this passage, Thomas allows for “another being [esse] of this suppositum” which at first glance seems to abandon the position taken in ST III, 34 In his biography of St. Thomas, Torrell considers a wide range of possible dates for the disputed question De unione. He concludes: “We incline rather to accept those authors who situate this question toward the end of the second period of teaching in Paris, early in April (Weisheipl) or May (Glorieux) 1272” (Saint Thomas, vol. 1, 207).This would place its date at the outset of Thomas’s work on the tertia pars of the Summa theologiae. For a wider discussion of the chronology for the De unione, see Torrell, Saint Thomas, vol. 1, 201–7 and 336–37. 35 Thomas writes: “Et ideo sicut Christus est unum simpliciter propter unitatem suppositi, et duo secundum quid propter duas naturas, ita habet unum esse simpliciter propter unum esse aeternum aeterni suppositi. Est autem et aliud esse huius suppositi, non in quantum est aeternum, sed in quantum est temporaliter homo factum. Quod esse, etsi non sit esse accidentale—quia homo non praedicatur accidentaliter de Filio Dei, ut supra habitum est—non tamen est esse principale sui suppositi, sed secundarium” (De unione, a. 4). English translations are taken from A Disputed Question: Concerning the Union of the Word Incarnate, a. 4, trans. J. L. A.West, in The Aquinas Translation Project, coordinator Stephen Loughlin, www4.desales.edu/~philtheo/loughlin/ATP/. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 69 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 69 q. 17, a. 2 for a “two-esse model.”Thomas, however, surrounds his claims with a number of negations which must be noted. First, this aliud esse is not the esse of the eternal suppositum; it cannot therefore pertain to the Word as a suppositum for Christ. Second, it is not an accidental esse because Christ’s human nature was not assumed accidentally. Third, it is not the principle esse of the suppositum which can be taken to mean that it is not the “personal” esse which Thomas speaks of in question 17. If it cannot pertain to the Word nor convey personal or accidental esse, what is it? It seems to gesture at a secondary kind of esse which belongs to Christ as he exists as man. It could be said that the aliud esse presents a particular instance “whereby” Christ is said to have esse, namely, as man, whereas Christ’s divine nature can also explain “whereby” Christ has esse as God. If one understands the human nature to have an esse through its union to divine esse (so that it depends entirely on the personal esse of the Word) this could be called a secondary esse inasmuch as it is identifiable in the human nature of Christ in time. The fact that he relates the secondary esse to “this suppositum,” namely Christ’s one suppositum, adds to its possible “whereby” or “quo est” meaning which Thomas outlines in ST III, q. 17, a. 2. Given Thomas’s negations, one should be confident that the De unione does not reverse his view of a single personal (or substantial) esse for Christ. In a sense, this affirmation of a secondary esse is an affirmation of the mystery of the Incarnation which he acknowledges. Writing in the first article of De unione,Thomas submits that no analogy according to created things can fully exposit the union of two natures in one person; he writes: “And thus, as his power is not limited to these modes of goodness and being which are in creatures, but is able to make new kinds of goodness and being unknown to us; so also he was able to make a new kind of union through the infinity of his power, in order for human nature to be united to the Word personally, but not accidentally, although no adequate example for this can be found in creatures.”36 In this spirit, it can be argued that the secondary esse referred to in article 4, while neither personal nor accidental, affirms the reality of a certain existing duality (which relates to the natures) in Christ. Divine power, in this instance, exceeds the explanatory power of metaphysics because the Incarnation remains unique from any 36 Thomas writes: “Et ideo, sicut virtus eius non est limitata ad istos modos boni- tatis et esse qui sunt in creaturis, sed potest facere novos modos bonitatis et esse nobis incognitos; ita etiam per infinitatem suae virtutis potuit facere novum modum unionis, ut humana natura uniretur Verbo personaliter, non tamen accidentaliter. Quamvis ad hoc in creaturis nullum sufficiens exemplum inveniatur” (De unione, a. 1). N&V_win10 .qxp 70 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 70 Shawn Colberg other kind of existence observed in the economy. In that sense,Thomas’s esse secundarium acts as a grammatical placeholder for something which is unlike any other kind of existence.This negative statement, or moment of apophasis, however, would have to be understood from within the larger set of negations already posited by Thomas in article 4, such as it cannot replace personal esse or refer to accidental esse. At best, it gestures to the ineffable way in which the human nature remains essential and distinct in its union with the divine suppositum. Critical Views of Single Esse: A Defense by Cajetan One of the most notable and influential commentators on Thomas, Cardinal Cajetan, devoted much of his adult life to adapting and defending Thomist positions. Over the course of his career, Cajetan produced over 150 separate works on theology and philosophy with varying degrees of fidelity to Thomas’s own theological and philosophical commitments.37 Beginning in 1507, Cajetan committed the next thirteen years of his life to a comprehensive commentary on the Summa theologiae, the first of its kind. He accomplished this task while serving as master general of the Dominican order (1508–1518), papal legate, and frequent theologian for papal decrees and positions. While he sometimes radicalizes or departs from Thomas’s positions, he painstakingly follows the order set down by Thomas, commenting article-by-article, question-by-question, for each section of the Summa.38 Often concise in his observations, his commentary on question 17 stands out as unusually long, especially for article 2, where he engages no less than fifteen separate objections to Thomas’s teaching on esse. He clearly views the second article as critical to Thomas’s Christology and as vulnerable to attack by later writers; a brief outline of the commentary illustrates the structure and content of Cajetan’s thought on this point.39 37 A list of his works can be found in J. F. Groner’s Kardinal Cajetan. Eine Gestalt aus der Reformationszeit (Fribourg, 1951), 66–73. 38 In his biographical essay, Jared Wicks, S.J. describes Cajetan’s commentary thus: “Cajetan’s comments show the place of each part, question, and article in the total vision of Aquinas, indicate the main divisions and steps in Aquinas’ arguments, and take up the objections made against the Thomist position by intervening thinkers like Duns Scotus and Durandus of Saint-Pourcain.” Wicks, Cajetan Responds: A Reader in Reformation Controversy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1978), 6.Wicks includes a useful “biographical essay” from pages 3 to 42, which in part describes Cajetan’s primary strengths and weaknesses in his adaptation of Thomas. 39 It should be noted that certain interpreters of Thomas regard Cajetan as misconstruing Thomas’s teaching on Christ’s esse.This study, in part, attempts to indicate wider agreement and the useful manner in which Cajetan defends Thomas’s view of single-esse. For a critical reading of Cajetan, see H. M. Diepen, “Un scotisme N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 71 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 71 Cajetan’s commentary comprises twenty-four total sections, and he devotes only the first three to a basic commentary on the corpus of ST III, q. 17, a. 2.40 The remaining twenty-one act as a kind of disputed question which engages various objections to Christ’s single esse. Sections 4 through 6 acknowledge and attempt to resolve the difficult and potentially compromising language of article 4 in De unione. In section 8 Cajetan outlines four “types” of objections which can be leveled against ST III, q. 17, a. 2; they include doubts: (1) concerning the premise of Thomas’s argument, (2) about the way in which Christ “has” a human nature, (3) concerning Thomas’s conclusion, and (4) concerning contradictions (offered by his opponents).41 He follows this by enumerating a host of objections under these four headings in sections 8 through 12, citing Scotus as the primary and overarching antagonist but also Durandus of Saint-Pourcain, Peter Aureolus, and John of Naples. He references the sentence commentaries of Scotus, Durandus, and Capreolus as sources for these opinions, and at certain points quotes directly from these sources.42 In sections 13 through 14 Cajetan offers his own respondeo to the objections, and following this apocryphe, la christologie du P. Deodat de Basly, O.F.M.,” Revue Thomiste 49 (1949): 428–92;Torrell has chronicled this debate in “Le thomisme dans le débatchristologique contemporain,” in Saint Thomas au XXe siecle (Actes du colloque du Centennaire de la Revue Thomiste: 25–28 mars, 1993—Toulouse), ed. SergeThomas Bonino, O.P. (Paris: 1994), 383–87. Adrian Hastings also tracks Diepen’s criticisms of Cajetan, particularly the notion of the “ecstasy of existence” which he and Diepen associate with Cajetan, arguing that it departs from Thomas’s mature teaching; see “Christ’s Act of Existence,” The Downside Review 73 (1955): 139–59. 40 In an ironic comment, Cajetan warns his audience of Dominican novices that they ought not to analyze the particulars of question 17, article 2 without first seeing the broad implications of Thomas’s Christology; Cajetan then procedes to introduce a dense and lengthy defense of Thomas’s position. He writes:“Do not hold stubbornly to [Thomas’s] conclusions unless you already clearly grasp the truth of his solutions to the more general problems. Be content to acknowledge the logic and consonance of this conclusion.” Tommaso de Vio Cajetanus, Commentaria in Summam Theologiae Sancti Thomae de Aquino, in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, Opera Omnia, iussu impensaques, ed. Leonis XIII P.M., Tom. 11 (Roma: S.C. de Propaganda Fide, 1903), section 22. 41 Cajetan writes: “Circa secundam autem quaestionem multiplex dubium occurrit. Nam primo, dubitatar de praemissis; deinde de modo quo ponitur Christus existentiam humanam habere; tertio, de ipsa conclusione; quarto, de sua contradictoria” (Commentaria, section 8). 42 It would seem as if Cajetan has certain commentaries at hand as he writes his own so that he draws objections directly from the above-mentioned sources. See sections VII, X, and XI respectively for explicit references to Scotus, Durandus, Aureolus, and John of Naples; Cajetan seems to extract the opinions of Aureolus and John of Naples from within Capreolus’s sentence commentary. N&V_win10 .qxp 72 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 72 Shawn Colberg corpus, he renders specific rebuttals to each objection previously cited (at least fifteen distinct critiques) in sections 15 through 21. He concludes his commentary with a résumé and defense of what he considers the two indispensable premises of Thomas’s argument (sections 22–24). The following study of Cajetan’s commentary first considers representative objections and responses to the “four” kinds of doubts pertaining to Thomas’s text (sections 8–12 and 15–21), and it concludes by examining his discussion of De unione (sections 4–6). While this procedure inverts Cajetan’s own organization, it provides a more expeditious and telling ingress into the prevailing critiques of Thomas and Cajetan’s response.The first important objection against Thomas is one by Scotus “against his premises,” and it asserts that the human nature assumed by the Word possesses its own proper esse distinct from that of the suppositum. Citing an argument from his sentence commentary, Cajetan quotes Scotus directly: A part coming to a whole does not give esse to the whole, but it receives [esse], because it is perfected by the form of the whole. The conclusion is proved: because if [the part] remains distinct as earlier, it does not receive the esse of the whole but it has either its own proper esse or none at all. But the human nature united to the Word does not have the ratio of a part . . . because it is not informed by the Word, but remains simply distinct.Therefore it either has no esse at all or a certain proper esse.43 Scotus does not reject Thomas’s “part-whole” concept of shared esse; rather, he disputes the premise that the human nature assumed by the Word has the ratio of a part. If it is in no way a part of the whole, and is thereby not informed by the Word, it necessarily retains it own distinct esse or none at all (the latter being impossible). Scotus could certainly add that, if Christ’s human nature is essential to the whole—as a part typically is—then it loses its own identity and seems subsumed into the divine nature. Cajetan views this as a serious challenge to the fittingness of Thomas’s part-whole analogy for the assumption of human nature. In section 9—arguments against the way in which Christ is said to have a human nature—Cajetan again cites an argument of Scotus, namely, if the 43 Scotus writes: “Pars adveniens toti non dat esse toti, sed recipit, quia perficitur a forma totius. Quod probatur: quia, si remaneret distincta sicut prius, non reciperet esse totius, sed vel haberet proprium esse, vel nullum. Sed natura humana unita Verbo non habet rationem partis, nec istam rationem partis: quia non informatur a Verbo, sed remanet simipliciter distincta. Igitur vel nullum esse habet, vel aliquod esse proprium” (Cajetan, Commentaria, section 8). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 73 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 73 human nature of the Word does not have its own proper esse, then Christ as a homo cannot be said to be a certain something (aliquid). Cajetan quotes Scotus:“If the Word has only a new respect to that [human] nature, and that [nature] is only a respect of reason [rationis], since through the respect of reason it is not said that a subject is formally a certain thing, therefore the Word, insofar as he is a man, will not be a certain thing.”44 Here Cajetan identifies a particularly bold criticism, namely, that the way in which Thomas speaks about the relation of the human nature to the Word is heretical. Scotus asserts that, inasmuch as the human nature is related to the Word by respectus rationis, nothing substantial can be posited of Christ as a homo. If this is true, Christ is not a certain thing (aliquid) and the Christology falls under the condemnation of Pope Alexander III who held that Christ must be a certain something.45 Thomas’s view that the human nature—like the accrued eye—has a “new relation of the preexisting personal being to the human nature” is under attack. Relations cannot posit anything substantial, including existence, and so a new relation to the pre-existing Word is not substantial enough to convey personal esse to the human nature. Without personal esse, the human nature of Christ cannot be said to exist or to be an aliquid (unless of course through accidental esse). A third kind of objection comes from the “arguments against the conclusion,” and a number of the objections drive at this same reality. Cajetan summarizes: “There was a two-fold living in Christ: as is clear from the fact that he lost one through death. Therefore there was in [Christ] a two-fold esse. And the conclusion is confirmed by this quote from Book II of de Anima: For living beings, living is being.”46 Here the objection points to a basic reality of Christian faith: Christ is said to die on the cross, yet the divine nature did not die.Yet if Christ possessed only a divine esse, it would be impossible for his human nature to die in the 44 Scotus writes:“Si Verbum tantum habeat respectum novum ad naturam illam, et ille est respectus rationis tantum; cum per respectum rationis non dicatur subjectum formaliter esse aliquid, ergo Verbum, inquantum homo, non erit formaliter aliquid” (Cajetan, Commentaria, section 9). 45 The irony of this objection is that Thomas is fully aware of Alexander’s decretal and himself uses it to declare the third opinion of the Lombard heretical in his Scriptum and the Summa theologiae ; see Scriptum III, d.VI, a. 1, response and ST III, q. 2, a. 6. The decretal Cum Christos was defined by Pope Alexander III on February 18, 1177, and a similar, though less famous, decretal was earlier issued against the Bishop of Sens on March 28, 1170 by the same Alexander III. 46 Cajetan writes: “In Christo fuit duplex vivere: ut patet ex hoc quod unum per mortem perdidit. Ergo in ipso fuit duplex esse. —Et tenet sequela ex II de Anima: Vivere viventibus est esse” (Commentaria, section 10). N&V_win10 .qxp 74 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 74 Shawn Colberg sense of losing its existence. Instead, the death on the cross requires a second human esse whose existence can expire, for a time, on the cross.47 The critique relies on the identification of esse with vital being—so that to be alive is the same as to exist. It also implicitly accuses Thomas of monophysitism; that is, if a second esse, which dies on the cross, cannot be posited of Christ, then it is as if Christ only has an eternal divine nature and esse, or that the human nature is at best one with the divine. This same argument holds for other aspects of Christ’s human nature, such as his soul or his birth. If by generation or by a human soul Christ’s humanity does not have a proper esse, then Scotus et al. argue that it is necessary to conclude that the divine nature is generated or constitutes Christ’s human soul, again intimating monophysitism. This same kind of objection becomes more forceful in the fourth section—those against the contradictions—where Scotus takes up the reality of Christ’s two wills and reasons to the reality of two esse in Christ. Cajetan writes: For because in Christ there are two wills and two willings [velle ], according to the Damascene, ch. 62. But esse has itself more intimately and more immediately to essence than willing to the will.Therefore esse is more necessarily multiplied according to the plurality of natures. . . . Nature, as distinguished against suppositum, is the principle of operation. Therefore is it also the principle of being in act, because esse has itself more intimately, etc.48 Scotus here attempts to collapse Thomas’s distinction between essence and existence by arguing that esse is more intimate to an essence than “willing” to a will. He sustains his claim in part by positing that natures (essences) constitute the principles of operations in the suppositum, which almost demands that they have their own personal or substantial esse. If he can establish that esse inheres in essence, then he can posit that, just as Christ has two “willings” according to two wills, so he has two esse according to two natures. Christ’s necessary possession of two natures implies two esse on the principle of an essence’s intimacy with existence. 47 Cajetan cites a similar kind of argument with respect to Christ’s birth (natural generation) and his possession of a created soul (see the first and third objections in section 10). 48 Cajetan writes: “Tum quia in Christo sunt duae voluntates et duo velle, secundum Damascenum, cap. LXII. Sed esse intimius et immediatius se habet ad essentiam quam velle ad voluntatem. Ergo magis neccesse est plurificari esse secundum pluritatem naturarum. . . . Natura, ut distinguitur contra suppositum, est principium operandi. Ergo est etiam principium essendi in actu: quia esse immediatius se habet etc.” (Commentaria, section 12). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 75 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 75 A denial of this intimacy, inherent in Thomas according to Scotus, allows Thomas’s position to devolve into monophysitism. A final kind of objection by Scotus is worth noting, namely, that Christ’s humanity lies outside the suppositum of Christ and therefore requires its own esse —which Scotus calls an esse of quiddity. Referencing the Subtle Doctor, Cajetan explains:“For because the humanity of Christ is outside its cause, it therefore has a necessary proper actual existence, just as it has a proper esse of quiddity; although it does not have its own subsistence, which, however, adds nothing positive.”49 Christ’s humanity is beyond or outside of its suppositum (otherwise it is an essential part of the divine suppositum,) and hence it must have its own existence. Here again, the relation of a part to whole is denied while a second esse for the human nature is posited in its place. Cajetan adds:“Nor is it, says Scotus, that the existence of the humanity of Christ [is] an existence according to something [secundum quid ], but [it is] simply; for [it exists] in itself, because it is an existence of the genus of substance, which is being [ens] simply; as with respect to Christ.”50 The human nature does not have existence according to something else (like divine esse ) but instead possesses esse the way that substances do. Here it is important to note that Scotus regards all substances as having esse, but Thomas would regard a substance—if this means form, nature, or essence—as having esse by its suppositum. Cajetan notes that Scotus skips this step and instead asserts esse for nature as an individual substance. Not unlike a scholastic question, Cajetan offers his own respondeo in sections 13 through 14 which constitutes the heart of his response to the objections listed above. As an important tool in his defense, Cajetan reintroduces Thomas’s important distinction that person is related to esse as “what is” (quod est), and nature is related to person “whereby” it is (quo est). This distinction allows him to affirm that nature indeed has something to do with esse but only within its proper context. He writes:“And so nature is the immediate principle by which (quo) of that esse; but it is not the immediate receptacle of that esse, but [only] through the person mediating [serving as receptacle].”51 Natures have esse immediately but not 49 “Tum quia humanitas Christi est extra causam suam. Ergo habet necessario propriam existentiam actualem, sicut habet proprium esse quidditativum: licet non habeat propriam subsistentiam, quae nihil positivi addit” (Commentaria, section 12). 50 “Nec est, inquit Scotus, existentia humanitatis Christi existentia secundum quid, sed simpliciter: tam in se, quia est existentia de genere substantiae, quae est ens simpliciter; quam respectu Christi” (Commentaria, section 12). 51 “Ita quod natura est principium quo immediatum ipsius esse: sed non est receptivum immediatum ipsius esse, sed mediante persona” (Commentaria, section 13, emphasis mine). N&V_win10 .qxp 76 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 76 Shawn Colberg separately from a person; a person (or suppositum) mediates esse to the nature which it “personates” as the receptacle of esse. In this scheme, it is impossible to talk about nature having esse apart from its instantiation in a person. Cajetan continues:“And so it is necessary that a nature be personated [personari] to it, so that from it [nature], esse itself is actually originated [principietur], not by a defect of that originating nature as “by which,” [quo] but because it would lack a first receptacle of that esse if it were not personated; for person is that to which esse first convenes as a subject as either that which has esse or that which is [quod est].”52 Nature must be “personated” if it is to have esse because person is the first receptacle of esse; once a nature is joined to the person, it can then serve as a principle of esse “quo est.” Esse thus belongs to both person and nature but by different modes, with person remaining the primary and prevenient locus of esse, that is, as the ens of a concrete being. Here, then, the reader sees Cajetan’s metaphysical response to Scotus, namely, that natures in themselves cannot possess esse but depend on a union to the suppositum (a union in subsistence) for their personation and connection to esse. Person is indeed “more intimate” to nature than existence because nature is first personated and then said to exist.53 The distinction between essence and existence is thus maintained according to Thomas’s own teaching, and it is located in the language of person or suppositum. To this distinction, however, Cajetan adds the conceptual imagery of “personation” which indicates the priority of personhood to nature in terms of esse. With this distinction in hand, Cajetan proceeds to the specific case of the Incarnation. In this circumstance, an existing person assumes a second nature which, in potency, has no personality of its own (because it lacks a suppositum of its own). To posit a separate suppositum of the human nature would be to fall into the homo assumptus trap, and so it must be said that the human nature lacks a personality.Two important conclusions follow from this. First, this lack of personality implies that the human nature can bring no additional esse to the person of the Word. Second, the potential humanity of Christ (only in the order of logic) can have no esse of its own because it has no person of its own. Cajetan explains: “Therefore, because the humanity of Christ is ‘prevened’ in the mystery 52 “Ita quod oportet naturam personari ad hoc ut ab ea principietur actualiter ipsum esse: non ex defectu naturae principiantis ut quo sed quia deficeret susceptivum primum ipsius esse, si non esset personata; persona enim est cui primo convenit esse ut subiecto, seu quod habet esse, seu quod est” (ibid, emphasis mine). 53 Cajetan writes: “Aliud est quod, quia prius natura personatur quam existentiam propriam constituat, intimior est persona naturae quam existentia” (Commentaria, section 13). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 77 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 77 of the Incarnation, it does not emerge from taking on its own proper personality, but it is assumed to the personality of the Word; and for that reason it is as if impeded from having its own esse and emerges with the esse of the divine person.”54 Cajetan concludes that Christ retains only one esse, that of the divine Word, because his humanity is prevented from taking on its own esse. It gains personality, or is personated, only through its assumption to the eternal Word. After Cajetan defends the separation of essence and existence and applies it to the case of the Incarnation, he responds to the explicit objections of Scotus, and particularly to his accusation that the human nature of Christ lacks the ratio of a part. He first reminds his readers that nature and person can be understood as both related to esse according to the quo est versus quod est distinction and that nature can be said to have esse inasmuch as it is that “whereby” a thing exists. The quo est relation, he argues, applies to any constitutive part of a whole. Second, he argues that Scotus is mistaken when he rejects Thomas’s part-whole analogy as incoherent. Cajetan argues that Christ’s human nature has the ratio of a part to the whole precisely because it is determined—personated—through its assumption to the suppositum of the Word. He writes: “Because, as it is clear from the points laid out above, person adds a certain thing above [supra ] nature; for it adds the intended end [or object—terminatio ] of that nature. Whence the argument of Scotus takes a non-cause for a cause, and this is wrong.The true cause, however, is because esse suffices to whatever thing by its mode.”55 Nature has the ratio of a part and possesses esse only by “its mode.” This mode, obviously, is the mode of quo est, not that of having being/being a something, that is, “quod” (ens ). Cajetan also appends the concept of integrity here and argues that any part of the whole has its esse in virtue of the integrity of the whole. In that sense, Christ’s human nature is an integral part of the whole (even if it is unnecessary) and cannot be considered as distinct in the sense of having its own proper esse. What makes a thing an integral whole is not the nature but the suppositum, and in that sense, Cajetan concludes that esse must be primarily affirmed of the person as the quod est of personal esse. 54 “Quocirca, quia humanitas Christi praeventa est in mysterio incarnationis ut propriam non sortiretur personalitatem, sed ad personalitatem Verbi assumpta est; ideo quasi impedita est a proprio esse, et est sortita esse personae divinae . . .” (Commentaria, section 14). 55 “Quoniam, ut patet ex superius discussis, persona addit rem aliquam supra naturam: addit enim terminationem ipsius. Unde argumentum Scoti assumit et noncausam pro causam, et falsum. —Vera autem causa est quia esse unicuique rei sufficit suo modo” (Commentaria, section 15). N&V_win10 .qxp 78 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 78 Shawn Colberg Cajetan next rebuts Scotus’s denial of the part-whole’s fittingness according to the notion of “relations.” He cautions that Scotus’s critique of the part-whole relation proceeds from “a bad understanding of the text” and its sense “is more distant from us than earth from heaven.”56 He asserts that “a new relation to the preexisting thing” is not insubstantial at all, but because it is not something which posits new esse, it is properly called a relation between two things sharing their original esse. Cajetan writes: But because that substantial conjunction [of Christ’s humanity to the person of the Word] is not according to a new esse of that humanity, but according to the eternal esse of that Word, in order to exclude the acquisition of new esse, the Author [Thomas] says that only a new relation is added to it; and he does not say this in order to exclude a substantial conjunction according to the personality and to that esse, as is patently clear in the text.57 Thomas uses the language of a new relation to negate any notion of a second personal esse of human nature, but this language need not be seen as excluding the esse which already actualizes the suppositum.The union of the human nature to the divine suppositum, as well as its corresponding relation, relies on the personal esse of the suppositum to exist.While the language of relations can therefore be used to negate new or additional esse, it cannot deny—rather it presupposes—the original esse of the two terms of the relation. Cajetan concludes this argument: “Wherefore it is clear that [Scotus’s] argument totally collapses.”58 Applying himself to the argument that two esse are necessary to account for a number of Christ’s actions ad extra —including his birth and his death, Cajetan distinguishes between esse essentiale and esse actualis existentiae. He regards the former as related to living (vivere ) and the latter as personal esse. If one speaks of the esse essentiale, then it can be said that there is a duplex esse of “this kind” in Christ, namely that both the divine and human natures are living or vital. Here Cajetan tries to elicit a kind of secondary use of esse as the esse essentialis in order to explain that both natures are vital and that one part of the whole can expire while the 56 Cajetan writes: “Ad objecta deinde eiusdem Scoti contra modum respondetur quod ex malo intellectu litterae procedit. . . . Hic autem sensus longe est a nobis plus quam terra a caelo” (Commentaria, section 16). 57 “Sed quia coniunctio ista substantialis non est secundum novum esse ipsius humanitatis, sed secundum aeternum esse ipsius Verbi, ideo Auctor, ad excludendam acquisitionem novi esse, dicit quod solum advenit sibi nova relatio: et non dixit hoc ad excludendam coniuntionem substantialem secundum personalitatem et illius esse, ut clare patet in littera” (ibid.). 58 “Unde patet argumentum totaliter ruere” (ibid.). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 79 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 79 other continues to live (vivere as opposed to existere ). Lest Scotus or others confuse this with the personal esse of the suppositum—which is the primary meaning of esse —Cajetan warns: “And this is not to be understood of the esse of actual existence.”59 An important question which Cajetan leaves unanswered is, what exactly does an esse essentialis mean if it is not related to personal esse? His thinking here seems to parallel Thomas’s aliud esse in De unione, affirming that Christ’s human nature exists in a unique way such that it can be said to exist without meaning that it exists outside the actual ipsum esse of the Word. Scotus’s final charge again attempts to posit a distinct esse for the humanity of Christ; this time it is approached from the perspective of its cause being outside the suppositum. One can anticipate Cajetan’s response, namely, that an essence or nature cannot exist outside a suppositum, and so the humanity of Christ must be personated either in the person of the Word or in a separate person. Rather than simply refuting the argument, however, Cajetan adds that the relation of part-to-whole need not be viewed as one of two stark options. Scotus, he thinks, would have his readers believe that a part is either distinct unto itself with its own esse (unnecessary) or absorbed into the person of the Word (necessary) as “a part of water is contained in a body of water” or as “food and drink are consumed by someone eating.”60 Rather, Cajetan returns to Thomas’s analogy of the accrued eye.The new eye cannot add esse to the person of Socrates because (1) it inheres in Socrates and gains esse from his suppositum (which is the receptacle of his esse) and (2) the person of Socrates belongs to an intelligent and immaterial genus which cannot admit any material esse which an eye could communicate. Cajetan adds that the accrued eye must be regarded like a congenital eye, which has its own distinctive relation to esse (a quo est relation) but nevertheless does not add more esse to Socrates’s suppositum. On this account, the humanity of Christ is a congenital part 59 The larger context of the argument runs as follows; Cajetan writes: “Scoti dici- tur quod verbum Philosophi verum est de vivere essentiali et de esse essentiali: vivere enim est esse essentiale. Et hoc in Christo duplex fuit. Et unum eorum, quod in coniunctione animae et corporis consistit, corruptum est per mortem. Et non intelligitur de esse actualis existentiae” (Commentaria, section 17, ad 2). 60 Cajetan writes:“Ubi adverte, pro clariori intellectu, quod non est imaginandum, ut isti putant, quod additio partis ad personam sit velut additio quanti ad quantum: sive per modum continuationis, puta cum aqua aquae continuatur, ubi ex duabus quantitatibus partialibus fit una totalis quantitas partialiter inhaerens partibus totius aquae; sive per modum aggenerationis, puta cum alimentum auget hominem qui alitur ex illo, ubi non remanet quantitas cibi potusque alentis, sed sic adiungitur alito ut subinduat quantitatem ipsius qui alitur, extendente illam anima, ut in II de Anima dicitur” (Commentaria, section 19). N&V_win10 .qxp 80 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 80 Shawn Colberg that remains distinct because Christ exists “by” the human nature but not “on account of ” the human nature. In this way Cajetan redeploys the accrued eye to maintain the tension that Christ’s humanity has as a “necessary yet unnecessary” status as a part to the whole.61 Two important features deserve note in Cajetan’s responses to the objections against Aquinas’s argument. He believes that Thomas’s single esse teaching is protected from the kinds of attacks rendered especially by Scotus and Durandus by following two basic commitments. Cajetan explains: Attend diligently and cautiously, o novice, that that decision depends on two common questions.The one is: whether existence and esse are really distinguished.The other is: whether substantial existence is of person as the proper receptacle or whether it is commonly of person or nature. For [Thomas’s] teaching presupposes both that esse is another thing from essence and that esse is owed to person as [its] proper subject.62 Cajetan’s rebuttals can be largely reduced to these two commitments. While this may in fact seem rather limited or unimaginative, these same premises come under scrutiny with each objection and so demand nuanced defenses. Moreover, Cajetan demonstrates his awareness of potential heresy and the importance of one esse for understanding Christ’s human actions (such as his nativity or passion). Of note is that neither Scotus, in these objections, nor Cajetan in his answers deals with the concept of accidental esse except to note its difference from personal esse. The lack of discussion about this concept is telling; Cajetan never imagines that Thomas speaks of the union of a human nature to the divine as accidental, and so accidental esse has no bearing on Thomas’s position. It should be inferred that, in Cajetan’s mind, the part-whole analogy has no connection with the relation of accidents to a subject.63 61 Cajetan explains:“Et quia idem est iudicium de oculo adveniente de novo et oculo congenito, et de hac et reliquis partibus, ideo humanitas Christi, quae quasi pars quaedam est personae Verbi, quia ad personalitatem propriam Verbi: assumpta est, invenitur sufficienter posita extra causam suam existens absque propria existentia, et absque hoc quod actuetur per informationem inhaesivam ab existentia Verbi: sibi enim non debetur existentia nisi per personam cuius est” (Commentaria, section 19). 62 “Attende diligenter et caute, Novitie, quod ista decisio pendet ex duabus quaestionibus communibus. Altera est: An existentia et essentia distinguantur realiter. Altera:An existentia substantialis sit personae ut proprii susceptivi, an communiter sit personae vel naturae. Praesupponit enim doctrina ista et esse aliam rem esse ab essentia: et esse deberi personae ut proprio subjecto” (Commentaria, section 22). 63 The question of accidental esse, while acknowledged by Cajetan in section 3, does not play a significant role. In the modern context, Cross has suggested that accidental esse resolves the most “theologically damaging” problems associated with Thomas’s single-esse view (“Aquinas,” 202). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 81 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 81 Cajetan on De unione During his commentary on ST III, q. 17, Cajetan notably decides to introduce a problem found in another text; his intentional discussion of De unione signals its importance to the debate on Christ’s single esse. Addressing article 4 of the disputed question, Cajetan illustrates that the admission of an aliud esse could be regarded either as an insight or a mistake. As an insight, Cajetan argues that Thomas also affirms a second esse in ST III, q. 17, a. 2, ad 1. He writes: “In the response to the first [objection] a duality of esse is not totally negated, but with the comparative magis it is said that esse magis retinet unitatem secundum unitatem hypostasis, quam habeat dualitatem secundum dualitatem naturae. In which words a duality of esse is indeed less affirmed, but it is not totally negated. . . .”64 Cajetan here seems to hold that, even in the Summa theologiae, Thomas posits a view of dual esse in Christ.This dual esse, however, boils down to the distinction between quo est and quod est ; specifically, esse can be considered in a dual manner insofar as it relates to the two natures whereby it exists. This is a necessary flexibility that stems from affirming that a nature gives a thing its quiddity or that it is related to esse quo est. As a positive insight, then, Cajetan allows the possibility that De unione (and also ST III, q. 17, a. 2, ad 1 and ad 3) can be taken as speaking to the way in which Christ’s natures relate to his esse, as quo est. This view not only makes use of Thomas’s own quod est versus quo est distinction; it also fits with the restrictions laid down about the esse secundarium. This position also relieves potential tension between the Summa theologiae and De unione and suggests that they may be read in tandem as supporting Christ’s single-esse in principle. Here one sees Cajetan receiving Thomas and laboring to illustrate consistency within his corpus. If a reader refuses to interpret Thomas’s position in this more supple and generous manner and insists that he posits of Christ’s humanity a second esse quod est, then De unione should be abandoned as misleading. The esse secundarium can never be taken as implying personal or substantial esse ; it also cannot be understood as accidental inasmuch as the union of natures in the Word is not accidental (contra the habitus opinion). If 64 “In responsione quoque ad primum, non negatur totaliter dualitas esse: sed cum comparativo magis dicitur quod esse magis retinet unitatem secundum unitatem hypostasis, quam habeat dualitatem secundum dualitatem naturae. In quibus verbis dualitas esse minus quidem affirmatur, non autem negatur totaliter . . .” (Commentaria, section 4). One should note the infelicitous translation by the English Dominicans which ignores this comparative (magis/quam ) cited by Cajetan. He goes on to add that the response to the third objection “also insinuates” the possibility of a duality of esse ; see section 4. N&V_win10 .qxp 82 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 82 Shawn Colberg someone persists in positing another personal esse based on this text, Cajetan recommends this response: It is said that that opinion posited in the Question De unione Verbi needs to be considered as retracted, unless somebody is such a fool believing that the doctrine laid out in this last book [ST III, q. 17, a. 2], and also proven earlier in the authentic books, namely in III Sent., dist.VI, q. II, and in Quodlib. IX, q. II, has to be reduced to the little question hardly known among the works of the Author and composed much earlier.65 He argues that if one cannot see a way of harmonizing the De unione text, as he outlined above, then it cannot be regarded as authoritative against the weight of Thomas’s other writings on this issue. Recent biographers have proven Cajetan’s dating of De unione incorrect; he regards the opinion as written when Thomas was still young and had not yet reached his mature view of a single esse in Christ. Cajetan’s interpretive judgment nevertheless remains the same irregardless of the work’s date. The importance of Cajetan’s defense is two-fold. First, he regards the opinion as potentially consonant with the rest of Thomas’s writings if one but grasp the quo est versus quod est distinction. Second, if it remains subject to misinterpretation it does not contribute enough new information to merit defense and retention.66 Cajetan’s Oratio de unione Verbi Cajetan’s commentary on ST III, q. 17, a. 2 provides a spirited and metaphysical defense of Thomas’s single esse position. Further, he indicates at least implicitly that these arguments have larger theological consequences. The affirmation of one personal esse in Christ, as well as the rejection of any language of accidental union, clearly mediates against the first and third opinions of the Lombard. He moreover recognizes in the cited objections that Scotus and others see inchoate Eutychianism in Thomas’s single esse 65 “Dicitur quod opinio illa, posita in Quaestione illa de Unione Verbi, ut retractata censenda est: nisi quis adeo desipiat ut putet doctrinam in hoc ultimo libro traditam, et in authenticis libris etiam prius probatam, scilicet in III Sent., dist.VI, q. II, et in Quodlib. IX, q. II, reducendam esse ad quaestiunculam vix cognitam inter opera Auctoris, et longe ante factam” (Commentaria, section 6). 66 This question of how to handle De unione persists among modern Thomists with Torrell leaving its interpretation open (Saint Thomas, vol. 1, 201–6) while others insist that it is irredeemable. Here one should see J. L.A.West’s essay “Aquinas on the Metaphysics of Esse in Christ,” The Thomist 66 (2002): 231–50. The author regards De unione as positing two esse and therefore admits:“Accordingly, I think we must conclude that the two-esse doctrine of the De unione is a theological and philosophical aberration” (237). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 83 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 83 Christology to the point that it is difficult to exposit events such as Jesus’ birth and death.67 Cardinal Cajetan was not, however, blind to the great theological and pastoral consequences of a single esse and union in the suppositum of the Word. While serving as the Dominican procurator in Rome (1501–1507), Cajetan was invited to preach before the papal court on at least five occasions during Advent and Lent, and for one of his Advent sermons, the Oratio de unione Verbi cum natura humana, Cajetan drew upon his Thomistic heritage and exposited the wonder, salvific nature, and dignity of Christ’s Incarnation. The sermon survives, unedited, in early modern editions of Cajetan’s opuscula. The sermon’s value for the present study is most obviously found in its subject of the Incarnation, yet it also provides a rare glimpse into Cajetan’s pastoral concern and practical work as a preacher called to teach and exhort even the papal household. Cajetan’s sermon combines theological precision with commitment to rhetorical exhortation. Unwilling to pass over the challenge to understand the mode of the Incarnation, Cajetan admits that theologians must strive to penetrate the mystery that he “who was God in the beginning was made flesh so that the Church stands ready to give answer for that which it believes.”68 The most common ways of parsing this mystery, he says, are to understand the union as either in person or in nature, and if it is understood in the person, then as a union of substance or accidents. Significant consequences stem from these choices, and the early lines of the oration attest to the need for theological caution and perspicacity. He says: For if that conjunction of God and man is of substance, either divinity will be the form of humanity, or just as Apollinarius dreamed, a third kind of nature will be conflated from a commingling of both. But if it is affirmed as being an accidental [union], either by saying that the Word lives in that man, as in a temple, or that it is connected [to it] as to a garment (as if two hypostases compounded in the same person), then the Nestorian impiety has to be conceded, which was long ago expelled by the Fathers from the borders of the Church.69 67 Here one can note, in the least, objections 1 through 4 in the Commentaria, section 17. 68 He writes:“An fortem satis erit nobis pertransire crassa (ut aiunt) Minerva; et ruditer arbitrari talem fuisse illam unionem, qualem Deus voluit, aut qualem Ecclesia credit. Sed si haec fides sufficit, vana est admonitio principis Apostolorum, qua nos paratos esse iubet de ea, quae apud nos est inconvulsa fide, omni posceti nos rationed reddere.” Tommaso de Vio Cajetanus, Oratio de Unione Verbi cum Natura Humana, 184a 24–30, in Opuscula Omnia Thomae de Vio Cajetani (Lyon: 1581), 183–85. 69 “Etenim si substantialis est ipsa Dei hominisque coniuncto, aut divinitas erit humanitatis forma, et perinde, ut Apollinaris somniavit, tertia quaedam natura ex utriusque commixtione conflata est. Si vero accidentalis affirmatur, sive divinum N&V_win10 .qxp 84 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 84 Shawn Colberg Any failure to properly understand the manner of union threatens Christology on one side with Apollinarianism (which seems much like monophysitism in this account) and on the other with Nestorianism. To properly sail these straits, Cajetan suggests that neither a union of two substances into one nor an accidental union of natures can be affirmed in the divine suppositum. Here, then, the papal court finds its preacher striving to define the proper way that the human nature is joined to the divine Word. Cajetan stresses over and over again that the union should be seen through the model of a conjoined instrument so that, as Damascene and Thomas stress, Christ’s humanity is an organ of his divinity.70 Ultimately, Cajetan uses the vivid image of a sixth digit to illustrate the union between the humanity of Christ—as congenital and conjoined— and the Word. He writes: “And it does not interfere with us [our argument], that the connected organs seem to be part of the completeness of [a person].This indeed ought not to be true always, as can be proved by the example of a sixth finger, which—by whatever reason—was born simultaneously. It is not part of the integrity of the person of the human species, but nevertheless it is a connected organ of the human person who has it.”71 Just as Thomas and Cajetan take up the example of an accrued eye as something which belongs to the integrity of the whole person, but as non-essential, so a sixth finger signifies the way in which the human nature is conjoined to the divine as if it were congenital.This congenital nature, however, is simultaneously unnecessary, and so God can be praised for God’s utter gratuity in assuming it. Cajetan does not leave his technical definitions and concepts to stand on their own in his sermon; on the contrary, in a show of rhetorical force, he extols the great dignity which the Incarnation confers on humankind dicamus Verbum habitare in illo homine, veluti in templo, sive ut indumento connexum (quemadmodum duas hypostates in eandem personam componentes) concedere oportet Nestoriam impietatem a finibus Ecclesiae iampridem a Patribus explosam ultro revocaremus” (Oratio, 184a 14–22). 70 Cajetan does not cite either Thomas or Damascene, but his use of “conjoined instrument” and organum is frequent. For instance, after discussing an example of an accrued eye, Cajetan remarks: “Quocirca modus quidam relinquitur, quo personalis aliqua coniunctio definiri potest, nulla se vel partium, vel accidentium natura commmiscente, quoniam organum implicitum asseveravimus cuipiam tributum esse personae, atque hoc nimirum pacto nostram naturam Dei verbo unitam citra omnem dubitatione confitemur” (Oratio, 184 78a–1b). 71 “Nec officit quicquam nobis, quod coniuncta organa ad integritatem naturae eius, cuius sunt, spectare videantur, non enim oportet id continuem verum esse, ut sexti digiti quacunque ex causa cogeniti exemplo probari potest. Is enim de speciei humane integritate non est, et tamen organum connexum est hominis habentis illum” (Oratio, 184b 48–53). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 85 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 85 through its particular union. He refers to the assumption of human nature to the Word as a “great sacrament” by which Christ as a second Adam comes as a bridegroom to his people.72 This wonderful marriage is the source of salvation for the Church and her members, and in view of this, the Incarnation is a reminder of the great dignity which God has given to all human beings. This gift and human dignity should move believers to practice holy living as befits their status. Cajetan thus says to Alexander VI and his court: “Acknowledge, therefore, your dignity, you whoever who deem yourself a Christian; and you who have been made a participant of the divine nature do not return to old worthlessness by living ignobly. Remember of whose head and body you are a member!”73 The Incarnation has made it possible for human beings to become members of Christ’s body with him as their head, and in view of this gift no one ought to return to the practices of an old and degenerate life. Indeed, in Cajetan’s oration the reader sees the Thomist doctrine of the Incarnation—including the necessity of Christ’s single esse (hence the sixth digit analogy)—serve a multiplicity of ends. For example, the language of dignity illustrates a positive theological anthropology not in view of human nature itself, but in view of its new status through God’s condescension and activity as incarnate. Also, the language of membership in Christ’s body and a new way of life demonstrate the ecclesiological and moral implications of the Incarnation. Christians ought to remember their dignity, gained through participation in divine life, and respond with the appropriate moral life that befits the state begun for them in the Incarnation.The technical understanding of the Incarnation, which is found in his commentary, can be said to inform his larger view of the economy of salvation and the theological milieu of his own day.74 72 Cajetan states: “Hoc est magnum illud atque apostolicum sacramentum: quo secundus Adam tamquam sponsus procedens patrem relinquit matrem, quando forma suscepta servili splendorem maiestatis obtexit, et synagoga dimissa novae sponsae inhaesit, factique sunt duo, Deus inquam et homo, in carne una” (Oratio, 184b 70–73). 73 “Agnosce ergo quisquis Christianae professionis censeris dignitatem tuam et divinae iam consors factus naturae noli in veteram vilitatem degeneri conversatione redire. Memento cuius capitis corporisque membrum sis” (Oratio, 185a 5–9). In his essay on this and other orations by Cajetan, Jared Wicks, S.J., describes this passage reminding those who hear it of their noblesse oblige.Wicks argues that Cajetan uses his Thomist understanding of the Incarnation as a union of natures in the divine Person as an opportunity to exhort his listeners to remember their dignity. See Wicks, “Thomism Between the Renaissance and Reformation: The Case of Cajetan,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 68 (1977): 9–31, at 19–20. 74 While these court sermons are indeed earlier than his commentary on the tertia pars, Cajetan’s encounter with Thomist theology is evident enough by his time at N&V_win10 .qxp 86 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 86 Shawn Colberg Here, then, one can at least argue that, like Thomas, Cajetan’s metaphysical views of the Incarnation can and should be scrutinized within the larger context of his theological commitments and vision. Conclusion: Metaphysical and Theological Continuity The preceding exposition of Thomas and Cajetan on Christ’s esse underscores several important insights. Foremost is that both authors support a single-esse Christology.This is clear from their insistence on one personal esse for a suppositum and one suppositum in Christ. Moreover, their common affirmation (1) of the distinction between essence and existence and (2) that both “person” and “nature” relate to esse as quod est and quo est respectively demonstrates the way in which Christ’s existence relates to both his suppositum and his two natures. With this teaching in place, neither author is inconsistent to suggest an esse secundarium that pertains to the quo est of Christ’s humanity, and in that sense,Thomas’s De unione can be read harmoniously with his other texts. Cajetan’s emphasis on the suppositum as the primary receptacle of esse also proves useful in a defense against predicating esse directly of natures as critics seem wont to do.The teaching of single-esse, taken on its own, can therefore be regarded as consistent and coherent in Thomas’s Summa theologiae and other writings as well as in Cajetan’s commentary. This essay has argued, however, that the single-esse doctrine not be taken on its own. This drains the teaching of its real force and does an injustice to both Thomas and Cajetan. For Thomas, single-esse mediates against incursions of homo assumptus and habitus opinions inasmuch as it excludes two subjects and accidental union. Moreover, the necessaryunnecessary tension of the accrued eye attempts to underscore simultaneously the congenital and gratuitous nature of the Incarnation; that is, Christ’s humanity really belongs to the suppositum as a constitutive part yet it is not necessary, and so God in God’s love can deign to assume it to God’s self as an integral part of the whole. Finally, that Christ’s humanity is personated by divine esse itself perfects the humanity and makes Christ a human exemplar in every possible way.This perfection of Christ’s human nature signifies the way in which God will sanctify human beings through God’s grace.These realities are not lost on Cajetan. He too sees the papal court that such comparisons are possible and apt. Indeed,Wicks explains the relation of his Thomist training to these sermons thus:“These sixteen printed columns of oratory based on the Gospel passages of these Sundays show us, instructively, I believe, how Renaissance themes could flow into the Thomist framework of ordered creation, total divine providence, the Incarnation, and man’s supernatural gifts” (“Thomism,” 15). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 87 Aquinas and Cajetan on Christ’s Esse 87 the conceptual teaching of single-esse give way to the adoption of humankind through the Incarnation. Human beings have been made “participants” in the divine nature by Christ’s humanity possessing divine esse, and this participation ought to give way to a life where Christians imitate their savior, seeking eternal life as the summit of their existence and the purpose of the Incarnation. When Cajetan comments that Thomas’s doctrine hinges on (1) the distinction between essence and existence and (2) the suppositum as the first receptacle of esse, he provides a useful guideline for modern lines of defense for Christ’s single esse. Additionally, both Thomas and Cajetan have suggested that accidental esse only complicates the mode of union inasmuch as it destroys the “congenital” aspect of Christ’s human nature while only providing it with accidental existence in return.This kind of esse makes it more difficult to discuss the union of natures hypostatically, and therefore contributes little “explanatory” help to the mode of union affirmed as dogma.Thomas and Cajetan are thus wise to view accidental esse as problematic and worth discarding. In these preceding ways, then, the two theologians provide their followers with consistent and defensible responses to their critics. In the case of Cross, for instance, it has been noted that his critique targets Thomas’s part-whole analogy by arguing that the human nature must either be necessary (having no esse and being absorbed into the divine nature) or non-necessary (in which case it has its own esse and possibly its own suppositum).To avoid this last problem of two subjects, Cross recommends assigning accidental esse to human nature.75 As a critique against the essence-existence distinction which recommends accidental esse to avoid Nestorianism, Cajetan outlines the appropriate response to the critique by reasserting the suppositum as the primary locus of esse, and Thomas explains the danger of the accidentalesse solution.These kinds of modern objections, like their historical predecessors, should be welcomed by readers of Thomas. They ultimately locate the single-esse teaching at the nexus of theological commitments in Thomas’s thought. Indeed they underscore that the hypostatic union, Christ’s human life as exemplary, and his sanctifying activity in the econN&V omy all find their footing in Christ’s single and divine esse. 75 Cross writes: “If Aquinas had seen his way to these two conclusions, he could have made a straightforward claim that the human nature could be accidental to the Son of God—and thus have contributed new accidental esse to the Son of God. This would have enabled him to avoid all sorts of theologically damaging claims about the unity of esse in Christ” (“Aquinas,” 202). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 88 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 89 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 89–106 89 Thomas Aquinas on Progress and Regress in the Spiritual Life B ASIL C OLE , O.P. Pontifical Faculty of the Dominican House of Studies Washington, DC Introduction: A “Spiritual” Theology The Problem of Spiritual Stagnation M OST RETREAT masters and parish missionaries know that it is very easy to bring back to confession people who have slipped away from the faith for many years and very difficult to motivate good people to become better. There is a very challenging sentence in Cardinal Newman’s writings that needs commentary: “What then is it that we who profess religion lack? I repeat it, this: a willingness to be changed, a willingness to suffer (if I may use such a word), to suffer Almighty God to change us. We do not like to let go our old selves.”1 If Newman is correct, what does it mean to let God change us, and why do most of us not like to change? St.Thomas speaks to the same issue more laconically, and with warning or a challenge, when he observes,“To stay at one’s level is to go backwards.”2 For Aquinas, each act of charity or the moral virtues is supposed to become more intense because it is the nature of a “habitus” to expand. Hence he uses the terminology “remiss acts” to describe acts of virtue that merit an increase of grace but not immediately when not done with their full actuality.3 This does not lead one to venial sin by necessity, but it may make it more difficult to live by the inspirations of the Holy Spirit or the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. 1 John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. 5 (London: Longmans, Green and Co.), 241. 2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae II–II, q. 24, a. 6, ad 3. 3 ST I–II, q. 52, a. 3; I–II, q. 114, a. 8, ad 3; II–II, q. 24, a. 6. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 90 Basil Cole, O.P. 90 Newman and Aquinas require us to lean upon God. Consider the scriptural account of Jesus sleeping in the boat while a squall emerges on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples are panicky because it appears that the boat is going to sink. At a certain point, they awaken the Lord. It seems strange, in a boat bouncing up and down on waves, that anyone could sleep at all! Since it seems unlikely that one could sleep on the sea during a heavy storm, what does Jesus teach us by his sleeping during the storm? A Trial of Faith Jesus asks his disciples to take the boat to the opposite shore during the night, a time that most sailors normally would not want to sail because of the darkness and the difficulty of finding port. Nevertheless, they set sail. Here the Scriptures provide a symbol of what happens when Jesus calls us at times in life to transcend self and abandon self-will by giving up our control in order to lean more upon him. More importantly, however, in these instances, the Christian person is often called to a new mission within the vocation already in place. The instant this is known only compounds the problem—for he is forced to grapple with the unknown.Will the new task or situation spell success or failure, as if these were the only criteria to discern God’s will? The Need for Spiritual Theology and St.Thomas’s Contribution Before reflecting on some special insights that can enhance or dethrone the spiritual life according to St. Thomas Aquinas, it is important to be clear about the nature of spiritual theology. Jordan Aumann, O.P., of happy memory, called it, when he taught at the Angelicum, the “cream of theology” because it must take its conclusions from all areas of theology and the experience of the saints.4 It is both a speculative and practical science and not “theology lite.” Spirituality concerns itself with the doctrines surrounding the Trinity, because in practice growing in the life of the Spirit means getting to know each person of the Trinity since they dwell in the soul of someone in the state of grace. Likewise, spiritual theology must concern itself with incarnational, Marian, and sacramental doctrines as well since the dogmas must be known, loved, and lived, as the Catechism (§89) reminds us. Ignorance of these doctrines often leads to a sentimental love of neighbor and God himself. 4 Jordan Aumann, O.P., Spiritual Theology (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1980), preface and chap. 1. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 91 Aquinas on the Spiritual Life 91 Origin of the Word “Spirituality” The word “spirituality” comes from the life of the spirit that is in every person re-created by sanctifying grace. Actual grace from the Holy Spirit prompts us to dynamically grow into a whole life of virtue based upon the infused theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity together with the cardinal virtues. The precepts of God, the theological and moral virtues, together with seven sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit as well, become actualized with our consent to actual graces, given in particular circumstances. Did St. Thomas Have a Spiritual Theology? St.Thomas Aquinas was often thought to have mainly given to the Church an understanding of dogmas and morals using the light of reason. However, contemporary Thomists now agree as a result of the work of Servais Pinckaers, O.P. and Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P. that he also weaved into his writings a spiritual doctrine, even though it is now a branch of theology. Thomas gives many insights into the praxis of growing or declining in grace and virtue, not only for the beginner but also for those who want to progress in their relationship with God.The following quotation from the Summa is an excellent example of his spiritual theology for any student working at understanding the faith by the light of reason: The soul is made like to God by grace. Hence for a divine person to be sent to anyone by grace, there must needs be a likening of the holy soul to the divine person who is sent, by some gift of grace. Because the Holy Spirit is Love, the soul is assimilated to the Holy Spirit by the gift of charity: hence the mission of the Holy Spirit is according to the gift of charity. But the Son is the Word, not any sort of word, but one who breathes forth Love. . . . Thus the Son is sent not in accordance with every and any kind of intellectual perfection, but according to the intellectual formation or illumination which breaks forth into the affection of love. . . .5 So, the sign of true insight into revelation is indicated by how much charity is given and grows in the soul of the professional or a student of theology. St.Thomas Aquinas at first seems boring to those not familiar with his terminology. Looking at the questions he poses, his answers seem fraught with abstractions with an over-emphasis of the reasoning process. However, contemporary Thomists more clearly understand that this is a distortion. Due in large part to the theological writings of Pinckaers and Torrell, contemporary Thomists recognize that Thomas also wove into his writings on dogma and morals both a speculative and practical spiritual 5 ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2. N&V_win10 .qxp 92 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 92 Basil Cole, O.P. doctrine.Thomas gives many outstanding insights into the practicalities of how to grow or not to grow in grace and virtue. In his monumental work The Sources of Christian Theology, Servais Pinckaers indicates in chapter 15 how freedom for excellence underpins Aquinas’s spiritual theology of virtue. Pinckaers uses the example of the three stages of human life (childhood, adolescence, and adulthood) to highlight Thomas’s teaching on the three stages of the spiritual life, that is, beginners, progressives, and the perfect. One can also find in the last chapter of The Pinckaers Reader a small treatise on the role of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and their importance for growing in heroic virtue.6 In his masterpiece Saint Thomas Aquinas, Torrell sums up the spiritual teaching of “The Master of Aquino,” as he calls him, in the following way: “(I)t is a Trinitarian spirituality, a spirituality of deification, an objective spirituality, a realist spirituality, a spirituality of human flourishing and a spirituality of communion.”7 St. Thomas Aquinas on the Spiritual Life Problems Causing the Stagnation of the Spiritual Life In the remainder of this essay, I hope to show some very important solutions of St.Thomas to spiritual problems which emerge during one’s spiritual journey. I will present Aquinas’s spiritual teaching in the following order: the degrees of perfection; the role of loving perfection itself; the role of vainglory as it enters into doing great works for the wrong reasons; following the pertinent counsels of Christ at the right time and circumstances for growth in perfection; and finally and most importantly, and quite unknown to many virtue theorists, the importance of the readiness of the will and mind to do certain virtuous deeds of a difficult character. The Degrees of Charity St. Thomas Aquinas, following many of the Fathers of the Church, instructs us that the life of the spirit has three stages in this life, one for beginners, another for those progressing in virtue, and, finally, another for the perfect in virtue. The theological virtue of charity has no golden mean between two opposite vices because God can be loved without limit.That is, one can never claim to have finished loving God in this life. 6 Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Pinckaers Reader: Renewing Thomistic Moral Theology, ed. John Berkman and Craig Steven Titus (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 385–95. 7 Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 371–76. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 93 Aquinas on the Spiritual Life 93 It is always possible to advance deeper or more intensely in a love union by grace while in this life.Thomas makes a very fine case that grace does not depend upon natural talents, but upon the generosity of God, who can give more grace to one than another for reasons not fully known to us (Mary being the exception for he prepared her without her cooperation, which enabled her to become worthy of the Son of God’s presence in her womb as a man): Part of the reason for this diversity [of grace] lies in the individual who prepares himself for grace; someone who prepares himself more for grace receives it more abundantly. But the primary reason for this diversity cannot be found here, since preparation for grace is only man’s doing in so far as his free choice is moved by God. Hence the primary reason for this diversity lies in God himself, who dispenses the gifts of his grace diversely, in order that the beauty and perfection of the Church should emerge from the array of these different degrees; so too he established different degrees among created things so that the universe might be perfect.8 With his help, we can prepare for these graces; however, he is the primary cause of even the preparation. One might rightly recognize that much of the preparation does not seem to be a preparation at the time, but only in retrospect. Further, the depth or degree of at least initial grace if not subsequent graces, especially in one who has fallen from grace by mortal sin, is totally dependent upon God’s choice.This is certainly the case for beginners, and for those who have resisted actual graces in the past. Moreover, God can overwhelm grave but repentant sinners with deeper graces than they may have originally possessed, which in turn urges them on to the life of growing in perfection and mission. Experience in the pastoral field indicates that last minute re-conversions are possible because one’s past sins do not hinder the strength of God’s grace with a person’s consent to take them away. However, last minute rejections of final graces remind Christians not to let their relationship with God wax and wane during their lifetime, deliberately assuming that they will ultimately be saved at the end of their lives by receiving the sacraments at that time.This is not only illusion, but also a sin against hope called presumption.9 The Beginning of Conversion to Christ Once someone is justified by grace, the life of following Christ goes through many movements or stages, both backward and forward for most 8 ST I–II, q. 112, a. 4. 9 ST II–II, q. 21, a. 1. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 94 Basil Cole, O.P. 94 people.To continue meeting the challenges of the Christian life, and ultimately death itself, everyone needs the virtue of perseverance.This could seem strange since sanctifying grace would appear to be powerful enough to sustain someone with impeccability since it is a share in God’s own life. Although one could argue that of itself grace can do this, St.Thomas explains quite brilliantly why there is a problem with such thinking, based upon analysis of the will and scrutinizing human experience: Perseverance can be taken in two ways. . . . First as referring to the disposition itself considered as a virtue; in this sense, it needs the gift of habitual grace as do the other virtues infused by God. Secondly, it can be regarded an act of perseverance continuing till death; in this sense, it needs not only habitual grace but also the freely given help of God, who preserves man in good till the end of life. . . . Now since our free will is of itself fickle (vertibile ), and its fickleness is not removed by the habitual grace of our present life, it has not the power even when restored by grace to keep itself immovable in the good, though it has the power to choose the good. For often the choice lies within our power, but not its realization.10 What Is a Beginner for St. Thomas? Those in the beginning stage of spiritual enlightenment are caught up in the problem of the emotions dominating the faculty of reason so that the moral norms, which, when followed produce virtue, are overturned by the will’s consenting to light and grave sin, due in large part to its fickleness. In his Summa, St.Thomas explains: The second way this happens [that is, sin being caused by emotion] involves the object of the will, which is the good perceived by reason. For the perception and estimation of reason is overwhelmed by a strong and unruly imagination and a distorted judgment of the estimative power, as is clearly the case with the madman. For it is clear that the emotions of the sense appetite follow the imagination and the estimative power just as the discrimination of taste is dependent on the condition of the tongue. Thus we see that men who are emotionally aroused are with difficulty distracted from what they are doing. Consequently, the judgment of reason and the act of the will, which would normally follow rational judgment, quite frequently follows the emotions of the sense appetite.11 Sin, grave or light, is the choosing of a good either of the senses (for example, food or money) or the spirit (for example, honor or revenge) 10 ST I–II, q. 137, a. 4. 11 ST I–II, q. 77, a. 1. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 95 Aquinas on the Spiritual Life 95 that is not in accord with reason and faith. This ultimately results in breaking of a major or minor precept of God. Sin is often caused by weakness of will and a corresponding excessive love of self: Properly speaking, the cause of sin is assigned by reason of man’s turning to the perishable good, and from this point of view every sin presupposes an inordinate desire for some temporal good. Man’s inordinate love for a temporal good comes from an inordinate love of himself, for when we love someone we wish him good. Quite clearly, then, it follows that inordinate self-love is the cause of all sin.12 Inordinate self-love then gives rise to unconscious or willful pride (the failure either to accept one’s limitations and/or the rule of God over and for oneself) and/or avarice (the excessive desire for created things).Venial sins are due to lighter matter (small lies) involving the rejection of actual grace to resist these promptings to sin or due to good-will ignorance or diminished voluntariness where grave matter is involved. Moreover, special inspirations prompting one to do generous deeds of supererogation when prudence dictates that they can and should be done even beyond the call of strict duty, are also rejected frequently.These rejections, together with deliberate venial sins rooted in selfishness, dispose one eventually to commit mortal sin.Thomas also calls first movements of sensuality venial sins, but these sins are only analogously so since there is not deliberation.13 Mortal sin has the terrible effect of keeping one from meriting an increase of grace and from pleasing God by neglecting to give him due glory, among other consequences. Growing in supernatural virtue is stopped altogether since charity is no longer motivating moral virtue or the theological virtues of faith and hope.As a result, someone can remain in the beginning stages of the spiritual life for years or for a lifetime. For the many interested in the spiritual life who stay out of mortal sin, lack of progress is usually due to ignorance of the laws of the spiritual life. Further, many Catholics today are not instructed on how to grow in virtue because of a lack of learned priests, deacons, or consecrated persons and educated laity who themselves may not always understand the common-sense ways of the spiritual life. Spiritual guides often overestimate the power of free will or the mere reception of the sacraments and consequently give false guidance. The people who rely on these guides become bogged down in the emotions that dominate their lives. 12 Ibid. 13 See ST I–II, q. 89, aa. 3 and 5; II–II, q. 36, a. 3. See also De veritate, q. 26, a. 6, ad 17, where Thomas says that first movements do not possess the complete nature of sin. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 96 Basil Cole, O.P. 96 They are thus disposed to overturn or ignore the principles of the natural law or supernatural law either deliberately or in ignorance. It is clear and evident that those who know the teaching of the Church are poignantly aware that one cannot become either morally good or holy without the help of Jesus Christ. The way to that help of Christ is through the sacraments, prayer to the indwelling of the Trinity and Blessed Sacrament, prayer to the saints, especially to Mary, Joseph, and the angels, contemplation, and fidelity to the responsibilities of one’s state of life—for the glory of God, not one’s own glory. To seek to progress in grace and virtue relying on oneself alone is the practical heresy of Pelagianism. The only “self-made” persons in the next life are those in the hell of the damned who chose to live life “their way,” without a dependency upon Christ and his holy Church. Growing Up in the Spiritual Life to the Progressive Stage Regardless of the difficulties of growing out of the beginner’s stage of the spiritual life, progress is possible and potentially easier than one would think, if one frequents confession and Mass, prays regularly, and does daily meditation (also called mental or contemplative prayer). Growth in the theological virtues occurs in proportion to receiving the sacraments, praying, and doing or surrendering to God’s manifest will. Growth in the moral virtues occurs by applying the theological virtues to one’s daily life, for living the commandments is meant to be faith actions and not merely human acts producing only human or natural virtues.Thomas also warns us that all persons, both religious and laity, are obliged to do whatever good they can, for it is said to all, Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly (Ecclesiastes 9:10).Yet there is a way of fulfilling this precept and avoiding sin, namely, if one does all he can according to the demands of his state of life, as long as there is no contempt of doing better, for this would set the mind against spiritual progress.14 If one refuses to make spiritual progress,Aquinas further warns his readers: One is not permitted to put limits to charity such that one deliberately refuses to advance in charity when prudence dictates you can easily do such and such but you refuse.15 St.Thomas notes that as the believer grows in moral virtue, a personal self-identity emerges. Per accidens, however, this love of self can become 14 ST II–II, q. 186, a. 2, ad 2. 15 ST II–II, q. 184, a. 3. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 97 Aquinas on the Spiritual Life 97 somewhat excessive.Thomas assures us that it is reasonable to love oneself, for the great commandment is to love neighbor as one’s self. Yet when vigilant prudence does not govern the person, it is natural to feel somewhat fulfilled and so become inflated with one’s abilities, and to rest, if not rely, in and on one’s self.A strong faith will prevent one from judging that one’s excellence or gifts are due to oneself rather than the grace of God. A strong sense of one’s self-worth and identity may not always be easily moderated, however, because one’s personhood becomes so strengthened by virtuous activity that anyone can at least unconsciously exaggerate or bask in one’s self-worth. Often many personal trials permitted by God are meant to cure one of such egoism. Becoming Self-Satisfied or Self-Dissatisfied? It is at the stage of advancing to a higher degree of charity that difficulties emerge and that resistance grows.This is due in part to the fact that one is accustomed to achieving virtue along certain lines and patterns. For the gifts of the Holy Spirit to work within the human person more than in an episodic manner, newer trials are necessary to lay the groundwork for newer inrushes of sanctifying grace.This in turn prepares for a more stable onrush of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.The ground of the soul is readied by trials that can come upon us in many ways: the demands of religious obedience, a major illness, a sense of frustration and failure at particular tasks, even in the wake of a civil divorce for the married person. From the lives of the saints we learn that when they look back at the trials they endured, they are convinced that these crosses were the occasions of new dimensions of grace to their lives, or simply speaking, a deeper conversion. To grow in the spiritual life requires numerous conversions, or turnings, throughout life. At first, these conversions require giving up a life of sin, but eventually they mean giving up the exercise or mode of certain virtues temporarily for doing newer ones. This was the great difficulty experienced by many sisters, brothers, and priestly groups that failed to survive throughout history. Sometimes God demanded that some members cease doing certain heroic deeds and return to a simpler and easier lifestyle to find him, but they refused. Ascetical practices often became ends in themselves to keep up appearances, and not helpful means at certain junctures of one’s personal life or the collective life of a religious community. In a strange and perverse way, many loved the cross more than they loved God, the inverse of loving the consolations of God rather than the God of all consolations! On the other hand, some preferred a simpler or easier lifestyle, as a result of resisting the cross. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 98 Basil Cole, O.P. 98 Other times, there was great delight in doing heroic deeds because it led to creating a great ego or enjoying popularity or vainglory and its outcomes. Still other times, an easier status quo was maintained and the harder climb to perfection was refused.Why these problems? The Desire for Great Works Gone Awry Those who are enthralled with doing great works often find themselves depending more on themselves for excellence, or loving their personal excellence for its own sake. Paradoxically, the problem with possessing one virtue imperfectly, such as chastity, is that once it exists, it consequently strengthens the self-will. But an overly strong self-will can make one less amenable to direction either from higher ecclesiastical authority or from the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. Of course, it does not follow from this that one should sin in order to maintain humility, nor does it follow that doing virtuous deeds is a false road, because good works are necessary for salvation. Rather, the conclusion is that pride can enter all virtues, as St.Augustine reminds us.16 People can seek to become virtuous as a love of their own excellence without reference to seeking the glory of God. In this case, virtue is then primarily sought for one’s personal fulfillment alone. Personal happiness or fulfillment is not per se evil, but it is not the ultimate end of the spiritual life. Rather, personal fulfillment is subordinate to the search for the glory of God.“Not to us, O Lord, but to your name give the glory” is not quite the theme song of this personality desiring personal honor and glory. How often in the confessional are people upset because they do not seem to be patient; as if they could be patient without the help of God’s grace. Preparatio Animi Another very important theme in St. Thomas Aquinas for growing in virtue concerns the idea that one must develop what he calls a “preparation of mind and heart.”17 An example of Thomas’s notion of preparation is seen in his discussion of Jesus’ correction of the Scribes’ and Pharisees’ ideas of justice: For they believed that the desire for revenge was licit because of the precept about retaliatory penalties. Now this precept was made so that justice might be preserved, not that man should seek revenge. And so to exclude this, the Lord teaches that man’s mind ought to be prepared even to endure much if necessary. Thomas next refers to another counsel when he says: 16 Rule of St. Augustine, chap. 1, §7. 17 ST I–II, q. 108, a. 3, ad 2. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 99 Aquinas on the Spiritual Life 99 They supposed that the motion of greed was licit because of the judicial precepts which laid it down that restitution for something taken away was to be made together with something extra. . . . The law did in fact lay this down so that justice might be observed, not to leave room for greed. And so the Lord teaches that we are not to act out of our greed to seek a return, but be ready if need be to give more. Aquinas concludes with reference to another error of the Scribes and Pharisees: They believed that the motion of hatred was licit because of the precept concerning the slaughter of enemies. The Law did in fact prescribe this so that justice might be fulfilled . . . , not that hatred might be sated. And so the Lord teaches us to have love for our enemies, and to be ready in case of need to do good to them. For these precepts are to be understood as a matter of inward readiness, as Augustine shows. As we can easily see, these precepts of being ready to do certain deeds are similar to other precepts forbidding lust or murder; however, positive precepts do not always oblige or bind. The actual performance of the latter will depend on particular circumstances, requiring discernment from the virtue of prudence. Following the Counsels Here and Now and Growth in Perfection From another section in the Summa, Thomas shows that this “inward readiness of mind,” when exercised out of generosity and not from obligation, can lead to greater perfection: What the Lord says in Matthew 5 and Luke 6 about true love for enemies and the like is necessary for salvation, if it is taken to refer to inward readiness of mind; in the sense that one would be ready to do good to enemies and so on when necessity demands. And so these matters are put among precepts. But that someone should readily put this into effect to enemies, when no special necessity arises, belongs to the particular counsels. . . . The sayings in Matthew 10 and Luke 9 and 10 were disciplinary precepts meant for that time, or concessions. . . . And so they are not meant to be taken as counsels.18 In the body of the same article, Thomas teaches that counsels are concerned with “better and more expeditious ways by which man can 18 ST I–II, q.108, a. 4, ad 4. What is Thomas referring to? The other counsels of Jesus found in Matthew 10 and Luke 9 and 10 were time-conditioned for those disciples who were sent on a particular mission such as not taking certain items with them or greeting people in a certain manner. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 100 Basil Cole, O.P. 100 reach this end” (eternal blessedness). So, if a person brings some benefit to an enemy when necessity does not oblige, or forgives an injury without asking for a recompense, these acts are of the counsel and when accomplished are the occasions of great grace. Enduring Violence What about the counsel of turning the other cheek? When and how does it apply in the spiritual life? Using the wisdom of St.Thomas we discover what this counsel really means: Patience is as necessary in respect of what is said against us as in respect of what is done against us, and we have to bear the precepts of patience in mind in the sense of being ready to put them into practice, as Augustine explains apropos of the saying of the Lord, But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. He says that man should be ready to do this if and as the occasion arises without needing to go about doing this all the time, since even the Lord did not do this; what John reports is that when he was struck he asked, Why do you strike me? And we have to apply the same principle to defamatory words uttered against us, for we have to be ready to endure defamatory remarks when that seems the fitting thing to do.19 We can notice that turning the other cheek is not a moral absolute, nor is one to become a doormat for people’s insults. At times, answering someone back when he is not disposed to listen does no good. Also, returning an insult can get someone killed as happened in the era of Nazi war camps. Like all other virtues, one needs prudence in order to discern when to retaliate or remain silent. Readiness of Mind and Heart When Undermined Beginning with the secunda secundae in the Summa theologiae, Thomas further develops the notion of “readiness of soul.”This is first found in a negative way in the example of the heretic who chooses to disbelieve an article of the faith. Because of this, he is then prepared in mind to disbelieve all the other articles because he no longer accepts the authority of the Church.20 Then in the tract on charity, especially the love of one’s enemy, Thomas will introduce the notion that in cases of necessity one must have the attitude in mind to show love in a particular way to an enemy.21 19 ST II–II, q. 72, a. 3, trans. Marcus Lefébure, O.P., vol. 38. 20 ST II–II, q. 5, a. 3. 21 ST II–II, q. 25, aa. 8 and 9. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 101 Aquinas on the Spiritual Life 101 Several vices come to mind but one vice in particular that plagues the West today and makes preparation in mind and heart for doing certain more difficult deeds of charity or justice problematic is what St.Thomas calls “softness” or soft living. He clearly explains what he means in the body of the article following Aristotle’s description: Also, pleasure itself moves one more strongly by attraction than does sorrow for the lack of pleasure by holding one back.Therefore, according to Aristotle, someone is rightly called a soft-liver who withdraws from what is good on account of sadness caused by lack of pleasures, giving in as it were to a feeble influence.22 In the answer to the third objection, Aquinas concretizes his meaning: In amusement there are two things to be considered: first, pleasure— and in this context to be inordinately devoted to amusement is against the true idea of play; second, a certain relaxation or rest, which is opposed to hard work. So, just as inability to endure exacting work is characteristic of softness, so also is excessive desire for amusing games or for any other kind of relaxation.23 Adults and children alike who are used to watching television shows and movies, or surfing the Internet for entertainment, or listening to music for five and seven hours a day cause this problem within themselves, blocking out the time needed for proper reflection to face difficult challenges of the spirit. Another difficulty which gets in the way of a certain readiness of mind that will lead to spiritual progress is called by St.Thomas “pusillanimity,” which is opposed to the magnanimous spirit, in the same way that small mindedness is opposed to greatness of mind. Here in Thomas’s treatment of courage, he delineates what he means: For as the magnanimous man because of his magnanimity strives for great aims, so the pusillanimous man because of his pettiness of mind withdraws from such aims. Secondly, pusillanimity can be considered in relation to its cause, which is both the intellect’s ignorance of a man’s quality and the will’s fear of failure to attain what it wrongly reckons to be beyond his ability. Thirdly, pusillanimity can be considered in its effect, which is holding back from the greatness of which a man is worthy. . . .24 22 ST II–II, q. 138, a. 2. 23 Ibid., ad 3. 24 ST II–II, q. 133, a. 2. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 102 Basil Cole, O.P. 102 If everyone is called to holiness and not only religious and priests, then everyone is called to fulfill a “great aim.”This is why magnanimity must accompany humility, lest the humble person think too badly of himself without striving for the divine gifts that God wants to give the person. Progress in the spiritual life can be curtailed when individuals falsely assume that humility means thinking ill of oneself simply speaking, which is clearly an inferiority complex leading to self-pity. However, some saints felt that way temporarily through the sanctifying gifts of the Holy Spirit because they had such a powerful experience of God.They also experienced their own nothingness, as in the case of St. Catherine of Siena.25 However, more often than not, as Aquinas has shown, progress can also be attenuated because of a lack of magnanimity due simply to fear of failure and thus failure even to aim at the “heights” of holiness. Consequences of Not Having This “Readiness of Soul” More importantly, without a due preparation in mind to grow in the counsels, advancing in virtue and even being in virtue is problematic for Thomas when he says: The virtues are all connected with one another, not materially, but formally, namely by their life drawn from practical wisdom and charity; . . . There is nothing to stop a person having at hand the material for one virtue but not for another; for instance, if he is in the state of poverty his way of life provides opportunities for him to be temperate, but not magnificent.26 Likewise the material for other virtues may be present while the material for virginity, namely bodily intactness, may be absent.Yet the form may be present in preparedness of mind, namely the resolution to maintain this reserve, were it called for. So also a person in poverty may have a spirit prepared to spend magnificently were his condition to allow it, and so also a person in prosperity may have a spirit prepared to bear adversity with equanimity.Without such readiness of spirit nobody can be virtuous.27 Readiness of Mind for All the Commandments Thomas remarks that a willingness of mind is necessary for all the commandments of the divine law: 25 See Raymond of Capua, The Life of Catherine of Siena, trans. and ed. Conleth Kearns, O.P. (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1980), 85–93. 26 The virtue of magnificence presupposes great wealth spent well for the common good. 27 ST II–II, q. 152, a. 4. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 103 Aquinas on the Spiritual Life 103 The law gives directions for acts of virtue. Now it was earlier remarked that certain commands of the divine law have been given to ensure willingness of mind [animi ], so that a man may be ready to do this or that should the occasion present itself. Consequently certain things are connected with an act of virtue as implying a willingness, namely that given the situation he is prepared to act in accord with reason. This seems especially noteworthy in the case of martyrdom, which is the right endurance of sufferings unjustly inflicted. Now people ought not to provide each other with opportunity for unjust action, but if someone does treat us unjustly, we ought to endure this in a balanced way.28 More often than not affirmative laws have a latitude of due circumstances, but there must be a certain dedicated readiness in a person to accomplish them when the circumstances are right: [A]ffirmative precepts, although always binding, nevertheless do not bind universally, but according to circumstances of time and place.Thus, just as the affirmative precepts concerning other virtues are to be taken as referring to preparation of mind—that a man should be ready to fulfill them when occasion arises—so also the precepts of patience.29 Such preparedness of mind and will (animi ) can be found in many of the saints: Merit is weighed less by the deed than by the spirit in which it is done. Abraham’s was such that he would have remained a virgin had that been his divine vocation. His marital continence and John’s virginal continence were equally deserving with respect to the substance of the reward, though not to certain accessory enhancements. And so Augustine remarks that John’s celibacy and Abraham’s marriage fought Christ’s battle according to the historical context of each; what John did in fact Abraham was prepared to do.30 Though virginity is better than conjugal continence, a married person can be better than a virgin . . . from very chastity itself, as having a spirit more prepared to be ungrudging about virginity, were it called for, than some who in fact are virgins.31 Clearly, such judgments of particular individuals’ virtue and merits are, in the final analysis, only found in the justice and mercy of God. 28 ST II–II, q. 124, a. 1, ad 3. 29 ST II–II, q. 140, a. 2, ad 2. 30 ST II–II, q. 140, a. 4, ad 1. 31 Ibid., ad 2. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 104 Basil Cole, O.P. 104 How Does One Go about Preparing One’s Inner Dispositions? If such preparedness of mind and heart is so essential for progress and growth in the spiritual life, how does one achieve this readiness to act? We cannot presuppose that one will have experienced these difficulties and then learn from one’s blunders. Moreover, can one avoid the moral blunders at all? Thomas, unfortunately, does not give us much detail on the praxis which would keep us ready or steady to do what is right or fitting in particular circumstances or would be helpful for growing in divine love. But hidden away in one article, there is a suggested solution. When Thomas confronts the question of courage in the face of unforeseen emergencies arising from menacing threats to one’s life, he says: When a person acts virtuously without forethought, under the inescapable threat of sudden danger, this above all else reveals the existence of a habitus of courage deeply seated in the soul.Yet even a man who has no courageous disposition can by long forethought [diuturna praemeditatione ] prepare his soul against dangers.And the brave man too avails himself of this preparation at the right time.32 The best teacher for the preparation of mind and heart is meditation done over a period of time. It is here in the quiet of one’s intellect that resolutions are made, difficult virtuous deeds are born and nourished, and one’s relationship with Christ is intensified when meditation turns into mental or contemplative prayer.33 Prolonged meditation enables one to be ready to do certain difficult deeds when obliged or even when only counseled. The notion of meditation signifies the ability to ponder lovingly the concepts derived from authors of the spiritual life or Sacred Scriptures, conferences, homilies or the arts, and thus will stimulate the desires to practice the ordinary and, in this context, the more difficult virtues. Devotion In his treatment on devotion, Thomas gives the main insight into the “why” of meditation when he says: God is the extrinsic and principal cause of devotion. . . . Clearly, however, the intrinsic or human cause of devotion is contemplation or meditation. Devotion is an act of the will by which a man promptly gives himself to the service of God. Every act of the will proceeds from some consideration of the intellect, since the object of the will is a known good. . . . Consequently, meditation is the cause of devotion 32 ST II–II, q. 123, a. 9. 33 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2654. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 105 Aquinas on the Spiritual Life 105 since through meditation man conceives the idea of giving himself to the service of God.34 But the service of God is ultimately the whole life of virtue, not simply liturgical acts, which can only be achieved by depending upon the grace of God. While meditation on the very nature of the Triune God can awaken love for him, a person can also consider his or her weaknesses so as to banish presumption of personal strength and submit to God’s help almost out of necessity.35 But to look to God, one needs the virtues of humility and magnanimity, which in part depend on meditation as well. The Role of Humility and Magnanimity St. Thomas reminds thinkers of the spiritual life that humility holds back one’s immoderate desires for high things when someone does not have the talent for certain kinds of actions.36 On the other hand, given certain gifts from God, magnanimity “stiffens the spirit against hopelessness in the pursuit of great things in accordance with right reason.”37 Now to be humble and magnanimous requires an act of the will. However,“it is necessary that he should recognize where his abilities fail to match that which surpasses them. And therefore the knowledge of one’s own deficiency is a condition of humility as a rule and criterion moderating one’s appetite. . . .38 Like humility, magnanimity needs intellectual perception because, as Thomas says,“In man there is a quality of greatness possessed by God’s gift, and a characteristic defect which comes from the weakness of his nature. Magnanimity therefore makes a man esteem himself worthy of great things through considering the gifts which he has from God. . . .”39 In both virtues, the intellect needs to be activated by meditation, which can come through mental prayer, spiritual reading, and even infused contemplation. These insights of Thomas show how important the intellectual life is for growth in virtue as well as readiness of mind and heart to engage in certain positive precepts when called for by the virtue of prudence. A Few Words about the Perfect Stage of the Spiritual Life In two places of the Summa theologiae, Aquinas describes those few persons who have achieved perfection of charity in this life when he says that they 34 ST I–II, q. 82, a. 3. 35 Ibid. 36 ST II–II, q. 161, a. 1. 37 Ibid. 38 ST II–II, q. 161, a. 2. 39 ST II–II, q. 129, a. 3, ad 4. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 106 Basil Cole, O.P. 106 devote all [their] zeal to the consideration of God and divine things, leaving aside everything else except what the demands of this present life impose.40 The third stage is when a man applies himself chiefly to the work of cleaving to God and enjoying him, which is characteristic of the perfect who long to depart and to be with Christ (Phil 1:23). . . .41 Thomas’s description of the perfect stage of virtue in this life includes not only those in the religious state but anyone of the laity.These are the ones who have lived the various counsels even when not strictly obliged, together with the precepts of God. It is also interesting to note that Thomas in no way suggests that those in the perfect stage receive private revelations or apparitions or an extraordinary phenomena at all. Conclusion Holiness in practice consists primarily in exercising the three theological virtues, with divine love being the most important of them. Secondarily, everyone is also called to accomplish and embody the moral virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance according to his circumstances. Both the theological and infused moral virtues42 are assisted not only with the help of actual grace but also with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, so necessary for heroic virtue according to St. Thomas.43 While this article could not treat the positive thrusts of all the virtues, given the problems of the spiritual life we have analyzed here, it is evident that undermining or ignoring the very important law of the spiritual life concerning the preparatio animi, among the other problems treated in this article, leads one to mediocrity and failure to achieve one’s human and divine potential and destiny. The demise of many religious and priestly vocations after the Second Vatican Council can be laid at the door of the failure to meditate and pray, which, Aquinas assures us, does prepare individuals for more difficult deeds of the spirit. Following the Second Vatican Council, many heroic changes were demanded of religious and priests. Judging from the many defections, those committed to perfection were not prepared in mind and heart to endure the new challenges and departed for marriage, or the single life of the layperson in the world. N&V 40 ST II–II, q. 24, a. 8. 41 ST II-II, q. 24, a. 9. 42 A teaching of St.Thomas found in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, but seem- ingly abandoned in the present Catechism of the Catholic Church. 43 ST I-II, q. 68, aa. 1-8. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 107 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 107–124 107 Ambrogio Catarino’s Doctrine of the Devil’s Fall: Christocentric Reflection on the Origin of Evil A ARON C LAY D ENLINGER University of Aberdeen Aberdeen, Scotland SIXTEENTH-CENTURY Dominican theologian Ambrogio Catarino tends to get a “bum rap” in the scholarly press. Consider, for example, Pierre Mandonnet’s comments about Catarino in last century’s Dictionnaire de Thèologie Catholique.1 Specifically with regard to Catarino’s teachings on predestination and grace, Mandonnet complains of Catarino’s “disregard for traditional theology,” his “impudence,” and “his lack of theological sense” (not to mention “scruples”), intellectual qualities demonstrated by his willingness to “create new theological currents”—his willingness, that is, to promote novel doctrines. In honor of Catarino’s faults, Mandonnet goes so far as to label a certain sixteenth-century proclivity to deviate from traditional teaching catharinisme. “Catharinism,” suggests Mandonnet,“embodies most especially the déviations of theological humanism”; yet this ism—or at least the man for whom it was named—enjoyed “the high protection . . . of the Roman court,” thereby evading the condemnation that some humanist and all Protestant déviants received.2 Somewhat less overtly antagonistic towards Catarino is Daniel Kennedy, who describes the Dominican thinker as an “eccentric genius, who . . . was frequently accused of teaching false doctrines, yet always kept within the bounds of orthodoxy.”3 Kennedy’s and Mandonnet’s depictions of Catarino coincide in 1 Pierre Mandonnet,“Frères Prêcheurs,” in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, vol. 6.1 (Paris: Letouzey and Ane, 1903–1972), 912–13. 2 Ibid. 3 Daniel Kennedy, “Lancelot Politi,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic N&V_win10 .qxp 108 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 108 Aaron Denlinger representing the man—specifically with regard to the role he performed as a theologian of the Reformation period—as intellectually unprincipled, given to “opinions” which were (in Kennedy’s words) “singular,” dogmatic notions which failed to conform to any obvious norm (such as, say, traditional Catholic thought).4 In what follows I advance a rather different picture of Catarino qua Catholic theologian. I hope to demonstrate that Catarino’s theological reflections were, in fact, rather principled; that is, they were normed by specific dogmatic commitments and a certain intentional stance, at least, towards traditional teaching. Catarino’s theological reflections and dogmatic decisions were governed by his conviction regarding the absolute nature of God’s determination to become incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. In Catarino’s understanding, God’s decision to become incarnate was neither contingent upon, nor logically subsequent to, his foresight of humankind’s fall into sin and need for redemption. Rather, the Son of God purposed to join his own nature to human nature in the particular man Jesus from the very moment—so to speak—he decided (with his Father) to create a rational creature called “man” per se.To employ recent theological parlance, Catarino adopted a supralapsarian Christology.5 His doctrine of the motive(s) for the Incarnation, which drew upon a certain strand of traditional Christian thought, informed his theology broadly, and so informed specific dogmatic convictions. I suggest, then, that ideas advanced by Catarino which could appear to epitomize eccentricity, theological “impudence,” a “disregard for traditional theology,” and/or a “lack of theological sense” might assume a more intelligible and even— from contemporary perspective—theologically attractive character when their relation to his more fundamental conviction regarding the motive(s) for Christ’s Incarnation is recognized and given due attention. I will attempt to demonstrate as much in the balance of this essay by exploring one of Catarino’s doctrines which might, prima facie, seem most indicative of a “lack of theological sense”—his doctrine of the Devil’s fall.6 Church, ed. Charles Herbermann et al., vol. 12 (London: Encyclopedia Press, 1914), 213. 4 Ibid., 212. 5 Cf. Edwin Christian van Driel, Incarnation Anyway: Arguments for Supralapsarian Christology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 6 For exposition of Catarino’s doctrine of the Devil’s fall I rely chiefly upon his De angelorum bonorum gloria, et lapsu malorum, which is included in his Opuscula, vol. 1 (Lyon, 1542; repr. Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1964), 144–60, referenced subsequently as Opuscula, and his Enarrationes in quinque priora capita libri Geneseos (Rome, 1551), referenced subsequently as Enarrationes. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 109 Ambrogio Catarino on the Devil’s Fall 109 The Devil’s Fall in Catarino’s Thought From the very outset of his 1542 De angelorum bonorum gloria, et lapsu malorum Catarino acknowledges the relatively novel character of his account of Lucifer’s fall from glory. In fact, he introduces the work with some prolegomenal comments upon novelty and Christian doctrine. He confesses the wisdom of the aphorism that admonishes that “we should not receive new doctrines into the Church, nor suffer their reception,” but insists that this should be received cum sale —“with salt.” After all, he notes, the Jews rejected Christ’s teaching on the grounds that it was novel. Catarino admits the existence of a certain kind of novel teaching that “ought to be rejected as false” merely on the basis of its novelty— “that which is new in such a way that it does not have the testimony of antiquity.” He has in mind, no doubt, dogmas promoted by magisterial reformers Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Bullinger; even—by this time— Calvin. But there are “new doctrines” which do have “the testimony of antiquity.”That which occasioned Jewish antagonism towards Christ was his proclamation of the novum testamentum, a reality (and a doctrine) genuinely “new” in its arrival (and articulation), yet witnessed to by, for example, the prophet Jeremiah when he announced:“Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (cf. Jer 31:31).7 It is irresponsible, then, to reject too quickly a doctrine as “novel” merely because it has no exact antecedent. One must ask, rather, whether a “new” doctrine has or lacks antiquity’s testimony. Catarino hopes to demonstrate that his understanding of the Devil’s fall does, in fact, own the testimony of the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the best of the Scholastic theologians.Thus he begins exposition of his own doctrine by surveying the teachings of earlier theologians on Lucifer’s fall.“It was the opinion of the ancients,” he notes,“that envy (invidia ) was that sin of the Devil, from which occurred his fall and ruin.”8 Of course, envy discovers its own, deeper roots in the sin of pride (superbia ): “for envy is not the cause of pride, but pride of envy.”9 In some sense, then, “all agree regarding the fall of Lucifer and his companions, that pride cut them off from their highest good.” Indeed, Scripture identifies pride “as the beginning of all sin” (cf. Sir 10:15). But pride often assumes concrete form as envy:“[T]he proud man, on account of his pride, desires to excel beyond his limit; therefore, when he sees the good of another, he thinks his own excellence to be diminished or injured by that good, and he 7 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 144. 8 Ibid., 146. 9 Ibid., 146–47. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 110 Aaron Denlinger 110 begins to envy.”10 Envy precipitates apostasy from God. The envious individual “regards some object, and loves it more than God, on account of which he turns himself away from God.”11 Identifying invidia as “that sin of the Devil, from which occurred his fall and ruin,” implies a rather obvious question: “If envy was the Devil’s sin, towards whom (I ask) were his envy and spite (livor ) directed?”12 According to Catarino, the ancients testified that Lucifer’s envy was specifically directed towards humankind. So Cyprian of Carthage, “who lived not long after the Apostles,” wrote: From this source [envy], even at the very beginnings of the world, the devil was the first who both perished (himself) and destroyed (others). He who was sustained in angelic majesty, he who was accepted and beloved of God, when he beheld man made in the image of God, broke forth into jealousy with malevolent envy—not hurling down another by the instinct of his jealousy before he himself was first hurled down by jealousy, captive before he takes captive, ruined before he ruins others.While, at the instigation of jealousy, he robs man of the grace of immortality conferred, he himself has lost that which he had previously been. How great an evil is that, beloved brethren, whereby an angel fell, whereby that lofty and illustrious grandeur could be defrauded and overthrown, whereby he who deceived was himself deceived!13 To Cyprian’s testimony Catarino adds that of Basil of Caesarea, who noted in a homily on invidia :“What urged the devil, the beginner of evil, to wage fierce war against man? Was it not envy? It was through envy he came to war openly against God; enraged against him because of his bountifulness to man, but avenging himself on man because he is powerless against God.”14 And finally Catarino cites Augustine, who in De genesi ad litteram libri duodecim observed:“Several authors say . . . that what brought about [the Devil’s] fall from the supernal regions was his jealous grudging of the man being made to the image of God.”15 Of course, the 10 Ibid., 147. 11 Ibid., 146. 12 Ibid., 147. 13 Ibid. I cite Cyprian from The Ante-Nicene Fathers:Translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, vol. 5 (Edinburgh:T & T Clark, 1986–1990), 492. 14 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 147. I cite Basil from Phyllis Graham, “On Envy: A Sermon by St. Basil,” Angelus Online, www.angelusonline.org/modules.php?op= modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2883&mode=mode=thread&order=0& thold=0, accessed 6 February 2009. Catarino’s citation omits the latter half of the final sentence (beginning with “enraged”). 15 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 147. I cite Augustine from Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, On Genesis:A refutation of the Manichees, Unfinished literal commentary on N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 111 Ambrogio Catarino on the Devil’s Fall 111 venerable Bishop of Hippo went on to distance himself from this explanation for the Devil’s fall, a point which somewhat undermines the sweeping nature of Catarino’s conclusion, which reads:“From these [citations], therefore, [it appears] the opinion held by the ancients was that the Devil fell because of envy, which was agitated by man and the glory to which the Devil saw man predestined.”16 The Scholastic theologians, Catarino argues, departed from the Fathers on this point. “Although they all conceded that the Devil was jealous of man and tortured by his envy, they did not teach that this envy was the reason for his fall.” In seeking to determine that “reason for his fall,” the Scholastics looked, rather, to the Devil’s pride (superbia), and enquired into the peculiar effect of that pride; they asked, that is, what perverse longing (concupiscentia) ensued from Satan’s primal arrogance. And “all, whether recent or more distant, seemed to agree in this: that the Devil somehow desired (appetere) divine majesty.”17 In this judgment, Catarino observes, Scholastic thinkers had biblical backing; the words of the prophet Isaiah, traditionally understood, relate Lucifer’s damning desire:“I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, . . . I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the Most High” (Is 14:13–14).18 The Scholastics could not agree, however, on what exactly diabolical desire for “divine majesty” entailed. Catarino identifies three broad medieval schools of thought regarding the precise object of the Devil’s appetite.19 The first school denied that Lucifer coveted genuine “equality with God,” on the grounds that Lucifer “would have known that this was impossible to obtain.”Thomas Aquinas—whom Catarino does not cite in this particular regard—explained: “[Lucifer] could not seek to be as God in the first way [that is,‘by equality’], because by natural knowledge he knew that this was impossible: nor was any passion fettering his mind, so as to lead him to Genesis,The literal meaning of Genesis, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002), 438. 16 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 147. Jeffrey Burton Russell identifies both Irenaeus and Tertullian as proponents of the idea that envy of man lay at the root of Lucifer’s fall: see Satan:The Early Christian Tradition (London: Cornell University Press Ltd., 1981), 81, 93. Giovanni Papini asserts: “Everyone believes, now, that Lucifer, driven by his insolent pride, ‘against his Maker lifted up his brows,’ as Dante put it. But the early Church Fathers, the first theologians, did not think of pride at all. According to many of them, the cause of the Archangel’s fall was envy, envy of man.” Giovanni Papini, The Devil: Notes for a future diabology, trans. Adrienne Foulke (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1955), 29. 17 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 147. 18 Ibid., 147–48. 19 Ibid., 148–49. N&V_win10 .qxp 112 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 112 Aaron Denlinger choose what was impossible . . . as sometimes happens in ourselves.”20 Indeed, no rational being “can desire his own destruction, which would follow from the desire for divinity [ex appetitu divinitatis].”21 Thus this school argued that the Devil actually desired not divine equality, but that “supernatural beatitude” promised to those—angelic or human—who obtain their summum bonum, the visio Dei, and thereby experience some greater union with, or likeness to, God.This “supernatural beatitude” was, of course, legitimately promised to Lucifer; he sinned, then, not so much in wanting it, but in wanting “to obtain it by his own strength [ex propria virtute], and not by divine help [ex divino auxilio], as the Lord had purposed.” Catarino dismisses this position with rather curt logic, noting that if Lucifer knew genuine “equality with God” was impossible, he also knew that obtaining his supernatural end by virtue of his own strength was impossible.The argument fails, in other words, to escape the trap of its own logic and initial premise—that the Devil could not possibly will an impossibility.22 The second school identified by Catarino rejected the premise that Lucifer could not will an impossibility. Even if Lucifer might have foregone pursuit of “equality with God” in recognition of such equality’s unattainable status, he could nevertheless have wanted it—and therein he would have sinned already.23 Though he names no names, Catarino describes the position of Duns Scotus; interestingly, he offers no refutation of Scotus’s logic.24 The third school identified by Catarino held that Lucifer both desired “equality with God” and believed it possible to obtain. If Catarino’s representation of this school is accurate, it largely made no attempt to refute the logical arguments of the preceding schools; rather, it appealed more forcefully to the biblical text cited above. “Those words of Satan 20 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q. 63, a. 3. 21 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 148. Cf.Thomas, ST I, q. 63, a. 3: “No creature of a lower order can ever covet the grade of a higher nature; just as an ass does not desire to be a horse: for were it to be so upraised, it would cease to be itself.” 22 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 148. Catarino notes a variation of this position, which suggested that Lucifer forsook his supernatural end and pursued his natural end (with the natural happiness entailed therein). Lucifer’s sin, according to this theory, lay chiefly in holding that supernatural end for which God ordained him in contempt.This would appear to be Thomas’s doctrine: see Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer:The Devil in the Middle Ages (London: Cornell University Press, 1984), 200–4. Catarino is equally dismissive of this theory, observing that diabolical desire to obtain one’s natural end apart from God’s provision hardly amounts to wanting to “ascend into heaven” and “be like the Most High,” to quote the words of the Prophet (Opuscula, vol. 1, 148). 23 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 148. 24 See Russell, Lucifer, 201. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 113 Ambrogio Catarino on the Devil’s Fall 113 appear to express . . . an appetite for something possible. . . . He says,‘I will ascend into heaven. . . . I will be like the Most High.’ ”25 The words attributed to Lucifer communicate a desire to be equal to God and genuine hope—however desperate—of obtaining that goal. Rightly identifying that diabolical desire is a matter of faithfulness to the biblical text, not of reasoning from a priori logical commitments. Again, Catarino offers no condemnation of this school’s argument. Catarino’s sympathies apparently lie with the positions of the latter two schools. He merely hopes to synthesize their basic insights into Lucifer’s perverse desire (and hope) for “divine majesty” with the doctrine of the Fathers.Towards that end, he identifies three criteria that a doctrine of the Devil’s fall must meet. First, it must do justice to Lucifer’s words “I will be like the Most High”—that is, it must insist that Lucifer desired at least “a certain divine quality [quiddam divinum].” Second, it must maintain that what he desired was—at least to his thinking—genuinely possible to obtain: “for he says ‘I will (ero),’ which word undoubtedly conveys hope (spes) for the desired thing.” And third, it must take into account the doctrine of the ancients; it must maintain that Satan’s appetite for “a certain divine quality” was somehow, simultaneously, envy of man.26 What devilish misdeed—or mis-desire—in ages past can fulfill (or rather, has fulfilled) these terms? Here Catarino takes a step back to reflect on the reality and nature of angelic beings per se.The angels, he notes, were created by God at the dawn of time; indeed, the introductory words of the Christian canon—“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”—indicate God’s creation of the angels, for “by the appellation ‘heavens’ all the angels are understood.”27 Contra “the insanity of the Manicheans,” who discovered in the demons an instance of some eternal evil principle, and “the intolerable error of Porphyry,” who posited “a genus Demoniorum which was fallen by nature,” Catarino insists that all angelic beings were created good. In creation, he further notes, the angels received from God “the gift of grace (dono gratiae)”—therein, the supernatural qualities of “love for God,”“faith” in God’s promise of some highest good and final end, and “hope” for the same were infused into them.28 The angels 25 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 148–49. Emphasis mine. 26 Ibid., 149. 27 Catharinus, Enarrationes, 180; see also Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 149. 28 Following Duns Scotus, Catarino also identifies the gift of sanctifying gratia granted Adam in the beginning with charitas Dei ; see Diomede Scaramuzzi, “Le idee scotiste di un grande teologo domenicano del ’500 (“The Scotist Opinions of a Significant 16th Century Dominican Theologian”): Ambrogio Catarino,” Studi Francescani 5 (1933): 213–17. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 114 Aaron Denlinger 114 were not created “perfect,” or with that “perfect beatitude” which comes from seeing God “face to face”; they were, rather,“candidates for that beatitude which consists in the vision of God face to face.” Catarino emphasizes this point: “[The angels] did not yet have this vision, but expected it and hoped for it, and even contended for it.”29 The promise of seeing God—with the perfect beatitude corresponding to that vision—was not made unconditionally to the angels. Indeed, Catarino notes, the angels were “to merit that beatitude in a certain manner,” by observing “a certain commandment,” a “law of love.”Angelic experience mirrored soon-to-be human experience at this point. Just as man’s progress towards his supernatural end would hinge from the very first upon his observance of a specific command (“not to eat from the fruit of a certain tree”), angelic progress towards the (same) supernatural end hinged upon angelic obedience to a specific command—a mandate which transcended the mere dictates of (angelic) nature. But what precisely did God demand of the angels? In his 1551 Genesis commentary Catarino pulls back the curtain on God’s first words to his angelic creatures: After the Lord God had made [the angels] . . . he said, “Listen to me, my angels, and learn that which I decreed in my eternity, before I made anything at all.This is my plan: I intend to communicate myself to my creation, according to my omnipotence, in some immeasurable way, in order to lift that creation up to myself. . . . And this is the [particular] creature which I have chosen, [to which I will communicate myself]; he is not among you, neither is he yet created: I will create him, and now I show him to you.” And so in the appearance and figure of man God revealed to his angels his Son Jesus Christ. And he said, “Worship this man, with whom I am well pleased above all creatures. Render to him your deference and your honor, just as to your God. For even if he will be a man, he will no less also be God, on account of that divine hypostatic union with my Word, two perfect and unmingled natures obtaining. If you will obey my command, he will be your God, your happiness, your eternal beatitude. I promise this man to you as the one who will give you beatitude, and so likewise I promise myself to you, since we are one with our Holy Spirit. In this man, therefore, consists your life.”Thus said the Lord God to his celestial spirits.30 God commanded his angels to worship Jesus Christ, the God-man, whose Incarnation already constituted the chief matter of God’s consilium. Somewhat more prosaically, Catarino explains in his earlier treatise:“God revealed [to the angels] that great mystery of the eternal Word which 29 Catharinus, Enarrationes, 180–81. 30 Catharinus, Enarrationes, 183. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 115 Ambrogio Catarino on the Devil’s Fall 115 would at length assume our nature in such a way that the Word himself would become flesh through the union of natures in a single subject, . . . in which [event] God would become man, and through this God would be called ‘man,’ and man ‘God.’ ” To this revelation was appended the divine mandate:“Moreover, there was the commandment of God himself to them, that they should all adore that God-man, if they wanted to obtain his beatitude and glory.”31 Catarino discovers biblical evidence for this primordial command to worship the to-be-incarnate Christ in Hebrews 1, where the Apostle notes that “when God [brought] the only begotten [Son] into the world, he said:‘let all the angels of God worship him’ ” (Heb 1:6).32 In Catarino’s understanding of this text, God “[brought] the only-begotten [Son] into the world” when he first revealed to the angels his intention to see his Son become man, long before that actual event. There was a peculiar logic undergirding God’s command to worship Christ in some pre-incarnate but embodied form: Christ, by his very being, would make (and in some sense had already made) creaturely attainment of the summum bonum, the vision of God “face to face,” possible. The bridging of Creator and creation, which occurred already in God’s determination to join divine and human natures together in Christ, permitted God to bless both angelic and human rational creatures—in and of themselves so intrinsically unworthy—with that supernatural end (without diminishing the necessity for them to “contend” for, and in some way “to merit,” that end). This point is developed more fully in Catarino’s works on the motive(s) for the Incarnation; here he simply notes with reference to the angels:“For they too were destined for salvation (salus ) through the man who was Christ.”33 Thus the promise of eternal life which God, according to the Apostle Paul (cf.Tit 1:2), made “before the ages of the world [ante tempora secularia ]” was made “to the Angels, who alone were to be found ‘before the ages of the world’ capable of receiving and accepting that promise.”34 It was this revelation of the future Incarnation of the Word—the joining together of divine and human natures in the man Jesus—along with the command to worship the person resulting from this future event which occasioned Lucifer’s fall. Unlike “the most holy Michael, . . . Gabriel, 31 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 149. 32 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 149. 33 Salus here has the somewhat imprecise meaning of obtaining one’s end, rather than the precise meaning of recovery.With the tradition more generally, Catarino believes fallen angels are incapable of “salvation” in the latter sense. 34 Catharinus, Enarrationes, 183. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 116 Aaron Denlinger 116 Raphael, and Uriel,” who “accepted God’s commandment at once” and immediately complied, Lucifer chose to mull over (secum cogitare et disceptare) God’s mandate. Rumination soon turned to jealousy and anger— or so Catarino suggests, exposing the Devil’s very own train of thought: What kind of thing is this which God wants for himself? And with what justice has he decreed to establish this commerce [commercium ] with man, whose nature (as [Lucifer] rightly understood) is inferior to our own? Why has he not rather granted this honor to an Angel, whose nature is in every way much more sublime than that of man?” . . . Therefore, as he pondered this thing, he came to think God’s plan unbecoming and unfair. . . . “What sin have we committed, that we should be deprived of this gift?” If he wants to give this thing, would he not give it to us with much more propriety than to man?35 Lucifer’s thoughts eventuated in the darkening of “his intellect” and the depravation of “his will”—“he began . . . to envy man, and vehemently hated Christ, whom he entirely wanted to kill and destroy.”Thus, Catarino notes, Christ himself testified regarding the Devil: “[H]e was a murderer [homicida] from the beginning” (cf. Jn 8:44).36 In Catarino’s understanding of Christ’s words, Lucifer’s murderous intent predates the proper creation of man; it was Christ himself whom Lucifer wanted to murder—Christocide translates into homicide by virtue of the incarnate Son’s human nature. Of course, further devilish deeds and desires—as well as divine responses to the same—could be traced through the beginning and progress of human history in Catarino’s thought; here, however, his doctrine of the Devil’s first sin and fall is complete, and we must circle back to investigate whether Catarino’s account of Lucifer’s fall meets the criteria which he established for a successful doctrine of the same. In recognizing the Incarnation—and therefore Jesus Christ—as the peculiar object of the Devil’s envy, Catarino retains something of the Fathers’ identification of “envy of man” as Lucifer’s initial sin. Lucifer envied “man” in genere, since it was “man” in general whom God blessed when his Son assumed human nature, as well as the particular man Jesus, in whom divine and human natures were conjoined without confusion. Moreover, Catarino’s doctrine does justice to the biblical (and Scholastic) identification of the Devil’s desire to “be like the Most High.” It was, after all, a “certain divine quality” that Lucifer desired for himself when he coveted hypostatic union between his own and the divine natures. Lucifer desired “divine majesty . . . not indeed through any transmutation or corruption of himself, so that from 35 Ibid., 183–84. 36 Ibid., 184. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 117 Ambrogio Catarino on the Devil’s Fall 117 an angel he should become God and cease to be an angel, but through a union of natures—namely, his own and the divine—within the same subject, the divine Word.”37 If the man Jesus Christ was and is God by virtue of his divine nature (and identity as the second person of the Trinity), Lucifer too might have been God had the Son assumed Lucifer’s angelic nature. Finally, Catarino’s doctrine escapes the trap of positing some impossible desire in a being that knew the boundaries of possibility only too well. Lucifer’s desire to have his own nature joined to the divine nature could—at least in theory—have been realized. “Just as . . . man approached divine majesty through that union of natures, so it might have been with [Lucifer].” Indeed, Catarino reasons, the joining of divine and angelic natures in a single subject “would seem to be more appropriate [than the joining of divine and human natures], since [the angel] is a more dignified creature.”38 Of course, the criteria that Catarino established for a successful doctrine of the Devil’s fall were drawn from Patristic and medieval teachings on the subject in question; thus Catarino can—at least to his thinking—claim the “testimony of antiquity” for his doctrine, notwithstanding the fact that he has advanced a rather novel account of Lucifer’s fall from glory. It would be interesting, at this point, to trace the fortunes of his doctrine. It certainly encountered its share of skeptics. Not least of them, from an early date, was the Genevan reformer John Calvin, who noted in his own commentary on Genesis the existence of “curious sophists” who—addressing the issue of “what had impelled Satan to contrive the destruction of man”—“feigned that he burned with envy, when he foresaw that the Son of God was to be clothed in human flesh.” Calvin dismissed Catarino’s doctrine as “frivolous,” arguing that “since the Son of God was made man in order to restore us, who were already lost, from our miserable overthrow, how could that be foreseen which would never have happened unless man had sinned?”39 But others found Catarino’s doctrine of the Devil’s fall more appealing. The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (d. 1617) defended Catarino’s doctrine several decades after the Dominican’s death (1553); more recently Matthias Joseph Scheeben (d. 1888), German Catholic theologian of some repute, has found Catarino’s account of Lucifer’s fall from glory persuasive.40 37 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 150. 38 Ibid. 39 John Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, trans. and ed. John King (repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975), 82. 40 For Suarez’s teaching see De angelis, lib. 7, cap. 13, in Opera omnia, vol. 2 (Paris, 1856), 880–91; for Scheeben’s defense of Catarino’s doctrine see The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1961), 268–69. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 118 Aaron Denlinger 118 My intention here, however, is not to illumine the doctrine’s fate, but to highlight the intra-systematic relationship it sustained to Catarino’s conviction regarding the motive(s) for Christ’s Incarnation, towards the end of highlighting certain features of his thought more broadly.Whether Catarino could claim the “testimony of antiquity” for his account of Lucifer’s fall with any credibility is—of course—debatable; it must, in any case, be acknowledged that his doctrine did not find its origin or impetus immediately in Patristic or medieval teaching. The sheer difference between his doctrine and those of earlier theologians precludes the possibility of any direct inheritance: certain Fathers did identify Satan’s first sin as envy provoked by man’s great privileges, but they also identified those privileges—creatio ad imaginem Dei, and elevation over all creation, not that privilege (as it were) of seeing human nature joined to the divine nature in hypostatic union.What, then, prompted Catarino’s rather unique account of the Devil’s fall? We need not resort to the exaggerated and unhelpful language of Giovanni Papini, who suggests that “this most singular interpretation of Satan’s fall came like a blinding flash” to “the learned Catarino.”41 Rather, we should recognize “this most singular interpretation of Satan’s fall” as an intellectual implication or consequence of Catarino’s Christology. Christ’s Incarnation in Catarino’s Thought Catarino advanced his doctrine of Christ’s Incarnation—his conviction, that is, that God’s Son would have become incarnate “even if Adam had not sinned”—in multiple works.Two treatises are specifically devoted to the subject: the first—rather significantly, I suggest—immediately precedes his treatise on the Devil’s fall in his 1542 Opuscula ; the second is appended to his 1551 Genesis commentary.42 His arguments for the absolute nature of God’s determination to become man also figure critically in his biblical commentaries (that on Genesis as well as one on the New Testament epistles, both published in 1551), as well as his 1543 Claves duae.43 The last work, which Guy Bedouelle has rightly labeled Catarino’s “manual of theology,” is particularly noteworthy.44 Given the 41 Papani, The Devil, 32, 33. 42 Catharinus, De eximia praedestinatione Christi (Opuscula, vol. 1, 114–43); Pro eximia praedestinatione Christi annotatio specialis in commentaria domini Caietani (Rome, 1551). 43 Catharinus, Commentaria in omnes divi Pauli et alias septem canonicas epistolas (Venice, 1551); Claves duae ad aperiendas intelligendasque scripturas sacras perquam necessariae (Lyon, 1543). 44 Guy Bedouelle, “L’introduction à l’Écriture sainte du dominicain Ambrosio Catharino Politi (1543),” Protestantesimo 54 (1999): 280. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 119 Ambrogio Catarino on the Devil’s Fall 119 broad theological scope of its subject matter, Claves duae arguably provides the greatest insight into the critical relationship which Catarino’s understanding of the Incarnation sustains to his other doctrinal convictions. Despite the emphasis upon the (non-redemptive) motive(s) for the Incarnation in Catarino’s works, his teaching on this point has attracted almost no scholarly interest. Only Diomede Scaramuzzi has commented upon Catarino’s doctrine of the Incarnation at any length, drawing attention to the Scotistic character of Catarino’s teaching in order to demonstrate Catarino’s appreciation for, and intellectual dependence upon, Scotus more generally.45 Scaramuzzi’s argument regarding Catarino’s intellectual relationship to Scotus is compelling; however, it is unfortunate, for those interested in the substance of Catarino’s theology, that he does not exposit Catarino’s own arguments for a supralapsarian Christology— some of which go beyond Scotus’s teaching—more fully. Here only a cursory overview of Catarino’s position on Christ’s Incarnation can be given. I cite, first of all, Claves duae, in order to illumine the primal and fundamental character which God’s decision to become incarnate owns in Catarino’s theological perspective: [God’s] very own Son and Word, who was the highest wisdom and the true light, saw everything which could be made, and everything which would be made by his Father, and realized that everything would not be “very good” in and of itself. . . .Thus, in order that he might be satisfied with his works and render them “very good” (since he himself was, simultaneously with his Father, composing all things), he decreed to join (coniungere) himself to his creation, and in a certain manner to graft himself into that creation, by a most marvelous and eternal grafting.46 Thus freeze-framing God’s earliest inclination, as it were, to “join himself to his creation,” Catarino exhibits his own understanding of the relationship between Christ’s Incarnation and all created reality. For Catarino, Christ’s future Incarnation—bridging the gap between Creator and creation per se —permits the benediction “very good” to grasp all created reality within its compass (and so to fill the ears of every rational creature). In other words, the goodness of God’s creation was from the very first, and in its totality, rooted in that “certain affinity” which God contracted with creation in the Incarnation.47 45 Diomede Scaramuzzi, O.P.,“Le idee scotiste di un grande teologo domenicano del ’500:Ambrogio Catarino,” Studi francescani 29 (1932): 296–319; 30 (1933): 197–217. 46 Catharinus, Claves duae, 88. 47 Catharinus, Enarrationes, 177. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 120 120 Aaron Denlinger In his treatises on the motive(s) for Christ’s Incarnation, Catarino discloses further reasons why God should have determined ab initio to “join himself to his creation,” reasons which rob Adam’s first sin of any claim to having necessitated God’s assumption of human nature in time.48 Indeed, the primary motives for Christ’s Incarnation flow from God’s own attributes: divine omnipotence, for example, requires omnifarious display, and no act has greater potential to parade God’s power than that “which joins Creator to creature.”49 So also God’s wisdom, goodness, and providence are most brilliantly reflected in the Incarnation.50 From an emphasis upon God’s attributes further motives for the Incarnation unfold; God’s wisdom, goodness, and providence are directed specifically towards angels and men, rational creatures who benefit in specific ways from God’s assumption of human nature. Catarino identifies three overarching motives for the Incarnation in relation to the particular needs of human creatures. First, God wanted to “elevate” human nature, in order that he might enter into some more definite relationship with human creatures—a relationship defined by their progress towards himself as their greatest good and final end; progress defined by works of faith and charity. Apart from Christ’s Incarnation there could have been no such relationship between God and humankind, for “our nature was most distant from the height of God, not only because we were a created thing, but because we were a corporeal created thing.”51 Human nature, then, uniquely participated in that general goodness which Christ’s Incarnation granted to creaturely reality; it was, after all, “our nature” and “our flesh” to which “he betrothed himself ” in particular. Christ’s (future) Incarnation rendered human nature a fitting recipient of those gifts—especially grace and original justice— which served to elevate human nature in the beginning. Second, God wanted to provide human creatures with a moral “example”—one specific human being whom they might observe and imitate while “in the way,” en route to their greatest good. Human creatures, Catarino notes, were predestined—from the very first—to be conformed to Christ’s image in heaven; “thus it was necessary that he should be [to them] an example, in order that [they] might conform themselves to him in the way.”52 Third, God always intended—in culmination of the relationship he would contract with humankind—to raise human creatures to heaven, 48 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 117–24. 49 Ibid., 117–18. 50 Ibid., 118–24. 51 Ibid., 123. Emphasis mine. 52 Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 124. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 121 Ambrogio Catarino on the Devil’s Fall 121 where they might enjoy that “perfect beatitude” flowing from the vision of himself. And Christ’s Incarnation was required for this particular consummation of human history:“For earth—that is, man who [is] of the earth—could not suitably ascend into heaven unless some commerce and affinity was first contracted by the lowering of heaven itself to earth, with the intention that our kind [genus nostrum ] would be carried just like a bride into the house of her husband.”53 Transition to “heaven” at the end of the age carries an ontological implication for human creatures: those who obtain that end are glorified.Thus Catarino notes that Christ, who has become humankind’s redemptor on account of Adam’s sin, would have been humankind’s glorificator in any case: “He would have come to carry us into heaven, and to glorify us.”54 But the relationship between Christ’s Incarnation and humankind’s consummation extends even further. According to Catarino, Christ becomes—and always was intended to be—the object of humankind’s consummated vision, the “God” who is physically seen “face to face,” and thus the source of “perfect beatitude.” Vision of Jesus Christ pertains specifically to the glorified human creature’s corporeal element (or, in Catarino’s words, the “inferior part”); human creatures will contemplate the invisible God with spiritual eyes. Without Christ’s Incarnation, however, there could be no perfect beatitude for human creatures: “man himself would not be perfectly happy without Christ, since our eternal life consists not only in knowledge of the Father, but also in knowledge of Jesus Christ. . . . For in him our inferior part is made happy, and so the whole man is made happy.”55 Conclusion Catarino’s doctrine of the motive(s) for Christ’s Incarnation deserves fuller exposition; however, the above summary will suffice to draw some conclusions regarding the intra-systematic relationship between Catarino’s Christology and his account of the Devil’s fall. Catarino’s conviction regarding the absolute nature of Christ’s Incarnation clearly owns a certain systematic priority in relation to his doctrine of the Devil’s fall. In Catarino’s theological perspective, Christ’s Incarnation does not require— that is, it does not follow from—Lucifer’s apostasy, abjection from heaven, and subsequent corruption of humankind; indeed, that is rather the point of Catarino’s teaching on the motive(s) for Christ’s Incarnation! But Lucifer’s fall could only have occurred according to the pattern suggested by Catarino if Christ’s Incarnation was both purposed and revealed 53 Catharinus, Enarrationes, 177; see also Catharinus, Opuscula, vol. 1, 124. 54 Catharinus, Enarrationes, 178. 55 Ibid., 177. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM 122 Page 122 Aaron Denlinger according to the pattern he suggests for that reality. Thus Papini notes regarding Catarino’s theory on the Devil’s fall:“The first advocates of the new theory accepted as essential premises the ideas of Rupert, splendidly developed by Duns Scotus, with regard to the Redemption. Duns Scotus, as we know, wished to demonstrate that the Incarnation would have occurred in any event, even had Adam not fallen.”56 It would be wrong, however, to reduce Catarino’s doctrine of Christ’s Incarnation to a mere premise in relation to his doctrine of the Devil’s fall. Catarino’s peculiar convictions regarding Christ’s Incarnation positively fueled his understanding of Lucifer’s fall from glory. In Catarino’s theological perspective, the Incarnation undergirds and informs God’s relationship with every aspect of his creation. God’s decision to assume human nature constitutes, as it were, a primal and fundamental choice that implicates all God’s dealings with humankind, the angels, and creaturely reality per se. It is God’s chief decree—subsequent to, but already anticipated in, God’s decision to create as such. It is appropriate, then, that God’s earliest revelation to rational creatures should consist in disclosure of his plan for the Incarnation.To put the matter somewhat crudely, God couldn’t wait to tell someone outside the circle of his own triune being what he was going to do. But even this does not express the matter adequately. Revelation of the Incarnation to the angels did not merely follow from divine anticipation of a determined goal combined with garrulity. There was, as noted previously, a specific logic undergirding God’s commandment to the angels to worship the incarnate Son—they too would be beneficiaries of his peculiar person and work; they too would discover, in time, perfect beatitude in and through him. In broader analysis of Catarino’s thought, then, one should note how the doctrine of the Incarnation—given his peculiar perspective on that reality—necessarily informed the major dogmatic loci of his theology. If one will trace the patterns of Catarino’s thought, one cannot discuss the being, origin, and destiny of humankind, the angels, the demons, or creation broadly without reference to the incarnate Son.Thus the Incarnation informs cosmology, anthropology, angelology, diabology, and eschatology, for a start.The Christocentric character of Catarino’s theology in toto (and thereby the Christocentric character of specific dogmas which he advanced, such as that regarding Lucifer’s fall) constitutes the basis of my initial suggestion that Catarino’s thought might be theologically attractive to a contemporary audience, should anyone bother to start paying the sixteenth-century Dominican thinker serious attention. My 56 Papini, The Devil, 32. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 123 Ambrogio Catarino on the Devil’s Fall 123 suggestion takes into account what Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt has described as a recent “tilting in Scotus’s direction” on the question of “whether, if human beings had not sinned, God would have become incarnate.”57 In Bauerschmidt’s judgment, “there seems to be a growing agreement that one ought to think of the Incarnation first in terms of perfecting creation . . . rather than repairing it.”58 Surely such a “tilting in Scotus’s direction” renders significant and noteworthy a theologian who, to cite Scaramuzzi, offered “a more complete, thorough, and vigorous demonstration of [Scotus’s] thesis [regarding the Incarnation] than we have found in any of the pure-blood Scotists.”59 Indeed, in Catarino one might find a theologian who pushed Scotus’s doctrine of the Incarnation somewhat further, or at least drew greater theological implications from the recognition of the Incarnation as so proper and central to God’s original intentions. Of course, whether Catarino’s theology in toto or specific doctrines that he advanced do ultimately appear more attractive to contemporary eyes depends too much on theological trends, confessional identities, and subjective tastes. But surely recognition of the Christocentric character of his doctrine can serve—regardless of how attractive one finds his actual conclusions—to subvert the rather typical scholarly representation of Catarino noted in the opening of this article. Divorced from his doctrine of Christ’s Incarnation, Catarino’s account of the Devil’s fall could seem to exemplify theological “impudence,” a “disregard for traditional theology,” and/or a “lack of theological sense.” Considered in relation to his doctrine of Christ’s Incarnation, Catarino’s account of the Devil’s fall calls these characterizations of his thought into question. Was Catarino’s theology truly marked by an impudent disregard for traditional Catholic thought? As should now be clear, Catarino was sensitive to the need for some “testimony of antiquity” to his doctrines. And his teaching on the Devil’s fall did draw upon “traditional theology” in a certain way. It was broadly informed by the reflections of preceding theologians on the issue 57 Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, “Incarnation, Redemption, and the Charac- ter of God,” in John Paul II & St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2006), 31. 58 Bauerschmidt, “Incarnation, Redemption, and the Character of God,” 31–32. Bauerschmidt identifies a trend in Catholic thought; he points to Karl Rahner’s teaching on the Incarnation as evidence for this “tilting in Scotus’s direction.” Edwin Christian Van Driel’s work Incarnation Anyway, referenced previously, evidences a trend among Protestant thinkers to conceive the Incarnation along lines loosely anticipated by Scotus, Catarino, et al. 59 Scaramuzzi,“Le idee scotiste di un grande teologo domenicano del ’500:Ambrogio Catarino,” 197. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 124 Aaron Denlinger 124 of Lucifer’s apostasy; it was specifically informed by a perspective on Christ’s Incarnation that was affirmed by Rupert of Deutz, Alexander of Hales, and Albert Magnus, and given definitive shape by Duns Scotus, Gabriel Biel, and a host of Franciscan thinkers.60 So also Catarino should be acquitted—at least with regard to his teaching on the Devil’s fall—of demonstrating a “lack of theological sense.” His teaching was principled and governed by specific convictions regarding Christ’s Incarnation and those divine intentions for rational creatures—angelic and human— which provoked the Incarnation. Revision of the scholarly portraits of Catarino qua theologian is clearly needed. Consideration of his teaching on the Devil’s fall will not provide sufficient material to perfect any such revision, but perhaps it provides sufficient material to indicate that Catarino, as a starting point, might best be approached and understood as N&V a Catholic Christocentric theologian of the Reformation period. 60 See Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption (Belmont, MA: Nordland Publish- ing Company, 1976), 163–70. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 125 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 125–141 125 Experiential Expressivism and Two Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians G UY M ANSINI , O.S.B. Saint Meinrad School of Theology St. Meinrad, Indiana F ERGUS K ERR justly remarks in the Preface to Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians that “the philosophical problems for theology raised during the modernist crisis in the first decade of the twentieth century seem as troublesome as ever.”1 And in his first chapter, he says that “the history of twentieth-century Catholic theology is the history of the attempted elimination of theological modernism, by censorship, sackings and excommunication—and the resurgence of issues that could not be repressed by such methods.”2 Theological Modernism, we understand, includes the view that religious experience gives rise to doctrinal statement,3 a view that shares important parts of the Liberal Protestant view of revelation and doctrine, a view George Lindbeck calls the experiential-expressivist view of dogma.4 “Experiential expressivism” is just a systematic term for what historically we know as the Liberal Protestant and Catholic Modernist view of dogma. Kerr follows Lindbeck in raising the question of whether Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan are experiential-expressivists.5 The trouble with such a view, Kerr says, reporting Lindbeck, is that it is hard to see how 1 Fergus Kerr, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Neoscholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), viii. 2 Ibid., 4–5. 3 Ibid., 5. 4 George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984), 16–17. This would include the pragmatist view of dogma espoused by Edouard LeRoy; see Kerr, Catholic Theologians, 14. 5 Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 16, 31–32. N&V_win10 .qxp 126 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 126 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. there could be a pre-conceptual experience of the divine that we could then subsequently rightly identify as such.6 Lindbeck took it as obvious that Lonergan and Rahner are experiential expressivists, but he said also that their expressivism was combined with the recognition of a cognitive value for doctrines. This means that doctrines, while expressive of religious experience, nonetheless inform us about religious and divine reality, and so are capable of being true or false. Kerr does not report this part of Lindbeck’s analysis, so it is hard to know whether he agrees with it or not. In the case of both Rahner and Lonergan, in any event, Kerr introduces the sub-section with a question: “Experiential Expressivism?” He presents evidence for and against Rahner, but ultimately acquits him. For Lonergan, however, the only evidence we see is for, and Kerr seems inclined to convict. I wish to suggest that this is to get things precisely reversed; namely, that Rahner did indeed end in a form—an unacceptable one—of experiential expressivism, and that Lonergan, appearances that Kerr reports to the contrary, did not. Liberal Protestant and Modernist Dogma For the sake of some clarity about what we are speaking of, let us recall if only too briefly the views of Auguste Sabatier (1839–1901) and George Tyrrell (1861–1909). For Sabatier, a Liberal Protestant, revelation is strictly the experience of God that is both the answer to prayer and that elicits prayer,7 and whose principle function for Sabatier is to strengthen the sense of our freedom and moral agency in a world that the sciences tell us is deterministic.8 The criterion of the authenticity of a revelation, in fact, is precisely that it enrich and enhance and strengthen our spiritual and moral life.9 Dogmas for their part express the experience; they express the feeling of dependence on God (Schleiermacher).10 However, they do not really tell us anything about God; that would be the mistake of “intellectualism.”11 In this Sabatier expressly recognizes the strictures of the Kantian critique.12 6 Kerr, Catholic Theologians, 92–93; see Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 36–37. See also the discussion of private language in Kerr’s Theology after Wittgenstein, 2nd ed. (London: SPCK, 1997), 84–90. 7 Auguste Sabatier, Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion Based on Psychology and History, trans.T. A. Seed (New York: Harper Torch, 1957 [French, 1897]), 25–29, 30. 8 Ibid., 12–13, 18–19. 9 Ibid., 60–61. 10 Ibid., 45. 11 Ibid., 137–38. 12 Ibid., 276–77, 326. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 127 Lonergan, Rahner, and Experiential Expressivism 127 For Sabatier, the presence of God, which just is revelation considered in itself, evokes in us both the emotion, or feeling, of our dependence on him, and our response in prayer.This emotion, in turn—that is, religion— produces the idea of our relation to God, and indeed every religious form and rite and formulary.13 The expression of our relation to God in idea is dogma. Dogma considered as idea, in its theoretical aspect, is the envelope and expression of our relation to God, which is the implication of our religious feeling, which is the product of the presence of God.14 Or it is simply the envelope and expression of the feeling. It seems to be speaking about God; all it really expresses is the emotion, the relation.15 Dogma has at it were two faces: interiorly, its soul is piety, or consciousness of relation; exteriorly, its body is some intellectual or even philosophically formulated statement. For Kantian reasons, however, the intellectual form of dogma cannot really inform us about God. Still, such form is necessary in order to express the emotion, the consciousness of the relation, both so as to communicate it to others and to rekindle it in ourselves.16 Such forms are wholly the work of man, not God; they are not revealed; revelation is consciousness of the presence of God.17 Further, since the intellectual form is always constructed out of whatever intellectual or philosophical materials lie to hand in the culture of the time, they are also historically variable.18 For George Tyrrell, a Catholic Modernist, it is this last thing, the historical variability of dogma, that leads him to much the same position. According to Jan Walgrave, the germ of Tyrrell’s position is captured in the following argument. Revelation is either propositional, and therefore the development of doctrine is dialectical, logical; or revelation is nonpropositional, experiential. But development is not dialectical, logical; therefore revelation is not propositional.Therefore it is experiential; it is the ineffable experience of God.19 Not only does the non-dialectical, non-logical course of the development of doctrine demand that revelation be thought of as an experience rather than as a speech, but unacceptable consequences would follow if it 13 Ibid., 229. 14 Ibid., 240. 15 Ibid., 240–41, 298–99. 16 Ibid., 256–58, 318, 321. 17 Ibid., 242–43. 18 Ibid., 246–47. 19 Jan H.Walgrave, Unfolding Revelation:The Nature of Doctrinal Development (Philadel- phia: Westminster, 1972), 178, 251. See for instance Tyrrell’s “ ‘Theologism’—A Reply,” in Through Scylla and Charybdis (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907), 346, 349. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 128 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. 128 were conceived of as propositional. For one thing, it would seem that later Christians would have a better purchase on revelation than earlier ones.20 For another, it would seem that the Church would be wedded to antiquated and indeed falsified teachings of ancient science and philosophy.21 The experiential character of revelation means that strictly speaking it is non-cognitive, and does not inform us about the divine.22 What revelation chiefly does is install in us a way of life and religion, a moral and religious form of life.23 What it really is, is grace, God’s sharing of his life with us.24 As for dogma, it is merely protective of the experience; but insofar as it can be taken as positively informative, positively cognitive, it is not binding. Cognitively, it has at most a symbolic value. It is to point us ever more back to the experience, and to the form of life the experience engenders.25 With other Catholic Modernists,Tyrrell has a much greater sense than the Liberal Protestants of the role of the Church, and recognizes the revelatory experiences of prophets and apostles as in some way normative.26 But there is no difference as to the expressive character of dogma, and no difference as to what it gives non-cognitive, non-informative expression of, namely, the experience of the divine. We turn now first to Lonergan and then to Rahner. Bernard Lonergan Kerr’s indictment of Lonergan is drawn from Method in Theology, chapter five, on “Religion.”27 Kerr reports that for Lonergan, different religions are “different expressions or objectifications of a common core experience.”28 This core experience is what Lonergan calls the experience of being unrestrictedly in love with God.29 Theologically, this experience is the state of affairs named by saying that a person has received sanctifying grace,30 but can be described in the more concrete terms of the New 20 Tyrrell, “ ‘Theologism,’ ” 322–24. 21 Tyrrell, “Semper Eadem II,” in Through Scylla and Charybdis, 153. 22 Tyrrell,“Rights and Limits of Theology,” in Through Scylla and Charybdis, 205–12; “Revelation,” in Through Scylla and Charybdis, 282–83, 287–90. 23 Tyrrell, “Revelation,” 273, 275–76. 24 Tyrrell, “Rights and Limits,” 211–12. 25 Ibid., 205–7. See also Tyrrell,“Semper Eadem I,” in Through Scylla and Charybdis, 120, and “Semper Eadem II,” 145. 26 Tyrrell, “Revelation,” 292. 27 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, 2nd ed. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972). 28 Kerr, Catholic Theologians, 118. 29 Lonergan, Method, 105. 30 Ibid., 107 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 129 Lonergan, Rahner, and Experiential Expressivism 129 Testament as the fruits of the Holy Spirit such as are named in Galatians 5: “it is a conscious dynamic state of love, joy, peace, that manifests itself in acts of kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control.”31 While it is in this sense conscious, however, it is not necessarily known— that is, one may not know propositionally, which is to say that one may not be able to say, that one is in love with God.32 The experience is known only when expressed, where, doubtless, it functions as the norm of its expression.33 Furthermore, Lonergan follows Friedrich Heiler in believing that it finds common expression in such things as the acknowledgement of the existence of something transcendent and the realization that to approach it one must love one’s neighbors as oneself.34 The expression of the experience occurs in as many forms as the sociology and psychology and history of religions report.35 Now, since these expressions are incommensurable, do we not have as nice a liberal theological reduction of dogma and doctrine to the accidental as could be desired?36 It is being in love with God that is important. There will necessarily be some expression of it, but what will the differences of its expression matter? Kerr pretty much leaves us with Lindbeck’s worry that the experience of being in love with God precedes any expression of it in history and language and indeed draws the one who has it into a wordless world of mysticism.37 The outward word is seemingly important only as an avowal of the love that is experienced.38 Thus Kerr leaves us, about mid-way through the chapter. It is enough, I think, to finish the chapter to see that the invitation he has extended the reader to see Lonergan as an experiential expressivist is to view his position in a quite distorting light. Continuing the chapter, we learn that the word in which the experience of being in love with God is expressed is personal, social, and historical.39 Now, the apprehension of the value of this divine fulfillment of our transcendentality Lonergan calls faith, “the knowledge born of religious love.”40 Among the other apprehensions of value that faith makes 31 Ibid., 106. 32 Ibid., 107. 33 Kerr, Catholic Theologians, 112. 34 Lonergan, Method, 109. 35 Ibid., 108. 36 See Walgrave’s nice definition of theological Liberalism as any position that consigns doctrine to what is accidental to Christianity, Unfolding Revelation, 226. 37 Kerr, Catholic Theologians, 119. 38 Ibid., 119, reporting Method, 112–13. 39 Lonergan, Method, 113. 40 Ibid., 115. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 130 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. 130 possible, however, is that of belief, “of believing the word of religion, of accepting the judgments of fact and the judgments of value that the religion proposes.”41 The religious communities in which such judgments are made, moreover, perdure through time, acquire a history, become historical.42 So far, so may we continue to read Lonergan as a liberal. Then there is this: But there is a further and far deeper sense in which a religion may be named historical.The dynamic state of being in love has the character of a response. It is an answer to a divine initiative.The divine initiative is not just creation. It is not just God’s gift of his love.There is a personal entrance of God himself into history, a communication of God to his people, the advent of God’s word into the world of religious expression. Such was the religion of Israel. Such has been Christianity.43 With this stroke, all the positivity of Christianity and the Christian revelation that Lindbeck feared has been sold down the river returns. It is not the case that all expressions of being in love with God are human expressions. It is not the case that all objectivations of the experience are human products. Some are divine. And that is the claim of the Christian gospel. One may say that in this matter, beyond the systematic precision with which he wishes to relate human subjectivity and transcendence, religious experience, religion, faith, and belief, Lonergan is concerned for two things. First, by making good what follows from the will of God for the salvation of all—the offer of grace and so the possibility of an experienced being in love if it is accepted—he makes the divine will to save more believable. Second, he is concerned to think out more concretely how the universal offer of grace should be described given the scope and detail of the modern knowledge of the religions of man. But having mentioned these modern concerns, I should also say that what Lonergan is doing is quite traditional. In distinguishing being in love with God and the knowledge born of it from the exterior word of God spoken to his people through prophet and apostle, he does nothing except trade on St. Thomas’s observation that the gift of faith comes to us from God in two ways, from the interior light, the lumen fidei and the exterior proposition on the lips of prophet or apostle. [I]n the faith by which we believe in God there is not only the accepting of the object of assent, but something moving us to the assent.This 41 Ibid., 118. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 118–19. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 131 Lonergan, Rahner, and Experiential Expressivism 131 is a kind of light—the habit of faith—divinely imparted to the human mind. . . . It is clear, then, that faith comes from God in two ways: by way of an interior light that leads to assent, and by way of the realities that are proposed from without and that had as their source divine revelation.44 Lonergan expressly identifies what he calls “faith,” the knowledge born of love, with the lumen fidei, just as previously he has identified the experience of being in love with God with sanctifying grace. All that he has done is connect the light of faith with the experience of grace: the light of faith is the knowledge born of love, the apprehension of the value of giving assent to the creed.45 Karl Rahner Kerr raises the question of whether Rahner is an experiential expressivist as follows:“Theologically, the charge is that Rahner’s heuristic strategy of returning us always to the self ’s experience of transcending finitude diverts attention from allowing God’s unique self-revelation historically in Jesus Christ to shape Christian self-understanding.”46 Kerr acquits Rahner on the ground that his anthropology is contained within the ecclesial context in which alone he thought theology was to be prosecuted.47 This purportedly saves him from collapsing all talk about God into talk about us and our experience.48 It might also be urged on behalf of Rahner that the obvious rejoinder to the charge of experiential expressivism is that the transcendental experience of God finds expression not in the consciousness of the individual as such, but in history, in the objectivation of historical event, including the words that in part constitute and interpret the event.To the question of how we identify the religious experience as religious, or the experience of God as really of God, Rahner could answer with Lonergan that the identification is made for us by prophet and apostle, which is to say by God, and that, moreover, doctrine bears also expressly on the historical, on the presence of God in history, and informs us of this presence.That is, we 44 St.Thomas Aquinas, Faith, Reason and Theology. Questions I–IV of his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius, trans.Armand Mauer (Toronto: PIMS, 1987), 69: q. 3, a. 1, ad 4. 45 Lonergan defends his freedom to use “faith” as he does, meaning the light of faith, and distinguishing it from “beliefs” (Method, 123–24). 46 Kerr, Catholic Theologians, 93. 47 Ibid., 93–94. 48 The difference between Liberal Protestantism and Catholic Modernism was supposed to be the greater “ecclesiality” of the latter. This did not prevent Modernists from embracing an inadequate view of the cognitive character of doctrine. N&V_win10 .qxp 132 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 132 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. could think that Rahner combines his expressivism with a straightforward cognitivism, by which I mean the mediation of the word of God in the human words of prophet and apostle. In fact, Rahner’s position bears closer examanination. In a short essay entitled “Human Religion and the Religion of Jesus Christ,” Hans Urs von Balthasar makes a strong case for taking Rahner as a liberal theologian in the classical sense; that is, as conforming Christianity to the demands of the Enlightenment and so transforming Christianity from “a positive, historical religion to a religion valid for man in general, who is essentially religious.”49 Balthasar makes his case mostly on the basis of two of Rahner’s essays, “Yesterday’s History of Dogma and Theology for Tomorrow” and “The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation.”50 According to the former, the interpretation of doctrine with the help of modern historical methods will doubtless lead us to discard many things we once thought were part of revelation. According to the latter, Christ and his cross are but the objectivation of the transcendental and universal experience of the closeness of God (what Rahner otherwise called the supernatural existentiale as conditioning all of human consciousness universally). Liberal Protestantism and Catholic Modernism are, of course, just forms of the Enlightenment project. Perhaps the first thing to be said about the idea that Rahner ended in experiential expressivism is how ironic, if true, that should be. For this, it is enough to recall the original version of Hearer of the Word, his foundational essay in what Rahner called the philosophy of religion.51 For Hearer aims at the (transcendental) vindication of the possibility of a positive revelation in history, wherein the “word” to be heard is the word of the prophets, of Christ, of Scripture.52 It is therefore not surprising that it expressly, if rather casually and in a sort of goes-without-saying tone dismisses Lessing and Schleiermacher, and Liberal Protestantism and Modernism.53 We are expressly informed, more49 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Human Religion and the Religion of Christ,” in New Elucidations, trans. Sister Mary Theresilde Skerry (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986 [German, 1979]), 74–87, at 75. 50 Karl Rahner,“Yesterday’s History of Dogma and Theology for Tomorrow,” in Theological Investigations XVIII, trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 3–34; “The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation,” in Theological Investigations XVI, trans. David Morland (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979), 199–224. These articles appeared in German in 1977 and 1975, respectively. 51 Karl Rahner, Hearer of the Word, translation of the first edition by Joseph Donceel, ed. Andrew Tallon (New York: Continuum, 1994 [German, 1941]). 52 Ibid., 40–41, 61, 132, 145–46. 53 Ibid., 15, 19, 154. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 133 Lonergan, Rahner, and Experiential Expressivism 133 over, that the content of revelation cannot be thought of as determined by man’s subjectivity and is “more than an objectivation of humanity’s subjective state,”54 and is not deducible from human transcendence.55 Rather, revelation will find objectivation and necessarily so in a historical event that proceeds from a divine freedom whose decision cannot be anticipated or predicted.56 As the event is unpredictable, so will be the human words of prophet and apostle, the content of their message, the message that in part constitutes and is comprised within the event. Hearer ends with the deduction that, should God speak to us in history and in our words, that history and those words will necessarily be particular so as to be recognizable,57 and will therefore comprise a deposit to be guarded by an institution that will be able to say something equivalent to what the Church in fact says, extra ecclesiam nulla salus.58 Not a conclusion that suggests liberal theology. Could we be any further from experiential expressivism and Modernism? And how ever did Rahner come to the positions Balthasar takes him to task for in the above mentioned essay? Let us stay with Hearer and first note the remarkable difference between the first and second editions. Recall that the second edition was prepared by J. B. Metz in 1963 and with Rahner’s approval.59 The additions Metz made importantly qualify the anti-Modernist tone of the first edition. In the first place, the transcendental revelation of God—that is, that revelation that consists in the offer of grace to every man, or, let us say, in the supernatural existentiale—is now repeatedly and insistently said to be the most important form of revelation, more important than that to be discovered in history and in word, therefore.60 Of this basic or first form, historical event and word are the necessary objectivation, without which a revelation to man in his entire reality cannot be conceived.The transcendental is given only in and with the categorial.This does not or need not mean that doctrine has become the expression of the transcendental experience itself and alone—that would sound like Modernism 54 Ibid., 19. 55 Ibid., 58, 92, 151. 56 Ibid., 70–71. 57 Ibid., 134–35. 58 Ibid., 156. 59 Karl Rahner, Hearers of the Word, trans. Michael Richards (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969 [German, 1963]), hereafter Hearers, where the additions of Metz are referred to.All the notes are from Metz except the one on page 71.Andrew Tallon identifies the additions in “Spirit, Freedom, History: Karl Rahner’s Hörer des Wortes (Hearers of the Word),” The Thomist 38 (1974): 908–36. 60 Rahner, Hearers, 22, n. 6; 112–13, n. 2; 152–53, n. 2. N&V_win10 .qxp 134 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 134 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. indeed. To the contrary, if the objectivations “express” the experience, it could be the case they are informative and, as statements, are true. The words of Scripture and doctrine would tell us of divine things, of divine things and divine action in history, the correlate of grace, and tell us truly. Who, after all, is doing the “objectifying” of the transcendental revelation? Presumably, it is God through his prophets and apostles, and we are to suppose some quite ordinary understanding of prophetic and scriptural inspiration.61 On the other hand, the more worrying step seems also to be taken in the Metz-Rahner text, according to which the objectivation is indeed nothing but the exegesis of the transcendental revelation. One could therefore start with the concept of a gracious “transcendental revelation,” and it could probably be shown that the categorial factual revelation of Christianity is nothing but the reflexive thematization of this “transcendental revelation . . .”62 The “categorial-reflexive and historical” can, it seems, be considered as nothing but the “coming to itself ” of the transcendental, of grace.63 Sayings like these seem to mean that what all the historical events and words mean is nothing more than “grace,” or that “God has come close.” If that is what they “thematize,” that is what they mean. If the first edition of the book was anti-Modernist, therefore, Metz’s version in some measure de-anti-modernizes it. Rahner and Tyrrell could talk. It is certain that by the second edition of Hearer, Rahner had at least taken the step, seemingly forbidden by the first edition, of deducing the content of revelation from the idea of man’s supernaturally elevated subjectivity. This occurs in The Trinity (German 1965), where the Incarnation, Pentecost, and the doctrine of the Trinity itself are deduced from the idea that God communicates himself to us.64 To be sure, this is not a deduction from man’s subjectivity or transcendentality all by itself, and so in this way the strictures of the first 61 See for instance Rahner’s essay on inspiration, “Inspiration in the Bible,” in Inquiries (New York: Herder, 1964), the first of the Quaestiones Disputatae series, first published in German in 1958. 62 Rahner, Hearers, 153, n. 2. 63 Ibid., 149, n. 2. 64 Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974 [German, 1965]). On page 100, note 18, Rahner says he is pursuing a middle way between an a priori proof of the Trinity and an “a posteriori gathering of random facts,” since he presupposes the truth of the Incarnation and Pentecost. Still, he aspires to see necessary relations between these events and the idea of a divine self-communication to man as historically self-realizing spirit. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 135 Lonergan, Rahner, and Experiential Expressivism 135 edition of Hearer are maintained. It is a deduction from graced transcendentality. More precisely, it is a deduction of grace, the grace of the Holy Spirit, from the idea that human transcendentality is visited by God, and the deduction of the Incarnation from the companion idea that human historicity is likewise a locus of God’s self-communication.The structure of human historical subjectivity and the content of revelation seem nonetheless to be more tightly connected than Hearer prepared us for. The ensuing controversy over the status of the immanent Trinity in Rahner is a sort of warning signal that, with the barest shake, the elaborate construction of the deduction reduces to the declaration that all the dogmas mean are “God has come close,” even though I do not think a fair reading of The Trinity by itself supports that view. This suggestion, that it is not only the case that all doctrine can be necessarily connected to the idea that God has come close, but that all that doctrine can mean is that God has come close hovers in the essays where Rahner directly addresses the topic of “experience.” In “The Experience of God Today” (German 1969), the experience of God is in its “ultimate depths . . . the experience of an ineffable nearness of God to us such that . . . he bestows himself upon man with an immediacy that brings him forgiveness and a share in his divine life.”65 Furthermore,“in its pure form . . . it [the experience] is precisely this that we call Christianity.”66 This experience has an objectivation in history and word, therefore. In fact, Christianity is both the pure form of the experience and its “sheer objectivation in history.”67 Finally, in its pure form, the experience is said to be “related to Jesus Christ as [to] its seal of authenticity.”68 This might mean that the subsistence of the Logos in the humanity of Jesus authenticates the experience of God, telling us, as it were, that it is trustworthy. It might also mean that the intelligibility of Jesus Christ exhausts itself in the news that “God has come close to us.” And this is all the more probable in that Christ guarantees the trustworthiness of the experience, not as causing grace efficiently, but only as signifying its presence sacramentally, announcing its presence in history.69 Evidence for taking it the second way is provided in Foundations of Christian Faith (German 1976), where the hollowing out of Christological dogma is quite explicit and where the Church’s Christology is pretty 65 Karl Rahner, “The Experience of God Today,” in Theological Investigations XI, trans. David Bourke (New York:The Seabury Press, 1974), 164. 66 Ibid., 165 67 Ibid., 164. 68 Ibid., 165. 69 Rahner, “The One Christ and the Universality of Salvation,” 207–8, 212–16. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 136 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. 136 much reduced to the declaration that “God has come close.”70 It is all the more important that we find this in Foundations, moreover, which has some claim to be Rahner’s most considered and authoritative statement of things.We begin with the section on the “validity and limits” of classical Christological dogma.71 The Church’s Christology is a descending Christology, and therefore, Rahner tells us, hard to keep free from “mythological misunderstandings.”72 What constitutes a Christology as mythological? This is clarified in the immediately following remarks on what it does and does not mean for the Church to say that “Jesus is God.” The copula in such statements of the Church, Rahner says, the “is,” does not function as it ordinarily does to express “a real identification in the content of the subject and the predicate.”73 The “is” does not function as it ordinarily does in affirmative statements, and so, what saying “Jesus is God” does not mean is that Jesus is God. For if it functioned in the ordinary way, Rahner says, there would be an incoherent identification of the divine and the human in such a way as to fall afoul of the Chalcedonian injunction to keep the natures “unmixed”; it would be to fall into monophysitism.74 What we miss in Rahner’s analysis of Chalcedon, in other words, is the acknowledgement that “one and the same” is both God and man, human and divine; namely, the only-begotten Son. Rahner takes the Chalcedonian “unmixed” as permission to elide the subject of union, to make the hypostasis of the hypostatic union disappear. This is prepared for by the strange analysis, reported just above, of how the copula functions in ordinary statements. He says it expresses “a real identification in the content of the subject and the predicate.” But of course it does no such thing: no one takes the “is” of “the cat is white” to assert that the conceptual content of subject and predicate are the same, and that felinity is whiteness, but 70 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christian- ity, trans.William V. Dych (New York:The Seabury Press, 1978 [German 1976]). 71 Ibid., 285ff. 72 Ibid., 290. 73 Ibid. The German will perhaps be welcome for this important passage; see Grund- kurs des Glaubens: Einführung in den Begriff des Christentums (Freiburg: Herder, 1976), 284: “[D]ieses ‘ist’ als Kopula in einem ganz anderen Sinn auftritt und verstanden werden will als in den uns sonst geläufigen Sätzen mit der (scheinbar) selben ‘ist’-Kopula. Denn wenn wir sagen: Petrus is ein Mensch, besagt der Satz eine Realidentifikation der Inhaltlichkeit des Subjekts- und Prädikatsnomens. Der Sinn des ‘ist’ bei Sätzen der Idiomenkommunikation in der Christologie beruht aber gerade nicht auf einer solchen Realidentifikation, sondern auf einer einmaligen, sonst nicht vorkommenden und zutiefst Geheimnis bleibenden Einheit von real verschiedenen, einen unendlichen Abstand voneinander habenden Wirchlichkeiten.” 74 Ibid. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 137 Lonergan, Rahner, and Experiential Expressivism 137 only that the thing that is feline is also the thing that is truly characterized by the predicate and so is white.75 So also at Ephesus and Chalcedon (not to mention Constantinople II), the one who is eternally divine is the same one who becomes man and is human. But for Rahner, if we take the Church’s “is” statements literally, we fall into myth, and we burden the idea of incarnation “with a lot of mythological misunderstandings,” among which, presumably, is that the eternal Son became man.76 All we assert is an “unknown and deeply mysterious unity between realities [the humanity of Jesus and the divinity of God] which are really different and which are at an infinite distance from each other.”77 Why ever did the Church insist on the communication of idioms, once Nestorius challenged it? On Rahner’s view, not because “one and same” is both God and man. Not because, granting the mysterious character of the union, it is known, contrary to Rahner’s assertion, and known as hypostatic. Rather, it is only “faith’s experience of the unique presence of God in Jesus” that requires the communication of idioms.78 If that is all the communication of idioms commits us to, it is hard to see why Nestorius was condemned. The disappearance of the hypostasis, of what, or rather who, the Church understands the hypostasis of the “hypostatic union” to be, is confirmed in the sub-section entitled “The Indetermination of the Point of Unity in the Hypostatic Union.”79 Here, we learn that if the point of unity of the natures,“person” or “hypostasis,” is understood in its ancient sense as the “bearer” of the natures, then “the assertion . . . remains rather formal and abstract”—that is, I take it, useless and uninformative. On the other hand, if we take “person” in its modern sense, we fall into monophysitism or monotheletism—that is to say, myth. “For what is understood by this is a single center of activity, namely the divine center.”80 And this would “overlook” the human and created “center of activity” in Jesus that he exercised vis-à-vis God and indeed “in an absolute difference from him.”81 So, in Christ we have a human subject free and obedient to God, but not a divine subject that has been “humanized” because of the assumed nature, a divine subject expressing his divine freedom in the obedience of the created freedom of the assumed humanity. 75 See Henry Babcock Veatch, Intentional Logic (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1952), chapter 5, “The Proposition.” 76 Ibid., 291. 77 Ibid., 290. See note 70 for the German. 78 Ibid., 288. 79 Ibid., 292. 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 138 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. 138 Why is Rahner’s position not adoptionism pure and simple? He says it is not because Jesus is not being thought of merely as a prophet like one of the other prophets—not, that is, as a bringer of words only—but rather as being in his entire human reality the final and eschatological message of God.82 This is what the resurrection verifies, that he is the eschatological message of God.83 And this, moreover, is all that we can mean by saying that Jesus is the Word, the Word who has become flesh. “He is the Word of God which is spoken to us in everything which he was and said.”84 Anything more will land us in myth.The assertion of the “pre-existence” of Christ, moreover, is sufficiently grasped in understanding that the God whose offer of himself to us he makes through Jesus is correctly understood as eternal and “pre-existent” relative to every created being, though here “in a radically different way than is the case when God is pre-existent to some other temporal creature,” since this temporal creature, Christ, is God’s own “self expression.”85 Rahner liberally sprinkles his conception of the presence of God in Christ with such modifiers as “unique” and “radically different,” and such like, but they do not rescue it from psilanthropism. Rahner’s Christology does not rise to the height of Nestorianism. There is also in Foundations a nice expression of our transcendental religious experience as the principle of verification in Christology.86 In its context in Foundations, it lets us see what the additions of Metz to Hearer of the Word mean. If transcendental revelation, our transcendental experience of God, is the basic form of revelation of which word and event are objectivations, then all it will verify in Christ is the existence of another man. We will not get more from historical event and prophetic and dominical and apostolic word than is in our criterion, and the criterion remains something human, the human experience of the God who is other, who is not us. Foundations perfectly illustrates the methodological strictures on Christology Rahner lays out in “The Two Basic Types of Christology” (German 1971).87 The first type, the Christology of saving history, takes Jesus in his humanity as God’s final and eschatological revelation. The second is the Christology of descent, where the Word becomes flesh and 82 Ibid., 280. 83 Ibid., 279–80. 84 Ibid., 281. 85 Ibid., 304. 86 Ibid., 282. 87 Karl Rahner, “The Two Basic Types of Christology,” in Theological Investigations XIII, trans. David Bourke (New York:The Seabury Press, 1975), 213–23. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 139 Lonergan, Rahner, and Experiential Expressivism 139 dwells among us, and whose official expression is to be found in the Chalcedonian settlement. Now, Christologies of the second type are founded in Christologies of the first.Therefore Chalcedon “need necessarily be saying [no] more than what was already clearly present at the starting-point: Jesus in his human lot is the (not a !) address of God to man, and as such is eschatologically unsurpassable.”88 Moreover, Chalcedon cannot be saying anything more than that, for Christologies of the first type are the norm of Christologies of the second.89 Therefore, if to say that Jesus is the eternal Son of God is to say more than that Jesus in his humanity is God’s last word to us, then Chalcedon is not saying that, and its statements are “intended merely as emphatic statements in the sense of the first basic type.”90 On the other hand, if Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople II are saying that the Son of God became man, and if that is to say more than that God speaks to us (finally, irrevocably, etc.) through the humanity of Jesus, then Rahner’s analysis must be mistaken. The manner in which Rahner handles Christological dogma in Foundations comes to nice expression—“reflexive expression”—in “Yesterday’s History of Dogma and Theology for Tomorrow” (German 1977), one of the essays Balthasar used to indict Rahner as having cast his lot with the liberal theology of the Enlightenment. Moreover, it links up dogma and the transcendental experience of God so closely that the former is reduced to meaning a declaration of the latter. Doctrines, we learn, are sometimes composed and compounded with elements alien to their real and abiding import.When, under the press of Enlightenment historiography and hermeneutics, we can spot these encrustations for what they are, we can excise them.91 Just so, in Foundations, the Logos as the unique hypostasis subsisting in two natures, the pre-existence of the Son, the divinity of Jesus—all of these things are extraneous material, doubtless necessary at the time of doctrinal composition, and now all to be abandoned. What is left is that God has come close to us. Further, as Balthasar noted, according to Rahner’s exposition what once was not “erroneous” may be so today.92 And if one should ask whether such cleansing and re-interpretation might lead in the end “to the destruction of any real meaning of a religious statement,” Rahner replies that “a religious statement in the last resort points not to what is drained of meaning, but to the ineffable mystery that we call God, and 88 Ibid., 216. 89 Ibid., 222. 90 Ibid. 91 Rahner, “Yesterday’s History of Dogma,” 10–16. 92 Ibid., 15–16. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 140 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. 140 that it is this reference alone that makes a statement a religious one.”93 Whatever we thought a doctrine meant, all it ever really means is “God,” and “God has come close.”94 Our task today is to “derive” doctrine from “the basic substance of the event of revelation,” which basic event is the “one event of God’s most authentic self-communication, occurring everywhere in the world and in history in the Holy Spirit offered to every human being,” and which is also the correct norm of the teaching of the New Testament.95 One notes the same structure of thought as in Tyrrell. Enlightenment hermeneutics gives us leave to criticize the history of dogma and to jettison what does not stand up to criticism. The cognitive character of dogma is thus untenable.All it can be is the expression of experience, and what the expression means is “the experience.” It is to be wondered, however, whether we will any longer be able even to tell ourselves so much as that “God has come close.” For in the future, religious truth must be re-inscribed in many different horizons of understanding, cultural and linguistic.These horizons, moreover, are incommensurable with one another. Therefore also the religious statements made within them will be incommensurable and unsynthesizable.96 So how can we tell they are true or not? And a statement which cannot be known to be true cannot inform us. At least, it cannot inform someone outside the cultural linguistic bailiwick within which it was made. So, my dogmas do not inform someone from another horizon and his do not inform me.To each his own, and we cannot know whether we are in communion with one another or not.The very point of dogma, one of the points, anyway, is lost.The work of the Holy Spirit is undone, and we are surrounded again with the cacophony of Babel.All that will be left is the one and same transcendental experience of God come close to us, revealing himself to us in this basic and foundational way, although it is hard to see how we shall ever talk even about it or know we are talking about the same thing. Kerr’s original worry about experiential expressivism returns. Conclusion Improbable and astounding as it seems—as indeed I think it is—Karl Rahner leads us back, not just to an expressivist view of doctrine wherein 93 Ibid., 16. 94 Cf. ibid., 18. 95 Ibid., 17–18. 96 Ibid., 33. See earlier (German, 1969) Rahner’s “Theological Pluralism,” in Theolog- ical Investigations XI, trans. David Bourke (New York:The Seabury Press, 1974), 7. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 141 Lonergan, Rahner, and Experiential Expressivism 141 religious experience is privileged as the locus of revelation, but also to a sort of non-cognitivism that was the most unbearable part of the Liberal Protestant and Catholic Modernist views of dogma. Lonergan does and Rahner does not uphold what Newman called the dogmatic principle. Just two things remain to be said. First, there was what we can justifiably call a sort of imperialist streak in Rahner. In certain of his deliverances he can seem catholic and generous in admitting theological pluralism and many ways of doing theology, and of course he always said that the classical dogmatic expressions of the Church were “in themselves” justified. But also, he really did think things ought to be done his way. In “History of Dogma,” he lays down quite magisterially what is required for “our time,” and it turns out to be what he is doing. Second, there is the significant title of one of the essays visited above, “The Experience of God Today.” Today.The experience has a history, and we must attend to the peculiar, unique contours of the experience in our own time and place. For Rahner himself, what was peculiar about “today” were things like a heightened sense of the transcendence of God. He was a tough old Jesuit who knew how to discern spirits. Other people, accepting Rahner’s invitation to do so, consulted their contemporary experience, something more quotidian than his, however, and marshaling such things as the experience of being a woman, of being Canadian, of suffering the threats of nuclear war and acid rain, of celebrating human interrelatedness, made them fonts of theology, whence are drawn new images, new symbols of God and Christ, suitable for our new situation.97 From the high and serious transcendental deduction of the conditions of the possibility of revelation, we arrive at what Ernest Fortin in 1986 called “the theologically lean and impoverished literature of our time.”98 N&V 97 See Ellen Leonard, “Experience as a Source for Theology,” CTSA Proceedings 43 (1988): 44–61; see her appeal to Tyrrell and Rahner together on page 45. 98 Ernest Fortin, “Faith and Reason in Contemporary Perspective: Apropos of a Recent Book,” in Ernest Fortin: Collected Essays, ed. J. Brian Benestad, vol. 1: Classical Christianity and the Political Order (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 301. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 142 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 143 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 143–160 143 Lucis Mysterium: Ignatius of Antioch on the Lord’s Baptism G REGORY VALL Ave Maria University Ave Maria, Florida THOUGH Ignatius of Antioch (died c. A.D. 113 ) never uses an expression such as “the Christ Event,” it is clear that he views the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery as demarcating a single event within the divine economy. Indeed it is the culminating and definitive event, the event that somehow subsumes the whole, such that the entire redemptive plan of God can be described as “the economy concerning the new man Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 20:1).1 Ignatius identifies Jesus Christ as “he who was with the Father before the ages and appeared at the end” (Magnesians 6:1). This remarkably compact formulation accomplishes three things simultaneously. First, while it distinguishes between the domains of theologia (that which eternally “was”) and oikonomia (that which has happened temporally), it places these alongside each other in such a way as to indicate their proper relation and the bond that unites them: he who is eternally with the Father is he who has appeared in time. Second, though only one event in the entire economy is mentioned in this statement, the essential struc1 Here and in Ephesians 18:2 Ignatius uses the term oi< jomolía in what was already becoming its technical theological sense, that is, to designate the great “plan” or “arrangement” by which God dispenses graces to his creatures (cf. Eph 1:10; 3:9).The translations of passages from Ignatius’ letters throughout this article are my own and are based on the Greek text as presented in Michael W. Holmes, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). All translations of biblical texts are also my own. I adopt the convention of italicizing the titles of Ignatius’ letters (and their abbreviations) and not italicizing the names of biblical books. This helps distinguish between Pauline and Ignatian letters that have the same title (for example, Ephesians and Ephesians respectively). N&V_win10 .qxp 144 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 144 Gregory Vall ture of the economy and the place of that one event within the whole are indicated.The economy has a teleological structure, and the appearing of the Son comes “at the end” (e< m sékei). Naturally, this is not strictly or merely a matter of chronology. It indicates that the Christ Event is the goal and point of perfection toward which the whole economy is oriented. Third, the specific nature and purpose of the economy is indicated: it is essentially a matter of the temporal manifestation of that which is eternal and invisible. Thus the entire Christ Event is summed up by saying that “he appeared” (e< uámg). This is spelled out explicitly later in the same letter. The “one God” has “manifested himself [uameqx́ray e> atsóm] through Jesus Christ his Son” (Magn. 8:2; cf. Eph. 19:3). Ignatius tells the Philadelphians that the gospel consists of three pillars: “the advent of the Savior . . . , his passion, and the resurrection” (Philadelphians 9:2). Similarly, he wants the Magnesians “to be fully convinced of the birth and the passion and the resurrection” of Christ (Magn. 11:1). This three-fold schema appears to be basic for Ignatius, but he can elaborate it in a variety of ways to suit his purposes. In one text, the reference to the Incarnation includes explicit mention of both the conception and the birth of Christ as distinct moments (Eph. 18:2). In another, the passion is broken down into three moments: persecution, crucifixion, and death (Trallians 9:1). In anti-Docetic contexts there are references to Christ’s eating and drinking, whether prior to his death (ibid.) or after his resurrection (Smyrnaeans 3:3). Specific events in the life of Christ occurring between his birth and his death are, however, mentioned only rarely. Despite Ignatius’s patent familiarity with the Synoptic tradition (in its Matthean form), we hear nothing of Jesus’ miracles, exorcisms, or controversies with the Jewish leadership. In fact, apart from a glancing reference to the anointing at Bethany (Eph. 17:1), the only event between the nativity and the passion that merits mention in Ignatius’s letters is the Lord’s baptism in the Jordan by John, which is twice included within creedal formulations (Eph. 18:2; Smyr. 1:1). After a brief look at the way the Lord’s baptism is presented in the Gospels, the body of this essay will be devoted to a thorough theological exegesis of these two Ignatian passages.The primary aim of this study is to elucidate two important aspects of the divine economy: the interrelation of the distinct moments that comprise the Christ Event, and the relationship between the Christ Event and the events that precede and follow it in the temporal unfolding of the divine economy. With regard to the first aspect, the baptism of the Lord can be viewed as a kind of hinge between the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery, helping us to grasp the soteriological unity of the life of Christ. With regard to the N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 145 Ignatius of Antioch on the Lord’s Baptism 145 second aspect, the baptism of the Lord is suggestive of how the Christ Event is connected to the creation of the world, God’s covenant with Israel, and the sacramental life of the Church. Pope John Paul II counted the Lord’s baptism in the Jordan among the lucis mysteria because of its capacity to illuminate “the total mystery of Christ” (totum Christi mysterium ).2 More recently Pope Benedict XVI, drawing on both modern biblical scholarship and ancient exegetical and liturgical traditions, has suggested some of the links between the baptism in the Jordan and the broader economy of redemption.3 For Ignatius of Antioch the Christian life is fundamentally a matter of vqirsolahía, or “learning Christ” (Phld. 8:2; cf. Eph 4:20), that is, of entering into the mystery of Christ through a lifelong intellectual and moral process of personal discipleship. He places the Lord’s baptism among the principal mysteria vitae Iesu in such a way as to suggest its mystagogical function, that is, its capacity to lead us into the mystery of Christ.4 From the Gospels to Ignatius’ Letters Aspects of the mystagogical capacity of the baptism in the Jordan are hinted at already in the New Testament.5 First, it is an event in which all three persons of the Trinity are manifestly involved and in which something of the Trinitarian mystery is disclosed. At the Jordan God calls Jesus “my beloved Son,” thus revealing himself as Father, while the Spirit descends from the Father and comes to rest upon the Son. Second, the Synoptic narratives of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan make various allusions to the Old Testament.The Father’s voice from heaven and the hovering of the Spirit in the form of a dove over Jesus and over the waters of the Jordan may evoke the creation of the world as narrated in Genesis 1:1–3.6 There may also be an allusion to the Flood here, especially if Mark’s statement that Jesus saw “the Spirit coming down to [ei< y] him like a dove” (Mk 1:10) is 2 John Paul II, apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae (October 16, 2002), §21. 3 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), 9–24. 4 On the relationship between the mysteries of the life of Christ (plural) and the mystery of Christ (singular), see Christian Schütz, O.S.B, “The Mysteries of the Life of Christ as a Prism of Faith,” Communio 29 (2002): 28–38. 5 For an exhaustive historical-critical study of the presentation of Jesus’ baptism in the Synoptic Gospels, see Fritzleo Lentzen-Deis, Die Taufe Jesu nach den Synoptikern: Literarkritische und gattungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, Frankfurter Theologische Studien 4 (Frankfurt: Josef Knecht, 1970). 6 R.T. France, The Gospel of Mark:A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 79. N&V_win10 .qxp 146 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 146 Gregory Vall meant to recall the dove that came “to Noah” and “into [ei< y] the ark” (Gen 8:9, LXX).7 If so, we should perhaps compare Jesus both to righteous Noah and to the ark itself, for these passed through the waters of death in order to bring the human race to a kind of rebirth or new creation.8 The close narrative conjunction (especially strong in Mark) between the Lord’s baptism by John and his forty-day testing in the wilderness may hint that in these events Jesus in some sense recapitulates the founding events of Israel’s covenant with Yahweh: the crossing of the sea, the forty-year testing in the wilderness, and the crossing of the Jordan.The words spoken by the Father at the Jordan, which vary slightly in each of the Synoptic Gospels, contain clear Old Testament echoes that indicate that Jesus is the Servant of Yahweh and the Davidic Messiah.9 The brief allusion to Jesus’ baptism as God’s “anointing” of him “in the Holy Spirit and power” in Acts 10:38 points in a similar direction. The connection between Israel’s historical covenant and the baptism in the Jordan is thematized in Matthew 3:15, where the Lord’s words to John the Baptist—“Allow it for now, for it is fitting for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness”—serve to draw this event into Matthew’s programmatic theology of Old Testament fulfillment.10 Third, two dominical logia in which Jesus refers to his approaching passion as a “baptism” that he must undergo (Lk 12:50; Mk 10:38–39) intimate a close connection between his baptism in the Jordan and the Paschal Mystery. Finally, the words of the Baptist—“I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit” (Mk 1:8)—indicate the economic or salvation-historical relationship between John’s baptism on the one hand and Christian sacramental baptism and the grace of the new covenant on the other hand.11 Jesus’ own submission to John’s ritual seems to transform it and in some manner prepares for or makes possible 7 Craig S. Keener considers it “likely” that “an allusion to Noah’s dove as harbin- ger of new creation” is present in the tradition that lies behind both John 1:32 and the Synoptics (The Gospel of John: A Commentary [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003], 1:460). R. T. France notes that the Flood is a type of (sacramental) baptism in 1 Peter 3:20–21, but he regards any link between Noah’s dove and the dove-like Spirit of Mark 1:10 to be “obscure” (Gospel of Mark, 79). 8 Cf. Augustine, De civitate Dei, XV, 26. 9 John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 2, Mentor, Message, and Miracles (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 106. 10 See Mt 1:22–23; 2:5–6, 15, 17–18, 23; 3:3; 4:14–16; 5:17; 8:17; 11:13–14; 12:17–21, 40; 13:14–15, 35; 15:7–9; 21:4–5, 13, 16, 42; 22:43–44; 23:39; 24:30; 26:31, 64; 27:9–10, 46. Of particular relevance is 5:17–20, which (like 3:15) combines the notions of “fulfillment” and “righteousness.” Jesus’ fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets enables his disciples to live a life of righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. 11 See also Mt 3:11; Lk 3:16; Jn 1:26–27, 33; 3:5; Acts 1:5; 11:16; 19:1–7. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 147 Ignatius of Antioch on the Lord’s Baptism 147 Christian baptism. In sum, the baptism in the Jordan is a Trinitarian mystery that hearkens back to the creation of the world, the Flood, and Yahweh’s covenant with Israel, while it anticipates the death and resurrection of the Lord and sacramental baptism. From early on, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan gave rise to theological questions.Why did Jesus undergo a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mk 1:4)? Had he sinned? Did his submission to John’s ritual indicate the latter’s superiority over him? Do the descent of the Holy Spirit and the Father’s proclamation—“You are my beloved Son”—imply that Jesus was previously unaware of his divine Sonship, or even that he was not in fact the Son of God or Spirit-filled prior to this event? Further, it is evident that confusion over the relationship between John’s ministry of baptism and Christian baptism continued for decades after the resurrection (Acts 19:1–7; Jn 3:22–30). The Gospel narratives were composed in such a way as to guide their readers toward a correct understanding of these issues. In Matthew, for example, the brief conversation between John and Jesus (3:14–15) indicates that the former was not superior to the latter and that Jesus was baptized not because he was a sinner but in order to fulfill the requirements of righteousness on Israel’s behalf. Matthew’s slight alteration of the Father’s proclamation—from “You are my beloved Son” (Mk 1:11; Lk 3:22) to “This is my beloved Son” (Mt 3:17)—suggests that these words were not spoken for Jesus’ benefit but for ours. Luke, for his part, notes that the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary at the Annunciation such that the child conceived in her womb was already “Son of God” (Lk 1:35). He also virtually removes John from the scene of Jesus’ baptism (3:20–21). Finally, John the Evangelist explains that Jesus Christ is the Incarnation of God’s co-eternal Logos ( Jn 1:1–2, 14), sharply distinguishes between Jesus and the Baptist, and declines to narrate Jesus’ baptism as such. Clearly the evangelists handled the whole affair with kid gloves. It is, however, a crude reductionism to explain the Gospels’ treatment of Jesus’ baptism in terms of “embarrassment” and “damage control,” as John Meier does.12 The evangelists approached the Lord’s baptism cautiously because of its potential for misinterpretation, but they also recognized its capacity to illuminate the mystery of Christ. Even the Fourth Gospel makes positive allusions to it ( Jn 1:29–34). It is similarly unjustified to suppose, as Kilian McDonnell does, that Ignatius of Antioch found Jesus’ baptism to be “problematic” and “a source of embarrassment” merely on the grounds that he alludes to Matthew 3:15 in one of his two references 12 Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:101–3. N&V_win10 .qxp 148 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 148 Gregory Vall to this event (Smyr. 1:1) and hints at a relation to sacramental baptism in the other (Eph. 18:2).13 Does one explain only in order to explain away? Ignatius was under no compulsion to include the baptism in his creedal formulations (most of which lack any reference to it), and it is likely that he had some positive reason to mention it when he chose to do so.14 It is true that Docetic Gnostics beginning at least with Cerinthus (c. A.D. 100) interpreted the baptism of Jesus in a radically adoptionistic manner that cut at the very heart of the gospel,15 and it is probable that Ignatius is consciously guarding his readers from some such interpretation.16 But, as I will attempt to demonstrate, he also glimpsed theological riches in the Lord’s baptism.After all, Ignatius polemicizes also against the Docetic interpretation of the passion (Tral. 10:1; Smyr. 2:1), and no one supposes that he viewed the passion as “problematic” or “a source of embarrassment”! Before examining the two passages in which Ignatius mentions the baptism of the Lord, it will be helpful to attend to one further prolegomenon. Ignatius has acquired—somewhat undeservedly, in my opinion—the reputation of being an unsystematic thinker and of writing in a rambling and “turbulent” style.17 The point is arguable with respect to the overall character of his letters, but for present purposes we need merely point out that such a preconception is bound to mislead when it comes to those passages that contain his creedal formulations. And this is 13 Kilian McDonnell, The Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan: The Trinitarian and Cosmic Order of Salvation (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 19. McDonnell’s treatment of the New Testament evidence is insufficiently critical of Meier’s dubious methodology. Michael D. Goulder also parrots this approach when he finds “increasing defensiveness” in the Gospel texts and “embarrassment” in Ignatius’s two references to the Lord’s baptism (“Ignatius’ ‘Docetists,’ ” Vigiliae Christianae 53 [1999]: 27). 14 According to Daniel Alain Bertrand, Ignatius was compelled to include two allusions to the baptism in the Jordan because he was citing traditional formulas; he was in fact entirely uninterested in—and did what he could to minimize the theological significance of—the Lord’s baptism, which constitutes a “foreign body” in his argumentation (Le baptême de Jésus: Histoire de l’exégèse aux deux premiers siècles, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Biblischen Exegese 14 [Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1973], 26–32). The remainder of the present essay should serve to refute this thesis. 15 For Cerinthus’s interpretation of Jesus’ baptism, see Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 1.26.1; for that of the Valentinians, see 1.7.2 and 3.11.3; and for that of the Ophites, see 1.30.12–14. 16 Cf. Goulder, “Ignatius’ ‘Docetists,’ ” 26. 17 Cf. Cyril C. Richardson, trans. and ed., Early Christian Fathers (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 74. These alleged features are romanticized in P.-Th. Camelot, Ignace d’Antioche, Polycarpe de Smyrne: Lettres, Martyre de Polycarpe:Texte Grec, introduction, traduction et notes, 4th ed., Sources Chrétiennes 10 (Paris: Cerf, 1969), 16–18. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 149 Ignatius of Antioch on the Lord’s Baptism 149 exactly what we are dealing with in the case of Ignatius’s two references to the Lord’s baptism. Ignatius’s creedal formulations are carefully crafted and characterized by rhetorical symmetry.Typically he employs symmetry to emphasize both the divine and human origins of Jesus Christ. A good example is Ephesians 7:2, which I shall lay out schematically, following the Greek word order as far as possible. 1 There is one Healer, 2 fleshly and spiritual, 3 born and unborn, 4 in man God, 5 in death true life, 6 both from Mary and from God, 7 first passible and then impassible, 8 Jesus Christ our Lord. This creedal formulation consists of eight phrases. The opening and closing phrases solemnly indicate who is spoken of and serve to frame six descriptive pairs (phrases 2–7). In each of these pairs the first element pertains to Christ’s true humanity (“fleshly . . . born . . . in man . . . in death . . . from Mary . . . passible”) while the second element pertains to his divinity (“spiritual . . . unborn . . . God . . . true life . . . from God . . . impassible”). Finally, this creedal formulation forms a chiasmus (a literary structure of inverted parallelism), such that phrase 1 is echoed by phrase 8, phrase 2 by phrase 7, phrase 3 by phrase 6, and phrase 4 by phrase 5. This example of manifest style and theological precision ought to alert us to similar features in Smyrnaeans 1 and Ephesians 18. Smyrnaeans 1:1b–2 Now let us consider the elaborate creedal formulation found in Smyraeans 1:1b–2. Having spent time with the Christians in Smyrna, Ignatius recognizes that they are “fully convinced” that Jesus Christ is truly from the stock of David, Son of God according to will and power, truly born from a virgin, baptized by John that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him, truly, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch, nailed in the flesh for us, N&V_win10 .qxp 150 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 150 Gregory Vall from whose fruit we are, from his divinely blessed passion, in order that he might raise a standard for the ages through his resurrection for his holy and faithful ones, whether among the Jews or among the gentiles, in one body of his Church. Leaving aside for the moment the ecclesiological elements of this formulation, let us focus first on its Christological elements. Ignatius gives them in three‚ pairs, introducing each pairing with the anti-Docetic adverb a< kghxy (“truly”). Simplified, they are as follows: truly from the stock of David (and) Son of God truly born from a virgin (and) baptized by John truly nailed in the flesh . . . passion (and) resurrection Once we recall that the Gospels associate the baptism in the Jordan with Jesus’ divine Sonship (Mt 3:17; Mk 1:11; Lk 3:22; Jn 1:34), and that the New Testament likewise associates the Resurrection with his divine Sonship (Acts 13:33; Rom 1:4), it is clear that once again Ignatius has used rhetorical symmetry to emphasize both Jesus’ humanity (“from David . . . from a virgin . . . nailed in the flesh”) and his divinity (“Son of God . . . baptized by John . . . Resurrection”). But this is not the whole story. Each of the three pairings potentially displays a correlation between its two items as well as a contrast.The first pairing contrasts Jesus’ human origins in the house of David with his divine Sonship; but since “Son of God” is also a title of the Davidic Messiah (2 Sam 7:14; Ps 2:7; 89:27–28), the pairing may suggest a close correlation as well. Indeed, the fact that Ignatius qualifies the title “Son of God” with the phrase “according to will and power” suggests that he is thinking in economic rather than strictly theological terms here.The man Jesus is Son of God by virtue of an act of divine power that is part and parcel of the divine economy or “will” (hékgla). But this affirmation need not be understood in an adoptionistic sense. In all likelihood the reference is precisely to the conception of Christ in his mother’s womb, when a concrete humanity derived “from the stock of David” was united to the Logos. If this interpretation is correct, the creedal formula of Smyrnaeans 1:1b–2 is very closely parallel to that of Ephesians 18:2, which likewise distinguishes between Christ’s conception and his birth. As we shall see, the latter text qualifies its reference to the conception of Christ with the phrases “according to the economy of God” (cf. “according to will and power”) and “from the seed of David” (cf. “from the stock of David”), while it N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 151 Ignatius of Antioch on the Lord’s Baptism 151 pairs off the birth of Christ with his baptism in the Jordan (just as Smyrnaeans 1:1b does). The second pairing of Smyrnaeans 1:1b–2—“born from a virgin” and “baptized by John”—likewise suggests a close economic correlation between two events.The first of these phrases, following closely upon the reference to “the stock of David,” completes an allusion to the famous prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, which Matthew 1:23 explicitly indicates to have been fulfilled by the birth of Jesus Christ.As we have seen, Ignatius qualifies the second phrase—“baptized by John”—with an allusion to Matthew 3:15: “that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him.” This indicates the fulfillment of Old Testament law and prophecy in a more general or comprehensive sense. Ignatius’ formulation also sets up a suggestive parallelism between the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist as key role players in the unfolding drama of salvation. Both are situated at the threshold between the old and the new. Later authors of the patristic period will discern further points of correlation between Christ’s nativity and his baptism,18 but as Ignatius presents these events in Smyrnaeans 1:1b, the accent is on Christ’s fulfillment of the old covenant. The third and final pairing of Smrynaeans 1:1b–2—passion and Resurrection—is one found frequently in Ignatius’s letters, where it designates the two principal moments of what we would call the Paschal Mystery and suggests their close interconnection.19 Here Ignatius continues the strongly historical cast of his creedal formulation while he delicately transitions from Christological affirmations to ecclesiological and eschatological concerns. Having already mentioned David, Mary, and John, Ignatius now refers to Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch, thus grounding the story of salvation firmly in historical reality.The passion is the point at which the economy of redemption directly touches us— Christ endured the passion “for us,” so that “we” are its “fruit”—and through the Resurrection the Paschal Mystery and the whole historically particular economy opens out into a universal and eschatological dimension. The reference to Christ’s raising a “standard [rt́rrglom] for the ages” alludes to a whole trajectory of prophecies from the book of Isaiah (5:26; 11:10; 49:22; 62:10).20 According to these texts,Yahweh will raise 18 Cf. McDonnell, Baptism of Jesus, 103–6. 19 Eph. 20:1; Magn. 11:1; Phld. sal.; 9:2; Smyr. 7:2; 12:2; cf. Phld. 8:2. 20 All four passages involve the Hebrew word sn (“sign, battle standard”), which the Septuagint normally translates rt́rrglom.This word is not used in the Septuagint of Isaiah 11:10, but it is found in the translations of that verse by Aquila and Symmachus (cf. Edwin Hatch and Henry A. Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint and the Other Greek Versions of the Old Testament (including the Apocryphal Books) N&V_win10 .qxp 152 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 152 Gregory Vall a standard for the gentile nations, summoning them to himself at Jerusalem. One of these passages identifies the standard as “the root of Jesse,” that is, the Davidic Messiah (11:10), while another notes that the ingathered gentiles will be charged with the duty of bringing along with them Yahweh’s scattered “sons and daughters,” that is, the children of Israel (49:22). The eschatological people of God will thus consist, as Ignatius perceptively notes, of Jews and gentiles. The “one body of his Church” takes up into itself, as it were, the two historical eras of redemption: the period of the old covenant, in which God sent his word to Israel; and the age of the new covenant, in which the gospel is proclaimed to all the nations. This is why Ignatius, like Paul (Rom 1:16; 3:29; 9:24; 1 Cor 1:23–24), mentions the Jews ahead of the gentiles. It is his teleological view of the economy of redemption that enables Ignatius to grasp the unity of its temporal and transcendent dimensions. Formally the creedal affirmation of Smyrnaeans 1:1b–2 is concerned with the Christ Event, which Ignatius here presents as comprised of five moments: conception, birth, baptism, passion, and Resurrection. But through a series of carefully worded modifiers and biblical allusions Ignatius indicates that the Christ Event fulfills and takes up into itself God’s particular covenant with Israel while it opens out into a universal and eschatological reality: the Church of Jews and gentiles. This understanding of salvation is thoroughly biblical and, in particular, Matthean and Pauline.Anyone who supposes that Ignatius was not a skillful exegete of the Old Testament, that his understanding of redemption lacks a salvation-historical perspective, or that his eschatology was confined to the redemption of the individual and dominated by the “realized” dimension, ought to pause carefully over this passage.21 [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987], 1323). Each of the other three passages (in the Septu<´ (“raise”), the same agint) uses rt́rrglom as well as some form of the verb aiqx verb employed by Ignatius in Smyrnaeans 1:2. As recent scholars have noticed, the canonical book of Isaiah, which contains the work of several prophetic authors living centuries apart, achieves a certain literary and theological unity by means of such trajectories, which unfold Isaiah’s prophecies as they applied to Israel’s situation in subsequent generations (cf. Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah, Old Testament Library [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001], 1–5). Ignatius’ skillful allusion suggests to me that he was not simply scouring the book of Isaiah for proof texts or cryptic passages that might be verbally referred to Christ but that he had a sense of the book as a whole and respected its literal meaning. 21 These criticisms are commonly leveled against Ignatius. According to William Schoedel, “Ignatius was obviously much less skillful than writers like the authors of Hebrews or Barnabas in finding [Old Testament] passages” to support his arguments (Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, Hermeneia [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985], 209). Hans Conzelmann maintains N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 153 Ignatius of Antioch on the Lord’s Baptism 153 For present purposes, let us note that in this very carefully constructed creedal affirmation Ignatius has chosen to include one and only one event situated chronologically between Christ’s birth and his death: the baptism in the Jordan. This moment in the life of Christ may, then, in some sense mediate between his conception-and-birth on the one hand and his death-and-Resurrection on the other hand. As such, it may illuminate the relationship between Incarnation and Paschal Mystery and help us to grasp the unity of the Christ Event. Moreover, because John the Baptist is a threshold figure in the divine economy (Mt 11:13) and because Ignatius associates Jesus’ baptism with “fulfillment” of the old covenant, it may even be that this lucis mysterium will shed light upon the relationship between “new things and old” (13:52). Ephesians 18:2 Turning now to Ignatius’s one other reference to the baptism of the Lord, we find yet another tightly woven creedal formulation. For our God Jesus Christ was conceived by Mary according to the economy of God, from both the seed of David and the Holy Spirit; he was born and baptized, in order that by the passion he might cleanse the water. (Eph. 18:2) This statement comprises most of the same elements that we saw in Smyrnaeans 1:1b–2, and in roughly the same order, except that it contains no reference to the Resurrection. In part, this is because Ignatius is concerned in this context with the mystery of the Cross in particular (cf. Eph. 18:1; 19:1). Once again he employs rhetorical symmetry, but just where we would expect to find a reference to the Resurrection, he mentions instead Christ’s purification of the water. I shall defer for the moment the series of questions which this abrupt statement elicits (What water is meant? How has it become polluted? And how does Christ’s passion effect its purification?). At this point it will suffice to note that that “no salvation-historical perspective is apparent” in Ignatius’s letters (Gentiles— Jews—Christians: Polemics and Apologetics in the Greco-Roman Era, trans. M. Eugene Boring [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992], 259). And Virginia Corwin holds that while Ignatius occasionally retains “the trappings of Jewish eschatology,” he is “utterly certain that the matter is not an essential part of the Christian gospel” (St. Ignatius and Christianity in Antioch [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960], 173–74). All three criticisms are present (the first implicitly, the other two explicitly) on a single page in Sergio Zañartu, “Les concepts de vie et de mort chez Ignace d’Antioche,” Vigiliae Christianae 33 (1979): 334 (cf. notes 69 and 73). N&V_win10 .qxp 154 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 154 Gregory Vall Ignatius here makes an oblique but undeniable allusion to sacramental baptism. Apparently he wishes to elucidate the relationship between this sacrament and certain events in the life of Christ, including the Lord’s own baptism and his passion.A reference to the Resurrection might have disrupted the balance of his formulation and unnecessarily distracted from the point he is making. In this passage Ignatius refers to four moments in the Christ Event: conception, birth, baptism, and passion.The cleansing of the waters is not presented as a fifth moment but as an effect of the passion. Jesus’ conception receives a careful and fairly elaborate treatment, and once again Ignatius insists on both the human and divine origins of Christ. But our particular concern is with the very terse statement he makes about the birth, baptism, and passion, with its reference to the purification of the water and allusion to sacramental baptism. We must note at the outset that Ignatius does not simply say that Christ cleansed the water by means of his baptism in the Jordan.22 Some later Church Fathers make that claim,23 and Thomas Aquinas will hold that Christ instituted the sacrament of baptism when he himself was baptized.24 Be that as it may, Ignatius ascribes no direct efficacy in this regard to the Lord’s baptism. Instead, he subordinates it to the passion. The baptism in the Jordan, like the nativity, is for the sake of the passion, and it is by means of the latter that Christ cleanses the water. This is hardly surprising given the centrality of the Paschal Mystery throughout Ignatius’s letters. Of course, Ignatius does draw our attention to the parallelism between the Lord’s baptism and our own, and he wishes us to discern a close economic connection between the two. But whatever that connection may be, it is not one that bypasses the mystery of the Cross. For Ignatius, as for Paul, everything flows through the passion. Ignatius says that Jesus Christ “was born and baptized in order that by his passion he might cleanse the water.” It is relatively easy to appreciate the force of the word >i´ma (“in order that”) with respect to Christ’s birth. His nativity is in a very practical sense necessary to his passion and thus to his cleansing of the water. If he is not born, he cannot do the Father’s will as man. It is less obvious how the same purpose clause applies to Christ’s 22 Expecting Ignatius to say this, Kirsopp Lake offers a highly improbable translation ‚ by which sx∫ páhei (normally rendered “by the passion”) would refer to Jesus “himself submitting” to John’s rite (Kirsopp Lake, trans., The Apostolic Fathers, Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985], 1:193; cf. Corwin, St. Ignatius and Christianity, 100, n. 12). 23 McDonnell, Baptism of Jesus, 186, 197. 24 Summa theologiae III, q. 66, a. 2. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 155 Ignatius of Antioch on the Lord’s Baptism 155 baptism.Why is the latter necessary at all? By what sort of logic is Christ’s baptism accomplished for the sake of his passion and his purification of the water? Perhaps the most straightforward and biblically defensible answer to this question comes through the simple recognition that the baptism in the Jordan inaugurates and empowers Christ’s public ministry, a ministry which leads inexorably to Golgotha. If by means of his nativity the Son of God steps into the world of human action and historical causality, through his baptism he enters upon public life, so that what he does henceforth is done more fully in the sight of men and is in that sense more “on the record.”This seems fitting for events that will be revelatory of the Father’s universal redemptive will and that are to be proclaimed openly throughout the world and for all generations hence. Further, we might suppose that the descent of the Holy Spirit at the Jordan bestowed upon Christ’s sacred humanity the particular charismata by which he would carry out his ministry of teaching, healing, and exorcism (cf. Acts 10:37–38). In short, Jesus Christ was baptized in order that he might carry out his public ministry, a ministry that culminates in the passion. This answer is helpful as far as it goes but is not entirely satisfying. It begs the question why Christ’s public ministry should begin with this particular gesture and why the Holy Spirit should descend in response to this particular action of Christ.And so we are led to consider the symbolic dimension of the event. Presumably John the Baptist, under the guidance of the Spirit of prophecy, chose a gesture that evoked key events in Yahweh’s historical covenant with Israel (the crossing of the Red Sea and the crossing of the Jordan) while it also resembled the many ritual immersions required for “cleansing” by the priestly Torah.25 And almost certainly John’s ritual would have brought to the mind of the biblically literate Jew the story of Naaman, whose “baptism” in the Jordan—undertaken in obedience to a prophet— not only effected a cleansing from “leprosy” but signaled a profound conversion of heart and mind (2 Kings 5).26 Coupled with John’s proclamation of imminent judgment, immersion in the Jordan symbolized Israel’s 25 On the background to John’s ritual, see Lentzen-Deis, Die Taufe Jesu, 59–76; Lars Hartman, “Baptism,” Anchor Bible Dictionary 1:583–84. 26 The New Testament’s use of the verb bapsífeim to refer to quasi-ritualistic bodily immersion in the Jordan as a sign of repentance recalls the Old Testament use of the Hebrew verb lb+ (which the Septuagint normally renders with a form of bápseim or bapsífeim) and its use in 2 Kings 5:14 in particular. This text says that Naaman “went down and dipped [lb+yw (LXX e< bapsíraso] in the Jordan seven times according to the word of the man of God, and his flesh was restored, like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”This is the climax of the narrative, after which Naaman acts with humility and confesses his knowledge of the God of Israel and his desire to serve him exclusively (cf. vv 15–17). N&V_win10 .qxp 156 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 156 Gregory Vall eschatological repentance from sin.The Jews who submitted to John’s ritual, then, would be indicating their own repentance through a sort of symbolic recapitulation of Israel’s historical covenant with Yahweh. For biblical Israel, and second-temple Judaism in particular, repentance was fundamentally a communal and historical matter. It involved personal remorse and amendment of life, of course, but it was never a merely individual and private affair. In the great communal prayers of repentance composed during the post-exilic period, a righteous leader such as Ezra or Daniel speaks in solidarity with his sinful people, saying “we have sinned,” and confesses the sins of Israel’s past generations as well as those of the present generation (Ezra 9:9–15; Dan 9:3–19; Bar 1:15–3:8; Is 63:7–64:12). As John Meier notes, Jesus fulfills a similar role of leadership and solidarity with his sinful people when he submits to John’s baptism.27 Indeed, we would want to say that Jesus undergoes baptism not only in solidarity with Israel but with the whole human race and even on behalf of the entire creation. In any case, it is impossible to say how many of these biblical resonances would have occurred to Ignatius. At a minimum, his allusion to Matthew 3:15 (Smyr. 1:1b) suggests that relating Jesus’ baptism to Israel’s past would not have been foreign to his thinking. We may safely make one further assumption. Since Ignatius views Jesus’ life and mission as fundamentally a matter of obedience to the Father’s will (Magn. 7:1; 8:2; 13:2; Smyr. 8:1), he would no doubt have viewed the baptism in the Jordan in those terms. This is important theologically because it unites the baptism with the passion at the level of Jesus’ voluntary human action “for us.” Ignatius subordinates the baptism to the Paschal Mystery, but this does not mean that the baptism is merely a prefigurement or visual aid while the passion alone is “the real thing.”Whatever symbolic value Ignatius might or might not have recognized in Jesus’ baptism, it seems likely that he would have viewed it first of all as an act of obedience to the Father and of love for man, an act having its own moral substance, so to speak. It has, to be sure, a type-antitype relationship to the Paschal Mystery, and its significance as type derives in large part from its symbolism: Christ’s immersion in the Jordan anticipates his “immersion” in suffering (Lk 12:50; Mk 10:38), his solidarity with his sinful people, perhaps even his descent among the dead; and his reemergence from the water to receive the Father’s proclamation and the anointing of the Spirit foreshadows the glorification of his humanity in the Resurrection. But it is crucial to view Christ’s life as a unity and his saving action teleologically. His life and mission comprise a series of many acts of obedience and love that lead in 27 Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:114–15. See also Martin Bieler, “The Mysteries of Jesus’ Public Life: Stages on the Way to the Cross,” Communio 29 (2002): 52–54. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 157 Ignatius of Antioch on the Lord’s Baptism 157 a very definite direction and arrive at a “consummation” in his death.The act by which he lays down his life gathers up, as it were, all the “little” acts of obedience that precede and anticipate it and perfects them in an act of love ei< y sékoy, in finem ( Jn 13:1), so that at the moment of death he can say sesékersai, consummatum est (19:30). Lucis Mysterium The passion is the antitype of the baptism and the definitive act of salvation by virtue of its place within this teleological structure—a structure that is determined to some extent by the basic structure of human life as vita usque ad mortem—but the passion does not stand in splendid isolation as the only redemptive act. Its special soteriological efficacy does not place it in an extrinsic relation to the baptism or to any other event in Christ’s life. Each of Christ’s actions is characterized by obedience and love, and so each participates in the whole and, in a sense, contains the whole—though not as perfectly as the passion does. Of the events of Christ’s life, which are far too numerous to record ( Jn 21:25), the early Church preserved, and the evangelists narrated, a few that especially have the capacity to draw us into the mystery of the whole.These are events that indicate the direction of Christ’s life, that show forth his revelation of the Father, that disclose the depth of his obedience and love. Among the events that fall between Christ’s nativity and passion, the baptism in the Jordan arguably has this mystagogical capacity to an uncommon degree. It stands at a critical juncture in the life of Christ. As an act of divine humility and identification with sinners, it hearkens back to the Incarnation, disclosing the latter’s character and purpose. As an act of filial obedience, it sets the Lord Jesus decisively upon the road that leads to the Cross and so has a clear intrinsic relationship to the passion. And it possesses a remarkable symbolic potency that reinforces its significance within the life of Christ while shedding light upon the whole mystery of Christ and even upon the whole economy of redemption. It is indeed a luminous mystery. To fill out this sketch of the mystagogical significance of the Lord’s baptism somewhat, we may now turn to the three questions elicited by Ignatius’s reference to Christ’s cleansing of the water in Ephesians 18:2: What water is meant? How has it become polluted? And how does the passion effect its purification? On one level these questions are easily answered. “The water” is the water of the whole world. It has become polluted by human sin.28 And the Christ Event—which includes the 28 According to many authors of the third and fourth centuries, the waters of the world were not only polluted by sin but infested by demons, who were vanquished when Christ descended into the Jordan (cf. Bertrand, Le baptême de Jésus, 31, n. 3), N&V_win10 .qxp 158 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 158 Gregory Vall Incarnation as foundation, the baptism as an integral element, and the Paschal Mystery as culminating moment—has a redemptive effect not only upon men’s souls but upon the whole creation, such that the elements of the physical world may serve a sacramental role under the new covenant. At least something of this sort seems to be presupposed by Ignatius’s elliptical statement:“He was born and baptized, in order that by the passion he might cleanse the water.” But this interpretation hardly penetrates below the surface.We should make some attempt to unfold the deeper rationale by which an ancient Christian such as Ignatius might view the divine economy of creation and redemption in this way. And here we face a hermeneutical gap, for the “logic” that underlies Ignatius’s statement is largely foreign to the modern mind.Thus William Schoedel speaks in this context of “the more or less magical idea that water was purified by Christ’s baptism in the Jordan.”29 This smugly dismissive remark is characteristic of an approach that has no truck with metaphysical convictions. In what follows I will attempt to be a bit more empathetic. Ignatius’s statement presupposes the unity of creation and thus a kind of metaphysical solidarity among creatures.When man sins, his sin has an adverse effect on all creation, rendering it “defiled” before God. In the Incarnation the Son of God descends into his creation and unites it to himself in order to redeem and “cleanse” creation through the Paschal Mystery. Now, if we attend once more to the symbolism of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan, we may view it not only as the middle term between Incarnation and Paschal Mystery but as a sort of epitome or “thumbnail sketch” of the entire Christ Event, which the New Testament sometimes presents as a mystery of descent-and-ascent (Rom 10:6–7; Eph 4:8–10; Phil 2:6–11; Jn 3:13–14, 31; 6:38, 50–51, 62), followed by the descent of the Spirit. In the Incarnation the Son of God descended from heaven into his creation—the descensus de coelis being, in a certain sense, completed in the descensus ad inferos—and when he had been exalted in his humanity through the Resurrection and Ascension, the Spirit descended upon the Church (Acts 2:32–34; Jn 6:62–63) to be the source of her sacramental life.And it is this schematic view of the Christ Event that draws our attention to similar contours in the Lord’s baptism.30 Christ’s humble descent but it is not clear that Ignatius is implying this much when he refers to Christ’s “cleansing” the water. 29 Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 85. 30 “Jesus’ descent into the river is at one and the same time solidarity with all who confess their guilt and dive into the waters of judgment and salvation, and—as solidarity—obedience to the voice of God which sounds forth from the prophet’s voice, and thus obedience incarnated in history. Jesus’ initiative attains immediately N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 159 Ignatius of Antioch on the Lord’s Baptism 159 into the waters of the Jordan (at a geographical point that is very nearly the lowest spot on the surface of the earth)31 recalls his Incarnation while it also anticipates his death for sinners and descent among the dead. Similarly, his ascent from the Jordan—which is immediately followed by the descent of the Spirit, anointing his humanity with power for the public ministry (Acts 10:37–38)—anticipates his Resurrection and Ascension, which make possible the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the Church. Moreover, the fact that the glorification of Christ’s humanity constitutes the incipient redemption of all creation is reflected in the role now played by elements of the physical creation, such as water, in the new covenant’s efficacious signs of God’s grace.Thus Jesus’ immersion in the aqua Iordanis purifies and sanctifies the waters of the whole world, not as an isolated event and certainly not by means of magic, but as an integral and revelatory moment within the broader mystery of redemption. It should also be noted that Ignatius’s view of the economy of redemption presupposes a hierarchical and teleological understanding of creation and implicitly identifies man as the creature in whom creation is summed up and reaches its telos. Not only is each creature ordered to its own end, but creation as a whole is ordered to a final end, an end which it cannot achieve apart from man.This end is the glory of God.The subhuman physical cosmos is not, of course, morally culpable for man’s sin, but neither can it glorify God in the manner for which it was created as long as man remains alienated from the Creator.32 The biblical category of “uncleanness” or to its fulfillment, for he ‘rises up’ out of the waters, and his act of ‘coming up from beneath’ is answered by the ‘coming down from above’ of the ‘Spirit (of God)’: here we see that Incarnation is the encounter, to the point of identification, of the Israel who has been made ready and the God of the covenant who descends to Israel.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 7, Theology:The New Covenant (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 56. 31 The Jordan runs through the Rift Valley, a deep rut in the earth’s surface that includes the Dead Sea basin and continues south to the Gulf of Aqabah.At nearly 1300 feet below sea level, the water surface of the Dead Sea is the lowest spot on Earth. The traditional (and likely) site of Christ’s baptism is near the southern end of the Jordan, close to where it empties into the Dead Sea. 32 The unified and teleological view of creation that informs Ignatius’s interpretation of the economy of redemption is eminently biblical.To cite but two obvious examples, it is presupposed in the account of the Fall in Genesis 3, where we read that the earth bears a curse “on account of ” man (v 17), and also in the closely related passage in Romans 8, where Paul tells us that “the creation itself will be set free from the bondage of corruption for the glorious freedom of the children of God” (v 21). Anyone who wishes to describe the metaphysical convictions of Ignatius and the Fathers as “more or less magical” must say much the same with regard to the biblical authors. N&V_win10 .qxp 160 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 160 Gregory Vall “defilement”—implicit in Ignatius’s use of the verb “cleanse”—serves him nicely here, for it does not necessarily suggest moral culpability but designates the condition of having been impeded from being “holy,” that is, from being set apart for the purposes of God. Moreover, like all of Ignatius’s statements about the divine economy, the formulation of Ephesians 18:2 presupposes that Jesus Christ is the one in whom man is summed up and reaches his telos. Christ is the “Son of Man” (Eph. 20:2),“the new man” (Eph. 20:1), “the perfect man” (Smyr. 4:2). Finally, let us note that the creedal formulation of Ephesians 18:2, like that of Smyrnaeans 1:1b–2, is fundamentally a statement about the Christ Event, but one which opens out into something that is suggestive of a comprehensive view of the divine economy. Specifically, Ignatius’s brief reference to the cleansing of the waters hearkens back to Creation and Fall while it also points forward to sacramental baptism and the life of the Church. The point is not simply to appreciate Ignatius’s lapidary and elliptical style but to see that his creedal formulations reflect his Christocentric view of the divine economy. He is able to grasp the unity of the whole economy precisely in the Christ Event with its interrelated moments. Moreover, it may well be that the baptism in the Jordan played an important role in the development of Ignatius’s thought in this regard. I do not suppose that he would have mentioned this event in the life of Christ at all—much less incorporated it into such carefully crafted statements—had he not previously devoted serious reflection to it. The baptism of the Lord is the sort of individual mystery into which one may N&V gaze in order to espy something of the Mystery. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 161 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 161–183 161 Henri de Lubac: The Church as the Body of Christ and the Challenge of Ethnic Nationalism T HOMAS G. W EINANDY, O.F.M., C AP. Capuchin College Washington, DC I N ALL likelihood, Henri de Lubac will be remembered primarily for his contributions in three areas of theology. The first, and the one that caused the most debate during his lifetime and persists today, is that of the relationship between nature and grace.1 The second is his innovative and comprehensive study of patristic and medieval exegesis.This initiated a renewed and deeper appreciation of the exegetical presuppositions and methods employed by the Fathers and Scholastics, and of their resulting scholarly theological achievement.2 This appreciation continues to mature in reaction to the theological sterility of much contemporary biblical scholarship. The third, and the one I would argue de Lubac pursued with the deepest inner conviction, is that of fully grasping and 1 See Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études Historiques: nouvelle edition (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1991). For recent discussions of this issue, see John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) and David Braine, “The Debate Between Henri de Lubac and His Critics,” Nova et Vetera 6 (2008): 543–90. 2 See Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis:The Four Senses of Scripture, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) and vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). For a good overview of nouvelle théologie and patristic exegesis, see Brian Daley, S.J., “The Nouvelle Théologie and Patristic Revival: Sources, Symbols and the Science of Theology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7 (2005): 362–82. On the significance of nouvelle théologie in general and of de Lubac in particular, see M. D’Ambrosio,“Ressourcement Theology, Aggiornamento, and the Hermeneutics of Tradition,” Communio 18 (1991): 530–55; Avery Dulles, “Henri de Lubac: An Appreciation,” America, September 26, 1991: 180–82; and R.Voderholzer, “Dogma N&V_win10 .qxp 162 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 162 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. clearly articulating the nature of the Church, specifically as constituting the Mystical Body of Christ.3 De Lubac was not a systematic theologian in the traditional sense, for he never addressed in a methodical manner the various mysteries of the faith that comprise the whole of dogmatic theology, nor did he even articulate a complete systematic ecclesiology.Yet, when addressing the authentic nature of the Church as the Body of Christ, he did, by necessity, address other doctrinal themes that are essential for fully appreciating this particular mystery of faith, for example, natural human solidarity, the Fall and its effects, Christ and redemption, the hierarchical and sacramental nature of the Church, evangelization, and eschatology. De Lubac rightly perceived that the Church is, “as far as we are concerned, the meeting-place of all mysteries.”4 So central is the Church for de Lubac that he could say that “the Church is not only the first of the works of the sanctifying Spirit, but also that which includes, conditions and absorbs all of the rest.”5 The purpose of this essay is to argue that de Lubac’s understanding of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ is a robust theological and History: Henri de Lubac and the Retrieval of Historicity as a Key to Theological Renewal,” Communio 28 (2001): 648–68. For an excellent study of the relationship between de Lubac’s understanding of exegesis and his theology of the Church, see Susan K.Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac (Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 1998). 3 In The Theology of Henri de Lubac: An Overview, Hans Urs Von Balthasar wrote: “The Church stands clearly in the center of what we can call de Lubac’s work” ([San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991], 105). In his early works de Lubac identified the Roman Catholic Church with the Mystical Body of Christ. In his last works the Mystical Body included all Christians of every denomination. As Wood states: “Regarding the relations of the Church to the Mystical Body, we can conclude, despite the lack of clarity, that de Lubac’s thought developed from The Splendour of the Church to The Church: Paradox and Mystery, the former strongly reflecting Mystici Corporis and the latter reflecting Lumen Gentium” (Wood, Spiritual Exegesis, 85). Paul McPartlan observes that de Lubac’s writings on the Church influenced key figures at the Second Vatican Council, for example Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Paul VI, and Bishop Carol Wojtyla, and he also notes the immense impact that his thought had on Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes. For example, McPartlan states: “Joseph Ratzinger pays a remarkable tribute to de Lubac when he affirms that: ‘in all its comments about the Church, [Vatican II] was moving precisely in the direction of de Lubac’s thought.’ ” McPartlan,“The Eucharist, the Church and Evangelization:The Influence of Henri de Lubac,” Communio 23 (1996): 780.The quotation is from Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 50. 4 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, 2nd ed. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956), 4. 5 Ibid., 24. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 163 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 163 response to one of the most challenging issues of his day and one that is even more perilous today—the ascendancy of aggressive, and frequently militaristic, ethnic nationalism.To demonstrate this, this essay is composed of three parts. The first part will examine briefly the cultural and theological milieu out of which de Lubac articulated his theology of the Church as the Body of Christ. The second part will more extensively consider his understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ in some of her variously related aspects.The final section will address the contemporary relevance of de Lubac’s theology of the Church as the Body of Christ in the light of contemporary ethnic nationalism. The Cultural and Theological Setting De Lubac initially took up the topic of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ in his Catholicism: A Study in the Corporate Destiny of Mankind, which he first published in 1937.6 At first glance, to address the ecclesial notion of the Church as the Body of Christ appears inappropriate and even an irrelevant topic at a time when Europe was on the verge of actually being devastated by its second war in less than fifty years, a war that for the first time in the world’s history was truly global in nature.Would there not have been more pressing issues to examine, issues more politically, culturally, and globally germane, given the extremely belligerent conditions that existed? Moreover, at a time when the Church in Europe was itself under political and military duress, why expound upon a topic that is seemingly so ecclesiastically confined, so religiously provincial, and so theologically erudite as to render it impractical? Little thought is 6 However, de Lubac stated in the introduction that his book is “no treatise on the Church or on the Mystical Body—although these pages refer continually to both.” English translation taken from the fourth French edition, 1947: Catholicism: A Study in the Corporate Destiny of Mankind (New York: Mentor-Omega Book, 1964), xi. He refers to previous works by K. Adam, E. Mersch, and M.-J Congar which develop more thoroughly and systematically these topics. In 1939 de Lubac completed his more scholarly treatise Corpus Mysticum:The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, which was not published until 1944 (English translation taken from the second edition, 1949 [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006]). This study traced the historical and theological evolution of the term “Mystical Body” as first pertaining to Christ’s presence in the Eucharist and only gradually coming to designate the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. De Lubac states that “[t]he first chronological instance of its appearance [referencing the Church] would seem to be the famous Bull Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII (18th November 1302)” (Corpus Mysticum, 3).While the term progressively and incrementally came close to referring to the Church, “[n]onetheless, there is no writer of Christian antiquity or of the high Middle Ages in whose work the word itself appears as a description of the Church” (ibid., 6). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 164 6:37 AM Page 164 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. required to perceive that de Lubac recognized that an articulate and convincing study, such as Catholicism, on the “corporate destiny of mankind” as found and realized within the Church as the Body of Christ is precisely what the war-torn global situation demanded. Moreover, this is specifically what the Catholic Church in Europe needed at a time when it was militarily and intellectually attacked from without and emotionally and spiritually wracked from within. In the introduction to Catholicism, de Lubac noted that, while agnostic philosophies still undermined belief in the Gospel and while doubts about the truth of the biblical narratives and the authenticity of the Church’s origins and historical development still prevailed, there had arisen a new and deeper distrust that went to the very heart of Catholicism. “ ‘How,’ they ask in particular, ‘can a religion which apparently is uninterested in our terrestrial future and in human fellowship offer an ideal which can still attract the men of to-day?’ ”7 When civilization itself appeared to be on the verge of collapse, what relevance could Christianity have when its seemingly primordial, if not sole, concern pertained to a life beyond, located in some heavenly realm? While authors had argued that the Gospel is social by its very nature, nonetheless “[w]e are accused of being individualists even in spite of ourselves.” Catholicism is, nonetheless, “social in the deepest sense of the word: not merely in its applications in the field of natural institutions but first and foremost in itself, in the heart of its mystery, in the essence of its dogmas. It is social in a sense which should have made the expression ‘social Catholicism’ pleonastic.”8 Thus de Lubac did not see his little book Catholicism, nor would he consider his later writings on the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, purely as an exercise in satisfying academic curiosities, thus rendering them practically irrelevant. De Lubac was resolutely convinced, as we shall see, that the mystery of faith that Christ is the Head of the Church, which is his Body, is the only reality that is theologically hardy enough to nurture and strengthen the bonds of unity and peace among Catholics, a unity and peace that can stand against and overcome the violent antipathy that seeks to destroy both the Church and civil society itself. Moreover, as Christians and Catholics intellectually grasp the profound nature of their mutual brotherhood in Christ and live it within a world beset by war, such societies can be transformed once more into cultures of peace and justice. Thus, it is only the reality of the Body of Christ that is able, practically and concretely, to transcend and so unify 7 De Lubac, Catholicism, ix. 8 Ibid., xi. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 165 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 165 races and nations, compelling peoples of various countries to sheath their swords and live in harmony.9 The external political, intellectual, and cultural circumstances, as well as what was taking place intellectually and pastorally from within, forced the Church to examine who and what she is. De Lubac observed that “[t]hirty years ago Romano Guardini drew our attention to a fact which has asserted itself more and more strongly ever since—that the Church has reawakened in our souls. The reality of the Church has, somehow, soaked itself deeper into the core of the Christian consciousness, and alongside that development has gone a general flourishing of ecclesiological studies.” For de Lubac, this truth was confirmed in Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi.“In a word, it seemed as if, as far as the development of doctrine is concerned, the twentieth century is destined to be ‘the century of the Church.’ ”10 How then did de Lubac, over the years, articulate his understanding of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ so as to address these and other issues that concern the wellbeing of the world and the vibrant life and mission of the Church? The Church as the Body of Christ: Overcoming Sinful Divisions De Lubac takes as his starting point the Thomistic axiom that grace builds upon nature. “Thus the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ, a supernatural unity, supposes a previous natural unity, the unity of the human 9 Joseph A. Komonchak states: “In 1933, during a period of exacerbated tensions between France and Germany, he [de Lubac] wrote an essay on patriotism and nationalism in which he explicitly criticized Maurras’s absolute nationalism and contrasted to it the transnational community of Christians.” Komonchak, “Theology and Culture at Mid-Century: The Example of Henri de Lubac,” Theological Studies 51 (1990): 597. See also page 598. Komonchak notes de Lubac’s “Patriotisme et nationalism,” Vie intellectuelle 19 (1933): 283–300. 10 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, 10–11. De Lubac was referring to Guardini’s Vom Sinn der Kirche, 1923, p. 1. Pope Pius XII published on 29 June, 1943 his encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi. De Lubac’s early works and studies, as well as works by other authors at the time, gave impetus to the pope’s encyclical, and it is not surprising that many of the same cultural and theological concerns are reflected both in de Lubac’s early works and in Pius XII’s encyclical. See, for example, Mystici Corporis, §§1–6, where, similar to de Lubac, Pius XII perceives that the Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, is the only workable cure that can adequately heal the deadly wounds that nationalistic wars have inflicted upon the world. I will note and/or quote throughout this essay some relevant passages from Mystici Corporis, the documents from the Second Vatican Council, and later papal encyclicals in order to show their relationship to de Lubac’s thought. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 166 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. 166 race.”11 The Fathers of the Church marveled that God did not simply create isolated individuals; rather he created humanity to be a unified whole. The sin of Adam and Eve destroyed that unity. Not only was humankind separated from God, but it was equally splintered from within. Following Origen and Maximus the Confessor, de Lubac “considers original sin as a separation, a breaking up, an individualization it might be called, in the depreciatory sense of the word.” In contrast, “God is working continually in the world to the effect that all should come together into unity.”12 The work of redemption is precisely the healing of the sinful wounds of division. Redemption is “a work of restoration”; it is “the recovery of lost unity—the recovery of the supernatural unity of man with God, but equally of the unity of men among themselves.”13 In anticipation of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes, de Lubac does not perceive the Incarnation to be merely the Son of God assuming an individual human nature, though he did do that, but that, in so doing, he united himself to the whole human race and, in turn, united the whole of humankind to himself.14 “Christ the Redeemer does not offer salvation merely to each one; he effects it, he is himself the salvation of the whole, and for each one salvation is a personal ratification of his original ‘belonging’ to Christ, so that he be not cast out, cut off from the Whole.”15 The supernatural uniting of the whole of humankind to Christ is the great mystery revealed in the fullness of time—“to re-establish all things in Christ” (Eph 1:10). For de Lubac, this is the great mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ whereby humankind is not simply once more restored to that original natural unity but now elevated to a supernatural communion that finds its source and end in God himself.16 In designating the Body of Christ as “Mystical,” de Lubac explains that Catholic doctrine is distinguishing it from other usages of the term “body.” It “is a supernatural organism which should be thought of in the image of a natural body, but by the same token contrasted with it.”17 The Body of Christ is like a “natural body” in that it is one living reality made up of many members. However, unlike a natural body, it is supernatural; 11 De Lubac, Catholicism, 17. 12 Ibid., 20. 13 Ibid., 22. 14 “For, by his incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself to each man” (Gaudium et Spes, §22). 15 De Lubac, Catholicism, 22–23. 16 See De Lubac, Catholicism, 25.This understanding is also reflected in Gaudium et Spes, 22. 17 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, 87. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 167 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 167 that is, Christ, as the Head of the Body, enlivens it through the divine life of his Holy Spirit and so simultaneously, through the same Spirit, makes it one living reality in union with himself.Thus, while the Body of Christ differs from a natural body, it equally must not be thought of as simply a “moral body”—a group of loosely knit individuals united by some common purpose. For de Lubac,“if this happened there would no longer really be any question of the Body of Christ, His ‘living body,’ which is animated by His Spirit as our own bodies of flesh are animated by our souls, the body which is really Christ.”18 It is the mystical nature of the Body of Christ, then, that provides a living supernatural unity that transcends all “earthly” unities, for the bond of communion exceeds all “earthly” associations—political, racial, or social—and so heals the sinful divisions that these can readily spawn.19 The Church as the Body of Christ: Historical and Visible The Mystical Body of Christ, therefore, cannot be something that is ethereal or invisible. While this unity is supernatural in origin and so beyond human and finite potential, it is concretely present and visibly manifested within the world of time and history. If the Mystical Body of Christ where not actually visibly ensconced within the reality of this world, it would be of no benefit to it. But where do we find the tangible expression, the living reality, of the Body of Christ in our historical, finite world? For de Lubac, following St. Paul, there is only one answer. The Body of Christ here on earth is the Church (see Col 1:24). It is impossible to consider the mystical aspect of the Church as Christ’s Body “apart from her visible existence in time.”20 As the Son of God brought salvation to the world only by becoming a visible physical man within time and history, so the visible Church incorporates this incarnational principle throughout all ages so as to be a continuing sacrament of salvation—the visible efficacious sign of salvation.Without the visible, historical, and concrete presence of the Church, Christ himself would not be present, and so neither would his Body, the Body through which communion with him and among all peoples is ultimately founded.The mystery of the Church “is not that of some purely spiritual ideal or invisible reality, without a tangible structure, but is a communion that at least 18 Ibid., 89–90. 19 For similar articulations of the Mystical Body of Christ, see Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis, §§52–63 and Lumen Gentium, §7. In Mystici Corporis Pius XII speaks of the unity between Christ and his Body the Church as forming “one mystical person” (§67). 20 De Lubac, Catholicism, 116. N&V_win10 .qxp 168 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 168 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. in one of the qualities that constitutes her is a visible society, organized and possessing a power of government. The Church is the ‘visible and mystical body of Christ.’ She is ‘instrument, sign, and sacrament of union with God and of the unity of all human kind.’ ”21 It is within the very historical institution of the Church that all of humankind finds its unity within every historical age and among the myriad of diverse peoples. By virtue of the divine power received from her Founder the Church is an institution which endures; but even more than an institution, she is a life that is passed on. She sets the seal of unity on all the children of God whom she gathers together.22 This gathering together is not simply a uniting of contemporaries, but of peoples of every age and culture—Christians recognize their brothers and sisters from ages past and from societies and cultures radically different from their own.They “indeed form one single whole, united by the love of Christ.”23 There is a brotherhood of common responses; they answer the same appeal and enjoy the same communion in the same love; it is as if one and the same blood flowed in their veins.They are children of the same Church; fed by the same faith, they are “given to drink of the same Spirit,” who produces in them one and the same spontaneous reaction, and thus provides the sign by which they recognize one another.24 The common bond that unites all the members of the Church into a brotherhood of love, spanning historical epics and diverse cultures, is not a horizontal love among themselves, but a transcendent love that is founded upon their communion with Jesus as their Head, who, as their Head, subsumes them into the very divine communion of the Trinity itself. Quoting Origen, de Lubac emphasizes that the Church is “full of the Trinity.” “The Father is in her ‘as the Principle to whom one is united, the Son, as the medium in which one is united, the Holy Spirit 21 De Lubac, The Church: Paradox and Mystery, 34. For de Lubac, to reduce the Church to an invisible and so simply an intellectual principle would be to mold it into a Platonic “idea” devoid of actuality. See Catholicism, 39 and The Splendour of the Church, 56. On the visible nature of the Church as the Body of Christ also see Mystici Corporis, §14 and Lumen Gentium, §8. Space does not permit a treatment of de Lubac’s understanding of the hierarchical nature of the visible Body of Christ and in particular the office of Peter. See, however, The Splendour of the Church, 47–49, 101, 202. 22 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, 31. 23 Ibid., 33. 24 Ibid., 32; see also 33–34. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 169 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 169 as the knot by which all things are united; and all is one.’ ”25 Employing Augustine’s concept of the city of God, de Lubac states: “Among those who are received within the heavenly city there is a more intimate relationship than subsists among the members of a human society, for among them there is not only outward harmony, but true unity.”26 How does the Church, as the Body of Christ, establish and foster this unity? The Church as the Body of Christ: The Sacrament of Christ The Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, is able to establish this true communion among all peoples of every age because she is the instrument and means of salvation—overcoming the sin that divides by the cleansing and unifying power of the Holy Spirit. For de Lubac, the Church is the authentic herald of the Gospel of salvation, for in her the Gospel itself is lived out.“Thus this Church . . . as a visible and historical institution is the providential means of this salvation.”While peoples of every age strive for a “common life,” such human striving never achieves its desired goal. Only the Spirit of Christ inspires men and women “to work for their own spiritual unity” and it is “only through the leavening of the Gospel within the Catholic community and by the aid of the Holy Spirit that this ‘divine Humanity’ can be established, unica dilecta Dei.”27 The Church is the means through which Jesus and his communion of salvation is visibly found, for she “is an organism of salvation, precisely because she relates wholly to Christ and apart from him has no existence, value or efficacity.”28 The efficaciousness of the Church’s activity by which she acts and matures as the Body of Christ is founded upon her being the primordial sacrament of salvation. Anticipating Vatican II, de Lubac states: The Church is a mystery; that is to say that she is also a sacrament. She is “the total locus of the Christian sacraments,” and she is herself the great sacrament which contains and vitalizes all the others. In this world she is the sacrament of Christ, as Christ Himself, in His humanity, is for us the sacrament of God.29 25 Ibid., 175; also 159–60. See also De Lubac, Catholicism, 140 and The Church: Para- dox and Mystery, 24. 26 De Lubac, Catholicism, 65. 27 Ibid., 119–20. 28 De Lubac, The Church: Paradox and Mystery, 15. 29 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, 147. For Vatican II’s teaching on the Church as a sacrament, see Lumen Gentium, §§1, 9, 48; Sacrosanctum Concilium, §§5, 26; Gaudium et Spes, §§42, 45; and Ad Gentes, §§1, 5. Hans Boersma states that “[t]here seems to be little doubt that de Lubac had a significant impact on the common acceptance of this approach [Church as N&V_win10 .qxp 170 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 170 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. As the Son of God acted salvifically through his humanity, so now Christ acts salvifically through the Church, especially through the sacraments. It is precisely because Christ, as Head, personally acts through his visible Body, the Church, that the Church is the sacrament of Christ himself. For de Lubac, this sacramentality of the Church is at the heart of her being the Body of Christ. “The Church is the sacrament of Christ; which means, to put it another way, that there is between her and Him a certain relation of mystical identity.”30 Moreover, it is the sacramental actions that Christ performs as the Head of the sacrament that is his Church that establishes and nourishes the life and unity of his Body. “Since the sacraments are the means of salvation they should be understood as the instruments of unity. As they make real, renew or strengthen man’s union with Christ, by that very fact they make real, renew or strengthen his union with the Christian community.” Thus it is only in “union with the community that the Christian is united to Christ.”31 The first effect of the sacrament of baptism “is none other than this incorporation in the visible Church.”This is not merely a juridical event, but a thoroughly social event as well.“So it is that by being received into a religious society one who has been baptized is incorporated in the Mystical Body.”32 Equally, the rationale behind the sacrament of Penance is to re-establish the bond of unity with the Body of Christ that was severed due to sin. “The whole apparatus of public penance and pardon made it clear that the reconciliation of the sinner is in the first place a reconciliation with the Church, this latter constituting an efficacious sign of reconciliation with God.”33 The fullest expression of unity within the Church, as the Body of Christ, is found within the Eucharist. For de Lubac, this is ultimately what the whole of humanity longs for—true communion with God and one another. Sacrament] within the Catholic Church.” Boersma, “Sacramental Ontology: Nature and the Supernatural in the Ecclesiology of Henri de Lubac,” New Blackfriars 88 (2007): 262; see also 262–68. For a further treatment of de Lubac’s understanding of the Church as the sacrament of salvation, see Wood, Spiritual Exegesis, 105–17. She enumerates the differences between de Lubac and Schillebeeckx. On this last point, see also Boersma, “Sacramental Ontology,” 268–72. 30 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, 152. 31 De Lubac, Catholicism, 48. 32 Ibid., 48–49. 33 Ibid., 50. Vatican II understands the sacraments in a way similar to that of de Lubac: see Lumen Gentium, §11. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 171 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 171 The Church as the Body of Christ: The Eucharist as the Body of Christ Very insightfully de Lubac articulates the reciprocal causal relationship between the Church and the Eucharist. As it is only within the Church as the Body of Christ that the Eucharist is celebrated as the sacramental summit of unity, so the Eucharist, as the sacramental summit of unity, establishes, fosters, and effects the fullness of communion within the Body of Christ, the Church. Thus everything points to a study of the relation between the Church and the Eucharist, which we may describe as standing as cause each to other. Each has been entrusted to the other, so to speak, by Christ; the Church produces the Eucharist, but the Eucharist also produces the Church. In the first instance the Church is involved in her active aspect (as described earlier)—in the exercise of her sanctifying power; in the second case she is involved in her passive aspect, as the Church of the sanctified. But in the last analysis it is the one Body which builds itself up through this mysterious interaction in and through the conditions of our present existence up to the day of its consummation.34 In a similar manner de Lubac speaks of the Eucharist as making the Church more fully what she truly is: fellowship with one another through their mutual communion with Christ, their Head. Now, the Eucharist is the mystical principle, permanently at work at the heart of Christian society, which gives concrete form to this miracle. It is the universal bond, it is the ever-springing source of life, thus all “drink of the one Spirit,” who truly makes them into one single body. Literally speaking, therefore, the Eucharist makes the Church. It makes of it an inner reality. By its hidden power, the members of the body come to unite themselves by becoming more fully members of Christ, 34 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, 92–93. In Corpus Mysticum de Lubac states that the early medieval theologians, following Augustine, recognize that “the Eucharist corresponds to the Church as a cause to effect, as means to end, as sign to reality” (13). The Fathers of Vatican II stated: “Likewise in the sacrament of the eucharistic bread, the unity of believers, who form one body in Christ, is both expressed and brought about.All men are called to this union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and towards whom our whole life is directed” (Lumen Gentium, §3). Pope John Paul II develops this notion of the Church making the Eucharist and the Eucharist making the Church in his 2003 encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §§21–26. For an excellent study of this notion in de Lubac, see Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh:T&T Clark, 1993). N&V_win10 .qxp 172 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 172 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. and their unity with one another is part and parcel of their unity with the one single Head.35 It is precisely because the Church, within the Eucharist, is united to Christ, her Head, that this supreme unity is achieved.“The Head makes the unity of the Body, and that is how it is that the mysterium fidei is also the mysterium Ecclesiae, par excellence.”36 Thus the unity, which the whole of humankind seeks, is found principally within the Church as the Body of Christ, and the fullest expression of the unity is achieved by participating in the Eucharistic sacrifice in which the members of his Body partake of Christ’s Eucharistic body and blood. “The sacrament in the highest sense of the word—the sacrament ‘which contains the whole mystery of our salvation,’ the Eucharist, is also especially the sacrament of unity: sacramentum unitatis ecclesiasticae.”37 For de Lubac, then, “the Church is entirely concentrated in the Eucharist” for within the Eucharist the Church becomes what she truly is—the Body of Christ living in communion with Christ her Head.38 None of this could be possible if it were not for the twofold reality of the Church and the Eucharist. If the Church, as the Body of Christ, were merely a spiritual reality or a moral association of like-minded people and not the concrete living reality that she is within the world of history, she could not effect the real sacramental presence of Christ within the Eucharist. Similarly, if Christ were only spiritually or morally present, in a representational manner, and not really and truly present, in a sacramental manner, the Eucharist could not effect the true and real communion of the whole Church with Christ her Head. 35 De Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 88. 36 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, 107. De Lubac makes the same point in Corpus Mysticum :“Through the Eucharist each person is truly placed within the one body. It unites all the members of it among themselves, as it unites them to their one head” (23). 37 De Lubac, Catholicism, 51. In The Splendour of the Church, de Lubac also writes: “The Church, like the Eucharist, is a mystery of unity—the same mystery, and one with inexhaustible riches. Both are the body of Christ—the same body. If we are to be faithful to the teaching of Scripture, as Tradition interprets it, and wish not to lose anything of its essential riches, we must be careful not to make the smallest break between the Mystical Body and the Eucharist” (110). 38 De Lubac, The Church: Paradox and Mystery, 5. Pius XII also expresses a similar teaching on the Eucharist establishing the supreme bond of unity between Christ and the Church and among the members of his body. See Mystici Corporis, §§81–84. For a further presentation of de Lubac’s Eucharistic theology, see also Boersma, “Sacramental Ontology,” 254–62. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 173 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 173 Eucharistic realism and ecclesial realism: these two realisms support one another, each is the guarantee of the other. Ecclesial realism safeguards Eucharistic realism and the latter confirms the former.The same unity of the Word is reflected in both. Today, it is above all our faith in the “real presence,” made explicit thanks to centuries of controversy and analysis, that introduces us to faith in the ecclesial body: effectively signified by the mystery of the Altar, the mystery of the Church has to share in the same nature and the same depth.39 While the Church, as the Body of Christ on earth, is the only temporal communion that not only transcends, and so supersedes, the earthly unities of race and nationality, but also overcomes the divisions caused by sin, this communion does not find its consummation within the earthly historical order. It is a reality that fosters and so prefigures, especially within the Eucharist, its heavenly completion. The Church’s “outlook remains, as it was in her early days, essentially eschatological.”40 It is at the Second Coming of Jesus in glory that his Body will obtain the fullness of his resurrected life and so achieve its ultimate union with him and among its members. For de Lubac, at the end of time,“the earthly Church enters upon her definitive status as the heavenly Church.”41 She is the same earthly Church,“living and progressing laboriously in our world, militant and on pilgrimage,” that will “see God face to face, bathed in His glory.”42 39 De Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 251. 40 De Lubac, Catholicism, 146. De Lubac comments on the eschatological teaching in Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium in his The Church: Paradox and Mystery, 47–54. De Lubac anticipated much of what the Council taught. For example, Gaudium et Spes states:“The Word of God, through whom all things were made, was made flesh, so that as a perfect man he could save all men and sum up all things in himself.The Lord is the goal of human history and civilization, the center of mankind, the joy of all hearts, and the fulfillment of all aspirations. . . .Animated and drawn together in his Spirit we press onwards on our journey towards the consummation of history which fully corresponds to the plan of his [Father’s] love:‘to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth’ (Eph. 1:10)” (§45). Pius XII also wrote in Mystici Corporis : “For nothing more glorious, nothing nobler, nothing surely more honourable can be imagined than to belong to the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, in which we become members of one Body as venerable as it is unique; are guided by one supreme Head; are filled with one divine Spirit; are nourished during our earthly exile by one doctrine and on heavenly Bread, until at last we enter into the one, unending blessedness of heaven” (§91). 41 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, 41; see also 42–54. 42 Ibid., 53. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 174 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. 174 The Saints in heaven may enjoy the beatific vision, yet they are not without longing, for they share in the very longing of Christ himself.The reason for this longing is that the Church, as the Body of Christ, has not reached her full stature—the Body of Christ has not yet obtained her full complement of members. For Fathers of the early Church, it was not simply that individuals would find salvation.“They loved to think of the Church entering heaven after she had won her victory. As long as she was the Church militant, so it was more or less vaguely supposed, none of her members could enjoy the fullness of triumph.”43 As long as the earthly Body of Christ continues along the path of maturity,“as long as the Body is not fully grown, how shall one member of it realize his full stature?”44 So profound is this solidarity between the Church triumphant and the Church militant as the one Body of Christ that not only do the earthly members already share in and anticipate, especially within the Eucharist, the glory of their heavenly brothers and sisters, but also the heavenly members share in the sufferings and trials of their earthly brothers and sisters. Perceptively de Lubac takes up this ancient and often forgotten ecclesial theme. While Christ is the risen Lord of glory and while the Saints reign with him in glory, as long as the earthly members of his Body continue to suffer, so do Christ and the heavenly members suffer in communion with their brothers and sisters. “As he [Christ] still suffers in his earthly members, so, according to this view, Christ hopes in himself and in his heavenly members: and taking this suffering and this hope completes the work of redemption.”45 Only at the consummation of the world, when all will be fully one in the risen Christ, the Head, will the Body of Christ obtain its full maturity in the Holy Spirit to the praise and glory of God the Father. Having extensively, but not exhaustively, examined de Lubac’s understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ, I want now to consider three themes where his understanding is of contemporary relevance— nationalism and ethnicity, ecumenism and religious pluralism, and global evangelization. The Church as the Body of Christ: A Response to Contemporary Ethnic Nationalism I argued at the onset of this essay that de Lubac’s ardent study of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ was undertaken within the context 43 De Lubac, Catholicism, 69. 44 Ibid., 70. 45 Ibid., 74. For a fuller study of the notion that the risen Christ continues to suffer in relation to his earthly body, see Thomas G.Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap., Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 2000), 252–59. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 175 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 175 of the political nationalistic aggression of the mid-twentieth century that fermented global warfare. De Lubac, throughout all of his writings on ecclesial topics, stressed that the only reality that could establish unity among the whole of humankind was that of the Church as the Body of Christ, for only she provided a transcendent truth—salvation in Christ and the Spirit’s living bond of loving peace—that could both heal divisions and foster unity among all races, nations, and cultures.Today the relevance of the reality of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ has not lessened; rather it has increased appreciably. The contemporary rise of aggressive ethnic nationalism and tribalism continues to divide peoples and nations on every continent, and all of the present military conflicts are its fruit. Even when particular ethnic peoples have legitimate grievances and just demands, these are often entwined with inflated ethnic pride frequently nurtured on reciprocal hatred of their ethnic neighbors. Ethnic pride and national patriotism are virtues to be honored, encouraged, and esteemed. However, when ethnicity, tribalism, and nationalism are not tethered to some transcendent principle that prevents them from becoming the supreme and only standard of unity, they assume a status that is detrimental to themselves and destructive of others.They cultivate a political culture that is completely inward looking and self-absorbed. Such a culture seeks only its own perceived good and aggressively advances, often militarily, its own ethnic, tribal, and national self-aggrandizement. Because of this, peoples, tribes, and nations do not become their authentic selves with their own authentically unique cultural traits, character, virtues, and qualities; rather they radically disfigure themselves, becoming less human, less cultured, less creative, and less civilized and so undermine the very integrity they seek to enhance—their proper ethnic and national identity. What we perceive here, as de Lubac insisted, is the primordial effect of sin—division and separation. What de Lubac perceived in his day is still relevant in our day—only the Church, as the Body of Christ, offers what all races, tribes, peoples, and nations truly seek and long for—a unity that is not founded upon some worldly philosophical principle or some human ethical mandate, but upon the living person of Jesus Christ. Only in him is the forgiveness and healing of sin, only in him is found the life-giving and unifying gift of the Holy Spirit, and thus only in him does the whole of humankind, as members of his Body, find the bond of love that leads to peace.The Christian understanding of the Body of Christ not only permits but also promotes authentic ethnic, tribal, national, and cultural identity, as well as offering a transcendent overarching communion of fellowship in Christ that is far more intense than any unity of human origin. N&V_win10 .qxp 176 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 176 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. Thus the Church, as the Body of Christ, must be at the heart of a culturally renewed and economically and politically unified Europe. She must be at the heart of Africa’s effort to ensure economic prosperity, to promote just and stable governments, and to calm tribal hostility so as to foster inter-tribal and national solidarity. Equally, the Church, as the Body of Christ, must be the impetus within the First World countries to rein in their materialistic lifestyles of consumerism and exploitation so as to come to the aid of their economically deprived brothers and sisters throughout the world.The list of relevant examples could continue, but what is evident is that the Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, is not peripheral to global stability, justice, and peace. Rather, only the Church, as the Body of Christ, guarantees peace and justice in the world, for only within the Body of Christ do peoples and nations find their true source and bond of mutual fellowship, a fellowship that finds its consummation in the heavenly communion of Christ and his Body.46 The Church as the Body of Christ: A Response to Ethnic Christianity The greatest of all scandals is that the very reality, willed by the Father, established in Christ, and made present in the Spirit, that is to be the answer to the virulent discord among peoples and nations is itself splintered and divided. The Body of Christ itself is fractured by schism and denominationalism. As de Lubac wrote: This makes it possible to understand why schism has always inspired the true believer with horror, and why from earliest times it has been anathematized as vigorously as heresy. For destruction of unity is a corruption of truth, and the poison of dissension that is as baneful as that of false doctrine.47 De Lubac recognized the horror of schism—“schism is the sin that leads to death”—for it is the mutilation of the Body of Christ.48 46 Gaudium et Spes equally emphasized this point:“As the firstborn of many brethren, and by the gift of his Spirit, he [Christ] established, after his death and resurrection, a new brotherly communion among all who received him in faith and love; this is the communion of his own body, the Church, in which everyone as members one of the other would render mutual service in the measure of the different gifts bestowed on each.This solidarity must be constantly increased until that day when it will be brought to fulfillment; on that day mankind, saved by grace, will offer perfect glory to God as the family beloved of God of Christ their brother” (§32). 47 De Lubac, Catholicism, 43. 48 Ibid., 149. De Lubac argues, following the patristic tradition, that one must be a member of the Body of Christ to receive the Body of Christ (see Corpus Mysticum, 80–83). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 177 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 177 To add to the scandal, these very divisions within the Body of Christ were not simply the result of theological and dogmatic disagreements, but were also rooted in ethnic nationalism.This is witnessed in the nationalism that wove itself into the very fabric of the conflicts surrounding the Reformation. Because the Protestant reformers discerned the sin residing in the institutional Church of their day, they jettisoned the visible Church, claiming her to be “a mere secular institution.” However, “as a matter of course it abandoned it [the Church] to the patronage of the state and sought a refuge for the spiritual life in an invisible Church, its concept of which had evaporated into an abstract ideal.”49 The principle, established by the Augsburg Peace of 1555, cuius regio eius religio, was the ultimate dethronement of Christ as Head of his Body and the triumphant coronation of nationalism.The resulting established national churches of England, Germany, Scandinavia, etc., confirmed the truth that nationalism had trumped the Church as the one universal Body of Christ. Even though the United States did not fall prey to the evil of sanctioning an established church, not infrequently today do some American Christian denominations and bodies promote a “God and Country” posture where one is not convinced that God actually does take precedence. Moreover, the centuries-old schisms between the Roman Catholic Church and the various Eastern Churches were not and are not simply divisions over doctrinal issues. These schisms possess their own historic nationalistic components. While the Roman Catholic Church has, in recent times, attempted to purify herself of her cultural elitism born of Western arrogance, it is difficult to perceive any reciprocity from the Eastern Churches.Within these Churches, nationalism often continues to loom large.The various Eastern Churches are often designated by nationality: the Greek Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church, the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church, etc. What is not evident at times is which is of the utmost importance—the ethnicity of the Church, or the Orthodoxy of the Church.50 This is confirmed in the manner in which they relate to Rome, and in the manner in which they relate to one another. While all belong to the Orthodox tradition, it is not infrequent that they are at odds with one 49 De Lubac, Catholicism, 42. 50 For a forthright and robust discussion of this issue even among the Uniate Churches, specifically from within a Ukrainian Catholic Church perspective, see P. Galadza, “The Structure of the Eastern Churches: Bonded by Human Blood or Baptismal Water?” Pro Ecclesia 17 (2008): 373–86. Galadza provides some very relevant bibliography regarding this issue. N&V_win10 .qxp 178 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 178 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. another over issues that bear more on ethnicity and national pride than on theological and ecclesial concerns. What is even more troubling is when the various ethnic Eastern Churches are seemingly intractably conjoined with their secular counterparts—both conspiring together in promoting and fueling a resurgent ethnic nationalism that often expresses itself in military aggression. When a Church uncritically baptizes ethnic and nationalistic movements, she is no longer baptizing people into the universal Body of Christ.51 The present state of ecumenical relations and the pursuance of full Christian unity are often not hopeful. The answer lies not simply in a renewed effort at overcoming the doctrinal differences and the ecclesial divides, however important they may be.The answer also lies in the purg51 I would argue that the Eastern Orthodox Churches, in losing Peter, lost the over- arching principle, actually “the person,” that/who personifies Christ as the unifying Head of the Body. Thus they lost that which would compel them to think beyond their own ethnic identity and so identify with the broader universal Church as the one Body of Christ. Over the centuries, in an effort to legitimatize and solidify their own independent ethnic patriarchal status, the ethnic identity of the various Eastern Churches gradually took precedence over being in union with the one universal Body of Christ, the Church.The only solution to this sad situation is for the Eastern Orthodox Churches to come into communion with Peter, but even then it will take centuries of saintly example and teaching of scores of holy men and women before the balance between the particularity of ethnicity and universality of the Church is set right within the Orthodox tradition. Insightfully, Galadza argues that Rome herself has contributed to this false aggrandizing of ethnicity. “If we study the statements of the last pontificate for the years 1978 to 1988 gathered in a booklet entitled Pope John Paul II Speaks to Ukrainians, we find that not only has Rome never challenged the partitive, ghettoizing ecclesiology operative throughout large segments of Ukrainian Catholicism, but it has actually reinforced it. References to ethnicity abound, while references to mission, outreach, evangelization, and the need to combat the idolatry of a temporally based sense of community are virtually absent” (“The Structure of the Eastern Churches,” 383). The absence of Peter within the Protestant traditions is even more calamitous. Many, if not most, Protestant denominations, especially those of a local congregationalist or fundamentalist tradition, have little, if any, concept of being a part of a larger Christian body other than through their own local assembly, which is vaguely perceived as being conjoined with some spiritualized invisible communion of all “true” believers, the members of the Catholic Church often being excluded from the elect. Despite their claims to being solely and exclusively biblical, such denominations have not heeded the preaching of their most revered apostle—Paul—for it is he who recognized most clearly, as his letters to the various individual churches bear witness, the universal and visible nature of the one Church as the one Body of Christ. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 179 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 179 ing of an ethnic nationalism that is revered, treasured, and honored more highly than the Church as Christ’s one Body.This can only be achieved within a renewed appreciation of the biblical and traditional notion that the whole Church is the one universal Body of Christ. Until Christians of all denominations groan in sorrow that Christ’s Body is rent asunder and thus inflicting immense suffering and pain not only on itself but also on the whole of humankind, and until Christians of all denominations long for Christ’s Body to be one, not only for its own vitality but also for the life of the world, nothing of real substance will take place on the ecumenical stage. The whole Body of Christ itself must come, ardently and prayerfully, to long for and cry out for, in the unity of the Spirit, its own healing. Only then will the Spirit be able to bind up and cure its wounds. Only then can the Church, as the universal Body of Christ, truly take up her supreme task and commission—that of evangelizing the whole of the world.52 The Church as the Body of Christ: The Challenge of Global Evangelization Despite the teaching of Vatican II and subsequent popes, there has been a noticeable flagging in zeal to evangelize.53 This absence of evangelizing zeal is witnessed not only with regard to those non-believers among whom Christians live, but also among those non-believers who abide throughout the world. I believe that there is at least a twofold reason for this. The first is a naïve understanding of other religions. It is common for Christians to assume today that all religions are basically good, even if one thinks that Christianity is the best.54 The second reason for the 52 Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, states that the division within the Body of Christ “openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the most holy cause, the preaching of the Gospel to every creature” (§1). For similar comments, see Pope Paul VI’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuniandi, §77 and Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Ut Unum Sint, §98. 53 In his encyclical Redemptoris Missio, Pope John Paul II, while noting that all Catholic people and institutions are called to evangelize, states: “Nevertheless, in this ‘new springtime’ of Christianity there is an undeniable negative tendency, and the present Document is meant to help overcome it. Missionary activity specifically directed ‘to the nations’ (ad gentes) appears to be waning, and this tendency is certainly not in line with the directives of the Council and of subsequent statements of the Magisterium” (§2). See also Vatican II’s Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, Ad Gentes and Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Evangelii Nuntiandi. 54 Because Lumen Gentium enumerates the various religions in a hierarchical fashion, emphasizing the truths that each contains and positioning them in relation to the beliefs of Catholicism, which resides at the pinnacle of the hierarchy, the impression can be given that all religions are good, Christianity merely being the best. N&V_win10 .qxp 180 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 180 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. demise in evangelistic zeal resides in the mediocrity of the practice of the Christian faith that is so prevalent today. If one does not personally glory in the knowledge that Jesus is the supreme Lord of all and does not perceive that the salvation that he brings is the greatest of all gifts, one will be reluctant, at best, to bear witness to Jesus and his Gospel of salvation. Moreover, if one does not appreciate that the goal of human history as a whole and of human individuals in particular is the completion of the Body of Christ, and that it is within that Body that all find the fullness of unity, peace, and joy with God and one another, then one will hardly be compelled, in love, to go forth and proclaim the Gospel to all nations. De Lubac wrote:“If I cease evangelizing, it is because charity has withdrawn from me. If I no longer feel the need to communicate the flame, it is because it no longer burns in me.”55 The contemporary lack of missionary zeal among many Christians lies precisely in a lack of faith in Jesus as the one supreme Lord and only Savior, resulting in a lack of appreciation of being members of his Church—the Mystical Body.56 This can easily undercut the need to evangelize. See also Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate, §2. What is often forgotten is the further acknowledgement that “[w]hatever good or truth is found amongst them [other religious traditions] is considered by the Church to be a preparation for the Gospel,” and, moreover, that “very often, deceived by the Evil One, men have become vain in their reasonings, having exchanged the truth of God for a lie and served the world rather than the Creator (cf. Rom. 1:21). . . . Hence to procure the glory of God and the salvation of all these, the Church, mindful of the Lord’s command,‘preach the Gospel to every creature’ (Mk. 16:16) takes zealous care to foster the missions” (Nostra Aetate, §16).Thus today, in the desire to affirm the good that resides within other religions, the error, and the evil that necessarily flows from such error, is frequently overlooked or even denied and so, then, the necessity of bringing the Gospel to all. 55 De Lubac, Le Fondement Théologique des Missions (Paris: Seuil, 1946), 41. Quotation and translation taken from McPartlan, “The Eucharist, the Church and Evangelization:The Influence of Henri de Lubac,” Communio 23 (1996): 784. 56 While the Fathers at the Second Vatican Council, in their dogmatic constitution Lumen Gentium, employed the notion that the Church is “the people of God” as its overarching template, I wonder if this notion carries the theological depth and ecclesial incentive necessary to support a committed and sustained evangelization. In one sense the whole of humankind makes up God’s people even if many do not believe in him and so the necessity of faith in the Gospel is somewhat undermined. However, one becomes a full member of the people of God only when one becomes a full member of the Body of Christ. De Lubac himself notes that within the preparatory schema the notion of the Church as the Body of Christ was emphasized in keeping with Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis. While de Lubac does not criticize the choice of the Council, he recognizes that the notion of “people of God” does not possess the biblical grounding nor the mature theological tradition as does that of the N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 181 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 181 Because of his ardent faith in Jesus and his deep appreciation of the Church as the Body of Christ, de Lubac would never tolerate or countenance such misguided attitudes. He professed that the ultimate destiny of all humanity “consists in its receiving the form of Christ, and that is possible only through the Catholic Church.”57 Prodded by the Holy Spirit, the Church is compelled, then, to proclaim the Gospel. “So long as the Church does not extend and penetrate to the whole of humanity, so as to give to it the form of Christ, she cannot rest.”58 The ultimate setting, again, where this forming of Christ within the whole of humanity finds its supreme expression is within the Eucharist. For de Lubac, the authentic fruit of the Eucharist is evangelization. Having been conformed into the likeness of Christ through communion with him in the Eucharistic banquet, the Eucharistic community is then sent forth into the world, after the manner of Christ himself, to gather all men and women into the Church, his Body, so that the whole of humanity might come to partake of his body and blood, becoming one—Head and members.59 Thus, for de Lubac, the task of evangelism will not come to an end until the coming of Christ in glory. Her whole end is to show us Christ, lead us to Him, and communicate His grace to us; to put it in a nutshell, she exists solely to put us into relation with Him. She alone can do this, and it is a task which she never completes; there will never be a moment, either in the life of the individual or the life of the race, in which her role ought to come to an end or even could come to an end. If the world lost the Church it would lose the Redemption too.60 Ultimately each human individual and humanity as a whole can only achieve the goal willed by the Father by being united to Christ and his Body, the Church, through the Holy Spirit. “Outside Christianity nothing attains its end, that only end, towards which, unknowingly, all human desires, all human endeavours, are in movement: the embrace of God in Christ.”61 Only the Church offers such a goal. For de Lubac, among the many philosophical and esoteric attempts to find unity,“Christianity alone Church being the Body of Christ. See de Lubac, The Church: Paradox and Mystery, 39–47. 57 De Lubac, Catholicism, 119. 58 Ibid., 123. 59 On the subject of the Eucharist and evangelization in de Lubac’s thought, see McPartlin, “The Eucharist, the Church and Evangelization,” 776–85. 60 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, 148; see also 28. 61 De Lubac, Catholicism, 120. N&V_win10 .qxp 182 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 182 Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M., Cap. continues to assert the transcendent destiny of man and the common destiny of mankind.”62 So convinced is de Lubac about the centrality and necessity of the Church for salvation that he believes that even those who are not visibly members of the Church, if they do obtain salvation, do so only through the Church. And so it is that God, desiring that all men should be saved, but not allowing in practice that all should be visibly in the Church, wills nevertheless that all those who answer his call should in the last resort be saved through the Church. Sola Ecclesiae gratia, qua redimimur.63 It is de Lubac’s understanding of the necessary centrality of the Church that must renew and enliven all members of the Body of Christ today—clergy, religious, and laity—so that the contemporary task of evangelization can be undertaken with renewed zeal and firmness of purpose. In the love of the Spirit, Christians, and Catholics especially, must be convinced that to bring Christ to others, of every race and nation, so as to enable them to enter the communion of his Body, is to offer them what they truly seek and long for—fullness of life and union with the Father. Conclusion Little needs to be said by way of conclusion. I have attempted to show that de Lubac’s ecclesiology arose within a milieu of aggressive nationalism. In response, both in his early and later works on the Church, de Lubac articulated a thorough and robust understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ. In so doing, he argued not only that the Church was communal in nature, but also that she was the only institution that could 62 Ibid., 79. In Ad Gentes Vatican II echoed the very thoughts of de Lubac. “It pleased God to call men to share in his life and not merely singly, without any bond between them, but he formed them into a people, in which his children who had been scattered were gathered together” (§2). “By means of this [missionary] activity the mystical body of Christ unceasingly gathers and directs its energies towards its own increase. The members of the Church are impelled to engage in this activity because of the charity with which they love God and by which they desire to share with all men in the spirit goods of this life and the life to come. . . . [In accordance with God’s plan the Church evangelizes so that] the whole human race might become one people of God, form one body of Christ, and be built up into one temple of the Holy Spirit; all of which, as an expression of brotherly concord, answers to a profound longing in all men” (§7). See also Lumen Gentium, §17. 63 De Lubac, Catholicism, 125; see also 116–28. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 183 De Lubac on Nationalism and the Church 183 transcend and so unite all peoples and nations.The reason that she could do so was precisely because it was the Father’s desire to unite the whole of humankind in his Son through the life and love of the Holy Spirit. Only Christ provides the communion for which all men and women long, for only in him do they all become one as members of his universal Body, the Church.This unity finds its fullest expression here on earth within the Eucharistic celebration which foreshadows its fulfillment in heaven where Christ and his Body reach full maturity—the one perfect man (see Eph 4:11). Drawing on de Lubac’s theological vision of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, I have suggested three areas where his thought still remains extremely relevant: (1) in response to contemporary aggressive nationalism, (2) as a means of cleansing Christian Churches and denominations of ethnic divisiveness, and (3) as a stimulus for a vibrant global evangelization. My hope is that this essay has accurately and clearly rendered de Lubac’s thought and, in so doing, fostered a love for and commitment to both Christ, the Head, and his Body, the Church. N&V N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 184 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 185 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 185–189 185 Human Action and the Foundations of the Natural Law ROMANUS C ESSARIO, O.P. St. John’s Seminary Brighton, Massachusetts TO ADDRESS the question why this book matters, one must observe that the theory of human action and of the nature of the object of the moral act have for too long—whether on the continent of Europe, or in England and North America—been separated from the foundational considerations of the natural law.1 Long’s Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act redresses this foundational error. The primacy of end and of form provides metaphysical profundity and rigor to the author’s contemplation of the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas regarding the nature of the moral act.The title of the book alone adverts to this: teleological grammar suggests intelligibility, meaning, communicability, order, purpose, form, intention. Without the aid of all the king’s horses or all the king’s men, Professor Long has put Humpty Dumpty together again. Chapeau! as the French say. Long understands that the natural law doctrine of Aquinas is deeply theocentric and metaphysical. The author articulates the manner in which man’s passive participation in the eternal law through the teleological structuring of his nature provides reasons to do and not to do for his active rational life. When received preceptively by reason moreover, this structuring constitutes the natural law in the strict sense. Today this doctrine is scarcely appreciated, and natural law itself often is reduced to either deontological or purely logical structures.The implications of such reduction for the theory of moral action, as might be expected, have been unfortunate. The implications for the lives of Christian believers remain deadly; indeed, in some cases literally. 1 Originally published in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 9.2 (Summer 2009): 389–391. Used with permission. N&V_win10 .qxp 186 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 186 Romanus Cessario, O.P. The Teleological Grammar sets forth an account of the object of the moral act as “what the act is about relative to reason” (17).The most formal part of the object is the ratio of its choiceworthiness to the agent in relation to the end sought by the agent. But the object always also includes the act itself with its integral nature and per se effects.The object of the moral act is not simply what the agent finds attractive about the proposed action, because the action with its nature and per se effects is deliberately and voluntarily chosen by the agent. Indeed, without the nature and per se effects of action there is no action.As the Mock Turtle reminds Alice,“No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.” Otherwise put, the purposeless traveler risks arriving in a real Wonderland. Long usefully notes that Aquinas distinguishes between formally disunified acts with disjunct species, and formally unified acts all contained within one species.The former category presents the case of per accidens order between object and act, wherein the object neither tends by nature toward the end, nor does the end by nature require the object. In this case of per accidens order the species derived from the object is not contained within the species derived from the end. An example of such per accidens order: theft does not of its essence tend toward adultery, nor does adultery by its essence require theft. Hence, the one who steals for the sake of adultery, while more adulterer than thief, is guilty of two species of moral dereliction, and the action undertaken is formally complex and disunified because characterized by two different species neither of which is contained within the other. A case of per accidens order remains altogether opposed to the case wherein there is natural per se order between object and end. In this instance, the most formal, containing, defining species is derived from the end, and any species derived from the object is contained within this defining species from the end. Such per se action is not formally complex, but rather is formally unified by the per se order toward the end. For Long, this stress of Aquinas in article 7 of the Summa theologiae I–II, question 18, proves absolutely fundamental for understanding his account of moral action. For if and only if the object is per se ordained to the end will the most containing, universal, and defining species derive from the end. In the case of per se order, any species derived from the object or objects is contained within the more formal and defining species derived from the end. Further, human action is as such per se, since even per accidens acts wherein the object does not tend naturally toward the end, nor the end naturally require the object, are in reality two or more per se acts that are accidentally ordered one to another. Indeed, where there is no per se order in action, then choice would become impossible, as nothing of its nature would tend toward anything. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 187 Human Action and the Foundations of the Natural Law 187 The most obvious case of per se order is a materially simple, freestanding act in which the object is essentially ordered to the end. For example, anesthesia might be given simply for pain relief, with no thought of its playing a part in a larger whole. But there are, Long tacitly suggests, more materially rich cases of per se order, where several acts or objects are required by the very nature of an intended end. In these cases, the species derived from the end is most containing and defining, while the species derived from the objects (which might have been but are not freestanding) are nonetheless retained within the species derived from the end as characterizing the larger whole. Long argues that the integral nature of the act and its per se effects are always retained in the object of the act.This teaching regarding the integral nature and per se effects of action is important for more than its implications regarding materially rich per se action, precisely because there is today a tendency to suppose that the deliberate choice of actions of a certain nature may be neglected in favor of a purely intentionalist emphasis on merely what the agent proposes to himself as the purpose for his action. Some arguments in favor of allowing condom use in certain circumstances unfortunately exhibit this misplaced emphasis. Why should the integral nature and per se effects of action be included in the moral object of the act? Because the object of the external act is what the act is about relative to reason. The relation to reason is an oblique reference to the end, for it is constituted by what makes the act choiceworthy to the agent. However, while what makes the act choiceworthy to the agent may indeed be the most formal aspect of the moral object, it is not the whole object—just as the soul is what is most formal in human nature, but it is not the whole of human nature. Rather, in addition to this aspect of what makes the act choiceworthy to the agent, the object also always includes the act itself and its integral nature and per se effects. Not alone what we seek, but the manner in which we deliberately choose to seek it, are morally significant for our action. With Aquinas, Long is saying that we are responsible, not alone for our proposals and intentions and preferences, but for the nature of our deliberately chosen voluntary actions. Long’s comprehensive treatment emphasizes the natural integrity of action, the primacy of end, and form. First, it stresses the natural integrity of action, because Long refuses to reduce the object of the moral act wholly to what makes the act desirable to the agent, or to a mere rational “proposal” or “idea” or “transcendentally constituted object.” He refuses to treat the moral character of what we do as reducible wholly to why we may wish to do it.The words of Veritatis Splendor, paragraph 79, inspire and N&V_win10 .qxp 188 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 188 Romanus Cessario, O.P. shape Long’s treatment of the moral act:“One must therefore reject the thesis, characteristic of teleological and proportionalist theories, which holds that it is impossible to qualify as morally evil according to its species—its ‘object’— the deliberate choice of certain kinds of behaviour or specific acts, apart from a consideration of the intention for which the choice is made or the totality of the foreseeable consequences of that act for all persons concerned” ( John Paul II, original emphasis). Long’s analysis sustains the role both of natural teleology and the relation to reason in a manner that upholds, in my view, this crucial teaching of Veritatis Splendor better than any present-day alternative reading of St.Thomas’s moral theory. Second, as for the primacy of the end in the moral life, this emphasis is clear in the role that per se teleological order enjoys within the doctrine of Aquinas. Long understands that the natural teleology of acts is not merely their reductively physical ordering. For instance, it is in a technical physical sense accidental that wax under the heat of a flame should melt.Yet should a message be contained in the wax, and should someone who did not wish the message to be read deliberately put the wax too near the fire, this would in moral terms be an act of melting the wax for the sake of obliterating the message. Clearly the melting of the wax would tend, by its very nature, toward the obliterating of the message, irrespective of the technical physical designation as to the accidentality of wax melting in heat. Third, Long’s account vindicates the supereminent role of form in understanding of the moral act, because where the object is per se ordained to the end, there the most formal, containing, and defining species is derived from the end. Hence, if we wish most formally to know what the moral nature of an act is, we must understand whether the act is formally unified within the species derived from the end, or whether it is in reality characterized by multiple disjunct species that are not formally unified owing to per accidens order of object and end. Long does not let his readers forget that the role of natural moral teleological order remains crucial. With respect to merely physical species, Long understands that while these do not of themselves necessarily determine the moral species of an act, they nonetheless are among the causal elements determining the moral species. Teleology saturates Aquinas’s moral teaching as it dominates Veritatis Splendor. This teleology counters proportionalism or consequentialism (which renders the whole act a congeries of accidents, not even distinguishing end from mere consequence).Thomist teleology supplies an analysis of human actions placing them in relation to the normative hierarchy of ends. One’s embrace of this teleology alone ensures that the human person achieves wisdom within the overarching context of Christian beatitude. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 189 Human Action and the Foundations of the Natural Law 189 The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act represents a sufficiently strategic work to give form to the recuperation of Catholic moral theology from the precarious uncertainties of proportionalism, logicism, and the transcendental evisceration of natural teleology. In achieving this objective, the author carries forth the hoped-for renewal of moral theology that was first expressed as a desideratum at the Second Vatican Council and later sketched out in the 1993 encyclical on moral theology. It is the great accomplishment of Steven Long’s book that it offers an account in depth of the understanding of the nature of the human act that is set forth magisterially in the papal encyclical Veritatis Splendor. For this reason, Teleological Grammar provides an especially useful companion volume for use with the handbooks on moral theology published at Catholic University of America Press in its series “Catholic Moral Thought.” Error is the most harmful evil that can befall the creature endowed with intelligence. Anyone who wants to know for sure what he is doing morally should read this book. If he finds it too difficult, then he should ask someone who can understand the book what it says. To put this otherwise, the book’s teaching remains indispensable for anyone who wants to understand, as is said, “what the Church teaches” about the happy life. N&V N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 190 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 191 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 191–205 191 St. Thomas, Steven Long, and Private Self-Defense L AWRENCE D EWAN, O.P. Dominican University College Ottawa, Canada I N CONCLUDING his book The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act,1 Steven Long says it presents “in one dense theoretic reflection St. Thomas’s teaching regarding the natural teleological grammar governing the constitution of the object and species of the moral act.”2 It is the word “dense” that I mean to stress. It contrasts, to my mind, with the word “primer” that Long uses in his introduction to the book: “why a speculative primer is necessary.”3 I would not like to use this presentation of the moral act and its object as an introduction in a classroom. Let it be understood that I regard it as a valuable exercise for specialists, inter doctores, and am most grateful to Long for providing it. Even though it is not meant to be a presentation of St.Thomas’s texts (and, of course, with Thomas, has as ultimate end the truth of the matter), I would have been happier if certain elements of Thomas’s own analysis and vocabulary had been adhered to. For example, there is hardly any use of Thomas’s vocabulary distinguishing between “interior act” and “exterior act.”4 Again, while Thomas notes a certain language concerning the goodness and badness deriving from the object of the act, in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 18, a. 2, as “in its genus,” he explains carefully that “genus” here is being used for “species.”5 Long calls this throughout the 1 Steven A. Long, The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2007). 2 Ibid., 83. 3 Ibid., viii. 4 Thomas uses this distinction so primarily that it is structural for his presentation of Summa theologiae I–II, qq.18–20. 5 Cf. ST I–II, q. 18, a. 2:“[P]rima bonitas actus moralis attenditur ex obiecto conve- nienti; unde et a quibusdam vocatur bonum ex genere; puta, uti re sua.”“[T]he first N&V_win10 .qxp 192 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 192 Lawrence Dewan, O.P. book “generic” goodness. I would have much preferred “specific.”This is especially so since St. Thomas, in ST I–II, q. 18, a. 7, a most important text for the Long project, presents the species taken from the end as the genus, relative to the species taken from the object of the exterior act.6 Let me say that I am in complete accord with Long on the importance of natural teleology in morals. I am going to limit myself in the present note to indicating my disagreement with Long concerning St.Thomas on private self-defense. I see the need to indicate two points: first, that for a private citizen to kill anyone deliberately is an act falling on undue matter, that is, is intrinsically bad; and, secondly, I reject the Long treatment of the difference between intention and choice.7 To begin with the latter point, Long’s position is that we must carefully distinguish between the intention and the choice. If we do that, we can say that the killing is not intended, but it is chosen. Only this approach, he holds, admits the full description of the act performed. Morally, it is a case of justified homicide.8 I disagree with Long’s views of both intention and choice. I see them in what we might call a “mirror-image” opposition. That is, where he stresses Thomas’s sign, in the reply to objection 3 of ST I–II, q. 12, a. 4, that the two are distinct, namely, that one can have the intention of the end and not yet have determined the means, I wish to call attention to the entire reply to the objection. The topic of the article is whether it is one act of the will whereby one intends the end and wills that which is goodness of the moral act is noted from the suitable object; hence, it is called by some people ‘good by virtue of its genus,’ for example, to make use of what is one’s own.” And later in the same article we have: “[I]ta primum malum in actionibus moralibus est quod est ex obiecto, sicut accipere aliena. Et dicitur malum ex genere, genere pro specie accepto, eo modo loquendi quo dicimus humanum genus totam humanam speciem.” “[T]hus, the first badness in moral actions is what is from the object, for example: to take what belongs to someone else. And it is said to be ‘bad from its genus,’ using [the word] ‘genus’ for ‘species,’ in that way of speaking by which we call the entire human species ‘the human genus.’ ” 6 Cf. ST I–II, q. 18, a. 7 (ed. Ottawa 816b26–30): “[D]ifferentia specifica quae est ex fine, est magis generalis; et differentia quae est ex obiecto per se ad talem finem ordinato, est specifica respectu eius.”“[T]he specific difference that is from the end is more general; and the difference that is from the object essentially ordered towards that end is specific relative to it.” 7 Cf. Long, Teleological Grammar, 47–51. 8 Long contends that “killing is not absolutely speaking an act under negative precept, but is only under negative precept where it does not fall under the form of just punishment, the form of just war, or the form of just defense” (51). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 193 St.Thomas, Steven Long, and Private Self-Defense 193 ordered to the end; the objector, wishing to negate this, notes that the act of the will bearing on what is ordered to the end is choice, and that choice and intention are not the same.This requires that Thomas explain the distinction between intention and choice.We read: [I]t is to be said that a movement which is one as to the subject can differ intelligibly in function of beginning and end: for example an ascent and a descent; as is said in Physics 3 [202a19–22].9 Therefore, in this way, inasmuch as the movement of the will bears on that which is ordered towards the end, inasmuch as it is ordered towards the end, it is choice. However, the movement of the will which bears upon the end, inasmuch as it is acquired through that which is towards the end, is called “intention.” It is a sign of this that the intention of the end can exist even when those things which are ordered towards the end, the objects of choice, have not yet been determined.10 What I mean to insist on is the basic description of the two acts, in the comparison to the two opposite movements over the same route. In the picture of the two acts in their perfect condition, both include the end and the means, but in inverse order. Why is this? It is because the will intending is the cause of the will choosing.The will is a self-mover.As willing the end, it moves itself to will the means.11 It is intention precisely inasmuch as the order to the means is introduced, no matter how indeterminately.Thus, in distinguishing intention from simple willing and enjoying, all three of which are acts of the will willing the end, intention is presented as follows: In a third way the end is considered according as it is the terminus of something which is ordered to it; and thus intention relates to the end: 9 Aristotle is teaching that the motion is in the moveable thing, even though it is the actuality of the mover.Thus teaching and learning are one event, one actuality, though they differ intelligibly, in that the event is teaching as “the actuality of X in Y” but is learning as “the actualization of Y through the action of X.” The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited and with an introduction by Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941). 10 ST I–II, q. 12, a. 4, ad 3: “Ad tertium dicendum quod motus qui est unus subiecto, potest ratione differre secundum principium et finem, ut ascensio et descensio, sicut dicitur in III Physic. Sic igitur inquantum motus voluntatis fertur in id quod est ad finem, prout ordinatur ad finem, est electio. Motus autem voluntatis qui fertur in finem, secundum quod acquiritur per ea quae sunt ad finem, vocatur intentio. Cuius signum est quod intentio finis esse potest, etiam nondum determinatis his quae sunt ad finem, quorum est electio.” 11 Cf. ST I–II, q. 9, a. 3. N&V_win10 .qxp 194 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 194 Lawrence Dewan, O.P. for it is not merely from this that we are said to “intend health,” viz. that we will it, but rather that we will to arrive at it through something else.12 It is understandable, then, that in the beginning the means be indeterminate, but the intention is the driving force of the deliberation, the act of reason under the direction of the intending will. Consider the way Thomas answers an objector who notes that St. John Damascene calls deliberation an “appetite” (Thomas’s own position being that deliberation is substantially a cognitive act): [W]hen the acts of two powers are ordered one to another, there is in each something that pertains to the other power; and so either act can be given a name from either power. But it is evident that the act of reason directing as regards things which are for the goal [in his quae sunt ad finem ], and the act of the will tending towards those things in accordance with the rule of reason, are ordered to each other. Hence, in [that] act of the will, which is choice, there appears something of reason, viz. the order; and in the deliberation, which is the act of reason, there appears something of will, as matter, because deliberation is about those things which a man wills to do; and also as source of movement [sicut motivum ], because by the fact that the man wills the end, he is moved to deliberate about those things which are for the end. And so the Philosopher says in Ethics VI [1139b4] that “choice is appetitive intellect,” that he may show that both concur for choice; and so also Damascene [De fide orthodoxa II.22 (PG 94.945)] says that “deliberation is inquisitive appetite,” that he may show that deliberation in a way pertains both to will, concerning which and starting from which there is inquiry [circa quam et ex qua fit inquisitio ], and to the inquiring reason.13 What I stress in this text of Thomas is his care in distinguishing two different roles of will, one as prior and one as posterior to deliberating reason, and the entirely causal nature of the analysis.There is a series and very explicitly so. We see in the De malo 6, on free choice, how the very freedom of choice is explained by the fact that the will uses as its proper instrument deliberating reason, which can come to opposite conclusions concerning contingent matters.14 Intending will and deliberating reason are the 12 ST I, q. 12, a. 1: “Tertio modo consideratur finis secundum quod est terminus alicuius quod in ipsum ordinatur, et sic intentio respicit finem. Non enim solum ex hoc intendere dicimur sanitatem, quia volumus eam, sed quia volumus ad eam per aliquid aliud pervenire.” 13 ST I–II, q. 14, a. 1, ad 1. My emphasis. 14 Deliberation is not a demonstrative inquiry, but one allowing of coming to opposite conclusions. Since this is the proper means by which the will moves itself, the N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 195 St.Thomas, Steven Long, and Private Self-Defense 195 causes of the choice.The intending will is the mover of the choosing will. Accordingly, we must expect that in the beginning the intention will aim at means which are still indeterminate. However, with the conclusion of its servant, deliberating reason, the intention is perfect, and intends the means which are the matter of choice. No wonder, then, that Thomas, in presenting the difference between intention and choice, includes the willing of end and means in both, but in a different order. Let us now reread ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7. That I am going to come to a different conclusion than Long stems, I would say, from my reading of the question as a whole. By the time I arrive at article 7, I am convinced that “a private citizen kills a human being,” as the description of a moral act (not of an inculpable accident,15 nor as a purely physical description of an event) is per se malum, that is, in its very nature against reason.16 Article 217 has established that a criminal can be the object of a good act of homicide;18 however, the agent of such an act cannot be a private person, but must be someone responsible for the common good (a. 3). Nor (a. 4) can that agent be a cleric (no matter what responsibility for the common good he has).19 movement which it imparts to itself is not necessarily this or necessarily that (not even “to choose” or “not to choose”).We read:“Cum igitur uoluntas se consilio moueat, consilium autem est inquisitio quedam non demonstratiua set ad opposita uiam habens, non ex necessitate uoluntas se ipsam mouet.” Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae de malo, in Opera omnia, t. 23 (Rome/Paris: Commissio Leonina/Vrin, 1982), lines 377–81. 15 Cf. ST II–II, q. 64, a. 8. 16 On the role of reason in morals, cf. for example, ST I–II, q. 18, a. 5; also I–II, q. 1, aa. 1 and 3, and q. 18, a. 10; also q. 20, a. 1, concerning the goodness or badness of the exterior act in particular. 17 We must not fail to notice the wonderful teaching of ST II–II, q. 64, a. 1, asking whether one may kill plants and animals:“[N]ullus peccat ex hoc quod utitur re aliqua ad hoc ad quod est.” “[N]o one sins from the fact that he makes use of some thing for that for which it exists.” Long is certainly right to feature natural teleology. 18 Can we speak of “a good act of homicide?” It is a fact that the Latin word “homicidium” is often best translated as “murder;” however, I note in, for example, ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7, ad 3, that the judge passing a just sentence is spoken of as having to do with an “actum homicidii . . . absque peccato,” an act of homicide involving no sin. Certainly in English we use the word as meaning “killing a human being,” whether justifiably or culpably. 19 Long, in his earlier article “A Brief Disquisition Regarding the Nature of the Object of the Moral Act according to St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 67 (2003): 45–71, in footnote 28 (pp. 65–66), refers to the ad 3 in ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7, concerning the irregular condition of a cleric who kills someone in good selfdefense. Long’s argument there is based on the Church’s doctrine of the “irregularity” that stands in the way of, for example, someone being ordained to the N&V_win10 .qxp 196 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 196 Lawrence Dewan, O.P. Nor (a. 5) can one kill oneself, that is, be the agent of one’s own death (even if one is responsible for the common good).After these views of the killable man, namely, the threat to the common good, and the appropriate agent for such a killing, we come (a. 6) to the case of the innocent person. Is he a killable object? Not for any reason. It is only at this point in the sequence of articles that we have put before us that puzzling character, the attacker of the private citizen. No judgment will be made as regards his state of soul,20 but the person attacked has the right to take the necessary steps to save himself, even though this sometimes must result in the death of the attacker. The preceding article 3,21 forbidding the killing of the criminal by a private person, makes clear the reason for this: the killing of the criminal is for the sake of the common good only, and thus it is for those responsible for that good to make the necessary judgment about the criminality of the criminal. Its ad 2 should be especially considered: priesthood. Long’s main thesis is that one cannot leave killing out of the description of the moral object of the act of private self-defense.The irregularity mentioned in II–II, q. 64, a. 7, ad 3 arises from one’s association with homicide, and falls even upon people who are committing no sin, such as a judge passing a sentence of death (who becomes ineligible for ordination) (cf. Sent. IV, d. 25, q. 2B, ad 2), or a cleric in a blameless act of private self-defense (ibid., ad 3). On the other hand, it does not fall upon someone accidentally killing someone, provided that it does not take on a voluntary aspect by occurring when one is involved in illicit activity or is negligent (ibid., ad 3).The issue is that those who represent Christ at the altar, Christ who did not resist, are not suitably imitating him when they become involved in even blameless killing. It does not seem to me that this sort of “association” with killing should be used to determine the correct analysis of the difference between good and bad private self-defense. I think that the meaning of ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7 is that the private self-defender must have as moral object “the violence that suffices to save my life” and not “lethal violence to save my life,” that is, that the lethality as such “happens” to the moral description. There seems no reason why the Church could not judge that even such association with homicide in a voluntary act constituted an unsuitable mode of representing Christ. 20 While his act is in the nature of a sin, the private citizen faced with the attack cannot make even the sort of judgment of the attacker that the public authority can. I notice, however, that Cajetan conceives of the attacker as a sinner:Thomas de Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, Commentaria Cardinalis Caietani, super ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7, at para. 2, in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, Opera Omnia (Rome: ex Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de propaganda fide, 1882 ss.),T. 9, p. 74. 21 I am repeating here some things said in my review of Flannery. Cf. my review article: “Acts Amid Precepts: The Aristotelian Logical Structure of Thomas Aquinas’s Moral Theory” by Kevin Flannery, S.J., (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 431–44, at 438–43. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 197 St.Thomas, Steven Long, and Private Self-Defense 197 The man who is a sinner is not naturally distinct from just men.Therefore, there is need of the public judgment, in order to discern whether someone is to be killed for the common welfare. The insistence is on the need for right discernment concerning the public need and the moral condition of the accused, in inflicting such great harm on a person.22 This need for public judgment throws great light on the situation of the private self-defender. His act simply cannot be a killing of the attacker as a malefactor. How important, then, in the whole sequence of question 64, is article 6, the absolute rejection of all killing of the innocent! We read: [T]he human individual [aliquis homo ] can be considered in two ways: in one way, just in himself; in the other way, by comparison to something else. Considering a man just in himself, it is not licit to kill anyone, because in anyone, even a sinner, we ought to love the nature which God has made, and which by killing is destroyed. But, as was said above, the killing of the sinner is rendered licit by comparison to the common good, which is destroyed by sin. But the life of just [people] is conservative of and promotes the common good, because they are the more principal part [principalior pars ] of the multitude. And so it is in no way licit to kill the innocent.23 First it is noted that we have the obligation to love the nature that God has made and which is destroyed by killing: thus no one, just or sinner, is a killable object, just in himself.24 Secondly, it is noted that the public authority 22 The question on homicide leads off the discussion of vices violating the justice of exchange, and in particular involuntary exchanges: this is to say that some harm is visited upon one’s neighbor against his will, either as to deed or word, and among deeds, those that harm the person or the associate of the person, or the property. Homicide comes first as maximally harming one’s neighbor. Cf. ST II–II, q. 64, prologue. 23 ST II–II, q. 64, a. 6:“Respondeo dicendum quod aliquis homo dupliciter considerari potest, uno modo, secundum se; alio modo, per comparationem ad aliud. Secundum se quidem considerando hominem, nullum occidere licet, quia in quolibet, etiam peccatore, debemus amare naturam, quam deus fecit, quae per occisionem corrumpitur. Sed sicut supra dictum est, occisio peccatoris fit licita per comparationem ad bonum commune, quod per peccatum corrumpitur.Vita autem iustorum est conservativa et promotiva boni communis, quia ipsi sunt principalior pars multitudinis. Et ideo nullo modo licet occidere innocentem.” 24 It is to be noted that the argument is not from the viewpoint of justice here, but rather of love of the human being. Already in ST II–II, q. 64, a. 5, ad 1, as to suicide,Thomas replies to an objector who argued that since one cannot be unjust to oneself, suicide is not a sin, as follows: “Ad primum ergo dicendum quod N&V_win10 .qxp 198 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 198 Lawrence Dewan, O.P. can kill the public enemy.This brings out the enormity of the crime of a public authority that would take the life of the good citizen: since the innocent primarily constitute the community (which is essentially a school of virtue),25 killing the innocent, we can well conclude, is analogous to amputating the head to save the arm.26 It is with these premises in view that we come to the self-defender. He is faced with an attacker, but has no right to judge that attacker to be a criminal, a public enemy: no right to kill a criminal. Nor has he any right to kill an innocent human being. He has no right to kill at all. But he does have a right! He has the right to preserve his own life against the attacker by a use of suitable means. He does not have the right to take as means of saving his own life the killing of the attacker, but he does have the right to use the saving means, even if they must result in the death of the attacker. Let us review the text. homicidium est peccatum non solum quia contrariatur iustitiae, sed etiam quia contrariatur caritati quam habere debet aliquis ad seipsum. Et ex hac parte occisio sui ipsius est peccatum per comparationem ad seipsum. Per comparationem autem ad communitatem et ad deum, habet rationem peccati etiam per oppositionem ad iustitiam.”“To the first it is to be said that homicide is a sin, not merely solely because it is contrary to justice, but also because it is contrary to the charity that one ought to have towards oneself; and in that regard the killing of oneself is a sin relative to oneself. However, as compared to the community and to God, it also has the nature of sin by opposition to justice.” The commandments to love God above all and one’s neighbor as oneself are prior to, and foundational for, the ten commandments (which are in the realm of justice): cf. ST I–II, q. 100, a. 3, ad 1. While “charity” strictly speaking refers to the supernatural love of God and one’s neighbor, nevertheless that supernatural love is an elevation of our natural love of God, ourselves, and our own kind: cf. ST I, q. 60, a. 5. I think also of Thomas’s citation of Augustine at ST II–II, q. 154, a. 12, ad 1, where Augustine speaks of the “society” which ought to obtain between us and God, the author of nature. 25 See the essay “St.Thomas, John Finnis, and the Political Good,” ch. 17 in my book Wisdom, Law, and Virtue (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 286–90. 26 As I noted in my essay on the death penalty, in Wisdom, Law, and Virtue (587, n. 39), it is astounding that Germain Grisez translated principalior pars as “the majority”! Cf., G. Grisez, “Toward a Consistent Natural-Law Ethic of Killing,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 15 (1970): 64–96, at 67. No wonder, then, that he found Thomas’s argument “muddled”! This quantitative reading shows that he was far from Thomas’s conception of the political society even when professing to read Thomas. It is like saying that the head is “the majority” of the human body.The old English Dominican translation has “chief part” of the community, which is quite good.The more recent one has “the bulk of the people,” which is as bad as Grisez’s “majority.”Thomas is saying, in keeping with his amputation simile, that one does not amputate the sort of part which is the head. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 199 St.Thomas, Steven Long, and Private Self-Defense 199 It never ceases to amaze me that St.Thomas can make a case in so few words: here the body of the article has only 232 words! We begin with the point that will determine the ultimate lesson. Nothing prevents there being two effects of one act, only one of which is within the intention, the other being outside the intention. Now, moral acts obtain their species in function of that which is intended, not from that which is outside the intention, since that is incidental, as is clear from things said earlier.27 Here is the crucial issue for the judgment: what is within the intention, what is without? Next, we have the application to the case of someone defending himself against an attacker menacing his life: Therefore, from the act of someone defending himself two effects can issue, one being the preservation of his own life, the other the killing of the attacker.Therefore, this act, from the fact that the preservation of one’s own life is intended, does not have the note of the illicit, since it is natural for each person that he preserve his own life as much as possible.28 This first step of application merely considers the act from its lifepreserving side, and judges its moral acceptability in that respect, based on its natural foundation. Next we address the problem of means.We read: Nevertheless, an act issuing from a good intention can be rendered morally unacceptable if it is not proportionate to the end. And so if someone in order to defend his own life uses greater force than is necessary, it will be morally unacceptable. However, if moderate force is used, it will be permissable defense: for, according to the laws:“to repell force with force is permissable with the moderateness of blameless care.”29 27 ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7 (1762b37–44): “Respondeo dicendum quod nihil prohibet unius actus esse duos effectus, quorum alter solum sit in intentione, alius vero sit praeter intentionem. Morales autem actus recipiunt speciem secundum id quod intenditur, non autem ab eo quod est praeter intentionem, cum sit per accidens, ut ex supradictis patet.” The backward reference is to q. 43, a. 3 and I–II, q. 72, a. 1 according to the Ottawa editors. 28 Ibid. (1762b44–52):“Ex actu igitur alicuius seipsum defendentis duplex effectus sequi potest, unus quidem conservatio propriae vitae; alius autem occisio invadentis. Actus igitur huiusmodi ex hoc quod intenditur conservatio propriae vitae, non habet rationem illiciti, cum hoc sit cuilibet naturale quod se conservet in esse quantum potest.” 29 Ibid. (1762b52–1763a8):“Potest tamen aliquis actus ex bona intentione proveniens illicitus reddi si non sit proportionatus fini. Et ideo si aliquis ad defendendum N&V_win10 .qxp 200 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 200 Lawrence Dewan, O.P. Here, the act is characterized as issuing from the intention, the intention being good.That act, issuing from the good intention, can be disorderly because of a lack of proportion to the end. We are considering the case where in fact a death occurs. Excessive force, compared to the end of selfpreservation, will render the act immoral. Moderate force will not. We continue: Nor is it necessary for [one’s own] salvation that a man forego moderate defense in order to avoid the killing of someone else, because a man is more obligated to care for his own life than for the life of another.30 This, one might say, is the note needed in the context of the theology of supernatural charity (it is a point that particularly occupies Cajetan in his commentary on this article). Lastly we read: But because to kill a human being is not permitted, save by public authority for the common good, as is clear from things already said, it is immoral for someone to intend to kill a human being in order to defend himself, unless it be someone invested with public authority, who, intending to kill someone in his own defense, relates this to the public good: as is clear in the case of a soldier fighting against enemies, and in the case of the servant of the judiciary fighting against bandits. Still, even these sin if they are moved by private desire.31 Here we have the whole reason for the particular approach in this article. Our portrait thusfar, it turns out, is of the private self-defender.This, in fact, is the first time that the issue of the private status has been mentioned (at least in the body of the article).And with it comes a whole alternate picture of an act of self-defense, an intention (1) “to kill the attacker in order to save oneself.” This is in contrast with the former propriam vitam utatur maiori violentia quam oporteat, erit illicitum. Si vero moderate violentiam repellat, erit licita defensio, nam secundum iura, vim vi repellere licet cum moderamine inculpatae tutelae.” 30 Ibid. (1763a8–12): “Nec est necessarium ad salutem ut homo actum moderatae tutelae praetermittat ad evitandum occisionem alterius, quia plus tenetur homo vitae suae providere quam vitae alienae.” 31 Ibid. (1763a13–24): “Sed quia occidere hominem non licet nisi publica auctoritate propter bonum commune, ut ex supradictis patet; illicitum est quod homo intendat occidere hominem ut seipsum defendat, nisi ei qui habet publicam auctoritatem, qui, intendens hominem occidere ad sui defensionem, refert hoc ad publicum bonum, ut patet in milite pugnante contra hostes, et in ministro iudicis pugnante contra latrones. Quamvis et isti etiam peccent si privata libidine moveantur.” Emphasis mine. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 201 St.Thomas, Steven Long, and Private Self-Defense 201 picture, namely, (2) “to use the appropriate means to save oneself.” In (1) the killing is within the intention, whereas in (2) the killing is outside the intention, incidental. What is described in the case of (1) appears to relate to the point taught in ST I–II, q. 12, on intention, at article 2. It is asked there whether intention is only of the ultimate end.The answer is no. It relates to an end as a terminus. But there can be intermediate termini on the way to the ultimate terminus. And these can be intended. Thus, in the case we are discussing, the soldier can intend to serve the common good by preserving his life by killing the enemy. Let us review the Cajetan analysis of this criticized by Long.We read: In the seventh article of this same question 64, understand well the distinction in the text, i.e. that the relating of the killing of someone else to the conservation of one’s own life can be done in two ways: firstly, as a means to an end; secondly, as a consequent item deriving from the necessity of the end.And as is said in the text, it makes a great difference which way it is. For both the end and the means to the end fall within the intention: as is clear in the case of the medical practitioner who intends health through a potion or a diet. However, that which is a necessary consequence of the end does not fall within the intention, but arises as remaining outside the intention: as is clear as regards the weakening of the sick person which follows from the healing medication.And according to these two modes, diversely, the public person and the private person can licitly kill. Thus, the public person, say a soldier, orders the killing of the enemy as a means to an end subordinated to the common good, as is said in the text; whereas the private person does not intend to kill so as to save himself, but rather intends to save himself, and is not going to forsake his own defense even if the death of the other person must follow from his defense.And thus, the latter does not kill, save per accidens [through attachment], whereas the former essentially kills.And thus for that the public authority is needed, but not for the other.32 32 Cajetan, Commentaria Cardinalis Caietani, super ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7 (para. 1), in Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, Opera Omnia,T. 9, p. 74: “In articulo septimo eiusdem quaestionis sexagesimaequartae, intellige bene distinctionem litterae, scilicet quod dupliciter potest referri occisio alterius ad conservationem vitae propriae: primo, ut medium ad finem; secundo, ut consequens ex necessitate finis. Et ut in littera dicitur, multum interest altero modo se habere. Nam et finis et medium ad finem cadunt sub intentione: ut patet in medico, qui intendit sanitatem per potionem vel diaetam. Id autem quod consequitur ex necesitate finis non cadit sub intentione, sed praeter intentionem existens emergit: ut patet de debilitatione aegroti quae sequitur ex medicina sanante. Et iuxta duos hos modos diversimode occidere potest licite persona publica, et privata. Nam persona publica, ut miles, ordinat occisionem hostis ut medium ad finem subordinatum bono communi, ut in littera N&V_win10 .qxp 202 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 202 Lawrence Dewan, O.P. Now, this seems to me exactly what St. Thomas has in mind. What does Long say about it? We read: Clearly here “intention” is used univocally whereas it is analogical as between the end (whose intention is prior to and the condition of the choice of means) and the object (which is “intended” only because of this prior moving of the will toward the end which is that which is strictly speaking intended). Here, Long seems to be criticizing Cajetan’s conception of intention: Cajetan used it “univocally” of means and end whereas it is really to be applied analogically of means and end. I confess I do not see any fault in the text of Cajetan.33 I would say that we should focus on what Thomas says. Everything moves along smoothly until it becomes a question of the private person “intending to kill a human being in order to save himself.” This is the picture of a genuine intention and an immoral one. In such a scenario, we are dealing with the same physical act as we were before, but the outcome of killing has been placed in a finalist role, one subservient (and thus a means ) to the ultimate end of the saving of my life.This transformation is admissible if one is a soldier, having an end beyond the saving of one’s own life, namely, the common good. There is nothing wrong, then, with the approach, except for the fact that the private person has no right to kill.The scenario is rectified if, instead of intending the death as an end subservient to the saving of my life, I merely intend the end of the saving of my life by the appropriate means. I do not see any “univocal” use of “intention” as regards ends and means. I take it that speaking of “analogy” of intention as said of ends and means, one refers to the priority and posteriority involved.The intention is of the end through the means; thus the end is primarily intended and the means for the sake of the end. I see no attempt to make the word “intention” bear on the means in an independent way.What I do see is that when a private person “intends dicitur: persona autem privata non intendit occidere ut seipsum salvet, sed intendit salvare seipsum, non destiturus a sui defensione etiam si alterius mortem ex sua defensione oporteat sequi. Et sic iste non occidit nisi per accidens: ille autem per se occidit. Et propterea ad illud requiritur publica auctoritas, ad hoc non.” 33 Long, at page 52, note 8, introduces the views of Vitoria, who contends that one can “will to kill” [licet velle occidere ] since the “willing” so described is choice, not intention; I see no room in Thomas’s presentation for such a “will to kill” on the part of the private self-defender. Of course, one can use the harquebus if it is the only life-saving means one has, and one wills, chooses, to do so. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 203 St.Thomas, Steven Long, and Private Self-Defense 203 to kill a human being in order to save oneself ” (as St.Thomas describes the forbidden act), one has a more involved intention, one that includes two termini, one for the other, though the same physical act is understood as the means used. Cajetan can speak of the death as an intended “means” because it is taken as an intermediate terminus between the act and the end which is the saved life. Long is right that what Thomas describes as a forbidden intention, Cajetan speaks of as a means to the end which is the saved life. However, the two descriptions are true and in accord with the doctrine of ST I–II, q. 12 on intention. I come, then, to the view that in self-defense the act of the private and the public agent can be physically the same, resulting in the particular case in the death of the attacker. However, there are two different morally good acts.The private agent intends as an end his own survival, and the external act of force is the one necessary to effect that result. (The killing is incidental, belonging to the physical act as such.) The public agent, performing the same physical act, intends the killing of the attacker in order to save his own life, in the interest of the common good (his exterior act, as a moral act, is formally a killing). The fact that the one physical act can have two different moral descriptions should not surprise.We see it in ST I–II, q. 1, a. 3, ad 3 concerning capital punishment and murder.We see it in the case of marital intercourse and adultery.34 In the present case, we have two different good moral acts, public and private, both with the same physical description (in the particular case where private self-defense results in the death of the attacker). Conclusion Again, physically the act by which the public servant saves himself and the act by which the private citizen saves himself can be identical; the difference is that the former intends the lethal means as lethal whereas the latter intends the lethal means only as self-saving. 34 Cf. De malo, q. 2, a. 4, ad 6:“[A]ctus qui secundum se sunt boni, differunt specie ab actibus qui sunt secundum se mali, prout sunt actus morales, licet forte non differant specie prout sunt actus naturales, ut patet de his duobus actibus, cognoscere suam et cognoscere non suam.” Emphasis mine.“[A]cts that are intrinsically good differ specifically from acts that are instrinically bad, inasmuch as they are moral acts, though admittedly they may not differ specifically inasmuch as they are natural acts: as is clear in the case of these two acts: to know carnally one’s own and to know carnally someone not one’s own.” I am saying that this is the sort of difference we are dealing with. We are confronted with acts which are naturally the same. However, they are morally different. N&V_win10 .qxp 204 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 204 Lawrence Dewan, O.P. I do not see this as licensing redescriptions in an arbitrary way. This, I would say, is the importance of ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7, ad 4 concerning the attempt to make fornication a means of self-defense. Long has rightly insisted on the foundation of morals in natural teleology. It happens that the violence needed to save one’s life from an attacker is physically identical, in some cases, with the violence needed if one intends to kill the attacker. I see myself as giving an adequate description of the moral act concerned, with the chosen means as designed precisely for what is intended by the interior act of the will, namely the saving of myself.What is not intended as a means is the death, though it is necessarily included in the physical act sometimes. Long contends that “killing is not absolutely speaking an act under negative precept, but is only under negative precept where it does not fall under the form of just punishment, the form of just war, or the form of just defense.”35 It seems to me that if that were true, there would be the same account for the private citizen and the public servant.There would be no need of a special account. What St.Thomas has taught is that it is never right to kill an innocent (ST II–II, q. 64, a. 6). There is no judgment of the attacker in a selfdefense as being a criminal. Hence, to kill this human being is not an available morally good act. Rather, what is available to the private citizen who is attacked is the act of self-defense.This act is naturally the application of force on the attacker. The force to be applied is the force that will effectively stop the attack. It happens that sometimes only lethal force is adequate. It is chosen, not as a killing act, but as an appropriate use of force in self-defense. My remarks touch only one point in Long’s valuable book, albeit an important one. He is clearly right to oppose arbitrary redescription in dealing with difficult ethical problems, and it is a most helpful task he has undertaken in attempting judgments on the various difficult cases. Addendum I should provide a scenario for a case of virtuous private self-defense ending in the death of the attacker. I believe it is helpful to enter into the mind of The good private person does not intend the killing and the right description of the exterior act as a moral act is “applying the necessary saving force.” It is in itself a good act, because the person has the natural right to self-defense and uses the natural means of self-defense, and intends only his own survival. 35 Long, Teleological Grammar, 51. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 205 St.Thomas, Steven Long, and Private Self-Defense 205 the self-defender as he works out his choice of action.What form will his deliberation take? Some of Long’s cases seem to have influenced my imagination. The killer has just killed two people in plain view with a machete. I am in a small indentation in the face of a cliff, and he has now begun to approach me on a rope bridge across a chasm. He is plainly coming to kill me. What can I do? The only possibility is to cut the rope securing the rope bridge he is using to come at me. I can just reach the rope end with scissors I have in hand. Only cutting that rope will put him out of action. Of course it will kill him. However, all I want is to put him out of action to save my life. That the result will be his death is physically obvious. I have no desire N&V that he die; my aim is to use the available saving means. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 206 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 207 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 207–213 207 Commentary on Steven A. Long’s The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act DANIEL M C I NERNY Baylor University Waco,Texas S APIENTIS est ordinare. In his remarkable book The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act,1 Steven Long has wisely demonstrated how one should put into order St. Thomas Aquinas’s demanding teaching on the object of the human act. But far more importantly, Long’s book provides us with the key to understanding the very objectivity of the moral order, which is to see it precisely as an order, both in the microcosm of the simple human act, and in the macrocosm of the natural hierarchy of human ends. For this reason The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act bravely echoes the prophetic cry of Veritatis Splendor regarding the intrinsic evil of certain human acts, acts that simply are “not capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person” (Veritatis Splendor, §81). In what follows I would briefly like to develop four appreciations of Long’s admirable account. Human Action as Essentially Teleological At the core of Long’s argument is the claim that human action can only be understood according to its teleological grammar. What this means, I take it, is that human action is essentially movement, understood as efficient causality, directed toward an end as final cause.When Hamlet proposes to put “an antic disposition on” he does so because he thinks it is the best means of moving toward his desired end of smoking out his murderous uncle. In the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent clarification of August 1, 2007, it is declared that the administration of food and 1 Steven A. Long, The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007). N&V_win10 .qxp 208 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 208 Daniel McInerny water to patients in a persistent vegetative state, whether naturally or artificially, is in principle “an ordinary and proportionate means” of preserving the end of human life. Human action, as Long puts it, “is a species of efficiency” that is “unintelligible apart from teleology” (Long, 23). The means-end relationship of human action can exist either per se or per accidens. If the end absolutely requires a certain means, or if a certain means is one among several that tends essentially toward the end, the means-end relationship exists per se (Long, 27). If no necessity exists between means and end, then the relationship exists per accidens. Food and water as means are per se related to the end of human life, but there seems to be only an accidental relationship between discovering the truth about a possible murder and feigning madness. The object of the human act, simply speaking (Summa theologiae I–II, q. 18, a. 6), evinces just this means-end structure.That object is twofold: (1) “the act itself and its integral nature”—or the object of the external act; and (2) the relation to the end desired by the agent—or the object of the internal act of the will (Long, 12). The “act itself and its integral nature” is the means chosen by the agent to achieve the end he desires. When the relationship of chosen means to desired end exists per se, then the moral species derived from the end is the most formal and containing and defining moral species (Long, 26). In the per se case, end exists as form and chosen means exists as individuating matter. So the administration of food and water to a patient in a persistent vegetative state is morally speaking an act of preserving life. But central to Long’s case is that “the act itself and its integral nature,” the external act, possesses its own teleology, apart from whatever end is desired by an agent. Aquinas says that external acts can be called good or evil in two ways: (1) according to the kinds of acts they are and the circumstances connected with them; and (2) in relationship to the end sought by the agent (ST I–II, q. 20, a. 2). Giving alms in and of itself is good granted an appropriate set of circumstances (for example, I am not giving away stolen money), but becomes evil if done as a means to vainglory. Certain external acts are evil by their very nature, such as denying food and water to a patient in a persistent vegetative state. For denying food and water has a per se relationship to the end of death, and so is manifestly contrary to the normative end of health care. Long is insistent and right on the point that because certain means exhibit a per se order to certain ends, those means are open to moral assessment irrespective of the further end or ends desired by the agent (Long, 15).The danger lies in making the relation to reason, the end principally desired by the agent, the sole constituent of the object of the N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 209 Commentary on Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act 209 moral act.That would enable Hamlet to describe his cruelty to Ophelia as simply “ridding Denmark of a tyrant,” or a physician to describe his refusal of food and water to a patient as “administering care.”Adultery has as its per se ends the satisfaction of lust, the endangering of children, and the shattering of trust between spouses, and because of this is morally illicit, no matter the further ends desired by those involved (see ST II–II, q. 154, a. 8). The complete moral assessment of a given act, however, must take into account the complete moral object simply speaking, which is both the act itself and its integral nature and the end desired by the agent (Long, 24). A health care worker or family member may deny food and water for the sake of relieving the patient and the family from suffering. The moral object in this case is complex: it involves the illicit choice of denying food and water, which is its own simple act, desired as a means to relieving suffering. A good end of course never justifies a means illicit in itself, though it may mitigate or exacerbate the evil done in choosing so. The point I most want to appreciate in all this, once again, is the particular causal ligature at play in human action. Human action is teleological, efficiency toward a desired end. Distinctions between per se and per accidens means-end relationships, and then between moral and immoral means-end relationships, are parasitic upon this basic causal structure (Long, 25, n. 21). But this brings me to my second appreciation, which concerns Long’s understanding of how this causal ligature characterizes the broader structure of the human quest for happiness. The Larger Hierarchical Structure of the Human Quest for Happiness Long affirms that both according to the teaching of Aquinas and according to the necessities of moral reality human action can only be understood properly against the backdrop of a natural hierarchy of ends, a hierarchy that evinces the same means-end structure that we find in the object of the human act.This is not always claimed to be the teaching of Aquinas, and it would be generous even to call it a minority view among contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophers. Nonetheless it is an account that I believe to be very much correct. Granted, a full-blooded justification of a natural hierarchy of ends is not the business of Long’s book. But in the introduction and in chapter one he gives us at a first sketch of a justification for it, the importance of which cannot be underestimated. The basic picture Long paints for us is this: at the font of every contingent choice there is “not alone the proximate end, but a further and natural end which accounts for our desire for the proximate end” (Long, 2). N&V_win10 .qxp 210 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 210 Daniel McInerny The natural ends of human beings serve as the original, non-contingent sources of our movement, without which we would literally have no reason to get up off the couch and do anything (see ST I–II, q. 1, aa. 4–5). Yet here is the rub. These natural ends “are not just a dis- or nonordered plenum, for they exhibit an intelligible order” (Long, 2). Life is desirable both in itself and for the sake of other and more desirable ends, such as wisdom, virtue, holiness. Both nutrition and friendship are ingredients of a happy life, but clearly friendship is the more important good and hence is situated higher in the natural hierarchy of ends. Long counterposes this understanding of a natural hierarchy of ends existing prior to choice to what he calls the idea of incommensurability, but what I think ought more accurately to be called the leveling incommensurability thesis. This is the claim that prior to choice the array of intrinsically valuable goods, or final ends, possesses no intrinsic ordering. The array of final ends is simply the various entrees on the menu of happiness, having no relationship of prior and posterior. It is important to distinguish this leveling incommensurability thesis because the notion of incommensurability, in and of itself, poses no threat to a natural hierarchy of ends. Incommensurability simply refers to the lack of a common quantitative measure between two or more items, and the final ends that comprise human happiness certainly do not possess a common quantitative measure. Friendship is a “higher” end than nutrition, not because friendship possesses “more” of some quantity than nutrition, but because friendship more fully meets the criteria of human perfection, criteria which are not univocal but analogous.2 The dangers of the leveling incommensurability thesis, Long observes, are twofold: first, it unwittingly destroys the nature of the good. For no good that is not intrinsically ordered to the highest and best good can even be called “good,” for goodness without qualification can only be ascribed to the absolutely ultimate end, or to something somehow tending to the absolutely ultimate end (see ST I–II q. 1, a. 6). Hence the meaning of Christ’s reply to the rich young man:“There is only one who is good.” The second danger of the leveling incommensurability thesis is that it makes ethics a subjective affair. If no order exists among final ends prior to choice, then order can only be manufactured by choice itself. As Veritatis Splendor reminds us, the morality of the human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the object rationally chosen by the deliberate 2 A much more developed critique of the leveling incommensurability thesis can be found in Daniel McInerny, The Difficult Good: A Thomistic Approach to Moral Conflict and Human Happiness (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006). N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 211 Commentary on Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act 211 will, and whether that object “is capable or not of being ordered to God, to the One who ‘alone is good,’ and thus brings out the perfection of the person” (Veritatis Splendor, §78).This is to say that human action manifests both goodness and truth insofar as what is chosen can be situated within an order that man discovers but does not make. This natural hierarchy of human ends evinces the same means-end structure we saw in the object of the moral act. And it is crucial to note that this structure includes the ordering of final ends. The “act itself and its integral nature” has its own intrinsic moral character, even as it also serves as a means to the end desired by the agent. So too, the final end of nutrition enjoys its own integral goodness even as it serves as a means to the higher final end of friendship. Our actions manifest moral integrity, or the lack of it, insofar as they measure up to this natural hierarchy of final ends. A Word about Lethal Private Defense My third appreciation concerns Long’s discussion of lethal private defense as discussed by Aquinas at ST II–II, q. 64, a. 7. His position is that in lethal private defense we intend, as the object of the interior act of the will, defense, whereas we choose, as the object of the exterior act, a means whose per se end is taking the life of an assailant.The death is thus praeter intentionem, literally “beside the intention,” though it is not “beside” the choice. In his recent book Double-Effect Reasoning,3 Tom Cavanaugh argues that for Aquinas intention is of the complex end-through-means. He then pictures the following scenario: “I (a private individual) and my assailant have swords.We begin to fight. I realize that my aggressor has far greater endurance; the only way I can preserve my life is to kill him. According to Thomas, I may not do so because I may not intend his death” (Cavanaugh, 10). Cavanaugh then goes on to develop an analysis of “risking” the assailant’s life, of knowingly endangering another’s life. His conclusion is that in self-defense a private citizen can only licitly take an action that foresees death as a possible—as opposed to a per se—consequence (Cavanaugh, 11). But what Cavanaugh misses in this interpretation is Long’s distinction, taken from ST I–II, q. 12, a. 4, response and especially ad 3, between what is intended and what is chosen, between the final cause and the efficient moving cause that together make up the object of the moral act. Cavanaugh assumes that if one chooses a means that has, as the object of the external act, the per se end of killing someone, then one intends to kill. 3 T. A. Cavanaugh, Double-Effect Reasoning: Doing Good and Avoiding Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). N&V_win10 .qxp 212 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 212 Daniel McInerny Without further qualification, this doesn’t seem to be the way to interpret Aquinas’s text. Long seems to be more correct in saying that, for Aquinas, intention is principally of the end, choice is of the means, and only derivatively and analogously do we speak about intention of the means (Long, 41). So in an act of lethal private defense what is chosen is some means of moderate self-defense that per se brings into being defense. Morally, all rides on the nature of the means, the act itself and its integral nature, and its per se end. Presumably one can inflict a wound that may result in death. But can one shoot straight at the heart? At the head? Can one licitly choose an act whose per se end is death? In his response Aquinas says:“But as it is unlawful to take a man’s life, except for the public authority acting for the common good, it is not lawful for a man to intend killing a man in self-defense, except for such as have public authority. . . .”To be sure, at the beginning of this sentence Aquinas says that it is unlawful “to take a man’s life.” But clearly he doesn’t mean that it is unlawful “to take a man’s life” tout court, for then he would contradict himself in ad 4, where he argues that it is not always unlawful to take a man’s life. It may be retorted: in ad 4 he simply means when the death comes about per accidens. For in ad 4 he refers to the act of moderate self-defense as the act “whence sometimes (quandoque) results in the taking of a man’s life.” But Aquinas in ad 4 seems to be concerned with those instances when the taking of another’s life is per se and not merely per accidens ordered to defense. Long’s observation that Aquinas never argues that direct killing cannot be an act of moderate self-defense, and the fact that Aquinas in the very next article goes on to discuss chance killings, confirm Long’s interpretation. In this light, the quandoque in ad 4 simply refers to the fact that moderate self-defense does not always end in a killing. When faced with a gun, the assailant may back down. A Disputed Question about the Rescuing of Frozen Embryos Finally, I want to appreciate what I take to be the truth in Long’s argument against the morality of rescuing frozen embryos, and then to raise a disputed question about it.The moral object of such an act he assesses as “having a child not conceived within one’s marriage with one’s own husband and implanted in one’s womb for the sake of saving its life” (Long, 135). On this analysis, frozen embryo rescue is placed within the moral species of surrogacy, and so is rendered illicit according to the teaching found in Donum Vitae. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 213 Commentary on Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act 213 This seems right. But then what of the following scenario: what if a couple, after having generated by IVF several frozen embryos, sees the moral light about the use of IVF, but nonetheless desires to rescue as many of their own frozen embryos as possible? The couple grants that the artificial fertilization of the embryos was illicit, and even has repented of it.The question is whether they can do anything now to save the children they illicitly brought into being.This would require, in the language of Donum Vitae, homologous artificial insemination. Should such an act be construed as an illicit replacement of legitimate, natural conjugal acts, or can it be construed as the kind of technological intervention designed to facilitate, rather than replace, the natural process of gestation and delivery? N&V N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 214 N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 215 Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 8, No. 1 (2010): 215–231 215 Book Reviews Intellectual Appetite: A Theological Grammar by Paul J. Griffiths (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2009 ), 235 pp. ANACCOMPLISHED philosopher, theologian, author, and editor, Paul Griffiths holds the Warren Chair of Catholic Theology in Duke Divinity School.Yet he has become liberated enough from all that to offer these reflections as a father, a spouse, and a fellow explorer of the contours of a human life lived in gratitude to the One who creates us. Framed, to be sure, by an astute intelligence, the structure of these reflections is effectively internalized so as not to distract the reader. So what results? Try the image of a series of exercises to improve our skills of improvising our way through life’s obstacle course, or of a scalpel deftly used to lay bare the sinews we exercise in our daily activity. The first image focuses on practice, to which a plethora of examples constantly recalls us; the second alerts us to the fine-grained analysis we will often encounter as well. Both images call attention to grammar, as the title announces. We seldom welcome grammatical corrections until we have come to be grateful for the way they have saved us from gaffes we can observe others make. Appeals to grammar are meant to be liberating rather than dominating, however, and this guidebook into ways of knowing and loving uses careful analysis to liberate us from sentimentality, to realize a healthy relationship to what is good and true in God’s creation, offering a “properly Christian account of what it is to want to know” (52), depicting “the way in which you ought to see the world if you are a Christian” (30). His skillful analysis proceeds by way of examples to alert us to healthy or to damaging ways we attempt to engage our world, focusing on creation as an unmerited gift in which creatures are called to participate through an appetite for wonder, yet always ready to be subverted by our tendency to kidnap beautiful things which face us so as to own them or turn them into titillating spectacles to feed our need for novelty, stoking our loquacity rather than nourishing our gratitude. (Italics signal the table of contents.) Griffiths defines the “the principal topic of this book [to be] the rational creature’s knowing response to the world” (76), more specifically: N&V_win10 .qxp 216 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 216 Book Reviews “a properly Christian account of what it is to want to know” (52); and yet more pointedly: “a depiction of the way you ought to see the world if you are a Christian” (30). Yet eschewing reliance on modern epistemology (which rather takes its knocks herein), his optic on knowing is far more down-to-earth, along the lines of Jung’s apparently banal “what we do not know, we fear,” or Kierkegaard’s “children fear the dark; adults know what really to fear.” So our need to know, our “wanting to know,” as Griffiths puts it, is primary, as well as the admonitions about knowing found in biblical wisdom literature, especially Luke 14:33, which admonishes those who would prepare for the real battle of life to “renounce all their possessions.” Indeed, this admonition will guide the way he helps us discriminate ersatz from authentic knowing. Griffiths explores this elementary human need topically by calling on refined discussions which have shaped the Christian tradition over the centuries, beginning each chapter with a pithy quote from Augustine.Yet his treatment of these pregnant issues is also shaped by current debate in philosophical or theological circles, yet sparing readers the usual footnotes. While that strategy is explicitly defended in the final chapter, readers by that time will have come to realize that it displays the principal point of this illuminating journey: contrasting curiosity with studiousness, or better: mathesis with a mode of inquiry which attends to creatures as creatures. “Advocates of mathesis seek, and often take themselves to have found the perfect method of an ensemble of spatialized, discrete objects” (149); where the “magical key is method” (148) with mastery if not ownership the goal, like the skilled seducer who views victims as replaceable objects for his insatiable appetite.Yet “the studious Christian, seeking participatory intimacy driven by wonder and riven by lament, cannot coherently seek ownership” (154), since what is brought into being and sustained by God can only be shared. Lament affects these seekers not simply because they cannot attain what they are after, but because their own propensity to grasp and to possess brings their original desire to naught. So we are presented with a searing critique, not just of the “entertainment industry” diverting our natural zest for wonder into a feeding frenzy for novelty, but of any form of schooling which hones our skills for knowing in order to satisfy a yearning for power.We are constantly faced with “if the shoe fits, wear it” by an unabashed “Christian advocate of gift, participation, and wonder” (151) towards a universe freely created by a loving God. So this work is to be pondered, as befits its elaboration, as it traces those propensities, shaped by our culture, which so easily captivate our appetites and distort them.What is at stake is the operative sense faith can give us of ourselves: N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 217 Book Reviews 217 A Christian understanding of creatures as imagines dei, especially intimate participants in divine gift, is different in almost every interesting respect from an understanding of humans as autonomous beings possessed of a rational will capable of universal species-wide legislation. And each is equally though differently different from an understanding of humans as desire-driven congeries of causally connected event-continua. (116) What marks the principal difference from a Kantian morality or a materialist ideology, and the only thing that can, lies in realizing the implications of avowing the universe to be freely created by a loving God.Yet that is hardly pollyannic, but rather to be utterly realistic: Our pride, complacency, violence, fear, and so forth, are like . . . a genetic defect or an infection, we tend towards these like second nature, whether we like it or not. [Yet] this damage is not restricted to sentient creatures, much less to rational ones. It afflicts the entire cosmos, as Christians should never forget: the cosmos in its entirety groans in anticipation of its salvation to come. (90–91) The difference which Griffiths is intent on articulating finds primary expression in our characteristic ways of knowing: Thinking and speaking of creation as the gift of being from nothing, and of creatures as recipients of and participants in that gift, suggest some things to say about what it is for creatures to . . . perform the act of knowing. By definition, this act must establish a relation between knower and known, and this relation will inevitably be . . . a relation between one participant in God and another [since] knower and known share a fundamental likeness and intimacy because each participates in God. (129) Griffiths acknowledges that “participation” is not a category but a figure, the point of which is to indicate that it is part of the grammar of the Christian account of things to say that no account of what it is for things to be can be given that does not begin and end with God. This is exactly to reject ontological system and to place ontology where it belongs, which is a part— and always a derived and subsidiary part—of theology. (87) He displays that he knows his “ontology” by showing how those who propose to think about God in terms of existential quantification and necessity, . . . when pressed tend exactly in the direction of participation, [maybe even sensing] that [their] thinking does not suggest, and tends to contradict, the N&V_win10 .qxp 218 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 218 Book Reviews intimacy between God and creatures intimated by talk of creaturely participation in God, and along with it, an understanding of the intrinsic goodness of creation. (84–85) These illustrations are offered to help us taste how the prose this work exhibits is itself an icon of the intimacy associated with a conception of knowing which has deliberately replaced a modern fascination with representation with a classical predilection for participation. And that move is executed by an exacting analysis of what it means to be gift, enabling us to approach gingerly and modestly the daunting task of speaking of the universe as gift. For thinking analogously about God’s being is more difficult than any other intellectual enterprise: we grope, we fail, and our failures are magnified by our unwillingness to recognize the depth and scope of what we do not know and of the errors in whose truth we have confidence. (69) Philosophers of religion, take note: this extended essay reads like a meditation of one who has come to appreciate the limits of academic study of religion, and would initiate others into the set of attitudes and practices which can nurture wonder and even intimacy with God. So it can only be read in the spirit of Griffiths’s earlier Religious Reading (1999), offering academics a challenging transition to lectio divina. Perhaps the best way to prepare readers for this mode of inquiry (if the author will forgive me) is to compare it with Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, as one might liken some of Griffiths’s earlier work (to continue the trope) to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Nor is the comparison as outrageous as first one might feel. Indeed, a transformation of this sort might even be expected of those reflecting on “things divine” (in divinis ), much as (reaching for yet another touchstone) John of the Cross signals a normal development towards a more intimate mode of knowing on the part of those who are brought to levels of detachment which foster it.Yet such detachment is not something we undertake, but something which happens to us: the very etymology of “suffer.” Here the cumulative images suggesting the intimacy of this mode of knowing certainly move in this direction, as opposed to the ordinary Western metaphor of “dealing with” things. I am often reminded of Aquinas’s prescient statement that our best efforts in speaking of God amount to “imperfectly signifying divinity” (Summa theologiae I, q. 13, a. 4), which means that most of the time we get it wrong. That is the quality of intellectual humility which this inquiry into intellectual appetite intends to foster.Yet the work is hardly limited to or even primarily directed to philosophers of religion, N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 219 Book Reviews 219 nor can it be reviewed in such a way that one may content oneself with reading the review. For we are offered a guidebook inviting mature and searching human beings into attitudes appropriate to a universe said to be good by its gracious author, yet one which our possessive propensities ever seek to own and exploit for our own ends, leaving us all face to face with what we have come to call “the ecological crisis” yet now become painfully aware of its source. So we had best equip ourselves to meet it head-on. N&V David Burrell, C.S.C. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana Uganda Martyrs University Nkozi, Uganda Church and Society: The Laurence J. McGinley Lectures (1988– 2007) by Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008 ) xxvii + 546 pp. ENCOMIA for the life-long theological work of Avery Cardinal Dulles have abounded since his death on December 12, 2008.The thirty-eight McGinley lectures collected here (delivered over the course of twenty years) stand as a testament to his substantial theological talents. As virtually all of the essays appeared in either First Things or America, many will remember the general thrust of the discrete lectures.The advantage of this collection is in its cumulative force which illustrates Dulles’s sterling qualities as a theologian: a profound indebtedness to the Catholic tradition, a willingness to revitalize old insights with creativity and élan, a legendary even-handedness when evaluating competing positions, an enviable synthetic and amalgamative power, and an expository style luminous in its clarity. Dulles tells us at the outset that the topics chosen were “of current interest and in need of theological clarification” (xxi).And he offers some hints about his own theological approach when he states,“I have become convinced that the greatest danger for the Church and theology is to accommodate excessively to the spirit of the times” (xxii). He, on the contrary, seeks to adhere to the consensus of the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church while avoiding an “unhealthy traditionalism” that would not sanction even homogeneous development, the kind of progress that is to be carefully distinguished from “disruptive change or reversal” (xxiii). While not explicitly citing Vincent of Lérins, Dulles is no doubt thinking of Vincent’s insight, offered in the fifth-century, but repeated at crucial moments in the Church’s life: development most assuredly takes N&V_win10 .qxp 220 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 220 Book Reviews place over the course of time, but it must be development that is congruous with the prior tradition, eodem sensu eademque sententia. Of course, the crux of several theological debates revolves around just this question: what is legitimate, homogeneous progression and what is unfortunate adulteration and deformation? In several of the essays, precisely this query animates Dulles’s work. One issue about which Dulles registers some reservations is the move toward the abolition of the death penalty. In a 2000 lecture, he points to the virtually unanimous verdict of the Christian tradition: the State has the authority to administer proper penalties for crimes, including, when necessary, the death penalty. Yet Dulles observes that “Pope John Paul has at various times expressed his opposition” to capital punishment and some theologians have argued (citing a 1977 essay in L’Osservatore Romano) that the time has come for a dramatic development in the Church’s teaching on this issue. Dulles himself makes clear that any such “development” would, in fact, be a “radical revision—one might almost say reversal—of the Catholic tradition” (336). Ultimately, he argues that the position of John Paul II is reconcilable with the traditional teaching since capital punishment is not theoretically ruled out by the pope, but is prudentially judged, because of its possibly evil effects, as best avoided. The cardinal returns to this point in a 2003 lecture entitled “John Paul II and the Mystery of the Human Person.” He repeats that the pope does not condemn the death penalty as intrinsically evil, but his deep respect for human life “inclines him to reject capital punishment in practice” (423). Nonetheless, Dulles wonders why John Paul never quotes (as far he knows) Romans 13:4 where St. Paul says that secular rulers do not bear the sword in vain for they are God’s instruments in executing wrath on wrongdoers—a citation with deep and abiding roots in the theological tradition. Another issue provoking reflection on the distinction between homogeneous development and illegitimate deformation is, unsurprisingly, religious freedom. Dulles observes that Dignitatis Humanae of Vatican II, when compared with earlier Catholic teaching,“represents an undeniable, even a dramatic, shift” (349). At the council itself, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre held that the declaration was a repudiation of earlier papal teaching and, as such, overturned principles inherent to Catholicism. In response, Dulles cites Newman’s intimation that teachings possessing social and political characteristics develop uniquely and even irregularly, not entirely along the purer lines of dogma. Social teaching, rather, applies the unchanging principles of the Gospel to mutable political situations.As such, adaptations will occasionally be necessary and some discontinuity may be expected. Dulles is at pains to argue that a certain modicum of discontinuity does not imply a reversal “unless the Church at an earlier time ruled out precisely the N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 221 Book Reviews 221 development that was to occur under changed circumstances” (350).The cardinal does not shy away from a careful exegesis of the Syllabus of Errors of 1864.While conceding that some propositions taken from the Syllabus appear to be contrary to Vatican II, Dulles insists that a properly contextual reading of that document shows that such is not the case. Ultimately, he concludes that Vatican II does not judge the teaching of the nineteenth-century popes to be erroneous, but limited by the socio-political horizons of the time. Changing circumstances have required adaptation, but the fundamental principles remain identical. Dulles’s argument here, while forceful, is not entirely persuasive. I would have liked to have seen the issue of doctrinal development vis-à-vis religious freedom addressed in a more expansive forum given the stark differences between nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholic teaching. Many other essays are worthy of specific mention. I note only a few in order to provide a brief sample of the texture of Dulles’s work. In a 1994 essay entitled “The Challenge of the Catechism,” Dulles reflects on a disputed question that is already largely forgotten: should there exist a universal catechism? Dulles reminds us that several theologians argued that religious truth is ineffable, hardly expressible in propositions, while others claimed that all statements are inexorably conditioned by socio-cultural concerns. Herbert Vorgrimler, for example, wondered if one could speak of a “fixed, unchangeable ‘deposit’ of teaching of faith and morals. . . .” David Tracy worried that a universal catechism would be an example of an “unwelcome and unacknowledged Eurocentrism in a polycentric world church” and Johann-Baptist Metz warned against “official centralism as a defensive protection for unity” (160). Dulles contends that criticism of the draft of the Catechism did, indeed, result in helpful emendations. The hierarchy of truths, for example, was given greater attention so that the central mystery of the Triune God was always at the center of the presentation. But he also insists that the Catechism’s very existence (promulgated under the significant title Fidei Depositum) is itself a challenge to certain contemporary tendencies: an exegesis that limits itself to historical-critical methodology; a view of dogmatic theology that is historicist in kind; and a catechetical theory insisting on the primacy of local experience over universal Christian doctrine. The essay “Justification Today” is offered as a reflection on the Joint Declaration on Justification signed by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church in 1999. The Christian teaching on justification remains a delicate theological issue. Not long ago (in an audience of November 18, 2008), Pope Benedict offered a brief but helpful synthesis of the Catholic position, adducing Luther’s important witness in the N&V_win10 .qxp 222 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 222 Book Reviews process. In this lecture, Dulles argues that the heart of the Joint Declaration (paragraph fifteen) properly echoes both the Augsburg Confession and the council of Trent: we are justified by faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any personal merit; at the same time, in justification we receive the Holy Spirit who renews us and calls us to good works. Dulles endorses this as an excellent statement, even while registering continuing questions about several aspects of the Declaration. As he says, “. . . theologians have not yet been able to establish how, or to what extent, certain Lutheran positions can be reconciled with official Catholic teaching” (315). He then recounts those areas, such as the teaching on “merit,” in which further work is clearly needed. It is the best essay I have read on the Joint Declaration since its promulgation ten years ago. In 2005, Dulles offered “How Real is the Real Presence?” another example of his comprehensive theological thinking. He admits at the outset that at times he regretted proposing this topic since the very question “taxes the human mind to the utmost” (455).The cardinal observes that since the time of scripture itself, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist has been a constant affirmation of the Church.The council of Trent described this most precisely, insisting on the ontological presence of Christ in the sacrament, meaning that this presence takes place in the order of being and is not dependent on “the thoughts or feelings of the minister or of the communicants” (456). Dulles carefully notes that the word “transubstantiation” is unique and unparalleled, clearly exceeding the philosophy of substance offered by Aristotle, who believed that any substantial change required accidental changes as well. (This observation is important given that some theologians have argued that with the invocation of “transubstantiation” theology became clearly enslaved to Aristotelian philosophy.) At the same time, the cardinal is not opposed to new terms provided they protect the mystery of Christ’s unique Eucharistic presence. Dulles goes on to examine several medieval attempts to speak intelligibly of the Real Presence, and is attracted to Aquinas’s claim that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist resembles the presence of the soul in the body. Finally, the cardinal approvingly cites the statement by Paul VI in his 1965 encyclical Mysterium Fidei wherein the pope says that the presence of Christ in the Eucharist is called “real” not because his presence in other sacraments is unreal but because such presence “is real par excellence” (461). In the long view of history, Cardinal Dulles’s primary theological legacy, I suspect, will be as a deeply insightful, first generation commentator on Vatican II, the defining event of twentieth century Catholicism. A careful reading of Vatican II is evident throughout the McGinley Lectures, placing the teachings of the great council in the context of, and N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 223 Book Reviews 223 in dialogue with, the entire tradition of the Church. As such, the lectures N&V stand as an exemplary model of Catholic theological reasoning. Thomas G. Guarino Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey To Know God and the Soul: Essays on the Thought of Saint Augustine by Roland J.Teske, S.J. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008 ), xviii + 289 pp. J AMES J. O’D ONNELL has said, “All of us who read Augustine fail him in many ways.”1 This is easy to do. Augustine’s writings contain so many ideas, some rather strange to us, that we easily fail to grasp or even notice certain ones, especially the stranger ones. Fr. Roland Teske tackles some of the strange and difficult ideas of Augustine in this collection of fourteen articles originally published between 1981 and 2000. However, the essays are not for only a few highly specialized scholars; rather, they treat topics perennial to Christian philosophy, such as God, how to speak about God, the soul, creaturely existence, and time. For Teske, as with Robert J. O’Connell, S.J., whose influence Teske freely acknowledges, much may be understood about Augustine, including many of his strange ideas, by seeing Plotinus’ influence. But Teske does not reduce Augustine to Neoplatonism, nor play the Neoplatonic influence off against Augustine’s Christianity; rather, he is sensitive and sympathetic to Augustine’s Christian concerns. Not all will find convincing his thesis of strong Neoplatonic influence on Augustine’s philosophical underpinnings (and I do not find it satisfying in all aspects); nonetheless,Teske presents his arguments clearly and provides ample citation, so that he is a valuable conversation partner. The thesis of strong Neoplatonic influence pertains especially to Augustine’s “spiritualist metaphysics.”To his credit,Teske takes seriously Augustine’s claim in Confessions 5.10.19 that the “greatest and almost sole cause of [his] inevitable error” before converting to Catholic Christianity was his inability to conceive of a spiritual, i.e., incorporeal, substance. Teske maintains that Augustine learned to conceive of this from “the books of the Platonists,” that is, the Neoplatonists. Unlike those who have argued that Augustine’s indebtedness to Neoplatonism means he first became a Neoplatonist and only later a Christian, Teske presents Neoplatonism as having helped Augustine into the Church, for its teaching about spiritual 1 James J. O’Donnell, Augustine: Confessions, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), xix. N&V_win10 .qxp 224 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 224 Book Reviews substances provided intelligent answers to the problem of evil and that of how to interpret certain Scripture passages (see below). For Augustine, Neoplatonic philosophy was at the service of faith (cf. 264) and Christ was his highest authority (86). Accordingly,Teske’s investigations include how Augustine’s enthusiasm for Neoplatonism was tempered in some areas as Augustine learned of its inadequacies for the Christian faith (e.g., on what loving your neighbor means [chap. 4]), how Augustine without realizing it was sometimes limited by Neoplatonic thought (for example, on how to understand the body-soul relation [see chap. 11]), as well as how Augustine’s adoption of Neoplatonic insights introduced enduring and, Teske implies, still valuable ideas into the West (for example, on divine immutability [see chap. 7, cf. also chaps. 5 and 6]; the first essay’s defense of an Augustinian philosophy implies this as well). A repeated claim in the essays is that Augustine introduced into the West the ideas of incorporeal being and of eternity as tota simul (and not merely as having neither beginning nor end). Before him, especially in Northern Africa, the Christian West was steeped in Stoic corporealism.Tertullian had tied existence to corporeality and thus even called God a body (Adversus Praxean 7.8). Manicheanism exploited the problems with corporealism against Catholic Christianity: for example, Scripture’s teaching that the human being is in the image of God meant that God has a human shape (cf. Confessions 6.3.4–4.6)—how else could image be understood in a corporealist scheme? Augustine’s discovery from Neoplatonism that both the soul and God are incorporeal provided a way out, and provides one reason for his oft cited interest in God and the soul (and hence the title of Teske’s book).That understanding the soul correctly is tied to understanding God correctly is explicitly stated by Augustine in a passage Teske might have cited (but did not) from De Genesi ad litteram 10.24.40: If we but consider the soul seriously, there is no other being that can so help us to think of God, who remains immutable above all His creation, and to recognize Him as incorporeal, as the soul, which has been made to His image. On the contrary, there is nothing more likely, or perhaps nothing more logical, than that God should be thought of as a body once the soul is thought of as a body.Thus, constantly immersed in the corporeal and living the life of the senses, people are unwilling to think that the soul is anything other than a body, for they fear that if it is not a body it may be nothing. Consequently, they are all the more afraid to think that God is not a body in proportion as they fear to think that God is nothing.2 2 Translated by John Hammond Taylor in The Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 2, bks. 7–12, Ancient Christian Writers series (New York: Newman Press, 1982), 128; translation slightly modified. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 225 Book Reviews 225 Teske does cite the next chapter of the work in which Augustine comments on Tertullian’s belief that God and the soul are bodily; Augustine explains that Tertullian feared that what was not a body was nothing (203n13). Augustine of course does not think that the soul and God have the same nature.Teske notes texts in which Augustine presents a hierarchy of being in terms of God, soul/mind, body. Corporeal things are mutable in space and time, the soul mutable only in time, and God is wholly immutable. Further, while spatial mutability involves bodily extension, temporal mutability for the mind involves a sort of extension as well, namely, the mind’s distention (e.g., 150, 256n37). However, God is extended in no way; as immutable, his being is wholly everywhere and wholly “everywhen” (150–51, also 147n47).This provides another case in which Neoplatonic insights helped Augustine to understand better the Christian faith, for the Manichees had challenged the opening lines of Genesis by asking what God was doing before he created the world (see esp. chap. 9). In light of God’s temporal immutability or eternity, Augustine need not give the famous flippant response, “He was preparing hell for people who ask such questions” (see Confessions 11.12.14), but could explain that only creatures are in time, while God is beyond it. The latter half of Teske’s essays especially explores issues regarding time: God’s eternity, the eternal God’s relation to creation, and creaturely temporality. Also included here are discussions of the “world-soul” (esp. chaps. 12 and 13), one of those ideas truly strange to us.The topic of the world-soul also touches on perfect contemplation and the ideal mode of existence for intellectual creatures. Some of Teske’s theses in these areas are, by his own admission, tentative and come with loose ends. For example, when he tentatively argues for dependence on Ennead 3.7 to explain Augustine’s claim that Christ saves us from time, even though elsewhere Augustine has a more positive presentation of time, the precise nature of that dependence remains unresolved (chap. 13). Did Augustine here simply adopt Plotinus’s negative understanding of time or did he adjust it in some ways due to Christian concerns? And if the latter, then how so? Further observations include the following.Teske offers an introduction that is a refreshingly frank assessment of his work. It notes his approach to Augustine (for example, O’Connell’s influence), the limits of his research (the later works of Augustine, especially on grace, are not well represented), and how his essays would have benefited from subsequent literature (he mentions Ronnie Rombs’ book, Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul: Beyond O’Connell and his Critics [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006]). Moreover, before each essay Teske provides a sort of retractatio to put the essay “in a better perspective” as well as to imitate N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 226 Book Reviews 226 Augustine’s own “intellectual candor” (xii–xiii). The work comes with a bibliography and an index of names, but no subject index. Again, the articles deal with topics perennial to Christian philosophy; therefore, while Teske’s focus is primarily philosophical, the topics pertain to theology. Seasoned scholars of Augustine who are already familiar with Teske’s arguments may not need a collection of essays that “represent the core of what [he] learned in studying Augustine over the past quarter-century” (xiv), but students of Augustine and non-Augustinian scholars wanting a greater familiarity with the saint’s philosophical thought will find the collection a convenient resource. Thomists, in particular, might find especially interesting how, in Teske’s reading, Augustine’s talk of substance is especially concerned with a substance’s nature—for example, in what way, if at all, it is mutable—and not simply with its existence (see esp. chaps. 2 and 6). The emphasis on nature, in distinction from existence, might suggest a more sympathetic way for Thomists to read Augustine’s view that the soul is a substance. Further, the fifth essay finds a distinction in Augustine between speech, thought, and reality when talking about God that is not altogether different from St. Thomas’s distinctions in Summa theologiae I, qq. 12–13 between naming, knowing, and reality. Given that Thomas’s distinctions help avoid the Platonic error of conflating the mode of predication with the mode of existence,3 it is interesting to find similar distinctions in Augustine although he draws from the Platonic tradition.This perhaps surprising fact reminds us that Augustine can be a difficult thinker to understand. But thanks to N&V Teske’s informative essays, we can hope to fail Augustine less. Austin G. Murphy, O.S.B. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana Phenomenology of the Human Person by Robert Sokolowski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 ), 345 pp. IN THIS BOOK, Sokolowski lets the human person show himself as an “agent of truth.” As persons, we are the kind of thing to which the truth of things can show itself,“the kind of thing to whom being is exposed.”This exposition happens in words; the truth is shown to us in our speaking it. Further, we are the kind of thing that can install the speakable truth in our desire and action. Most curiously, we are the kind of thing for which the truth of things 3 The point is made in Ralph M. McInerny’s Aquinas and Analogy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 47. N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 227 Book Reviews 227 and ourselves as involved in speaking the truth can just in themselves be made to come into the light, and then we are philosophers. The title of the book is noteworthy. It is not “The Phenomenology of the Human Person,” which suggests a false finality. But neither is it “A Phenomenology of the Human Person.” Neither “phenomenology” nor “human person” is qualified in any way.There is no limiting and constricting sub-title to this book. The ambition is to produce the essentials of what any and every phenomenology of the human person must in some way address in contemplating the human person in his wholeness. The promise of the book’s title is richly and comprehensively fulfilled by its contents, and assiduous readers of Sokolowski will have the pleasure of seeing the many topics he has addressed over the years—such as quotation and picturing, predication and distinguishing, parallel consciousness, moral action and friendship—inserted into the appropriate whole of which they are the parts, which is precisely the phenomenology of the human person, in an unqualified sense. In showing how we are agents of truth, moreover, Sokolowski aims to get several other things done. First, he offers an important adjustment in how to recapitulate Husserl’s work. Second, he suggests a new and less philosophically dangerous way to speak of memory and imagination. Third, he contemplates no less an achievement than the dissolution of “the epistemological problem,” and a reunion of ancients and moderns. And although he does not say it, something should be said about why theologians should pay attention to this book. The book is divided into four parts. Truth appears to us syntactically, and the first part of the book shows us the structure and form of human thinking.What is the right point of entry, the right stance from which to describe human thinking? It is not, Sokolowski says, predication all by itself, saying p of S. It is rather that form of speech in which the speaker himself also shows up, declaring himself as the one who responsibly makes the predication. Not,“the pines are afflicted with bark beetles,” but “I know the pines are afflicted with bark beetles.” It is the second, and not the first, that is “the appropriate whole for language,” because it not only gives the speaker, but gives the conversational whole in which speech has its origin and sustaining environment. The declarative use of the first person in reporting, stating an opinion, judging, making a promise, is dependent, to be sure, on the same capacity for syntax that enables the reports, opinions, judgments and promises in the first place.The core of this part of the book shows us the evocation of syntax from the perceptual matrix in which wholes and parts, things and their features, are really there, and this as opposed to postulating the origins of syntax N&V_win10 .qxp 228 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 228 Book Reviews either with Kant in the transcendental ego or with those moderns who think of it as some sort of hard wiring of the brain. This all readers of Husserl will be familiar with. What they won’t be familiar with, what Sokolowski brings freshly to the exposition of some of Husserl’s basic moves, is to insert the phenomenology of the person into a phenomenology of conversation. The achievement of a categorical intuition is something “a speaker does for listener.”The benefits of taking thinking as inter-subjective are developed in a chapter that builds on Sokolowski’s prior attention to quotation, an ordinary but especially revealing tactic within human conversation that provides a signal display not only of syntax at work, but also of agents of truth at work with one another. Part two moves to the analysis of the content of our thinking. Sokolowski here retrieves the ancient doctrine of the predicables. Ordinarily in our conversation, we are predicating things that are true of some subject but that need not be true of it—we are predicating an accident of a subject. But if there is a glitch in the conversation, and someone does not know what we are speaking of, then conversation backs up to essential predication: the genus of the thing is located, as probably already known, and then what distinguishes the subject from other things in the genus is mentioned. Here, Aristotle’s intuition of indivisibles, what medievals called simple apprehension, finds a description within the moves of conversation. Furthermore, there is an exciting demonstration of how accidental predication always engages some property of the subject, something that, though not a part of the essence, flows from the essence, and gives us some glimpse of the essence. We do not have first accidents, and then properties. We have essentials and accidentals together. If the pines are afflicted by bark beetles, that is accidental. But that they be able to be affected by parasites is a property of living things. In this second part we have a first important engagement with the epistemological problem. When we exercise simple apprehension, when we come to know the subject others are speaking of, do we install a concept in our mind? Have we acquired a representation of some piece of the world we did not have before, and is it this inner copy of the thing that lets us speak about it? But what would representations be, Sokolowski asks, if they are distinct from the represented? And how would we ever know they were accurate? He teaches us first to distinguish pictures from memories and imaginations, and to appreciate the identities they engage, making the pictured or imagined present across the absences that are a function of space and time. In using words, we are again engaged in making identities present, but not via some profile or aspect of a thing. The possession of a word is the identification of the N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 229 Book Reviews 229 intelligibility the word names. Our ordinary conversation thus shows itself as the fine and indeed astounding accomplishment it is, the mutual making present for one another of the intelligibilities of things. Should we think of the intelligibilities so possessed, so magically present in the words of our conversation, as “in” us, just as they as also in the things of which they are the intelligibilities? But the mind isn’t a place, and it does not contain them as the Louvre contains pictures, nor even as the memory “images,” since words evoke the pure essences of things, unadorned by any accidentals available to perception. Sokolowski leaves us at this juncture with the concept as “an intelligibility taken as present to someone.” In nailing the intelligibilities of things, words also nail their ends, and give us things as being what they should be, what they want to be when they are in good form. Thus we are introduced to the third part of the book, which begins with the body and ends with desire, volition and action, and how these things come to speech.There is first a description of the ways in which our bodies are present and absent to us.The senses are described according as they are attuned to different forms of energy—sight to electromagnetic energy, taste to chemical energy, sound to the fluid energy of the air, and so on. Sensation turns these differing kinds of energy into a single kind, the electro-chemical energy in the brain which, together with the rest of the nervous system, constitutes the material substrate of experience. Rather than take perception as the construction of an internal model of the externally perceived object, Sokolowski embraces the “enactive theory” of perception of such thinkers as Alva Noë, according to which “perception should be described as an interaction between the perceiver and the world, not as an internal state of the organism.” It is an important corollary of considering perception in this way that the looks of things, their appearances, belong to the things and are part of the objectivity of the thing and are not some internal reaction to or copy of the thing. A further upshot is that it would be futile to try to find a one to one correspondence of mental states and brain states, which last observation plays a role in the illuminating contrast Sokolowski draws with contemporary materialism. The phenomenology of the person finds one form of completion in the consideration of wishing and action. Another is in the consideration of what the human being is doing when he performs his most puzzling but also most characteristic act of taking the philosophical point of view, the view from the transcendental ego.The only language we have is the language we use in the natural attitude, suited to speaking about tigers N&V_win10 .qxp 230 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 230 Book Reviews and tables and porridge and pines. Language makes things present but is unsuited to speaking of the presence of things. In philosophy, our language must be stretched to speak about issues that engage the whole of things and of the manifestation of things. Whatever language we use will be borrowed from speaking about things, and always suggest to us that things that are not things are things.When we freshly mint some strange coinage for philosophy, the freshness lasts only for a while, and we at length and again risk taking something that describes our agency of truth as if it were a tool in some spiritual carpenter box. We may very well use the metaphor of internal copies and pictures. But Sokolowski attempts to refresh our philosophical awareness with a new metaphor, something whose metaphorical status we will not readily forget. Instead of imagining ourselves to have mental images of things we perceive, he wants us to imagine ourselves as a sort of strange kind of lens. If we think of our brain and nervous system rather as a lens than as a canvas for images, we more easily remember that our perceptual apparatus, however we are to speak of it, is a medium, a transparency, rather than a library of film-strips. The metaphor is developed at length, and in this way, Sokolowski makes a new thing, the language of “lensing,” serve an old purpose, finding some way to talk about sensing. In other places, he refurbishes the old language, as with the “light” of the agent intellect, which becomes bringing the possibilities of syntax to bear on what is perceived, or startles us with an imaginative translation, as when “species” becomes “the thinkable look.”This finding of new metaphors and reviving of old ones, is a part of the program of the reconciliation of ancients and moderns.The chief part of this reconciliation, however, is the “epistemological problem,” to which the fourth part of the book is entirely devoted. Sokolowski begins with a patient sifting of the texts, first of Aristotle, and then of Aquinas. Both assert that the knower is identical with the known, which is not an explanation of knowledge so much as an assertion that there is such a thing as knowledge, that there is such a thing as the manifestation of being to human datives. But both also invoke the language of likeness or similitude in order to speak of knowledge, especially Aquinas, for whom understanding involves not only the passive reception of intelligible “species,” but the production of mental words, the “concepts” that seem to land us squarely in representationalism. The trouble with talk of likenesses and similitudes arises when we stay in the natural attitude and suppose we have named things like pictures or photographs, a kind of naturally occurring mental picture.Then, speaking of interior representations and likenesses, we suppose that, rather than merely indicating the presence of what is known, we have accounted for N&V_win10 .qxp 2/19/10 6:37 AM Page 231 Book Reviews 231 it. To the contrary, to have a “concept of X” is just to advert to the presence of the thing in its intelligibility to a human agent of truth.The eidos or species of a thing is not its representation but its intelligibility. “The intelligibility of thing is not multiplied or copied. It is one and the same in its various existences.” By the end of the book, we shall have had to think through more carefully what we really mean by the immateriality of mind. I pass over many graceful and illuminating things. It is time to say why theologians should pay attention to this phenomenology of the human person. For one thing, it is as nice a response to the call of John Paul II in Fides et Ratio as one could wish for.The Pope invited philosophers to a renewed attention to truth and being, to man and metaphysics. Sokolowski’s book is wholly devoted to showing man as the agent of truth—the truth of things, the truth of himself, the truth of being. Such a consideration of man in relation to being and truth is a sort of necessary presupposition of making sense of the very idea of revelation, and so of theology generally. More particularly, the analysis of quotation and of “recapitulation” are useful not only within a theology of revelation, but also as a means of tying together revelation and hagiography, the scriptures and ecclesial and magisterial teaching. Sokolowski’s observations on the problem of philosophical language cast light on the distinct but related problem of theological language. Language must be able to be stretched philosophically, in order to speak about presence and presencing and truth, if it is to be able to be stretched theologically to speak of the manifestation of what is beyond finite being, something that is the ground of manifestation as well as of everything that is manifested. Correlatively, the human being must be appreciated as an agent of truth if he can be a hearer of Truth; he has to be appreciated as constructing and articulating the world by his words and syntax if he is to let himself be re-constructed by the Word of God and a syntax that can articulate something beyond the world.The phenomenology of words prepares us for the theology of the Word. N&V Guy Mansini, O.S.B. Saint Meinrad School of Theology St. Meinrad, Indiana